Lieberman's Folly

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “What can I say?” Resnick asked, beaming at Lieberman, who scratched his hairy ear and glanced around at a display of colorful ceramic cups. “How about taking a wrench or something you can use around the house?”

  “Make it a couple of cheeseburgers from Solly’s next time we come by,” Lieberman said.

  When they were back in the car heading toward the lake, Lieberman popped a few more Tums and said, “Valdez.”

  “You want me to take her?” Hanrahan said.

  “It’s Friday,” Lieberman reminded him.

  Hanrahan nodded and said, “Got nothing better to do, Abraham.”

  “I’ll take the next one,” Lieberman said.

  “We’ll take ’em as they come,” said Hanrahan. “We’ll just take ’em as they come.”

  2

  IT WAS CLEAR FROM the moment Abe stepped through the front door that Bess had a “topic.” A “topic” was more important than “something to discuss.” Hours before a “topic” was about to be laid out on the kitchen table, Bess’s lips went tight and she smiled at everything Lieberman said whether it was about the day’s mayhem or a bit of comedy overheard at Maish’s. He also knew the “topic” would bubble near the surface of their Shabbat conversation till the blessings were finished and Lieberman had his glass of wine.

  Other signs were evident, especially to a detective with thirty years’ experience. His wife’s dark hair cut short, her gray suit neatly pressed, her smile a little too sweet, and her conversation a little too mundane, were dead giveaways.

  Above the flame of the two candles at the dinner table set with their best linen tablecloth, Bess had given him a look that said, “Prepare.”

  Bess was five years younger than Abe Lieberman. On a bad day she looked fifteen years younger. On a good day, she looked like his daughter. She was her husband’s height, dark and slender. While she was not a beauty, she was a fine-looking woman, Lieberman thought, and a Lady with a capital “L.” Her father had been a butcher on the South Side, but she carried herself as if he had been a banker, and she had a voice that telephone operators dream of.

  After he had said the prayer over wine and shared a drink with her from her father’s Kiddush cup, Bess served him a generous piece of pot roast and said, “I have something to say, a topic to discuss.”

  “I’m attentive,” he said, eating a small, dark, tender slice of roast.

  “Lisa and Todd aren’t getting along.”

  Lieberman nodded and poured himself a more than generous glass of wine.

  “I said,” Bess repeated, “Lisa and Todd are not getting along.”

  “I heard,” said Lieberman. “It’s natural.”

  “It’s serious,” said Bess.

  From the day she was born, the Lieberman’s only daughter had been, in her father’s opinion, “serious.” She had been a beautiful child who took in everything and seldom laughed aloud. She had been a wonder student at Mather High, only one B among the As and that B had caused nights of anguish, heartache, tears, and eventual determination to prove to Miss Landis in Science 7 that she had made a grievous error. Lisa had gone to the University of Chicago on a scholarship to study biochemistry. She had met a serious young classics professor named Todd Croswell, had married and had two children, Barry, who was approaching his bar mitzvah, and Melisa, who was approaching her eighth birthday. Barry and Melisa, thank God, were neither serious nor wonder students.

  “What’s the discrepancy?” Lieberman said, finishing his first glass of wine.

  “Don’t say that,” Bess said, closing her eyes.

  “It was an attempt to lighten the tone before we plunged into the depths of despond,” he said. He toasted his wife with wine.

  Bess allowed herself a small, pained smile of amusement.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lieberman. “What’s the trouble?”

  “The usual,” answered Bess with a shrug. “You’re not eating lima beans. Lima beans are your favorite.”

  “I’ll eat lima beans,” he said, spooning buttered beans on his plate. “See, I’m eating. What’s ‘the usual’? He’s going with other women? He takes drugs? He beats her?”

  “You’ve been a policeman too long,” Bess said.

  Lieberman seriously considered her statement and started on his second glass of wine.

  “No,” Bess went on. “He doesn’t make enough. She wants to go back to work. And other things.”

  “Other things,” Lieberman repeated. He tore off a piece of challah.

  “Abe, are you an echo or a father?”

  “I’m listening,” he said. “I’m listening and I’m dipping my challah into a delicious gravy. See, look, I’m dipping. I’m eating and I’m drinking a good wine. I’m looking forward to a peaceful evening with my wife. And I’m waiting to hear what you want me to do.”

  “Talk to her,” said Bess. “She listens to you.”

  “She doesn’t listen to me, Bess,” he said. “She lets me talk. She looks serious. Then she does what she is going to do. That’s the way she was when she was six. It’s the way she is at thirty-six.”

  “Then let her talk to you,” Bess said.

  “That she can always do,” he said.

  “Call her,” Bess said.

  “Tomorrow,” he said with a smile, holding up his glass to toast his wife.

  “Tomorrow may be too late,” said Bess. “But, if it has to be tomorrow, it has to be. If you’re too tired …”

  “It has to be,” said Lieberman.

  “You want rice pudding or carrot cake for dessert?”

  “I want you for dessert,” he said, feeling the wine.

  “We’ll see how you feel about that later,” she said, shaking her head.

  “In that case,” replied Lieberman, “I’ll have both the pudding and the cake.”

  There was no more said about Lisa and Todd. But Lieberman knew that if he didn’t call his daughter the next day, he would pay for it with hurt rebuke the next night. The “topic” would linger between them like a grinning gnome.

  They did the dishes together and Bess went on to a different topic, one that Lieberman found even more uncomfortable than the prospect of talking to their daughter about her marital problems.

  “Have you thought about it?” Bess said as she dried the dishes.

  “It? Which it?” he asked though he knew.

  “Moving,” she said. “To Skokie. A nice one-bedroom condominium apartment.”

  “I’m a policeman, Bess. I have to live in the city.”

  “You can retire. You’re eligible. Do this one again. Look, right here. That’s grease.”

  He took the dish back and plunged it into the soapy water in the sink.

  “Three years,” he said. “Then we’ll talk about retiring.”

  “The neighborhood’s changing,” she said.

  “They all change. Skokie’s changing,” he answered. “I like this neighborhood, the house. And where would we put Barry and Melisa when they came to stay? Sleeping bags on a living room floor?”

  Bess and Abe had lived in the two-bedroom house on Jarvis for almost thirty years. They both knew that they could sell it for eight times what they paid for it and move into a safe, new one-bedroom in Skokie with plenty of money left over for the long-discussed trip to Israel which Lieberman had no interest in making. Lieberman felt reasonably sure that if he took a chance and told his wife he was ready to consider the move she would have second thoughts about it. Most of their friends had moved out of the neighborhood, but many still remained. The Liebermans knew where things were. When he gave in, she would back down … maybe.

  “Change would do us good,” she said.

  “I get change all day,” he said. He finished the last pot and reached for a towel to help her dry what remained in the drainer. “Criminals are in the business of making changes. I like to come home and know things are where they’ve always been, that nothing changes.”

  “We’ll talk about this again,” she said. She
touched his cheek. He could smell something sweet on her fingers and knew that if she kept at him eventually she would win. His best bet was a delaying game.

  They arrived at Temple Mir Shavot on California Avenue, just four blocks from their house, at seven, early enough to have good seats for the Shabbat services. Before they entered the synagogue, Bess adjusted the yarmulke that bobbed on top of Abe’s curly hair. She greeted the Rosens, who had come up the stairs behind them.

  “He tell you about his girlfriend?” Herschel Rosen said to Bess as they went through the double doors.

  Herschel was twinkling. Herschel was a little raisin. Herschel, Lieberman decided, needed a rap on top of his freckled head.

  “Which one?” Bess asked.

  “The Latin from Manhattan,” said Herschel, whose wife was giving Bess apologetic looks. “A real Mexican spitfire. Came into Maish’s this morning looking for Abe.”

  The walls of the corridor leading to the sanctuary were covered with crayon drawings from the Bible done by the Hebrew School students. Lisa had gone to Hebrew School here. Her drawings, precise, neat, had once hung in the corridor. Lieberman wondered what happened to all those drawings.

  “She’s an informant,” Lieberman said. He nodded at people as they passed, recognizing most of them in the dwindling congregation. Resnick of hardware store notoriety moved past with his wife and mother and gave Lieberman a wave.

  “I’m not the jealous kind,” said Bess, hugging her husband’s arm. “Sarah, your husband has a dirty mind.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Sarah. She shook her head and dragged Herschel into the sanctuary.

  “Abe,” Bess said with a smile. “You fooling around?”

  “If I was fooling around, would I have her meet me at Maish’s in the afternoon in front of the Alter Cockers?”

  Bess smiled and kissed him on the mouth as two couples moved past.

  The services were, as always, the major meditation of Abe Lieberman’s week. He had, in his life, gone through the usual range of emotions about religious services. For ten years, through his twenties, he had been a silent atheist, boycotting the services his father had made him attend as a boy. For another ten years, after he was married, he had toyed with becoming a Buddhist, a secret Buddhist but a Buddhist nonetheless. When Bess insisted that Lisa have religious training and tradition, Lieberman had gone to services when he couldn’t avoid it. The constant thanks to God were at first an irritant. Then, one Yom Kippur, he had had an insight. The services, he discovered, were a meditation, something he could get lost in, not greatly different from Buddhist meditation. The Hebrew words of praise, said by the congregation and Rabbi Wass and sung by Cantor Fried, were a mantra.

  Having made this discovery at the age of fifty, Lieberman had stopped fighting his tradition, though he was still not sure about what he made of the universe. But he was not only comfortable with services, he looked forward to them, to being lost in prayer, to sharing the ritual with others. He wasn’t sure whether he attributed this to his age or wisdom. He did not choose or need to explore the question. That it was comforting was sufficient.

  Rabbi Wass was the son of the original Rabbi Wass, who was himself the son of Rabbi Wass of the town of Kliesmer north of Kiev. He had been head of the congregation for nine years and was, in Lieberman’s opinion, a definite improvement over his father, though some thought the reverse. The old Rabbi Wass, who still appeared a few times a year from Florida to lead the congregation, was a constantly smiling man whose sermons almost always dealt with his infancy in Poland and childhood in New York City. He had endless stories about his mother’s compassion and his father’s wisdom. The stories never seemed to have a point and Lieberman had found himself at times wondering what it would be like to get the old Rabbi Wass into an interrogation room and work him into a confession, to break the spell of clichés and smiles. Shortly before old Rabbi Wass retired, Lieberman finally acknowledged to himself that the old Rabbi was not now and had never been particularly bright.

  Upon old Wass’s retirement, Lieberman and Bess had considered moving to Temple Beth Israel, whose rabbi was young, smart, and progressive and whose congregation included many families with small children, but loyalty prevailed, and even when the new Rabbi Wass revealed himself to be no brighter than his father, they stayed because it was familiar, because it was convenient, because they didn’t want to abandon their friends and they didn’t want to hurt the new rabbi.

  Rabbi Wass did have one saving grace. He was relevant. Israeli politics, Arab terrorism, racial relations, Jewish politicians at the local, state, and federal level were all material for Rabbi Wass’s sermons, and he always concluded them with a sincere call for the comments of his congregation. It was at this point that Abe Lieberman usually left the sanctuary and headed for the lobby to wait for Bess. To listen to the meanderings was more than he could bear.

  But tonight’s sermon was of special interest to Lieberman.

  “The issue,” said the young Rabbi Wass, who was forty-eight years old, “is one our building committee has been exploring. The young have moved and are moving from our community. Can we continue to survive without new blood? Do we move where the Jewish families are moving or do we slowly fade and watch our numbers drop till we are in danger of losing even a morning minyan? More questions upon questions. Can we afford to maintain this building with fewer and fewer members? Your annual dues go up each year and the number of events we have has dwindled.”

  Rabbi Wass was obviously engaged in a conspiracy with Bess, a conspiracy which might well require that Lieberman sit through the discussions to respond to and defend against it or at least slow it down. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. After all it would take time, possibly years and years, to find a new location, raise money, start building.

  Ancient Ida Katzman, eighty-five, in her usual seat in the front row, put her hand on her cane and turned to examine the congregation. Her eyes met Lieberman’s. Ida Katzman, whose husband Mort had died almost twenty years earlier leaving her ten jewelry stores, was the congregation’s principle benefactor. Talk of fund raising was always, ultimately, directed at her, but Ida invariably looked around to see who might reasonably join her in her philanthropy. Lieberman was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “The building committee has only this week reported to me,” said Rabbi Wass with a knowing smile, “that the Fourth Federal Savings Building on Dempster Street is available for purchase at a very reasonable figure, that it could be quickly and beautifully redesigned, and that a generous offer for the building in which we now sit has been made by the Korean Baptist Church Foundation. The money we could make on the sale of this building would more than cover the cost of purchase of the Fourth Federal Savings Building and most of the needed renovations.”

  There was a stir of conversation around the room. Most, but not all, sounded to Lieberman like approval.

  “Assuming we are to pursue this momentous change,” Rabbi Wass continued, “and I am well aware that it will take extensive discussion, though I remind you that the offer from the Korean Baptist Church and the price on the Fourth Federal Savings Building are subject to change if we do not move quickly, then we will need a fund-raising committee to deal with renovations to our new Dempster location. We will need a chair and …”

  Lieberman had had enough. In thirty years he had never said a word during or following a sermon, but Rabbi Wass was trying to railroad this thing through.

  Lieberman raised his hand, caught Wass’s eye, and began to rise. Ida Katzman strained to see what was going on.

  Before Lieberman could say anything, he felt a tug at his sleeve. He was certain it was Bess trying to get him to sit down and shut up. But this was the moment to act. He was Mr. Smith and Congress would listen. Rabbi Wass, who looked vaguely like a pudgy Claude Rains, would listen. The tug came again and Lieberman turned his head slightly.

  “Mr. Lieberman, telephone,” said an old black man, who had been pulling his sleeve. Whitlock normall
y came into the sanctuary only to clean up. He seemed decidedly uncomfortable in front of the congregation, all of whom were looking directly at him.

  “Man says it’s emergency,” Whitlock repeated.

  “Lisa,” said Bess. “Something’s happened to …”

  Lieberman and Bess followed Whitlock to the door and Lieberman was vaguely aware of Rabbi Wass saying. “Thank you. We have a renovation committee chair.”

  The congregation applauded.

  “Mr. Lieberman,” Rabbi Wass said, “please feel free to call upon me or any member of the building committee to assist you.”

  Lieberman paused for an instant at the door of the sanctuary, turned to protest, and was pulled outside by Bess.

  The phone was in the rabbi’s office, a small wood-paneled box lined with shelves filled with heavy books. One window looked out on the parking lot. Lieberman picked up the phone and touched Bess’s hand.

  “Lieberman,” he said.

  “She’s dead, Abe,” came Hanrahan’s voice.

  Lieberman looked at his wife.

  “She?” he repeated.

  “Estralda Valdez,” said Hanrahan. He had trouble getting the name out clearly. Bill Hanrahan had been drinking. “I think you better get over here.”

  “It’s Bill,” Lieberman said covering the mouthpiece. “The woman Herschel mentioned. She’s dead.”

  “Thank God,” said Bess, sinking into the rabbi’s swivel chair. And then she realized what she had said.

  “I don’t mean,” she went on. “I’m just glad Lisa and the children aren’t …”

  Lieberman patted her shoulder.

  “Where are you, Bill?” Lieberman asked.

  “Where? Oh, at her apartment.”

  Lieberman hung up and put both hands on Bess’s shoulders.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “The Rosens will walk you home.”

  Bess looked up at him with a smile and still moist eyes.

  “You’ll talk to Lisa tomorrow?”

  “I’ll talk to Lisa tomorrow,” he said. “Why don’t you sit here for a minute or two before you go back in?”