In real life the Bookbinders came to New Haven when Chaim was about 11 years old. The father was a dermatologist which meant that he got to dress in a white coat and everyone admired him but he rarely had emergencies and was home at five-thirty every day for supper. Moshe the Bookbinder son was in Chaim’s class and the two boys became close friends. Deep down Chaim knew that he liked Moshe’s family even more than he liked Moshe.

He would find reasons to visit after school and would happily accept the Bookbinders’ firm invitations to stay for supper. Chaim liked to stay — not for the food but for the feeling. Here was a jovial lighthearted father who would ask each child about his day always including Chaim as well. He would tease his wife but then go dry the dishes with her as they chatted softly. Mrs. Bookbinder laughed out loud and was free with compliments — but they never felt trite or empty.

She noticed Chaim’s new cap before anyone else did commenting on how it made him look like Mickey Mantle. Her husband had laughed and pulled on the bill causing the cap to cover Chaim’s eyes. Chaim wished he could stay that way in happy darkness forever.

When he came home from the Bookbinders his mother would grill him. What was for supper? Why did he prefer the macaroni made by Mrs. Bookbinder — who spoke like she’d just come off the boat by the way — when at home there had been delicious fish? What was so exciting at that messy little house anyway? Once he told his parents — his quiet peace-loving father and his contemptuous mother — that he thought the Bookbinder home was a fun place to be. His father sighed and nodded and Chaim could see that he understood that he also sometimes wished he had a fun place to relax after supper with the newspaper and his pipe. His mother had pounced.

“So you wish you were a Bookbinder then? Is that it?”

Something in his face had given him away.

“Is it?”

There was no way she could know that at night in bed he imagined being a Bookbinder the father ruffling his hair the mother rushing to hang his math test on the refrigerator. She couldn’t have seen the inside of his mind where he dreamed about accepting Moshe’s invitation to join them on their summer trips to a bungalow. There Moshe would tell him he ran around with other kids all day finding frogs and fishing in a small lake. His father had helped him build a club-house and some nights all the kids slept in it. You really have to come with us Moshe would say. My parents won’t care. They’d be happy to take you along!

If Chaim had immediately denied his mother’s charge maybe nothing would have changed. But his guilty silence was enough. “You wish you were one of them” she hissed and it was clear that “them” was a bad thing. Bookbinder was the new enemy.