The Beautiful Possible

by Amy Gottlieb

  “Where are you now, Sonia?” Walter asks aloud. “Where are you going, Rosalie?”

  Rosalie wears her white satin wedding shoes to Sol’s graduation party so she can break them in. She totters on the spiked heels and leans on Sol’s arm for balance. Her face is smeared with a paste of makeup, and she holds her neck high. This is who I will be, she thinks. A first lady. A queen. A rebbetzin who is foolish beyond words. She enters the Seminary party room, her arm linked with Sol’s.

  The students and faculty erupt into the traditional wedding song: “Od yishoma be’arei yehuda, uvechutzot yerushalayim: kol sasson v’kol simcha kol chatan v’kol kallah. Still will be heard in the cities of Judea and in the courtyards of Jerusalem: the voice of laughter and the voice of joy, the voice of a groom, and the voice of a bride.”

  Walter crosses the courtyard, following the sound of raucous singing. When he first met Rosalie, he was afraid to walk across this open space alone and would linger in the shadows of the arcade. But he no longer worries that he will be murdered by a Nazi, or exposed for being less than an authentic Jew. Rosalie’s love had made him feel safe; her affection felt like a canopy over his head. Let the rabbis wrap themselves in prayer shawls; if Walter were to ever become a man of prayer, Rosalie would be his tallit.

  He stands at the doorway of the party room and peeks. With her upswept hair and veneer of makeup, he can barely recognize her. They look perfect together, he thinks. They will have beautiful babies. Walter pictures Sol and Rosalie’s mothers sitting together at the wedding, admiring their grown children cascading across the dance floor, perfectly matched in each other’s arms.

  Walter turns and Rosalie calls to him.

  “Wait—”

  “It’s a lovely party,” he says. “You and Sol are a perfect fit.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Go back to your fiancé, darling.”

  Her voice quivers. “Find me when this is over. I’m so confused—”

  He takes her face in his hands and kisses her tears.

  “Better now,” he says.

  “Not better at all,” she whimpers.

  “Go to him, Rosalie. Sol is waiting for you.”

  After the party Sol is invited to the Radish’s apartment for drinks and final words of congratulations. Rosalie and Walter sit side by side in the upper geniza, and stare straight ahead at the unread Torah scroll resting under the suit jacket. Rosalie kicks off her party shoes.

  “I want to go back in time,” she says. “Our first kiss.”

  Walter shrugs.

  “Don’t you?” asks Rosalie.

  “My relationship to the past is very different from yours,” says Walter. “I’ve lived through many chapters before this one.” He reaches over and rubs her feet. “You have fresh blisters.”

  Rosalie closes her eyes. Remember how he touches you, she thinks. You will need every moment to be a repository for when this is over.

  “Those shoes are finished,” she says. “I’ll be wearing flats to my wedding.”

  “You will look elegant in flats. Very stylish.”

  “I don’t know how to end this,” she says.

  “I followed a man off a boat and wound up in Bombay,” says Walter. “A man wearing a hat. I was on my way to Palestine and then to Shanghai and I never arrived.”

  Rosalie wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t want to go to Shanghai or Bombay or anywhere that doesn’t include you. I don’t want to go to my own wedding.”

  Rosalie brings her palm to her mouth so Walter won’t see her lips quiver.

  “You belong to each other,” he says.

  “I don’t hold back from you.”

  “And you won’t hold back from Sol.”

  “You spoiled me completely.”

  “Sol will spoil you.”

  Rosalie shakes her head. “Would he understand this?”

  “Do you expect him to?”

  “Of course not,” says Rosalie.

  “Sol is a true Talmudic scholar. He knows how to parse obscurities, plumb the meaning of things. So maybe he’ll figure it out. Or he won’t.”

  “And me? Will he figure out the meaning of me?”

  Walter stops rubbing Rosalie’s feet and rests his head in her lap.

  “I believe in the two of you, Rabbi and Mrs. Kerem. You will grow to love your life, you’ll see.”

  “But I—”

  Walter reaches up and puts his finger to her lips.

  “What was I thinking? I followed my body and now I can’t bear to lose you. I don’t want to spend my life longing for you.”

  “You are immense, Rosalie. You can carry the challenge.”

  “I want to carry your children,” she says.

  “I’m not looking for a family.”

  Of course not. She tries to imagine Walter cradling a baby in his arms, standing at the head of a Shabbat table reciting kiddush over a goblet of wine, laying his hands above a child’s head, offering a blessing. But all she can see is Walter lying naked in her arms, their bodies sprawled on a blanket that covers a dirty floor.

  Walter closes his eyes and Rosalie stares straight ahead. Neither of them speak for a long time.

  “I will leave first,” says Rosalie. “And I will close the door behind me.”

  “Yes,” says Walter. “For now.”

  She’elah: How does one prepare to depart?

  Teshuvah: Every ending is a beginning. Every departure carries the seeds of homecoming.

  THE BRIDE

  June 1947

  Rosalie has bathed, scraped off her nail polish, and gently whirled a Q-tip inside her ears and navel. Her pearl earrings and engagement ring rest in a small dish next to the sink. She pushes a button on the wall and waits. The mikvah attendant has young eyes, but her stiff wig and housedress make her look old enough to be Rosalie’s mother.

  “Come, my bride.” The attendant loosens the robe from Rosalie’s shoulders and lets it drop to the floor.

  “Such a figure you have.” She runs a finger down the length of Rosalie’s spine and pauses to remove a loose hair. “Show me your hands.”

  Rosalie holds them out, palms up, then palms down.

  “What’s this yellow here?”

  “I was cooking with spices.”

  “It’s on your hip too,” says the attendant. “And your belly. You cook naked?”

  Rosalie lets a tear fall.

  “Your husband will think he’s getting a painted lady. Vey iz mir.”

  “I just—”

  “Don’t be like those Sephardic girls with their crazy spices. A little white pepper and salt will season a soup just fine.”

  Rosalie begins to sob.

  “Another crying bride. Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?” She offers Rosalie a tissue.

  “Mothers never prepare their daughters. After you get used to it, sex is a pleasure. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Rosalie laughs.

  “I heated the mikvah for you, made it extra special. The water carries blessings for your marriage. You will immerse three times. After each one I will call out ‘Kosher!’ The first time you go down, I want you to think about all your childhood dreams and longings floating away like seaweed in the water. The second time I want you to think about your husband and how much you love him and the children you will have. It will be a beautiful life. And the third time I want you to plunge as deep as you can, open your eyes wide and let everything you desire enter your body in a single holy moment.”

  Rosalie steps down into the mikvah and runs her arms through the water. She stands in the deepest part, hesitates, then immerses. She thinks of her mother and how she hid a book from her the day she sorted through her father’s library. Was it the Spinoza? She pictures her father pulling the Mei HaShiloach off the shelf, and then she sees Walter’s hands shake open the same book in the geniza, freeing a sprig of faded freesia that he places behind her ear. She kisses him, runs barefoot down Broadway and then Walte
r catches her, enters her from behind.

  “Kosher!”

  Rosalie mumbles the Hebrew blessing her mother taught her. She immerses again and summons Sol, who smiles at her and leans close. She can see his wedding suit, the fresh creases in the pants, the narrow lapels, and the silver cuff links that brush against her face when they kiss. He will spoil you, Walter said. You will educate him. Rosalie can see the braid of the three of them crossing over throughout their lives, knotted in places, tangled and impossible, her head resting on a wall of stone, ribbons and challah dough under her fingers, a single thread of fine hair streaming down a child’s back—

  “Kosher!”

  Rosalie dives deep this time, opens her eyes. She sees her hands tremble in the water, the dank green tiles at the bottom, her feet shimmering like fish. She followed a scent in a geniza and wound up in an illicit forest that has no trail, no borders, no end. Rosalie plunges deeper, allowing her knees to fan out. She exhales bubbles, circles her arms wide, feels the water open her up as she empties her lungs and finds the last still place until it is too late and then she pushes down another inch and springs up.

  “Kosher!”

  Sol has asked the Radish to officiate at their wedding. When he meets with Rosalie before the ceremony, the Radish instructs her to circle Sol seven times under the wedding canopy. Her mother will follow closely behind and carry her train. “It’s a meaningful ritual,” says the Radish. Rosalie remembers how her father explained that seven circles represent the completion of the world, but the Radish has another explanation.

  “You will be like seven wives to your husband,” he says.

  “And how many husbands will my one husband be to me?” asks Rosalie.

  She’elah: If a bride thinks of another man when she stands under the wedding canopy, will the marriage be rendered impure?

  Teshuvah: Three stand under the wedding canopy: the groom, the bride, and the presence of the holy one.

  Walter knocks on the door of the Radish’s office and hands him a package to mail to Sol and Rosalie.

  “You should have been at their wedding,” says the Radish. “You and Sol had something special. You lit him up. He should have kept you as a chavrusa, instead of starting up with Morris.”

  “I was a corrupting influence on your prized student.”

  “He had a spark when he was learning with you. I could see it.”

  “It was all too much for him,” says Walter.

  “I just hope—”

  “Hope what?”

  “That he can handle his wife,” says the Radish. “She’s a handful.”

  “How did she seem?” asks Walter. “How did she look?”

  The Radish blushes. “She was radiant. Reminded me of Lauren Bacall.”

  “Lauren Bacall?”

  “Hollywood.”

  Walter shakes his head. He can’t imagine Rosalie as an actress on a silver screen.

  “You should have seen them dance together.”

  Walter pictures Sol and Rosalie sweeping across a dance floor and wonders if she ended up wearing flats to her wedding and if the turmeric powder ever faded from her hip, her belly, and the places that only he knew how to find.

  On their wedding night, Sol and Rosalie check into a hotel in Queens, close enough to the airport to hear the roar of the planes. Sol lies on his back on the cheap brocade bedspread, waiting for Rosalie to emerge from the bathroom. He closes his eyes and tries to picture his wife’s body: the naked thighs he has imagined beneath her pencil skirts but never touched, the nipples he has seen outlined beneath her blouses but never kissed. This night is not what he anticipated. No seduction, no tantalizing first kiss as husband and wife. Rosalie drank too much at the wedding and wobbled into the taxi that brought them here. As soon as they checked in, she ran into the bathroom, vomited, and then closed the door behind her.

  When she finally emerges, Rosalie is still wearing her wedding dress. She lies beside her husband and wraps her arms around herself.

  “Can you take this off?” he whispers.

  “Go ahead,” she says, turning her back toward him.

  Sol begins to unzip her dress but the lace gets caught and he can’t untangle it.

  “What’s taking so long?”

  “I didn’t realize I would need my reading glasses.”

  “Never mind.” She rolls onto her back and lifts up her gown.

  “You’re not wearing underwear,” he says.

  “Of course not.” She opens her legs and gently pushes his head down. Sol flinches.

  Know what I want, she thinks. Do what Walter would do.

  Sol rubs his hands around her buttocks for a moment and then surfaces to lie beside her.

  “I love you, Rosalie.”

  “Love you too,” she says.

  “Can we just start now?”

  “I am showing you how we begin,” she says.

  “I’m sorry. I am new at this.”

  “Of course you are.”

  Sol closes his eyes and remembers sitting beside Walter in the Seminary attic. When she was shot, Walter had said, her wetness was still fresh on my hands. Walter knew how to make love to a woman; he knew so much about everything. Sol thinks of their kiss and shudders.

  “No one taught us anything, Rosalie.”

  A plane careens outside, rattling the windows. Rosalie jolts up and covers herself with the bedspread. Save me, Walter. Find me, touch me, never let go— She begins to sob.

  “It’s late,” says Sol. “Let’s get some sleep. We have the rest of our lives.”

  Sol and Rosalie live in a hotel room on the side of a highway in rural Pennsylvania, waiting to find out when they can visit the synagogue under renovation and inspect their new house. Sol spends the days pacing; Rosalie suggests they play rummy to pass the time. Each morning she lies under the covers and watches Sol wind his tefillin around his arm, wrap himself in his tallit, and daven at the foot of the bed, his body swaying as he sings the words of the Shema. She takes in his body, his face. This is the man I married. This stranger is now my husband. My prayers are on his lips; he is to become my home, my kingdom.

  Since their wedding night, they have avoided touching. At first Sol asked and Rosalie refused, feigning nausea or a headache. After a few weeks, Sol stopped trying. Every night, they fall asleep on opposite ends of the bed, quenching any hope of desire. When Sol raises the possibility of making love, Rosalie explains that the time isn’t right, that they are both too nervous about his impending pulpit, too worried about the state of the house they are not welcome to visit. “Not right,” she says. “I want this to be perfect.” Then Rosalie tells Sol she misplaced her diaphragm and she is too young to be a mother.

  “There are other means,” says Sol.

  “You’re not allowed to spill your seed into a bag of rubber,” says Rosalie. “Your rebbetzin knows the law.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about that,” says Sol. “And anyway, the law is fluid.”

  She kisses him on the cheek. “Soon. I promise.”

  Days turn into weeks and for a month they live in a hotel room, waiting for a home. They play rummy and drink Scotch in the late afternoons, and every night Rosalie turns away from Sol and wraps her arms around herself.

  Why, wonders Sol. There is a reason for everything. Every action derives from an intention; every teshuvah is borne from a she’elah. So much of life is rational, sequenced, then this, then this, and, inevitably, this. Some nights he falls asleep clutching a pillow between his legs for warmth, Rosalie on the far side of the bed. He is ignorant about her body, about how she wants to be touched. He knows so much about the intricacies of the letters that crowd a page of Talmud, but nothing about the strange flower that lies between his wife’s legs.

  But maybe it’s something else, Sol wonders. Maybe Rosalie heard about the time he kissed Walter, and maybe she thinks he is less than a man. After all, Rosalie and Walter spent time together; perhaps Walter felt betrayed by him and told R
osalie about the kiss. Sol kissed me, he would have said. Sol desired me. And if Walter had said something to her, where would the truth lie? Was the kiss a momentary lapse of judgment, or the opening of a gate?

  Dear Paul,

  I’m ready to move on. I have slept in every room of this building. I can find my way around a sacred text. I don’t know how to build a mikvah or how to kasher a pot, but I learned how to design a meaningful source sheet, which may be the most useful skill of all. My time here has not been a waste.

  Please arrange for my studies in Chicago. I am lost in this country, and without a university to shelter me I will never find my way. There is so much I miss but I cannot name what or whom I am longing for the most.

  With gratitude,

  Walter

  Sol and Rosalie are told that the job promised to Sol no longer exists; the synagogue building never passed inspection, and a congregant’s father moved to town and agreed to lead services for free at a local rotary club. “But it’s good news,” Sol says to Rosalie. “We’ve been offered a shul in Westchester. With a brand new house.” They drive to New York, find the sign that says TEMPLE BRIAR WOOD ENTER HERE, and careen into a parking lot with a small circus tent in its center. They walk across the lot to their new split-level house. Rosalie steps inside the kitchen and brushes her hands on the granite countertop, while Sol runs upstairs and counts the rooms. Three bedrooms for their children and a master suite for the rabbi and rebbetzin. Even if Rosalie doesn’t desire him, he thinks, she will behold the emptiness of these carpeted rooms that wait for their babies and she will take the hint, God willing, and soon.