The Beautiful Possible

by Amy Gottlieb

  Walter groans and shouts: No! He takes another hit of the spice and sorts through his pile of unopened mail. No papers; just a few journals and a letter postmarked from London.

  January 4, 1974

  Dear Walter,

  You may remember me from the American Colony Hotel—I am Rosalie’s friend. I don’t think she has any intention of telling you directly, but she and Sol lost their son Lenny to Hodgkin’s. As you can probably imagine, they are not shouldering this tragedy very well. I don’t want to intrude but I believe Rosalie would like you to know what has befallen them.

  Madeline Rosenblum

  Walter phones Rosalie and insists she fly out to see him; Rosalie tells Sol that Madeline has invited her to London. At first Sol grumbles about the cost of the ticket and then asks how long she plans to be away. Rosalie arrives at Walter’s empty studio on a Monday afternoon. She lets herself in, lies down on her coat, and sleeps on the floor. When Walter arrives he lies beside her, rests his hand on her hair, and asks for nothing. He cancels classes and meetings for the rest of the week and he stays with Rosalie and offers no words. When they finally make love they become swimmers in a familiar ocean. Time loses its context and the dimensions of the studio become meaningless. Walter passes spices over Rosalie’s body as he once did, and they kindle a hunger that rivals their days in the upper geniza and the lower geniza, only this time with a slow passion that carries its own language. They barely speak. They allow the peacocks to wander inside and scatter droppings and feathers. They forget to buy food and consume only what Walter has on hand in the studio: peanuts dipped in cumin, pickles and chopped herring from a jar, a bottle of Champagne, stale Saltines laced with cardamom and garlic.

  The studio is their deserted mountain cabin, their geniza, their cave in the snow, every hidden place in the world and no place at all. It is the most ugly slum on earth and the most heavenly palace. At night Rosalie lifts her head from the futon and gazes at the city lights surrounding the East Bay. She believes the lights are stars and she is floating in the sky. Only their bodies are real. Rosalie is forty-six years old. Walter is fifty-four. They are alone for four days and their recognizable lives become obliterated, irrelevant. For both of them, this time is not joyful, but necessary.

  Rosalie is scheduled to be picked up in two hours to make her flight home. She has not unpacked her bag, showered, or combed her hair since she arrived. Walter holds up a mirror so she can see how her hair is knotted into haphazard dreadlocks, her face parched and sallow.

  “You were making love to a witch,” she says.

  “A goddess,” says Walter. “My holy rebbetzin.”

  “What does that make you?”

  “Not a rabbi.”

  “Thank God,” says Rosalie.

  “We are the excommunicated; free to live our prayers out of bounds.”

  “I thought you don’t pray.”

  “My whole life is a prayer,” says Walter. “So is yours.”

  “You sound like a rabbi.”

  Walter laughs. “Our transcendent trifecta.”

  “Don’t bring Sol into this,” says Rosalie.

  “There is always a third,” says Walter.

  “What I felt for you was always separate from my marriage; it still is—”

  “The third is not always a person.”

  “Oh. God in the room. The three under the wedding canopy. Pulpit words. Convenient lies. Take them and parade them before your students, Walter. They are free for the asking. I’m finished with all that.”

  She reaches for the bottle of Champagne and takes a swig. “No more lies,” she says. “No more dried flowers falling out of a book in a geniza. No more holy rebbetzin channeling some precious wisdom. I fell into this world; an accident of lineage. The rabbi’s daughter marries a rabbi. But it didn’t have to be this way. I could have become an archaeologist and my Torah would have been a threshing bowl I unearthed in Indonesia. I could have become a cellist and my Torah would have been Bach. The celestial answer would be unspoken; I’d have no use for these misleading words, this constant attempt at awkward metaphors. What a life that would be!”

  “We traveled the route of words, darling. Both of us.”

  “Years ago I would have conjured some lovely quip to suggest a hidden truth. Such fun I had! But I’m too old to dredge up meanings. And yes, I love you. And I’m tired of this. And Sol—”

  “You saved him.”

  “The purple binder, placed into the rabbi’s hands by his loyal wife. Such a bullshit artist. And these congregants, dumb and hungry and needy, they hang on to my words, our words, his words. I despise them for it. Even now they expect us to show up and say, Oh, we learned from our loss, oh, God took Lenny for a reason, oh, it all makes sense in some kabbalistic terrain.”

  “The myth of the eternal—”

  “At least you don’t pretend, Walter. Your God has no name. You don’t parade your spiritual life in front of an eager audience.”

  “Saved by indirection and distance. Wise me.”

  “I used to envy you. I would picture you looking out over the Pacific, free to think your own unmollified, uncorrupted thoughts. I wanted to live in your brain, not this Shabbat-addled Torah-true fiction that I can’t escape.”

  “It was your illusion to live, just like my illusion belongs to me. Does anyone live without some veneer of faith? Even the so-called faithless are circling a great mystery. No one is immune.”

  “We wanted it both ways, Walter. Spices for the body and poetic words about the soul to satisfy ourselves beyond the body. A seesaw of meaning.”

  “Wanted? Past tense, Rosalie?”

  “Wanted. Want. But it’s not only you that I want; there’s something else I have no words for. Oh, Walter. Don’t let me stop talking. I can’t stop—”

  Walter kisses Rosalie, and the sky darkens around them. The only place they can travel now is where their bodies take them and they travel there together all night.

  Rosalie misses her plane.

  Six weeks later Sol and Rosalie lie in bed. The sun has not yet risen but Sol kicks off the blanket and reaches for his tallit and tefillin. Rosalie grabs his hand, pulls him toward her, and whispers in his good ear.

  “Is this some kind of biblical joke? You’re on the pill!”

  “I stopped taking it when Lenny got sick. What was the point? I was getting older and we barely bothered.”

  “Barely is not never and forty-six is not too old,” says Sol. His eyes mist. “This is a blessing.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “We will have to tell Walter.”

  “What does he have to do with it?”

  “He called me. Oh, Rosalie. I didn’t tell you.”

  “You’re telling me now.”

  “It was almost one in the morning, about six weeks ago, when you were in London. You had missed your flight and rescheduled for the next day, and I was up late, reading. I didn’t even realize Walter knew about Lenny. When I heard his voice I started crying, and I cried and cried while he just listened on the other end of the phone. Hours of this, Rosalie, hours. And just before sunrise, I asked him if he was still listening. He was. And then he said to me—at least what I heard him say—maybe you will be blessed with another child.”

  Rosalie closes her eyes. “We need to tell the boys.”

  “Yes,” says Sol. “And Walter.”

  “You said that already.”

  “He wished it for us, Rosalie.” He pulls her close and lifts her nightgown.

  “You’ll miss services.”

  “This is my prayer today,” he says. “This, this, and oh, yes, this.”

  Three times in her life Rosalie leaned into the arms of a nurse and waited for an anesthesiologist to deliver an epidural into her lower spine to obliterate the pain of contractions. Three times she would wait for the needle that numbed her legs into tree trunks. Three times she would sit up in a hospital bed, Sol beside her, and watch the peaks on the monitor register the pain s
he did not feel, as if she were witnessing another woman’s birth drama. Three times Stu Katz would mosey in and out of the room, nod, touch her shoulder, and look at his watch. Now, in her eighth month, Rosalie lies back on the familiar exam table in Stu Katz’s office, her belly covered in goo, and listens to the whosh-whosh of the baby’s heartbeat.

  “Sounds good, rebbetzin,” says Stu. “We’re in the home stretch, no pun intended.”

  “Excellent,” says Rosalie. “I’m pushing out this baby without any drugs.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I already scheduled a C-section. You’re too old for a natural delivery.”

  “I was young enough to get pregnant! No C. And no drugs. It’s my last chance to experience what I missed with the other three.”

  “You can read about it,” he says. “We have advanced technology now, rebbetzin. The only women who aren’t delighted by this are either shamefully primitive or emotionally unstable. You’ve been through this three times. This one will be no different, only surgical.”

  “No surgery. No epidural.”

  Rosalie thinks of Giselle at Eden Ranch, how she crouched on the ground and let her belly rest there like a pumpkin in a patch. She is certain that Giselle delivered in a squatting position, with Paul standing close by, ready to catch the baby.

  “I must insist,” says Stu.

  “Are you telling me how to give birth to my own child?”

  “This birth is more risky than I can explain.”

  “Try.”

  “I would need a medical dictionary and I’m sure the details would either bore or frighten you. Look, rebbetzin. You trusted me before, and my hands delivered your three boys into this world. I loved Lenny the most, and I will mourn with you and Rabbi Kerem for the rest of my life. Just trust me once more.”

  Rosalie glances at Stu’s hands and realizes that he touched her children before she did. She notices the age spots on his knuckles and begins to feel nauseated.

  “Give me my records,” she says.

  “What?”

  Rosalie adjusts her bulk and rolls off the examining table.

  “The folder with my charts. Every recorded heart beat, every added pound, every notch of blood pressure. Every damn detail.”

  “That’s for me—”

  She reaches to the counter and snatches the folder.

  “Where are you taking that?”

  “To a midwife,” she says.

  Stu laughs. “Good luck with that! And even if you find a misguided midwife who wants to stand in harm’s way and risk a lawsuit, no one will treat you in your eighth month, not in your condition.”

  When she returns home Sol is standing in front of the garage, his hands on his hips.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Rosalie?”

  “I’m going inside. I have to make some calls.”

  “Are you out of your mind? Stu Katz just phoned and told me what you’re up to.”

  “What we are up to, Sol. We. Together.”

  “Are you risking my baby’s life?”

  “This is my baby, Sol. The last one.”

  “Our baby.”

  “Yes. And so will you help me find a midwife in this backwater suburb or are you going to wring hands with Stu Katz over my foolishness?”

  In her thirty-fifth week of pregnancy, Rosalie is learning how to breathe. A midwife named Gail instructs her to exhale, and Rosalie opens her mouth, panting like a thirsty dog.

  “Natural breath,” says Gail.

  “You have to treat me like a first-time mother,” says Rosalie. “I can’t even remember how to exhale.”

  “You’ve been breathing all your life. Try it again.”

  “I have no patience for this.” Rosalie bursts into tears. “Can I just have the baby now?”

  “You’re not in labor, honey. We don’t make appointments for giving birth, and you have to learn a few things, be reminded of what your body already knows.”

  “It’s just—”

  “This was your choice, Rosalie. If you want to work with someone else I’m sure your doctor will take you back. Are you with me or not?”

  “My husband is not the baby’s father.”

  “And are you the mother?”

  Rosalie smiles.

  “Then look at me and breathe normally.”

  Rosalie reaches for Gail’s hands and holds them tight.

  “I’m sorry to blurt. It’s so different with this one.”

  “No more sleepwalking. Now inhale and exhale. When the time is right, we’ll see if you are dilated.”

  When Rosalie’s water breaks later that week, Sol picks up the phone to call Stu Katz.

  “What are you doing?” Rosalie screams. “If you call that idiot, I will chain myself to our bed and deliver this baby myself.”

  Sol puts down the phone, sits beside her, and waits. When the contractions begin she pushes her weight against his, then cries into his arms during the endless taxi ride to the birthing center.

  Rosalie labors for seven hours. Sol stands in the corner of the room and davens. When she is fully dilated, Rosalie calls out her mother’s name and asks Sol to explain why he couldn’t be more like her father and why the fuck can’t he quit being a lying rabbi and why did she marry him when she had been far too young to be a wife and too young to be a mother and look at them now, just look at this mess of a tribe. And when Rosalie closes her eyes she thinks of Walter at Eden Ranch calling out the names of the dead and she pictures the animals walking out of the forest and feels their eyes holding her in their creaturely gazes. With every contraction she believes her body will split open but then Gail calmly asks her to bring her breath to the center of this moment and they breathe in sync and this goes on for an eternity during which Rosalie trusts Gail’s knowing instructions—what choice does she have?—but secretly longs for death or deliverance from this body that betrays her, cursing its history, spitting on her divided life, and then she finds a brief moment with the animals in the forest, locking eyes and then losing them again, until, miraculously, Gail shouts, “Push! Now!” and Sol repeats “Now!” Gail and Sol look at each other and reach for Rosalie’s armpits. They pull her up to a crouching position and she grinds her feet on the sheet and groans in a voice she does not recognize as her own, and then she hears Gail say, “The baby is crowning,” and Rosalie imagines her baby wearing a garland of flowers, and then Gail’s hands catch the baby’s head and she gently pulls and Sol cries out, “We have a girl, Rosalie. This one is a girl.”

  Rosalie asks Sol if he wants to choose the first name. “Maya,” he says. He explains how the baby connects him to the prayer for rain he recited on Shemini Atzeret. As he stood on the bima in his white robe he glanced at Rosalie’s swollen belly and asked God to provide the water—mayim—that would repair their broken souls. As the baby suckles from her breast Sol asks Rosalie to choose a middle name.

  “Oh, there are so many,” says Rosalie.

  “We have our grandmothers—”

  “No grandmothers.”

  “What then?”

  Rosalie pauses.

  “Sonia. I like the name Sonia.”

  “Significance?” asks Sol.

  “It’s a lovely name; that’s all.” She brushes her baby’s soft cheeks and smiles. “It suits her, don’t you think?”

  Walter and Paul have box seats for the San Francisco Orchestra performance of Haydn’s “Nelson Mass,” a gift from one of Walter’s wealthy doctoral students. Before the music begins, Paul peruses the libretto.

  “We should write about this outing,” he says. “An evening of music with the scholars of religion. Just look at the words of the Mass. Everything beautiful connects to God in some way. I know several editors who would be happy to publish our reveries in their journals.”

  “A night at the symphony as career promotion,” says Walter.

  Paul laughs. “It’s not self-promotion. It’s love. All this wonder, everywhere. Let’s create a Music and Awe retreat at the
ranch.”

  “You’ve been tainted by fatherhood.”

  Paul pulls a baby picture from his pocket and passes it to Walter.

  “Jacob Rabindranath Richardson.”

  “Such an august name for an ordinary baby.”

  “My son is anything but ordinary. He’s a cathedral of magnificence, Walter! A work of art! As exalted as the music that embraces our longings in this concert hall we share with thousands of strangers. Holiness is everywhere!”

  Walter gazes at Paul. His mentor’s white hair falls past his shoulders, the creases around his eyes are pronounced, his skin has darkened from the sun. The man with the brown felt hat has morphed himself yet again, while Walter still feels like a lost refugee who wanders around a foreign spice market, looking for the single hit of cardamom that will change his life.

  During the Qui Tollis movement, Walter thinks of the daughter who isn’t quite his. They named her Maya Sonia Kerem. Her middle name is the thread that connects us, Rosalie said to him on the phone. Our little secret. The baby belongs to Sol and Rosalie, his gift to them. Given in consolation, conceived with love. He closes his eyes and tries to still his mind by following the line of the chords that resolve and open, invite and sustain and bear so much beauty.

  After the performance Paul says, “I listen to this music through my child’s ears. I evaluate everything in my path with a single question: Is this worthy of bequeathing to Jacob Rabindranath? Nothing else matters to me now. My tolerance for mediocrity is nil. I want everything to be as transcendent as this Mass.”

  Walter stares ahead at the empty stage.

  “I’m sorry,” says Paul. “You have no idea what I’m talking about and I’ve intruded somehow. I try so hard to be good to you, and often feel as if I’m letting you down. I once promised you everything and look at you now.”

  “What do you see?”

  “You are so very successful and so very alone.”

  “You made good on your promise,” says Walter. “You gave me an American life.”

  “I hope it’s been good for you.”

  “I have a daughter now,” says Walter. “A newborn, a love child. She belongs to another family.”