by Rhoda Lerman
His father bent to the oven. Flames danced on his face. Yussel saw his father’s face melting like wax. Weeping, he said to his father, his hand on the infant-thin shoulder, “Why do you fight with me, Totte?”
His father pulled out a large, round matzoh, dropped it into the straw, looked at him in surprise. As his father turned, the fire of the flames slid from his face and the cold of the moon spread wax over it. His father said in Yiddish to the sky: “This son should not understand everything I have in my own mind? This son who need only ask that it be revealed and it is revealed, even more than for myself? Why do I fight?”
“Yes.”
“We’re here to save souls, Yussel, to kindle sparks, to bring the world closer to the Creator. You and I come from a dynasty of holy men, of souls so kingly, so intelligent, so keen, we get killed for it. Why do we fight?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Oy, Tottele, selling insurance isn’t good for your mind.”
“Why? You fought with my mother and you fight with me. All your knowledge, you couldn’t make peace in the family?”
“Who learns from peace?”
“We couldn’t discuss things? Other families discuss things.”
“Yussel, what happens to you when we fight?”
“I get cramps in my stomach.”
“If it was only in your head, you wouldn’t remember it so long.”
His father was right. The question so torments, only the right answer brings relief to your gut. “Okay, me you’re teaching. What about Mom? Why do you fight with her?”
“I’m marrying again.”
Yussel turned his back. He wept and saw himself reflected in the picture window, the moon over his shoulder. He was young, rich, strong, and he wept. What should he ask for? What could be revealed to him that would help? “Why marry? Why embarrass Mom? My accountant says if I’m going to fly it or drive it I should rent it.”
“So?”
“So maybe you could just rent, Totte? Not buy?”
“This is what you learned from me? You should go to Hell, Yussel. This is a lovely human being.”
“So is my mother.”
The world revolved around his father. His father could make it stop, start, change directions. His father fought with God over His decrees, shook his fist at Him on Yom Kippur in front of the whole congregation, accused God of being a bad father. If his father wasn’t fighting with God for his people, he was fighting with his people for God. He was always alone, always fighting. His father said that when a Jew knows the universe and how it works, knows the Creator and the Words, knows the Torah, he isn’t a victim of the stars. He makes them move, sometimes. Sometimes he can figure out how things happen. Sometimes they show beforehand on the screen. His father didn’t mean go to Hell the way ordinary men meant it. He meant go to Hell so you can learn from your errors.
“You’re telling me I should go to Hell, Totte? I’m telling you, you’re going.”
His father handed him a matzoh from the oven. It burned Yussel’s fingers. “Yussele, the fires of Hell are only the shames you’ve created for yourself in your lifetime. I have no shame, Yussel.”
“You should.” Yussel took his airplane ticket from his pocket.
“If I should, I would. And you? Shoshanna says you aren’t nice to your neighbor, Chaim.”
“He’s a user.”
“Aren’t we all, Yussel, aren’t we all?” His father dampened the flame. They went into the kitchen to wash their hands. “I said I’m marrying her. I sleep every night in Babe’s old garage, not under the same roof. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Yussel said nothing. He handed his father a clean dish towel. He knew exactly what his father would say. His father knew he knew but said it anyway. With a shrug, as if he were throwing something away. “The first marriage is not made in Heaven. Even so the stones of the Temple weep when there is a divorce. The second marriage, that’s made in Heaven.”
As his father said Heaven, the screen appeared for both of them. Yussel saw his father in action with the Flower Child. Maybe that’s what his father saw also. They both blushed, turned from each other. “I need a cup of coffee,” the Rabbi said to Yussel.
“It’s bad for you.”
“If they tell me I’m going to die by fire, I don’t have to worry about water.”
Yussel pounced. “You’ve been to the doctor?”
His father said nothing. Yussel followed him inside. The hippies were back. Greasy knapsacks and rotting sneakers filled the foyer. His mother’s wallpaper was flocked with chicken fat. Dead plants were lined up under the dining room table. The drapes his grandmother gave to Yussel’s mother were black at the tops from Sabbath candles, memorial candles, holiday candles. His father sat at the dining room table, rolled beeswax candles from slabs of wax. Yussel thought his father was mad, holy, a genius, an ass. He hated him, he loved him. His father’s face lit up at something behind Yussel. Yussel froze.
The Flower Child was buxom, succulent, might have once been Christian. Everything was as he had imagined. She came in with a tray of brownies and coffee in Styrofoam cups. She looked him over carefully, the way a woman looks at a man. He didn’t like women who made him feel like a man. He only liked men who made him feel like a man. She laid her arm over his father’s back. His father took her hand, lifted it off himself in the presence of his son, gave it a pat. She giggled, then spoke to the Rabbi with a little lisp and a very slight English accent. “I’ll be right in the kitchen if you need anything. You’re warm enough?”
His father said to Yussel, “Some people in this world know they are angels, that they are here to give. This is one of those people. Except of course for her temper and her little crises. Now, sheine maidela, pretty little girl, go keep busy while we talk.”
She gave him a slow sweet dimpled smile. There was something absolutely childish and beguiling about her. She put the tray down and left. Yussel and she were the same age. He should not look at her, ever.
“She’s not such a flower child,” his father apologized. “She just acts like one.”
Later she set up an easel in the dining room, hummed little waltzes, painted cats with a large Japanese brush in great confident strokes.
Yussel couldn’t forgive his father for what he’d done to his mother, his mother for what she’d done to his father, both of them for what they’d done to him. He’d never be a rabbi as long as he lived.
“It is more true …” His father exhaled, looked at him over the rim of the Styrofoam cup, and Yussel knew he’d read his mind. “…It is more true that you will never be a rabbi as long as I live.”
Yussel was used to this. His mother knew when it would rain. His father never called into his room when he was masturbating, which was a sin but according to his father, to the horror of everyone in the Yeshiva, was perfectly natural for a young boy. Yussel bent his head under the weight of his father’s words. “HaShem should give you long life, Totte.”
His father rolled another candle, kissed it when its shape was finished. So did Yussel. His father rocked his head side to side. “I’ve already had a long life,” his father said, shrugged, his neck disappeared, his shoulders covered his ears. “Come here, Tottele.” He blessed his son and touched his forehead with his finger. Yussel felt the fire of his father’s eyes burning into his own. “I speak your name twice, Yussel. The first time I talk to you, to your animal soul. The second time I talk to your Neshama, your higher soul. Yussele, Yussele. As long as I have, I have.” He smiled up at his son. “Go back to your wife, go back to your clients, protect the widows and the children. Protect the trust funds. Say hello to your mother when you talk to her. Tell her I’m okay. Tell her I’m even a little happy.”
“I can’t tell her.”
His father shrugged again. “She’ll know without you. Save your money from the phone calls.”
“You should be ashamed.”
“If I should, I would. HaShem doesn’t make mistakes.”
His father’s voice was soft. “You’re going back then?”
Yussel nodded. “First thing in the morning.”
“You want to come sleep in the garage with me? I made a nice little place.”
“I’ll sleep here on the couch.”
“You’ll come back soon.”
Yussel didn’t know if it was a question or a prophecy. He didn’t want to know. “Even if you die, I won’t be a rabbi. You understand that?”
Deep in his own chest, Yussel felt his father’s sigh.
Early in the morning he rose from the couch, stretched, walked toward the night-light at the bottom of the stairs in the narrow hall leading to the bathroom. She was just coming down the stairs. They met at the bottom. They were less than a foot from each other and there was no place to go. She gave a startled “Oooh!” Then she smiled a sweet sleepy smile at him. Yussel was in his pajamas and very embarrassed. They stood there for a moment, both not knowing which way to move. She smelled of baby powder. Without her makeup, without her scarf, she looked much younger. She had a huge old-fashioned head of hair, all ringlets and curls and tumbling darkness around a sweet wide-eyed small-mouthed pale face. She looked like the girl on the couch in some famous painting. She looked like someone you feed chocolates to. “Oh, my God. I didn’t know anyone was here!” She grabbed a shawl from the closet and threw it over her head. Yussel smiled. He couldn’t help smiling. If he had been awake, he wouldn’t have smiled or even looked.
“You have your father’s smile,” she said.
Yussel stood there at the bottom of the stairs by the night-light, trying to remember the painting, trying to wake up. She took a step one way, he took a step the other way. They kept shifting but couldn’t get past each other. She wore the strangest pajamas he’d ever seen. Unless they weren’t pajamas. They were yellow cotton printed with black guns. She wore a loose white sweater over the pajamas. Her toenails were polished pink. Yussel cleared his throat, determined to say something, like, “Your turn.” But she flung her arm out to her side, toward the bathroom, and, like Charlie Chaplin, danced a little two-step, crossed in front of him, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door behind her. He heard her lock it, heard her turn on the water so he wouldn’t hear her. He went back to the couch until he heard her flush, unlock the door, heard the bare feet with the pink toenails padding softly up the stairs. He called after her, “A religious woman doesn’t leave her bedroom with her head uncovered.”
“And a religious man doesn’t look.”
The bathroom smelled of baby powder. Yussel stayed up the rest of the night. He could understand why his father would want such a new-age fairy-child. He couldn’t understand what the fairy-child could see in an alte cocker like his father. He couldn’t understand that wordless gesture of apology for her weakness, that she must do something human like using the bathroom in the middle of the night. He could understand why the Federation kicked his father off their board.
His father’s Honda had 110,000 miles on it, was peeling and rusty. He called it the Shanda, which meant the shame. They drove it to the airport. His father ran a stop sign, a red light. “She’s a good girl.”
“You should rent.”
A jeep with college kids swerved away from them, screamed to a dusty stop in a 7-Eleven parking lot. “You almost had an accident.”
“Everything’s intended. I can’t have an accident.”
On the highway, his father wouldn’t yield to the oncoming traffic; trucks peeled around him.
“I’m not so well attached, Totte. Slow down.”
“Maybe you want some insurance, Yussel?”
“Me? What for?”
At full rattling speed, his father, ignoring an oncoming cement truck, turned to Yussel. “Moving is expensive. It’s like a fire.”
“I’m not moving. I like the ocean. By the way, I left an envelope next to the telephone in the kitchen.”
“So, HaShem provides.”
“I gave it to you, Totte. It’s my money. I earned it.”
The Rabbi looked at his son in astonishment. “My river is mine and I made it? Where do you think you got it? HaShem gives. He also takes.”
Yussel looked out the window. The sun was rising on his face. He didn’t want to hear how HaShem takes. Gelt, gilt, and guilt. At the airport, his father handed him a brown paper bag of beeswax candles. They kissed each other’s cheeks, hugged, cried. The other red-eye specials stared, smirked, pointed them out to each other: the two Jews in the long coats, beaver hats, the old one in cowboy boots.
Shoshanna was shopping for duvets and drapes on Delancey Street with Ruchel. She’d left a note in Yussel’s study. “Your father called, very excited, and said you should come quick.”
“I just got home,” he said to his father on the phone.
“Come quick.”
“You okay, Totte?”
“It happened, Yussele. It happened. I heard from HaShem.”
“From who, Totte?”
“HaShem. Yussel, I heard! You must come.”
“Did He, blessed be His name, did He tell you when … you uh …”
“No, Yussel. The message was for you!”
It was three in the afternoon. Shoshanna would be back because the kids would be coming home from school. “Could it wait until tomorrow, Totte?”
“Yussel! Shame!”
“I haven’t slept.”
“Yussel, your father hears from HaShem and you haven’t slept? You’ll have eternity to sleep. And pick up some Chinese? The little pancakes with the plum sauce, chicken.”
One thing, they didn’t lie to each other. They never lied. He didn’t change a thing in his suitcase. He laid the beeswax candles on the kitchen table, said a prayer for his journey, and left. A message for Yussel. Don’t fly? Get plenty of sleep? Your father is going crazy?
His uncles were wrong about the drugs. His father was no less sane, no more sane than ever. Yussel said evening prayers in the back of the plane. A lot of people watched in case he was a hijacker.
His father’s first words when Yussel stepped from the cab: “You should take all your money and buy land.” Then: “You brought the Chinese?”
“What?” Yussel handed him the plastic container.
“In Kansas.”
“HaShem knows from Kansas? How did he say Kansas in Yiddish?”
“Hebrew.”
He saw the Flower Child slip up the stairs. Coffee bubbled in the kitchen. The drapes were down. New ones were up. They were Shoshanna’s, from the dining room. Shoshanna was in cahoots with this. Yussel was furious with Shoshanna. The dead plants were gone. New ones blossomed brightly. His father looked worn. There were crayons on the floor. His father ate moo goo gai pan, glat kosher.
“I didn’t hear Him. The words came. ‘He should take all his money and buy land in Kansas.’ ”
“God help me. Totte. Totte.”
His father shrugged. His neck disappeared. Then his father turned on his eyes and looked at Yussel and he felt the eyes burning. “I work all my life. I pray. I live in poverty. I study Talmud, Nietzsche, Carlyle, anything that might help the shmegeggies. I turn my pockets inside out for them. I lose my wife. I love. I give. I wait. And finally …” his voice thundered, roared with power. “Finally, Yussel, I am given illumination. Yussel, illumination. Yussel, I heard.” His father danced. His father stretched his thin arms above his head, his forefingers pointing to the ceiling, and danced to God. His feet didn’t touch the floor. He wept; he sang.
“I am given as Abraham is given, the Voice of the Lord, and I heard Him and He tells me my son should take all his money and buy land in Kansas with three palm trees and a tent.” His father dropped into a chair. His chest heaved. “And my son, the insurance salesman, doesn’t believe me.”
“You saw?”
“I saw light.”
“You heard?”
“Only in
my head.” His father threw himself at Yussel’s feet, clutched Yussel’s ankles. “I trembled. I fell to the floor. My stomach burned but I think that’s my prostate problem. I, oh, Yussel! Yussele, I heard.” The Rabbi wept. He loosed Yussel’s ankles and buried his face in his hands and wept and his hands trembled and he hit his head against the floor next to Yussel’s feet.
Yussel rubbed his beard. “When?”
“Last night, when you left.”
“When?” Yussel saw it all on the screen. “When, Totte?”
“With her.”
“With her?”
“What can I tell you?”
“I don’t want to know, Totte.”
“But you know.”
Yussel sat on the floor and stroked his father’s head. “You spent a lifetime praying and it happens …” Yussel shook his own head. “With a woman? You think it’s because of her?”
His father sat up and leaned against Yussel’s back. They spoke away from each other, slowly.
“I don’t know.”
“It couldn’t have been with Mom?”
“She didn’t give me backrubs. Also I’m now married to this one. A month.”
Yussel felt his father pull himself up, watched him walk to the picture window. With his back turned, he shook his head slowly. Yussel decided it wasn’t a good time to ask about the crayons. He was embarrassed for his father.
“So, tomorrow morning we go look for the land, Yussel.”
He was worried for himself. In his wildest imagination he could not imagine this. “I should move to Kansas? I should take all my money and buy land? I’m not going to.” Yussel felt something pressing on him, squeezing him like an olive. It felt like time. “I don’t tell you what to do, you don’t tell me what to do.”
