The Beautiful Possible (16 page)

She’elah: How?

Teshuvah:

She’elah: Why?

Teshuvah:

Teshuvah:

Teshuvah.

Months pass. In the house of the rabbi the meaningful mourning rituals are as useless as weak tea. Sol’s daily recitations of the Mourner’s Kaddish do not connect him to Lenny and his prayers are empty and rote. The women of Briar Wood surround Rosalie with affection but the words they speak linger on her skin like cheap perfume and she wants to rub them off with a scouring pad. No atheist is ever found in a foxhole; no believer is ever found in a child’s empty bedroom. The sunlight streams into the house during the long afternoons and mocks their brave, sad lives. Termites parade into the kitchen; the exterminator overcharges for
treatment. Sol cries to the exterminator, to the gardener, to the handyman, to the floor waxer. Every service man who walks into their house utters the same syllables:
Rabbi, I heard. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, as if Jeff, who makes a living by carrying a can of pesticide on his back, had stolen Lenny from the Kerems.
I’m sorry
, as if Glen the gardener had swept Lenny into a sewer with autumn leaves and gum wrappers.
I’m sorry,
they all say, bearing words that slash like razors.

You shouldn’t have named your son after the
West Side Story
composer, rabbi. I remember that sermon you gave, how music inspired your child’s name. That was a huge error in judgment, thinking you could attach your son’s life to art.

You didn’t pray enough; better you should be Orthodox and you would be a real rabbi.

Your wife is so aloof. Something is not right in your lives. Rabbi, I’m only telling you this because I care.

Your son was never yours. God lent him to you and then broke the terms of the lease.

Rosalie cannot breathe in the house, cannot breathe in the shul. She cannot bring herself to go anywhere except to the mall where she meanders into stores, and caresses expensive dresses that she has no intention of buying. At the same time every night, Madeline phones Rosalie from London and listens to her cry into the phone. After a few weeks of these sessions, Madeline interrupts Rosalie’s sobs.

“Have you told him, Rosalie?”

“No, and I don’t intend to. Don’t you think my distraction cost me my child? What if I was missing cues about Lenny while
I was running off to California? Even Charlie knew something wasn’t right with Lenny’s health. How did I miss it?”

“Children are aware of things that adults can’t pick up,” says Madeline. “You could not have known. And anyway, your visits to Walter allowed Sol to keep his job.”

“Those visits allowed me to step backwards into a hornet’s nest of youthful desire. I had no business—”

“Jerusalem. Madame Sylvie. You were so hungry with longing and you weren’t wrong to follow it.”

“Easy for you to say, Madeline. Easy for you to hold your friend’s hand while she walks through fire. Safe from a distance.”

“Don’t judge my life,” says Madeline. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” says Rosalie.

Nathan Samuels has granted Sol bereavement leave. After he recites Kaddish at morning services, Sol is free to go home. No sermons to prepare, nothing for him to do. A student rabbi fills in for the holidays. On Kol Nidre night, Sol waits at the door with Philip and Charlie, and turns to Rosalie.

“I presume you won’t be joining us.”

“As usual,” she says.

“This time I won’t even try.”

After they leave, Rosalie stands on the porch and waits for the first notes of the prayer to pull her away from her house, her body, her life. Walter is far away now, a figment from another time. She wraps her arms around herself and when she hears the first words of Kol Nidre she goes back inside the house, sits down at the dining room table, and wets the white holiday tablecloth with her tears.

All the poems of our lives are not yet made.

—
MURIEL RUKEYSER

January 1974

Walter takes a hit of cardamom mixed with ginger and mace, places his palms flat on the floor, and springs his body into a headstand. Fluid as paint, he thinks. Still in the game. He lands on his feet and considers the drawing he wants to finish before the new semester begins. Walter is sketching Sonia as he remembers her, but he has no photograph to work from and his memory is vague. He has found the shape of her cheeks, her eyes, her cascading hair—certainly not a true representation, but he captured something.

When he returned home from Eden Ranch that last time Sonia began appearing in his dreams and she has become a frequent guest. She doesn’t speak, just stands before him in the slip and sweater she was wearing when she was shot, and stares at him with cool indifference. At first Walter wasn’t taunted by her appearance but the regularity of the dream seemed to him like a request, and he picked up a piece of charcoal and began. His studio has become a tangle of sketchbooks and ungraded papers; the
books he and Rosalie tore through for their project are stacked in a corner, exactly where they left them.

The door has shut, he thinks. Eden Ranch was the ending, sealed by the fire. May life be sweet for the rebbetzin and her rabbi. May they grow old together in the place where their words bloom, where their Torah flowers and bears fruit. May they teach others. May they prosper without me.

Walter groans and shouts:
No!
He takes another hit of the spice and sorts through his pile of unopened mail. No papers; just a few journals and a letter postmarked from London.

Walter phones Rosalie and insists she fly out to see him; Rosalie tells Sol that Madeline has invited her to London. At first Sol grumbles about the cost of the ticket and then asks how long she plans to be away. Rosalie arrives at Walter’s empty studio on a
Monday afternoon. She lets herself in, lies down on her coat, and sleeps on the floor. When Walter arrives he lies beside her, rests his hand on her hair, and asks for nothing. He cancels classes and meetings for the rest of the week and he stays with Rosalie and offers no words. When they finally make love they become swimmers in a familiar ocean. Time loses its context and the dimensions of the studio become meaningless. Walter passes spices over Rosalie’s body as he once did, and they kindle a hunger that rivals their days in the upper geniza and the lower geniza, only this time with a slow passion that carries its own language. They barely speak. They allow the peacocks to wander inside and scatter droppings and feathers. They forget to buy food and consume only what Walter has on hand in the studio: peanuts dipped in cumin, pickles and chopped herring from a jar, a bottle of Champagne, stale Saltines laced with cardamom and garlic.

The studio is their deserted mountain cabin, their geniza, their cave in the snow, every hidden place in the world and no place at all. It is the most ugly slum on earth and the most heavenly palace. At night Rosalie lifts her head from the futon and gazes at the city lights surrounding the East Bay. She believes the lights are stars and she is floating in the sky. Only their bodies are real. Rosalie is forty-six years old. Walter is fifty-four. They are alone for four days and their recognizable lives become obliterated, irrelevant. For both of them, this time is not joyful, but necessary.

Rosalie is scheduled to be picked up in two hours to make her flight home. She has not unpacked her bag, showered, or combed
her hair since she arrived. Walter holds up a mirror so she can see how her hair is knotted into haphazard dreadlocks, her face parched and sallow.

“You were making love to a witch,” she says.

“A goddess,” says Walter. “My holy rebbetzin.”

“What does that make you?”

“Not a rabbi.”

“Thank God,” says Rosalie.

“We are the excommunicated; free to live our prayers out of bounds.”

“I thought you don’t pray.”

“My whole life is a prayer,” says Walter. “So is yours.”

“You sound like a rabbi.”

Walter laughs. “Our transcendent trifecta.”

“Don’t bring Sol into this,” says Rosalie.

“There is always a third,” says Walter.

“What I felt for you was always separate from my marriage; it still is—”

“The third is not always a person.”

“Oh. God in the room. The three under the wedding canopy. Pulpit words. Convenient lies. Take them and parade them before your students, Walter. They are free for the asking. I’m finished with all that.”

She reaches for the bottle of Champagne and takes a swig. “No more lies,” she says. “No more dried flowers falling out of a book in a geniza. No more holy rebbetzin channeling some precious wisdom. I fell into this world; an accident of lineage. The rabbi’s daughter marries a rabbi. But it didn’t have to be this way.
I could have become an archaeologist and my Torah would have been a threshing bowl I unearthed in Indonesia. I could have become a cellist and my Torah would have been Bach. The celestial answer would be unspoken; I’d have no use for these misleading words, this constant attempt at awkward metaphors. What a life that would be!”

“We traveled the route of words, darling. Both of us.”

“Years ago I would have conjured some lovely quip to suggest a hidden truth. Such fun I had! But I’m too old to dredge up meanings. And yes, I love you. And I’m tired of this. And Sol—”

“You saved him.”

“The purple binder, placed into the rabbi’s hands by his loyal wife. Such a bullshit artist. And these congregants, dumb and hungry and needy, they hang on to my words, our words, his words. I despise them for it. Even now they expect us to show up and say,
Oh, we learned from our loss, oh, God took Lenny for a reason, oh, it all makes sense in some kabbalistic terrain
.”

“The myth of the eternal—”

“At least you don’t pretend, Walter. Your God has no name. You don’t parade your spiritual life in front of an eager audience.”

“Saved by indirection and distance. Wise me.”

“I used to envy you. I would picture you looking out over the Pacific, free to think your own unmollified, uncorrupted thoughts. I wanted to live in your brain, not this Shabbat-addled Torah-true fiction that I can’t escape.”

“It was your illusion to live, just like my illusion belongs to me. Does anyone live without some veneer of faith? Even the so-called faithless are circling a great mystery. No one is immune.”

“We wanted it both ways, Walter. Spices for the body and poetic words about the soul to satisfy ourselves beyond the body. A seesaw of meaning.”

“Wanted? Past tense, Rosalie?”

“Wanted. Want. But it’s not only you that I want; there’s something else I have no words for. Oh, Walter. Don’t let me stop talking. I can’t stop—”

Walter kisses Rosalie, and the sky darkens around them. The only place they can travel now is where their bodies take them and they travel there together all night.

Rosalie misses her plane.

Six weeks later Sol and Rosalie lie in bed. The sun has not yet risen but Sol kicks off the blanket and reaches for his tallit and tefillin. Rosalie grabs his hand, pulls him toward her, and whispers in his good ear.

“Is this some kind of biblical joke? You’re on the pill!”

“I stopped taking it when Lenny got sick. What was the point? I was getting older and we barely bothered.”

“Barely is not never and forty-six is not too old,” says Sol. His eyes mist. “This is a blessing.”

“Yes it is.”

“We will have to tell Walter.”

“What does he have to do with it?”

“He called me. Oh, Rosalie. I didn’t tell you.”

“You’re telling me now.”

“It was almost one in the morning, about six weeks ago, when you were in London. You had missed your flight and rescheduled
for the next day, and I was up late, reading. I didn’t even realize Walter knew about Lenny. When I heard his voice I started crying, and I cried and cried while he just listened on the other end of the phone. Hours of this, Rosalie, hours. And just before sunrise, I asked him if he was still listening. He was. And then he said to me—at least what I heard him say—
maybe you will be blessed with another child.
”

Rosalie closes her eyes. “We need to tell the boys.”

“Yes,” says Sol. “And Walter.”

“You said that already.”

“He wished it for us, Rosalie.” He pulls her close and lifts her nightgown.

“You’ll miss services.”

“This is my prayer today,” he says. “This, this, and oh, yes, this.”

Three times in her life Rosalie leaned into the arms of a nurse and waited for an anesthesiologist to deliver an epidural into her lower spine to obliterate the pain of contractions. Three times she would wait for the needle that numbed her legs into tree trunks. Three times she would sit up in a hospital bed, Sol beside her, and watch the peaks on the monitor register the pain she did not feel, as if she were witnessing another woman’s birth drama. Three times Stu Katz would mosey in and out of the room, nod, touch her shoulder, and look at his watch. Now, in her eighth month, Rosalie lies back on the familiar exam table in Stu Katz’s office, her belly covered in goo, and listens to the
whosh-whosh
of the baby’s heartbeat.

“Sounds good, rebbetzin,” says Stu. “We’re in the home stretch, no pun intended.”

“Excellent,” says Rosalie. “I’m pushing out this baby without any drugs.”

“Are you out of your mind? I already scheduled a C-section. You’re too old for a natural delivery.”

“I was young enough to get pregnant! No C. And no drugs. It’s my last chance to experience what I missed with the other three.”

“You can read about it,” he says. “We have advanced technology now, rebbetzin. The only women who aren’t delighted by this are either shamefully primitive or emotionally unstable. You’ve been through this three times. This one will be no different, only surgical.”

“No surgery. No epidural.”

Rosalie thinks of Giselle at Eden Ranch, how she crouched on the ground and let her belly rest there like a pumpkin in a patch. She is certain that Giselle delivered in a squatting position, with Paul standing close by, ready to catch the baby.

“I must insist,” says Stu.

“Are you telling me how to give birth to my own child?”

“This birth is more risky than I can explain.”

“Try.”

“I would need a medical dictionary and I’m sure the details would either bore or frighten you. Look, rebbetzin. You trusted me before, and my hands delivered your three boys into this world. I loved Lenny the most, and I will mourn with you and Rabbi Kerem for the rest of my life. Just trust me once more.”

Rosalie glances at Stu’s hands and realizes that he touched her children before she did. She notices the age spots on his knuckles and begins to feel nauseated.

“Give me my records,” she says.

“What?”

Rosalie adjusts her bulk and rolls off the examining table.

“The folder with my charts. Every recorded heart beat, every added pound, every notch of blood pressure. Every damn detail.”

“That’s for me—”

She reaches to the counter and snatches the folder.

“Where are you taking that?”

“To a midwife,” she says.

Stu laughs. “Good luck with that! And even if you find a misguided midwife who wants to stand in harm’s way and risk a lawsuit, no one will treat you in your eighth month, not in your condition.”

When she returns home Sol is standing in front of the garage, his hands on his hips.

“What do you think you’re doing, Rosalie?”

“I’m going inside. I have to make some calls.”

“Are you out of your mind? Stu Katz just phoned and told me what you’re up to.”

“What we are up to, Sol. We. Together.”

“Are you risking my baby’s life?”

“This is my baby, Sol. The last one.”

“Our baby.”

“Yes. And so will you help me find a midwife in this backwater suburb or are you going to wring hands with Stu Katz over my foolishness?”

In her thirty-fifth week of pregnancy, Rosalie is learning how to breathe. A midwife named Gail instructs her to exhale, and Rosalie opens her mouth, panting like a thirsty dog.

“Natural breath,” says Gail.

“You have to treat me like a first-time mother,” says Rosalie. “I can’t even remember how to exhale.”

“You’ve been breathing all your life. Try it again.”

“I have no patience for this.” Rosalie bursts into tears. “Can I just have the baby now?”

“You’re not in labor, honey. We don’t make appointments for giving birth, and you have to learn a few things, be reminded of what your body already knows.”

“It’s just—”

“This was your choice, Rosalie. If you want to work with someone else I’m sure your doctor will take you back. Are you with me or not?”

“My husband is not the baby’s father.”

“And are you the mother?”

Rosalie smiles.

“Then look at me and breathe normally.”

Rosalie reaches for Gail’s hands and holds them tight.

“I’m sorry to blurt. It’s so different with this one.”

“No more sleepwalking. Now inhale and exhale. When the time is right, we’ll see if you are dilated.”

When Rosalie’s water breaks later that week, Sol picks up the phone to call Stu Katz.

“What are you doing?” Rosalie screams. “If you call that idiot, I will chain myself to our bed and deliver this baby myself.”

Sol puts down the phone, sits beside her, and waits. When the contractions begin she pushes her weight against his, then cries into his arms during the endless taxi ride to the birthing center.