“We didn’t have many Jews in Greensboro,” he said. “You’re the first Jewish guy I’ve ever gone out with.”
“Want to know something? I’ve never dated a Jewish guy.”
“You’re kidding me,” he said. “Why not?”
“Never really thought about it,” I said. “I guess I’ve always had a thing for blonds.”
“Lucky for me,” said Pete, with a smirk.
We sat for a while longer while he asked me about the other blond guys I’d dated. He was a good listener.
We left the coffeehouse and headed to a little disco on P Street. He was a good dancer.
We took a break from dancing and kissed next to the coat check. He was a good kisser.
So far, I thought, so good.
Saturday, I went to visit my parents, who lived about twenty minutes from me, in Rockville. I typically saw them maybe once every other week. I’d go over for dinner, or they’d take Michelle and me to a show downtown, or some family friend would have some kind of affair—bris, bar mitzvah, wedding, funeral—that we’d go to together. We all got along, particularly when our time together was limited to a couple of hours.
This time, though, I wasn’t looking forward to the visit. My folks were having their old friends the Mehlmans over for brunch, including the Mehlmans’ son Andy, visiting from San Diego. Andy and I never had much in common; he was a year older, something of a jock in high school, smart but too cool to get good grades, the kind of guy who used to tease guys like me. But we had known each other through our parents since we were toddlers, and they all still assumed we’d prefer having each other’s company to having nobody our own age at the table. That assumption wasn’t true for me, and I suspected it wasn’t for Andy, but nevertheless. Honor thy parents. I had to go.
My mother asked me to pick up a gallon of orange juice on my way over, so I stopped by the supermarket next to my office. As I was putting the juice in my car, Saturday morning services were letting out at B’nai Tikvah, the little Orthodox synagogue just across the main parking lot. The women came out first, maybe forty of them in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, with small children trailing behind. The men followed, a larger group in dark suits and white shirts, old men and teenage boys together; black yarmulkes topped almost every head, glasses graced almost every face. Rabbi Zuckerman was among them, one of the older men who favored hats, but he lagged behind the rest. And while the other men made conversation punctuated with nods and gesticulations, the rabbi seemed to focus all his energy on the simple act of walking in the midday heat.
I stood next to my car, unseen, and watched him. With great effort, he made it to the corner crosswalk. Already, though, he was left alone; the others had made it across and were heading down the opposite sidewalks in every direction. He wiped his brow as he waited for the light to change, then slowly crossed the street with the walk signal. He continued straight ahead, up the hill into a residential development, struggling with the side street’s gentle rise as if he were climbing a mountain.
After he vanished from view, I got into my car and drove to Rockville, turning up the stereo so I could hear Coldplay over the blast of the air conditioner.
Andy was the center of attention at brunch, since he had come the farthest, so he got to talk about his job and his house and his Hawaiian vacation and his sports car. The dads asked him some questions about the Padres and the Chargers. I didn’t have any questions. I was more interested in the bagels and lox.
But when Mrs. Mehlman finally interrupted and asked what I’d been doing lately, I told everyone about Rabbi Zuckerman sleeping on my couch all week, and it seemed to entertain them more than anything Andy had to talk about. I played it up to keep the conversation from shifting back to professional sports or something equally mundane. And the questions kept coming.
“On your couch?”
“Was he asleep?”
“He came back?”
“Didn’t anyone call a doctor?”
And then my mother’s question: “What kind of a rabbi is he?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Does he have a congregation?” she asked.
“No, he owns the Jewish bookstore.”
“I thought you had to have a congregation to be a rabbi.” That was Andy’s contribution.
“Apparently not,” I said.
“Well, is he Conservative? Reform?”
“I think he’s Orthodox. He wears a yarmulke all the time. And he goes to B’nai Tikvah. That’s Orthodox, right?”
“Yes, it is,” my father said.
“He’s not trying to convert you, is he?” my mother asked.
“Convert me to what?” I asked. “I’m already Jewish.”
“Not to him, you’re not,” she said. “As far as the Orthodox are concerned, we might as well be Baptists. Or devil worshippers.”
“Judy, don’t be ridiculous,” my father added gently.
“Mom, we’ve never even spoken.”
“Good, just keep it that way,” my mother said. “Those Orthodox are just like a cult. You know that Edie Hirsch’s son Adam became Orthodox and now he won’t even eat in his parents’ house and he won’t even let them babysit for their own grandchildren overnight because he’s afraid they’ll fill the kids’ heads with other ideas—ideas that he grew up with himself before he got brainwashed! They’re crazy, I’m telling you. Just stay away from them.”
“He’s not going to brainwash me,” I said. “He can barely stand up.”
“Well, just keep an eye on him. I don’t want you coming home with payes and those tzitzis hanging out. I knew it was a bad idea to open your office in Glenbrook. Too many black hats.”
I didn’t respond.
My father, never a fan of drama, tried to ratchet things down: “Judy, B’nai Tikvah isn’t for black hats. It’s Modern Orthodox.”
“What’s that mean?” asked Andy.
“It means they observe all the laws of Judaism, and men and women sit separately in synagogue, but they live in the modern world,” my father explained. “They work in all kinds of jobs—lawyers, teachers, businessmen—and they go to Redskins games and movies, and they wear normal clothes and they even shave. They’re just observant, that’s all. They’re not like Hasidim, with furry hats and black coats and long beards.”
“So they don’t wear funny hats, big deal,” my mother said. “They’re still religious nuts.”
My father replied: “First you’re upset that he doesn’t go to synagogue anymore and he isn’t observant enough. And now you’re worried that he’ll become too observant?”
Yes, if there was anything worse than her children neglecting the traditions she held dear, it was the notion that her children might berate her for her own random assortment of religious observances and nonobservances: keeping kosher at home but eating treyf outside the house; going to synagogue on Saturday mornings but shopping at the mall on Saturday afternoons; having a seder every year but ignoring Passover for the other seven days.
“Nothing’s changed, Mom,” I said. “I’m not becoming Orthodox, or Conservative, or Reform. Or Satanist. So don’t worry about it.”
By this point, I’d have been thrilled to have the conversation shift to baseball or football or anything else. And sure enough, Andy came through with a brilliant California-themed segue—“I heard a joke the other day: A rabbi and a priest and a Buddhist monk are in a rowboat with Arnold Schwarzenegger . . .”—and my mother’s tirade was over, for the time being.
After we were done eating, the Mehlmans said their good-byes. And then, as I helped my mother clear the table, she started in again.
“I just don’t understand it. You never want to come to synagogue with us, your own parents. You tell us it’s just not for you. Fine. I don’t like it, but fine. But now you’re hanging out with some Orthodox rabbi from Glenbrook?”
“We’re not ‘hanging out.’ ”
“Well, whatever you want to call it.”
> “He needed a place to lie down. That’s all.”
She gave me one of her looks that said, “I know better, believe me.” There was no comeback for a look like that.
I went upstairs to my old bedroom, which had recently become my mother’s “office,” meaning she kept a computer on my desk and a fax machine on my dresser, which she used for “making arrangements” like buying airplane tickets and reserving hotels. The things I used to keep on my desk were now stuffed inside. I opened the bottom drawer and found some old CDs from high school: Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Portishead. Depressing music for angst-ridden nineties teens. I grabbed a few for nostalgia’s sake.
My father walked in behind me. “Don’t take your mother too seriously,” he said, his way of taking my side privately without criticizing her publicly—his usual course of action.
“I don’t,” I said.
He took out his wallet. “Do you need some money?”
I did. Business was a bit slow. But I didn’t want to take it.
“I’m fine, Dad.”
He fished out a twenty.
“Here, take it,” he said, holding out the bill. “For gas. We’re always making you drive out here.”
The drive to my parents’ house required about a buck’s worth of gas. But I took the money.
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing it in my front pocket.
“Listen,” he said, changing the subject, “what are you doing for the Fourth of July? We were thinking of going somewhere for the day. Annapolis, or Baltimore. If you and Michelle aren’t doing anything . . .”
“Thanks, but we both have plans.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s nice. She still seeing Dan?”
“Yeah.”
“And who’s your date?” he asked tentatively. I’d been out to them since my sophomore year of college, and they’d met a handful of guys I’d gone out with and heard about several more, particularly after things had gone sour. But even after all these years, despite being relatively comfortable having a gay son, my folks were still reluctant to ask me directly about who I might be dating—although at least my father took the bait sometimes if I brought it up first. I think he was primarily worried about prying into my private life, something Rachel had often berated him about when she was dating, rather than uncomfortable hearing me talk about other men. Not that I’d ever asked.
“His name’s Pete,” I said.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know.”
The manager of Paradise called Monday morning with good news: I got the job. They signed me up for a yearlong deal, creating one new ad for each month. They would run in local gay papers and alternative weeklies and would be slightly modified as posters to be hung around Dupont Circle in windows, on bulletin boards, and on lightposts. He wanted to kick off the campaign with the devil poster and move on from there; we’d meet occasionally to go over new ideas. The manager already had a photographer lined up. All we needed to do now was land the right models.
“This is the fun part,” I said. “Finding guys who look good with their clothes off.”
“Hardly sounds like work,” said the manager.
I was playing it cool, but the job was important to me. I needed the money. Next time, I thought to myself, I won’t need to take “gas money” from my dad.
Monday afternoon, the rabbi came at the usual time, without a word. But once he got settled, I left my office and walked around to the front of the shopping center to the Jewish bookstore.
“Hello, Benjamin,” Mrs. Goldfarb called from behind the counter. “I know why you’re here. But this is the last time. Look, they’re working on the air conditioner right now.”
She pointed to a man on a ladder in the back of the store.
“We should be just fine by tomorrow,” she said. “The store will be cooler, and Rabbi Zuckerman won’t need to lie down, and everything will be back to normal. You can have your couch back.”
Strangely enough, I was disappointed.
“Actually, that’s not why I’m here,” I said. “The rabbi isn’t even bugging me.”
“Well, that makes one of us!” she blurted before catching herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“What’s the problem?”
“He’s just a difficult man to work with sometimes,” she said diplomatically. “But it’s perfectly understandable. If I were in his position . . .” She drifted off without finishing the sentence, assuming I’d know what she meant. I didn’t. But I didn’t ask.
I told Mrs. Goldfarb that I’d seen the rabbi walking uphill on Saturday afternoon, in the heat. I asked if she knew where he lived.
“Just a few blocks from here,” she said, “right in the development across the street.”
“He walks to work every day?” I asked.
“He sure does,” she replied. “Every day. Back and forth.”
“It’s straight up the hill. Why doesn’t he drive?”
“They took away his license after he crashed into a telephone pole last winter,” she said. “We should all be thankful—that little old man in that huge old Pontiac, he was a menace on the road. Scraped my car once, in the parking lot. In broad daylight!”
“Couldn’t someone give him a ride home?”
At this point she snorted out loud. “Someone, maybe. But not me. I’ve offered, believe me, I’ve offered many times. But I tell you, the man is stubborn. Once I was pulling out of the parking lot when I saw him standing at the entrance to the shopping center, leaning against the Don’t Walk sign, trying to catch his breath. ‘Rabbi, please just get in,’ I said to him. He leaned over and looked in my car—which is very neat, by the way, no clutter or cat hair or anything—and said no.”
“Why would he say no?”
“He’s an old-fashioned man,” she said.
Mrs. Goldfarb presented her supporting evidence: The rabbi grumbled whenever she wore pants to work. He had complained when she suggested selling a line of yarmulkes and prayer shawls specially designed for women. (“I finally won that argument,” she said with pride, “and these are very big sellers for us, thank you very much.”) He had balked at her idea of creating a humor section for the books, claiming—so Mrs. Goldfarb recounted—that “there’s nothing funny about being Jewish.”
“So why is it so hard for you to believe,” she said, “that maybe he doesn’t like women drivers?”
“Come on,” I said.
“Rabbi Zuckerman has some very strange ideas stuck in his head,” she said. “This one is no stranger than the rest.”
“Do you think he’d let me drive him home?” I asked.
“Well, you’re not a woman. . . .”
“Is that a yes?”
“I have no idea, Benjamin, but if you really want to, you can ask him yourself,” said Mrs. Goldfarb. “You know where to find him.”
The rabbi and I hadn’t exchanged a single word that week—or ever—but I broke the silence in my office that afternoon. When he sat up after his spell on the couch and put his shoes back on, I asked him: “Rabbi Zuckerman, it’s still very hot when it’s time for you to go home. Would you like me to give you a ride?”
He looked up at me, and stood up, surprised, head cocked.
“Yes, Mr. Steiner, I would,” he said in a gravelly voice, bowing slightly toward me.
So he does speak English, I thought. Not even an accent.
“My car is right outside, the blue Corolla. Just come knock when you’re ready to go.”
He nodded and opened my office door. Back to the silent routine.
“Rabbi?” I asked him. “How did you know my name?” Mrs. Goldfarb had never used it and we had never been introduced.
He pointed at the nameplate on my door. Then he walked out.
His knock came around six o’clock. I grabbed my backpack, shut down my computer, and got up to leave.
“I’m parked over here,” I said on the sidewalk, pointing to my little sedan.
The rabbi walked slowly, a few steps behind me. If he noticed my anti-Bush bumper sticker—a simple black “W” with a red circle and a slash over it—I couldn’t see his reaction.
I opened the passenger door and waited to see if he needed my help getting in; he didn’t. Then I got in the driver’s side, tossed my bag in the back, and started the car.
The stereo was blaring, the same Nine Inch Nails album I’d been listening to that morning, at a volume my parents would call “ear-splitting”: My whole existence is flawed. You get me closer to God.
Rabbi Zuckerman sat up straight—from the sheer loudness of the unexpected assault, not, I assumed, from the mention of God. I punched the off button. I couldn’t imagine what the rabbi would do if we got to the part where Trent Reznor sings, “I want to fuck you like an animal.” He’d probably jump out of the car, then and there.
I chuckled sheepishly and apologized. He didn’t say anything, just adjusted the air conditioner vent and looked straight ahead. I backed out of my parking space and headed for the exit.
“How far up the hill are you?” I asked.
“Four blocks, on the right,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
The drive was quick and quiet. His house was a small brick cottage with three concrete steps to the front door. A maple tree took up most of his modest front yard. No flowers, just grass and a couple of small bushes on either side of the doorway. I pulled into his short, empty driveway.
He unbuckled his seat belt.
“Thank you, Mr. Steiner,” he said.
“No problem, Rabbi Zuckerman, but please call me Benji.”
“Fine. Thank you, Benji, for the ride.”
It was the longest sentence he’d uttered to me. I decided to push further.
“You know, Mrs. Goldfarb told me that she offered you a ride, but you turned her down because you don’t trust women drivers.”
“Linda Goldfarb knows far less than she thinks she does,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t care about women drivers,” he said. “I won’t ride in her car because it stinks of perfume and cigarettes. It’s hard enough to work in the same store with her sometimes.”
Sweet Like Sugar Page 4
