The Family Markowitz

by Allegra Goodman

  “Oh, God,” Henry says, “I don’t think that’s the right place. Look, you hit the support. Get the caterer—”

  Henry turns away when the caterers dismantle the wedding cake. “It would be rather silly to spend all that money and not eat it, wouldn’t it, darling?” Susan asks. “We’ve got the pictures, in any case.”

  Henry carries Rose’s piece out for her himself, along with some strawberries. “Thank you, dear,” she says.

  “Thank you for coming,” he tells her, and his voice shakes.

  “It was very nice,” Rose replies. “This gentleman here is asleep, however.”

  “I’ll get Susan.” Henry strides off in his sweltering morning coat.

  “I never wanted to stay in England,” Rose muses as she sets to her cake and strawberries.

  MOSQUITOES

  There is no one behind the desk at the Airport Green Shuttle Service, and no customers are waiting at the counter. Ed thinks he must be in the wrong place. He’s been traveling for ten days. Customers mob the other shuttle counters. Ed waits fifteen minutes and then tows his bags over to a pay phone. “Markowitz?” someone calls out. An enormously heavy woman rushes up to him with a clipboard. “Peterstown?” she asks, out of breath. “Christians and Jews—Ecumenical Institute?”

  Ed nods grimly.

  “All right.” She heaves herself behind the desk. “Let me do this—receipt. Mark you paid for.”

  “Where is the bus?” Ed asks.

  “I have to bring it out front,” she says. She picks up his suitcase, and he follows her out to the curb, where a young man is waiting, reading Origen.

  “Are you going to the Peterstown conference?” Ed asks him.

  “No, sir, I’m going to St. Peter’s College to join the faculty. My name is Pat Flanagan.” The young man says all this with such alacrity that Ed stares at him. Flanagan shakes his hand vigorously.

  “Theology?” Ed asks.

  “Primarily philosophy.” The van pulls up with the heavy woman at the wheel. “I’m interested in demonstratio Dei—natural theology, proofs of God’s existence,” Flanagan explains, as they drive off.

  “Descartes?” Ed asks.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Yeah, I remember that from college.” Ed had never liked philosophy. “But what was the story with him? His whole proof turned out to be circular, right?”

  “Circular?” Flanagan ponders this. “I’ve never thought so.”

  Ed leans against the rattling van window. He’d accepted the Peterstown invitation because the honorarium covered his trip out to the Hoover Institution and the Berkeley conference on the intifada. But after ten days and three speaking engagements in the Bay Area, he just isn’t up to another conference. He can’t wait to get back home, to D.C.

  They drive out on the highway into the cornfields, past gleaming silos and Howard Johnson restaurants—each set back from the road on landscaped acreage. There are cows, as well, and some city instinct in Ed makes him want to say aloud, “Cows.” He looks at Flanagan and holds it in. “When do we get there?” he asks the driver.

  “We stop about one o’clock,” she says.

  Not for another hour, he realizes, and he tries to sleep.

  At last they pull up into a Holiday Inn parking lot, and he staggers off the van after the driver. She looks at him. “Can I have my bags?” he asks, fumbling in his wallet.

  “This isn’t Peterstown,” she says. “This is the bathroom break.”

  “Where the hell are we?” Ed asks Pat Flanagan in the men’s room.

  “This is St. Cloud. Peterstown is two and a half hours west of here.”

  Ed dabs his face with a wet paper towel.

  “It’s a little remote,” Pat admits. “But it’s very pristine.”

  —

  St. Peter’s College stands on a sweeping hill above a lake. Beyond the lake there are trees. There is no sign of a town. Flanagan shakes hands again with Ed and strides off into a huge cruciform building on the crest of the hill. Then the van rattles down a side road to the lake. There is no institute in sight, no sign of human habitation. The driver unloads Ed’s suitcases, and Ed stands with his bags on a grassy meadow in front of the broad lake, the water rippling slightly in the breeze. “Wait!” he calls after the driver, but she slides the van door shut and leaves him there.

  Staring at the hillside, Ed sees chimneys and vents poking through the lush green turf. He drags himself down to the lake and finds that the institute is composed entirely of terraced sod houses dug into the ground. Each opens onto the lake with sliding glass doors, and there are at least a dozen of these buildings, although they are nearly invisible from the road. A beaming man strides out from one of the houses—a large man, looking like a cross between a bear and a Buick, with a big chest, broad shoulders, and a polished dome of a forehead. “You must be Ed; you’re the second to last. The others all came this morning. My name is Matthew.”

  “Matthew—” Ed hesitates for a last name.

  “Brother Matthew. I’m just filling in as a liaison between the college and the institute—making sure you’re all comfortable. Follow me. We’ve got you down at the end, in Lama House.”

  “What does that stand for?” Ed asks.

  “The Dalai Lama. We’ve got each of the houses named after a spiritual leader.”

  “Quite a setup.”

  “We had a competition for the design ten years back,” Matthew says, “and this concept really stole our hearts. The idea of living in the ground in complete humility in front of that view. The semicircular formation of the houses stands for tolerance and equality—there are a lot of symbols here—and of course all that sod is wonderful in the winter. We have our winter fellows living here with their families, and they love the insulation. Here we are. Let’s just rap on the door and see if your housemate is around. Hello, Bob? He must be asleep. Let’s just get your bags inside. Bob Hemmings is our Presbyterian.”

  “In what sense?” Ed asks.

  “For the conference,” Matthew says.

  “Oh, you’ve got one of each flavor?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right. Well, I’ll let you settle in.”

  “Oh, wait.” Ed calls him back. “Can I have my key?”

  “We don’t have keys,” Matthew says. “It’s easier that way. In any case, there aren’t any locks. It was one of the special features in the design.”

  The front room in the little house is a combination living room and kitchen. Behind, in the shadows, is the bathroom, flanked by bedroom doors. Ed opens the door on the right and finds Bob Hemmings stretched out on his back in his underwear listening to a Walkman. Hemmings jumps up and pushes off his earphones. “Hi, there!” he cries out. He’s a deep-voiced man, well over six feet. Ed feels suddenly exhausted from the earnest welcomes he has been receiving all day. He misses the peckishness of the academics in California, the sullen diffidence of his students in Georgetown.

  —

  “Listen,” Ed says to Bob, after he has showered and changed, “is there any food in here? I missed lunch.”

  “No, we’re having all our meals up at the college,” Bob says. “See, here’s your meal card. They left it on the table. The dining hall opens for dinner at six.”

  “Can we walk to town?”

  “Well, I’m game.” Bob stretches out his lanky frame. “It’s a bit of a hike, though.”

  “How far?”

  “Well, we could do it in an hour.”

  Ed flops on the couch. “Isn’t there a convenience store around here someplace?”

  “Not that I know of. Oh, but just a sec. I saved an apple from lunch. It’s in my room.”

  “What is this, a prison?” Ed mutters, staring at his meal card.

  “I love it here,” Bob says. “I took my study leave here last winter.”

  “Where do you teach?” Ed asks.

  “Well, I preach. I’ve got a ministry in Syracuse.”

  “Oh,” Ed says. “Where’s the conf
erence schedule?”

  “I haven’t seen one. We’re supposed to convene at dinner. I guess we’ll find out what’s up when we get there.”

  “Fine,” Ed says. “Great.” He strides into his bedroom and shuts the door.

  “I’ll leave the apple on the table for you,” Bob calls after him.

  “Oh, uh, thank you,” Ed says.

  “Sure thing!” Bob sings out.

  Ed’s room contains a bed and a chair, but no desk. He puts his suitcase on the bed and rummages through his toiletries case. He takes out his green roll-on mosquito repellent and rubs it all over his arms and neck. He hasn’t seen any mosquitoes yet, but he’s been warned. He’s heard stories back in Washington. Then, of course, the airport concession stands in Minneapolis were full of T-shirts and coffee mugs picturing “The State Bird.” He stretches out and falls asleep.

  —

  Pastor Bob is gone by the time Ed ventures out into the front room. It’s after six, and he rushes out with his meal card to search for the dining hall. A thin, gray-haired man lopes up the path just ahead. He is wearing a yarmulke.

  “You’re going to the institute dinner?” Ed calls out.

  “Oh, yes,” the man sighs. “Who are you, Markowitz? My name is Mauricio Brodsky.” He has a Spanish accent, Ed notices. “Tell me, how is it that they ensnared you and brought you here to the country? I arrived this morning. Already the silence is deafening. Already my migraines are flaring.”

  “What’s that sound?” Ed asks. He can hear a tiny whine in the air—the soft, steady sound of a mosquito.

  “This is my secret weapon.” Mauricio unclips what looks like a cigarette lighter from his pocket. “It makes the sound of the male mosquito—to repel the female, who bites. She is already pregnant and wants nothing to do with him, and thus she flies away to bite someone else. Just two triple-A batteries. I got it by mail order from the Germans. Where else?” He gestures upward with long fingers, and Ed marvels at the way this man’s accent combines with an unmistakably Yiddish kvetching lilt. He looks gray about the gills, like a New Yorker, and he wears charcoal slacks. His face is changeable, with sardonic eyes, hair and chin receding, a look of studious penetration, devil-may-care pessimism, a little mustache, a satiric gleam. “So how did they lure you here?” Mauricio asks.

  “I was on my way back East anyway—”

  “I heard they were short of Jews,” Mauricio says. “Did they give you a thousand? Two thousand? Listen, you don’t have to say anything. I’m in the business. I know. Catholic-Jewish is my specialty. It’s like the theater business. Worse!”

  Sweat soaks Ed’s shirt, and the summer air hangs heavy and wet against him. They get to the top of the hill, and he is almost overcome by the heat. When Mauricio opens the glass door to the college dining hall, the chilled air from inside covers them in a sickening rush. An eager, blue-eyed man emerges from a crowd of young students, nuns, monks in brown cassocks. “This is Rich Mather,” Mauricio tells Ed, “the institute director.”

  “Ed! Wonderful to see you!” Mather looks Ed in the eye. “Come up to the front of the line.”

  “Wait a second,” Ed says, grabbing a tray, but Mather hurries him past the plates of brownies and red Jell-O cubes and the vats of mashed potatoes. Ed reaches for a plate of meat loaf, but the woman at the counter gives him a tray wrapped in layers of aluminum foil. “Your kosher meal,” she says. He takes it, almost ill with hunger. “Listen, Rich,” he says to Mather, “I’ve got a quick question on the time limits for the presentations. I’ve got two papers I could present—one that’s more theoretical, running about forty minutes, or I have one that’s more popular, on terrorism, tolerance, double standards.”

  “Ed, Ed,” Mather says, “you don’t have to worry about any of that here. I think you’ll see pretty soon that we don’t care about formalities here.”

  “No time limits?” Ed asks.

  “Oh, no. No papers, either. We just want you to say what you want to say.”

  “Well, I did say what I wanted to say. It’s in my paper!” Ed turns in alarm to Mauricio, who looks at him with his thin-lipped, sardonic smile.

  —

  They sit down in a private dining room with Bob Hemmings and the other conference participants. There are eight in all: five Christians and three Jews. The fourth Jew got stuck in Paris, Mather tells them. He’ll be arriving in the morning. Ed looks at the cafeteria trays piled high with potatoes and Irish stew, bowls of minestrone. He would like to go back to the line and explain that although he’s Jewish, he doesn’t keep strictly kosher outside the home—that he would gladly take some stew and potatoes. But Mather keeps talking. Ed peels away the foil layers on his tray. He pulls out a bagel-dog.

  “Well,” says Rich Mather, “I think it’s time for me to open up this dialogue. Some of you have asked me about presentations and conference sessions. I’d like to re-emphasize that our goal here is to depart from the academic-conference style as much as possible. Our institute is a very unique place, not only bridging the gap between Christians and Jews but also between academics and clergy. Time, rules, and public speaking are not a concern here. Our tradition is not structured or formal but, rather, informal to the highest degree. And what we require—the only thing we require—is that all of you speak from the heart, talk with total honesty and sincerity, express the beliefs you hold deepest within you—”

  Oh, is that all, Ed thinks, holding his bagel-dog, and he feels a sudden panic. He feels he is falling—had he ever really read the conference brochure?—falling as in a dream, his prepared paper snatched away, ripped from his flailing hands, while this rhetoric sways below him in roiling mud bubbles.

  “What we do here is speak in the first person,” Mather says. “We talk about our common subject by talking about ourselves. After all, there is no better way to talk about interfaith relations than to talk about inner faith. That’s what we’ve found at each of these gatherings over the years. What is the study of religion but the study of life itself? The study of ourselves?”

  Ed thinks he is going to puke. He swallows and looks across the table. Brother Matthew is still beaming as he puts away his mashed potatoes. Next to him a pale woman, blue-eyed and fair-haired, pores over a pocket Langenscheidt dictionary.

  “So I guess what I’m saying is that we all come to this conference as—as—”

  “Pilgrims,” a woman on Ed’s left fills in with assurance.

  “Yes! Except that we don’t really know where we’re going or how to get there. But I think it’s that process of searching that’s really the key. We’re going to follow an old tradition at the Ecumenical Institute—one of personal narrative. I’ll just go ahead and begin, and any one of you can jump in when you’re ready.”

  “Hold it,” says Ed. “I want to understand what we’re doing here. So basically we’re going to spend these sessions telling about ourselves? You want us to sit here and tell the story of our lives?”

  “Only as a starting point,” Mather answers. “It’s not the whole story we’re after. Just the turning points, the epiphanies. And, naturally, we’d like to focus on the religious dimension. Your relationships on a spiritual level—with God, with Scripture. To begin—”

  “Rich,” Brother Matthew interrupts, “just let me distribute these.” He hands out a red St. Peter’s College notebook to each of them. “Gifts from the college,” he says.

  “Oh, and I also brought a little something,” announces a white-bearded man with a big yarmulke. He passes around some little plastic tubes in folded papers. “Lip salve,” he says. “One of my congregants has devised this new formula here, and he’s starting out in business with it. Those little papers have his address in North Carolina for you to order. I think you’ll like it. I often use it myself.” He smacks his lips. “Especially in the summer,” he adds.

  “Thank you, Rabbi,” Mather says. “Rabbi Lehrer comes to us from Chapel Hill, where he holds a chair in medieval history.” Ed stares at the wiry litt
le rabbi. A chair! What kind of chair could it be? Or is the man some kind of brilliant eccentric? Ed has never heard of him.

  “I grew up in Cambridge, Mass.,” Mather tells the group, “in the shadows of all those Mathers. They sort of dominated the landscape for me, like the red brick…”

  Ed glances around the room. He is amazed to see all the others taking notes. He looks over at Bob Hemmings’s notebook. “St. Peter’s College,” Bob has written. “We are all pilgrims. In religion, ourselves.” Ed opens his own notebook. He stares at the blank page, then rips it out and writes a note to Mauricio. “What the hell is this?”

  Mather hums on pleasantly like a lawn mower in the distance. “And I’d got to the point, by the time I lived in Eliot House, where I’d always won these academic awards, continually won these prizes—and I didn’t know enough to let it scare me; I assumed I deserved everything that came to me. Until the day I found out I hadn’t won that Rhodes Scholarship—that I hadn’t been chosen. I see that as a turning point for me, because it opened my eyes to a new experience. I mean, I was experiencing failure—which, of course, was so much more important than all the successes I’d had before. I remember I woke up in the middle of the night and began walking along the Charles. I felt absolutely at peace and in love with this new, bittersweet taste—failure. I felt a humility before the world and before God. I felt that I was in fact not a chosen one, not set apart, created to excel. I was created only to live! Of course, at that stage of my life this heightened understanding couldn’t last—”

  Mauricio hands back Ed’s note. His answer is in pale ballpoint, his letters elongated and aristocratic under Ed’s black scrawl. “What is this, you ask? A conference in the old sense, no? A parlement? A convocation? A Decameron? No—it’s a Canterbury Tales, or, rather, Parliament of Fowls. A medieval amphigory. Believe me, this is what ecumenicism comes to. New York burns and the Klan is marching. We are sequestering ourselves. We are retiring to the country. Mather begins the Book of the Unitarian Courtier. What do you want me to say? It gives me migraines—still, I love my work.”