by Ragen, Naomi
“Delilah, I can’t concentrate with all that crying. Could you possibly take him outside for a while?” he’d say, not looking up until she shoved the baby into his arms and disappeared.
After these outbursts, she’d be overcome with guilt. She’d sit in her bedroom, listening to her albums and weeping until she had no more tears left. Then she’d go into the bathroom, wipe her eyes, and examine the sad state of her skin and the tire around her middle that simply refused to vanish. She’d return to Chaim, retrieve her son, and cuddle him tenderly in her arms, crooning lullabies and whispering to him.
She would never, ever, she told herself, do anything that would remotely harm the baby. Why, just the idea that a single hair on his little head might be pulled filled her with horror and pity. In fact, every time the child went to sleep, she remembered that she was deeply in love with him. She’d sit for hours, examining him, every minute detail. But she had to admit, he disappointed her. He had his grandfather’s little eyes, which seemed to stare at her accusingly, her mother’s big nose, her mother-in-law’s thin dissatisfied lips, and her husband’s dark hair. She would have preferred a girl with a beautiful little face, big blue eyes, and darling blond curls. A little doll she could buy adorable baby J-Lo dresses for with matching hair bows.
But she took some pride in having created a son. Little Abraham was a credit to her. She had produced him, after all, when she could just as easily have produced a girl as first-born. Orthodox Jews, no matter their well-concealed disappointment and shocked denials, were no different than the members of most other religions and cultures on this point. Let’s face it, girls are not considered much to celebrate. There’s no ceremony. No gathering of rabbis and friends to welcome her into the tribe. And even though politically correct modern Orthodoxy has been embarrassed into sanctioning the mesibat bat, or girl party, and the Bat Mitzva, everyone is in on the fact that it is just a pale-flaccid little consolation prize.
He was her pride and joy, she reminded herself. If only he wasn’t so much work. If only she had more time. . . .
“Normal people look forward to weekends! What do I get on weekends? I get to be inspected, to serve armies of house guests, to visit cemeteries. I’m a prisoner here. Getting away for the weekend, or for holidays, is always impossible!”
Chaim, used to Delilah’s tantrums, had learned to tune them out.
However, later that evening, after she’d said goodbye to the last of the sisterhood members and loaded the dishwasher and vacuumed the carpet, she leaned against the doorpost of his office and said, very calmly, “Did you know that Andrea Yates was class valedictorian? Captain of the swim team? In the National Honor Society? A nurse in the cancer ward?”
He’d stared at her in horror. Then he picked up the phone and made immediate arrangements for a private meeting with Arthur Malin.
Soon after, the synagogue board voted to provide the rabbi and his wife with some weekly hours of child care and housekeeping and to give Delilah a free yearly membership in the Swallow Lake Country Club.
As with many kind gestures, this move also proved the wisdom of the saying that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
TWENTY
Delilah Levi walked through the doors of the Swallow Lake Country Club with the exact opposite feeling with which she walked through the doors of Ohel Aaron: the delicious sensation of being invisible, instead of a walking poster for Virtue of the Week. With her brand-new skin-hugging Lycra shorts and tank top, her brand-new New Balance cross trainers, and a headband that made her look like a Jane Fonda video backup girl, she joined the aerobics classes, letting herself go, shimmying and grapevining across the floor as she admired herself in the mirror-lined room. She loved the way she looked, her blond hair loose or up in a pony-tail, her figure rapidly going back to its prepregnancy youthfulness, the stomach and waist melting away. There, among other women her age who didn’t know who she was, she felt released from the burdens of her fish-bowl existence.
It was a great revelation to learn that she was as lonely in the Swallow Lake congregation as she had been in the Bronx. Here too, the movers and shakers on the board were grandmothers. As for befriending the younger women, it was complicated. She wasn’t their equal. She was supposed to be their superior, or at least to maintain that myth. A synagogue hired a rabbinical family to put on a pedestal, to be looked up to and imitated. To breach the distance, to become chummy, exposing the reality behind the perfect picture, could jeopardize that illusion and, she worried, her family’s position in the community.
While she couldn’t avoid every single woman in her congregation, she quickly learned to steer clear of the country club in the very early hours when Mariette came in; and the one afternoon a week Solange used it. Felice, who had a private trainer and a home gym, never showed up, nor did Amber, who wasn’t into exercise.
Relaxed and temporarily unburdened of the plethora of rabbinical prohibitions concerning her body, dress, voice, and flesh, which only had force when men were around to stare and listen, she left her anxieties behind in the bubbles of the Jacuzzi and the pool of sweat in the sauna. Soon she was striking up conversations with strangers her age, gossiping about clothes and movie stars and men, sending caution to the wind in her hunger for companionship, telling herself it was good enough if they didn’t look too familiar.
One woman in particular caught her attention. She was about the same height and body build as herself, a sexy blonde she had never seen before. Her hair had been colored by a genius; it was the most delicate shade of ash blond with marvelous natural highlights. Her body was tight, like a dancer’s, and as voluptuous as Pamela Anderson’s. There had no doubt been a boob job. Nobody with the possible exception of Barbie had boobs that big and hips that slim. And the nose? That too had been surgically snipped to shiksa perfection. And boy, was this woman in shape! When the rest of the class was groaning from the stomach crunches, she was still crunching away even more effortlessly than the instructor. Delilah often followed her around the gym like a groupie. One day, she managed to meet her at the lockers.
“You are in such wonderful condition. What’s your secret?”
The woman threw her exercise bag over her shoulder, turned, and looked at Delilah curiously, her eyes flicking up and down, leaving no part unregistered. “You are?”
Delilah wiped her sweaty hand on her tank top and held it out. “Delilah. Delilah Levi.”
The woman smiled and shrugged, declining to take it, “I’ve got a thing about germs. Nothing personal. Joie Shammanov.”
A bell, low and resonant, clanged in Delilah’s head.
Shammanov.
For months she had been hearing about the fabulously wealthy Russian businessman who had bought the biggest estate in Swallow Lake and had been building on it ever since. Shammanov, it was said, would be in court for a hundred years battling the county’s municipal authorities for having broken every single zoning law to build what was rumored to be Xanadu on uppers. But no one knew for sure because, to the chagrin of Swallow Lake’s leading citizens, who were dying of curiosity, no one had been invited to the house, despite numerous overtures. The Shammanovs were Jewish but had no intention of becoming part of the community, spokespeople who answered the phone said firmly.
Like his estate, Shammanov himself was also shrouded in mystery. Although he had been featured on the cover of Fortune magazine, the article had revealed very little, calling him secretive, a shunner of limelight. According to Fortune, his wealth had come from his near monopoly on shares of the privatized oil fields in his native Turdistan, following the fall of the Soviet Union. He was said to own banks, real estate, airlines, hotel chains, and innumerable corporations. His wealth, Amber had whispered, was equal to the gross national product of certain small countries.
Delilah whistled in nervousness. “Wow, interesting name!” bo is yours.
“Please, let’s not get into it. It’s been a pain my whole life. It was my grandmother’s name and my father ins
isted—”
“Parents.” Joie pursed her lips in disgust. “I really sympathize. I’ve got the same kind. Never happy unless they are making you miserable.”
Delilah, who wasn’t prepared to go that far, decided nevertheless not to blow this bonding opportunity. “I guess we just have to live our lives and put up with them,” she agreed. “Love what you’ve done with your abs. You’ve got such . . . definition.”
“Really?” Joie looked at her arms, pleased. “You think? You also look great. I envy those stomach muscles.”
Coming from the crunch queen, that was high praise indeed. “Oh, thanks!” Delilah gushed, thrilled. “I just had a baby, and I’m dying to get rid of these extra pounds. They are so stuck on.”
Joie stared at her. “Oh, I also just had a baby! I thought I’d never lose them.”
“You look fantastic!”
“Thanks. I have to get ready for my son’s Bar Mitzvah.”
“You have a son who’s thirteen years old? You look like twenty yourself.” Delilah said, truly amazed and not a little envious.
The woman turned to her, put down her bag, and smiled. “Oh, he’s not mine. He’s my husband’s, from his first marriage. You are so nice! Not like most of the snobs I’ve met here. They are so full of themselves. And most of them go to that synagogue with the men on one side and the women on the other. I never saw such a thing.”
Delilah shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, it’s not so bad.”
The woman’s face dropped. “Oh. Do you go there too?”
Delilah nodded. “I’m the rabbi’s wife.”
Joie slapped her forehead. “Oh, so sorry! I’m just such a blabber-mouth. My husband always tells me. He’s Russian and very outgoing, and I’m always saying the wrong thing, screwing up his multibillion-dollar deals left and right.” She held out her hand. “Please, forgive me?”
Delilah took it gratefully. “There’s nothing to forgive. Believe me, I know it seems weird to outsiders: the separate seating, the hair covering, the no phones, no cars, no cooking on the Sabbath.”
“It’s not weird, it’s just that I’m so ignorant and prejudiced. I think you have to grow up in a family that has respect for religion, for traditions. And I didn’t. My parents weren’t at all respectful. And I think I lost out a lot because of it.”
“Well, its never too late to learn.” Delilah couldn’t believe she heard herself say this, in perfect imitation of a rebbitzin on the make for lost souls. “Oh, no, forget I said that!”
“Why?”
“Because this is the one place on the planet where I don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Convert people to the true faith. I can just forget I’m hemmed in by all these weirdo rules, by all these rabbis, and just wiggle and crunch and grapevine and boogie. I know I could put on a tape and do it in my bedroom, but I find if I have people to compete with, it keeps me going. It gets so lonely, you know, with a new baby, and my husband is never around.”
The woman’s face softened. “I know exactly what you mean.” She hesitated. “Look, I was just heading home. If you’ve got a few minutes, why don’t you come over to the house for a cup of coffee? I’ve also got this home movie theater, and we just got a preview copy of this year’s Oscar nominees. . . .”
The idea of making a friend of the elusive Joie Shammanov, who incidentally had a home movie theater and movies not yet available even in DVD and whose husband was making multibillion-dollar deals, intrigued Delilah. Besides, she was always happy to inspect and then eat her heart out over the glories of yet one more Swallow Lake estate.
A blue Bentley was waiting at the entrance for Joie Shammanov. A chauffeur got out and opened the door for her. Delilah followed behind in her beat-up Ford.
When Delilah Levi drove past the polished bronze gates, under beautiful scrollwork that spelled out USPEKHOV, she began to feel a little like Dorothy at the end of the yellow brick road. Rising to her right on a low hill stood a breathtaking Romanesque-style castle straight out of Fantasy-land in Orlando, Florida. To her surprise, the Bentley drove right past it, turning off and continuing down the road toward the lake.
She couldn’t believe her eyes when the car pulled up to a huge lake-front mansion.
“Joie, what does Uspekhov mean?”
“It means success.” She smiled.
They’d built a brand-new second house on the property. Talk about excess. It was mind-boggling. But she reminded herself not to go around saying omigod and to make believe she saw this kind of thing all the time, so as not to put off her new friend with any hick behavior.
She needn’t have worried. As it turned out, Joie was only too happy to discuss her wealth. Over lattes served on a deck overlooking the lake and an infinity pool, Delilah learned that the Shammanovs’ purchase of forty acres of lakefront property had included a 7,500-square-foot French château that neither of them really liked. But instead of tearing it down and rebuilding, they’d decided to simply put up a second house, nearer the lake. They had been building for over a year, but the place still wasn’t quite finished, although Joie was happy to report that the 45,000-square-foot home was already estimated to be worth well over $90 million. They had a screening room, a Japanese garden with 500 rare species of trees flown in from Japan, office facilities, a gym, and a library. The living room alone was over 3,000 square feet, with an adjoining reception hall large enough to seat 150 people for dinner or hold 200 people for a cocktail party. There was a 70-foot pool with an underwater sound system, as well as a trampoline room, an Art Deco theater, and goodness knows what else. Joie said even she didn’t really know.
“This is my husband’s thing. He loves to build. He’s never going to finish this house. Every time I think we’re almost done, he finds something he doesn’t like, or he gets a better idea and tears everything out and starts over. We ordered Brazilian rosewood for the library? After it was all built, he decides it’s too dark, so he throws the whole thing out and orders a different wood. And the tiles in the kitchen, handmade in Mexico? He saw something similar somewhere, which made him mad, so he had them all taken out and ordered tiles from this tiny factory in Portugal.” She laughed, her eyes grim. “So many of them broke on the way over, he had to order them fifteen times before he had enough.”
After coffee and a few delectable scones, Delilah said delicately, “Love to see this place sometime.”
“Would you? Oh, sure. If you’ve got time, come now.”
Oh, the marble floors! she thought in rapture. What had they done to get rid of those pesky grouted lines? How did they get it to shine seamlessly, like glass? And how did they get those designs, the red and cream and white marble laid out in an intricate pattern like some handwoven rug? And how did they get the walls to look like some Chinese lacquer box? And where did they find those chandeliers, and that furniture, all oversized like a scene out of some forties Hollywood movie? It was extremely costly and yet, overwhelmed as she was, even Delilah recognized everything was a just a tiny bit off. A little too much, a little bit old-fashioned. A little bit Arab or Eastern European in its decadence, where huge sums had been poured into projects that, instead of showing off the owners’ impeccable good taste, did quite the opposite. It was like those sultans known as boobs of the rain forest, who give solid gold watches custom-made to hold tacky nude photos and then throw in CDs, some cheesecake, shortbread cookies, and a candle. The Queer Eyed folk would have wrung their hands.
Nevertheless, the sheer enormity of the place, and its mind-boggling expense, rolled over Delilah like a large vehicle going full speed. It was simply on a scale too grand to envy, the way no one actually envies Queen Elizabeth her Buckingham Palace. It wasn’t a place anyone could actually aspire to own or even if they did, would really want to live in, the way no one would actually want to live in Grand Central Station, even if it could be remodeled as a private residence. Unlike the homes of the Malins, the Grodins, the Rollands, and the Borenbergs, fab
ulous estates that one nevertheless felt were possible to get your greedy little hands around—given the right luck—this house was quite a different story. It was a place only a person with unheard-of appetites and a truly fabulous imagination, matched by an equally bottomless pot of money, could have envisioned, let alone build.
“It’s like the castle in that old black-and-white movie,” Joie said. Delilah looked at her blankly.
“Citizen Kane.”
“Oh, of course.” She smiled. Who in heaven’s name watched black-and-white movies? She resolved to take it out of the video library next chance she got. Hopefully, Ted Turner had gotten around to colorizing it.
“Want to see the baby?” her hostess said suddenly, apparently bored with the tour.
Delilah, who would have much preferred to continue opening doors and prowling hallways, nodded. They took an elevator lined in mirrors and marble up a few flights.
The nursery was done up exquisitely in pastel nursery-rhyme themes. An enormous pink dollhouse you could actually walk into was filled with stuffed animals and lovely dolls. There were rocking chairs and window seats and soft carpeting that matched the walls and curtains. In the center of this fairyland sat an old woman with enormous breasts holding an infant swathed in clothing more suitable for a little Eskimo in an igloo than for a child in a heated nursery. The baby was cute: blond, with large blue eyes. She was about six months old. She looked up at her mother in wonder.
“Here she is, my little Natasha,” Joie said, smiling at the baby, her arms outstretched. The woman, unsmiling, grasped the child closer.
“Let me have her, Yelena,” Joie demanded.
There was a volcanic storm of Russian, whirling up a notch in belligerence with each passing moment. The old woman shook her head and then her fist, shooing them both away.
Joie turned on her heel and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
