American Pastoral (Nathan Zuckerman)

by Philip Roth

  Well, the usual things you hear.

  I DON'T HEAR THEM, DAWN. YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TELL ME.

  Well, mostly about being pushy. (Pause.) And materialistic. (Pause.) The term "Jewish lightning" would be used.

  JEWISH LIGHT?

  Jewish lightning.

  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

  You don't know what Jewish lightning is?

  NOT YET.

  When a fire is set for insurance purposes. There's lightning. You never heard that?

  NO, THAT'S A NEW ONE ON ME.

  You're shocked. I didn't mean to.

  YES, I AM SHOCKED ALL RIGHT. BUT WE MIGHT AS WELL GET THIS OUT IN THE OPEN, DAWN. THAT IS WHAT WE ARE HERE FOR.

  It wouldn't be all Jews. It would be New York Jews.

  WHAT ABOUT NEW JERSEY JEWS?

  (Pause.) Well, yes, I think they're probably a variant of New York Jews.

  I SEE. TO JEWS IN UTAH IT DOESN'T APPLY, JEWISH LIGHTNING. JEWS IN MONTANA. IS THAT RIGHT? IT DOESN'T APPLY TO JEWS IN MONTANA.

  I don't know.

  AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR FATHER AND JEWS? LET'S GET IT OUT IN THE OPEN AND SPARE EVERYBODY A LOT OF SUFFERING LATER ON.

  Mr. Levov, even though those things are said, most of the time nothing is said. My family doesn't say very much about anything. Two or three times a year we go out to a restaurant, my father and my mother, my younger brother and me, and I'm always surprised when I look around and see all the other families talking away amongst themselves. We just sit there and eat.

  YOU ARE CHANGING THE SUBJECT.

  I'm sorry. I don't mean this as a way to excuse it, because I don't like it, but I'm only trying to say that it isn't even something they strongly feel. There's no real anger or hatred behind it. What I'm pointing out is that on rare occasions he uses the word "Jew" in a derogatory fashion. It isn't really an issue one way or another, but every once in a while something will come up. That is true.

  AND HOW WOULD THEY FEEL ABOUT YOU MARRYING A JEW?

  They feel about the same way you feel about your son marrying a Catholic. One of my cousins married a Jew. They might tease about it but it wasn't a big scandal. She was a little older, so everybody was glad, in a way, she found somebody.

  SHE WAS SO OLD EVEN A JEW WOULD DO. HOW OLD WAS SHE, A HUNDRED?

  She was thirty. But nobody was brought to tears. It's not a big deal until somebody wants to insult somebody.

  AND THEN?

  Well, then you might want to get in a snide remark if you were angry at the person. I don't think the issue of marrying a Jew is a huge deal necessarily.

  UNTIL THE ISSUE OF WHAT TO RAISE THE KIDS AS.

  Well, yes.

  SO HOW WOULD YOU RESOLVE THIS ISSUE WITH YOUR PARENTS?

  I'd have to resolve the issue with myself.

  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

  I would like my child baptized.

  YOU WOULD LIKE THAT.

  You can be as liberal as you want, Mr. Levov, but not when it comes to baptism. what is baptism?

  WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THAT?

  Well, it's technically washing away original sin. But what it does, it gets the child into heaven if they die. Otherwise, if they die before they're baptized, they just go into limbo.

  WELL, WE WOULDN'T WANT THAT. LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING ELSE. SUPPOSE I SAY OKAY, YOU CAN BAPTIZE THE CHILD. WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU WANT?

  I guess when the time came, I'd want my children to make their first communion. There are the sacraments, you see—

  SO ALL YOU WANT IS THE BAPTISM, SO IF THE KID DIES IT GETS INTO HEAVEN AS FAR AS YOU'RE CONCERNED, AND THE FIRST COMMUNION. EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THAT IS.

  It's the first time we take the Eucharist.

  AND WHAT IS THAT?

  This is my body, this is my blood—

  THIS IS ABOUT JESUS?

  Yes. You don't know that? You know, when everybody kneels. "This is my body, eat of it. This is my blood, drink of it." And then you say "My Lord and my God" and eat the body of Christ.

  I CAN'T GO THAT FAR. I'M SORRY, I CANNOT GO THAT FAR.

  Well, as long as there's baptism, we'll worry about the rest later. Why don't we leave it up to the child when the time comes?

  I'D RATHER NOT LEAVE IT UP TO A CHILD, DAWN, I'D RATHER MAKE THE DECISION MYSELF. I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE IT UP TO A CHILD TO DECIDE TO EAT JESUS. I HAVE THE HIGHEST RESPECT FOR WHATEVER YOU DO, BUT MY GRANDCHILD IS NOT GOING TO EAT JESUS. I'M SORRY. THAT IS OUT OF THE QUESTION. HERE'S WHAT I'LL DO FOR YOU. I'LL GIVE YOU THE BAPTISM. THAT'S ALL I CAN DO FOR YOU.

  That's all?

  AND I'LL GIVE YOU CHRISTMAS.

  Easter?

  EASTER. SHE WANTS EASTER, SEYMOUR. TO ME YOU KNOW WHAT EASTER IS, DAWN DEAR? EASTER IS A HUGE TARGET FOR DELIVERIES. HUGE, HUGE PRESSURES TO GET GLOVES IN STOCK FOR PEOPLE TO BUY THEIR EASTER OUTFITS. I'LL TELL YOU A STORY. EVERY NEW YEAR'S EVE, IN THE AFTERNOON, WE'D CLEAN UP ALL THE ORDERS FOR THE YEAR, SEND EVERYBODY HOME, AND WITH MY FORELADY AND MY FOREMAN L'D POP A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE, AND BEFORE WE'D FINISHED TAKING THE FIRST SIP WE WOULD GET A CALL FROM A STORE DOWN IN WILMINGTON, IN DELAWARE, A CALL FROM THE BUYER THERE FOR A HUNDRED DOZEN LITTLE WHITE SHORT LEATHER GLOVES. FOR TWENTY YEARS OR MORE WE KNEW THAT CALL WAS GOING TO COME FOR THE HUNDRED DOZEN AS WE WERE TOASTING IN THE NEW YEAR, AND THOSE WERE GLOVES THAT WERE FOR EASTER.

  That was your tradition.

  IT WAS, YOUNG LADY. NOW TELL ME, WHAT IS EASTER ANYWAY?

  He rises.

  WHO?

  Jesus. Jesus rises.

  MISS, YOU MAKE IT AWFULLY HARD FOR ME. I THOUGHT THAT'S WHEN YOU HAVE THE PARADE.

  We do have the parade.

  WELL, ALL RIGHT, I'LL GIVE YOU THE PARADE. HOW'S THAT?

  We have ham on Easter.

  YOU WANT A HAM ON EASTER, YOU CAN HAVE A HAM ON EASTER. WHAT ELSE?

  We go to church in an Easter bonnet.

  AND IN A PAIR OF GOOD WHITE GLOVES, I HOPE.

  Yes

  YOU WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ON EASTER AND TAKE MY GRANDCHILD WITH YOU?

  Yes. We'll be what my mother calls once-a-year Catholics.

  IS THAT IT? ONCE A YEAR? (Claps his hands together.) LET'S SHAKE ON THAT. ONCE A YEAR. YOU'VE GOT A DEAL!

  Well, it would be twice a year. Easter and Christmas.

  WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO CHRISTMAS?

  When the child's small we can just go to the Mass where they sing all the Christmas carols. You have to be there when they sing all the Christmas carols. Otherwise it's not worth it. You hear the Christmas carols on the radio, but in church they won't give you the Christmas carols until Jesus is born.

  I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT. THOSE CAROLS DON'T INTEREST ME ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. HOW MANY DAYS IS THIS GOING TO GO ON AT CHRISTMAS?

  Well, there's Christmas Eve. There's Midnight Mass. Midnight Mass is a High Mass—

  I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. I DON'T WANT TO. I'LL GIVE YOU CHRISTMAS EVE AND I'LL GIVE YOU CHRISTMAS DAY AND I'LL GIVE YOU EASTER. BUT L'M NOT GIVING YOU THE STUFF WHERE THEY EAT HIM.

  Catechism. What about catechism?

  I DON'T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT IT IS. THAT'S AS FAR AS I GO. I THINK THIS IS A GENEROUS OFFER. MY SON WILL TELL YOU, HE KNOWS ME—I AM MEETING YOU MORE THAN HALFWAY. WHAT IS CATECHISM?

  Where you go to school and learn about Jesus.

  ABSOLUTELY NOT. ALL RIGHT? IS IT CLEAR? SHOULD WE SHAKE? SHOULD WE WRITE THIS DOWN? CAN I TRUST YOU OR SHOULD WE WRITE THIS DOWN?

  This is scaring me, Mr. Levov.

  YOU'RE SCARED?

  Yes. {Near tears.) I don't think I can fight this fight.

  I ADMIRE YOU FIGHTING THIS FIGHT.

  Mr. Levov, we'll work it out later.

  LATER NEVER WORKS. WE WORK IT OUT NOW OR NEVER. WE STILL WANT TO TALK ABOUT BAR MITZVAH LESSONS.

  If it's a boy and he's going to be bar mitzvahed, then he has to be baptized. And then he can decide.

  DECIDE WHAT?

  After he grows up, he can decide which he likes better.

  NO, HE'S NOT GOING TO DE
CIDE ANYTHING. YOU AND I ARE GOING TO DECIDE RIGHT HERE.

  But why don't we just wait and we'll see?

  WE WILL NOT SEE.

  (To the Swede.) I can't have this conversation anymore with your father. He's too tough. I can only lose. We can't negotiate like this, Seymour. I don't want a bar mitzvah.

  YOU DON'T WANT A BAR MITZVAH?

  With the Torah and all that?

  THAT'S RIGHT.

  No.

  NO? THEN I DON'T THINK WE CAN REACH AN AGREEMENT.

  Then we won't have any children. I love your son. We just won't have children.

  AND I'LL NEVER BE A GRANDFATHER. IS THAT THE DEAL?

  You have another son.

  NO, NO, THAT WON'T DO. NO HARD FEELINGS BUT MAYBE EVERYBODY SHOULD JUST GO THEIR OWN WAY.

  Can't we wait and see what happens? Mr. Levov, it's all a lot of years away. Why can't we just let him or her decide what they want?

  ABSOLUTELY NOT. I'M NOT LETTING SOME CHILD MAKE THESE KIND OF DECISIONS. HOW THE HELL CAN HE DECIDE? WHAT DOES HE KNOW? WE'RE ADULTS. THE CHILD IS NOT AN ADULT. (STANDS AT HIS DESK.) MISS DWYER, YOU ARE PRETTY AS A PICTURE. I CONGRATULATE YOU ON HOW FAR YOU'VE COME. NOT EVERY GIRL REACHES YOUR HEIGHTS. YOUR PARENTS MUST BE VERY PROUD. I THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY OFFICE. THANK YOU AND GOOD-BYE.

  No. I'm not leaving. I'm not going to go. I'm not a picture, Mr. Levov. I'm myself. I'm Mary Dawn Dwyer of Elizabeth, New Jersey. I'm twenty-two years old. I love your son. That is why I'm here. I love Seymour. I love him. Let's go on, please.

  So the deal was cut, the youngsters were married, Merry was born and secretly baptized, and until Dawn's father died of the second heart attack in 1959, both families got together every year for Thanksgiving dinner up in Old Rimrock, and to everyone's surprise—except maybe Dawn's—Lou Levov and Jim Dwyer would wind up spending the whole time swapping stories about what life had been like when they were boys. Two great memories meet, and it is futile to try to contain them. They are on to something even more serious than Judaism and Catholicism—they are on to Newark and Elizabeth—and all day long nobody can tear them apart. "All immigrants down at the port." Jim Dwyer always began with the port. "Worked at Singer's. That was the big one down there. There was the shipbuilding industry down there too, of course. But everyone in Elizabeth worked at Singer's at one time or another. Some maybe out on Newark Avenue, at the Burry Biscuit Cookie Company. People either making sewing machines or making cookies. But mostly it was at Singer's, see, right at the port, down at the end, right by the river. Biggest hirer in the community," Dwyer said. "Sure, all the immigrants, when they come over, could get a job at Singer's. That was the biggest thing around. That and Standard Oil. Standard Oil out in Linden. The Bayway section. Right at the edge of what they called then Greater Elizabeth....The mayor? Joe Brophy. Sure. He owned the coal company and he was also the mayor of the city. Then Jim Kirk took over.... Oh, sure, Mayor Hague. Quite a character. Ned, my brother-in-law, can tell you all about Frank Hague. He's the Jersey City expert. If you voted the right way in that town, you had a job. All I know is the ballpark. Jersey City had a great ballpark. Roosevelt Stadium. Beautiful. And they never got Hague, as you know, never put him away. Winds up with a place at the shore, right next to Asbury Park. A beauti ful place he has.... The thing is, see, Elizabeth is a great sports town, but without having the great sports facilities. A baseball park where you could charge fifty cents or something to get in, never had that. We had open fields, we had Brophy Field, Mattano Park, Warananco Park, all public facilities, and still we had great teams and great players. Mickey McDermott pitched for St. Patrick's Elizabeth. Newcombe, the colored fella, an Elizabeth boy. Lives in Colonia now but an Elizabeth boy, pitched for Jefferson.... Swimming in the Arthur Kill, that was it. Sure. Close as I ever got to a vacation. Went twice a year to Asbury Park on the excursion. That was the vacation. Did my swimming in the Arthur Kill, underneath the Goethals Bridge. Bareback, you know. I'd come home with grease in my hair and my mother would say, 'You are swimming in the Arthur Kill again.' And I'd say, 'Elizabeth River? You think I'm crazy?' And all the while my hair is sticking up greasy, you know.... "

  It was not quite so easy as this for the two mothers-in-law to find common ground and hit it off, for though Dorothy Dwyer could be a bit loquacious herself at Thanksgiving—just about as loquacious as she was nervous—her subject always was church. "St. Patrick's, that was the original one down there, at the port, and that was Jim's parish. The Germans started St. Michael's parish and the Polish had St. Adalbert's, at Third Street and East Jersey Street, and St. Patrick's is right behind Jackson Park, around the corner. St. Mary's is up in south Elizabeth, in the West End section, and that's where my parents started. They had the milk business there on Murray Street. St. Patrick's, Sacred Heart in north Elizabeth, Blessed Sacrament, Immaculate Conception Church, all Irish. And St. Catherine's. That's up in Westminster. Well, it's on the city line. Actually it's in Hillside, but the school across the street is in Elizabeth. And then our church, St. Genevieve's. St. Genevieve's, when it started, was a missionary church, you see, just a part of St. Catherine's. Just a wooden church. It's a big, beautiful church now. But the building that stands now—and I remember when I first went in it—"

  That was as trying as it ever got: Dorothy Dwyer prattling on about Elizabeth as though this were the Middle Ages and beyond the fields tilled by the peasants the only points of demarcation were the spires of the parish churches on the horizon. Dorothy Dwyer prattling on about St. Gen's and St. Patrick's and St. Catherine's while Sylvia Levov sat across from her too polite to do anything other than nod and smile but her face as white as a sheet. Just sat there and endured it, and good manners got her through. So all in all, it was never anywhere near as bad as everybody had been expecting. And it was never but once a year that they were brought together anyway, and that was on the neutral, dereligionized ground of Thanksgiving, when everybody gets to eat the same thing, nobody sneaking off to eat funny stuff—no kugel, no gefilte fish, no bitter herbs, just one colossal turkey for two hundred and fifty million people—one colossal turkey feeds all. A moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity, a moratorium on the three-thousand-year-old nostalgia of the Jews, a moratorium on Christ and the cross and the crucifixion for the Christians, when everyone in New Jersey and elsewhere can be more passive about their irrationalities than they are the rest of the year. A moratorium on all the grievances and resentments, and not only for the Dwyers and the Levovs but for everyone in America who is suspicious of everyone else. It is the American pastoral par excellence and it lasts twenty-four hours.

  "It was wonderful. The Presidential Suite. Three bedrooms and a living room. That's what you got in those days for having been a Miss New Jersey. The U.S. Line. I guess it wasn't booked, so we got on board and they just gave it to us."

  Dawn was telling the Salzmans about their trip abroad to look at the Simmentals in Switzerland.

  "I'd never been to Europe before, and all the way over everybody was telling me, 'There's nothing like France, just wait until we come into Le Havre in the morning and you smell France. You'll love it.' So I waited, and early in the morning Seymour was still in bed and I knew we had docked and so I raced on deck and I sniffed," Dawn said, laughing, "and it was just garlic and onions all over the place."

  She had raced out of the cabin with Merry while he was still in bed, but in the story she was on deck alone, astonished to find that France didn't smell like one big flower.

  "The train to Paris. It was sublime. You see miles and miles of woods, but every tree is in line. They plant their forests in a line. We had a wonderful time, didn't we, darling?"

  "We did," said the Swede.

  "We walked around with great big bread sticks sticking out of our pockets. They practically said, 'Hey, look at us, a couple of rubes from New Jersey.' We were probably just the kind of Americans they laugh at. But who cared? We walked around, nibbling at the tops of them, looking at ever
ything, the Louvre, the garden of the Tuileries—it was just wonderful. We stayed at the Crillon. The greatest treat of the whole trip. I loved it. Then we got on the night train, the Orient Express to Zurich, and the porter didn't get us up on time. Remember, Seymour?"

  Yes, he remembered. Merry wound up on the platform in her pajamas.

  "It was absolutely horrendous. The train had already started up. I had to get all our things and throw them all out the window—you know, that's the way people get out of the train there—and we ran out half dressed. They never woke us up. It was ghastly," Dawn said, again laughing happily at the recollection of the scene. "There we were, Seymour and me and our suitcases, wearing our underwear. So, anyway"—for a moment she was laughing too hard to go on—"we got to Zurich, and we went to wonderful restaurants—smelled of delicious croissants and good pates—and patisseries everywhere. Things like that. Oh, it was so good. All of the papers were on canes, they were hung up on racks, so you take your paper down and sit and have your breakfast and it was wonderful. So from there we took a car and we went down to Zug, the center of the Simmentals, and then we went to Lucerne, which was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and then we went to the Beau Rivage in Lausanne. Remember the Beau Rivage?" she asked her husband, her hand still firmly held in his.

  And he did remember it. Never had forgotten it. Coincidentally enough, had himself been thinking of the Beau Rivage just that afternoon, on the drive back to Old Rimrock from Central Avenue. Merry at afternoon tea, with the band playing, before she'd been raped. She had danced with the headwaiter, his six-year-old child, before she'd killed four people. Mademoiselle Merry. On his own, on their last afternoon at the Beau Rivage, the Swede had gone down to the jewelry shop off the lobby, and while Merry and Dawn were out walking on the promenade to take a last look together at the boats on Lake Geneva and the Alps out across the way, he had bought Dawn a diamond necklace. He had a vision of her wearing the diamond necklace along with the crown she kept in a hatbox at the top of her closet, the silver crown with the double row of rhinestones that she had worn as Miss New Jersey. Since he couldn't even get her to wear the crown to show to Merry—"No, no, it's just too silly a thing," Dawn told him; "to her I'm 'Mom,' which is perfectly fine"—he'd never get her to put it on with the new necklace. Knowing Dawn and her sense of herself as well as he did, he realized that even to cajole her into trying them on, the necklace and the crown together, in the bedroom, just modeling them there for him alone, would be impossible. She was never more stubborn about anything than about not being an ex-beauty queen. "It's not a beauty pageant," she was already telling people back then who persisted in asking about her year as Miss New Jersey. "Most people involved with the pageant will fight with anyone who says they were in a beauty pageant, and I'm one of them. Your only prize for winning at any level is a scholarship." And yet it was with the crown in her hair, the crown not of a scholarship winner but of a beauty queen, that he had imagined her wearing that necklace when he caught sight of it in the window of the shop at the Beau Rivage.