“You don’t have to celebrate Hanukkah,” I said, but like a dog that can’t stop itself from growling, I added, “I’ll just send back your Hanukkah presents.”“Did your teachers talk about Hanukkah at school?” I asked my son.
“Yeah,” he said. “We made a star. We made candy. We made everything.”
“But you talked about Hanukkah?” I asked.
“They said Hanukkah has a little star,” he said, barely listening to himself.
“Well,” I said, “they make it sound very exciting.”
It was sort of an inopportune time to bring home Mary, Joseph and the donkey, in the midst of my efforts to resurrect my son’s Jewish side, but I had no choice. As we walked out of his school with the bag of cardboard cutouts, my son bumped into some classmates, and they began playing tag in front of the school. As we were leaving, one of the mothers began waving her arms urgently to get me to stop. I rolled down the passenger side window.
“You forgot Mary and Joseph!” she yelled. I inadvertently left them on the church steps.
“Oh my god,” I said. Jews may not believe in Jesus, but I have a healthy sense of fear and superstition, and I’d just as soon not mess with religious icons. You never know which team got the story right.
I grabbed the bag, and my son and I took off. Our first stop was a hardware store to pick up a pair of tree pruners. When I came out, my son was using Mary to swat a bee.
“Mama, I made it fly out the window,” he said.
We are so going to hell, I thought.
We headed to a play date with a boy we befriended because he likes to roughhouse as much as my son does. We were going to bring Mary and Joseph, but my son was afraid his friend would take them so we left them in the car. It was a wise move as every time my son picked up a toy, his friend would seize it back when my son wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to have to explain why we were returning Mary to the school without a head.
That night, Mary, Joseph and the donkey accompanied us to an Italian restaurant believed to be frequented by members of organized crime. We sat down, and I took Mary, Joseph and the donkey out of the bag and lined them up along the wall behind the salt and pepper. The waitress took our order and said nothing about our guests. They remained there as I drank a vodka martini and my husband had a beer, and the two of us bickered about how he asked me what I wanted to order, and I said, “I already told you, just two minutes ago. You don’t listen to me.”
As we drove home, I asked my son, “Are you looking forward to Hanukkah?”
“No,” he said. “I’m looking forward to Christmas.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Because I like presents, and Santa comes down the chimney, and that’s funny,” he said.
Oh, that funny, funny Santa, I thought. “What would you say if I told you Moses comes down the chimney —”
“Who’s Moses?” my son asked.
“He’s a Jewish guy. He comes down the chimney for Hanukkah, and he brings you twice as many presents as Santa. What would you say to that?” I asked. I could feel Mary and Joseph’s condemnation through the plastic bag.
Yesterday, my son and I made a gingerbread house, though he seemed more interested in playing with the gummy worms I’d bought than with decorating the house. I realized I never heard what happened when he brought Mary and Joseph back to class. Each child usually discusses where they took the two and their donkey.
“Did you get to tell everyone what you did, or did you have to skip it that day because you had your play?” I asked.
“We actually talked about them,” he said.For sure I can write in fiction things that would not get through the publication review board. I’m not going to reveal classified information or methods. But in fiction, you’re god, and you get to arrange the characters as you like. And so that has been a steep learning curve for me but one I’ve really enjoyed. And to tell these stories — a lot of them based on characters I knew — and get to bring them to life … In “Burn” there’s one character named Charles who is an older man … a mentor of hers. But he is very much based on someone who was a mentor to me. And you couldn’t make up his real life story.
What is the process behind getting the book vetted by the CIA?
My publisher understands it. I submit everything to the CIA.
Has the CIA come back with anything they want to remove from your fiction?