The Whipping Club (2 page)

             
Thank you,
Ben, she thought, looking through her own reflection in the glass.
Please.
             
Marian and Ben crossed Lennox Street in silence and made their final left to Portobello Road, a cobblestone street with stucco homes, moisture eating away their paint.
             
“We’re here,” Ben whispered. Clematis vines drooped from a trellis against the side of the house, and it occurred to Marian that the plant was dying from a lack of attention.
             
Ben gave her an embarrassed smile. “None of the Ellises plant seeds well,” he said.
             
She touched her belly, imagining the cells forming inside her to create another living being, another person, who was theirs. Tell him, she thought.
Tell him right now and forget Father Brennan’s selfish offer.
They could run off, be married in London. It was their life. For a moment, all her angst about meeting Ben’s parents seemed trivial. She must tell him about the baby, they should decide together what to do. But now Ben was opening the door.
             
She squeezed his hand as they entered his parents’ foyer, the house warm with the garlic smell from the cholent she’d heard schoolchildren talk about at Zion. She felt her nervousness returning and reminded herself that she had been invited to this Sabbath dinner.
             
Low heels tapped across the ceiling.
             
“They must be getting ready,” Ben said. “Come and sit in the living room,” he said, and handed her the bakery box. Yarmulke caps lay in a glass bowl on the coffee table.
             
“Are you all right, then? I’ve told Tatte all about us. It’s the Mammy we’ll be telling tonight. And I’m sure Mammy will love you, too. Just a case of the frayed nerves, you have.”
             
There was some truth to this prognosis. Sabbath dinner with his parents would be difficult under any circumstance. She recalled his frayed nerves the one time she’d brought him to her empty home. He’d sat in the kitchen, gazing at the wooden crucifix hanging on the wall.
Judaism, Catholicism, and Marianism,
he’d joked—that was his trinity.
Especially Marianism,
he added quietly, pulling her closer until they kissed. Her eyes fixed on the crucifix.
             
“I’ll just be a moment,” he said, and he walked through the foyer, went into the toilet and closed the door.
             
She sat on the couch with her hands folded around the gift box in her lap and looked around. The dining room was set for four. A white lace tablecloth and silver platters adorned the table. They’d gone to great efforts to create an elegant impression, she thought, and sunk her black shoes into the maroon living room carpet. Family pictures stood on every side table: Ben graduating from Trinity College; a rabbi’s arm around Ben’s shoulder at his
Bar Mitzvah
; Ben as a little cowboy with holsters. She wondered if their baby would be a boy, if it would look like him.
             
If her ma knew where she was, she would be livid. Marian stood erect, raw blisters rubbed against the heels of her stiff new shoes.
It is strange how life turns out,
she thought. Growing up there wasn’t a Jew around her, and here she was, in a Jewish home, about to marry Ben. She stood stock still, staring into the foyer, wishing she could stop the sweat from dripping down the underarms of her new dress. Marian heard the toilet flush and Ben walked towards her into the living room. They surveyed the dining room, a platter of chopped liver and unleavened bread on the table, candles ready to be lit. She would try a little, even though she knew the breadsticks tasted like dog biscuits, worse than the Host.
             
“We are here!” Ben called up the stairs. He took Marian’s hand. “Mammy! Tatte!”
             
Mr. Ellis tiptoed down the staircase, like a pirouetting bear. Marian could see the blueprint of Ben’s face in his father’s.
             
“Excuse us,” Mr. Ellis said. “We’re off form at the moment.”
             
“Why don’t you rest a bit longer,” Mrs. Ellis said as she came downstairs. Mr. Ellis didn’t budge. She gave Marian a polite smile. She was a delicate, slightly hunched woman; her posture reminded Marian of a cursive C. She wore an evergreen knit suit with a circular emerald pin on her lapel. The sharp violet and musk smells from Old Yardley perfume overwhelmed the living room as the matron entered.
             
“We are delighted to meet any friend of Benjamin’s,” Mr. Ellis said to Marian. He clapped Ben on the back and placed a black velvet yarmulke on Ben’s head.
             
“Friends?” Mrs. Ellis let out a hard laugh. “Since when do friends hold hands?”
             
“Come, Marian. We’ll eat. We’re all friends,” Mr. Ellis said. “You’ll call us Sam and Beva, won’t you?” he said.
             
Marian approached Beva and held out their gift. The woman took the bakery box, said thank you, but added something about Sam being on a strict diet. From the kitchen came Beva’s maid with a tray of glasses filled with white wine.
             
“That was Patsy,” Ben explained as Beva and the maid returned to the kitchen. “She’s the
Shabbos goy.
She shuts off the electric lights, puts out the fire when it gets dark.”
             
“She looks like she could be my cousin,” Marian whispered before Beva returned and instructed them to stand behind their chairs.
             
“Benjamin, would you like to start the prayers?” Beva said.
             
Ben nodded in silence and bowed his head, his eyes shut. Marian watched him almost sing the prayers, oscillating slightly, and she was intrigued and desirous of his belief in something that she could never grasp. Beva and Sam listened, their heads bent, and all of this comforted her somehow. Catholics knelt and the Jews stood, yet it occurred to Marian that the two groups were more similar than different in their devotion.
             
“
L’chayim
! Cheers.” Ben raised his glass as he finished.
             
“
Gut Shabbos
,” Beva said. She kissed her son.
             
Marian sipped her wine. “Sweet,” she said.
             
“It’s kosher. I’m afraid you’ll have to live with the
matzoh
, too,” Beva said, passing the unleavened bread. “I made salmon, Marian. Is that okay with you?”
             
“That’s grand,” Marian said. “Catholics eat fish every Friday. It’s the standard.”
             
“So, fish was the right choice. You see, Benjamin? We’re not the only ones with religious duties. Catholics have rules coming out of their ears.”
             
“Oh, there are rules. So many of them,” Marian agreed. She recalled privately her own litany of the Saints:
Pray for us. Pay for us. There’s a better way for us. Give us a cuss, your mouth is puss.
How she’d giggle as a girl with her friends, chanting this until the nuns marched over and twisted their little ears.
             
“Every religion follows rules,” Beva said. “Am I right, Sam? What else holds people together?”
             
Sam shrugged and gave a warm smile to Marian.
             
“Tradition,” Beva said. “You go to church; we go to synagogue. We keep a kosher home. We have different plates for different times. I bet you didn’t know that, Marian.”
             
Marian smiled and pretended that Ben hadn’t told her about the meat and dairy dishes. Between Ben and her students, she knew more than Beva realized. A black radio sat silent on a plastic tablecloth, and Marian wished Beva would turn on a little music but guessed there would be no music after sundown.
             
“
Mazel tov
to Da Valera on getting those desperate families visas into Ireland, Benjamin,” Beva said. “I read your commentary.
Mazel
.”
             
“They tried for ten, but five families were better than none.”
             
“Don’t you forget that,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “If you read one book this year, read
The World of Sholom Aleichem
. Beautifully done about Jewish
shtetls
in Russia. I don’t know if Benjamin told you, Marian, but we’re all refugees from Eastern Europe. All of us were thrown out of somewhere. It was either leave or have my father and brothers waste their lives suffering as nobodies in the Tsar’s Army.”
             
Beva passed the salmon.
             
“What did it matter? They wouldn’t let them out. Maybe because I was a girl, and I was fair, only I got out.”
             
“Beva, don’t get yourself–”
             
“No. She should know this. I wrote lots of letters to everyone, and to the Minister of Justice. I was desperate to get all of them visas. I was told no.” Beva lowered her voice. “My mother died. My father died over there. And still, they wouldn’t let my brothers enter Ireland. They were killed like animals during the
Shoah
.”
             
“I’m so sorry,” Marian said, and she meant it, but she heard something accusatory in Beva’s tone.
             
“My two smart brothers, in Lithuania,” she said, pointing at Marian. “From then on, no one stops my family.”
             
“Mammy, nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.” Ben looked worried. No, compassionate. It was what drove him to become a journalist. It was funny, Marian loved the same things in Ben that his mother did. She wanted to say this to Beva, to create a bridge between them, but she sensed too much in the way.
             
“The war’s over,” Sam broke in, potato bits in his teeth. “The Irish didn’t kill your relatives.”
             
“The Irish didn’t do anything at all. Let’s face facts,” Beva retorted.
             
“Listen, the Irish have been very good to the Jews. They’ve no trouble here in Dublin. Enough talk about the war,” Sam said. “If you have to talk about something, talk about the salmon. It’s divine.”
             
“It is lovely,” Marian said.
             
“Brain food. Lithuanian Jews have a thirst for education, am I right, Benjamin?”
             
“There were two scholarships given by the Department of Education the year Marian was leaving Secondary School. Only two. Marian received one of them,” Ben bragged.
             
“You must be very proud, Marian,” Beva said, passing platters.
             
“She was the smartest girl in her form,” Ben continued.
             
“Ben.” Marian rolled her eyes.
             
“The first one in her family to graduate college. The first one to become a schoolteacher.”
             
“A twist of fate,” Beva said and laughed. “God knows she hasn’t been inside a temple, has no idea what the Jews are about, and yet gets hired at the Zion School.”
             
Marian felt the shrill sound of tin whistles racing through her.
             
“But I’m sure she’s a good Catholic and understands the profound implications of her religion, am I right, Marian?”
             
“No, not really,” Marian said, and took a sip of her wine. She made a point to meet Beva’s stare.
             
“Forget religion. Did Benjamin tell you he got a raise?” Sam said.
             
“Tatte, I was saving that. I was going to tell you later tonight,” Ben said, taking Marian’s hand. “We’re going to make it, Marian.”
             
“Don’t tell me you two talk in the
we
and
next year we’ll do this or that
!” Beva said.
             
Ben dropped his fork and stood. Positioned behind Marian’s chair, he spoke.
             
“I have an announcement,” he said. “Mammy and Tatte. Marian and I are in love, as you might quite rightly have figured out. We want to be married.”
             
Silence from the yenta at last.
             
Beva stared at her son and then at Marian. Marian stared right back at her. “Benjamin, who do you think you’re inviting to such a wedding?”
             
Nobody answered. Marian rose now, standing close to Ben.
             
“Where would you do it?” his mother asked, coming closer, clutching his arm for balance.
             
“A civil ceremony. Nice and quiet,” he said. Ben looked at Marian, and she nodded her approval. Father Brennan’s words came back at her, but he was wrong. Ben was enough, and she was enough, and they were more than enough together. She would tell Ben later tonight about their baby, and they would more than manage.