The Rabbi of Lud

by Stanley Elkin

  “Connie, calm down.”

  “No,” she said, “you calm down. You calm down!”

  “How can I calm down,” I asked reasonably, “if I’m not the one who’s excited?”

  “Well, you should be,” she said. “You should be. I’d be excited if I were you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “You hear this?” I asked Shelley. “ ‘It means what it means.’ What’s that supposed to mean? Now she talks in riddles.”

  “She’s telling us about Chicago-le.”

  “Oh, stop that!” Connie said.

  “Don’t talk that way to Mama.”

  “Oh, please,” Connie said.

  “You’re a little cranky,” Shelley said. “It’s probably jet-e-le lag-e-le.”

  “That’s old, Mother. That’s so old.”

  “Don’t you criticize your mother,” I warned. “Who do you think you are? Don’t you dare criticize her!”

  “You think I don’t know what’s going on? You think I don’t know you don’t even sleep together anymore? You think I don’t know that?”

  “We sleep together, dear,” Shelley said. “Really,” Shelley said. “Honest. We do.”

  “Why do you answer her? Why do you give her the satisfaction?”

  “Really,” Connie said. “I suppose your comb and brushes just happened to walk into the spare bedroom! I suppose your lucky porcelain lion did! And your jewelry case that you never leave lying around anywhere and always keep in the bottom drawer of your bureau under your sweaters! Oh, sure! Tell me another, why don’t you?”

  “You spy on your mother? You search out her little secret hiding places?”

  “I decided to move some things around without going to the trouble of rearranging the furniture,” Shelley said. “To see how it would feel, you know? You were visiting in Chicago and I had some time on my hands.”

  “I wasn’t ‘visiting’ in Chicago, Mother.”

  “Of course you were. You were visiting your uncle Al Harry. You were visiting your cousins.”

  “He’s not my real uncle. Don’t you think I don’t know he’s not my real uncle?”

  “No,” I said, “Al Harry’s not your real uncle, and you weren’t ‘visiting’ in Chicago. You were on the lam because of all the trouble you caused.”

  “And you and my mother don’t sleep together anymore.”

  “I already explained that,” Shelley said. “I already told you what that was all about. There’s a saying: ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ I was a little bored. The sheets with the sheets, the tablecloths with the tablecloths. My jewelry case in the bureau drawer under my sweaters.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why’d you put it all back?”

  “It was too hard to find things. I couldn’t remember where anything was.”

  “Oh, sure, oh, right,” Connie said, crossing her arms and glaring at her mother. “If you couldn’t remember where anything was, then how’d you know where to find the things you forgot so you could put them back where they belonged?” she demanded triumphantly.

  “Aha,” Shelley shot back, trumping her triumph, “but I didn’t! You found the brushes, you found the comb! You found my jewelry and lucky lion!”

  “What is this? What’s going on? What’s this about?” I asked, sliding into my rabbi mode. “What’s all this fireworks between my two best girls?”

  “Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, young lady,” Shelley said, “you must never, but never, go to bed angry. Your father and I never go to bed angry.”

  “Mother, that’s gross.”

  “Because we’re no different,” Shelley told her suddenly, ardently. “Connie, dear, you have to understand this. We’re no different. We’re not. You aren’t different. I’m not. What, just because we live in a funny little town? What’s that? It’s nothing. Or any of the rest of it either. All that peer baloney you think you missed out on. It isn’t anything, Connie sweetheart. Really. I promise you. It’s nothing at all, Connie dear.”

  I looked at my serious, even solemn, wife, in her rabbi mode once more. I’ll be, I thought. I’ll be damned, but you never know where your succor is coming from next. I’ll be, but my redeemer liveth. I thought we were all about to embrace each other.

  “If he was my real uncle, or Diane and Beverly were my real cousins, I could never look them in the face again, especially Diane,” Connie said softly, suddenly, her point dipped in a sort of quiet, come-hither hostility.

  “What’s this, a new riddle?”

  “I’d be too ashamed,” she said.

  “Connie?” I said.

  “You don’t do that to real cousins.”

  “You don’t do what to real cousins?”

  “Who’ve taken you in. Who trust you.”

  “This isn’t some new St. Myra Weiss thing we haven’t heard about yet, is it, Connie? Something like Gold Cards or individual retirement accounts and living wills of their very own for teenagers? It’s about Keoghs for kids, isn’t it, Connie?”

  “No wonder she always goes to the papers first,” my wife said. “You pick on her.”

  “Another county heard from.”

  “You don’t? You don’t pick on her? You’re not sarcastic? You don’t poke fun?”

  “He seduced me.”

  “I’m out of line?” I said, wailing my woe, to Connie, to Shelley, to the room, to all the living and dead in Lud. “I guess maybe I’m out of line I turn a phrase on a kid she tries to tear up her daddy’s career, who has a problem with the neighborhood she runs to the press with handouts and bulletins, who practically cleaned me out with my own wife.” I turned to my daughter. “Guess what? Guess what?” I demanded. “I sold Klein’s and Charney’s dirt for them. I gave up my nights and weekends and flogged cemetery real estate to the trade and came home to an empty bed. What do you mean he seduced you? Who seduced you?”

  “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “He swept me off my feet. He turned my head.”

  “Who swept you off your feet? Who turned your head? What are we talking about here?”

  “All he does is just stand next to me and I hear music playing.”

  “Music,” put in Shelley, my wife the entertainer.

  “Marvin made me feel like a woman for the first time in my life.”

  “What Marvin? Who Marvin?”

  “Marvin. Diane’s boyfriend from Hebrew school. The one with the crush on me they told me about at the slumber party. He taught me how to play miniature golf. He wined me and dined me.”

  “He’s twelve years old!”

  “He’s tall for his age.”

  “I’m going to kill her,” I said.

  “You’re upsetting your father,” Shelley said.

  “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Jerry, calm down. We’ll gather our thoughts, we’ll find out exactly what happened. Connie,” Shelley said carefully, “Connie, dear, when you say he ‘seduced’ you, just what is it you mean exactly, sweetheart?”

  “I surrendered my cherry to him.”

  “Your cherry, your cherry?!”

  “He promised to write!”

  “That’s why you did it, so you’d get mail?”

  “No,” Connie said, “of course not.”

  “Of course not,” Shelley agreed. “Let her explain.”

  “Explain what? What’s there to explain?” I yelled.

  “Oh, you think it’s so easy for two people who want to get it on, one of whom doesn’t even live in Chicago but is only staying at her uncle’s place (who isn’t her real uncle anyway) until some stuff blows over in New Jersey, and the other of them not only has no car but isn’t old enough to drive one yet even if he did, or even old enough to have a learner’s permit so he might at least have access to one so long as there’s a licensed driver or even just a person old enough to have her learner’s permit beside him in the death seat when the cop stops him. Or if they
had the car. Even if they had the car, where could they go to be alone? To her cousins’? Even if one of them was off practicing swimming at the East Bank Club in the Olympic-size pool, what about the other one? What about Diane, whose boyfriend he actually was supposed to be? Even if neither one of them was at home? You think that’s so easy? How would you handle that one?

  “I’m sorry, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to be young and in love and from out of town and not have access either to a car or an apartment.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s all right, I guess, during the courtship phase, when you’re at the movies, say, and he’s sitting there, holding the tub of buttered popcorn between your Cousin Diane on the one side and you on the other and you reach into the box and accidentally brush his hand. Or you don’t, you put your palm out and he places the popcorn into it piece by piece. Or when you’re both guests at the East Bank Club and you’re both in your bathing suits side by side at one end of the pool holding the stopwatch between you and timing laps and flip turns for your cousin Beverly.

  “So don’t think it was so easy for us. Because what they say is so. The course of true love doesn’t run smooth. Or when we were at the Art Institute together standing in front of the nudes. (That’s when we knew. That’s when we first actually realized we were going to need either a car or an apartment.)”

  “What is this? What am I listening to here? I’m your father. I’m her father,” I told my wife. “Why is she talking to me like this?”

  “So what do you think he did?”

  “What do I think he did? He took your cherry. That’s what I think he did.”

  “Jerry!” Shelley said.

  “Come on, Dad, guess what he did.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Marvin’s got a friend, Larry. Larry’s big brother works at this motel in Skokie. (It turns out we didn’t even need a car. We decided to take the bus. It took three buses and two transfers to get there. People worry for nothing.) He’s the one who let us into the room. We had our own key and everything. We could use the TV. We could use the air conditioning. He even said we could use the telephone. So long as we didn’t call out and only used the phone to check the time with the motel operator. The only thing, the only thing we weren’t supposed to do was take the spread off the bed, and when we finished we weren’t allowed to use the shower. Because the maid had already made up the room? But it worked out okay. Guess how?”

  “You found an extra blanket in the closet and laid it over the bedspread. You decided to use the shower anyway and cleaned up the bathroom yourselves.”

  “That’s right!” Connie said. “What did we do about towels?”

  “You used that extra blanket. You wiped each other off with it. Then you wiped up the inside of the tub. Then you wiped up the floor.”

  “Guess what we did afterward?”

  “After you surrendered your cherry and cleaned up the bathroom?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You thought about calling room service, decided it was too risky, and got a couple of candy bars and some ice and Cokes out of the machines instead.”

  “That’s right! Then what?”

  I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy and, though she was my daughter, it’s not that I even had any very particular curiosity about it. It was simply clear to me, plain as the nose. As if, yes, this is what a couple of underage twerps would be doing at a time like this. This is how they would kill the time until their embarrassment settled and they felt calm enough to go home.

  “That’s right,” she repeated. “Guess then what?”

  “You dialed other people’s rooms. You found the motel’s writing paper and envelopes and wrote love letters to each other. You wrote Diane and Beverly postcards and circled your room on the front. You read them out loud. He said ‘Wish you were here’ on his. You laughed but were too frightened to send them and tore them up.”

  “Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah?” she said. “Then what? Then what?”

  “You got more candy out of the machine and watched HBO on the television.”

  “Uncle Al Harry told you all this.”

  “Al Harry knows all this?”

  “Cousin Diane told him.”

  “So,” I said. “Your cousin found out what you did. Sure,” I said, “Larry’s big brother. He’s the one who told Larry, Marvin’s friend.”

  “She’s not my real cousin.”

  “Larry told Diane about your boyfriend.” I was tired now. A seance really takes it out of you.

  “He’s not my real boyfriend,” Connie said. “He told her himself.”

  “Oh, Connie,” Shelley said. “Oh, my poor dear Connie. Do something, Jerry. Can’t you see her heart is breaking?”

  Do something? Do something what? My daughter was stretched across her mother’s lap, the two of them composed like the little Pietà of Connie’s deposition, Shelley stroking Connie’s madeover, layered hair and crooning her There-theres and consolations.

  “That’s right,” she comforted, “it doesn’t. It doesn’t run smooth. Of course not. Not for anyone. How wise you are. Isn’t she, Jerry? Isn’t she wise? How proud we are, sweetheart. What a level-headed heart you have on your shoulders! Such a love detective! Isn’t she, Jerry?”

  “Sure is.”

  “To have learned what you’ve learned? At fourteen? And to have found out our secret? Your father’s and mine? Not back in the house an hour and you discover we’re not sleeping together anymore. That Mother moved into the spare bedroom the minute you left. Wasn’t that clever of her? Wasn’t it, Jerry?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Yes,” Shelley said. “And we thought we could fool her.”

  “No way.”

  “Well, tell her,” said Shelley.

  “Hey,” I said, at once exhausted and as suddenly and frightfully free as a man who has just been in a stupid and devastating accident, “we’re happy to have you back in our funny little town where death drags down the neighborhood and kicks shit out of the property values.”

  “Really?” Connie said.

  “Hell, yes,” I told her, “cherry or no cherry, we’re just pleased as all get-out to have you back where you belong.”

  eleven

  BUT NO, I had to end it on a sour note. No sense of timing, when to get out. If I’d—so to speak—turned off the lights when she got to the part about the real uncle, real cousin, real boyfriend business, we could all have kissed and made up. Even if we’d brought down the curtain when the big lummox, all tragic and cozy, was crawling up and down my wife’s lap, we might still have been able to bring it off, music, swelling, up and out. But no, I had to hit the kid with my cherry-or-no-cherry speech. I just don’t know when to get out. Or where I get off.

  So instead of all is forgiven, nothing was. Shelley huffed and puffed, fussed and bothered, preening her car-pool temperament and conscientiousness like nobody’s business. The very picture of a mother right down to the last detail. As, before Connie came along, she’d been the very picture of the brand-new bride and, after, the perfect picture of a wife and lover. Or, throughout, had the rebbitzin, if not letter-perfect—I never said Shelley was letter-perfect—down pat, at least in the sensibilities. And, as now, she had become some vehicle of born-again reproach to me. We didn’t sleep together. Oh, we shared the same room, even the same bed, but we might, absent and yearning, have been in different cities. It wasn’t even as if she felt a sexual antipathy toward me. (I know my Shelley.) No, this was the judgment of the court. She was serving time, waiting until the next down-to-the-last-detail down-pat picture came to her.

  Connie, God bless her, harassed me with attitude while she—I thought—thought up new ways to go public. I asked if she meant to run away again, and she said, “Where would I go?” Sealing the ménage. Locking us, forever could be, into her tight, airless little game plan.

  And me? What about me, the Rabbi of Lud?

  Well, to tell the truth, I was in love at the time and
couldn’t be bothered. I don’t know, maybe it was my problems at home made it happen, one of those cause-and-effect, chicken-or-egg deals that make you crazy trying to fathom. Connie had already revealed God’s plan for her in the scheme of things, split Lud, and sent Shelley off packing into the spare bedroom with her jewels and lucky porcelain, so I was probably already half a goner anyway when I ran into one of my wife’s singing sisters in the hospitality suite of a nearby Best Western when I was working the interment circuit for Klein and Charney. Of all the musical Jews, God knows she was the one I’d always found the most attractive.

  It was Joan Cohen, the one who shopped. The tall, elegant Chaverot in the suedes and knits who, in her wool autumnals and graduated rusts and yellows, looked like camouflage, and seemed, as I’ve said, some quick tweed movement in a field, fashionably earthen as a saddle or the burnished stock of a rifle, a step from blood sport. She could have been poster lady for the National Rifle Association. Joan Cohen was like moonlight in Vermont, autumn in New York.

  Oh, oh, Joan, Joan, it wasn’t just the leaves you set ablaze when you stepped up to fill the brisk fall air with your smoky, musky chlorophyll, but whole heaped piles of my heart. You were aristocratic and as full of gorgeous, solid presence as some handsome, tweedy lady sensibly shod. Foxy Joan Cohen, do ye ken John Peel?

  I don’t know, she made me feel, well, Church of England, as though I had a “living,” two hundred a year, say, like some curate in a country parish on a great estate in a novel. Jerry Goldkorn, Rabbi of Dorchester House. Well-met we were in that Rutherford, New Jersey, Best Western.

  “Yoicks! Is that Joan Cohen?”

  “Rabbi, it is,” she said. “Shalom.”

  “Hail! Halloo! What cheer?”

  “I read about your Connie in the papers.”

  “My,” I said, “what a beautiful sweater. Shetland, is it?”

  “Kids,” she said, “go figure them. A bunch of nudniks.”