“That’s good news.”
“Yes. I am tired of this place. Awful food. And this ridiculous gown. And no books.”
I asked if the tests had revealed anything.
“They do not see any permanent damage,” he said. “But they also said that these things often happen more than once.”
“And that is the bad news,” I said.
“The good and bad often come together,” he said. Very sagelike, I thought.
I handed him his glasses and his siddur, which brought a smile to his face.
“I brought over your mail, too,” I said.
He put on his reading glasses and I began announcing his mail piece by piece as I handed him each item, like I was his personal mailman.
“Bill.”
“Bill.”
“Valpak coupons.”
“PBS solicitation.”
“Bill.”
“Bank statement.”
“Preapproved credit card application.”
I had only one piece of mail left in my hand, a small lavender envelope with a handwritten address made out to Zisel Zuckerman. The rabbi’s first name was Jacob. I held up the letter for a moment and asked him, “Who’s Zisel?”
His arm shot out at me with surprising speed and snatched the envelope from my hand. He tore it in half and tossed it in the wastebasket next to his bed.
“Benji!” he snapped, a scowl on his face. “Don’t be a snoop!”
CHAPTER 6
By the time he left the hospital, the rabbi was back to his old self mentally. But physically he seemed frail, weaker.
The doctor told him that he needed more rest and that he should think about taking some time off from work. He wasn’t convinced.
I visited him the Sunday he came home and told him that the doctor was right: He should take a break from work.
“How can I stay home? It’s my store,” he said, sitting in his usual spot on his sofa.
“It’s only temporary,” I answered. “Just a little time off.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You must have taken time off at some point,” I said. “When’s the last time you got away from the store?”
“Oh, Sophie and I used to go away a lot,” he said. “She loved it. If I ever said that I couldn’t leave because I needed to work, she used to tell me, ‘Even the good Lord, baruch hashem, set aside a time to rest.’ ”
“Where did you go?”
He rattled off a list of destinations. Los Angeles, where he had two nephews. New York, of course, to see Sophie’s family. Israel, many times. London. Paris. Montreal. A kosher cruise once, through the Caribbean. And, as might be expected for Jews of a certain age, Florida. Over and over.
“Who used to watch the store while you were away?”
“Linda Goldfarb.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Sophie trusted her,” he clarified. “And I trust her, too.”
“That’s not how it usually sounds,” I said.
“She has worked for me for many years, Benji. Of course I trust her,” he said. “That does not mean that I must also like her.”
“I see.”
“Although she is much easier to like when she is far away.”
A smile crept across his face and I saw that he was softening.
I told him I’d drop off any mail or important papers at his house at the end of each day so he could keep an eye on things.
“What if, God forbid, there should be an emergency?” he asked.
“If there’s an emergency, just call me and I’ll come pick you up,” I said, although I couldn’t imagine what might constitute an emergency at the bookstore. Dust on the dust jackets? A strike at the yarmulke factory?
“That’s very nice of you, but . . .”
As he spoke, he leaned forward to get up off his sofa, but quickly found that even this simple task was not so simple. He tried a second time, and a third before I reached over and offered my hand to pull him up and steady his balance. He was silent for a moment, embarrassed.
“Okay, Benji, I’ll try,” he said, conceding. “Just until I get my strength back.”
The first day the rabbi stayed home, I stopped in the bookstore late in the afternoon to fetch the mail. Mrs. Goldfarb stopped what she was doing—putting together a special display of shofars and honey dishes and greeting cards for the High Holidays, which were coming early that year—and stepped behind the front counter. She put three bills in a manila folder, and then she wrote the day’s total sales on a piece of memo paper, which she folded in quarters and slipped into the folder, as well.
“I don’t know how you managed it, Benjamin,” she said. “I’ve been telling him for months to take some time off, and he’s never listened to me.”
“Doesn’t it mean more work for you?” I asked.
“That’s a small price to pay,” she said without elaborating.
I couldn’t quite figure why they didn’t get along. Mrs. Goldfarb had once told me that she and the rabbi were just “two very different people,” but I didn’t buy it. Maybe the real problem was that they were too similar: bossy, opinionated, strong-willed. But I didn’t dare suggest that to her.
“If you don’t get along, why do you work here?” I asked.
“It wasn’t always like this,” she said. “When Mrs. Zuckerman was alive, this was a very nice place to work. She was a wonderful woman. And he was a whole different person when she was around. But ever since she died . . .”
She trailed off. I didn’t say anything.
“Years ago, he couldn’t have run the store without her,” Mrs. Goldfarb continued. “Today, he couldn’t run the store without me. We both know it. That’s what keeps me here. And that’s why he resents me.”
“I don’t know if he resents you,” I offered.
“Benjamin, please. I can handle it. He’s a very angry old man. But you, he seems to like,” she said. “Oh, that reminds me. He wanted me to give you something.”
She took a small dish off the counter and handed it to me. It was ceramic, with a single red apple in the center and tiny yellow bees around the edge.
“Sorry I didn’t wrap it for you,” she said. “I told him I would.”
“What’s this for?”
“It’s a honey dish. You dip apples in it. For Rosh Hashanah.”
“I know it’s a honey dish, but why are you giving it to me?”
“Rabbi Zuckerman called this morning and asked me to give it to you for him,” she said. “As a gift.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“You’re telling me. In all the years I’ve known him, this is the very first time he’s ever given away something from his store as a present.”
I studied her for a moment, to see if she was pulling my leg. She wasn’t. She shrugged.
“First time for everything,” she said.
I held out the dish and rubbed my thumb over the apple.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“You don’t?”
I shook my head.
“You’re like the grandson he never had.”
The rabbi wasn’t the easiest person to thank. I tried, but he was difficult.
“Mrs. Goldfarb gave me your present,” I said that evening as he scanned the day’s bills.
“It’s nothing, Benji,” he said without looking up, “a tiny gesture.”
“Yes, but it’s really not necessary.”
“It is necessary,” he said. “You need a honey dish.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t have one,” he said. He put the bills down and peered over his glasses. “Am I right?”
He had me there, circular logic and all.
“Now you do. And now you can have a sweet new year.”
I smiled. “Well, thank you.”
He nodded and went back to his paperwork. And without a word, the subject was closed.
Even though the rabbi wasn’t going to work,
he got dressed every day in the same slacks and button-down shirt he would have worn to the store. I viewed this as a positive sign.
Some afternoons when I stopped by, he’d invite me in and we’d chat. Other times, he was in the middle of something—typically reading upstairs in his study—and he’d take the papers from my hand with a quick “thank you” while we stood in the doorway, then I’d simply turn around and drive home.
Either way, his strength was improving and his spirits seemed fine. Calm and relaxed.
He was even making jokes. Once, just after Labor Day, when I handed him the day’s bills, he held them up to his nose and sniffed them. I asked what he was doing, and he said, “I’m just checking to see if Linda Goldfarb is smoking in the store.”
“I’m sure she isn’t,” I said, although I didn’t honestly know.
“She’s probably too busy popping open bottles of champagne because I’m not there,” he said.
I tried to reassure him: “No, I’m sure she’s—”
“I don’t mind,” he said, interrupting me. “I’m so happy not to see her every day, I’d be drinking champagne myself if my doctor would let me.”
He smiled, and I realized that he was putting me on.
“Fortunately, at my age, good old-fashioned ginger ale pretty much does the trick,” he said. “I pour a bit of Canada Dry into a wineglass before dinner and drink a toast to Linda Goldfarb in absentia, and it’s almost like New Year’s Eve in here. Actually, it’s better than New Year’s Eve. It’s like Sukkot!”
“I think those bubbles are going straight to your head,” I said, joining him in a chuckle.
“You know, Benji, maybe this was a good idea after all, taking some time off,” he told me as we sat in his living room. “I haven’t had a vacation in ages.”
Vacation. It wasn’t the word I’d have used to describe the rabbi’s situation. For most people, “vacation” involves lounging on a beach with a cocktail, toes digging tracks in the sand. Sitting home alone, taking blood thinners, studying Talmud or Torah or whatever the rabbi was studying—that wouldn’t be what most people would call a vacation. But I went along with it.
“What was your favorite place to go on vacation?” I asked.
“Sophie loved Miami Beach,” he said. “We bought a condo there about fifteen years ago. We were getting too old to schlep our luggage from hotel to hotel every time we went, so we got our own place. We would go down every Passover, and for a week every January, and over Thanksgiving. Sometimes just for a long weekend, too, if the cold weather got bad.”
“Sounds like a nice place,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “It was. Sophie used to talk about retiring there.”
I couldn’t imagine the rabbi retiring. What would he do? Play shuffleboard with the other old rabbis?
“When’s the last time you went?” I asked.
“I haven’t been there since Sophie passed away. I could never go back.”
“Well, you could always—”
“Never,” he interrupted, poking the air with his index finger, pointing straight up. “End of discussion.”
“He’s taking advantage of you, Benji.”
My mother. On the phone.
“He’s not taking advantage of me, Mom. This whole thing was my idea.”
“Then maybe you’re the one who needs to see a doctor,” she replied. “To have your head examined.”
“What’s the big deal? It’s hardly out of my way to drop off his mail.”
“So you’re a rabbi’s servant now?”
“He doesn’t have anyone else, Mom.”
“Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Benji, it doesn’t make any sense what you’re doing. What he needs is a home health aide or something, whatever they’re called. You know, a nurse to keep an eye on him.”
“He doesn’t need a nurse.”
“You said he was in the hospital.”
“Yes, he had a little stroke, but he’s fine now.”
“And you’re suddenly an expert in strokes? I didn’t realize you were premed at Maryland.”
“Come on.”
“Look, he’s got you running his errands for him, driving him around, delivering his mail. And what’s he paying you?”
I paused. “Nothing.”
“Exactly. He’s taking advantage of you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Explain to me how it’s not.”
“I can’t explain it, Mom. I guess I kind of feel sorry for him. He’s all alone, with no real friends, and no relatives nearby. All he really wants is someone to talk to once in a while.”
“So let him pay a shrink.”
I stopped to think of a better way to get through to her.
I began: “If you died and—”
“God forbid!”
“Yes, if you died, God forbid, and Dad was all alone, wouldn’t you want someone to look in on him and make sure he was okay?”
“Now you’re talking nonsense.”
“Why is that nonsense?”
“Because you live just a few miles away. He wouldn’t have to turn to a stranger. He’d have you.”
“Well, in the meantime, I suppose the rabbi has me, too.”
She was silent. We were at an impasse.
“Fine, so he can have you,” she said, changing the subject. “Can we borrow you just for one day? Your sister is flying in for Rosh Hashanah, with that husband of hers.”
“His name is Richard, Mom.”
She ignored me.
“Will you be coming to services with us?” she asked. “Or will you be going to the Orthodox shul with your rabbi this year?”
Apparently, we had progressed into sarcasm.
“Actually, I was thinking that this year I’d have a voodoo ceremony for Rosh Hashanah. Something with witchcraft and chanting and animal sacrifice.”
“Nothing you say surprises me at this point, Benji,” she said.
“Of course I’m coming to services,” I said. We went through this every year.
“Good. Get a haircut before then.”
“You haven’t seen me in weeks. How do you know I need a haircut?”
“I’m your mother,” she said, and hung up.
Michelle was trying to figure out her plans for Rosh Hashanah, too.
She called me at my office midafternoon, distraught. About Dan. She said she needed to talk to me after work, and before I hung up, I’d been roped into dinner and a movie at Union Station, not far from her office.
I’d played this role before, so even when I was still on the subway heading downtown to meet her, I already knew what the evening would involve: We’d meet in the food court and order cheesesteaks, but eat them open-faced to save a few calories, and she’d ask me how my day was. I’d have about six minutes before she got tired of listening to me and then she’d change the subject and spend the rest of the meal going on and on about her latest boyfriend troubles. I’d nod along, eat most of the french fries, and cut her off when it was time for the movie. We’d see some kind of stupid Hollywood comedy; we’d both laugh out loud while it was showing, and then talk about how lame it was when it was over. By then she’d be feeling better and she’d apologize for unloading on me. She’d give me a kiss and we’d go home and go to sleep.
I’d been helping Michelle in similar ways, with a dozen other boyfriends, for years.
I thought I might get more than my usual time at Union Station because I had something juicy to share: I’d scored a date that afternoon with a model from one of my Paradise ads.
“Let me guess,” she said, after a quick gasp, as we carried our dinner trays to a booth. “Blond.”
“That’s the best part,” I said. “He shaves his head. No hair at all!”
I hadn’t honestly entertained the possibility that one of my models would hit on me, but Frankie had been pretty obvious about it. When I told him he needed to take
off his shirt for a test shot, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “I will if you will.”
“Did you do it?” Michelle asked.
“I’m a professional,” I protested. “And by that I mean: Yes, I did. But I kept my pants on.”
“For now.”
“We’ll see what happens without all those cameras around.”
Michelle reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Well, I’m glad one of us is having fun,” she said, shifting the spotlight back to her as she launched into a story about Dan and one of his previous girlfriends.
“So he says that he just happened to bump into her last week and he just happened to be on his way to lunch and so he invited her to come along and she did and what’s the big deal,” she said as I mooched her fries. “And I’m like, ‘The big deal is that she’s your freakin’ ex-girlfriend and you’re not supposed to be going on dates with her.’ And he’s all, ‘It wasn’t a date,’ and I’m all, ‘If it wasn’t a date, then why didn’t you tell me about it for a whole week?’ And he says, ‘Because I knew you’d overreact.’ Like the whole thing was my fault. Can you even believe him?”
Sitting here watching Michelle have a meltdown about what seemed to me like an innocent lunch, I could believe him. But I didn’t mention that to her. Not that she paused long enough for me to interject anything anyway.
“So I told him that if he wanted to see her so much, maybe he should take her to the Redskins game this Sunday, and have her help him pick out new work clothes this weekend, and go home with her for Rosh Hashanah.”
“Is she Jewish?” I asked.
“Of course she’s Jewish. God, are you even listening? I was supposed to bring Dan home to Philly for Rosh Hashanah next week. I was going to introduce him to my parents. But now I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll go home with you,” I joked. “And Dan can spend Rosh Hashanah with my parents. That could be his punishment.”
She smiled, and her tirade derailed. “Your parents are great, Benji.”
“Okay, then you spend Rosh Hashanah with them, and I’ll take Dan to Philly to meet your parents, and he can be my boyfriend from now on.”
Sweet Like Sugar Page 11
