Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  “Not likely.”

  “So he’ll be half-Jewish,” M. J. said, lightly. “Half is better than none, right?”

  Zach knew some interfaith couples had made it work but he couldn’t see how. Would Terrell say the Sh’ma at his place, the Lord’s Prayer at hers? Would he consecrate the wafer and bless the matzah? Could his Jewish half believe the world is still waiting for the Messiah if his Christian half believed the Messiah already came, died, and got resurrected?

  “Half gets complicated,” Zach said, finishing his drink. “Suppose he’s not thrilled with a menorah and some dreidls and potato latkes. If he says he wants me to have a Christmas tree like his mom, I’d have to say no. Some fun dad.”

  M. J. cocked his head. “What if you called it a Hanukkah bush and stuck a Jewish Star on top?”

  The chef advanced them from martinis to T-bone steaks, linguine in garlic and oil, a good bottle of Barolo, and brownies with homemade hazelnut ice cream. It was eleven o’clock when they finished eating.

  Zach helped with the dishes. “I’m wasted, M. J. If I don’t go home now I’ll fall asleep standing up. Thanks for putting up with me, for listening, for feeding me so well—for everything.” He dragged himself across the hall and climbed into bed but didn’t conk out. He flipped his pillow to the cool side and kicked off the sheets. Still awake twenty minutes later, he got up and warmed some milk in the microwave, his father’s go-to treatment for insomnia. The playground scene kept rewinding in his head, Terrell’s voice alternating with Cleo’s and Rivka’s—a three-part fugue that kept him from sinking into oblivion. No use fighting it. He spent the rest of the night in the rocking chair in Anabelle’s room, watching a pillar of moonlight roll across the floor until it merged with the pink creep of dawn. When the sun edged over the roof of the building across the street, Zach reviewed his case notes, staggered to the shower, and got dressed for court.

  Caffeine and adrenaline carried him through his opening statement. The Slater case was a twin of the one he’d argued years ago on behalf of the cop with dreadlocks, except for the added component of military law. Shlomo (formerly Stuart) Slater, an army chaplain who’d been ordained in Conservative Judaism, had recently come under the influence of a Hasidic master and now considered himself a baal teshuva, the Jewish equivalent of a born-again Christian. In keeping with his new religious rigor, Slater had grown a long beard and ear curls, which he insisted neither interfered with the performance of his pastoral duties nor his capacity to minister to soldiers of all faiths and denominations. The Army disagreed and charged the chaplain with violating military regulations, which require a “neat and conservative appearance,” a standard decided on a case-by-case basis. After being found guilty in a military court, Slater had asked the ACLU to appeal the judgment in federal court and Zach Levy had been assigned to the case.

  Zach began his argument with an exegesis on the power of hair to signify something larger than itself:

  “Like a religious Sikh, Muslim, or any other observant male, the chaplain wears his hair in a manner consistent with the tenets of his faith. As clearly as his uniform proclaims his service to the United States Army and his insignia proclaims his rank, Shlomo Slater’s beard and payess proclaim that he is an Orthodox Jew, thereby conveying to the world what he stands for. No one has to guess.

  “Were he your neighbor, you would not offer him a lobster roll or ask him to drive you to the mall on Saturday. If he declined to shake your mother’s hand, you would know it was nothing personal. Were you his private-sector employer, you would not be permitted to discriminate against him because of his beliefs or demand that he violate his conscience to keep his job. We Americans pride ourselves on our respect for the religious practices of our fellow citizens. We grant each other the dignity of difference.

  “My client is not petitioning for the right to be trendy. He is asking for the right to express his religious beliefs. If a political activist can wear a campaign button to signal his partisanship and a union member can carry a picket sign to show her affiliation, a member of the clergy should be free to wear the symbols that bespeak his fidelity to his faith. For Shlomo Slater, hair is speech. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that the Army has deprived him of his First Amendment rights and must affirm and reinstate his religious freedom.”

  Zach wished he could define his own Jewish identity as succinctly as he’d defined his client’s. Hair was speech for Slater because he knew what he wanted to say.

  When the trial broke at noon, Zach invited the chaplain to lunch at his favorite Vietnamese restaurant.

  Slater waved a paper bag under Zach’s nose. “I brought my own. I keep kosher.”

  “Of course. Sorry.” Zach blushed. What was he thinking? “I’ll get an egg salad sandwich at the deli and meet you over there.” He pointed to the small park that straddled Chinatown and the courthouse district. “It’s a great spot for people watching.”

  Slater nodded and started toward the little park. When Zach joined him on a bench, the chaplain unfurled his bag, took out a soft roll, said a blessing over it, and gave half the roll to Zach. They ate the bread watching the lunchtime parade of lawyers, judges, jurors, court clerks, and stenographers mingling with the local Asian waiters, fishmongers, and office workers.

  “Our boys are always falling for them,” Slater muttered, tearing open the wax-paper wrapping on half of a roast chicken. “It’s a shonde.”

  “Falling for whom?” Zach knew shonde meant disgrace.

  “Asian girls.” The chaplain wrenched off the drumstick and jabbed it in the direction of a woman in a high-necked, Mao-style jacket. “A Jewish soldier meets one of them, she’s smart, beautiful, comes from a close-knit family so he thinks she’s like us; he falls in love and marries her.” Slater gnawed on the chicken leg. “But they’re not us. They’re as goyish as that black woman you got involved with.”

  Zach squirmed. He regretted confiding his dilemma to Slater. Bad move.

  “You should never have been with her in the first place,” the chaplain scolded.

  Zach unwrapped his egg salad sandwich.

  “You knew it was against Jewish law to go with a gentile girl but you didn’t know gentile girls could get pregnant? What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I just loved her.”

  “That’s what they all say.” The chaplain shook his head. “Okay, you did it, so what now? First, you have to pray for forgiveness. Tell the Almighty you made a terrible mistake and you’ll never do it again. Then, you have to call that woman and tell her you’re not taking her boy. You can’t take him. He’s not yours.”

  “He’s definitely mine,” Zach said, balancing his sandwich on his lap.

  “Genetically, maybe, but not halachically. If you take him, he’ll be a bad influence on your other children. I’m not saying he’s a bad boy. I’m saying when your Jewish children see their father loves a Christian child the same as he loves them, they’ll think it’s not so important to be a Jew.”

  “You’re telling me I should walk away from my own flesh and blood? How can that be right?”

  “Because according to Jewish law, he’s not yours. If he’s a gentile, he’s not Jewish and if he’s not Jewish, he can’t be yours.” Slater ate the last of his chicken. “Remember that the Fifth Commandment doesn’t say, ‘Honor your child,’ it says, ‘Honor your father and mother.’ May they rest in peace. You made your mother a vow. Don’t think you can fulfill it with a mamzer grandchild.”

  The word meant bastard. Zach’s thigh muscles went into spasm, sending his sandwich off his lap and onto the filthy ground. He threw it in the trash basket. He’d made a colossal mistake. A lawyer is supposed to give advice, not solicit it.

  “Forget I asked,” he said.

  “Forget is what you should do,” the chaplain retorted. “Forget you ever saw the boy.” He dumped his chicken bones into the brown paper bag and dropped it in the trash on top of Zach’s dirty sandwich. R
eaching in the breast pocket of his uniform, he opened a small, worn booklet entitled Birchat HaMazon (Grace After Meals) and gestured toward a page as if he expected his lawyer to say the prayer with him.

  Zach grunted, “No, thanks,” and stood up, eager to escape. “I have to get back to court. See you inside.” That afternoon, sitting beside his client at counsel’s table, he had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t just representing Shlomo Slater, he was representing the Bill of Rights.

  CHAPTER 21

  RUNNING OUT

  ON HIS WAY HOME FROM COURT, ZACH STOPPED AT THE video store and rented Kramer vs. Kramer—because he’d heard it was a stark portrait of single fatherhood—but before playing it, he decided to go to the gym to make up for the workout he’d missed that morning. However, the effort it took to change his clothes and put on sneakers triggered a fatigue so incapacitating that he could barely rise off the couch to insert the cassette. Surrendering to passivity, he watched the movie until Dustin Hoffman’s character found it impossible to balance his responsibilities to his five-year-old son and still keep his job. Zach switched to the Mets vs. Braves game, where a less agitating scenario was in progress—New York ahead 6–0, Atlanta at bat, two outs, nobody on. After an uneventful inning, he picked up the phone and ordered Vietnamese takeout, the dishes he would have had if he hadn’t opted to eat on the bench with Slater.

  Even after stuffing the remains of the meal in his garbage pail, the food left a strong funky after odor in the loft. He gathered up the cardboard cartons and brought them down to the basement to dispose of them in the incinerator. The building super was flaked out beside the furnace, sound asleep in his ratty, old desk chair, snoring. What a sad way to spend a summer night, Zach thought, then realized his own situation was not much better. He hadn’t felt this alone in the universe since Bonnie and Anabelle moved out. No one was waiting for him, missing him, needing him. M. J. was cooking at Lovage. Herb was romancing some new flame. And none of Zach’s other friends knew about his dilemma so before he could confide his misery, he would have to update them, which would take way too much time and energy. In truth, he could throw himself into the incinerator this minute and no one would know or care until the super woke up and smelled something odd.

  The thought of going back upstairs to his empty loft made him feel sick. He tightened his sneaker laces and went out for a run—west on Spring Street to catch the breeze off the Hudson, then south to Battery Park, which was where he got it into his head to repeat on foot the route that he and Cleo had taken on their bikes soon after they met. A Central Park loyalist, she had never explored Manhattan’s smaller parks so he’d mapped out a bike route that took them past the verdant neighborhood squares, hidden gardens, and jewellike green triangles that defied the city’s geometric street grid. They’d begun the tour right here in Battery Park, biked to Washington Square Park, then to Union Square, where they’d stopped at the Greenmarket and bought warm apple cider, a wedge of New York State cheddar, and fresh cinnamon donuts, and then with sugary lips shared a kiss beneath the statue of Abraham Lincoln.

  After covering that same route, Zach jogged up to Gramercy Park, then to Paley Park on Fifty-Third between Madison and Fifth, where they had leaned their bicycles against a locust tree and kissed at the waterfall cascading down the sidewall of the office building. Now, he noticed a tented sidewalk sign in front of the pub across the street—TAP BEER 50 CENTS—and rooting in the pockets of his running shorts, came up with two quarters and three dimes, enough for a beer and a 60 percent tip. The place was nearly deserted. The bartender let him nurse his Heineken through the end of the game—final score, Mets 6, Braves 1—as well as the entire half hour of the eleven o’clock news. About to make a pit stop before continuing on to Clinton Park, which had been next on his bike tour with Cleo, Zach changed his mind when four hulks in motorcycle jackets pushed through the front door of the bar and went charging to the men’s room. He left with a full bladder. The sound of the waterfall across the street was nearly his undoing. All the East Side restaurants were closed and the closest bathroom he could think of was at Herb’s place farther uptown so he pushed through his exhaustion and sprinted up Fifth Avenue and finally staggered into Herb’s lobby.

  The doorman greeted him with a cold stare. It was past midnight and Zach was dripping sweat on the Oriental rug. “Is Mr. Black expecting you?”

  “He’s not—but please call upstairs and tell him I’m here: Zach Levy.”

  The gold fringe on the man’s shoulder epaulets shimmied as he stepped over to a marble ledge and picked up the house phone. Mercifully, Herb was home. “You may proceed,” the man said as if waving Zach in to see the wizard.

  When the elevator opened on his floor, Herb was standing in the hall in a silk robe that matched his pajamas. “You look demented, man. What happened?”

  “Hell’s Angels.” Zach made a beeline for the bathroom, stammering, “Didn’t want to take my dick out.” He peed for what seemed like two solid minutes.

  “You’re not making sense,” Herb said.

  “Been running on no sleep and bad Vietnamese food. Okay if I crash in your guest room?”

  “All yours,” Herb said, leading the way. “There’s fresh towels, toothbrush, razor, whatever you need. I have an early meeting tomorrow but I’ll leave you a change of clothes so you can go straight to court.”

  Zach sat on the made-up guest bed and took off his sneakers. “Slater’s been carried over until Monday. I’ll have plenty of time to go home in the morning and change for the office, but I do need some cash.” Turning the pockets of his running shorts inside out triggered a split-second recall of the missing C-note. His life had not improved since Babka. Everything was more complicated, not less.

  “I’ll leave you a twenty on the hall table,” Herb said. “Help yourself to breakfast. I think there’s an egg. And some olives.” Herb closed the door behind him; had he been M. J. Randolph, he would have turned down the covers, brewed a pot of chamomile tea, and refused to let Zach go to bed until he had unburdened himself. Tonight, though, it was good that Herb was Herb; he offered something that, at this moment, Zach wanted more than succor: blessed silence. A man needs both kinds of friends.

  He passed a wet washcloth over his face, stripped off his grungy running clothes, and slid between the sheets. The guest room, though likely intended by the original architect to be a nursery, was decorated like a deluxe double at the Waldorf—quilted window cornice, sharply pleated draperies, tailored tuxedo chair, matching desk accessories. To Zach’s bloodshot eyes, these details suddenly seemed pitiful. For the first time since they’d met, Zach felt sorry for Herb. The man had a classy apartment but no family to fill it. When the digital clock read 3:00 a.m., Zach started counting the hours and minutes to Cleo’s deadline and fell asleep double-checking his arithmetic.

  The clock read 7:57 when he was awakened by the old dream—the castle, the stampeding baby carriage, his child self running after it as fast as he could. This time, however, when the stroller toppled into the river, he dove in and rescued the baby. After all these years, the dream’s new ending was a great relief to Zach. Except the baby’s face kept changing. First it was Yitzhak’s, then Terrell’s, then the face of a child Zach didn’t recognize. A child yet to be born.

  CHAPTER 22

  ADVANCED RESEARCH

  AT TEN O’CLOCK ON THURSDAY MORNING, THIRTY-EIGHT hours before Cleo’s deadline, Zach arrived at the office, wearing Herb’s clothes, to put in some face time at work, a charade of busyness punctuated by several trips to the coffee machine, water cooler, and other people’s desks. At twelve-thirty, he and Herb went out to lunch.

  Zach ordered a burger; his friend, after studying the menu intently, chose the soy croquettes.

  “Since when are you into bean cuisine?” Zach asked.

  “My girl’s vegan. I’ve got to learn to like this stuff.”

  “Since when do you have a girl?”

  “Six days ago.”
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br />   Zach leaned across the table. “Great! How come you never told me?”

  “You never asked.”

  Zach nodded and looked away.

  “It’s okay, man.” Herb mock punched Zach’s shoulder. “You’ve got issues. How’d you sleep? Guest room comfortable?”

  “Perfect. Thanks for taking me in. What’s her name, the girlfriend?”

  “Nancy Gordon.”

  “I thought you were saving yourself for Cybill Shepard.”

  “Cybill was my fantasy. Nancy’s real. I’m in love I think.”

  “Fantastic! How’d you meet her?”

  “She called to recruit me, white-shoe law firm, she’s a headhunter—”

  “You can’t leave the ACLU, Herbie! We promised we’d be lifers together.”

  Herb grinned. “I’m not going anywhere. I nixed the job offer but I’ve seen Nancy five nights out of the last six.”

  “Wow! For you that’s serious.”

  Herb chewed his croquette as if his teeth could unlock its flavor. “I’m telling you, man, I think she’s it.”

  Zach slid his chair sideways to escape a shaft of sunlight. His burger had come with a logjam of fries and a dollop of ketchup in a pleated paper cup. He stared at his plate. He salted the meat without tasting it first. Lately everything needed salt. The two men slipped into the effortless silence of close friends.

  “Is she Jewish?” Zach finally asked.

  “Christ, man! Give it a rest! Do you care about anything else?”

  “Unlike some people, I don’t have the luxury of not caring.”

  “That supposed to be an insult? I just told you I’m crazy about this woman and all you can do is ask her religion? No wonder you’re alone.”

  “I’m sorry the one promise I made to my mom who barely sur—well, actually, didn’t survive the Holocaust strikes you as petty,” Zach said. “But you’re right. I’m alone and you’re not and I’m glad you have someone. I can’t wait to meet her.” On the restaurant’s sound system, Tony Bennett crooned his regret at having left his heart in San Francisco.