The army didn’t even bother to send me a draft letter. I called them almost every day. They were always very nice and promised to take care of it, but let’s just say it’s been forty years and I’m still waiting. Eventually Dad had enough and he got me a job at Hedva’s grocery store. He said that by the time I finished waiting for life to begin, it would already slip through my fingers. But from there it was all downhill. ’Cause you see, getting lost in a class of thirty kids still makes some sense, but getting lost in a tiny grocery store—that takes real talent.

After the grocery store Dad found me a job at the dry cleaner’s, and then at the bakery near our house, in the Shapira neighborhood. He always tried to help as much as he could, but he admitted he was getting too tired. We’d sit at the kitchen table every evening, completely silent, and I could actually see how the years had made us more alike. Each with his own wrinkles. One evening he asked me how my day was, and I found myself yelling that I couldn’t keep going on alone like this. That it wasn’t healthy going through life without anyone. Dad was quiet for a few seconds, and then said that if God had wanted us to live in pairs, he would have created us that way to begin with. You probably think that was painful for me to hear, but to tell you the truth, it was reassuring. At that moment I finally realized that this is it, this is my life. And that’s also when I started blabbing like there’s no tomorrow, ’cause I knew no one was listening anyway. Believe me, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I look at people passing me on the street, and it doesn’t look much better. So what if people actually answer them when they say something, it doesn’t make much of a difference. If anything, it’s the feeling of being a bit stuck in place that bothers me, like I’m on a train that only stops where there are no stations, you know? But I think, maybe, others feel this way too, so why do I get to complain about it? That’s what I told myself when Dad passed away. That if I’m hurting like everyone else, I should be thankful I feel anything at all.