The Saturday Wife

by Ragen, Naomi

  Marilyn’s parents—a housewife and an insurance agent—were limited in their means, but nevertheless had high aspirations for their children, for whom they wanted the best of everything. Her mother sewed her clothes and carefully braided her hair. Although they couldn’t afford a private parochial school education, and Marilyn had been sent to public school, they made sure she faithfully attended Sunday and after-school Hebrew programs at her Brooklyn Orthodox synagogue.

  This was fine with Marilyn. But as she started high school and began to attend Orthodox Jewish youth programs, she became acutely aware of the social disadvantages of her background. Those who had attended the expensive Hebrew day schools and summer camps tended to date each other and to look down on the public school kids, however observant.

  For years she tried her best at the Thursday night midtown Manhattan indoor ice skating rink, where young Orthodox singles mingled. But she brought home only sore ankles and bruised pride—not to mention cold sores—for her trouble. Then, when high school had come and gone and she found herself dateless at Brooklyn College, one of her friends suggested investing in a weekend at Grossinger’s up in the Catskills, the great, kosher watering hole of mateless Jewish singles on the cusp of morphing from youthful attractiveness into carefully made-up desperation. Marilyn’s panic-stricken parents hurriedly laid out the money.

  And it was there, on her first try, that she met Joe Goldgrab.

  He was her waiter.

  Joe had a past that Marilyn liked to call “colorful,” at least in front of her family. The child of Jewish parents from Tyler, Texas, he had wanted to be a dress designer, then a sailor, and then a movie producer, and in the middle he had been drafted to Vietnam. After four horrendous years in the military, he had gone back home, only to find he was a piece of a jigsaw but the puzzle had changed. He wound up in New York, where he lived in dives and washed dishes until one of the more sympathetic waiters tipped him off about the big money and big knockers available to him in the Catskills during Jewish holidays.

  He had been disappointed on the first count, but not the second.

  He had smiled and brought her an extra dessert. She had smiled back. And later that weekend, when the men at her table were busy wooing the skinny straight-haired blondes, graduates of Ramaz and Flatbush Yeshiva, whose parents owned two-family homes and thriving businesses, Marilyn went walking on the grass with Joe. They sat by the pool in cold Adirondack chairs and looked up at the amazing stars. She found his Texas twang charming and his ambitions in fashion design and moviemaking thrilling. His military experience, which under normal circumstances would have anointed him with a huge black X as a marriage prospect, filled her with compassion. As he told it, he had been tricked into joining ROTC by slick on-campus recruiters dangling scholarships and National Guard duty, people who had disappeared along with signed promises not to draft him, replacing his college career with the jungles of Southeast Asia. Sure, he’d been bitter at first, he told her. But there were worse things than serving a country that had taken in his ancestors and protected them from the bullies of the world.

  His words touched her.

  Soon, he was taking her out weekends, to the theater and to bars, places Orthodox men seldom went. And although he was not what she, or her ambitious mother, had had in mind, both mother and daughter recognized the budding tire that would slowly envelop the youthful slim hips of the younger as it had the elder, realizing it was going to be Joe, or nobody. With her mother’s encouragement, she told herself, “I can make him into whatever I want him to be.”

  Joe, far from home, liked Marilyn’s parents, her warm house filled with the smells of chicken soup and knaidlach, and her warm, generous, yielding body, which gave a man something to hold on to instead of skin and bones. They got engaged. They got married. It was all a whirl of white—dresses, cake frosting, flowers. They rented a little apartment in Brooklyn near her parents. She dropped out of college, took a course in shorthand and typing, and got a job in an insurance office. He took a course in fashion design at FIT. The other students were a decade younger, savvy New Yorkers. Behind his back, they snickered at his hopelessly dowdy evening dresses, which could be envisioned only on aging, slightly overweight British royalty. He finished the course and got a job pushing around racks of dresses in Seventh Avenue knock-off shops, a job that had come with a nice title and many, many promises, none of which materialized.

  She got pregnant. She gained and gained and gained. And with every pound, he lost more and more interest in their marriage and in their life. Big shouting matches ensued. Her parents got involved. The word divorce hung in the air like cold smoke from a recent cooking fire.

  But when his first child was born, a boy, a new light came into his eyes. The baby was a little blond blue-eyed darling. Joe adored his son with an excess of love that spilled over onto the woman who had given birth to him. He had wanted to create something special in the world: a masterpiece of beauty and charm that was his own vision. With the child, his failures seemed to have been atoned for.

  He reconciled with his wife, but insisted they move away from her parents. And so they found a place out in the Rockaways, near the ocean. He had always been clever with his hands. He got a full-time job in a car repair shop and took up part-time alcoholism. He tried to be a good father to make up for being a disinterested husband.

  By the time Delilah was born, her parents had settled into their private Cold War, their dreams exploded into rubble. Like the inhabitants of Dresden, they built a new life on top of the debris. Using their dead hopes as fertilizer to help raise a new generation, they would never cease to burden their children with the task of fulfilling their own unfulfilled desires and expectations from life, all the while insisting “they only wanted the best” for them.

  Delilah’s brother, Arnie, was totally uncooperative, finding meaning in the dangerous, poverty-stricken idealism of kibbutz life. He left for Israel as soon as he was legally able, married a kibbutznik, and limited his connections to his parents to holiday phone calls and thank-you notes for care packages containing American coffee, tunafish, Entenmann’s donuts, and children’s clothes.

  Delilah had been Marilyn’s last hope.

  The engagement of her daughter to Chaim Levi, future rabbi, and the grandson of a distinguished, if little-known, leader of a synagogue, initially filled Delilah’s mother with a heady sense of victory. While she had never envisioned her future son-in-law as a religious leader, scion of a rabbinical family, she was nothing if not flexible, willing to unhitch her dreams from one wagon and hitch them to another, as long as there was a horse.

  Marilyn’s rosy vision of her daughter’s future prospects were based on those rabbis she’d met who were the principals and administrators in her daughter’s school—dapper little men who wore suits and smelled of aftershave, who knew how to squeeze the last dime of tuition out of pretension-filled parents—and the fathers of some of her daughter’s classmates who lived in the Five Towns, one of the most affluent Orthodox areas in America.

  In her mind, she conveniently edited out all the rabbis stuck teaching Bible and Prophets to fourth-graders—men struggling with mortgages on small frame houses in deteriorating neighborhoods—as well as her own rabbi, who worked in a tiny dwindling congregation in an expanding ghetto; a congregation that could barely afford to keep the synagogue in plastic cups, let alone pay their rabbi a decent wage. When these things intruded on her vision, like the pesky insects that ruin a lovely photograph by landing on your nose, she swatted them away with a determined murderous hand.

  No, with Chaim, all their dreams would come true. A beautiful house connected to a magnificent synagogue, where her son-in-law would stand in front of the Ark of the Torah, distinguished and revered. Her daughter would sit in the front pew, endlessly admired, envied, and imitated. And she, the rabbi’s mother-in-law, would sit next to her in a stunning hat. And when she got up, everyone would get up. And when she sat down, everyone would sit down. And
the children—her grandchildren!—would be the sons and daughters of the rabbi and the rebbitzin. And her daughter, aside from giving a few parties at her lovely home, which would be catered by staff, would have the leisure to improve her mind and do countless good deeds, all the while shopping in Lord & Taylor for beautiful modest clothes, because, as the rabbi’s wife, she’d need to set an example. And her son-in-law would have plenty of time to spend with his family, not like men who work nine to five. A few sermons, some back-patting, shmoozing, nice words at funerals that could be endlessly recycled, a few blessings under marriage canopies for which he would receive a generous check (and a full free catered dinner to follow, not to mention the smorgasbord that preceded). Actual working days would be limited to Friday night and Saturdays, with the rest of the week practically a paid vacation.

  With this in mind, she slowly relinquished the cherished visions of the successful diamond importer, the high-paid lawyer, and the brain surgeon, destined to put her charming blond daughter into a mansion in Short Hills, New Jersey. She had made the engagement and wedding plans with joy, borrowing freely and expansively to usher her child into the long-awaited, triumphant future.

  Her first visit to her daughter’s first home, a few weeks after the wedding, sent her into a tailspin. Her vision of the Bronx had been upscale Riverdale with the million-dollar mansions. Her vision of her daughter’s first home had been a three-bedroom condo. For several moments, she stood stock-still, staring at the recently whitewashed graffiti on the front of the building in the crumbling neighborhood. In shock, she labored up the dark stairwell to the second story, a slow fury building inside her as she entered and took in the tiny rooms, the small kitchen with its old appliances. She sat down on the couch and wondered how she could have been so misled.

  “Isn’t it nice?” Delilah said, smiling, waving her hand as if to introduce her mother to her new luxuries: the silver and porcelain, the Cuisinart, the Castro convertible with the new curtains to match.

  “When,” her mother said, taking huge gulps of air, “are you going to be able to move?”

  And thus began the relentless campaign of Marilyn Goldgrab to see that her daughter got everything she deserved in life, the kind of things that her snooty classmates and their snooty parents took for granted. Her daughter was as good as any of them and twice as beautiful, she thought. She had had the same expensive education, the same clothes, albeit cleverly obtained at a fraction of the price, but whose business was that? And she therefore had every right to claim the same good life that was the deserved consequence of such faithful adherence to the rules. And Chaim, by hook or by crook, was going to give it to her.

  Several times a week, her mother called Delilah, conversations that were full of unsolicited advice, hurtful and insulting admonitions, and dire prophecies. In short, Mrs. Goldgrab was driving her daughter crazy.

  “Just don’t talk to her,” Chaim would say. “Keep it short. Tell her you’re busy, that you’ll call her back.”

  Delilah, who could really never stand her mother’s pushy, demanding nature, wanted to do much more. And so, inevitably, there was a blowup. Hurtful, unforgivable truths were revealed in great, screaming arguments, and a soothing but troubled silence followed that lasted several weeks, until holidays and family celebrations intruded, necessitating a quick reconciliation. Marilyn called again, less frequently and more cautiously, nevertheless managing to preserve the needling subtext that was clear from everything she said.

  “Your friend Adina is moving to Teaneck. I hear the houses are really beautiful there. I think her mother said it was a two-story colonial with a finished basement. . . . And your cousin Myra’s husband—the one who went to work for your uncle Sam in his import business?—well, he just bought some license from Diesel to make watches, and now he’s designing watches and selling them by the thousands, and soon they are moving to Great Neck . . . a house with a swimming pool!”

  Like the centipede that enters the ears of people in horror movies, slowly taking over their brains and driving them insane, she felt her mother’s words seep into her thoughts.

  And then Chaim’s mother began to visit her new daughter-in-law on a regular basis. She brought cookies and fattening but delicious kreplach and knaidlach and rogelach in large plastic containers meant for catering halls. And she never left before leaving behind a piece of her mind as well.

  Like Emma Bovary, Delilah “accepted her wisdom; her mother-in-law was extravagant with it.” They spoke to each other like people in a documentary about family life: with exaggerated consideration. But when Chaim’s mother began a sentence with “I have to be honest with you,” Delilah cringed, knowing that something disagreeable and insulting was on its way like a projectile, a Kassam rocket catapulted with reckless abandon into the soft flesh of populated areas.

  The woman was relentless. Her criticism ranged from the kind of floor wax Delilah bought (too expensive) to the way she washed her dishes. “That set I bought you is porcelain, it should be hand-washed or the gold trim will turn dull.”

  Chaim, caught in the middle, tried to mediate and wound up getting himself exiled to his own bed even during the precious days when he could finally move into hers. Finally, there was the inevitable explosion, and his mother stopped bringing her plastic-covered caloric masterpieces. Instead, they went less frequently to her house to eat them.

  Delilah, kept busy with classes and synagogue functions, didn’t have too much time to brood. But eventually, she got bored. This was no fun, she thought. She tried doing more. She began preparing elaborate Friday night meals, inviting the synagogue president, the cantor, and his wife. But they were both in their seventies, on strict diets that precluded salt, sugar, fats, red meat, and just about anything else worth eating. Besides, she realized, what was the point of buttering them up? Her husband would be rabbi of this synagogue anyway; it was his by inheritance. And this life was going to be her life, until further notice.

  She looked out her windows at the treeless streets and old brick buildings. She examined her apartment, whose novelty had already worn off and whose deficiencies showed through with devastating clarity.

  She brooded, suddenly hearing her mother’s voice without a phone.

  And so the snake of discontent entered the garden of Delilah and Chaim’s newlywed bliss through gates as wide as barnyard doors. In fact, it was inevitable, even without Marilyn.

  The summer of Delilah’s sophomore year in high school, the school’s Hebrew department had arranged a class trip to Israel. It was very expensive. But even those parents who couldn’t really afford it felt ashamed not to let their kids participate. So, along with many others, Delilah’s parents took out loans, packed her suitcase, and sent her off.

  Everyone had a great time wandering through the ancient ruins and the modern malls, riding up to Masada and standing teary-eyed by the Wailing Wall. On the flight back, sitting just two rows ahead of her, Delilah encountered her vision of the New York Orthodox Jewish couple who had it all.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off them.

  She imagined they were coming back from a lovely vacation at five-star hotels, no doubt returning to Cedarhurst or Woodmere or another of those Long Island enclaves where mansions vie with each other on park-like lots nestled behind high stone fences, everything dappled by huge shady trees. New York’s Orthodox Beverly Hills. They were both tall and slim and were traveling with two children, surprisingly advanced in age, considering the parents still looked like recent yeshiva high school graduates. The daughter was about fourteen, the son maybe nine.

  The mother was a smoky blonde with long hair. Even after ten hours of being squashed on El Al, her hair still framed her face in perfect ellipses. You could still detect in her the yeshiva girl cheerleader that the disgruntled rabbis kept exhorting—to no avail—to lengthen her skirt. Now she wore a white cashmere sweatshirt with a hood and a pleated gray tweed skirt and black textured stockings that only legs like Angelina Jolie’s could
pull off. Her face was WASP princess: upturned nose, deep blue eyes. Delilah wondered if she’d had plastic surgery or if it was the same genetic magic that had Jews from Uzbekistan looking Mongolian and Jews from Great Britain like Margaret Thatcher.

  Delilah drank her in like a free airline Diet Coke.

  The husband, too, was gorgeous in his Banana Republic khakis and a blue striped shirt—Hugo Boss?—which had probably not been bought at discount at Century Twenty-One but at full price at Lord & Taylor’s or Barney’s during a busy lunch hour. He could no doubt well afford it. He was doing very well, thank you very much, Delilah thought, conjecturing if it was venture capital, heart surgery, or law, practiced from some office with ten-foot-high windows that looked over New York City like a personal backyard. Lie wore a discreet crocheted skullcap in no-nonsense black.

  She imagined how they would gather their Louis Vuitton luggage and load it into their SUV. How they would drive and park in front of a wonderful old house, a place that had been meticulously redecorated and enlarged with enough basement and attic space to house several more families their size without the least discomfort. It would be a house they’d bought from anti-Semitic WASPs who’d simply died out or frittered away their money or retired to an adults-only golf community in Phoenix or Florida, a place where guards kept out the grasping poor and sticky-fingered, noisy grandchildren had strictly enforced visiting hours.