by Ragen, Naomi
Everyone agreed that the singles crowd at Delilah’s wedding was promising, filled with Bernstein and Yeshiva University students, candidates for rabbinical ordination, and third-year dental, law, and medical school students, not to mention the few who already had their degrees in science, engineering, and accounting.
The music began, and Chaim, held at either elbow by his smiling father and chuckling father-in-law, was escorted toward his bride for the bedecking ceremony. He walked clumsily, his legs trembling, his face serious and intent, giving the appearance of one being dragged to his fate, as his friends clapped and sang all around him.
Delilah sat on a throne, flowers strewn around her, her face radiant with triumph. The blond down on her face caught the light, bathing her in a kind of golden shine like those photos of Marilyn Monroe, making her irresistibly beautiful and desirable. You could see the men in that room skip a step and miss a clap as they neared her, breathless.
Chaim too. He seemed mesmerized. The moment when the Jewish groom traditionally avoids Jacob’s error by looking carefully into the bride’s face to be sure it is really her and not her plain elder sister, before covering her face with the veil, went on almost embarrassingly long. Chaim just kept staring until finally, with an almost imperceptible look of exasperation, the bride finally reached up and pulled the veil down herself.
Delilah’s wholesale gown was lovely, a luxurious silk satin, covered with beaded lace, with a long lace-edged train and little puffed lace sleeves tied at her upper arms with a bow. Many religious girls tend to line such sleeves. Obviously, Delilah had opted to skip it, and her flesh shone through the lace like honey. On her head she wore a little hat, like a medieval queen’s headdress—very original—covered with the same lace and a double veil of stiff netting.
There were some frowns of disapproval among the older wig-and hat-wearers about the lacy sleeves, but if Delilah noticed she certainly didn’t seem to care. She floated down the aisle with the joyous self-congratulation of a Camilla Parker-Bowles while on either side her mother and mother-in-law, carrying candles, made attempts to keep up with her.
Mrs. Goldgrab’s face was like an enormous twinkling ornament atop a Christmas tree. Swathed in her sequined rose-colored gown, she threw smiles and waves in all directions. Chaim’s mother, on the other hand, walked with her head down, staring at her shoes, an aggravated smile pasted on her lips.
Some of the guests stood or sat attentively through the long ceremony with its many blessings, while others retreated to their places at the tables to examine the first course—a cold dish left waiting on the table so as to hurry the festivities along, ensuring the surly waiters an early exit.
It was a nice ceremony, very traditional, conducted by the groom’s venerable grandfather, whose hand shook as he handed the wine-filled silver goblet to the groom, who handed it to his father, who handed it to his mother, who finally lifted the bride’s veil and helped her take a sip. Two drops fell slowly, barely noticeable except to the most discerning and those looking for bad omens, staining the white lace.
Escorted by musicians and the dancing, singing friends of the ecstatic bridegroom, the young couple were led off to a private yichud room, as was the custom, for their half hour of alone time before rejoining the festivities.
In the meantime, the first course, following the cold plate, was served, a choice of salmon filet or chicken livers in a phyllo dough. And although everyone was already stuffed from the buffet, they opened their mouths wide and devoured this too as everyone waited for the young couple to rejoin the festivities so the dancing could begin.
Rivkie, who had come with a much put-upon and reluctant Josh, was on her way to the bathroom when she noticed Delilah sitting alone on a couch in the lobby, just staring at the tiny wine stain on her dress, rubbing it with her finger. She seemed slightly pale. Chaim was nowhere to be seen.
“Beautiful wedding!” Rivkie called out to her tentatively.
Delilah smiled in vague acknowledgment.
“Where’s your new husband?”
Delilah looked up. “Oh, Chaim? He went to talk to a rabbi, some urgent problem—God knows what now. You know, they delayed the ceremony half an hour because one of the letters in the marriage contract wasn’t clear enough? Or maybe it was the date. Try to get a roomful of rabbis to agree on anything . . . and nothing moves until they make up their minds.” She shrugged. She seemed listless. “Are you having a good time?”
“Wonderful. Everything is beautiful. The food is great. I love the band . . . and your dress is heavenly.”
She brightened. “They stained it with the wine, but I’m sure dry cleaning can get it out. Not that I’ll be needing it again anytime soon.” She laughed, but you could tell she didn’t think it was particularly funny.
And then Chaim showed up, a little sweaty and nervous, with a big smile. Behind him were photographers and friends and a man carrying a flute.
Seeing the crowd, a transformation came over Delilah. Like a toy with a new battery, she bounced up, daringly taking Chaim’s hand—bride and groom traditionally avoiding physical contact in public—as the cameras clicked away. Color flooded her cheeks. She threw back her head and laughed as the music started up, dancing her way into the banquet hall. Then everyone got up to form circles, the women bearing away the bride, and the men the groom. As they parted Chaim turned, looking back longingly in her direction.
Delilah stared eagerly straight ahead, never looking back at all.
SIX
As the last relatives finally left and the catering staff folded up the soiled linen, Chaim and Delilah made their way upstairs to their hotel room. It was not the bridal suite, but a room specially ordered to suit the needs of the religious bride and groom. So, unlike most wedding suites, it had twin beds, not a double.
They were both a bit awkward, a bit overwhelmed.
Delilah sat down in an armchair in her wedding dress, the bag with the cards and checks in her lap. It was a nice room, even if it was a little cramped, she thought, just a tad disappointed. She stared at the wedding gifts that lay piled up in a corner, all their festive wrappings and bows a bit frayed by being dragged around. Her head swam from glasses of champagne and rum Cokes and even a Bloody Mary, all of which she had managed to order and somehow actually consume.
Chaim approached her shyly, taking the bag from her hands and laying it on top of the table.
“Plenty of time for that in the morning,” he said, deadly earnest, reaching out to squeeze her.
Well, she thought, looking up at him. Well, well.
Gently, she pushed his hands away. “I’ll just be a minute, darling,” she told him, getting up and escaping into the bathroom with her overnight bag. Inside the bag were two nightgowns. One was a filmy white see-though bridal number with an equally filmy white dressing gown. The other she had noticed when another girl shopping in Macy’s had held it up to show her girlfriend, saying, “If I wore this, my boyfriend would kick me out of bed.” When they’d both stopped laughing and put it back, Delilah had bought it. It was a long pink number, totally opaque, with a high neck and long sleeves.
Quickly, she stuffed the white gown back into the bag and hung the other up on the door hook. She stepped into the shower, shivering under the stream of hot water. Even as she dried her clean hot skin afterward, she still felt goose bumps as she slid the pink gown over her head. Carefully, she reached into the bag and took out something else she had specially prepared.
“Shut off the lights, Chaim, will you?” she called through the closed door.
“If you want,” he answered, without enthusiasm.
She turned off the bathroom lights and then opened the door. The room seemed pitch dark. Chaim was already in bed. He moved over to the edge, reaching out for her.
“You are still dressed!” he said, disappointed, as his hands touched the material.
She reached back. He was totally nude.
“I . . . thought . . .” she stammered. “Yo
u’re a rabbi!”
“Maimonides says clearly that whatever a man and wife do together in the sanctity of their marriage bed is perfectly fine.”
“Whatever?” she said doubtfully.
“Whatever,” he repeated decisively. “There is no shame, no boundaries. Everything is kosher. We are married. You went to the mikva. We can just enjoy ourselves. Now, why don’t you take that silly thing off? Please, honey?” he wheedled.
“Well, if you’re absolutely sure, just . . .”
“What?”
“I think we should put a towel down first. The hotel staff,” she murmured.
“I’m sure they’ve seen everything.” He laughed, touched by his bride’s delicacy of feeling. He felt worldly and lusty next to her hesitation. It was just as it should be, he thought. He would be gentle with her, since she was obviously scared. And why not? A religious Jewish bride, so sheltered, so pure! Anything else would have been strange and suspect.
“I brought my own towel, from home,” she said. “That way, I can just take it with us. I wouldn’t want to steal a hotel towel. Please, just move over, will you?”
He rolled over, watching her outline as she bent over the bed, smoothing down the towel.
“Do you want me to put on a light?”
“No!” she shouted, and once again he felt moved and impressed by the touching urgency of her panic.
He chuckled. “It’s okay. Shhhh. I’m sorry, forgive—”
She pulled the nightgown over her head, taking his breath away. By the faint light of the bedside radio and the streetlamps, he examined his bride, absolutely mesmerized, stunned by the outlines of her slim waist and thighs and generous breasts as she got into the bed and sidled up next to him. In a moment, he was lost in the silken feel of her skin, the scent of her warm body, like no other perfume, impossible to bottle. He felt himself transported to another place, a heavenly sphere he had never even dreamed of. Only a poet could have such dreams, he thought as he pulled her close to him, delighting in every new, thrilling adventure that beggared his poor imagination.
He wanted to immerse himself in every aspect of her otherness, to command it, to own it, to make himself part of it. He ran his hands over the taut youthful waist, tracing how it billowed out into her slim hips and softly rounded thighs. Those warm secret thighs!
He was owner and lover and, like a man who has purchased a priceless work of art, he felt both the pride of acquisition and the frustration of knowing this thing was outside him, unknowable. Baal, he thought, the ancient Hebrew term for husband which meant owner. It was also the name of an ancient Canaanite god. She was his, and she would worship him and adore him as all things male, her first and only man, he comforted himself, thrilled, relying on the sex advice sprinkled with delicacy throughout the ancient Jewish canon. The moment he took her virginity, he would be her baal in every sense.
He tried to pace himself. He wanted to be considerate, not to frighten her or—God forbid!—hurt her in any way. All this had been impressed upon him by mentors provided for him in the yeshiva, kindly rabbis and older married students who had volunteered for bridegroom consultations. He tried to control himself, but to his surprise he found himself clutched and held and pressed and fondled. He was thrilled, even as it dawned on him that slowly, but surely, he was no longer in control. He thrust against her, and to his surprise there didn’t seem to be anything standing in the way. But before he could give that another thought, great paroxysms of uncontrolled feeling and sensation took hold of him, blotting out all rational thought. He felt himself pulled up and up and up and then suddenly released, allowed to free-fall down the precipice. He lay back, panting and almost unconscious.
He reached out to touch her, but she was already gone into the bathroom to wash herself off. The towel, too, was gone. Reluctantly, he moved over to the other bed, as is the custom, the bride and groom separating the moment that the “red rose” appeared. She would need to count seven clean days before they could meet again. It was maddening. It was Jewish law.
They had breakfast in bed, a sinful luxury, he thought, a bit embarrassed to let in room service, who rolled in a serving cart with juice, bread, jam, little boxes of cereals, silver carafes of milk and coffee, and a basket of fragrant warm muffins. She wore one of his undershirts, her blond hair tousled and adorable over her shoulders, her eyes heavy-lidded and satisfied.
“Are you all right, my love?” Chaim asked her, concerned.
“A little sore. There was a lot of blood. Good thing I remembered the towel,” she murmured.
He felt guilty and proud and manly.
She pulled the tray toward her and began to eat.
“Whoa, aren’t you forgetting something, my love?” he remonstrated gently, a bit surprised. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom to ritually wash her hands, spilling water over each lightly held fist three times, to rid her body of the lingering impurity of nighttime spirits, a ritual followed by every Orthodox Jew, who believed touching anything with such hands would not only be sinful but unhealthy.
She hesitated. “Oh, I did that earlier, my love,” she said breezily. “When you were still asleep.” She kissed him, even though it was forbidden. He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. Then she took a knife and spread some jam on a muffin.
“My darling, those muffins . . . they are from the hotel bakery; they don’t have any rabbinical hechsher, so we can’t know if they’re kosher.”
“But it’s just flour, oil, water, and sugar. What could be wrong with it?” she asked him, already feeding herself tiny pieces as she pulled it apart.
“But, really, darling, you shouldn’t.”
She looked up at him, annoyed.
Should he press her, he wondered, his new bride? Was it worth having a fight over, the morning after their wedding, when no doubt her nerves were frayed? There was such a thing as a pious fool, he told himself, the man who won’t rescue a drowning woman because he is too religious to touch a female that isn’t his close relative. He wasn’t a fool, he told himself. Besides, she was probably right; there wasn’t anything forbidden in them. Really, who would make the effort to locate and bake with pig fat in New York City in these cholesterol-conscious days?
He let it go but made a point to wash and dress, feeling he had to set a good example. “I’m going out on the balcony to daven,” he told her, taking his prayer book and tefillin with him. When he was finished with his morning prayers, he came back in.
He longed to take off his clothes and get back in with her under the covers. Instead, he sat in a chair across from her, silently eating his certified-kosher Kellogg’s breakfast cereal with milk and drinking his coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, thinking all the while how adorable she looked in his undershirt, her white thighs perfect, her ankles slim, her toenails sparkling with color. According to Jewish law, it would be almost a week before he’d be able to so much as touch her again.
It was maddening.
After breakfast, they ripped open the envelopes and added up their cash and checks, smiling, feeling overwhelmed with happiness and riches. They laughed at the wedding gifts, groaning over the third toaster and fourth blender, exclaiming over the intricately carved silver ritual objects.
With each tearing away of wrappings, Delilah felt the injustices of her deprived childhood recede farther back in memory, their sting softening. Images and memories of middle-income red-brick housing projects, bad haircuts, and dime store shopping trips were tossed onto a mental junk pile, to await the garbage trucks of forgetfulness that would hopefully clank along soon, dumping the lot into a landfill soon to be smoothed over and readied for the building of the lovely mansion that she would inhabit for the rest of her life. Soon, she hoped, the whole lot would be incinerated, so that it would all finally seem like a bad dream, as if it had never happened at all.
She had a sudden, wicked thought that her parents, most of all, were on top of that pile, never to hinder or badger or push her again. She’d inv
ite them over a few times a year, she thought, until they were stuck in wheelchairs in old-age homes and she’d be forced to visit them. And she would, if she wasn’t too busy.
They took a short trip to the bank to open an account and deposit the loot; then they checked out of the hotel, getting the bellboy to help them load their belongings into a taxi. They tipped him generously, using some of the bills that had been stuffed into the white envelopes, which they decided to stick in their wallets instead of sensibly storing in their new account.
Their first home was a small apartment in the Bronx near his grandfather’s synagogue, where Chaim would be employed as assistant rabbi until the next listing of job openings for rabbis was sent to him from his alma mater, which ran an employment service for its graduates. The listings were sent out every six months. Although he had tried to find another position before the wedding, he had had no success. People like Josh, of course, had been snapped up by well-regarded congregations in the suburbs. But for lesser luminaries, the opportunities were less than abundant: an assistant rabbi in Nebraska, a youth leader in Terre Haute. He’d decided to do the sensible thing and wait.
He was a bit deflated when they walked into their first apartment, both of them carrying packages like an old married couple home from their weekly shopping trip. The moment should have been magic; he wanted to carry her over the threshold like something in an old I Love Lucy episode, playfully groaning under her delicious weight, her warm body next to his. He felt deprived and resentful, even as he faithfully did his best to adhere to the strictest letter of Jewish law, being careful not to touch her, not even to sit next to her on the couch or hand her a plate.
