T’shuva

            “This isn’t my first rehab.” Ariel looked down at her hands as if there were something there for her; they were cupped as if she were holding a bird. “It isn’t even my fifth.” She laughed and did not look up, only gazing again at her hands, raising them now as if bringing water to her mouth and lowering them again. “Did you know?” she said brightly, looking up suddenly, directly at Rabbi Dovid like an eager student. “Did you know, there was this guy once who jumped out of a plane with a backpack filled with cocaine? So anyway, the fall killed him and his backpack was left hanging from a tree. So this bear found it and ate the cocaine, all of it, he didn’t stop ‘till he had a heart attack and died.” She paused expectantly. “That’s who I am. I’m the bear.” “But you didn’t die,” offered Rabbi Dovid. “You lived.” Ariel tipped her head and brought her cupped hands to a chest like a vow. “Trying to,” she said. She blushed like a girl, her skin already glowing pink from the rising sun. Rabbi Dovid rose and clapped his hands against his thighs, signaling that it was time to enter the Malibu surf. His group gathered there each Friday at lifeguard stand 17 where, twenty years before, he had sprinkled the ashes of his brother Eytan, whose request to be cremated was honored against the objections of their mother. Dovid had done it for him...