Born Again by Charles Rammelkamp

"I was only dead about a minute before they got my heart going again. That's been more than twenty years ago, 1977."

Bridgewater counted several beats before looking casually around at the speaker in a seat on the bus a few rows behind him, across the aisle on the right side. It was still before dawn. They were all being transported from wardrobe to location, everybody on the bus an "extra" in a synagogue scene, all outfitted in dark suits, white yarmulkes and prayer shawls draped around their shoulders.

"I was trying to kill myself," the man continued to his seatmate. He looked like he was in his late fifties or early sixties, pudgy, gray-faced, but with an alert eye. "I drank like a fish, smoked a couple packs a day, ate fried foods, didn't hardly exercise -- the whole nine yards."

Bridgewater remembered the conversation he'd had with his wife Zippy early that morning. The alarm had rung, and Bridgewater was about to leave the warm nest of the bed when they heard the distinct sound of their ancient cat, Ozzie, urinating on the floor at the foot of the bed. At seventeen, Ozzie was blind and incontinent. He did not seem to be in any pain, though he was frail and distracted. Bridgewater jumped from the bed and scooped Ozzie up. Ozzie had already finished, but he took Ozzie down to his litter box nevertheless before coming back up to mop up the piss. After he'd washed his hands he lay down for a moment longer.

"Our whole house is going to smell like pee," Zippy said. It sounded like an accusation. "It's annoying when he does it in the kitchen,but at least there I can mop it up."

"Well, what can we do about it?"

"If Ozzie were a person, we'd have to put him in a nursing home, where somebody could take care of him."

"God, sometimes I wish he'd just die, you know?"

"Well, when you get to the point of wishing an animal would simply die...you know, either we go on like this and let our whole house turn into Ozzie's litterbox, or -- or we have to make a decision."

"You mean kill him."

Zippy started to speak, but she couldn't get the words to sort out the complexities. She tried again but once more the words failed to come. They lay silently for a while and then Bridgewater got up to go to the filming. Downstairs, Ozzie lay on the couch, curled in a fetal ball. He looked gaunt. Surely he'd used up most of his nine lives.

The scene they were filming was Rosh Hashanah in an old Orthodox shul, ornate wooden pews carved with Stars of David, a balcony for the women, a stained glass domed ceiling with a Tree of Life. The director told everybody to remove their watches and eyeglasses and to put away their cell phones. This was supposed to be 1954. No anachronisms allowed.

The movie starred Hillary Nixon, whom Bridgewater had known as his brother's fiancee, Bambi Warner. Now fairly successful, she'd only been an aspiring actress when Mark had married her and they'd moved out to Los Angeles. She'd divorced Mark about the time their father, Frank Bridgewater, had died. A massive heart attack at an exercise club in Phoenix. Both of these events had sent Mark on a Christian revival. He'd found Jesus. Death and divorce had driven him to it. Born again.

In fact, Mark had accused Peter of "not having invited Jesus" to Frank's funeral, and he had adopted some nasty anti-Semitic rhetoric with his new-found Christianity. The brothers had not spoken in five years, though Bridgewater had heard from their uncle that Mark had joined some sort of cult in Colorado. He hoped they weren't some violent white supremacist doomsday outfit.

It had been seventeen years since Bridgewater had converted to Judaism. His wife, Zipporah, was Jewish, and Bridgewater, a child of the God-Is-Dead Sixties, converted to provide an unambiguous religious atmosphere for their children, when they had them. Now his older daughter, Susanna, was about to become a Bat Mitzvah. It didn't really feel all that different from what he'd known before. Sure, the holidays weren't the same -- Rosh Hashanah and Passover instead of Christmas and Easter -- but in America, the differences didn't seem that important. "Converting to Judaism must be like emigrating to Canada," he remembered a friend saying. The same drama of creation, revelation and redemption.

The star of the movie, Maurice Adcock, came down the aisle while the cantor sang a prayer at the end of the traditional Rosh Hashanah service. He stopped next to Bridgewater and gestured up to the balcony where Hillary stood. Bridgewater thought he caught a glimpse of Hillary's hair, though he didn't really recognize her. They shot the scene a dozen times from different angles, moving huge expensive equipment around for each shooting. Bridgewater wondered if he would appear in the film when it was released in a year. Maybe his left shoulder would be visible, or maybe he would recognize his left hand, with the gold band on the ring finger, where he had clutched the back of the seat in front of him.

"I'm going to be in a movie this weekend," Bridgewater had told Myra Malachevsky, a Russian woman at work. "I'm playing a Jew." Bridgewater was the Director of Communications for a non-profit heath care advocacy group.

He was subtly teasing Myra, who never really bought his conversion as anything but a gimmick. To her, Jew was something stamped on an identity card. It meant hardship, ostracism. It meant you were marked. You were born a Jew. You didn't "decide" to be a Jew or not be a Jew. "Peter is going to be Jewish this weekend," Myra said in an ironic tone to her boyfriend, Mark. They were all walking to the parking lot together after work.

"We can show him how to be Jewish, if he needs some help." Mark wore a beard and long hair. A man in his late forties, he had probably been a hippie.

"What do you know about Jews?" Myra said. Her voice dripped scorn. She'd escaped Russia during the Brezhnev years, going first to Israel and then to Baltimore.

"I know plenty of Jews."

But you don't know what it means. You can't know what it means."

Bridgewater parted company with them at the lot. They walked to Mark's car, still quarrelling about the meaning of Jewishness.

But I am a Jew! For the past seventeen years I've been living in a Jewish household, observing all the Jewish holidays, Friday night candles, Saturday morning synagogue services; both of my daughters go to a Jewish day school! What more does it take to be a Jew?

Filming had begun at seven in the morning and was over by two. Although they'd filled out W-2 forms, they weren't being paid. What they would have earned was being donated to the synagogue. They were given a cafeteria-style lunch in the basement of the synagogue, however. Bridgewater had learned about the movie through his children's school. A notice had been distributed to the students to give to their parents. ("EXTRA! EXTRA!") Others had learned about the event through other Jewish organizations and by word of mouth. Not everybody was Jewish. Bridgewater had overheard one man telling another that this was the first time he'd ever been in a synagogue. They were all just bodies wearing yarmulkes, dark suits and prayer shawls, enough to fill all the pews in the shul for a Rosh Hashanah scene in a movie.

Bridgewater filled his tray with salad, some sort of pasta dish ladled out by a film crew member, and tuna casserole - a kosher dairy luncheon catered for the occasion -and he carried it over to an empty seat at one of the long folding dining tables. A minute later, the gray-faced man he'd seen on the bus that morning took the seat opposite him. They nodded a greeting. Bridgewater wondered fleetingly if the man were "really" Jewish and then fell briefly into the abyss of wondering what a "real" Jew was.

"Interesting experience, huh?" Bridgewater said.

"Yeah, but I don't think I'd like to do it again. Once is enough."

"How long do you think that scene will be? Ten minutes?"

"Five, tops. It'll probably be cut with the outdoor stuff they shot yesterday."

"A lot of work for five minutes of film."

"Where do you think those huge production costs come from?"

"I wonder if we'll recognize ourselves in the movie."

"Immortalized on the silver screen, eh?"

"Gives new meaning to the phrase, 'born again.'" Bridgewater looked at the man to see if that phrase had any other special significance for him, but his expression didn't change.

"I didn't even see what's-her-face, Hillary Nixon," he said. "Did you?"

"Nope." Bridgewater thought about telling him she used to be his sister-in-law, but he decided against it. Why bother? "Just her head when they were shooting that scene where Maurice Adcock gestures up to her that he's going out for a smoke."

When he got home, Bridgewater was greeted by his daughter, Susanna. She was sobbing.

"What's the matter, honey?"

"Ozzie's dead!" she shrieked. "Zoe and I found him in the basement!" Susanna could barely get the words out. "I was calling for him, and he didn't come, and I started to worry, and I looked all over the place, and then I saw him in the corner of the basement, and I called him again, and he didn't move. He didn't even move!" She burst out sobbing again at the memory.

Bridgewater hugged his twelve-year old daughter close to him. He felt ineffectual, but he hugged her tightly anyway.

"Can I help you bury him?"

"Sure you can. We'll do that today. This afternoon." Ozzie's name was short for Azazel, the scapegoat who is sent away with his cargo of sins, part of the Rosh Hashanah symbolism. Symbolic of the fresh start the Jewish New Year signifies. Born again. They'd get Ozzie into the ground quickly and simply, Bridgewater reflected. Jewish-style.