The Outsider (12 page)

“No, the wedding's still on. Lucy went with the kids.” He explained the problem of a rabbi observing while a justice of the peace married two Jewish kids.

“Yes — yes, I can see where that puts you. Well, come along anyway, David. It's better than sitting alone in an empty house.”

“I couldn't get there until almost ten.”

“We don't eat before ten. It's our one touch of night life on the Ridge.”

It pleased David. He felt truant, fancy free. He recalled the party at the Carters' the year before, and it was rather sedate as parties go, but on the other hand, there were only two other Jews present besides himself, and that was certainly a novelty. This time, there were four Jews and their wives, three of them strangers to him, if indeed they were Jewish. He was irritated by a habit he had fallen into, glancing at a person and deciding whether or not the person was Jewish; but then he was increasingly irritated by the things he did and by the thoughts that ranged through his mind, and he felt increasingly driven by an oppressive sense of his Jewishness. Why, he wondered, had it not been so in the army? But in the army he had been part of a whole; here he was an outsider. He felt that he had come into this room as an outsider; he felt that he came into the Jewish homes of his congregants as an outsider; and he even felt at times that he stood in the synagogue as an outsider.

What nonsense, he said to himself. I am here and these people are warm and friendly and apparently delighted to meet me.

Millie Carter was a good cook, and the sideboard groaned under a rich assortment of New England autumnal dishes — a bean pot; Indian pudding; a huge salad of red onion, fresh corn, chickpeas, tomatoes, and lettuce; a platter of fried chicken; and a roast ham.

“Both you and Martin,” Millie said to him, “are obscenely thin. Please eat and eat and eat. I'll be very flattered. Who have you met?”

“Almost everyone by now.” He was looking at a tall, slender woman, a woman of about thirty, at least five feet nine inches. She had a sharply etched face, a high-bridged nose, wide cheekbones, and amber-colored eyes. Were her features not so sharply carved, she might have had a bovine appearance, so wide and placid was her brow; as it was, she was strikingly handsome.

“You haven't met her,” Millie said. “Let me introduce you. Be kind to her. She needs a good word and a thimble of kindness.”

“Why? Or is it simply what we all need?”

“Some other time. Come meet her. Her name is Sarah Comstock.”

Sarah Comstock took his hand firmly. Her own hand was strong and warm. “I'm so glad to meet you, Rabbi Hartman, and so glad that you came to the Ridge. I've looked forward to meeting you. I never met a rabbi before.”

“That would make you curious, I'm sure.”

“I'm so sorry. That's not what I meant. I've offended you, haven't I?”

“No. Oh, no. I didn't mean it that way either.”

“Shall we both start again?” She smiled. She had a remarkable smile that lit up her face and appeared to change it completely, mellowing the angles and planes.

“Please.”

“Where is your wife?” looking about the room. “I've heard so much about how pretty and clever she is. She and Millie have practically finished this cookbook they're doing —
The Parsonage Cookbook
— how to dish up gourmet food on a minister's or a rabbi's salary. It has a whole section on kosher food, and Millie thinks they've found a publisher —” She saw David's expression and broke off. “I don't know what's wrong with me tonight. I don't chatter away like this usually.” She shook her head unhappily. “You didn't know, did you?”

“Probably they planned to tell me about it when they had found a publisher.”

“Of course. It was to be a surprise. I mustn't monopolize you. It's not my best evening, Rabbi.”

“Please, Mrs. Comstock,” he said, “you haven't offended me and you haven't said anything out of place. My wife had to be with her family in New Jersey and that's why I'm here alone. Why don't you introduce me to your husband?” for want of anything better to say.

Sarah Comstock nodded across the room to where a rather handsome, blondish man of about forty, with a puffy, high-colored face, sat slumped in a chair, a drink in his hand. Vaguely, somewhere behind him, David heard someone itemizing the furniture in the room, the pieces that were made in Philadelphia in the 1760s, the sewing table from the hand of Hilton, all of them in Millie Carter's family for generations.

“That's my husband, Mr. Rabbi,” Sarah Comstock said bitterly. “We got here at nine o'clock, and that's his fifth vodka — on ice, six ounces in a drink. One or two more, and Marty will help pour him into our car and I'll drive us home.” And with that she turned on her heel and stalked away. When he looked for her again, she had left.

The following morning, after the Sabbath service, Jack Osner asked David whether they could have a few minutes in the rabbi's study. Once there, he made small talk uneasily until David suggested that he come to the point.

“Judge Interman, the one who's sitting on the case of the atom spies, is an old friend.”

David had followed the case in the newspapers, unhappily. Now he nodded.

“We were in the service together —”

David said nothing. He had little love or sympathy for Judge Interman.

“He'd like to talk to you. Well, not as David Hartman. He wants to talk to a rabbi. He belongs to the Temple Emanu-El in the city, but for reasons of his own, he feels he can't talk to the rabbi there.”

“There's certainly no shortage of rabbis in New York City,” David said without enthusiasm.

“No, of course not. But I know you, and I told him he could trust you. I think he'd rather someone away from New York.”

“All right,” David agreed, “I'll talk to him. He's about fifty, isn't he? I should think he'd want an older man.”

“No. He knows how old you are. Can you see him tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? I was thinking I might drive down to New Jersey and join Lucy and the kids.”

“It's very important to him, David — and to me — that you see him.”

“All right.”

“About three in the afternoon?”

“I suppose so.”

“He'll come to my house. I'll bring him over and drop him off at your place.”

All very mysterious, and for some reason distressing to David; but it gave him cause to quiet his guilt about Lucy and to stay away from the wedding in Jersey. He had thought that he might drive down on Sunday and arrive after the wedding. Now he put the thought aside, and when he called Lucy, he explained about the date that Osner had arranged.

“I don't like that man, David. Why must you please him?”

“He's a human being and a member of the congregation.”

“Aren't we all? Well, look, don't sit around and brood. Get some kind of dinner invitation. I'm glad you went to Martin's place last night. Did you meet anyone interesting?”

“Not really, no.” He didn't mention Sarah Comstock nor did he make any reference to the cookbook.

After the telephone call, he made a sandwich, warmed some cold coffee from the day before, and tried to read. But he was unable to concentrate, and he put the book aside and turned on the radio. Lucy felt that the children should be spared the insidious new diversion called television, and he half-agreed with her, but since they couldn't afford a set, the matter was decided without much discussion. On the other hand, David would have welcomed a TV screen today, something he could watch mindlessly.

He finished his sandwich and had about decided to take a long walk by himself, when the telephone rang. It was Sarah Comstock, and she said, “I didn't know how long your services take on the Sabbath, and I didn't want to disturb you at any personal devotions, so I waited. It's almost three o'clock now, and I must see you and speak to you, Rabbi, please —” All of it breathlessly, the words pouring out as if she were determined to say what she must say before David could stop her.

“Yes, of course,” David said.

“Where can I meet you?”

“Come to my study at the synagogue — say, half an hour. Is that all right for you?”

“Yes, I'll be there.”

Afterward, he would remember how she looked when he opened the door of his study for her. Her light brown hair was drawn back and tied almost carelessly at the back of her neck. She wore a suit of fawn-colored linen over a white cotton shirt, and her stockingless feet were in sandals. “I should have changed,” she apologized. “I don't go to church dressed like this, so I shouldn't come here dressed this way. But you said a half-hour —”

“You look fine.”

“Back there,” she said, “as I walked past, I saw the girls dancing. They looked so lovely.”

“That's Jenny Levine's group. She was with the American Ballet Theater, and we're lucky to have her in the congregation. She volunteers. We're even more poverty-stricken than Martin, if that's conceivable.”

“But the building's so fine.”

“Thereby our poverty. Sit down, please, and try to feel relaxed.”

She seated herself with her purse held primly in her lap, her legs uncrossed, her glance at the floor. “I don't know how to begin,” she said softly, “calling you, so presumptuous; it's arrogant —”

“Then don't begin, Mrs. Comstock,” he interrupted. “We'll just talk, and if I can be of any help or comfort — well, it will come out. But there is one thing I must ask you, and only because Martin is a dear friend. Why didn't you go to him?”

“Because he's Harvey's best friend — “ She began to cry. “Damnit, I don't cry. I'm not a weeper.” She dabbed at her eyes with a piece of tissue.

“Do you want a drink?”

“Yes.”

“Sweet wine. It's sacramental and a bit disgusting.”

“I don't care.”

He poured it into a silver
Kiddish
beaker and she drank it down.

“Thank you. This morning at ten o'clock,” she said flatly, still dabbing at her eyes, “I decided to kill myself. I am not a suicidal type. I have never considered suicide before, but this morning at ten o'clock, I decided that this was the open door, and I took a bottle of aspirin and poured about twenty into a glass of water and let them dissolve. That's how stupid I am in the art of suicide. But then I remembered stories I had heard about children who had gobbled down half a bottle and survived very nicely, so I flushed it all down the toilet, and then I said to myself, Marty's been of no damned use to me, but maybe a rabbi is different and possibly he knows things a Congregational minister doesn't, and you have a kind face, and Jesus God, I need a little kindness.”

“We'll talk. Kindness is in short supply, but not that short. Let's get rid of the suicide thing first.”

“I'm over it. Not because it's a mortal sin — is it with you? I mean a mortal sin?”

“No, not in the same sense. But it hurts too many people — not only the person who dies.”

“And who would it hurt if I died?”

“I don't know the people in your life, but it would hurt Martin and Millie — and it would hurt me.”

“You hardly know me.”

He smiled and nodded.

“Would you call me Sarah, please?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes. It's a fine old Jewish name. It's my daughter's name.”

“It goes a long way back in my family — Jewish, yes, I never thought of it that way.” Her face lit up with a smile, and, as on the night before, the smile transformed her face completely.

“Why the aspirin and the suicide?” David asked.

“You come to the end of the rope. Or you're the little boy who picks up a baby pony every day. But the pony gets bigger, until a point comes when he can't. That's my point. All the doors are closed, every damned rotten one of them.”

“Your husband's an alcoholic and to live with him is apparently very painful and difficult. Why don't you divorce him?”

“I can't.”

“Why? You're not Catholic. Is he?”

“It has nothing to do with religion, Rabbi. Have you known many alcoholics?”

“Some, yes.”

“I hear it's not much of a Jewish affliction. Maybe it's only our curse. It's terrible. A man turns into something else; you can't reach him or touch him or reason with him or plead with him, and all restraint goes and all decency goes and all shame goes, and this witless, brainless monster is your husband. And then he's sober, and you say to him, I have had it. Enough is enough. I'm leaving. And then he gets down on his knees and grovels at your feet like a whimpering child and kisses your hands and pleads and pleads, and the man is gone and you have a half-idiot child — and even that doesn't touch it, I mean what happens to me, and why I can't divorce him.”

“How long have you been married?”

“When he went overseas. That was eight years ago.” She shook her head. “I'm not telling you the truth. I'm trying to, but it's complicated and I keep thinking while I'm talking that you have some magic power to help me and release me — “ Her voice trailed away, and David waited, intrigued as he watched her battle with herself, give way to her emotions, and then press them back inside her.

“Do you have any idea what I looked like as a child, as an adolescent?” she asked surprisingly.

David shook his head. This was another tack. He had thought before that possibly she was on the threshold of a breakdown, but now he began to see a desperate if disjointed pattern.

“I was too ugly to look at. I am almost five feet nine inches, and I was that height when I was fourteen, long skinny arms and legs like a scarecrow, no breasts, red elbows, red knees, freckles all over my face and arms and legs, and a face like a gargoyle. I still see myself that way. I'll see myself that way until the day I die. Do you know how boys reacted? They laughed. I was a joke, a hideous clown of a young girl. I met Harvey in college. He was the best-looking boy in his house, and he fell in love with me and he married me, and that's why I can't divorce him.” The last words came through sobs that wracked her whole body.