by Barry Rachin
Two Pockets
by
Barry Rachin
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Published by:
Two Pockets
Copyright © 2010 by Barry Rachin
This short story represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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According to Hasidic tradition, everyone must have two pockets, so they can reach into the one or the other, according to need. In the right pocket are to be the words: ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in the left: ‘I am dust and ashes.’
The dark-haired girl arrived unannounced. Though the weather was humid in the mid-eighties, she wore long sleeves buttoned at the wrists and a drab, moss green skirt that hung well below the knees. The skin was pale with an ivory texture and lush, jet-black eyebrows that lent the otherwise placid features a haughty boldness. “My name is Miriam Applebaum and I live in the slate blue house with the shutters on the corner.”
Mark, who was seated at the kitchen table drawing up a list of building supplies, threw the pencil aside. “Yes, I know the house.”
The Applebaums had moved into the community several years back. They belonged to an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, Beth Ohavai Shalom, off Seneca Drive. Every Saturday the congregants traipsed in and out of the temple, the men dressed in black with skullcaps and prayer shawls. The women covered their heads with scarves even through the scorching summer months. “What can I do for you, Miriam Applebaum?”
The exotic-looking girl took several steps forward and was standing at the kitchen table now. She was medium height with a fleshy body. “Your pickup truck pulls onto the street every day in the late afternoon.” “Fournier Builders. General carpentry. New construction, interior and exterior renovations.” She recited verbatim as though reading directly from the metallic red lettering on the cab of the truck.
An easygoing affable smile lit up her features, and the thought occurred to Mark that the annoyingly persistent Jewish girl with the long sleeves wasn’t leaving anytime soon. “I was wondering if you had an entry level position available.”
A Chevy pickup with a blown muffler pulled into the driveway and his foreman, Kenny, lumbered up the backstairs and into the kitchen. Kenny handled the finished work – oak staircases, cornices, custom fireplace mantles, fancy trim, baseboard, windows and moldings. Noticing her strange dress, the middle-aged man gawked uncertainly at the girl.
“This is Miriam from down the street,” Mark said. “She’s looking for an entry-level job in construction.”
Kenny rubbed the back of his sunburned neck with a row of stubby fingers. The nail on the right index finger was blackened from an errant hammer. “What can you do?”
Again, as if on cue, her malleable features dissolved in an eager grin. “Anything, everything. I’ve never done this sort of work before, but woman work in construction and I thought maybe …” The sentence sort of petered away.
“Since Smitty quit, we ain’t got no helper,” Kenny ruminated, as though talking more to himself than anyone else in the room. “And we need someone to prime all that fascia and baseboard trim.”
A week earlier, Mark placed an order with the lumber company for several hundred square feet of molding. The shipment of wood arrived bare, with no protective primer coat. Rather than return the wood, the lumberyard agreed to sell him the entire load at cost. When Mark balked, the purchasing agent threw up his hands and said, “We got no use for it either. Take the crap and we’ll eat the loss.” The senior center project was already three days behind schedule due to bad weather and now a new headache; since Smitty quit, the mountain of unpainted lumber that cost him diddly-squat was utterly useless. Think wonders, shit blunders!
“What’s a helper do?” Miriam pressed.
“Anything and everything,” Mark repeated what she had said a moment earlier. “One minute you’re filling a dumpster with worksite debris, the next your lugging four-by-eight sheets of plywood to where a crew is installing subfloors.” Mark stood up and leaned forward so that his nose was a fraction of an inch from the girl’s face. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”
The girl never blinked. She only grinned all the more brazenly. “How soon can I start?”
Fifteen minutes later, as she was leaving, Mark called out, “Wait up!” Lumbering to the front door, he positioned his work boot over Miriam’s string sandal and pressed down gently. “Imagine, instead of this being my foot it’s a pressure-treated four-by-four post slamming down on your big toe.” He eased the dirt-crusted shoe off her foot. “You’re gonna need a pair of steel-toed work boots when you start on Monday. Also, no skirts. Pants or dungarees but no skirts.”
“Anything else?”
The impish grin was beginning to grate on his nerves. “Yeah, pick up a pair of work gloves, preferably heavy-duty.”
“Now comes the hard part,” she said, the smile wilting noticeably.”
“How’s that?”
“I’ve got to go home and tell my parents.”
Later that night as Mark was preparing for bed, the phone rang. “I bought the steel-toed work boots.”
“Where did you get my telephone number?”
“Off the side of your pickup truck, of course..”
“That’s nice.” He didn’t quite know what else to say.
“And a pair of genuine rawhide work gloves, too.” When there was no reply she added. “Should I go directly to the worksite?”
“No, just drop by my place at around eight o’clock.”
“Good night.” She hung up the phone.
*****
Miriam Applebaum showed up Monday morning for her first day at Fournier Construction dressed in a navy blue uniform that made her look more like a janitor or maintenance worker than carpenter’s helper. “We need some raw lumber primed.” Mark brought her out back of the Brandenberg senior center where several sawhorses were lying next to a pile of molding and random boards. “The paint and brushes are just inside the door.” He pointed to the back entrance to the building. “Any questions?” She shook her head, which was covered by a dark scarf similar to the ones he had seen the other Jewish women wearing as they walked back and forth from the Orthodox synagogue on Saturday mornings.
Mark went to the front of the building where a heavyset man with blond hair was framing the walkway for a handicapped ramp. “There’s a girl taking Smitty’s place. A nice kid. You leave her alone, okay? No foul language, ethnic slurs or dirty jokes.”
The fellow slid a metal-shanked, Estwing hammer from his carpenter’s belt and looked up. “Why should I give her any grief?”
“Because you’re an asshole with a warped sense of humor,” he replied and walked away.
The previous week they gutted the interior of the main function hall, framing the structure according to the architect’s new plans. Now three palettes of drywall had to be installed before the plastering crew arrived midweek. Because the building was older construction, an extra width of board had to be doubled up to reach the ten-foot ceiling. More aggravation and wasted time. At ten-thirty Mark laid his pale blue Makita screw gun on the ground and turned to Kenny. “I gotta check on the Jewish girl.”
Out in the back of the building he found a row of freshly painted boards lined up on the ground. “Not bad.”
A drop of white paint was smeared across the side of her cheek. “It’s not rocket science.”
He waved a hand at the remaining pile of unpainted boards. “We got two more piles of this stuff coming. Once the wood is done, we’ll get you inside and involved with some basic carpentry.”
“Okay.” She dipped the brush in the can and wiped a glob of excess paint on the inner rim.
“I met your father,” he suddenly said, shifting gears.
She lay the brush aside momentarily. “When was that?”
One day in late September Mark was coming home from work and spotted a heavy-set, older man standing next to a Subaru with a flat tire. Mark pulled over. “What’s the problem?”
The bearded man, who was dressed in black pants and a white shirt, waved a tire iron in the air and glowered at him suspiciously. “Lug nut’s frozen. Won’t budge.”
Mark went back to his truck and returned with his own iron. “Too big!” The middle-aged man exploded. “You don’t see what a little tire I got?”
Mark pointed at the four-posted tool. “Each end has a different size socket. This one should fit your car.” Still fuming, the man reluctantly stepped aside. Mark seated the tool over the frozen nut. “Because of the T-shaped design, you get twice the torque to muscle rusty bolts free.” Bracing his legs, he leaned into the tool twisting counter-clockwise, and, after a moment, the nut slid to the left. He loosened the rest of the bolts and stood up. “Can you handle it from here?”
“Yes, thank you so much.” There was a perceptible softening to the man’s tone, tinged with appreciation. As he was climbing back into the cab of his truck, Mark noticed a tall, emaciated youth with a wispy beard and skullcap lingering near a crab apple tree on the front lawn.
“The younger fellow with the thin beard?” Mark asked.
Miriam resumed painting, brushing the creamy white paint over a length of beaded molding in smooth, even strokes. “That would be my brother, Saul.” Finishing with the fancy strip, she laid it aside to dry and reached for another.
“What does he do for a living?”
“Oh, he doesn’t work. Saul is too busy with other pursuits.”
“Such as?”
“My brother spent most of last year at a yeshiva, a Jewish seminary, in Jerusalem. He’s studying to be a rabbi.”
“He’s very devout.”
“Yes, when he’s not chasing Jewish whores, he is the model of spiritual virtue and godliness.”
The odd remark caught the carpenter off guard. “Where does a rabbinical student in the Holy Land find prostitutes?”
“In Jerusalem, there are Jewish refugees recently emigrated from Russia. Many of the women arrive in Israel with no money. They can’t speak the language or find meaningful work. The more desperate girls sell themselves for a few liras.” She ran a second coat of paint over the wood to touch up the bare spots. “A handful of these downtrodden Russians also find their way to America.”
Mark had to get back to the sheetrock, but lingered a moment longer. “Does your father know about his son’s shenanigans?”
Miriam squatted down on her haunches, took a wooden stirrer and mixed paint, which had begun separating from the base coat. “About a month ago, my father spoke with a shadchun, a Jewish matchmaker, about finding my brother a suitable match and weaning him away from his perverted pastime.”
“And?”
“She found an eligible woman, the daughter of Mordechai Gorelnik.” She glanced up with a dry smile.
“Gorelnik’s Appliances?”
“None other.” Miriam nodded.
The Gorelniks owned a string of appliance outlets – ranges, refrigerators, dryers and washing machines - throughout southeastern Massachusetts and nearby Connecticut. Their radio and TV ads ran non-stop from early morning through the late-night talk shows. “Not a very pretty girl, but when your father has that much money, ones physical attributes don’t necessarily figure in the equation.”
Mark went back to work.
*****
On the ride home after Miriam’s first full day of work at Fournier Construction, a cell phone with a decidedly minor-keyed melody chimed and Miriam fished about in her pocket “Nu?... Gar nicht. Ich bin fahrtig.” She hung up the phone, glancing at the driver self-consciously. “My mother. She wanted to know if I’d been molested or forced to bow down before graven images.”
Mark, who was becoming accustomed to the girl’s eccentric mannerisms shrugged. “Why do your parents dress like they’re living in the Middle Ages?” They were a mile from home, pulled up at a traffic light.
“We’re Hasidic Jews. The Eastern European tradition goes back to two hundred years.”
Which tells me nothing.”
Miriam stared out the passenger side window for the longest time before replying “According to Hasidic tradition, everyone must have two pockets, so they can reach into the one or the other, according to need.” Mark flipped his directional on as they neared Hathaway Street. “In the right pocket are to be the words: ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in the left: ‘I am dust and ashes.’”
The truck pulled up in front of the slate blue house with the shutters. “See you tomorrow, Miriam Applebaum.”
*****
Three months passed. Bit by bit, Miriam learned construction. Not that she was anything more than a carpenters helper, rank novice, gofer - go for this, go for that - or fledgling apprentice. Still, she got up every day, and, even when her back ached, hauled her weary carcass off to work.
At first her father showed no interest one way or the other in his daughter’s aberration. To his way of thinking, that’s all it was – a fleeting mental derangement. The Goyim weren’t necessarily bad or misguided; they just did things differently. Religious Jews led perfectly sensible lives. Nice Jewish girls didn’t pound nails. They didn’t work in blue collar trades, building homes for people who worshiped several gods at once and had spent the last two thousand years tormenting God’s Chosen People.
But by the third week of the second month, Morris Applebaum had seen enough. “Meshugenah! What is this craziness?”
Miriam had just returned from work. She unbuckled her leather carpenter’s tool belt and let it fall on the floor next to the bed. “We finished the senior center today,” she said ignoring his belittling tone. “Tomorrow we start renovating that mill complex over by the YMCA. High-end luxury condos—that’s what the developer wants.”
“And this is a job for a nice Jewish girl? Nothing good can come of it.” Rolling his eyes, Morris Applebaum began pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. Miriam momentarily drifted into the bathroom where she stripped her clothes off down to her underwear. Pulling a bathrobe over her limbs she returned to the bedroom. “Fifteen pounds,” she said. “I lost fifteen pounds since I started this job, and I never felt so healthy in my life.”
“You know what you are?” The father suddenly wheeled around waving a finger menacingly in the air. “You’re a Babel. An Isaac Babel!”
“Gotenu! Bite your tongue to say such a thing!” Miriam’s mother was standing in the doorway. The large-bone woman placed a trembling hand over her mouth. “Isaac Babel was no better than a traitor,… a Molotov-cocktail-throwing Jew who joined the Cossacks, the very people who persecuted our race. How could you say such a thing?”
You’re a Babel. An Isaac Babel! Miriam understood perfectly well what Morris. Applebaum meant by the outlandish remark. Isaac Babel was a haskelah Jew, an enlightened soul equally comfortable among Bolshevik rabble rousers as mystical Jews. His stature as a great writer only complicated matters. Hero, traitor, lunatic, visionary, political agitator, heretic, prophet – how one understood the anomaly that was Isaac Babel depended as much on one’s personal biases as what side of the bed he woke up on.
Mr. Applebaum threw both hands up in an attitude of despair and rushed from the room almost knocking his wife down in the bargain. When he was gone, she slumped down on the bed next to her daughter, took Miriam’s hand and kissed it. Then she turned the palm over. “Your beautiful fingers are covered with calluses.”
“From honest labor.” In the yard adjoining their property, a lawnmower fired up. Miriam retrieved her framing hammer from where she abandoned it in near the closet. �
��Kenny, the man who does all the fancy work, showed me how to properly set nails.” She raised the shank chest high. “Your arm is just an extension of the tool.” She snapped her wrist and let the head of the hammer fall in a broad sweeping arc, striking an imaginary nail dead center. “I can set a sixteen-penny framing nail in three strokes. No wasted effort. Perhaps it’s not as impressive as studying the midrash but still it’s an accomplishment of sorts.”
Miriam’s mother kissed her cheek and sighed. “What we have here,” she waved a hand fitfully in the air, “it’s not enough for you?”
“I’m going to take my shower now,” Miriam replied evasively.
Before she reached the doorway, her mother said, “In a fit of anger, your father compares you to Isaac Babel.” The older woman spoke in a confidential tone so the words wouldn’t carry beyond the threshold. “But deep down, in his heart-of-hearts, you’re the ben h’bachoor.”
“The first-born son,” Miriam translated from the Hebrew. The tacit implication was both flattering and unsettling. The first-born son inherited the father’s fortunes; he honored and preserved his family’s good name. Saul, the religious zealot and sexual glutton, was not up to the task. Wrong man for the job. Miriam was the new ben ha’bachoor – by default, the Applebaum dynasty’s heir apparent.
Her father could rage about the house, muttering to himself, arms flailing like a madman, but squirreled away behind the fierce eyes and bushy eyebrows was an inchoate fear. The fear of losing his beloved Miri, the indisputable ben habachoor. Mr. Applebaum followed all the precepts of his religion. He recited his prayers, never straying from Hasidic custom. When he crawled out of bed in the morning, the stoop-shouldered man carried the added burden of two thousand years of Jewish tradition on his portly frame. But not one word in the many dozens of frayed books that lined his study taught the devout seeker of eternal truths how to love his wayward daughter with moderation.
“Any news from the Shadchun?
