“Hmm,” said the rabbi, chewing his lip, “And why do you think the story is told that way?”
“I suppose so Joseph can get in good with the pharaoh,” said Stephanie.
“And why does he need to get in good with the pharaoh?”
“So he can get powerful and his brothers will come to him for help.”
“And why do his brothers need to come to him for help?”
“So he can forgive them.”
“And why does he need to forgive them?”
“To show that he’s a bigger person.”
“And there you have it!” sighed the young rabbi. The twenty-questions technique was supposed to work, but when the thing dragged on one could begin to have one’s doubts. Fortunately, he had now hit pay dirt. The idea of forgiving a sibling for a misdeed was as tried-and-true as anything in the bar mitzvah lexicon. It would yield a predictable but charming anecdote of how said sibling had stolen something (a Nintendo game, a favorite hat, a Smash Mouth CD) and had been forgiven by the noble bar mitzvah child. To be sure, this was straying from Joseph’s interpretation of dreams and encroaching onto the passage of the following week, but these kids weren’t Sigmund Freud, and one made do.
“Okay, there’s something to work with,” pronounced the rabbi with relief. “Can you think of a time when you were the bigger person and forgave your brother when he acted badly to you?”
“No,” said Stephanie truthfully.
“Think about it,” said the young rabbi. “I’m sure if you try, you will.” He nodded to Carla, as if to say the ball was now in her court. “Bring in a draft next week for the dry run,” he told Stephanie. “We can put the finishing touches on it then.”
“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” complained Stephanie to Carla in the car on the way home. “I wouldn’t forgive Jeffrey if he sold me into slavery in Egypt and that’s final.”
“Well, maybe you can think of another lesson from the story,” said Carla wearily. “You still have a week to write the draft. Let’s talk about it later.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Hal had BEEN IN A STATE OF EXULTATION EVER SINCE Margot had announced she was coming to Venice. He felt sure they had made some kind of connection in his classroom, and was looking forward to building on that connection during the long plane trip they were now fated to take together.
But his expectation of a warm welcome was disappointed when they met at the airport. Although Margot had temporarily thawed toward Hal during her visit to the school, she had soon had a change of heart. She realized she had been thrown from her original intention by the sight of his receptive students and his line about respecting her mother’s wishes. It was just the sort of softening up that opposing attorneys tried to do in the courtroom to sway a jury in their favor, and which she had always been adept at counteracting in her closing arguments. Here, to her retrospective mortification, she had been bested by a middle-school teacher.
At the airport, therefore, she greeted Hal coldly. And once they boarded the plane, she turned her face to the window to avoid conversation. Jessie, however, who was seated between them, seemed content to ignore her daughter and chatter happily to Hal about the prospect of seeing her old home again.
“Just don’t get your hopes up,” said Hal, stealing a wistful glance past Jessie to the back of Margot’s head. “I returned to my old neighborhood in northeast Philly a few years back and there was an ATM machine where our house used to be—a particularly brutal reminder that you can’t go home again. In your case, we’re talking four hundred years. A lot can change.”
“Don’t worry so much,” said Jessie, patting Hal’s arm.
In fact, he did worry—that the trip might tire her and that she would be disappointed in her quest. Hal had developed a feeling for Jessie beyond his academic interest in what she could uncover.
He must have looked depressed, because Jessie began taking snack items out of her carryall and offering it to him. In this area she conformed to the profile of the conventional Jewish mother, believing that any show of nerves, discouragement, or depression could be treated by food. She pressed on Hal an apple, a juice box, some saltines with peanut butter (nicely prepared in sandwich form), and several varieties of sucking candy.
Margot, though she appeared to be indifferent to these proceedings, was in fact feeling rather left out. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Hal accepted each of her mother’s offerings—he was now sucking on one of her sour apple candies. It occurred to her that she would like one too. Not, of course, that she would stoop to ask.
“So when do we go to look for the house?” Jessie asked Hal now. “Can we go as soon as we get there?”
“I think we should wait until tomorrow,” said Hal. “It’s a long flight. I want you to be fresh.”
“But I don’t want to wait,” said Jessie petulantly.
“It will be too dark for you to see anything anyway,” said Hal firmly. “We’ll walk over in the morning.”
“I was just hoping to have a look first thing.”
“Jessie, you’ve waited four hundred years, you can wait one more night.”
“I suppose,” she sighed, “you know what’s best.” She patted Hal’s arm again, then pushed the button to recline her seat, closing her eyes as she did so.
“You and Mom seem to get along well,” said Margot once Jessie had drifted off to sleep. She had turned from the window and was addressing Hal for the first time since her chilly reception at the airport. She hadn’t been able to ignore the ease and affection with which he talked to her mother. Despite herself, she was touched.
Hal experienced a surge of pleasure. Being with Margot made him feel as if he were Stephanie’s age again, oddly excited and worried about what to say and how to say it. “I’m very fond of your mother,” he replied, trying for a casual tone. “My own died sixteen years ago, when I was in college, and there’s a sense in which Jessie fills a gap for me, I admit. I also know you think I’ve been a bad influence with this Shakespeare business”—he spoke haltingly, wanting to get across the full range of his feelings—“but you have to understand how extraordinary her knowledge of the playwright and of the social context of that period is. Really—it’s unprecedented. I know you disapprove, but I can’t honestly help being carried along by what your mother says.”
Margot noted the sincerity of his tone and, again, felt herself soften. “It has led rather far afield,” she said dryly, “but I have to admit that the whole thing has made her more, well, interesting—and brought back some of the zest she used to have for life.”
“She’s a delightful woman,” said Hal. “Shakespeare or no Shakespeare.”
“So what’s with your name?” asked Margot, suddenly changing the direction of the conversation. “Don’t tell me that your parents actually named you after Shakespeare’s Prince Hal.”
“Not intentionally,” said Hal, pleased by her knowledge of Shakespeare’s history play, and even more pleased by her effort to be friendly. “But it really is my name—or at least my genuine given nickname. I come from a long line of Henrys, and each of us got a different nickname in some vague effort at individuality. When it got down to me, Hal was pretty much what was left, even though the name had been tainted by that psychotic computer in 2001. It’s been made worse recently, I should add, by that awful and unfortunately titled movie Shallow Hal, in which Gwyneth Paltrow wears a fat suit. Unfortunately, few people know Prince Hal these days—with the exception of my students,” he noted rather proudly. “And you,” he added.
“Don’t tell me you’re also the fifth Henry in your family,” declared Margot.
“As a matter of fact, I am.” Hal laughed sheepishly—this parallel to Shakespeare’s Henry V had been a subject of lively discussion between Hal and his friend Gabe Stern when they were about twelve years old. “But as you see, there’s no prospect of a crown in store for me.”
Margot smiled, then ruminated: “I don’t suppose your f
ather or grandfather’s nickname was Hank?”
“My father’s was, yes.”
“Aha!”
“What?”
“Have you ever noticed that Hank Pearson is more or less an anagram for Shakespeare, give or take a few more N’s and a few less E’s? But they dropped the E’s rather capriciously back then, anyway, didn’t they?”
Hal took a moment to think this over. “Boy, you are sharp!” he finally concluded admiringly. “I can’t say I ever made that connection. Thanks for pointing it out.”
There was a pause as they looked at each other, but before either could come up with something else to say, the stewardess began handing out the airline meals. Jessie roused herself from slumber to wave hers away with contempt, and seemed appalled when Hal and Margot each took one and began eating the meal with gusto.
“How can you eat such chozzerai?” she asked. “I have a nice turkey sandwich and a potato knish if you want some nourishment. The knish is cold, I grant you, but it’s not bad cold. Your father used to like it that way,” she said, addressing Margot.
Hal explained that he had always looked forward to the airplane meal. “When you’re boxed in at thirty thousand feet, a piece of stringy beef and some soggy potatoes au gratin have an appeal that’s hard to explain.”
Margot agreed. “I always feel a sense of irrational anticipation when they start rolling that cart down the aisle. It just proves how human beings can adjust their expectations to the circumstances. Everything is relative.”
“It’s like the Yiddish story my friend Gabe’s father used to tell about the family in the shtetl who goes to the rabbi to complain that his house is too small,” noted Hal.
Margot laughed. “You know that story?” She picked up the thread (her father used to tell this story on a regular basis): “‘Rabbi,’ he says, ‘my wife and four children are so crowded we don’t know what to do. What do you advise, Rabbi?’”
“‘I’ll tell you what to do, Shmul,’” replied Hal, assuming a rabbinical tone. “‘Do as I say. Bring the goats into the house.’”
“‘The goats in the house?’” Margot rejoined. “‘Rabbi, what are you talking? We’re already crowded to death as it is and you say we should bring the goats into the house too?’”
“‘Do as I say, Shmul. Bring in the goats.’”
“So he brings in the goats. And the next day, Shmul goes back to the rabbi. ‘Rabbi,’ he says, ‘it’s worse than ever. Now we can’t even turn around with the goats in the house. What should we do?’”
“‘Shmul, listen to me, bring in the sheep.’”
“‘Bring in the chickens.’”
“‘Bring in the’—what else is there?”
“Cows.”
“‘Bring in the cows!’”
“‘But, Rabbi, now we can’t move. We can’t breathe. We can’t get a wink of sleep.’”
“‘All right—now, I tell you what you do—take the goats, the sheep, the cows, and the chickens and put them out of the house.’”
“And so they did—and what a difference,” finished up Margot. “So much space, you wouldn’t believe—at least for a while!”
Hal and Margot seemed momentarily overwhelmed by the hilarity of this anecdote, which they felt they had recited delightfully and with excellent Yiddish accents. “It must be that Jewish blood way back on your mother’s side,” noted Margot.
“Probably,” said Hal, “You know your mother says her Will claimed to have Jewish blood too, on his mother’s side.”
“That’s what they all say to get into the good graces of a Jewish woman,” noted Margot.
“No doubt,” said Hal.
“In any case, you have a good ear for ethnic cadences. You should have been an actor.”
“And who says he wasn’t?” interjected Jessie peevishly, having followed their exchange with less amusement. Then, she settled back in her seat, closed her eyes, and fell asleep again.
Chapter Thirty-eight
For the REST OF THE FLIGHT HAL READ TEACHING APPROACHES to As You Like It, while Margot read McCullough’s biography of John Adams. Jessie dozed, worked on a sweater she was knitting for Jeffrey, and thumbed through a copy of Gourmet magazine. When they finally touched ground at Marco Polo Airport, she had been sleeping deeply for some time and woke with a start. “Where am I?”
“Venice,” said Hal.
“Home,” said Jessie. She had turned chalk white and was shaking slightly.
“Mom, are you feeling well?” asked Margot, concerned. Her mother rarely was sick or displayed nerves.
“I feel so … strange,” she said.
“No need to be nervous,” said Hal, taking her hand.
“It feels … like stage fright,” continued Jessie. “Not that I’ve ever been on stage, but he used to describe it. Your heart starts thumping and suddenly you don’t remember what you’re supposed to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Mom,” Margot reassured her. “Just relax and enjoy yourself.”
“No, no,” said Jessie irritably. “I have something I have to do.” She paused as if trying to recollect what. “There were other loves, you know,” she murmured. “Will was a great love, but there were others.”
“Sure, Mom,” laughed Margot, “we all know, thanks to Uncle Sid, that you were a ‘hot tomato’ like me.”
“No need to think about that right now,” said Hal more seriously. He assumed she was thinking of Milt. After all, wasn’t this trip, an excavation of earlier love, a kind of imaginative usurpation of that later relationship? He could understand if she were suddenly feeling guilty. “Just take a few deep breaths and clear your mind,” he counseled.
Jessie didn’t respond, but made her way out of the plane into the airport, leaning on Hal’s arm, her lips pressed together. She didn’t speak until they had claimed their luggage and walked outside to catch the motoscafi that would take them across the lagoon, up the Grand Canal, to their hotel. As the boat approached the bank, she lifted her head to the sky. “That smell,” she said.
Margot sniffed. “It smells rather vile.”
“It was worse in the summer,” murmured Jessie. “Rotting garbage.” She waved her hand in disgust.
The boat let them off at the foot of the hotel, where they climbed up the stone steps, through a discreet entrance, and into the lobby, a magnificent room with gold damask wallpaper, blue velvet curtains, and a polished red and beige marble floor. The room was decorated in antique furniture and hung with tapestries and old paintings. A harpsichord stood in the corner near the reception desk.
“Wow!” exclaimed Hal. He had been to Venice before, but had stayed in a modest if quaint bed-and-breakfast.
“Stunning!” breathed Margot.
“Vanitas vanitatum,” murmured Jessie.
“What?” said Margot.
“It’s Latin. It’s what Will used to say whenever he saw how some of them lived. I can’t remember what it means.”
“‘The hollowness of vanity,’” translated Hal.
“Yes.” Jessie took this up. “It’s the idea that everything passes—even the rich and powerful ones die,” she said wistfully, “which makes you wonder what the fuss is all about.”
“‘Dust to stop a bunghole.’” Hal nodded. “Food for worms.”
“Enough already!” said Margot. “Would you stop being morbid and let me enjoy this place!”
But Jessie wasn’t listening. She had paused near the center of the room and was gazing around with a look of recognition on her face.
“What is it, Mom?” asked Margot.
“I’ve been here before.”
“You remember the room?”
“Yes. I was here with Poppa when I was thirteen. We came to see the Popish ambassador to work out the negotiations about the new trade routes. I sat over there in the corner and played checkers with the doge’s son. I remember: He was stupid but a nice boy. I let him win.”
Margot laughed. “That sounds like you, I’ll
admit,” she said, for the first time appearing to enter into the spirit of her mother’s story. Then she took Jessie’s arm and pointed to the elevator. “Why don’t we go to our room and get settled? You can lie down.”
“I don’t want to lie down,” said Jessie testily.
“It was just a suggestion,” said Margot in a conciliatory tone. “You don’t have to lie down if you don’t want to.”
“At least see your room and freshen up,” said Hal gently. “I’ll tell Anish that we’re here and you can meet us downstairs in the bar in half an hour—if you feel up to it.”
Jessie seemed agreeable to that, and now followed Margot to the elevator without protest.
Once in the room, she changed into her best dress, a blue crepe that she had last worn at Milt’s funeral. She told Margot to change too. “Wear the black one,” she ordered with surprising vehemence.
It was a little black dress that Margot had bought at Loehmann’s a few years ago and that Jessie had insisted she pack. It was nothing special—it had cost $39.99 on the clearance rack. But it had always been one of Jessie’s favorites and, truth be told, cheap clothes generally looked as good, if not better, on Margot as expensive ones.
Margot put on the dress. It had a scooped neck and empire waistline, and it draped in simple folds around her body. “Why do you like this dress so much, Mom?” she asked.
“Because it looks good on you—and he would like it.” (Margot did not bother to ask who he was).
Jessie had taken out her jewelry case as she spoke, and now handed Margot a locket.
“It’s beautiful,” exclaimed Margot. “Where did you get it?”
“At the jewelry store in Haddonfield. It was on sale.” (Jessie could never resist boasting about a good buy.) “It opens, you see.” She pointed to the groove on the side of the locket, and Margot pressed the latch so that the two halves sprung apart on the little hinge. “You can put pictures inside,” explained Jessie, “maybe of Stephanie and Jeffrey. Or your own children, if you have any. A lock of hair is nice, too.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mom.”
Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan Page 20
