by Amy Sohn
This must have been why she moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, because she knew how settled and placid we all were. She messed with me because she knew I had a family.
I felt sick for my mom and sick for the lying. She was no rube but she was trusting. I snuck out of the house at five AM when I was sixteen to go make out with a guy in my French class, Johno Lederer, who lived in the Village and left the door open for me. It was easy. I left a note that said, “Had an early meeting.” She never raised it with me again. Lying to my mom was like taking candy from a baby.
But the thing that got me going, that tore me apart about the affair, didn’t really have anything to do with her. What riled me up and made me queasy inside, more than my anger at him and fear for her, was this: somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, in the places you don’t like to think about or pretend exist, I had always imagined that if he ever picked another woman over my mom, it would be me.
The two of them always struck me as an odd couple, my father the hyperintelligent one who was always forgetting his keys, my mom the childlike innocent who knew how to put the food on the table. Sometimes she’d ask a silly question or misunderstand some crucial line in a story, and I’d feel like I was the ingénue and my mom was the one the hero’s in love with at the beginning, but the one you know will never stay. It kind of messes up your head when you believe that you are the Hepburn to your own father’s Tracy, but there were times it felt like he agreed.
If he was sleeping with Liz it had to mean he’d finally realized that somewhere in him he knew that he and I were meant to be together. But since he hated himself for wanting it he’d chosen my evil twin instead. My surrogate. It was worse than if he’d cheated with Shelly or Joan. The fact that it was Liz cut right to my quick, made me feel like I didn’t have legs. He hadn’t fallen out of love with my mother; he’d fallen out of love with me.
WHEN I got home I put the pillows over my head and tried to sleep but it was no use. Not long ago I’d had a stable family, a guy that loved me, and a career path. Now my dad was two-timing my mom with the ho of the hood, and I was dating an antimarriage activist while slinging drinks in the slowest-traffic bar on Smith Street.
I could pinpoint the exact birth of my father’s insanity to me dropping out. Maybe if I’d stayed in rabbinical school this never would have happened. What if God was sending me some kind of message? What if the only way to get my dad to stop fucking Liz was to go back to RCRJ? It didn’t seem fair. For the first time in my life I’d done something completely right and now everything was falling to pieces.
I needed someone to talk to, about all of it, but talking to Powell about infidelity was like going to Hitler for grief counseling. Before I was completely aware of what I was doing I got up and dialed the number that was still number one on my memory.
It rang twice and then a woman answered, with a slight foreign accent I couldn’t place. “H-hi,” I stammered. “Is David there?”
“Just a moment.” I heard her hand muffle the phone and then he came on.
“It’s Rachel,” I said. He was silent and I added, “Please don’t hang up.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “Are you OK? You don’t sound so good.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Who was that?”
“That,” he said proudly, “was my girlfriend Yael.”
“She lives with you?”
“Yep.”
“That’s—amazing,” I said, trying to sound generous and not inflamed. “Where’d you meet her?”
“In Israel this summer. We were both counselors at this music camp for deaf children in Tzvat. I was going to move to Israel to be with her but she was thinking of moving to New York anyway so it all kind of worked out.”
“Th-that’s amazing,” I said.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he said. “You sound funny.”
And as quickly as I had felt the instinct to call him I realized that I couldn’t tell him. It was humiliating enough that he had an altruistic Israeli live-in; he didn’t also need to know I’d just learned my father was a philanderer.
“I didn’t think you’d answer the phone,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t I answer?”
“I thought you hated me.”
“Well,” he said, “I spent a long time being angry at you but I’m not anymore. It took me a while but when I looked back on things it seemed pretty obvious that you were wrong for me.”
“Wrong for you? Don’t you mean we were wrong for each other?”
“Sure. But what I learned was that you had so much anger toward me, when I hadn’t done anything wrong. I kept tolerating it, telling myself it would change, but it never did. And I finally realized that I didn’t want to be with someone who hated me.”
“Is Yael in the room?” I said.
“She can’t hear anything when she’s got the loom on.”
“She’s a loomer?”
“Yeah.” She was not only musical but good with her hands. It couldn’t get much worse.
“Do you think I’m a bad person for what I did to you?”
“No I don’t. I’m just glad you dumped me so that I could finally get a good look at what was going on. If you hadn’t I think I would have kept lying to myself. And I never would have met Yael. So what’s going on with you? There’s all these rumors going around about why you left. One was that I broke your heart and you couldn’t stand to see me, which I thought was pretty funny.”
“This guy at Memorial died when I was sitting with him and his last words to me were, ‘You are the worst rabbi I ever met.’ ”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So I decided to believe him.”
He was quiet for a while and then he said, “I’m sure you weren’t the worst. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was saying. Maybe he was going senile.”
“He was thirty-nine. And totally lucid.”
“You sure you’re not putting too much stock in what a stranger had to say? What about what you wanted?”
“It wasn’t right for me. I mean, I know I did the right thing by leaving.”
“So what’s the problem then?”
I wanted to tell him how awful everything was, how I’d seen my father in the park, but I was so ashamed. I’d never aired my family’s dirty laundry in public but that was because up until now we didn’t have any. It was too embarrassing to tell him what was happening. He wasn’t my boyfriend anymore; he was barely even my friend. He had someone new now—a hot Israeli loomer. I had to leave him alone.
I felt my chest begin to tighten into a knot. “You know what?” I said. “I should go.”
“Is something the matter, Rachel?” he said. “I’m here for you if you want to—”
“Bye, David,” I said, and started sobbing as soon as I hit the button.
WHEN I woke up it was eight-thirty in the morning and the buzzer was ringing. When I said “Who is it?” into the intercom I heard my mom say “Me-e.” Oh God. Maybe she was onto my dad and was coming here with a loaded gun to kill Liz.
I ran downstairs and opened the door. “How you doing?” she said.
“Good,” I said. “Don’t you have school?”
“We have meetings this morning and I don’t have to be in for an hour. Can I come upstairs?” I nodded reluctantly and watched her stomp up the stairs, holding the banister. “I love the new paint job,” she said, running her hand along the wall. “The glossy really sets off the—”
“Mom. Can you examine the décor another time?”
“How’s your friend?” she said when she got to my door, jerking her head up toward the ceiling.
“Who?”
“The one who lives upstairs. Liz.” I examined her face for signs of connivance but she didn’t exhibit it. I didn’t think she was acting; she truly didn’t seem to know. And though it chagrined me I understood it. It was enough of a leap of faith for me to accept that my father was capable of snagging thirtysomething ass; it had to be a bigger leap for h
er. She was the one who saw him naked.
“She’s fine,” I said.
“What’s she up to these days?”
“This and that.”
“Did she work things out with her boyfriend? It looked pretty—”
“Yeah,” I said. “He was just over the other night.” I shoved her in the door like I was Mrs. Van Daan yanking Anne Frank into the apartment.
“So what’s up?” I said, as she took a seat at the kitchen table.
“Well, firstly I wanted to thank you for showing up the other night. It meant a lot to me. I know menopause might seem like a long way away but there’s no medicine better than education.”
“I’m with you on that one.”
“After you left we all got to talking,” she said. “Everyone was telling me what a great job I did leading and then we started talking about how few intellectual opportunities there are in the neighborhood, and we got the idea to start a group.” She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a cotton candy–pink flyer.
KOFFEE KLATSCH
Feeling a lack of intellectual stimulation in your life?
Think arguing is more fun than agreeing?
Come to a new weekly discussion group
at the home of Sue Block
191 Warren Street
Beginning Thursday, September 18 at 8
Bring a few ideas for topics!
Beneath it, printed neatly and nonchalantly, next to the word QUESTIONS? was our home phone number. I felt like I’d just seen my own face on a wanted ad.
“So what do you think of the name?”
“It’s certainly alliterative.”
“Are you being sarcastic or not sarcastic? I can never tell with you.”
“Why are you having it at the house?”
“Why not?” Leave it to a Jew to answer a question with another question.
“Why can’t you just have it in a coffee shop if it’s Koffee Klatsch? Why do you have to let strangers into our house?”
“A home environment’s much more intimate. I want to create meaningful relationships.” She was the only one in the family who wasn’t drowning in meaningful relationships. “And since it was my idea I volunteered the place. Nina and I are going to spend the afternoon postering.”
“Crazy people could see these,” I said. “Anyone could come! Like Typhoid Mary.”
“Who’s Typhoid Mary?”
“That bag lady with the really red cheeks who always used to crash Shabbat at synagogue for the free challah! What are you going to do if she shows up? Did it ever occur to you that there might be such a thing as too open?”
“That’s the whole point of what we’re doing! To facilitate conversation. We almost called it Open Lines but Nina thought it would sound like a heroin support group.”
“This is a mistake,” I said. “Someone could bring a gun. You live just blocks from the largest Al Qaeda cell in the country. Block is a Jewish name! They’ll know from the sign that you’re the enemy and come over to gun you down. At Passover we never open the door for Elijah because you never know who might wander in, but this is OK?”
She looked at me like I was not her own child but some evil kid that had been switched at birth. Then she shook her head morosely and said, “What ever.”
She had started using this expression about a year before, and it irked me to no end. I didn’t know if she used it with her friends too, or just with me, but lately she’d started saying it all the time. She would use it whenever we couldn’t agree on something, or she felt I was shirking my familial responsibilities. There’d be a long pause and then she’d sigh it out, long and defeatist. It didn’t seem right for a mother to have this much hostility toward her kid. It was like I had done something long ago that she was mad about, broken some cookie jar before I was conscious and was still paying for it now.
“Look,” I said, through my teeth. “It’s just—do you think it’s a good idea to be doing this in the house when Dad’s going through such a rough time?”
“What do you mean?”
“About the job hunt. I mean this could be a time to pay more attention to him, not less.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked accusingly. It’s not easy to tell your own mother what kind of wife to be.
“I just mean, maybe he needs a little support from you. Some TLC. Maybe you could buy him a present from time to time, so he knows you care. What about a book? Why don’t you buy him the Koufax biography?”
“He shouldn’t be reading biographies. He should be hitting the pavement. He shows up at his interviews late and then complains when he doesn’t get the job!”
“Look,” I said, “just try to be a little caring. I think he’s really down in the doldrums.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He shaved his beard last week and since then he’s been a new man.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“He’s even learning to drive! I don’t like him out of work but if that’s what it takes to get him to change his life around I gotta tell you, I’m all in favor. If you ask me, losing his job’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”
What could I say? It wasn’t like I was going to tell her and as far as she was concerned he was doing great. Why did it take an extramarital affair to catapault someone into positive life change? What did it say about the value of marriage?
As I walked her to the door she snapped her fingers and said, “I almost forgot. Mark your calendar for Rosh Hashanah dinner Friday night.”
I couldn’t believe the new year had crept up on me so fast. Without the RCRJ calendar to remind me, without any kind of regular relationship to a synagogue, the High Holidays had arrived. Usually I had them marked on my calendar in big block letters bigger than the ones I used for my birthday, but for the first time, they’d come without warning.
“OK,” I said. “Do you want me to bring anything?”
“Maybe a bottle of red, whatever kind you want.”
“Are you making brisket?”
“I was planning on it,” she said. “With string beans from the farmer’s market, and I was going to make tsimmes.”
“Do you have to?” I said. Tsimmes was one of those weird Jewish foods, a mix of carrots, cinnamon, and other halitosis-inducing dreck that I not only couldn’t stand, but couldn’t understand how anyone could.
“What’s wrong with tsimmes?” she said. We had this discussion every year. It was a ritual more ingrained than the banging on the chest during the recitation of sins.
“It’s the most disgusting of all Jewish foods,” I said, “and that’s saying a lot.”
“You don’t have to eat any. Anyway, I was thinking we’d eat around six-thirty since services are at eight.”
“I don’t know if I want to go to services,” I said.
“What? Why not?”
“I don’t think I’m in the mood this year.”
She gave me a shocked look, as though she’d misheard. “But you love Rosh Hashanah.”
It was true. I’d been a bigger nerd about the High Holidays than any other kid in my class. Since my bat mitzvah I’d gone Rosh Hashanah eve, Rosh Hashanah morning, and second day, which most Reform Jews don’t even do. I’d get there early to get a front seat up by all the alter kockers. I always told my parents it was just for the seat but in truth I liked being there when it was practically empty, and I could just sit and reflect.
But the thought of sitting in temple next to my parents, listening to the new young rabbi, Rabbi Rob, spin on the value of knowing right from wrong, seemed too much to bear. How could I sit next to my lying, cheating father and watch him beat his chest while he felt no remorse? I didn’t want to be near him and I didn’t want to be in a house of God when I was increasingly sure there wasn’t one. What was the point of going to synagogue with my parents, all dressed up like a show pony, when everything inside our family was totally fakakta?
“Rachel,” my mom said, �
��I know you’re going through a difficult time right now but—”
“This isn’t up for discussion,” I said.
“But everyone’s going to ask where you—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but that’s not really my problem.”
“You shouldn’t be so rude to your mother,” she said. “Or you won’t be inscribed in the Book of Life.” I wanted to tell her I wasn’t really the one she should be worried about but instead I said I’d see her at dinner.
AS soon as she left I got dressed and went up to Liz’s. I pounded and screamed “Liz!” like I was Brando in Streetcar. I put my head to the door. It was silent. I pounded one more time. T. Russell, the fat fortysomething stoner across the hall, stuck his head out. “Could you stop banging, please?” he said as the scent of cannabis rushed out.
“Sorry,” I said, and skulked down the stairs.
The bitch had eluded me; she must have been onto the fact that I might suspect, and she was keeping new hours to avoid a run-in. If that was the case then maybe I stood a chance. Maybe her guilt mechanism wasn’t completely on the fritz, just running at really low power. I’d nail her soon, before he could. Even if it meant a twenty-four-hour stakeout. Block vs. Kaminsky was on.
IT was midnight on Thursday, when the only people in a bar on a weeknight are the insomniacs, the alkies, and the lonely. A married regular named Randy had been chatting up a very young-looking twentysomething who wore her hair in two long blond braids. I knew he was married because one night he’d gone on a long diatribe about how little intimacy he had with his wife despite the fact that they had an eight-year-old son and had been together ten years. I’d noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding band and when I asked him why, he pulled out his keys and showed it to me, on the key ring.
“That’s how I remember to put it back on when I come home,” he said.
But lately he’d stopped complaining about his wife—and a few weeks ago he’d told me she was expecting their second child—so it irked me to see him flirting so shamelessly. Still, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen a married guy act in unmarried ways. The blonde had a petite curvy figure, amplified by her pink T-shirt that said in white letters, “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.” About ten minutes after she came in Randy went over to her and started chatting. Now they were on their fourth round of kamikaze shots and she was looking so sloppy I was worried.
