by Howard Fast
“I don’t suppose we could even consider putting our two kids in the Congregational creche?”
“Over my dead body.” David grinned. “And there are at least twenty members of the congregation who’d make sure it was very dead.”
It was at moments like this, when they were very relaxed and sharing things, that David considered telling Lucy the whole story of his encounter with Sarah Comstock. He resisted the impulse, just as he had resisted the impulse to ask Lucy about the cookbook. But Lucy told him finally, and he registered appropriate surprise and excitement. They had even found a publisher. His expressions of delight, however, did not lessen his guilt.
Sarah had called David’s office at the synagogue twice. The calls were taken by Mrs. Shapiro, David’s new and first secretary, part time but kindly and efficient. She was from Bridgeport and had not been around the Ridge long enough for the name Comstock to mean anything, or to be curious as to why a Sarah Comstock was calling the rabbi.
After a week had gone by, David thought that he had to return the calls. Guilty though he felt, he wanted desperately to see Sarah Comstock again, enough to overcome the guilt. He telephoned her during the day, and she asked him to meet her, if he could, at Brandywine Lake, about twelve miles north of Leighton Ridge. “I’ll be at the boathouse at three,” she said. “It’s closed down for the winter. No one goes there at this season.”
David telephoned Lucy, once again with a lie, telling her that he was driving to New York for a meeting at the Institute. It was not only that Lucy was totally trusting; she was also apparently incapable of suspicion, and David wondered how any man could carry on an extramarital affair if he was married to a trusting woman.
He parked at the lake. The weather had turned cold, and he buttoned his coat as he scuffed through the dry leaves. Sarah was sitting on a bench outside the boathouse, wrapped in a huge sweater. There was not another soul in sight. She rose as he came up to her and stood facing him, and after a long moment of hesitation, he put his arms around her and kissed her.
“I want you to know, dear David,” she said quickly, “that I understand our situation completely. You will never leave your wife and daughter and son, and even if you were unencumbered, I am not sure you would want to marry me. There is no open door for us, no way out.”
He held her face between his palms, staring at her.
“Is there?”
“No,” he said.
“Do you love me, David?”
“I think of you day and night. I want to be with you more than anything in the world.”
“We’re neither of us very strong, and I think we’re both frauds. Otherwise, I’d leave my husband, and you —” Her voice trailed away.
“I’m not that strong,” David admitted.
“I won’t see you again, David darling. Please help me not to see you again. If I call, don’t answer or return it.”
He couldn’t speak. Hand in hand, they walked over to where their cars were parked.
About six weeks later, sitting at the breakfast table with the Leighton Clarion in front of her, Lucy asked David, “Did you know Sarah Comstock?”
“I met her at the Carters’ when you were down in Jersey for the wedding. Why do you ask?”
“She killed herself yesterday. An overdose of sleeping tablets. What a shame — such a beautiful woman. There’s a picture of her here.” Lucy offered him the paper, but he ignored it, rose, and walked out of the room. He went upstairs to the bathroom, locked the door, put his face in his hands, and wept. When Lucy came upstairs and knocked at the door and asked him if he was all right, he managed to say “Yes, as all right as I’ll ever be.”
•
PART FOUR
1952
•
Lucy’s father had given David and Lucy a television set, a gift for their sixth wedding anniversary. Lucy was delighted with it; David’s view of it was somewhat dim and uncertain, and he had a feeling that this small box was the beginning of a change that was open ended. Tonight, dressing to go to dinner at the Osners’, David listened unhappily to the chatter of the box downstairs. His two children and the baby sitter were watching television, silent and enthralled.
“Don’t you think your father might have felt the same way about the coming of radio?” Lucy asked, tired of his television-inspired foreboding.
“Possibly.”
“And since your congregation is going to have television sets, doesn’t it behoove you to have one and know what it does?”
“You have a point.”
“I know it has its crazy side,” Lucy said, “but so has everything else. Just suppose God sent a messenger to earth.”
“God doesn’t send messengers to earth.”
“How do you know? All right, I don’t believe very much in God, but the Talmud is full of stories about messengers to earth. And how about Passover? Isn’t the Prophet Elijah supposed to slip down to earth from his heavenly place and join some Seder table?”
“This is going somewhere, isn’t it?” David said. “I mean we’re not having a theological argument — or are we?”
“That’s your department. Here, zip me up the back. No, I was thinking Mark Twain style. Did you ever read ‘Captain Stormfield Visits Heaven’?”
“No.”
“Well, Captain Stormfield gets distracted as he flashes through the universe and he misses the gate he should go to and arrives at a gate where they never heard of the Planet Earth. Well, they got a map about a thousand miles high, and they have angels scurrying all over the map trying to find the earth, and finally one of them locates something, but he can’t decide whether it’s a fly speck or a planet.”
“Well, which is it?”
“It’s the earth, but that’s not the point I was trying to make, and what was the point?” she wondered.
“Something about messengers.”
“Oh, yes. If Mark Twain can try it, so can I. Here’s my concoction. God tells this messenger or angel or whatever to coast down to earth and report back, and the messenger says, ‘Well, where? I mean where should I go?’ And God tells him that one place is as good as another, and where does the messenger end up but in Leighton Ridge?”
“That’s interesting. Where do you go from there?”
“Confusing too. Take Jack Osner. He’s just been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury — that total shithead is now a part of our government —”
“I hope you reserve the richer parts of the language for you and me.”
“Except for Millie Carter. She swears better than I do. We both use it as a buffer against piety. David, why don’t you ever get mad at me when I talk like this?”
“Even in the army, where every third word was fuck and motherfuck, the guys would get very upset if I used foul language. The minister and the rabbi are denied the emphatic use of the language. Perhaps it’s just as well.”
“I didn’t want to get into that,” Lucy said. “I was just thinking of our messenger trying to make sense out of Leigh-ton Ridge, where the local rabbi and the local Congregational minister are both going to a dinner party in honor of that creep Jack Osner, who has as much compassion and decency as any dues-paying Nazi.”
“That’s too strong, Lucy. I don’t know why you have it in for him,” David protested gently. “He’s no worse than anyone else in government —”
“And a pillar of the synagogue and a pillar of the community. Did you mean what you just said?”
“Yes and no. For heaven’s sake, Lucy, you can’t judge people, you can’t get inside of people.”
“He told the F.B.I. that Mike Benton was a communist. He told Joe Hurtz that he felt we ought to have an older man as a rabbi, someone nonpolitical, and he beat up on Shelly. So much for the famous dictum that Jewish husbands don’t beat their wives. And for my money, any man who beats up a woman is pure shit!”
“How on earth do you know all this?”
“Women talk. That’s one of the ways we have of staying
sane. If you put together a map of how absolutely insane the world of the other sex is, it helps you to stay sane. And, you know, Shelly isn’t at all the turd I took her to be. Her life stinks, and she simply does the best she can. You remember his son, Adam — you did his Bar Mitzvah a few months after we came here?”
“Yes — nice kid.”
“When Jack pushed Shelly around, Adam interfered — a real physical thing between the father and the son. Blows struck. Jack almost beat him senseless.”
“I knew there was bad feeling. The boy would not register for the draft, and that drove Jack up the wall.”
“Was the boy wrong?”
“No, Lucy. I will not judge the boy and say that he was wrong. When he came to me, I said, ‘Do what your conscience tells you to do.’ I think this war in Korea is rotten and manipulated from the word go. But I’m beginning to think that of every war. On the other hand, the army was the most important thing that ever happened to Jack Osner. A little kid who grew up on the Lower East Side in New York City becomes a colonel, bird and uniform and braid and all the rest.”
“What army? He sat on his fat ass in Washington! That’s where he fought the war.”
“Come on, Lucy. We all fought the war where we were sent to fight it. Jack was sent to Washington.”
“Damnit, David, why can’t you ever come out and admit that someone in your congregation is an unrelieved son of a bitch?”
“Because they’re in my congregation.” He grinned and put his arms around her. “You’re wonderful, and I love you.”
“In spite of the fact that I nag and complain without end?”
“You’re my conscience.”
“Come off it!”
“You look lovely tonight,” he said seriously. “Off to the Osners’ to pay our deep respects to money and power. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and it all balances out. Jack will no longer be president of the synagogue. We have Mel Klein lined up for the post, and he’s absolutely an angel.”
“And what happens to Osner’s house?”
“He’s selling it. He bought one of those old houses in Georgetown. He’s very serious about his political career.”
“And what does he intend to do about Sissy Hart?”
“Who is Sissy Hart?”
“I don’t believe you. Well, Sissy Hart is about my height, red hair, blue eyes, and enough curves to make her a big-league pitcher, and is married to Elbert Hart, who is president of the Leighton State Bank and one of the pillars of Marty’s church. She has also been sleeping with Jack Osner these past three years.”
“And I suppose everyone knows all about it except the rabbi?”
“Not everyone. Shelly caught them at it and blabbed to me, and Sissy poured out her heart to Millie. That was only a few days ago. I thought you knew.”
“No. Does Marty know?”
“I doubt it.”
“Wonderful. Simply wonderful. The only two people in this town who remain innocent are myself and the Congregational minister. Now off to dinner. It should be interesting.”
The dinner party was not very interesting until the matter of the atom spies arose. It was constrained until then. Shelly Osner was tight-lipped and unsmiling. When asked whether she looked forward to living in Washington, she replied that she was still trying to talk Jack into keeping the house and using her as a house-sitter. “After all, it’s been my profession for years.”
Phyllis Hurtz, thickening around the waist as she made her way through her fifties, said that she and Joe had been contemplating an apartment in Washington. A year ago, Joe had sold his men’s furnishings business and had made a deal with a Japanese electronics manufacturer. It had been enormously successful, and Hurtz was already a millionaire. He had donated a new Torah and a gym to the synagogue, but fortunately for David and others, he was so involved in his business that he did not contest the role of president. When Della Klein asked what on earth Joe would do with an apartment in Washington, Shelly said nastily, “Jack can give him lessons in that.”
Lucy whispered to David, “Shall I have a headache and work us out of here?”
“The rabbi stays, even after the rest of the troops have fled,” David whispered back.
Mel Klein offered a Jewish story to break the tension. He was a gentle, good-natured man who could not bear to be in a situation of contention and anger. “There was this Jewish fellow —”
“Why must it always be a Jewish fellow?”
“It’s a Jewish story, so it’s a Jewish fellow. So this one owns an antique shop, and a customer comes in, very friendly. I mean it’s someone he likes instantly, so he takes out from under the counter an old lamp, you know, the kind you see in pictures from Turkey, and he says to the customer, ‘This is a magic lamp. You rub it, and any wish in the world is granted to you.’ Well, the customer doesn’t believe this and they argue about it, and finally the customer says, ‘If this is really a magic lamp like you say, why should you sell it to me?’ So the antique dealer, he says, ‘What good is it to me? My daughter is married and every week my son calls me.’”
There was a ripple of laughter, and Ed Frome said, “That’s a beautiful story, Mel. Beautiful. It’s like one of the old classic tales brought up to date.”
David had not been surprised to find Frome at the dinner table even though Frome had no love for Osner. The distaste that Frome and Osner had for each other was widely known in the congregation; on the other hand, since Frome worked for The New Yorker, it made little sense for Osner, embarking on a political career, to cold-shoulder a writer for so prestigious a magazine. And since Frome was fond of David, he responded to Osner’s invitation.
The story broke the ice. Osner was not a sensitive man, except to his own needs, and sitting there with the members of the board, he appeared to set petty feelings and resentments aside. He was totally imbued with the belief that a highly placed member of the federal government must be taken to the bosom of one and all.
“They’ve finally moved Bill Interman up to the Appellate Division,” he said to David as the interested party, but loud enough for the whole table to hear.
“So he’s rewarded,” David said.
“Are you talking about Judge Interman?” Frome put in. “The same unspeakable bastard who sentenced the two atom spies to death?”
His wife, Sophie, put her hand on his arm and said softly, “Ed, it’s done. No one here is responsible.”
“If the rabbi here could spend two hours with Judge Interman, you could give ten minutes toward trying to understand his predicament without condemning him out of hand,” Osner said.
“The rabbi saw Dachau. I saw Hiroshima. David, did you actually spend two hours with that creep?”
“Perhaps not two hours. We had a talk.”
“Did he come for advice?” Oscar Denton asked. “But why here? He doesn’t live in Connecticut.”
“I imagine he wanted to get away from people who knew him.”
“What did you advise him?” Frome asked.
“I couldn’t advise him.”
Later, at home, Lucy asked him, “Why didn’t you tell them the whole story?”
“Because it was told to me in confidence.”
“Then you come under the shadow of advising him to do what he did. Of course, I know you didn’t. I know how you feel about Judge Interman, and I’m not even sure myself what happened between the two of you, but what are people going to think?”
“I can’t help what people think.”
“Well, it’s not fair.”
“Most things are not fair.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas. “I’ll look at the children,” Lucy said. Wrapped in a white quilted robe, her face scrubbed clean, her mass of brown hair braided and controlled for the night, she looked like a teen-age kid. David felt an overwhelming surge of love and protectiveness. How very lucky he was! Even though he often felt that she had more wit and brains than he, it nevertheless satisfied a need to see her as utterly depe
ndent upon him.
He rose and tiptoed after her. In the feeble glow of the nightlights, he saw the faces of angels, Aaron, aged five, Sarah, aged three. How absolutely right to fashion the shape of an angel after a sleeping child; that gave the whole concept of an angel validity. The feeling welled up inside of him, overpowering, and he had to fight to keep back the tears.
“What is it?” Lucy asked him.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I feel that I’ve discovered something, and I don’t know what I’ve discovered.”
A few days later, Millie Carter called to tell Lucy that one of their parishioners owned a mixed Irish setter bitch that had had pups. Three of the puppies would be given away. Did David and Lucy want one? “Do you know,” David told his wife, “when I was a kid, there was nothing I wanted more. My mother couldn’t see it in a New York apartment.”
“I’m kind of neutral about dogs. I don’t hate them, but I don’t love them.”
“Let’s try.”
The children were enchanted with the small golden ball. The dog was probably three-quarters Irish setter, with a mysterious fourth quarter that widened its brow and gave promise of a more intelligent animal than most Irish setters. David found himself reading books on dogs and spending their small spare cash on dog food, and then it all backfired.
“What in hell has happened to me?” he asked Lucy. “I’ve become a sort of preposterous cardboard cut-out of what they call the American Way.”
“You mean you’ve lived ten minutes without guilt.”
“That’s damned thin. I think you could come up with a little more understanding than that.”
“With what, David? You tell me. Suddenly I’m told that because you bought your kids a dog, your world has collapsed. Last night you were playing with both kids and the dog, and an objective observer would have said you were content.”
“If that’s my goal, what am I doing in this godforsaken hole pretending to be a rabbi with a congregation of make-believe New England Wasps?”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
“Try to understand me,” he begged her. “The trouble is, Lucy, that I no longer see myself. During the war I was part of something. I saw myself in the eyes of every frightened kid in the company. We were sweeping away the filth of Satan. We were renewing the earth. We were threaded together, and when I came back I didn’t want that fabric broken. That’s why I took the first synagogue Rabbi Belsen offered me. Do you follow me?”
