“How can you betray me—again? How can I trust you? You won’t even stand up for me.” The light turned green, and we swerved around the comer.
“But you were overreacting! You were acting like a lunatic!”
“Oh, so when I defend myself I’m a lunatic? Jesus, just because I’m not a goddamned wimp like you.”
“I’m not a wimp.”
“You’d let anyone walk over you, Billie, Liza, your father.”
“Shut up.”
“Anyway, I should think you’d be glad I’m leaving, it’ll give you a chance to fuck around with Roy what’s-his-name.”
“I said shut up!”
“What, do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I haven’t noticed that when you come back from your ‘walks’ your clothes always smell like smoke? Or the condoms in your wallet—”
“How dare you search my wallet.”
“I can break any rule I want because I don’t give a shit anymore.”
By now we were in Nora’s driveway. Brakes screeched. Without even taking the key out of the ignition Eli slammed into the house, up the stairs, ignoring the plaintive eagerness of the dogs, who were closed inside the kitchen. “Eli,” I called. “Please don’t be this way!”
“Go away!” he shouted through his study door.
“Eli, please! I’m not going away until you—”
“Leave me alone!” He was weeping. “God, can’t you ever leave anyone alone?”
“Not until you talk to me! Don’t you know how you’re hurting me?”
“Oh, so little Martin’s hurt! Isn’t that a pity! Is that all that matters to you, your own fucking hurt? Well, fuck you, then, because the world doesn’t revolve around your suffering, no matter what your mommy told you.”
“Don’t talk about my mother anymore!” And I smashed my fist, hard, into the locked door. He was silent. My wrist throbbing, I backed down the stairs, to where the dogs were trying to nudge their way out of the kitchen. I let them go. They ran to Eli’s door. Then I got the groceries from the car and put them away, very carefully, the milk in the refrigerator, the muesli in the pantry; I wiped the countertops; I scrubbed away some bits of food that were stuck to the inside of the sink. No noise ... Stealing upstairs again I saw that Eli, in his study, had switched off the light, that the dogs were sleeping, all three, outside his door.
I went back downstairs. In the kitchen I lit the Yahrzeit candle and put it on the ledge behind the sink, as I recalled my mother having done; for a moment the flame jerked, as if uncertain whether it wanted to catch, before taking hold. Then I took off my glasses and gazed at it. Shadows flew over the table. In the dark mirror of the window a moon was rising over cabinets, rivulets of hurled light, my own face, which might have been my mother’s. How far away she seemed—as far as the moon! Yet somehow she was also there, in that flame that writhed like a gypsy, a fierce little dancing girl, mutely convulsed by pity, pain, and love.
13. FLINT’S LIMP
HARRIET DIDN’T WANT to go to the Rosh Hashanah service; indeed, if it hadn’t been for her grandchildren, who were visiting at the time, she probably would have just stayed home, in the defiant hope of showing, by her very absence, how fiercely she disapproved of the rabbi’s conduct. For he was having a rather flagrant affair with the shiksa organist, of which everyone in the congregation except his wife was vividly aware. The illicit couple had even been seen kissing, one afternoon, in the back rose garden, in broad daylight, as if they wanted to be caught, as if a wish to incur his own ruin were part and parcel of the midlife crisis through which the rabbi was so obviously suffering.
Still, for the grandchildren’s sake, she stifled her pride and went anyway. There was a strong missionary impulse in Harriet; to instill in them (as well as in me) a passion for that religion about which they had been so ill educated, she was willing to put aside even the desire to make a point. So she had her nails done, put on a stoic red dress, and prepared to drive to the synagogue. It was a mild fall morning. Like Eli and his father, I was dressed soberly, in a black suit and pressed white shirt; a stiff little yarmulke was pinned into my hair. Though in my childhood I’d been taken a few times to synagogues, usually for the bar mitzvahs of cousins, until today I’d never been to a Rosh Hashanah service; nor did those modest synagogues of my childhood in any way prepare me for the grandeur of the edifice to which the Aronsons drove me that afternoon: a palatial structure of glass and glimmering steel, designed by a famous architect, and containing within its groomed, grassy confines not merely the temple itself, but a school, a community center, a cemetery, a playground, and a halfway house wherein Russian émigrés, their ransom paid by the members of the congregation, were taught the skills necessary to negotiate American life—all a far cry from the tiny Lower East Side shuls at which our grandfathers had worshipped, and where Sara Rosenzweig’s grandfather worshipped still.
That I was there at all was pure compromise, the upshot, like so much else in those weeks, of extended negotiations not only between Eli and me, but between my desire to be free and my fear of losing, along with him, the stability of which his family had become my only source. For I was in the throes, right then, of an affair with Roy Beckett, and he had made it clear early on that if I ever expected to meet his family, I was badly mistaken. “No one meets them,” he said when I asked him. “No one.” End of discussion. This affair, which I had not been able to keep from Eli, he had for the last few weeks been enduring “for the sake of our relationship,” he said—a leniency on his part at once generous and stupid, since in such a situation tolerance, rather than bringing the crisis to a head, only serves to perpetuate it. Every day was a mediation. If I went, say, to a benefit dinner with Roy one night, in exchange I would have to go somewhere with Eli the next—in this case, to his parents’ house for the Rosh Hashanah festivities. And what a contrast Harriet’s brisket-smelling kitchen presented to the sleek apartment at which, the evening before, I’d gone with Roy to a housewarming party, all men in their twenties and thirties, good-looking, well paid! In that glossy, underfurnished living room with its views of the 59th Street Bridge, under track lighting, we had chatted with a pair of bankers about the advantages of Dutchess County over the Hamptons. Every ring of the doorbell brought another bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag. Someone put the new Madonna album— True Blue, I think—on the stereo.
And then, the next morning, an early train out to Long Island, where Eli, who had gone the night before, picked me up at the station, drove me to his parents’ house, dressed me hastily in a borrowed suit and tie. In the kitchen, Harriet was making noodle kugel, there was everywhere the bustle of holiday preparation, the smell of singed oven mitts. For old time’s sake I rode the Stair-a-Lator up and down, up and down, and then we all piled into Eli’s father’s Mercedes and drove to that lavish synagogue with its pearwood bimah, its torah scrolls behind bulletproof glass. The temple itself was high-ceilinged, and crowded, as the ceremony began, with perhaps five hundred celebrants, all nattily dressed, cozily affluent, the hair of the old women piled high in elaborate coifs, the youngest boys eager to be outside getting grass stains on the knees of their suits. Finally the rabbi emerged in his fine vestments, a robust, bearded man whose face, for some reason, reminded me of Stanley Flint’s. Clearing his throat, he told a few jokes, then began to sing, in a lovely, full-throated baritone, while above him, in her gallery, the red-haired organist pushed keys and pedals, and brushed the curls out of her eyes.
I looked at Harriet. She had her eyes fixed not on the rabbi, not even on his mistress, but rather on her own nails. And what was she thinking about? Adulteries—her own, or her husband’s—or mine? Or was she feeling sorry for the rabbi’s wife, or the shiksa organist, or me, or Eli? I couldn’t guess.
It was now time for the rabbi to blow the shofar—that primitive trumpet, forged from a ram’s horn, with which the Jewish New Year is ushered in. Around me I heard backs stiffening: after all, this is the crucial moment in any Rosh
Hashanah ceremony, the moment of highest drama, in which the moan of history itself must be viscerally sounded. And so the rabbi picked up the shofar, blew mightily once, twice, a third time less mightily, then swayed and suddenly crumpled to the floor. Someone screamed. The organist leapt to her feet.
What had happened? Had he been shot? Had the roar of the shofar masked the firing of a bullet? No, apparently, for there was no blood. “Is there a doctor in the house?” a voice cried, almost comically, as if we were in a theater, and then—this being an affluent synagogue in suburban Long Island—twenty doctors descended, swarming like ants around the stricken rabbi. People held their breath. Some of the older congregants prayed in Hebrew, their voices a low mutter of entreaty, directed toward a deity to whose prankishness and ill temper they had long since learned to accommodate themselves. And then from the swarm one of the doctors called, “Does anyone have any nitroglycerine?” at which point—this being an affluent synagogue in suburban Long Island—a dozen old and middle-aged men swept down onto the temple floor, calling “I do! I do!” each eager to be the provider of the magic lozenge that, once slipped under the rabbi’s tongue, would bring him back to life.
As for the organist, from her perch I watched her gazing down, eyes wider than ever, presumably trying to edit her anguish down to a level that would appear commensurate with a merely “professional” connection. In the meantime the assistant rabbi—a girl my age—had been summoned from the auxiliary chamber in which up until that moment she had been leading the children (including Eli’s niece and nephew) in a sort of junior version of the service. Now, with the breathless self-assurance of emergency, she ascended to the lectern and swiftly raised her hands into the air. There she stood, the young understudy suddenly given, as a consequence of the elderly star’s attack, the opportunity of her life. It was All About Eve all over again. “Let us pray,” she intoned.
One of the doctors stood. “His heart’s beating!” he cried, and applause—the applause of relief—burst forth. Suddenly Harriet, as if in atonement for the vengeful thoughts she had been harboring about the rabbi, burst into a fit of weeping, as paramedics swept through and with agile efficiency lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him away.
“I know,” the assistant rabbi said—no one was listening; she pressed her lips to the microphone—“I know that Rabbi Meyer would have wanted us to bring the ceremony through to its conclusion.”
Quiet then, heads turned. “And so let us welcome the New Year by sounding the shofar.”
Picking the thing up, she blew. Alas, however, she did not have her predecessor’s lungs, for instead of a mighty roar there issued forth only a series of shrill bleats. “Let us pray,” she repeated.
After the ceremony ended, we took a walk through the synagogue’s rose garden. “It seems so sad,” Harriet said, bending down to smell some late buds of Perle d’Or.
“Yes, but it could have been worse,” said Marty. “If it had happened when he was alone, when there were no doctors around, he could have died.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She picked a rose. “What I meant was—oh, Eli, why do people always make such a hash of their lives?”
“I don’t know. Why do they?” He looked at me.
Taking her husband’s hand, Harriet turned quickly, and began leading him toward the parking lot.
After lunch—the brisket I’d smelled that morning, and glazed carrots, and sweet potatoes—I asked Eli to drive me to the station. “I need to be back in the city by six,” I told him.
“But I was hoping you’d stay the night!” he said, paling suddenly, his stalwart confidence suddenly crumbling like dried-out make-up.
“Eli, you know that wasn’t part of our agreement.”
“Still, I thought that maybe, once you got here ... well, that you’d decide you wanted to stay.”
“But I’m going to Stanley Flint’s reading!”
“Won’t there be other readings?”
“But it’s sold out! I’ve already bought the ticket!” I glanced at the clock. “Look, if you’d rather, I could call a taxi—”
“No, no, I’ll drive you. Come on.” And grabbing a set of keys from a hook over his mother’s kitchen desk, he stormed into the garage. I followed. “What are you getting so upset about?” I asked once we were in the car. “It’s not like I pulled a switcheroo.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“In fact, I’ve stuck to the plan exactly as we mapped it out.”
“And are you going to the reading alone?”
“Yes—though of course I’ll probably see people I know there. Julia Baylor, for one, I’m sure will be going.”
“And Roy?”
“I told you, Roy’s out of town.”
“Hmm.”
“What, you think I’m lying?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, great. So now I tell you the truth and you assume—”
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Eli interrupted. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I’ve decided to get an HIV test next week.”
“Why?”
“I’ve already made the appointment. And I also think ... well, let’s just say that I think it would be strongly advisable for you to have one too.”
“But, Eli, we’ve talked about this.” He raced a yellow light; I cranked the window open. “I mean, you know how I feel ... God, what is it with you today? It’s like, just because I’m leaving, you have to bring up some subject, at the very last minute, that you know is going to upset me, in order to make sure I get on the train miserable.”
Eli sighed loudly. “Oh, if you could only see beyond your own anxieties for once—”
“But my anxieties are real!”
“—you’d realize that I’m suggesting this for your own good. The fact is, Jonathan wanted me to tell you weeks ago, and I didn’t, because I felt it wasn’t my place ... only now I can’t help but feel—”
“Jonathan? What Jonathan?”
“Jonathan Horowitz. I never mentioned it to you, but last month I went to a meeting for prospective GMHC buddies—you know, where you go and help out someone who has AIDS—and he was one of the facilitators. He’s very unhappy about the way Roy broke off their relationship. Very abruptly. And he asked me to tell you—for your sake—well, that Roy doesn’t always practice safe sex, even though he says he does. There. Which is why, in my opinion, you ought to have the test.”
“But that’s stupid! Anyway, Roy and I always use condoms.”
“Condoms can break. You know that.”
We arrived at the station. Five minutes remained before the train was supposed to come in. Pulling into a parking space, Eli switched off the ignition.
“I wish you’d consulted me,” I said after a moment, “before making that appointment.”
“Why? What business is it of yours?”
“Well, Eli, you know very well—”
“What?”
“It’s just that in the past we agreed that this was something we’d do, if we did it, together. Unless you’re saying you no longer think of us as being together.”
“Do you?”
“Oh God, why do you have to put such pressure on?”
“I’m putting pressure on!”
“So what are you saying, that you want to break up?”
“It sounds to me like that’s what you’re saying.”
“No I’m not.”
“And Roy?”
I was silent. “We’ve been through this already.”
He put his head against the steering wheel. “Oh, Christ,” he said. “I just can’t believe it.”
“But I can’t help what I feel!”
“If you’d chosen someone worthy of you, Martin, then at least I could have the consolation of not having to fear for your soul—not to mention your life—but Roy Beckett! A black Republican! A gay black Republican, for Christ’s sake—”
“That’s not fair.”
> “Or maybe I overestimated you. Maybe people just find their natural level, and yours is lower than I ever believed—hoped.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, at the very least you can wear that yarmulke when you fuck him.”
I slammed out of the car. In the distance the train, its nose like a basset hound’s, was edging against the haze. Then it neared, slowed, stopped. I climbed aboard. Through a dirty window I looked to see if Eli was waiting for me, if he was going to run after me, if he was going to follow me onto the train. For I think I could hear, even then, the seams tearing; I think I knew this was our last opportunity, and that both of us, perhaps to our lasting regret, were going to flee it.
After that I rode to New York, to Penn Station, where I got on the subway and headed uptown. Here I was, living alone in Glenn’s apartment, Eli having decided, a few days earlier, to throw out his subletter and move back, with Maisie, to Elizabeth Street. (“So long as you are carrying on with Roy,” he’d written at the time, “I simply cannot bear to live in a space so emblematic of our failed ‘marriage’; much better for me to be surrounded by my own possessions, my bed, my books, my futon, my battered pots and pans: in short, things that help me remember the life I had—that I had a life—before I met you.”) And how strange, I thought (stepping through the door), that of all the places on earth I might have ended up, it should be here, in the one place I’d always felt least at home, that I should find myself obliged to create, at least for the time being, some semblance of a home. For I hadn’t the heart to throw out Baylor as Eli, so much more capricious, had thrown out his NYU student. Instead I’d agreed, reluctantly, to stick it out at Glenn’s until he got back from Florence, figuring that in any case I’d spend most of my nights at Roy’s. Only tonight Roy was away, in Chicago. In my wallet, scrawled on a comer of the New York Times, I had the number of his hotel, which I dialed.
“Roy Beckett,” he answered in his room, as he did at his office.
Martin Bauman Page 45
