The Rubik’s Cube
Eleanor Levine
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My sister Adelaide got me a Rubik’s Cube for Hanukkah.
Every year she and her wife get me whatever is on sale at Aldi. One year it was three bags of coffee that I threw out, though I could have taken them to my AA meeting at 5 pm in New Jersey where no one cares if this was a belated Hanukkah gift.
This is not as bad as the Art Deco plates in a wire container that Adelaide and her wife gave me. We placed their Art Deco dishware on the kitchen counter but eventually threw it out because who puts these things on their counter when you barely have enough room for your grilled cheese maker.
I buy Adelaide and her wife good things: Tommy Hilfiger shirts that fit her giant-size body, and a picture book about gnomes that my sister-in-law can peruse because she doesn’t read regular books as she spends forty hours a week doing Excel sheet calculations on a computer in a Lego factory.
My sister-in-law and sibling can take the ten dollars and get me a gift card for Amazon or Whole Foods. A can of tuna at Whole Foods would be more valuable than a Rubik’s Cube that is still in its plastic container in my trunk.
I know people who are so good at solving the Rubik’s Cube that they received a scholarship to MIT. I graduated from Rutgers thirty years ago and have no desire to attend MIT. My Boston friends say, “do the Rubik’s Cube so you’ll learn to be more patient,” but these Bostonians also think they live in a Henry James novel and examine the rudiments of life in its utter stillness.
I have less patience than my brother Harold who is a cashier at ShopRite and discusses anti-Semitism with Sri Lankan ladies who’d rather debate the hefty price of eggs. Harold is not upset that they gave me a Rubik’s Cube for Hanukkah (we had to drive two hours each way to get it); he is furious they gave me chocolate-covered almonds knowing I’ve had a binge-eating disorder since infancy.
“Adelaide would freak out if you bought her wife—a diabetic—chocolate!” exclaims Harold, who calls me a “whore,” though I only sleep with unread books. Harold ignores our canines who moan to take them out, but Harold is too exhausted from his prole job at ShopRite (where he also discusses politics with Republicans who’d never vote for Biden—only Trump—out of desperation—but they’d still never give their grandkids a Rubik’s Cube).
Adelaide won’t speak with these ShopRite conservatives because she refuses to speak with Republican friends she’s known since childhood (they smoked pot by the telephone lines in Jersey swamps before the Hasidim from Brooklyn moved to Lakewood, NJ). Adelaide’s old pothead friends are now Trumpies and don’t believe in immigrants; there are too many immigrants—7,000 a day—but Adelaide, who also says disparaging things about immigrants, but not too loudly (because we can’t be friends with people who speak like fascists), well, she and these neighborhood kids were friends when Nixon bombed Cambodia and they did not know or care about this because the pot was more scintillating. In truth, I see that Adelaide has a point, because being friends with these modern-day bigots is like befriending the sad and assimilated Germans in the 1940s who were indifferent during the Holocaust—but even those Nazi fucks would not have voted for Donald Trump.
I have a friend in Germany—Dagmar—who says, “you speak German like a Turk,” and has a fabulous job as an anchor for Berlin PBS. I write her too many emails—this gets in the way of her prosperous career like the time I refused to remove her name from my acrimonious blog.
Though not as humiliating as when her father called me “a despicable kike dike,” because I emailed him lesbian Hebrew poetry and he wrote, “don’t ever send me this shit again…” This does not surprise me because when I met him in New Jersey (Dagmar and I were teenagers then), he said “Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewish” with the “e” loud enough to be heard in downtown Warsaw.
In the 1970s, Adelaide had a crush on Dagmar and bought her a pair of Converse that did not fit. Dagmar thought this was creepy and stopped speaking with my sister.
I suggest we switch to the gift certificate—even from ShopRite—but Adelaide won’t listen. She might not even invite me back next year for dried turkey—though I offered to make lasagna—they have enough food—but could I stop and get a rhubarb strawberry pie for $18.95 from Delicious Orchards? I do not have an Elon Musk car, but my brother does and that’s cheaper than using a Volvo for gas for a half hour to pick up the pie or we could get it a few dollars cheaper at ShopRite.
Adelaide is not completely devoid of gifts and advises me: “Don’t be furious with your best friend, Agnes,” who NEVER socializes with me if her adult children visit. Adelaide thinks sending Agnes a fuming text, where verbs and nouns are jumping off the Empire State Building—yelling cruel epithets at her—might ruin a half-a-century relationship. Adelaide advises that I “delete” this message.
I calm down. I meditate listening to Lite FM. I breathe in and out.
I phone Agnes, and instead of arguing about her infantile maternal nature, we discuss Hanukkah gifts.
Agnes concurs—a 5-dollar cup of coffee at Whole Foods is preferable to a Rubik’s Cube and/or almond chocolates and/or the frigging mug Adelaide once bought me—with 0.5-centimeter lizards engaging in foreplay.
I appreciate Adelaide’s wisdom, which is worth a $1200 appointment with Manhattan’s best shrink. And while it’s not a puzzle—like the Rubik’s Cube—her words calm me more than a yoga instructor, at a discount seminar, could.
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Eleanor Levine’s poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was published by Unsolicited Press (Portland, Oregon). Her short story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, was published by Guernica Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Her novel, The Golden Kernel, was accepted by Main Street Rag Publishing Company for 2026. Also forthcoming is her second collection of poetry, Downsizing With Catherine Deneuve, which will be released by Unsolicited Press in 2028.
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Posted in Pride: June '26 and tagged in #boudin, #fiction, #flashfiction, Fiction