by Ragen, Naomi
“Gee, you’re a saint! If my babysitter pulled that, I’d fire her on the spot.”
Joie looked up. “That,” she said slowly, “is my mother-in-law.”
“Oops. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wish I could fire her. She makes my life a living hell.”
“You know, Joie,” Delilah said thoughtfully, “the Jewish religion is very clear about a man leaving his father and mother and clinging to his wife. There is actually a phrase in the Bible that says exactly that. And our rabbis teach us that a man mustn’t let his mother get between him and his wife. His wife comes first.”
Joie looked at her, transfixed. “A verse? In the Bible? Really?”
Delilah nodded. “I could show it to you.”
“That would be fantastic. Viktor had a very religious Jewish grandfather. He was a rabbi, Viktor says. Viktor has a lot of respect for religion—but you know, brought up in the Soviet Union, he had no one to teach him. His father was an atheist. But Viktor loved the old man, who died when he was just a little kid. He talks about him all the time.”
“You know, my husband would be really happy to learn with your husband.”
“Learn?”
“Oh, that’s just the way we Orthodox Jews put it, when we talk about religious instruction. It’s considered a joint effort. Teacher and student learn together.”
“Really? You think your husband would be willing to teach Viktor that verse in the Bible, about the clinging and about the mothers-in-law?”
“Joie, I don’t think it, I know it. My husband has a heart of gold. He’s always telling me we should be encouraging more people to join our synagogue.”
“Well, if your husband can get my husband to part with his mother, I would be grateful to you for the rest of my life.”
That was the moment when Delilah Levi and Joie Shammanov became instant best friends.
A week later, Chaim began learning with Viktor Shammanov. And two weeks after that, the elderly Mrs. Shammanov found herself with a one-way ticket on a plane to Miami.
TWENTY-ONE
Great unhappiness can only come about when one has known great happiness. This is the irony that people refuse to understand when the wheel of Fate turns and gives them their heart’s desire. The cocktail waitress who bets a few dollars in Vegas and winds up with the jackpot. The nebbish who asks the girl of his dreams to marry him and gets a yes. The plain girl with the glasses who lands the captain of the basketball team (a common occurence, by the way; just look around you). All these people, God bless them, are primed for the worst of disasters, while the rest of us—who shlep along with average luck and average successes and failures—are immune.
That is not to say one should not rejoice in one’s good fortune. As Henry James taught us in the most frightening of horror stories ever written, “The Beast in the Jungle,” the anticipation of disaster can, in itself, become the disaster. To paraphrase King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, rejoice in your good times, because time and chance happen to all.
This was Delilah’s good time, the best time in her life. There were picnics and pool parties at the Shammanovs. There were shopping trips to New York and stays in private hotel suites. There were manicures and pedicures and private masseuses who came to the Swallow Lake mansion and were just as happy to do two women as one. There were daily outings and private confessions. The good times were limited only by Delilah’s child-care arrangements; Joie had no such restrictions. Once she packed her mother-in-law off to Florida, she hired a daytime au pair and a nighttime au pair and even an au pair for her dog. “He is very jealous of the baby as it is. We don’t want to make it worse.”
Far from judging her friend or even envying her, Delilah rejoiced in her good fortune. While she knew that the average person would have been appalled at the meager amount of time Joie spent with her daughter, Delilah tended to agree with Joie that the time she did spend with Natasha—usually when the child was fresh from being bathed and diapered and fed—was “quality” time.
Delilah wondered what it would be like to foist her son off on somebody else whenever he was dirty and hungry and cranky, and to get him back clean, fed, and smiling. Why, they would only see each other at their best! And while she knew there were those who would condemn her for being a bad mother, she wondered if in the best of all possible worlds all children wouldn’t be better off bonding with their parents under such ideal circumstances. Imagine a world full of adults who had only known smiling, relaxed mothers! Why, they could close down the UN—that humongous waste of time and money whose only useful function, as far as she could tell, was to provide freedom from parking tickets and assorted felonies to Third World bureaucrats. And they could forget about nuclear nonproliferation treaties, because why would calm, smiling, satisfied adults want to build bombs to murder other calm, smiling, satisfied adults and their perfect offspring?
Every woman, Delilah, thought, should have a Joie Shammanov. She never ceased to rejoice over this unexpected relationship. She had a best friend. A shopping partner. Someone who made her feel smart and good and didn’t judge her.
Joie, for her part, seemed very happy to have Delilah’s constant companionship. Her marriage to a Russian Jew and her relocation to the very Jewish Swallow Lake had left her like a fish out of water.
Because the fact was that Joie Shammanov, until very very recently, wasn’t Jewish.
Born Jill O’Donnell in Lodi, New Jersey, to a housewife and a construction worker with a bit of a drinking problem, she ran away from home when she reached sixteen. It wasn’t a horror story. She wasn’t abused; she didn’t have a drug problem or an unwanted pregnancy; she was simply bored. The life of a New Jersey teenager—stupid parties, backseat romantics, cramming for exams, worry about SAT scores—just weren’t enough for her.
She wound up working in a clothing store in Manhattan, living with the owner and two other girls whom he put up in his Manhattan apartment. He took turns with each of them, which was fine with Jill, because it was better than putting up with the owner all by herself and it was a very nice apartment after all.
When she was eighteen, she moved out and decided to try her hand at modeling. But she wasn’t tall enough and, truth be told, wasn’t pretty enough, given the raving beauties from all over the world who were her competition in New York City. Her nose was a bit thick and her eyes rather narrow. But she had a beautiful figure and stunning hair, so every once in a while the agency found her work as a hair or figure model, where they needed just parts of her instead of the whole thing.
It wasn’t enough to live on, so she moonlighted in a bar in one of the downtown hotels. And it was there, one night, that she happened to serve a bunch of Russians, They were all overweight and absolutely interchangeable. But when the evening was over, one of them handed her a $500 tip and his card.
“Call me,” he said.
She didn’t, having no interest in expanding her already sizable knowledge of heavy drinkers, The next night, he showed up again, this time alone. He sat in a corner, nursing one drink until closing time. He then gave her a $1,000 tip and another card.
Still, she didn’t do anything. He was too muscular, she thought. Too foreign. Too old. He came in every single night, and each night he upped his tip. After a week, when she still hadn’t called, he disappeared.
She took the money and went on the mother of all spending sprees. She paid off her credit card debts. Then she bought a coat at Bendel’s for $2,000. A pair of boots for $1,500. She had her hair and nails done and used some to have her teeth whitened.
By the end of the second week, she was broke again.
The following month, a car pulled up to the bar and a chauffeur came in with a box with her name on it. He left it with her boss, who called her into the back. It was Russian sable. Stunned, she slipped it on, sliding her hand down the heavenly softness, into the silk-lined pockets. Inside was a velvet box holding a diamond and emerald bracelet. There was also a note that said he would pick her up
after work.
She didn’t wait until after work. She grabbed her purse and walked out of the bar and never looked back. She went straight to her apartment and packed a suitcase with all her new things, then went straight to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket on a bus to San Diego that was leaving in three hours.
After the first hour, she got hungry, so she bought herself a hamburger. As a blonde in a sable eating a hamburger at a Greyhound bus station, she attracted quite a bit of attention, which she rather enjoyed. She finished the food. She found a comfortable seat away from any weirdos and thought about San Diego: the beaches, Marine World, the year-round sunshine. And then she thought, I probably won’t need a fur coat in San Diego. Which was just as well, because she’d probably need to sell it so she’d have money to rent an apartment. She didn’t really have enough for more than a few days in a good hotel. And the more Jill O’Donnell thought about life on her own in San Diego, the more she thought about the man who had given her the coat and the bracelet and who seemed to have money coming out of his pores. She compared him in her imagination to other men, the kind she’d meet in San Diego; young, blond, and flat-stomached who spoke nonaccented English. They would all basically want the same thing from her, which she would or wouldn’t want to give them to a lesser or greater degree. And none would be as generous.
She sat there, trying to remember what he looked like, trying to imagine what would happen when he came to pick her up and she wasn’t there. First, she felt sad for him, imagining his disappointment. And then, suddenly, she felt frightened. She had, after all, walked off with tens of thousands of his dollars and had given him nothing in return, Then, suddenly, she looked up and saw them. The terminal was suddenly packed with them, like some scene from Angels in America, except instead of angels it was full of fat Russians who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Or maybe it was just her imagination. She began to sweat. She took off her coat and tucked her bracelet inside her sleeve. Then she picked up her suitcase and hailed a taxi back to the bar.
She stood outside, waiting for the car to show up. When it did, she got in.
TWENTY-TWO
Delilah, the phone has been ringing off the hook. I have had at least twelve different people in the synagogue call me up, furious. You aren’t returning phone calls! You aren’t giving me their messages! You aren’t taking their envelopes, or answering their questions, or discussing their matchmaking needs! They say you are rude. That you’ve stopped inviting people over, that you aren’t going out into the community enough, making enough of an effort to attract new members to join the synagogue.”
Delilah listened, her face impassive. When he was finished, she looked up calmly. “I’m really, really sorry to hear that, Chaim. I have some suggestions for them. Why don’t you tell them all that they can just kiss my mezuzah!”
“Delilah!”
She leaned back indifferently, taking out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one up, and blowing large smoke rings toward the ceiling. She’d taken up smoking again. She was trying to imitate Joie, how she held a cigarette, the way she tilted her head hack just so, exhaling with world-weary ennui.
Chaim’s arms waved frantically, dispersing the smoke in all directions. “And what is this with the smoking already? If you don’t care about yourself, think about me, about the baby, for goodness’ sake. You’re filling our lungs with tar and nicotine deposits too.”
“So, I’ll smoke outside.”
“Please, Delilah. What’s gotten into you? The shul has been so generous. They’ve paid for household help, a babysitter, and time off. Is this how you show your appreciation? Be fair!”
“Fair? You want me to be fair? Tell me this, Chaim, while we’re talking about being fair. How fair is it that some women get husbands who buy them Harry Winston diamond bracelets and some get men who grit their teeth when they shell out fifty-nine ninety-nine for gold earrings at Macy’s during the Presidents’ Day sales? How fair is it that some wives have cooks and chauffeurs, and—oh, four or five maids, and some have to beg and be grateful for four hours of housecleaning a week, if that much? That some women get their hair colored in Frederic Fekkai, and some do it themselves over the bathroom sink?”
She threw back her head, took another deep puff, and exhaled, studying Chaim through the haze of smoke, watching as his body and face faded, becoming blurry and indistinct, like some screen saver disappearing from a computer screen. Who was this guy, she thought, surprised, this person she was tied to for the rest of her life, who didn’t provide her with a single thing she really wanted?
“Delilah, what’s gotten into you?” Chaim shouted, astonished.
She didn’t want to be a rabbi’s wife, she suddenly realized. She wanted to be the wife of a rich man who would spoil her, the way all the women in her congregation were spoiled. The way Joie Shammanov was spoiled. Why did she have to be the good one, the moral one, the kind one, the generous one, the hard worker, the woman of virtue? Had she ever pretended to have any of these qualities, ever valued them, or aspired toward them, like the goody-goodies in Cedar Heights, the ones with the calf-length skirts who stayed after school for extra brainwashing in mussar and how to improve your judgmental skills and guilt quotient? No, it was all just a big accident, a big celestial joke—and it was on her, she realized.
“They are complaining that you are spending all your time with Mrs. Shammanov—who isn’t even a member of our congregation—doing who knows what: neglecting the congregation, not to mention your family. That you are acting like some airhead high school girl. It’s got to stop!”
Finally, miraculously, she was having a little fun, enjoying the pleasures she would only get to have in this life vicariously if at all, and there was a conspiracy afoot to deprive her even of that! She stubbed out the cigarette viciously into the carpet. “Look, get this through your skullcap. Joie Shammanov is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Why should I give her up—give any of it up? So that you can keep on playing social worker, psychiatrist, and Catskills entertainer to a bunch of self-indulgent whining mâchers and their wives who treat us both like low-level employees? They may own you, but they don’t own me.”
Just then, the phone rang. Chaim picked it up.
“Hello, Solange, how are you? . . . Good, good. Yes, well now is really not a good . . . Of course, of course. I understand. She’s right here. I’ll put her on.” Apprehensively, he handed Delilah the phone. Please, his eyes implored.
“Solange, Delilah here. . . . Well, let me just interrupt you, Solange, to tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that the sisterhood meeting should really go back to being at the synagogue where it belongs. . . . Oh, you like it better in someone’s house? Well, then, Solange, maybe you can have it at yours. And while you’re at it, you can get your chef and five slaves to decide the menu and the theme, and cook it and serve it and clean up afterward. And then the sisterhood can check out your hair dye and steal your plates!” She slammed down the phone.
Chaim went white.
They didn’t speak for three days. And then Chaim came home early. He brought a bottle of wine, some flowers, lit some candles, brought in take-out someone had picked up for him especially from the Broadway Deli in Manhattan: Delilah’s favorite restaurant, he remembered. He arranged for a babysitter. “Come, let’s have a quiet dinner and talk, Delilah,” he coaxed her.
He sat down across from her. They ate in silence. “Delilah, I’ve straightened it out. I called Arthur Malin. He is such a mensch. And he knows Solange can be a bit of a character—”
“Shes a klafta.”
He took a deep breath. “Now, now, don’t be unkind, dear.”
Chaim groveled. He apologized. He explained. He was as nice and understanding as he could possibly be. He even apologized for not having thought himself of moving the sisterhood meetings back to the shul or somewhere else. He even, in the end, agreed, that Solange Malin was, and had always been, a klafta.
Delilah listened
wordlessly, amazed. “Well, I have to say this for you: you’re trying.”
He certainly was. After an emergency call from Arthur, the two men had sat together and decided the best course to take. He was now taking it.
“I have an idea, my dear.”
OK, she thought, putting down her pastrami on rye, which brought back some mixed memories. She swallowed and tapped her mouth with a napkin, all the better to open it good and wide if circumstances should so require.
“Maybe you could influence the Shammanovs to join our synagogue. The board would be thrilled. Everyone has been dying to meet them. And then, perhaps, if the Shammanovs became more active, in a little while I could ask for a raise, and all the other things. . . . We would be able to afford more household help, child care—”
“You want me to talk them into coming to our synagogue?!”
“Yes, why not? Didn’t you tell me there is a boy who is almost Bar Mitzva age?”
“But they’re not religious at all! She’s a convert!”
“Think about it, Delilah. I know you’ve become her friend. Now, as her friend, wouldn’t you be helping her by bringing her and her family closer to their roots, their heritage? The Jewish people are strengthened every time another family joins a synagogue and becomes part of the community. And of course, I admit it, this would be such a good thing for us—for the synagogue, of course—but not just that. Even rich people can be lonely. Why don’t you invite them over for Friday-night dinner? We’ll invite the board. You can even have it catered if it’s too much for you to manage.”
Somewhere inside she understood that all this was perfectly reasonable. But the truth was, she felt stingy about sharing her friend, about destroying the special relationship they shared. Most of all, she didn’t want to introduce Joie Shammanov to Rebbitzin Levi; she wanted to keep the two worlds separate.
“Please, Delilah?”
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him squarely. “Chaim, I also have an idea. How would you feel about not being a rabbi?”
