by Howard Fast
“It’s a fine building,” David admitted. He had been a bit anxious over the possibility that there might be stained glass windows, but there were none, and he said softly, “Very frum, those who built it. Very frum indeed.”
“Oh?”
“Frum — means very Orthodox, very strict in observance of the law. The old folks in the old country were frum. They would have looked upon me, a rabbi of the Reform movement, as an agent of the devil.”
“I imagine the people who built this place were not so different,” Carter said. “Very fruw, as you put it. Proper. In our new church, we have a large brass cross behind the altar and a very healthy steeple. So you can imagine what my Puritan ancestors would have thought of that.”
“Frum,” Shelly said. “What an interesting word.”
“As if she never heard it before,” Lucy said under her breath, marching up the aisle to the altar. “Can we use this?” she asked David. “This old church. Is it proper?”
“The bimah is all right. And the altar? Proper? Sure, why not?”
“Bimah?”
“The step up. The platform at the front.”
“I’m getting an interesting education.”
“And I’m getting chilled,” Shelly said.
“Just a few minutes more,” Carter assured her. “I must show them the parsonage. It’s small but pleasant,” he assured Lucy. “Millie — that’s my wife, Millicent — Millie and I would be living there, except that she’s a local girl, and her parents passed away and left her their house. Big house, and we need it, with our kids.” He led them across the lawn to the parsonage, a small white clapboard Colonial house; living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs, and then narrow stairs up to three bedrooms. It was sparsely furnished with old maple and pine pieces, and there were rag rugs on the floors.
The two of them together were alone upstairs for a minute or so, and David asked Lucy what she thought of it.
“Beats me. I’m a stranger here, David.”
“So am I. But I’ve been a stranger on earth since the first two Christian kids jumped me and beat the hell out of me. It’s something you get used to, and in a way it has its advantages.”
“Tell me about it some time.”
“When we have more time.”
“And meanwhile we worship in a Christian church and live in a Christian house and make love in a Christian bed — unless you bring up your mother’s bed. This is lumpy.”
“We’ll bring up Mom’s bed. And I don’t think buildings partake of either faith or prejudice. Anyway, you’re an atheist, so you shouldn’t mind.”
“I’m a Jewish atheist.”
“Right. I’ll try to remember that.”
Washing for dinner that evening, in the guest bathroom of the Osner house, Lucy said to David, “Maybe I shouldn’t dislike that pissy Shelly Osner so much. After all, she bounced around with us all afternoon and then got out dinner for how many?”
“Eight, I believe.”
“Eight. And I’ll bet it’s delicious,” Lucy said unhappily. “I’m a lousy cook, David. I’ve kept that from you because I never had to cook anything for you.”
“Scrambled eggs this morning. Delicious.”
“That’s not cooking. And the Osners are putting us up for the night. That’s kind of nice. I guess I have a lot of quick, dumb opinions.”
“No. You’re sensitive and you’re worried. I guess I am too. I guess neither of us has ever been in a situation like this before, and if you feel that you can’t hack it, tell me. It’s not irreversible.”
“David, they sent me down to a U.S.O. in Georgia. I spent six months there. If I could take that, I can take anything. And I kind of like that little house. I always wanted to live in a parsonage, ever since going on a Brontë bender at age fifteen. And I’ll tell you something else, that sweet little house isn’t insulated, and it appears to have some kind of primitive hot-air heating system, and everyone’s been boasting about the wonderful cold winters — so we’re going to have lots of fun trying to stay warm. Did you ever hear of bundling? That’s an old New England mishegas I read about somewhere —”
“I think we’d better go down to dinner,” David said firmly.
Having a cocktail before dinner, David and Lucy met the three men who would form the pro tern committee for the functioning of the synagogue. They also met the wives, but that was simply social necessity and not the purpose of the evening. The host and Shelly Osner’s husband was a heavy-set man, Jack Osner by name, balding, mid-forties, a pair of heavy brows over small blue eyes. David had already learned that Osner had spent the war with the Judge Advocate and held the rank of colonel at discharge. He was part of a prestigious law firm, and the Osners maintained a small apartment in New York City. The two Osner children, Adam, twelve years old, and Susan, nine years old, were brought in briefly to meet the new rabbi and then disappeared. Osner brooked no nonsense around him.
“That boy has to be a Bar Mitzvah in about six months. You’ll have your work cut out for you there, Rabbi.”
Then the two other members of the pro tern committee and their wives were introduced. Joe Hurtz, about the same age as Osner, had a men’s furnishing store in Danbury. His wife, Phyllis, a few years younger than he, appeared to be overly shy. She smiled and nodded and said nothing. Mel Klein was the oldest of the three, a successful dress manufacturer in New York, who kept extolling the local air and school system, as if to account for his presence there. Like Joe Hurtz, he had three children, and a bright-eyed, perky wife, Della, whom Lucy immediately liked. She was years younger than her husband — a round, pretty, and bright lady.
Dinner consisted of roast turkey and trimmings, served by a skinny, unsmiling local lady who, as Shelly explained, helped out when they had guests. The food was delicious, as was the wine served with the meal. Most of the conversation was pointed toward the rabbi, either directly or obliquely, as when Phyllis Hurtz finally spoke and informed Lucy and David that there was a kosher butcher in Danbury.
“I’m sure that’s not very important for a Reform rabbi,” Shelly Osner said.
“We prefer it,” Lucy said loftily, which made David glance at her in astonishment.
“I hear you were with the Seventh Army,” Osner said to David. “What division?”
“The Forty-fifth.”
“They took quite a shellacking. Were you with them all the way?”
“When I wasn’t too frightened to lift my head up. I got to love the smell of wet mud.”
That drew a general round of laughter, and Osner said, “Joe and I were both in it, both of us old farts, but we both had commissions out of World War One. Just desperate for human flesh.”
“I was in the D.F.B. in World War One. D.F.B. — defusing bombs. You know, a bomb or a shell comes in and it doesn’t explode. At age nineteen, I was just crazy enough to volunteer for the double pay and the conviction that I was immortal.”
“Very crazy,” his wife said softly.
“This time, they pulled me in as a teacher. I spent the war at Fort Dix. Jack there had more sense. He spent the war at a desk in Washington.”
“Someone had to. As a matter of fact,” he said to David, “we have a very decent representation out of the congregation, five army, one air force.”
“I don’t think the rabbi wants to hear about who was in the army and who wasn’t,” Della Klein said. “I know this isn’t a meeting — perish the thought that women should be invited to a meeting — but it is Wednesday and we’ve been talking about a Friday night Sabbath service, and where shall we have it and what do we need? Do we need prayerbooks? And where will Rabbi Hartman and his wife sleep? They can’t sleep in that wretched parsonage with its lumpy beds, and anyway it’s cold and smelly. So may I offer our guest room?”
“They’ll sleep right here tonight,” Shelly said firmly.
“As the mistress says,” Della whispered to Lucy.
“And what about it, Rabbi,” Osner asked, “could you do a
Shabbas service Friday, day after tomorrow?”
“No reason why not,” David said.
“We could have it right here,” Shelly said.
“Our living room’s much bigger,” Della Klein said with particular emphasis. “You know everyone will come, and most will bring the kids, and then if word spreads to Redding and Ridgefield —”
“You’re talking about ten Jewish families, if that.”
“It could be thirty more. We might just have sixty or seventy people, and we certainly couldn’t turn anyone away — could we, Rabbi?”
“I wouldn’t want to — no, indeed.”
“Then my house,” Della Klein said decisively, looking firmly at Mrs. Osner and scoring.
“It makes sense,” Osner said, “What about prayerbooks?”
“I can drive down to New York tomorrow,” David said, “and pick some up.”
“Would you? Wonderful. And I imagine there are other things we need, but no hurry. I’m in New York every day. As a matter of fact, no reason why I can’t get the prayerbooks for you. There are at least five people in my office who spend the day doing nothing more important than taking coffee breaks.”
“Perhaps I’d better go in this time,” David said. “There are so many things to do. My Aunt Ana is moving into my mother’s old apartment, but there are certain things there we’ll need up here in the country.”
“But you’ll be back Friday on time?”
“Absolutely.”
In bed with Lucy, in the guest room at the Osner house, David asked her how she felt about it now.
“A little better, I think. I liked Della Klein — only — what is it, David, does a certain amount of genteel charity go with this job?”
“How do you mean?”
“Her husband’s in the dress business. She told me she realizes how hard it will be for us to get along on what they pay you, so I must feel free to go down there with her and pick up some dresses, on the house.”
David sighed. “I suppose it comes with the territory.”
“No good. But I do like her — in spite of the way she looked at you.”
“Come on — how did she look at me?”
“Hungrily. I sort of like Phyllis Hurtz. But so shy. Her husband beats up on her.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Oh, no. No. He just looks like someone who would. Defusing bombs. Wow!”
“Someone has to do it.”
“No work for a nice Jewish boy. Oh, the hell with the lot of them. Turn off the light and let’s make love.”
“Let’s try to enjoy it, baby.”
“Lights out.”
“Starts now. Happiness at Leighton Ridge.” He turned off the lamp and they both burst out laughing.
“Put on the light, David,” Lucy said.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to laugh in the dark. It’s like smoking. No fun smoking in the dark.”
David reached out, turned on the lamp by the bedside, controlled his laughter, and asked Lucy, “Why, my love, are we laughing?” After which, he burst out laughing again.
“Because,” Lucy managed to say, “the whole thing is so absolutely unbelievable. Here I am, Lucy Spendler, streetwise, smartass tough kid, product of P.S. Forty-six, Wadleigh High School, and Hunter College, the only girl on West One hundred and fifty-seventh Street who skipped five hundred and sixty loops of rope without ever snagging —”
“Five hundred and sixty? I don’t believe it.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Lucy, you’re a rabbi’s wife. No more crossing the heart.”
“Then you’re not supposed to call me a liar — and here I am out in this Connecticut Wasp wilderness, with all these tightass Jewish types trying to be country Wasps and pious Jews at the same time, and a husband making twenty-five dollars a week, and thank God he has a sense of humor. You know, years ago, when Pop had just started in as a printer at the Times, there was a point where all the copy boys were tied up, and Editorial was yelling for someone to come up and take a last-minute correction, so the printing foreman told Pop to run up to Editorial and get it. The editor, his name was Schiller or something like that, had scribbled out a paragraph to replace the one he had written before. Terrible handwriting, according to Pop. ‘Mr. Schiller,’ Pop said to him, ‘can I tell you a story? It’ll only take a minute.’ Schiller said okay, and Pop then told Schiller his favorite printer story. It seems that when Horace Greeley was editor of the Tribune, there was only one old grizzled printer who could read his handwriting and set up his editorials. Of course, that was before the Linotype and everything was set by hand. So one day, the other printers took a chicken, dipped his feet in ink, and walked him back and forth over a sheet of paper. Then they gave the paper to the old printer, who wasn’t in on the joke, and told him it was Mr. Greeley’s editorial and he should go ahead and set it up. Well, slowly and painfully, the old man set up line after line of the chicken tracks, but finally he was stuck. So he took the paper up to Greeley, pointed to one of the chicken tracks, and said, ‘Hate to interrupt you, Mr. Greeley, but that there word confounds me.’ Greeley glanced at the chicken print and shouted, ‘Unconstitutional, you old fool!’ Now I must have heard Pop tell that story thirty times, and there was always someone broke up over it, but Pop says that Schiller never twitched a lip. He said to Pop, ‘Why do you tell me this, Mr. Spendler? Is it a comment on my handwriting?’ ‘Oh, no, sir,’ Pop said, ‘I thought you’d be amused.’ And Schiller said, ‘Why should I be amused? Everyone knew that Greeley made a fetish of his so-called defense of the Constitution.’”
David stopped laughing and stared at his wife thoughtfully. “Are you going to tell me why you decided to tell me this strange story at midnight in this Connecticut wilderness?”
“Because you’re a pussycat.”
“That’s a sort of compliment, I guess, but not a reason.”
“You’ll figure it out. You’re pretty smart.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you want to turn me in? Do they have Jewish annulments?”
“Not tonight. You’d have to buy your way out, but tell me, Lucy, didn’t it ever bother you, having absolutely no religion?”
She thought about it for a long moment. “I don’t think it ever really bothered me. There were times when I felt a little left out of things, but the anti-Semitic kids on the block, the Irish and Italian kids — they beat up on me the same as on the Orthodox kids, and of course I didn’t go around telling kids my mom and pop were atheists.”
“It didn’t trouble you — God, death, the universe?”
“I think men brood over those things. Women have enough sense to manage the business of living day by day.”
“You know,” David said to her, “you puzzle me.”
“A woman should. That’s what Mom told me. Keep your secrets and see that he has enough changes of socks and underwear.”
“You’re one of the most decent, straightforward, and ethical persons I’ve ever known —”
“I’d much rather you said I was beautiful.”
“That too. Absolutely.”
“Then can we turn off the light and make love?”
He reached out and turned off the light. “Coming back to the city with me tomorrow?” he asked her.
“No. I’m going to clean up the parsonage and see whether people can live there.”
“People have.”
“So they say. No more talk, David.”
David left Leighton Ridge early the next morning, enough of a neophyte driver to enjoy navigating the narrow, twisting Connecticut lanes. By the time he reached the Black Rock Turnpike, on his way to the Merritt Parkway, he felt relaxed and assured. In New York, he discovered that the prayer-books had increased in price since before the war. The money the congregation had provided would buy thirty books, which he felt would be ample, in spite of the enthusiasm at the dinner table the night before.
It was a glorious, c
ool, and sunny spring day, the trees in Central Park bursting into blossom. The people out on the crowded streets on this typically New York spring day had to experience the sun and cool air before it disappeared. His Aunt Ana, his mother’s widowed sister, had moved from her wretched hotel room into his mother’s apartment on West End Avenue. She could barely manage the rent out of her small trust fund and Social Security, yet she begged David to let her hold on to the apartment. It was not large; she had always loved it; and it had a single window from which you could see the Hudson River.
“Of course you can have it,” David assured her. “And if you need money, you must let me know.” Although what help he might be in that area he couldn’t imagine.
“You’ll want the furniture,” she said wistfully.
“Absolutely not. Only the bed and the chest in my room. And perhaps some dishes and pots.”
“I have plenty of those,” she said with relief. “That’s all in Martha’s basement.” Martha was the third sister. “But I sold my furniture. I was such a fool, such beautiful things. But tell me, David, I hear already you have a congregation and a synagogue. Isn’t that wonderful, just out of the army and it should happen so quickly. Your mother, may she rest in peace, would be so happy.” Ana was a small woman, with a round, pudgy face. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke about David’s mother. “For her to walk into a synagogue and see her son on the bimah — a big synagogue, I’m sure. I hear the German Jews built wonderful synagogues there a hundred years ago.”
“In Hartford and New Haven, Aunt Ana. Not in Leighton Ridge. The congregation bought an old Congregational church.”
“A church, David?”
“It’s a small wooden building. They didn’t buy the religion, Aunt Ana, just the building.”
“It’s a sin, David. It’s wrong.”
“Aunt Ana, believe me, it’s not a sin. You remember Rabbi Belsen. He’s a very important rabbi and scholar at the Institute. I’m going to telephone him and let you talk to him — just so that you won’t think I’m doing something pretty awful.”
