by Rhoda Lerman
Two days after Babe left, one day after Yussel’s Bar Mitzvah, five minutes after the Rabbi and the Rebbitzen had had a furious shouting match over a stack of bills the Rabbi had left/lost/it wasn’t clear, in an old blue-enamel turkey roaster, the Rabbi had his first heart attack. Yussel knew his father had the heart attack because Yussel had done too well at his Bar Mitzvah or because he hadn’t done well enough. His mother knew it was because Babe, who didn’t deserve, didn’t learn, didn’t trust, had received.
The next Hanukah, Yussel’s father, who had recovered miraculously and was back smoking, screaming, working forty-eight hours a day, found in the mail a leather-bound gold-edged book of Babe’s husband’s poetry, which she’d published privately, which she’d mailed without an explanation to the Rabbi. Who after reading, threw the book in the garbage. “His father-in-law of blessed memory was right. He should have stuck with the chickens.”
“Look at this. Our new Rabbi who can’t even smile after twenty years he sees me!” Babe, half the size Yussel remembered her, calves no longer meaty, arms no longer rolling pins, stood at the door with her hands on her hips, a high-gloss bonded grin, tears and green contact lenses in her eyes. From shoes to eyelids, everything on Babe was lizard-green except for the nine-millimeter pearls swinging at her pupick. Yussel knew they were nine millimeters because once Shoshanna took him to Tiffany’s to show him what she wanted when they were rich enough, which now they’d never be. Babe had a new nose, leathery skin from facelifts. Support hose hanging off the back of Jane Fonda workout calves. “I changed his diapers for him, he can’t smile at me.” Babe still talked out of the side of her mouth, like an auctioneer. “You can’t come in until you smile.”
He should have accepted the offer on the spot. But he didn’t. He smiled. Even people you hate, to see them again after a lifetime, you’re sentimental, you smile.
“The kid hasn’t changed. Maybe you’re even handsome. You look like a hockey star.”
“You watch hockey?”
“I watch.” She shook her head. “You should have your mother’s constitution, not your father’s.” She walked around him, examining him. Yussel tried to turn with her. She was already in control.
“Before you enter among the thieves, Yussy, your mother, who thinks you’re crazy to do this and that your father of blessed memory should be arrested for kidnapping, your mother sends her love and wishes you only good luck with your new congregation, who you will, God willing, meet tomorrow. So now … ” She moved aside so he could pass. “Welcome to the Arizona.” Babe swept the floor with her bow, like she was greeting an angel. Babe didn’t believe in angels. It was the sarcastic bow of an executioner. So Babe bowed and Yussel walked into the Arizona.
“I’ll make coffee.”
“I don’t want coffee. I already had too much today.”
She closed both eyes, nodded once. Yussel remembered that well. “You look terrible, Yussy. You need a cup of coffee. Sit. Look around.” Babe wore green-gold high-heeled slippers that clattered on the floorboards of the Arizona as she made her way to the kitchen. She still moved like a battleship.
Yussel sat, looked around. Babe must have told everyone at the Arizona to stay away. Babe used to tell Yussel’s mother what to do. She may have told his mother to leave his father, maybe gave her the airfare to Haifa.
The Arizona was pretty much what it had been when Indian Joe had shown it to Yussel’s father: a long rectangle with a stage at one end, a dance floor in front of the stage, a kitchen and restrooms at the far end, a bar padded in orange Naugahyde in between. The bimah was on the stage. The ark was a gun case with a ruffled kitchen curtain over it. The dance floor was split by a shaky latticework divider so the men could sit separate from the women during services. Kitchen curtains were stretched over the latticework so the men and women couldn’t see one another praying. The men had two-thirds of the space. The bimah faced the men’s space. As Yussel passed the ark/gun cabinet, the curtains moved. His father would say the Torahs were alive behind the curtains. Yussel of course wouldn’t. The idea had scared him to death when he was a kid. Everything had scared him to death when he was a kid. Yussel waited at the bar while Babe made coffee. He couldn’t imagine why she’d come out here with all her money, with all her outfits. His mother told him Babe put her suitcases into a coffin when she traveled. It was always first on, first off, never got lost, never got opened.
“Where’s Grisha?”
Babe pointed to a door off the kitchen. There was a light on in the room. “In Lala Land, playing cards. Go, knock.”
The door was open a crack. Yussel pushed it a crack more. Grisha wore the same navy blue gabardine suit, the ancient snapped-brim hat, yellowed shirt, stained tie, sat on a stool, hunched over a dresser, and, under the light of a green gooseneck lamp, played solitaire with a greasy pack of cards from the railroad before it was Amtrak.
Grisha looked like he’d been peeled off a Russian icon, a holy man losing his material dimensions, drying out, flaking off. His beard and hair were paper white. His cheeks had red cherry spots on them and his skin was parchment, very thin, stretched and taut. Yussel hadn’t seen him for a dozen years. He was sixty something. He looked eighty. His face was smaller, his ears as big as griddle cakes. The waistline on his pants was gathered up in a belt yellow with scars. His shirt collar stood away from his neck, which looked like the lamp neck. He’d become one of the seedy ghost-Jews who hang around cemeteries and say prayers over the dead for a buck. Grisha was a bachelor, therefore a virgin, therefore could never climb to the full heights of holiness because he wasn’t married. Grisha swept up the cards, reshuffled them, didn’t look up, pulled apart the cards as he dealt.
“Who’s ahead, Grisha? You or God?”
“Baruch HaShem, He owes me.”
“You know I’m here?”
“I’m busy. I’m praying for you and I’m not getting an answer.” When he didn’t find the right cards, he ran the deck through a second time, shrugged, wiped his hands on his pants, grabbed Yussel, pounded him on the back, kissed him on the cheeks, took Yussel’s arm, led him to the main room. Grisha smelled of cigars, onions, stale, a leftover gabardine mold smell, a thrift shop scent, a man without a woman, growing old. His cheek was sandpaper when he rubbed it against Yussel’s. He whispered like a conspirator. “You better be nice to Babe, Boychickl. Babe’s a business lady. She didn’t have to come here.”
Babe brought tuna fish sandwiches, coffee.
Grisha swept a half-sandwich from the tray, put all of it in his mouth, spoke through it. “This is a rich lady, Yussel. You should see her bus. It sleeps eight. On her arm, her name in diamonds in English. On her neck, her name in diamonds in Hebrew. Some stuff. Her outfits …” He rocked his head from side to side. “Like a movie star.” Something flashed on Yussel’s screen, showed him Grisha as a very very old man, old and fat, his mouth open, snoring, stretched out on a La-Z-Boy.
Babe turned to Grisha. “So, what do I have to show for a lifetime, some shmatas and a bus?”
Yussel wondered what his own mother had to show for her lifetime. What Shoshanna would have; what she wanted. “And you, Grisha?” Yussel inquired.
“You don’t have family, you live longer.”
Babe scraped her chair back angrily. “I’ll defrost some Entenmann’s.”
Yussel started to refuse, knew it would be futile.
Grisha dealt his cards. “She make you turn around? She likes backsides. She watches football, baseball, hockey, backsides.” Yussel’s father hadn’t allowed anyone else to play cards. Only for Grisha, because Grisha was on a higher rung, cards weren’t sinful. Yussel’s mother always objected, went flying to her husband. The Rabbi said, “He’s talking to God. Leave him alone,” the Rebbitzen scoffed, “please.” The Rabbi said, “Who are you to say he isn’t talking to God?” “Me?” asked the Rebbitzen. “I’m only saying it’s against the Law what he’s doing.” “Behind the Law,” answered the Rabbi, “behind the Law beneath
the veils, there’s a mystery that’s more sublime than the Law. Leave him alone.” So the Rebbitzen gave Grisha so much housework to do, he didn’t get much time to play cards. He kept a journal as greasy as the deck of cards, charged himself fifty bucks a game to play, earned from himself five bucks for every card he turned over. When Yussel left to get married, God owed Grisha over fourteen thousand bucks.
Babe brought out two squares of cheesecake for the men, a sliver for herself. Babe’s nails were long and plastic, the kind of nails they put on in special shops. The first fingernail on each hand was gold. Shoshanna wanted such nails. He wouldn’t let her. Babe tapped these nails on her coffee cup, mopped her brow, sighed, said to no one, “So, this is our new Rabbi.”
Yussel’s father sat on top of the mirror. It was ornate, gilt, like a whorehouse mirror. Yussel had never been in a whorehouse, but he was certain this would fit, this and red velvet sofas. His father wore a red velour robe over black-and-white tiger-skin silk charmeuse pajamas, was now the size of a small goat with a large beard. He wore old slippers, Dearfoams, lined with plaid flannel. He’d had them for years. He nodded at Yussel formally as if business were about to begin. Yussel had a very reliable thought. No matter what his father said, no matter what he, Yussel, said, no matter what Babe and Grisha said, he’d leave in the morning and go back to Far Rockaway, buy his territory back if he had to. He’d sit and think these things if they started in on him. Yussel sat back in his chair, spread his hands on the table. “Well, what has to be done? What’s new? Who’s here?”
“You’ll see, Yussel. In the morning. Ernie built adobe huts. A new girl, a blondische, sewed regular Navajo tents. The kitchen’s terrific, fully equipped. Tomorrow you’ll kosher it. Everything’s organized. And we dig for a mikveh soon.” She pointed upward toward the mountain. “Also you have to talk to Music Minus One up there to turn herself off.”
“What’s Music Minus One?”
Babe jerked her thumb toward the mountain. “This woman who torments us. She had an entire honest-to-God orchestra on tape. It’s a sing-along system that does background music. You bought the sound equipment to cover it. It doesn’t cover.”
“Okay. What else?”
Grisha put down his sandwich, wiped his mouth with his navy blue gabardine sleeve. “Listen, what would your father of blessed memory say about the place? We did a good job? Wouldn’t he say we did a good job?”
It was cold, empty, cheesy, worse than the basement in the splitlevel. The ark was an insult, maybe even a sacrilege with its kitchen curtain. His father shook a warning finger. “Your father of blessed memory, Yussele, would say, thank you, you did a good job, you touch my heart.”
That’s what his father wanted him to say. So Yussel repeated, “My father of blessed memory would say thank you, you did a good job.”
Babe and Grisha smiled smugly at each other. Maybe they thought he was going to be a grateful, gracious, obedient rabbi, a good kid.
“And you touched my heart.”
“Sorry, Totte. We leave my heart out of this.”
Once, not long ago, a week, he was a successful businessman with opinions, clients, experience. He leaned back again, spread his hands out on the tabletop again, made believe they were asking him for a loan. “So, then, what are your major problems? What do you need?”
Grisha gave a little nod of approval for the question. “First, extra prayer books. For visitors.”
“For visitors?” Yussel laughed. Not a big laugh but enough of a laugh. Looking back, Yussel thought it might have been that moment, that question, that turned everything sour. He’d been there fifteen minutes. Up until then, they’d welcomed him. Babe raised her eyebrows at Grisha; Grisha sighed a long moist shuddering sigh. His eyebrows flaked bits of dandruff into his coffee. He stirred them in with a spoon. Babe said to Grisha, “See, for the rich the birds sing. On the poor, they shit.”
Grisha made a square mouth, lips out and forward as if he were tasting something rotten. “We expect from Kansas, Fort Greeley, Durango, Santa Fe, maybe Denver. Who knows? Also, right now we need four more men for a minyan.”
“You don’t have even enough for a minyan? How can you have Shabbas? Where are you davening?”
“We go to Chaim’s.”
Babe added, “Chaim charges fifteen bucks a head, includes three meals. On Shabbas the men sleep on the bus. The women don’t go. He’s a regular sweetheart, your friend Chaim.”
“I have to see Chaim twice a day?”
Babe rocked her head from side to side. “It’s not so terrible. We’ll get a minyan soon. It’s just a matter of time.”
Grisha leaned forward. Since Yussel could remember, Grisha breathed shallow breaths, and just when Yussel, even as a little kid, thought Grisha was dead, Grisha would take one big long moist shuddering sigh. Now he took one big long moist shuddering onion sigh. “Listen, Yussel, shmendrick, if it’s intended, we’ll have a minyan. That’s what your father would say. If it’s intended, they’ll come. Visitors, a minyan, donations.” Yussel could see the inside of his lips. The gums had white bumps. “So, Mr. Yussel Prophet, what do you see? We’re going to make it? Be a congregation?”
“I don’t see anything, Grisha. I don’t do prophecy.”
“Yeah, yeah. We all know about that, don’t we? So you don’t see a big shul? A Bes Midrash? Brisses, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs? Hundreds of Jews dancing at Simchas Torah? Mercedes lined up outside?”
Yussel leaned, tipped the front legs of his chair up, leaned back, watched his father in the mirror. His father was twisting his doorknobs, nervous. “An airstrip, Grisha, and stretch limos, and the Macy’s Parade. A regular Castle Garden.”
Grisha stood up as if Yussel were dismissed. “You see? What did I tell you? This is not a mensch.”
“Grisha, at least he came. He bought the place and he came.”
Grisha walked across the room, looked at the prayer books in the bookcases, looked at the altar, looked out the front door to the Rabbi’s grave, spread his cards on the bar. “So why did you come anyway? Why are you here, Yussel, if you don’t see a future?”
“Me? I’m here to help my father’s …” —He had to keep the word shmegeggies from rolling out—“… my father’s people.”
There was a long ugly silence. Babe looked at Grisha. Grisha looked at Babe. Babe shrugged, looked at her gold nails, examined each nail for imperfections, found a little chip. Grisha shuffled his cards. Finally Babe spoke, “You’re here to help us?”
The Rabbi slid off the mirror, put on his Dearfoam slippers, climbed onto the stage, hid inside the gun closet ark. Yussel could see his feet under the white ruffles. Yussel wanted to kill him. “Is that a problem for either of you? That I’m here to help you?”
“No,” Babe said diplomatically. “Who could refuse a little help?”
“So?”
Babe twisted her strand of pearls, swung them back and forth, decided. “Before he died, your father of blessed memory told everyone to come here and help you be a rabbi. Except me. He didn’t want me. Your mother wanted me here.”
Grisha slapped cards down. “He asked us to help you.”
The kitchen curtain covering the ark sucked itself inward.
“Before he died? He knew I’d buy before he died? It was all arranged?” Yussel stood, knocked over his coffee, made a vague gesture with a paper napkin to wipe it up, went as casually as he could toward the ark.
The ark said, “I do prophecy, Yussel. You know I do prophecy. I can see things going to happen, places, you know that.”
“They call it lying. Since when do we lie to each other?”
“Don’t get excited, Yussele. It’s not a lie. It’s just a matter of timing. When the Baal Shem Tov told a story that wasn’t true, it didn’t matter because he could make it true. We’ll talk later. You be nice. We’ll talk. Can’t we talk? Listen, you want a minyan? I’ll get you a minyan. Tell me what you want.”
“I want to go home.”
Yuss
el smashed his fist against the wall. The overhead lights swung back and forth. The divider swayed dangerously.
“Vey iz mir. He hasn’t changed, Grisha.”
“If I stay—if—I want you to know, I don’t want any advice from you, Grisha. Nothing. And from you, Babe, I don’t want a penny. Not a red cent. If I’m going to be the Rabbi here, I lead. I don’t follow. So if you want me to stay, you better understand the rules. Understand?”
Babe put on Sophia Loren glasses, examined her nails again. Grisha played his cards. Yussel stood on the stage. “You hear me? I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss it. Then I want an answer.”
Babe turned to Grisha. “He hasn’t changed much since he was a kid, has he?”
“Maybe it’s the altitude. Your head hurt, Yussel?”
“Forget the altitude. At sea level he was like this.” Babe and Grisha sounded like they rehearsed. “Remember his pole? How he hid in the garage and when some poor kid who’d hurt his feelings came along … he’d come charging out like a kamikaze pilot flying a forklift. His mother used to worry he’d kill someone. Take an eye out, God forbid.”
Yussel remembered the bamboo pole. From a carpet.
“We called him Zipper because he never zipped his fly and that’s how we reminded him.” Babe made the sound of knife on bone, which generically could be called laughter. Babe looked up at him. “His fingers were too fat for the piano. When did you get fat, Yussel? Before or after you stopped wetting the bed?”
“Wait. Wait. Remember how he ran around in his mother’s underwear? How everyone worried?”
“That’s a lie!” Yussel shouted, hated himself.
“A lie? Yussy,” Babe smiled slowly, crookedly. “You don’t remember how I went after you on the sidewalk with the little train track? You came outside in her corset, Yussy.”
Yussel remembered the H.O. track beating on his shoulders, Babe chasing him down the sidewalk, screaming. He didn’t remember wearing his mother’s corset. He did remember looking at the poetry notebooks because they had cutouts of the Dallas Cowgirls with shorts so short he could see the fold of tushy. He thought Babe chased him down the sidewalk because of the tushies. He didn’t remember ever even once putting on his mother’s corset.
