The Outsider (23 page)

“Yeah? Well, let me tell you this, Rabbi. I don't want a sensitive kid, not in your terms — and the kid tells me you teach them that war is wrong and somebody don't have the right to defend himself. Well, that's crap too. You're telling me Israel don't have the right to defend itself. So I'm taking my kid out and putting him where he can learn to be Jewish.”

“So that's it, and my heart goes out to the boy,” David told Lucy after he got home.

“It seems such a small thing. Of course, to my way of thinking it makes a great deal more sense to do it in English.”

“No, it's not English versus Hebrew. I had intended to suggest that I do a transliteration for the kid — you know, the Hebrew spelled out in English letters, so that he could read it — I mean if I couldn't convince the father, but he stormed out before I had a chance. No, it's not the English. He probably has memories of a small, warm Orthodox synagogue he knew as a child, where everything was just as it had been for a thousand years, and which was a refuge against the world. Poor man, he's frightened. I can understand that.”

“David, why can't you face reality? You don't have to love everyone, and everyone is not a good human being. I saw welts on the little boy's arms last week in Sunday school. His father beats him.”

“Frustration.”

“Bullshit!” Lucy exclaimed. “Do you beat your kids when you're frustrated? What in hell is wrong with you, David Hartman?”

“I'm a rabbi,” he replied feebly.

“Oh, that's a great beautiful excuse. You're a rabbi!”

“You're turning this into a fight. You're shouting at me as if I did something terrible. You're taking the position that it's a crime to understand people instead of hating them mindlessly.”

“That's right. I hate people who beat kids. I don't have to understand them. I just think they stink. And let me tell you this, David Hartman, there's a reason for language. Bullshit is bullshit. Lousy is lousy and rotten is rotten. You can even carry it further and say that shit is shit. You and Martin wipe out those words; you wipe out feelings; you pretend to a world that doesn't exist. Oh, hell, what's the use of talking to you!” And with that she fled upstairs, almost tripping over the two kids, who were crouched at the top of the stairs, listening.

The next day, during a slack moment of no calls and no demands, David drove over to the Congregational church. Martin Carter was on the telephone, and he assured David that he'd be with him in a moment. “My own
tsuris,
” he said. He knew half a dozen Yiddish words, and he used them whenever an opportunity arose. “My daughter Ellie is twenty-three. She's the perpetual student at Smith. This time it's a master's. Next time a doctorate. And her father's a country preacher. Well, now, at long last, she is deeply, romantically in love — with a Catholic boy, plain Boston Irish Catholic.”

“And it troubles you?”

“I don't know,” Martin said uneasily. “I told her that if she loved him, that was the important thing. He's a doctor and probably a hell of a nice lad. No, David, it upsets me. I'll get used to it, but right now it upsets me.”

“Millie — does it upset her?”

“She doesn't know yet, but she won't be troubled. She considers all religion as more or less of a disaster.”

“No — you're kidding.” When he had heard the same thing from Lucy, he had simply rejected it.

“Absolutely not. Haven't you sensed it?”

“But you seem to have the best marriage in the world.”

“Yes, we're very fond of each other. She simply accepts my attitude toward Christianity as evidence of a sort of brain damage. But that's not what you want to talk about.”

“Let's walk a bit,” David suggested, and when they were outside, he said to Martin, “In the ten years you've known me, Martin, how many petitions for civil rights have we signed, how many antiwar demonstrations, how many peace vigils?”

“Quite a few. Where do you go from there?”

“Lucy and I had one of our scraps. She said that you and I pretend to a world that doesn't exist.”

“Oh? Interesting. Did she elaborate on what she meant?”

“No.”

“Funny formulation — we pretend to a world that doesn't exist. Those words? Really, David?”

“Oh, yes. They stuck in my mind.”

“Thing is, where is the pretense? Are we pretending — or does she mean that we create in our minds a world that doesn't exist?”

“Or both.”

“That's a very bright woman, David, but I wouldn't brood over it. Marriage is an endless succession of small tragedies and new starts. But that's not it, is it? You've been depressed.”

“The world is depressing, Martin.”

“Come on — on a spring day, the Ridge here can be the most beautiful place in the world. It makes your heart sing just to look around you.”

“I envy you.”

“It'll work out.”

“I wonder,” David said. “I just wonder.”

“Of course it will. As for Lucy and Millie, God knows, it's not easy to be a minister's wife.”

“Do we pretend that language doesn't exist, Martin? I mean the kind of language that seemed to be as necessary to the war as a fifty-millimeter — motherfuck in every phrase, screw, shit, and all the rest of it — and I have to force each word.”

“I know.”

“Then for the love of God, what kind of a game are we playing?”

“We pretend. But we're not the only ones. I try to work it out some way, David. If I did not believe in God, if I lost my faith —”

“You do believe?”

“Yes, I believe. Do you know, when they were ready to test the first atom bomb, Fermi and Oppenheimer and the other great minds, as we've been told, they raised among themselves the question of whether the explosion might not ignite the atmosphere and, in one horrible moment, extinguish all life on earth. They took bets, and then they exploded the bomb. Is there any doubt in your mind that these so-called great scientists were criminally insane?”

“No, no doubt,” David said bleakly.

“I can say this to you, David, but not from my pulpit. So I pretend, so I'm a fraud and a coward, and I ask God to forgive me. I am only one human being at a point in history where mankind's madness has been combined with enough scientific knowledge to destroy the entire human race in moments. If I didn't believe in God, David, I would find the world meaningless and intolerable.”

“And you find meaning in it?”

“I try, David. You understand that, because you also try.”

“Yes, I try.”

“So we are what we are, ministers of a time so awful the mind rejects it.”

“On the other hand —”

“I know,” Martin interrupted, “on the other hand, life goes on as if nothing were any different, and we play our games. David, we are necessary, believe me. If I didn't feel that, I'd throw up the whole thing tomorrow. Maybe not honest, but necessary. Aspirin is necessary. Same thing. Liddy Delman is a parishioner. Fifty-two years old, intelligent, attractive woman. Husband passed away from a heart attack last year. Now she's dying of cancer in Danbury Hospital, a week or a month left. I get to see her at least every other day. I hold her hand and tell her that she will live again, that Jesus will receive her in his arms, that she will see her husband and loved ones. Am I telling her the truth, David?”

David was silent.

“No answer, my friend? The rabbi will not commit to the Christian minister. But damnit to hell, I give her peace! David, I give her peace! I take away the fear of senseless disease and meaningless death. I help her to depart this life with some dignity. Is that wrong?”

At home Lucy said to him, “If we could only have a fight, a real knock-down fight, and scream at each other and call each other vile names, and then cry and carry on and come out clean.”

“I don't understand that. I love you. I can't fight with you, Lucy.”

“I know, David. Tomorrow, I have to go into New York and spend the day with Momma. She can't go on in that apartment, all alone, after Pop's death —”

“I told you to persuade her to live with us. I like your mother.”

“You don't understand. You're a rabbi. The arguments with my mother would be endless. Anyway, she's decided to give up the apartment and go to California. We have all kinds of relatives out there, including Mom's sister, my Aunt Freda. She wants me to come to the apartment and take whatever I want. I don't really want any of the stuff in the apartment, but Mom will be hurt if I refuse.”

“Sure. You can leave the kids with me. No problem.”

“I'll be leaving at six forty-five in the morning, before the traffic gets heavy, and then I can be back here at dinnertime. I'll have a roast ready to go in the oven, and I'll write out instructions for stove temperature and basting. You'll have to get the kids up, see that they get dressed, give them breakfast, and pack them off to school. The bus picks them up at eight-forty sharp. Corn flakes and milk and doughnuts. They won't perish from one cold breakfast. They'll have a hot lunch in school, and the bus drops them back here at three-ten.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Sure you can. I'm being a pig about it.”

It was still night, and he had just fallen asleep. Lucy was shaking his shoulder. “Up and at them, Rabbi. It's six-thirty, and I'm on my way out.”

He might have complained angrily that he didn't have to get up at six-thirty, but he never complained angrily. That was part of the burden he bore. He never complained angrily.

He had always accepted as fact that his two children, Sarah, aged seven, and Aaron, aged nine, were an intimate part of his life. Suddenly on this morning, they were strangers. A relationship had shifted. They looked with suspicion on the corn flakes. “Mom gives us oatmeal or Wheatena, and she puts honey on it. You can't put honey on this stuff.”

Sarah explained in a hoarse whisper, “He can't make oatmeal. He's a man.”

“Why did she go to New York?” Aaron demanded.

“Grandma Sally is moving to California. Mom has to help her clear out her apartment.”

“Where's California?” Sarah asked.

“We'll never see her again,” Aaron said.

“Why?”

“It's too far.”

“We'll never see Mommy again,” Sarah wailed.

“She'll be here tonight in time to put you to bed,” David assured them. “She's not going to California. Grandma is — to be near her sister, your Great-aunt Freda.”

The strange, subtly antagonistic relationship continued until the children went off to school — leaving David to brood over what he meant to his kids. When they returned from school, he had milk and cookies waiting for them, but the first thing they asked was whether Lucy had come back. David's efforts to amuse them were as unsuccessful as the bowls of corn flakes. They tumbled out of the house to go their own way with their own friends, leaving David to wonder what he should do. So long as he remained in the house, he could watch the kids in the back yard, but did Lucy feel, as he did, that she must be there constantly to watch them?

Mrs. Shapiro called from the synagogue and reminded him of his appointments.

“You have to cancel them. I have to stay here and watch the kids.”

“We can't cancel now. Rabbi, I'll come over and watch the children. You keep your appointments. Wait for me, I'll be there in a few minutes.”

He felt a great sense of relief, released from the responsibility of his two children and entrusting them to Mrs. Shapiro. Mrs. Shapiro was a chunky, solid woman, whose every aspect spoke of dependability. And how brilliant she was to think of the exchange.

“You will keep an eye on them all the time I'm gone?” David said to her.

“Rabbi, Rabbi, what can happen to the kids in this beautiful place? Where I grew up, on Avenue B on the East Side, that was something else. But, you know, even there kids survive. It's a habit kids have.”

David stayed at the synagogue until the weekday evening service was over, and then he hurried home. Mrs. Shapiro was in the kitchen with the children, all of them seated at the kitchen table. In front of the kids, plates of scrambled eggs and sliced tomato, which they were eagerly devouring while they stuffed the remaining space in their mouths with bread and butter.

“My goodness, I forgot the roast. Lucy will kill me.”

“They're so skinny,” Mrs. Shapiro said accusingly.

“That's only because they're very active. Not because I forgot to put the roast in the oven.”

“They say you allow them to watch television. Is that true, Rabbi?”

“They don't lie, Mrs. Shapiro. Of course it's true. One hour of the children's programming.”

“There you are, see?” Aaron said. “You made us miss it.”

“And she fed you an excellent dinner, so don't be a pig about it,” David said.

“But I had the dinner in the fridge,” Lucy said, when she returned an hour later. “I told you that, David. I specified — roast, oven.”

“I know. I mean, I seem to have forgotten. Mel Klein came back from New York early for a finance meeting, and then the sisterhood came in with their argument that we should have a woman for a cantor. Sophie Frome and Dora Buckingham are both gung ho for something they call women's rights —”

“So am I.”

“And so am I,” David said. “But a woman cantor?”

“Why not? We sing better than men, we sound better, and I hear that there are a couple of places that already have lady cantors.”

“Let's not get into a thing about this. Tell me how your mother is.”

“All right. She's getting over it, but it's a slow thing. It's four years since Pop died, and you'd think she'd be over it at least a little. Well, maybe a little, but whenever we talk about Pop, she breaks down and cries. Well, they were very close, and I think it's a good thing that she's going to California.”