Esther clearly liked what she was hearing. They shared Sharon Springs and loathsome fathers, and they bonded with a grandfather. “This is fascinating! But you must tell me more about your mother.”
Deronda looked down at his feet and sighed as if he would prefer not to. “My mother is, how shall I say it, a Jewish mother. She recently sent me a pair of earmuffs from Emile’s Thrift Shop. Yes, earmuffs. I know it is summer. And she sends ample advice.”
“About women and how to avoid them?” asked Esther, laughing.
“Frankly, yes. I moved out of our apartment only last year to test the waters on my own. You see, I too am a caricature. For example, if I arrange a social visit, I must include my mother. She helps out with the conversation.” Deronda again looked down at his feet. “You see, Dr. Federman, my rabbi runs an online dating service. But it is not what you think.”
“How do I sign up?” asked Esther.
“You cannot if you are not already a member of our synagogue,” he said with emphasis. “You would not be given the password.”
Deronda didn’t seem to be taking the bait, so Esther tried a tactic that would have unforeseeable consequences. Philosophers call this sort of thing moral luck or, better, moral bad luck.
Turning to me, she said, “Jack, you for one are not a member of my synagogue. How could we ever manage?”
She tritely pinched my right cheek, trying to ignite Deronda by flirting with another man. Darwinians call this mating display, I call it child psychology.
Hoping that Esther would indeed find a man more suitable than I, I played along. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Look, I’ll leave the Muggletonians, convert and join your synagogue, and get the password from your rabbi.”
“Keep it up,” whispered Esther.
Assume a quarter hour of inane dialogue between Esther and me, while Sheila sullenly guzzled Goat White and Deronda uneasily looked on. I paid Esther compliment after compliment, mercifully omitted here. But the effect was less to stoke Deronda’s fire than to stir up Sheila’s yellow bile. I was tapping a vein I had not fully registered before.
“Mr. Deronda, a word to the wise. You won’t score with my sister if your gematria doesn’t add up.” She swilled more Goat White, a wine so sweet that it induces a kind of diabetic high.
“Hmmm,” Esther calculated, obviously interested in the question. “The name Daniel is forty-six, I think.”
“Forty-six. That number must be either perfect or sacred,” I said hopefully.
Esther was silent. Clearly this number was nowhere. And I feared Deronda was staying in the wrong room.
Sheila turned her animus toward me. Strange that a Plant Spirit healer would even have animus.
“You’re big with the compliments this evening, Mr. Jack Thrasher.” She kicked my right shin. “Maybe Es hasn’t told you some other things about herself, like her bulimia and kleptomania and the chronic papillomavirus.”
“Her what?” asked Deronda.
“Sheila, hush! Don’t believe a word of this, Mr. Deronda.” Esther took a gulp of Goat White and retaliated. “Jack, has Sheila told you about her affair with Thor?”
“Esther, shush! Okay, you asked for it. Jack, has my sister told you about her affair with Thor?”
I silently questioned whether Plato was right when he declared wine to be the greatest gift of the gods. Sheila’s affair with Thor? I had intuited this long ago but didn’t know what to make of it. And Esther’s affair with Thor? I had taken him at his word—it was short-lived.
“That’s a fib!” replied Esther. “You know damned well that Ohnstad and I never . . .” She looked at Deronda, who was shifting from one foot to another as if getting ready to shuffle off. “You know the expression, Mr. Deronda, this goy and I never ‘prepared the mattress of love.’”
“Thank you for the information.”
“You narcissistic twit,” said Esther to Sheila. “It’s your father’s fault that my mother is in her grave.”
“It’s your father’s fault that I was sexually abused.”
“But I was just now under the impression,” ventured Deronda, “that you two young ladies shared a father—a furrier father, if I am not mistaken.”
This was the first I’d heard of sexual abuse. I feared the exchange was about to end in sororal mud wrestling when Ohnstad rang the cowbell. He stood next to a large statue of Silenus, took the mike, and began uttering benefit platitudes. I tuned him out and scanned the gathering. Tabby and Harris’s crew had cameras and mikes everywhere, picking up stray and damning remarks. There was overlap with the Glimmerglass crowd of facelifts and drool. Some of the Holy Ravioli crowd had crashed the party, thinking another revelation might be at hand, maybe this time in the German sausage. And I noticed that the county-fair queens were peering in our direction.
Sheila and Esther breathed heavily and seethed on both sides of me. I try hard not to be a male chauvinist but couldn’t help puzzling over all the fashionable talk of a sisterhood. I felt caught ’twixt mighty opposites and prayed Ohnstad’s speech would last long enough for bile to subside. Having acknowledged the top donors of the Friends of Hyde Hall and called for increased donations, he passed along to other matters.
“As you know, Cooperstown has recently been the scene of eerie happenings. I need not remind you of the disappearance of the Cardiff Giant. Jack Thrasher and Sheila Drake have had the most recent sighting. The giant is for real, and Sheriff Tarbox is judicious in concluding there may well be aliens in our midst.”
Guests looked apprehensively to their left and right, while I pondered the hypocrisy of this seasoned skeptic adding to the paranormal craze. Granted, I was now a reluctant believer in the giant, but Ohnstad had no right to be, whatever the gain in local revenues.
“I personally thank Tabby and Harris for spreading the word. But I must fault the current governor for not following the counsel of his own I Ching oracle. He should order the National Guard up here to protect the citizenry. When I’m governor I’ll see to it that the giant is caught and the aliens get sent packing. And that the Holy Ravioli gets irradiated. Say, folks, has anybody seen the great Homero?”
I was looking around for Homero and had taken note that Hazel Bouche, never far from the smorgasbord, was unaccompanied. Would Sheila be leaving shortly for a rendezvous with “the Bat”?
“And now may I lean on your generosity and urge that, beyond the coffers of Hyde Hall, you make a contribution to the Ohnstad-for-governor campaign chest!”
Anemic applause followed this indiscreet appeal. I was embarrassed for Ohnstad. But he continued with a surprise announcement. “Friends of Hyde Hall and other guests, I now have the honor of introducing Danny Deronda, famed master of klezmer bluegrass, who will entertain us with a medley of Catskill Mountain melodies. Danny, take the mike!”
“My God!” exclaimed Esther. “That’s how I know your name. Danny Deronda. You are hot!”
“It is only my avocation,” said Deronda, who walked stiffly to the mike and without smiling stuck his fiddle under his chin, which I now saw had a prominent fiddler’s callus. He blinked a few times while registering the crowd through thick specs—most were still guzzling, chomping, and chattering—and, without saying a word, began to fiddle.
Within seconds this prodigious talent had silenced even the ageing beauty queens. All at once transformed from stiff stick to pliant river reed, he entered into a trance not unlike Yo Yo Ma at the cello, lunging forward and tilting back dramatically, making the instrument laugh and cry by turns. Such bluegrass standards as “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” “Truck Driving Man,” and “Dill Pickle Rag” reappeared as Jewish klezmer. He was making American mountain music fuse with the spirit and intonation of shtetels and urban ghettos, the double stops and hot licks of bluegrass augmented by the weeping ornaments and trills of the Eastern European fiddle. Entranced along with the rest of us, Esther became a Danny Deronda groupie on the spot.
When he shifted gears and began playing
a Yiddish Bulgar, or circle dance, the ageing county-fair beauty queens mistook it for a square dance and began to do-se-do. Squares don’t mix well with circles, so this unseemly misappropriation made Deronda snap out of his trance. He stopped playing after only two Bulgars and reconverted to a stiff stick while people applauded warmly. He bowed formally, said “Thank you kindly for your attention,” and rejoined us. Esther gaped at him as if he were Moses de Léon. Though all of us had been floored by his exquisite, impassioned music, Deronda himself now looked as if nothing had happened.
Ohnstad announced that Deronda CDs could be purchased near the cherubs, and the benefit began to peter out. Sheila excused herself to go upstairs to the ladies’ room—and indulged in some tongue display at Esther. I was left alone with her and Deronda. Ohnstad joined us.
“Hi, Danny boy. See you’ve fallen in with the best our party has to offer—Esther Federman and Jack Thrasher. How’s Sharon Springs moving along? Have you thought of getting I Drink Your Blood on Turner Cable? Good fundraiser!” He laughed heartily but Deronda was silent. “I know, movies are nowhere mentioned in the Torah. By the way, Esther here has a solid grounding in the Torah. The two of you would have lots to talk about. Just for curiosity, what’s your room number at the Otesaga?”
“Odd, Dr. Federman made inquiry into this matter upon our meeting,” said Deronda.
“That figures. Never mind. Say, where’s Sheila?”
“Ladies’ room,” I said.
“I must circulate,” said Ohnstad, “but please let her know I asked after her. Danny, your performance was gift enough to our benefit, but I hope you have something left over for my election fund. As governor, I’ll do what I can for Sharon Springs.”
I ducked out and ran toward the ladies’ room to find Sheila. Lots I wanted to ask her now—like why she and Esther had some mutual resentment that had eluded me, or what manner of fling she’d had with Ohnstad. What was that about sexual abuse? And, yes, did she know the whereabouts of Homero? Mother of Jesus, I hoped not.
I went up the central staircase and looked around. No Sheila. Maybe she returned to the first floor by a back stairwell. I cased the first floor. No Sheila. Then the bedrooms, the wine cellar, the servants’ quarters, the fountains, frog ponds, gazeboes, treehouses, bushes, and sacred groves. No Sheila. I asked Ohnstad to make an announcement over the PA.
“Will Sheila Drake please come to the grand stairwell. Jack Thrasher awaits you.”
I waited and waited. Esther and Deronda departed together in his ancient Studebaker. She was in no way concerned about her half-sister. “That slut went off with somebody else, Jack,” she whispered. “Here are keys to the Mercedes. Go back to the Otesaga—take this Klonopin. And wish me well.”
“I do, Esther. May the Horses of Fire be feeling their oats.”
— Chapter Fifteen —
FOLLOWING HUNCHES
The Klonopin did little to ward off the dark night of the soul. Both women had left me. I assumed that down the hallway Esther was with Deronda, an improbable pickup, but for all I knew, his yesod might overtake her mayim nukvim. Maybe he was a true fiddler in bed. This was nothing like Sheila’s desertion to the elephantine arms of Homero. I concluded that, yes, his absence from the benefit made it easier for Sheila to rendezvous with him afterward. I suffered visions of their doing the tango by other means. After years of abstinence she must be at the ready. It was his very incongruity that enabled her—she could be simultaneously impassioned and aloof, the fantasy made literal and held in check.
A sick and self-punishing curiosity led me to approach his room at the Otesaga. I snuck down the hall in my bathrobe and pajamas but was thwarted by three bodyguards. “Past your bedtime, chooch,” said one. “Take a walk.”
A late call to Sheila’s cabin in Cherry Valley didn’t even engage an answering machine—a contraption that interfered with natural energy lines.
Esther called me later that morning with a rundown of her night of passion with Deronda. He declined her invitation to continue the evening so that he might finish reading Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg. “I’ll keep trying . . . Have you heard from my sister? She doesn’t answer.”
“I’m surprised you even called her after yesterday’s squabble,” I said.
“Silly, that’s how we bond. You can be really dense, Jack. But, yes, I was going to forgive her. Where is she?”
By late morning when she’d not shown up for work at the opera house, it was clear Sheila had disappeared. Esther and I went to the sheriff.
“Looky here,” said Tarbox, “cain’t do nuttin’ fer twenty-four hours. We gotta see if she shows up dead or alive. Missing persons can already be dead, yah know. What was she wearing?”
“A fake 1860s chemise worn by Princess Hermia in the Glimmerglass production of Offenbach’s Bluebeard,” said Esther, as if this would be useful to Tarbox.
Well, it was. “Eighteen sixties,” he said. “Dat’s the same as when the Cardiff Giant got found. He might’ve took her fer one of his own. Her own fuckin’ fault. Give me twenty-four hours, den I organize a search party.”
Not willing to wait that long, I organized a search party of my own—Esther, Deronda, and me. At the wheel of her Mercedes, Esther took charge. In addition to a road map of Otsego County, she packed a kabbalistic primer. Off we sped, following her hunches. Deronda crouched in the backseat, terrified by Esther’s lurching and screeching.
“My sister’s not been kidnapped. She’s making a sacred voyage, like the yordei merkava who descend in a chariot. The Book of Enoch says this voyage can last five hundred years.”
“Let’s try five hours, or five commercial breaks,” I insisted. “I hope you’re right—she just took off on her own in a snit. Where would she go?”
“Let’s look at the map.” She did some rapid calculations on her smartphone. “I’ve got it. You know of Sheila’s love affair with trees. In the oral literature of Kabbalah, the word is ilan, from the Aramaic ilana. It has a gematria of ninety-one, the same as malakh, or angel. That’s no coincidence. Now the number of love—that’s ahava in Hebrew—is thirteen. And you know how Sheila feels about her father, quite the opposite of love. So I know where she is. She’s meditating beneath a tree angel in the Forest of the Dozen Dads, purging the dad in her.”
“Dozen, but you said thirteen.”
“Yes, Jack, it’s a baker’s dozen.”
So we vroomed out Black’s Road to the Forest of the Dozen Dads where we found a smattering of picnic tables, a solitary family of rednecks hunkered over headcheese, and a baker’s dozen of crows.
“Have you perchance seen a woman, midthirties, auburn hair, very well put together, wearing an 1860s chemise?” asked Esther of the rednecks.
The one sitting with rump hanging out over dungarees turned and replied, “Go fuck yourself, lady. Nobody here but us locals. You a kike?”
We got the message and piled back in the Mercedes. We neared Highway 33, the road to Cherry Valley.
“The sacred tree of the sephiroth has thirty-three branches!” exclaimed Esther. “Or maybe only thirty-two but close enough.”
“And Jacob had thirty-three children by his first wife, Leah,” chimed in Deronda, wishing now to ingratiate himself with Esther, a good sign.
“And Sheila’s been staying in Cherry Valley,” I added.
We scooted off to Cherry Valley at sixty-six miles per hour. The Cherry Valley Massacre during the Revolutionary War put the town on the map. Brits and Native Americans teamed up to murder a valley full of settlers. But it became known as “The Happy Valley” because all the survivors were high on lithium, abundant in the water supply. Sheila insisted the settlers were white imperialists, just asking for it. The Native Americans, her ancestors, were reclaiming their own.
She’d been staying on Maiden Lane in a Gothic house with steep gables and pierced bargeboards. It looked like a storybook cottage. Put in mind of the horrors of children’s literature, I knew we’d find her head on the mantle and l
imbs in a stewpot.
But this cottage of horrors yielded not much more than a Hall of Fame induction ceremony program signed “To Sheila—let’s tango!—Tony the Bat.”
Esther found relics of their girlhood days, including stuffed animals that her sister always took with her, claiming they were a more reliable source of respect and companionship than men. Next to three ceremonial peace pipes, there were also some brochures—the Lollypop Farm and Petting Zoo, the Buffalo Farm, Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park at Crystal Lake, Tepee Pete’s Chow Wagon, the Fly Creek Philharmonic, the Garlic Festival at Dancing Veggie Farm, and the Erie Canal. Where to begin?
Esther set to work again on the gematriot for all these venues, while Deronda and I commiserated. “Dr. Federman’s kabbalistic calculations have yet to bear fruit,” he noted.
“Well, third try is charmed.” But I dreaded the prospect of that petting zoo, not to mention the Fly Creek Philharmonic, so I suggested to Deronda that we figure this out with scant reference to sacred or perfect numbers. Where else might she be? My eyes then fell upon a recent issue of The Historic Fly Creek Cider Mill & Orchard Newsletter, lying on Sheila’s straw-filled futon. It carried an ad for the Antiques Roadshow, now being held at Hyde Hall. Hyde Hall . . . Eureka!
The Cardiff Giant Page 9