by Ragen, Naomi
All through dinner, she studied him.
He was about twenty-eight, twenty-nine, she guessed, taller than Chaim but not tall. He looked like a clean-cut rock star, his face covered with a fashionable dusting of light blond stubble. He had a strong jaw, a sensuous mouth. His blond hair had been cut short but combed straight up with gel by a very hip hairstylist. He wore a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a long wool scarf that was very Parisian-Left-Bank-starving-student. He had pale furtive blue eyes and pale lashes.
He was recently divorced and his wife had gotten the Manhattan condo, he told them with a certain air of melancholy, implying an unfairness on which he was too decent to dwell, although the truth was it had been hers to begin with. He described a job at a small advertising agency in Manhattan that sounded like creative director, when he was actually a freelancer. There were no kids. He made it sound as if the choice of an apartment in the Bronx had been an existential, almost spiritual choice, rather than a financial necessity. “I think the area has something really interesting going on,” he told them, pouring the last of the wine into his glass and finishing it. He told long rambling stories about advertising rates and the cola wars. Chaim listened appreciatively. He loved hearing people’s stories, and he enjoyed not having to entertain anyone, since he was “on” all weekend.
Delilah found him intensely interesting, despite the fact that she couldn’t have cared less about anything he had to say. She made a special effort to sparkle and twinkle in his direction, speaking at length about her favorite commercials and how an infomercial on the shopping channel had once convinced her to buy a brush that spun around automatically, but it had broken down after three months and they wouldn’t give her the money back.
He, too, tuned her out.
Yet all the while, voices inside them kept up a continuous murmuring communication that had nothing at all to do with what inanities their lips were forming. Secret knowledge passed between them through furtive, hidden glances; through eyes that narrowed and flashed, and did everything but outright wink. Like a promo for a new movie, these voices hinted at all the highlights and delights that awaited them if only they bought tickets to the show.
He began showing up at the synagogue regularly, secretly searching the pews for Delilah. It took him awhile to realize that almost no women showed up for services Friday night. So he started attending Saturday-morning services as well.
He was lonely and bored. The only women he met were blowzy middle-aged secretaries and jailbait from some of the modeling agencies. He didn’t like models, he decided, after numerous attempts, one of them serious enough to have landed him in divorce court. They were women who liked to talk but didn’t know how to listen, and for whom you functioned mainly as a mirror. While it was thrilling to wear one as an accessory out in public, where people could envy you, they soon became more trouble than they were worth, like stunning new shoes that killed your feet.
Delilah, on the other hand, was real, he told himself. He caught tantalizing glimpses of her through the lace curtains that hung along the wooden latticework that separated the men from the women, her face suffused in radiant light. The old, blazing chandeliers, the silver chalice covering the sacred Torah scrolls, the elderly rabbi’s long, white beard, the patina of heavy golden-hued wood—all of it together seemed to create an aura of saintliness that rubbed off on her the way a cat leaves its scent on its owners.
He focused on her prayer-murmuring, lipstick-less mouth, her charming retro hats, her modest but well-fitted suits. And that blond hair! And those big blue eyes! And the white skin! And the unbridgeable moat between them! It was deliciously tempting in all its contradictory allure. He felt elated by the possibilities and at the same time challenged, depressed, safe, and hopeless at the improbability of breaking down the walls that surrounded her.
Delilah, equally bored, was flattered and amused by him and eager to play the game. She made sure to pull back the little lace curtain, pretending to want a better view of her husband, or the elderly rabbi, all the while aware of Benjamin’s head turning in her direction. At kiddush, she felt his shadow move across her plate as she filled it with kiddush junk food: cookies, various oversalted or oversweetened morsels from cellophane bags. She looked up and smiled into his eyes just a fraction of a second too long. It was he who lowered his gaze first, shuffling off to the other end of the room to speak to the rabbi.
“Why don’t we invite Benjamin for lunch?” Chaim suggested.
“Who?” she answered innocently.
“Benjamin. You know. The art director. The divorced one. He’s all alone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said reluctantly, a small thrill hiding at the pit of her stomach.
“Don’t you like him?” Chaim asked her, surprised.
“It’s not that, it’s . . .” She shrugged, trying to look annoyed. “But if you want. If you think—”
“No, no, it’s not important . . .”
“But if you want,” she continued, with a new insistence in her voice that thoroughly confused him.
Chaim, by now, was used to being confused. In fact, he considered it whimsical and charming that he could never understand a single, solitary thing when it came to his wife’s motives, moods, interests, or desires. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“No. Why should I? If I’ve cooked already for four guests, what’s one more?”
He opened his eyes wide, but didn’t say anything.
Benjamin was delighted to accept the invitation. He wore a dark suit that fitted him well, she thought, and a blue striped shirt with a tie that was knotted a little too tightly. She saw the red streaks of a too-close shave on the delicate skin of his neck just above his collar and how his light skin reddened in the winter wind. It filled her with tenderness.
He brought them a bottle of rare kosher wine for which he’d traveled all the way to lower Manhattan in the hope of future invitations. He’d run home after services to fetch it, looking forward to the opportunity of handing it to her, acutely aware that it would be their first physical contact.
“Oh, look, Chaim, French kosher wine!” Delilah said, delighted, delaying the transfer of the bottle from Benjamin’s hands to hers a little longer than absolutely necessary. Her touch went through him like an electric shock. He moved his hand so quickly that the bottle almost fell.
She pressed her lips together, hiding a smile as she dipped to rescue it.
“Ah, a true Oneg Shabbat.” Chaim nodded. “But it looks very expensive. You shouldn’t have. I’ll be afraid to invite you if it forces so much trouble on you!”
“No trouble at all,” he lied.
Two of the shul’s board members and their wives—kind, aristocractic, German Jews who spoke with a thick accent—had also been invited. Benjamin sat at the end of the table, casting sidelong glances at Delilah as she passed up and back, serving the food, conscious of how her shoulder arched beneath her dress as she brought in the trays and set them down. The first course was some kind of mushy-looking whitish thing covered with horseradish. “It’s gefilte fish,” she murmured, breathing softly in his ear as she put the plate in front of him. Her fingernails were well trimmed and painted a delicate shade of clear pink that made them look shiny and clean, like a newly washed child’s, he thought. And her cheeks, pink and hot from the steaming kitchen, gave her a moist youthful glow. She smelled like vanilla.
There was a sudden knock at the door.
“Zaydie!”
Chaim’s grandfather walked in with a gracious smile. He hardly ever visited and then only during weekday holidays, like Chanukah and the Intermediate Days of the Festivals, when taking a car was permissible and Chaim’s parents could drive him over. That he had made the effort to walk several blocks and climb up two flights of stairs was remarkable and a bit disturbing. Chaim, touched and concerned, ushered him in with great reverence, giving up his own seat at the head of the table. “This is such a long walk for you. Why did you
strain yourself, Zaydie?”
The old rabbi coughed and looked down at the table. “I spoke to your mother. She’s . . . well . . . she thought it would be a good idea if I came to see you a little more often. I hope you don’t mind. Please, go on with your meal.”
“I was just about to serve the chulent, Zaydie,” Delilah said, laying a plate for him, not looking into his eyes. She hurried into the kitchen, leaning heavily against the sink for a moment. What could Chaim’s mother, that klafta, have told the old man? She could just imagine. She shrugged. Well, what of it? What could she do?
She served Chaim’s grandfather first and then went over to Benjamin. “Would you like meat or potatoes?” she asked him, and for some reason it sounded intimate, like a separate, secret conversation that involved only the two of them. Her eyes glanced at him sideways, a small smile on her pursed lips.
The old rabbi’s eyes glanced up, studying them.
Benjamin caught the end of the heavy platters, helping her support them. They gave each other a quick but meaningful glance as their fingers touched. “Oh, whatever you give me will be fine,” he said softly.
The old man suddenly pushed his chair back from the table. “I’ll go now,” he said, getting up abruptly.
“But why, Zaydie?” Chaim begged him, upset and confused. “You just got here! Please don’t go!”
But the old man was already at the door.
People began to leave after that, a sense of impropriety and discomfort suddenly poisoning the atmosphere like someone rudely exhaling from a big cigar as all around people choked on the smoke. They quickly said the Grace After Meals, and were gone.
“Why don’t I bring some tea and cake?” Delilah said brightly when only Benjamin was left. She, Benjamin, and Chaim sat together around the table, drinking tea, speaking casually, as Chaim, trying to be hospitable despite his sense of lingering discomfort, talked in a friendly way about his adventures with various shul committees about upcoming synagogue functions.
Always, the topic returned to the morning prayer service. They needed at least ten men—a minyan—to hold a prayer service. It was a disgrace, a disgrace!—that in a community of this size they had trouble finding ten men. Every morning! The absence of mourners required to say Kaddish for the departed souls of parents—the mainstay of Orthodox morning prayer services everywhere—left them at a distinct disadvantage, most of their congregants having lost their parents decades ago. Benjamin, who felt he should now offer to get up at five every morning to attend, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. There was no point in offering if he had absolutely no intention of keeping his word. And yet—
“I’d be happy to join,” he found himself saying, aware of her eyes on him and the small nod and smile with which his words were acknowledged.
“That would be great!” Chaim rubbed his hands together appreciatively, already feeling better, fully rewarded for his efforts to integrate this stray. “Really wonderful.”
“More tea? Or coffee?” Delilah murmured to Benjamin. Their eyes held.
Chaim, already busy pouring over the Torah reading of the week, smiled but didn’t look up. “Thanks, my dear. Coffee.”
As the liquid cooled in their cups, Delilah and Benjamin sat across from each other in the living room, she on the sofa, he in the armchair, reading magazines. “I think this is a beautiful ad,” Delilah said as she thumbed through a women’s magazine, trying to find in it something that would connect them. She wanted to sound sophisticated.
He took the magazine from her, pretending to study it. It was a silly ad, he thought, predictable and corny: a family in white shirts sitting on the grass. It could be selling anything from detergent to perfume to milk of magnesia. “I see what you mean.” He nodded seriously. What lovely eyes she had! That color, like a jewel, with tiny gold flecks. “It takes special eyes to notice this kind of thing.”
She found herself blushing.
“Well.” Chaim yawned, oblivious, stretching.
Benjamin, who had only his lonely apartment with its unmade bed waiting for him, reluctantly began to realize that he too was expected to leave. At the door, she handed him a package.
“Here, another piece of cake. I know how single men are. They have empty refrigerators,” she scolded him, her hands touching his. His fingers pulled back as if scorched. When he got home, he unwrapped the package, eating the cake greedily, crumb by delicious crumb.
He took to jogging past her house Sunday mornings.
Delilah, her hands encased in rubber gloves as she scrubbed the grime of the city from her neglected windows, felt herself start when she saw him run by. How slim he was, she thought. His shoulders and stomach were like a college student’s in his running outfit, his hair still adolescent in its thick golden shine. She gazed at her reflection in the glass, studying her face: still young, still sexy. She pouted at herself until she heard Chaim open the door as he returned from the morning minyan.
“Could have sworn that was Benjamin . . . strange guy. He hopped over to the other side of the street when he saw me coming.”
“Maybe he’s embarrassed he didn’t show up for minyan,” she said, her eyes lowered.
“Yeah, that’s probably it. But, then, what is he doing hanging around here?”
“He’s jogging!”
“But he’s got a park right across the street from his house.”
She didn’t answer him. Why should she? He didn’t expect her to know anything. Besides, she wasn’t sure she did. It could be a coincidence. He had plenty of women in that ad agency, all those Sex and the City wannabes breathing down his neck.
Be realistic, Delilah.
But it was so much fun to think about. Much more fun than thinking about her next scrape and polish. Or her next chesed project.
If you were the rabbi’s wife, you always had to have a chesed project. Feed the hungry, visit the sick. The more time-consuming and distasteful, the more worthy the project. So far, she had resisted anything with hospitals. Chaim got stuck with all the sick calls; considering that the entire congregation practically took weekly vacations in Mount Sinai the way other people went to Florida, he spent endless time in sickrooms.
They had been after her to do the old-age homes, the openmouthed snorers sitting in their diapers in wheelchairs. The mumbling, insistent ones who grabbed you and made you their slaves. Get me this. Pick up that. Wheel me there.
She wasn’t going back to the Moscowitz Hebrew Geriatric Center. Only one afternoon, and it had taken her three shampoos to get the smell out of her hair. She liked kids well enough. She offered to find some Jewish ones and do something with them.
“That doesn’t actually sound like much of a plan,” Chaim said mildly.
“So you think of a better one!”
“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated. “Maybe you could help some of the shul members with their shopping. Or take them to their medical appointments—so they won’t wind up in the hospital.”
“Old people,” she griped.
“Well, it’s their pensions that are putting food on our table and paying our credit card bills, my love. Show a little compassion. We’ll be old one day too.”
She looked up at him, suddenly stricken with conscience pangs. He really was a good person, she realized, ashamed of herself. He really did care about other human beings. And she, in taking on the job of being his partner, had to be a better person in spite of herself.
“All right. I’ll take them shopping. I’ll even do makeovers.”
“Honey . . .” he cautioned.
“Just kidding.”
She began by making a few phone calls, asking for advice from the president of the sisterhood, who liked her. She got a list of names and went about calling them, asking if they’d like her to join them the next time they went shopping. But that’s not what they wanted. What they wanted was for her to pick up their shopping lists and do their shopping for them.
So, after work, she hurried to make dinner, then r
an down to pick up their lists. Then she took the car and drove from store to store, buying farina and canned green beans and Metamucil, standing in lines and carrying heavy brown bags to the car. And, of course, she bought the wrong green beans, the ones with salt. They all had salt, except for one brand, sold in a little health food store where it was impossible to find parking. In the end, the old biddy even refused to pay for it. “I’ll just have to throw it out. All that salt could increase my Lenny’s blood pressure. Is that what you’re trying to do, give him a heart attack?! What kind of help is this, anyway?”
Without telling anyone, she stopped picking up the shopping lists. Chaim was deluged with phone calls from outraged congregants who had immediately gotten used to the idea of having a personal shopper and were now furious at having their old lives back.
“You work for the shul, not me. I quit,” she told him when he protested. “You go search all over town for low-sodium vegetables.”
Being left with no choice, he came to a compromise, offering to drive them around to their stores. But this meant he needed the car and Delilah would have to take the subway to work. She was furious.
“Why is it I’m always the last person on the list, the last one you worry about being nice to?” she fumed. “Why does every stranger in this place, people who hardly say hello to you, who don’t care about you at all, always have to come before me, your own wife?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I’ll try to work something out. Please, Delilah, just be patient!”
But as she entered the subway station, there was Benjamin, waiting on the platform. They approached each other a little awkwardly at first. But then, meeting every morning, he got more talkative. He told her about his childhood, the inevitable grandmother who lit Sabbath candles, the grandfather who was “very religious,” which Delilah knew could mean anything from eating chicken soup to wearing a streimel and kapota. You never knew what people meant by it. What Benjamin meant was that his grandfather wouldn’t eat pork in the house, only in restaurants.
What had brought him to their synagogue? Delilah asked.