The Beautiful Possible

by Amy Gottlieb

  “Perfect! Next week is Hanukkah. I’ll take you to the symphony. My treat!”

  “We don’t have to go out—”

  “Of course we don’t. It’s better that way.”

  “Next Tuesday night, then. West End Avenue at 71st. I’ll call you with the exact address.”

  “Rosalie teaches on Tuesday night.”

  “I know—”

  Their wires have gotten crossed, thinks Walter, and he blames this on the Ishbitzer. He had spoken to Rosalie only an hour ago, told her how he had arranged to give a paper at Yale as an excuse to pass through New York for a single night. But I can’t cancel my class, she had said. I need to teach my students about Hanukkah. I prepared such a great source shet on the hidden light. Oh, I’m sorry. I wish I could see you. And now Walter would have Sol, who would be eager to resume their Zohar-Tagore riff, and share some jazzy theological be-bop.

  If back at the Seminary, someone had played a reel of their future lives, would he have believed that Sol would carry the whole messy braid of them in his arms? Walter sometimes thinks of Sol as Sisyphus, lugging a heavy sack up a steep, rocky incline. He has bouts of relief—the Zohar! Maya!—but inevitably the load overtakes him. Walter wants to see Sol, but he had earmarked this single night in town for Rosalie. He hadn’t seen her in so long and he wanted to ask if Maya laughed like she did, or if the swell of his daughter’s cheekbones resembled his own.

  Maya is learning to sing. She lip-syncs to Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow, belts show tunes in the shower, and occasionally joins her father on the bima, leading the congregation in a folksy rendition of Adon Olam. Every Tuesday afternoon she has a voice lesson with Lucie Morgan, who specializes in training the vocal chords of young singers. Maya doesn’t care about the hour she spends running through arpeggios with the legendary Miss Morgan, but she relishes the forty-seven-minute train ride from the leafy platform of the Briar Wood station to Grand Central, where she delights in the smells of diesel, pretzel salt, and the cologne of the men who take the train to work. Her own father’s commute is a brief meander across a parking lot, and he never wears cologne.

  On the fourth night of Hanukkah, a Tuesday, Sol offers to drive Maya to her lesson. “My old chavrusa is passing through town,” he says. “And he’s staying only a block away from Miss Morgan’s studio. So close!”

  “I can take the train, Abba.”

  “I’d like you to meet him, even for a second. We’ll light candles when we get home.”

  She pouts.

  “Please, sweetheart. I ask you for so little. And I often get bored in the car without company.”

  Maya never thinks of her father as bored. For as long as she can remember, he has carried a volume of Talmud in his arms, opening it to a random page and running a finger across the trail of letters. Sometimes she catches him looking forlorn. When she was small she would climb onto his lap and nestle herself under his chin until he would wrap his arms around her and soften.

  At times, her father seems to be weighed down by sorrow. Even though the sad story of her dead brother lingers in their house—old family photos and sports trophies line the shelves—her mother seems too busy and distracted to let loss pull her down. But Sol swims in a moody haze that sometimes surfaces as deep misery, other times as a frisson of worry. And yet, when he stands on the bima and gazes at her and Rosalie, he seems tethered to happiness, at least for a moment. The rabbi needs his girls, Maya thinks. We save him from himself.

  “Okay, Abba. I’ll go. For you.”

  As they cruise down the Hutchinson Parkway Sol turns to her.

  “Do I look old to you, sweetheart? My friend hasn’t seen me in so long. Tell me, how do I look? Younger than Nathan? How about Marv?” He smoothes his hair, glances at himself in the rearview mirror.

  “Younger than your congregants, for sure. But older than Mom.”

  “Everyone looks older than your mother.”

  Maya laughs. “Sometimes I think even I look older than Mom!”

  “That’s because you have an old soul, sweetheart.”

  When they pull up to Lucie Morgan’s building, Sol hands Maya a slip of paper with an address. “Meet me after your lesson and I’ll introduce you.”

  She steps out of the car and then turns back and smiles. “You look good, Abba. Young. Like a rabbinical student.”

  He winks.

  After forty-five minutes of deep breathing and an exhausting arpeggio practice that makes Maya wish she had cancelled her lesson, she walks down the block and waits for the doorman to buzz her up to the apartment where she is to meet her father.

  “No answer,” says the doorman, “but you may as well go up.”

  Maya hesitates outside the apartment and listens to the voices on the other side of the door.

  “I missed you terribly. Who we once were. More than I can ever explain—”

  “I remember everything, Sol.”

  “My God! Look at you!”

  Maya knocks gently. Sol opens the door, and a barefoot man wearing a brocade Indian tunic and tailored pants stands before her. Maya notices his high cheekbones, then glances down at his feet. So familiar, she thinks. Famous? Ballet famous? The choreographer from the PBS special she watched? She stares at his bare feet. He can’t possibly be a dancer because his feet are not worn and calloused, but smooth. Is this her father’s study partner? Someone he knew in rabbinical school? Him?

  “You must be Maya. I’m Walter. We met when you were small—”

  “My father talks about you all the time.”

  “Actually, we haven’t met,” stammers Walter. “Not exactly.”

  “And not approximately either.” She turns to Sol. “We should go, Abba. Mom’s class will be over soon and we have to light—”

  Sol turns to Walter. “Hanukkah.”

  “I’m aware of it,” says Walter.

  Sol excuses himself to go to the bathroom, and Walter and Maya are alone. Walter stares intently at her face, as if she is a statue in a museum. His hands are clasped behind his back and a faint smile softens his mouth. Maya gazes straight ahead and holds herself perfectly still. He is just like a strange congregant, she thinks, only he is wearing a costume and resembles that choreographer from the PBS special.

  Walter angles his face close to the ends of her hair and inhales, as if trying to pick up the scent of her shampoo. Uh-uh. Too close, too weird, too costumey, she thinks, flinching.

  She hears the sound of the toilet flush and sighs. Sol emerges and clears his throat.

  Thank God, she thinks. Both she and Walter turn to face Sol. “We should go, Abba,” she says. “It’s late.”

  Silence.

  Sol is staring at her and at Walter. He squints, takes a step back, and then squints again. His eyes are fixed on Walter’s face and hers. He bites his lip, then audibly exhales and sighs.

  “Earth to Abba,” says Maya.

  Sol wipes his eyes and Maya can’t tell if he is wiping away tears or sweat.

  “Abba!”

  “Yes—”

  “We need to go—”

  Silence.

  Now, she mouths.

  Silence.

  Maya rolls her eyes. “I’ll be waiting outside.” She turns to Walter and waves. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Wait, Maya!” calls Sol.

  She lets herself out and then lingers for a moment, picking up fragments of the muffled conversation on the other side of the door.

  “Go home and light your candles. Maya is waiting for you.”

  “My daughter—”

  “Of course, Sol. Yours and—”

  “Rosalie’s and—”

  “Yes. Now take her home and make your holiday.”

  The door opens and Sol walks out, his face streaming with tears.

  The car is thick with silence.

  “Earth to Abba!” calls Maya.

  Sol turns to her and faintly smiles.

  “Your friend is an interesting dresser,” she says.

>   Sol stares at the road and doesn’t respond. Here comes his haze of moodiness, she thinks. The capsule of sadness that she can’t identify or name. She begins to say something and then stops herself. She reaches into her bag for headphones, clasps them on her ears, and leans her head against the window.

  After they pull into the driveway, Sol turns to Maya. He tenderly takes her cheeks in his hands and lays a kiss on her forehead.

  Rosalie sits at the kitchen counter, the phone cord wrapped around her arm, wincing as she listens to Walter sob. He had phoned right after Sol left the apartment. “I wasn’t prepared to meet her today. All these years I longed to see Maya again, with you. Sol didn’t tell me she would be stopping by, and then she arrived and I said the wrong thing and I couldn’t take my eyes off her and stood too close, and now I feel so empty—”

  Rosalie gasps. “I’m so sorry. Sol has no idea—”

  “Past tense.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Your husband isn’t blind. Stop underestimating him.”

  “But—”

  “He and I go back a long way, Rosalie.”

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “Oh, Rosalie. Our daughter is so lovely. I only wish—”

  “Please don’t, Walter. Please—”

  Maya unpacks her book bag, sings a brief arpeggio, glances at the clock. Can’t they light already, get this little ritual over with so she can do her homework and listen to her new Flora Purim record? Her parents occupy opposite ends of the house: Rosalie at the kitchen counter, holding the phone in her hand; her father sitting in his study, hunched over a book.

  She sits on the top stair and calls out, “It’s late! We have to light! Abba? Mom?”

  No one answers.

  “Mom? Abba?”

  I can light without them, she thinks. I can make myself a dismal little Hanukkah party, and then get down to finishing my homework.

  Sol emerges and rests a hand on Maya’s shoulder. “It’s time,” he says.

  Rosalie walks toward Maya, her eyes puffy and red. The three of them face the clay family menorah. Maya places the pastel candles in their holders, carefully arranging the colors in a patterned sequence. She stands between her parents and begins to recite the blessings and then her father joins in quietly, and then her mother. Sol lights the shamash, the server candle, and then uses it to kindle the others. They stand in silence and watch the candles burn down, each adrift in separate glimmering thoughts. Maya tries to guess what her parents could be thinking, what sparks they see in these delicate flames. Sol once taught her that Hanukkah symbolizes the infinite potential of the human spirit, but she has no idea how the three of them connect to anything beyond this small, sad moment.

  She’elah: What binds a constellation of stars?

  Teshuvah: An astronomer explains the properties of shared light. A poet ponders the revealed and the concealed. A child dreams of a path she cannot yet see.

  THE BRACELET

  January 1987

  Sol praises Rosalie for her ongoing class on Hasidic thought, then asks if she can teach something with broader appeal, like tennis.

  “After teaching them about the Mei HaShiloach, you want me to play tennis with them? I’ve never even held a racket! Don’t you know me anymore?”

  “How about a cooking class? You can teach them how to use a wok. Or play cards! Make friends with them somehow. Nathan wants us to become more of a community, raise the bar for membership. Think we’re up to it?”

  Rosalie scowls. “Why can’t I teach a real class again?”

  “To the same three students? No, sweetheart. That’s not enough.”

  Rosalie hosts a weekly mah-jongg game for the Sisterhood, and serves coffee and fresh strawberries because all the women are dieting. As their long nails click against the tea-stained tiles the women tell Rosalie about impending divorces, ailing parents, wayward children who marry out of the faith. Over the months these talks become laden with details that are conveyed with furtive glances and Rosalie listens to every story, offering bits of practical guidance and occasional Hasidic sayings.

  Maya joins her mother and the women at these confessional mah-jongg games. As they talk she folds empty Sweet’N Low packets into perfect squares and builds tiny pink paper houses on the table. Maya ponders what these women seem to be looking for. Serena needs to apply for a passport and move far away from Briar Wood. She is eager to embrace the world, Maya thinks. Missy Samuels no longer sleeps with Nathan. She needs to find surprise in her life and teach it back to him. Beth, Natalie, and Sue repeat the gossip they overhead at the Cosmos Diner. They need to feed their hungry imaginations with art. These women want Rosalie to wake them up, tell them she understands, that she believes—with absolute certainty—that everything in their lives will turn out all right. Maya thinks her mother is too reticent with them, that she could provide more than strawberries, coffee, and an occasional proverb, but she holds back.

  At times the house seems to Maya like a palace of countless stories—the ancient ones from the Bible and Talmud that she learns with her father—and the stories the women share over mah-jongg and strawberries. The stories that her mother whispers into the telephone late at night, either to Madeline or to someone else. The love stories in the songs that her parents play—each one a tale of desire set to music. Sometimes Maya drifts off to sleep and imagines that all the yearnings and all the stories that course through the walls of the house are one single story, and no matter how much she listens, she will never know everything.

  Walter calls Rosalie and announces he is going to Bombay on a two-year research grant.

  “That’s good,” she says. “I feel less confused when you’re stuck on the other side of the world.”

  “It’s better for me too,” he says. “Time passes differently in India.”

  “She is growing up so fast.”

  “Once I had less sadness,” he says. “Before her.”

  Rosalie closes her eyes and imagines Walter in his studio, holding the phone, a sketchbook resting near his bare feet, the sil batta and spice jars lined up like silent witnesses to his youth. His daughter would always be an abstraction to him; he had missed out on all the ordinary moments that marked her childhood—ripped tights and car rides, nut-free cakes and inside jokes, report cards and leaky pens, and at night, the remains of her half-finished milk souring at the bottom of a jelly glass. When Rosalie would drive Maya to her voice lessons in the city, Maya would sing “The Song that Never Ends” in a continuous tedious loop, and just when Rosalie thought she would go mad, Maya was old enough to take the train to her lessons, and Rosalie was alone in the car without the song and without Maya, and she hummed that ridiculous song and made herself weep with longing. Walter had missed out on holding the pudgy fingers that began so tiny and so eager, their potential hushed inside invisible molecules, until one day Rosalie looked at Maya’s hands and noticed how her small wrists bore the long fingers of a young woman, and she wondered how that happened while the song that never ends never quite ended, until it did.

  “Do you have any idea what I used to find at the bottom of her knapsack, Walter?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Tic Tacs, paper clips, pretzel crumbs, an Origami fortune teller, a troll with pink hair, a stale wad of Silly-Putty, and a barrette made of silver glitter.”

  “Significance?”

  “Nothing that would seem to matter. Just the details. All the good parts.”

  Walter’s voice becomes professorial. “The years tumble for all of us. Those of us who remain.”

  “Walter?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I want to make it right for you. Arrange a stopover in New York on your way back from India. Day or night—whenever. I’ll find a way to bring her to the airport. She’s grown taller since you saw her. So lovely, so assured. She’s transcended us in some way. You’ll see soon enough.”

  Walter dreads the long flights and hopscotch layovers, yet e
very time he travels to India he feels as if he is returning to his true home. When he and Paul published their translations of Tagore’s poetry, they co-taught a seminar at Shantiniketan and lectured in New Delhi. His research on cremation introduced him to Varanasi, a city he has grown to love. But this is Walter’s first return to Bombay. When he walks past the spice markets he looks for a glimpse of his younger self among the throng of tourists. These well-fed Westerners wear saris and kurtas with cameras dangling from their necks. The sound of Hebrew is everywhere; young Israelis storm the markets.

  At a silversmith’s stall, Walter sorts through a pile of bracelets and tries to picture Maya’s wrists—how small they seemed. He wonders if her hands would have grown bigger in two years, and what size bracelet would fit her now. He stops a girl who seems to be Maya’s age and asks, How old are you? Can I see your hands? Do you like silver? He chooses a small bracelet and mails it to Rosalie with a note: Please give this to her at the right time.

  A week before Passover Rosalie is alone in the house, taping paper to the cabinet shelves. Her forearm is ringed with a roll of masking tape, the unofficial ornament she wears to prepare her kitchen for the ritual reenactment of the Exodus. Each year she explains to the Sisterhood women that it’s best not to ask too many questions about Passover preparation, but rather meditate on every meaningless tear of the masking tape that is not prescribed by law but seems driven by the body’s understanding of tradition.

  The phone rings but Rosalie doesn’t pick up. Just before Passover the congregants call with their picayune questions about how to kasher the handle of a pot and if wine glasses should be soaked in cold water for three days or in warm water for two. They crawl out of the sidewalk with their questions—those who never inquired about a single aspect of Jewish law, and those who slammed the door in Sol’s face when he would try to gather a minyan on Shabbat morning. Rosalie listens to the sequence of rings and finally answers.

  “Rabbi Central, rebbetzin speaking.”

  “Is that you, Rosalie? It’s Paul Richardson, Walter’s friend. From the ranch.”