by Rhoda Lerman
Lillywhite wore a silvery lamé shirt, a silver belt studded with hunks of turquoise, worn jeans, high-heeled snakeskin boots with the same silver toes as Indian Joe’s boots. Yussel leaned over the dice, something snapped in his head, his screen flashed on full blast, and he knew what everyone should bet on.
“Hey, hey there,” she called, waved. He nodded, walked over, stood behind her. She said very softly, “Hello,” laid a handful of chips on the six.
“The four.” He couldn’t help it. A huge living neon four was pulsing in his head. What had suddenly revived his screen? A sexy woman, God forbid? A gambling den? The smell of Chinese pork from the kitchen? Numbers flashed in front of his eyes. Rabbits, greyhounds, horses ran in circles. The four played. She grinned, swept in chips, wiped her hands on her jeans and said, “Let’s go for a walk.” Now people noticed him because he was walking with her.
So she led him outside to the parking lot. He wouldn’t look at her face. Her hair was caught up in a comb that flashed under the parking lot lights. He could see the nape of her neck. Little red tendrils curled on it. Her boots clicked on the cement of the parking lot and echoed in the mountain stillness. She sounded like a creature with claws. Yussel reminded himself to remind himself to take deep breaths.
“How’d you know about the four?”
“It came to me.”
“You really are one of those rabbis, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t do prophecy.”
“We could go in and try it again? I’ll split with you.”
“We don’t gamble.”
“But you take chances.”
“What do you mean?”
“Coming up here.”
“I don’t gamble. It’s not taking a chance.”
It wasn’t what she meant. It wasn’t what he meant.
Two young men walked down the stairs of the Paradise toward them, past them, looked back over their shoulders. Suddenly Yussel and Lillywhite were a couple under a streetlight. As if they were both guilty of a private act in public, as if they had something to hide, they stopped talking. When the men drove away, their headlights drew a circle around Yussel, around her, around the light pole, left them in a darker moment.
She reached up, put her hand on his cheek, breathed egg roll onto him. “I saw you once at Purim. I went with some girlfriends to your synagogue in Brookline. They didn’t belong but the young adults from their congregation were invited. It was like an All Fools’ Day. They said you drank to get closer to God. I’d never seen Jewish men really drink. Your people were in costumes. Men were women, women were men. Someone was dressed like death, in long burlap rags and pregnant with a pillow stuck under the burlap. It was in the basement of a Victorian house. It was hot and noisy. Even the women were drinking. You wore a long white gown with a Roman striped belt that kept unwinding. Your face was bronzed. Your hair, your beard, your eyebrows were big, red, bushy. You were the burning bush; you were Moses. You stood on a picnic table, chugalugged a bottle of wine, a green bottle, tried to balance yourself with a shepherd’s crook. I’d never seen such power. It was everything I wanted … joy, wisdom, strength. I wanted a man like you. Between gulps, you’d look up to Heaven, beat your heart with your fist. You danced on the table, sang at the top of your voice. I don’t know why the table didn’t break. Bottles of vodka and scotch were lined up on the table. Sometimes a bottle fell off, sometimes they’d break, but no one would stop you. You’d pour a drink into a paper cup, shout for someone to come forward, pull him up on the table, put your arm around him, make him drink and dance, beat your heart, sing to the ceiling, weep, hug him. You were gorgeous. Then your men helped you down from the table. You broke two bottles of scotch coming off. No one cared. You fell into a chair. You looked at me and said something. I didn’t understand what you said. I was twenty-two, a senior at Radcliffe. You said to my girlfriend, ‘Don’t have children.’ Then you said to a man in a yellow-striped sweater, ‘Four years.’ He threw a hand over his mouth, paled. He knew what you meant. Then to a young boy with a white face bubbling with pimples and whiteheads, you said, ‘You have six generations. Ask and it shall be revealed.’ Then you looked at me again, annoyed that I was still there, and spoke more clearly to me. ‘I said,’ you said, ‘you have no generations. I said you will have generations of disciples.’ Remember? I was a senior. I knew a lot. I understood more. I said something. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I said to you, ‘I know.’ It rolled out. I did know. I hadn’t known until that moment, but I knew as surely as you knew, just as the man to whom you’d given four years knew. I’d never known anyone who had God’s ear. You did. You climbed up onto the table, danced, beat at your heart, snapped your fingers, clapped your hands, shot out your fingers, shouted, made everyone drink. I was frozen to the spot. My friend was leaning against a bookcase crying her eyes out. ‘We don’t belong here,’ she kept saying. ‘It’s too scary.’ When you saw her crying, you called her over, gave her a paper cup of vodka, smiled. She said to you, ‘What did you mean?’ You asked, ‘What did I say?’ ‘That I shouldn’t have children.’ You shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember anything I say on Purim. Don’t worry about it.’ Then you hit the table with your foot, started to dance again.”
Yussel choked on his tears. “Lillywhite, the prophecy wasn’t important. You saw the joy, the life, the strength. That’s what I would give you if I could. That’s what. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Are you crying?” Lillywhite asked Yussel.
Yussel cleared his throat, blew his nose. “Did he really say ‘generations of disciples’?”
“It’s not something you forget.”
“You remember his name?”
“No.”
“I have a cousin in Boston. Maybe that was my cousin. I wonder what he saw.”
“Not my tits, for a change.”
Yussel shuddered at the words. “Maybe he was trying to impress you.”
“You won’t let me have it, will you? You think he was trying to impress my cousin? Or the guy with four years?”
“I just wonder what he saw.”
“I told you what he saw. Why don’t you do a little prophecy? Tell me what’s going to happen with us? Why do we feel this way about each other?”
“I don’t have to do prophecy. I just have to be realistic. Nothing can happen.”
She leaned against the lamppost, put one leg up against the pole, comb flashing, eyes burning like candles. He could see the shape of her breasts in the silk shirt. She saw him looking at her breasts. She threw her shoulders back so he could see more.
“I came to talk business with you.”
She cupped her breasts, lifted them toward his eyes, his hands, his mouth. “How is it you can look at these but not in my eyes? What’s the matter with you guys? Listen, I’m not going to charge you for the water, if that’s what you want. You just have to tell me what you want.”
“I want …” Yussel lifted his shoulders and took a deep breath. It was like drowning. If this wasn’t the Other Side he couldn’t imagine what else it could be. Any minute she’d take out a little book and make him sign his name in it. Yussel whispered. “Why did you lease the water rights if you didn’t want to charge me?”
She tilted her chin up, looked at the stars. “I like to control things. I wanted control over the water. I told you I own all the land around you. Someday I may need water. Someday I might need something from you. Right now I don’t need water so you’ve nothing to worry about.” She stopped talking and looked very directly at him. He had to look at her face. “I don’t like to gamble either, Rabbi. Most of the time.”
He grabbed her hands from her breasts, held her wrists, shoved her arms above her head and pinned them behind the lamppost. “You’re too real, Lillywhite. You’re too real. I can’t take it.” He was only protecting himself from her. The raised knee pressed sharply into his leg. He squeezed her wrists tighter.
“I wait all this time for you to tou
ch me and your hands are freezing.” Then she dropped her knee and Yussel fell against her. That’s when he felt her. Her body was like iron, muscular and stiff. He was leaning against her, holding her arms above her head and she was fighting to get loose. She was very strong. A car flashed headlights over them, tooted.
Someone shouted, “Go for it!”
She stopped fighting. He felt her soften, loosen. Her mouth opened. He felt her breath on his face, her breasts, her hips, belly, her legs against his, the heat of her body through his clothes. Everything fit just as he’d expected, even standing up. How long had he stayed there against her, silent, the both of them, except for their deep breaths.
She whispered, “Your hands are getting warmer,” moved against him as if she were swimming.
“Don’t touch me,” he whispered in her ear, against her hair. “Ever again. Do you hear?”
Electric blue numbers flashed on his screen. He knew what would win the New York State Lottery, which Exacta would come in at Roosevelt Raceway, the odds at Monticello, everything. She rolled her hips around him in a circle like the headlights, asking big questions. Yussel was filling up with big answers. He gripped her wrists tighter to stop her movements. “Do you hear me?” he yelled at her. For a split second he moved against her.
That’s when Yussel wanted to kill her, bang her head against the pole until he stopped feeling her. When he realized that the lump in his pants was becoming a murder weapon, he ripped his hands from her wrists, his body from hers. Somehow he found his car. Balloons of his own breath floated away from him, as if his soul were leaving. He didn’t blame his soul. He’d like to leave also. His headlights lit her up. He hadn’t saved her soul. He’d cut out her heart to save his own. He couldn’t see through his tears. He had to make it up the road home, remind himself of the turns, the sharp shoulders. It was all right that he couldn’t see. He wanted to die.
First he went to the mikveh, seriously considered drowning himself. His body trembled so much he made waves. He looked down at his sex, floating small and innocent, telescoped, in the holy water. I didn’t do it. Me? Never. I make little Jewish babies. “You’re a liar,” he told it.
His father came in a blue terry-cloth robe, little blue terry-cloth slippers, climbed into the mikveh, patted Yussel. The lead doors displaced great amounts of water. “Two lead doors now. Thank you very much.”
His father splashed with his hands. “Well, that’s why HaShem might make you suffer—for protecting your own soul. You won’t get Brownie points because you denied yourself a pleasure; you’ll get punished for protecting your own ass at the expense of someone’s soul.”
“Totte, find out. You talk to someone up there. You stand in line. Find out what I’m supposed to do….”
“I told you, Yussele, that’s not how it works. You have to be free to choose. You can’t make choices if you know the answers.” His father made waves with his doors. “Let me explain to you the nature of suffering. God makes you suffer so you’ll come closer. When He sees you’re too far away from Him He brings you to Him. He makes you pay attention. The pain you feel is the correction you’re making in your soul. Everything depends on the correction you make.”
“My home? My money? My job? My car? Maybe my wife.”
“Maybe my wife, Yussele.”
“My heart, my identity. What’s left? How much more do I have to give? Can’t you ask? Can’t you find out?”
“Don’t second-guess. It all depends on the choices you make. Just think hard about those choices when they’re presented to you.”
Yussel left his father blowing his lead doors with the hair dryer. In his room there was a message from Shoshanna to call right away. Twice he dialed the wrong number.
“Dinela has a little fever and she wants to talk to you so she’ll sleep better.” This fast? Yussel’s heart turned over. He started to weep. “She wants to talk to you. Hold on.”
Grisha yelled from his room about the phone waking him up, yelled, “Can’t you stay away from each other?”
“My Dinela’s sick,” he yelled back to Grisha.
“Nebbuch. I thought it was your broker still sick.”
Dina was on the phone. Yussel cried, “Dinela, Dinela.”
Shoshanna got on the phone. “You’ll upset her. What’s the matter with you?”
“When did she get sick? How sick is she?”
“It’s okay, Yussy. It’s nothing to cry about. Stop crying. It’s only the chicken pox. They all had it. She’s just taking a little longer to shake it off.”
“When did she get sick?”
“Maybe two weeks ago.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“He says it’s chicken pox. I should build up her resistance and she’ll get rid of it.”
“Take her to another doctor, Shoshanna. Find an expert.”
“Kids get sick, Yussel.”
The knife turned in Yussel’s heart. Blood should come from his eyes. Is this the punishment he was waiting for? He grabbed Grisha’s arm. “Grisha, what does that mean, my kid’s sick?”
Grisha was eating a crust of challah dipped in cigarette ashes for Aaron the Priest. “Don’t ask me. Ask your broker.”
His father came so fast he wasn’t even wearing a bathrobe, just red-and-white-checked flannel pajamas, rumpled, a little stain on the fly. “Gevalt, Yussele. You see what you’ve done? You see? Now you want something from Him. Now He’s got you where He wants you.”
“You leave me alone too. You too. Get out of here. Look what’s happening. Look what you’ve done! My baby.”
His father gave a long and painful sigh. “You look, kid. You look.”
Two nights and two days Yussel stayed in his bed except for necessities. He wouldn’t eat. His heart was stone. By the afternoon of the second day under the covers, he decided maybe he was overreacting. Men have affairs; kids get sick. These things don’t have to be connected. It doesn’t mean the world comes to an end. It doesn’t mean a kid, God forbid, dies. Also who said he was going to have an affair? As soon as Shoshanna came, it would be all right. He’d forget. Bingo came, knocked. “Can we get you anything?” Then Natalie, Grisha, Babe, others. One of the kibbutzniks had to go to New York. His grandmother was dying. Grisha gave him permission. Was it okay? They’d have to go to Chaim’s for Tishabav. Yussel didn’t answer. He wouldn’t answer knocks on his door, supplications from Babe, advice from Grisha, a chain of phone calls from the Flower Child, who needed to talk to him, it was an emergency. Yussel would only agree to call her back, but she didn’t know where she’d be, wouldn’t say where she was. Still he wouldn’t talk to her, to anybody. Lillywhite called twice. He wouldn’t talk to her either. Nothing could rouse him.
Finally on the morning of the third day of his depression, they told him Shoshanna called: the tetracycline was working on Dina. He made a deal with himself. He wouldn’t call. He made a deal with HaShem. “Make her better. I won’t call.” Babe came to his door and told him Grisha was missing. Yussel got out of bed, called Lillywhite, told her he could never see her or talk to her again as long as he lived because God was punishing him by making his daughter sick, and hung up before she could call him a medieval son of a bitch.
22
TWO BY TWO THE MEN WENT OUT IN THE DARK ALONG THE ROAD TO the base of the mountain, along the highway, looking for Grisha. Yussel called the police. Babe cried, beat her chest. Everyone stayed up, took turns going outside, blamed themselves that Grisha had gone. Yussel reprimanded them. “You blame yourselves for the bad things and thank God for the good things. What’s wrong with you?” Yussel knew exactly why Grisha had gone and knew also to blame himself. At four in the morning someone with a Mexican accent called from the clinic on the other side of the mountain to say Grisha had been brought in. Yussel and Babe drove to the clinic. The clinic was a one-story adobe with two beds, a male nurse, a state trooper. The trooper took Yussel aside, held his hat against his chest as if he were pledging allegiance. “Might be
a little mental, sir.”
Grisha had walked down the center of the highway, so a truck would hit him, so Dina would live. Yussel tried to sound like the trooper. “Might be some medication he’s on. We’ll make sure he stays on the property.”
“Can’t have him wandering.”
And Grisha, like a piece of butcher paper, stiff and waxy, struggled to take off his oxygen mask, did, pulled Yussel to him, waved Babe off.
“You must be very close to HaShem, Yussel.” Yussel could hardly make out the words. “That he punishes you so soon for your sins.”
“Listen, Grisha, HaShem must love you a truck didn’t hit you.”
“Maybe. Maybe he refused my offer.”
“Dina’s getting better. She’s responding to the new drug. She’s going to be fine.”
Grisha squeezed Yussel’s arm, whispered. “Nu? Maybe He heard.”
The male nurse, Ruiz, a small brown man, obsequious, concerned, said to Babe. “Your husband he needs oxygen. We keep him here. It’s all right. Just to make sure. Too much liquid in the lungs. Three, four days, maybe.”
After the trooper left, Babe said, “He’s trying to kill himself.”
“Why should he kill himself?” Yussel asked, because if he didn’t Babe would know he knew why.
“I know how a man’s heart works?” Babe closed the clinic door behind her.
Yussel walked around the phone a thousand times. Lillywhite’s songs sailed down the mountain, over the desert, into his blood. That night, for the first time, he didn’t have to wait for Grisha to go to sleep. Once he picked up the phone, started to dial. Once it rang as he went to lift it and he tore it from the wall and looked at it in his hands, surprised. It’s okay, he told himself. Your Dinela’s getting better. It’s okay. Do what you have to do.
