A Kiss for Rabbi Gabrielle

by Roger Herst

  The light pink walls inside were crusted with years of grit, but surprisingly free from graffiti. Three toilet stalls lined the far side, opposite three basins—two leaking heavily. Discarded paper towels littered the concrete floor.

  “So this is where the exchange took place,” she muttered to herself. She was impressed by the simplicity of the transfer. In toilet stalls, money and guns could change hands with neither buyer nor seller seeing the other. It was something else they hadn’t covered in rabbinical school.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THOMAS BELMONT

  The doctors told Chuck that Thomas Belmont’s death had been caused by a multitude of diseases, but that pneumococcal fungi, lodged in his lungs, had administered the coup de grace. In the end, none of this mattered; Thomas had long before reconciled himself to the inevitable. Lydia characteristically counseled her brother that it was a blessed release—not only for Thomas, but also for him. And, true to form, she demanded in no uncertain terms that, after a respectful period of mourning (in her judgment about five days), he begin reconstructing his life. “Move on and move away,” Lydia said. It was the exact admonition she’d given Gabby when she’d been beaten in an early round of the Volvo Women’s Tennis Classic.

  Chuck looked to Gabby for wisdom and solace, but she was, by contrast, silent. Grief, she had learned, could not be assuaged by philosophy, no matter how brilliantly expounded or poetically framed. She silently disagreed with Lydia’s view that death was a blessed relief. Only the hard-hearted and dispassionate, she thought, could regard the demise of a lover with such distant objectivity. She refrained from saying what she really felt, that to lose someone dear was indescribably awful, not a hidden treasure that resulted in a heavenly reward. Death meant separation to her, and separation was as painful an experience as a human could suffer. Grief, she would often say from the pulpit, is the price we pay for the joy of loving someone, a form of worldly balance. What she gave Chuck was friendship, empathy, and the comfort of her physical presence. It said, more profoundly than any words could, “You are not alone.”

  On the day Thomas died, the media published her report to the National Coalition for Gun Control on the incident at the Izaak Walton Range. Invitations to defend her views on radio and TV poured in. She felt compelled to accept a single interview, but declined all others and reserved her time to be with Chuck. In contrast to Lydia’s energetic determination not to let her brother sink into despair, she sat quietly with him, holding his hand and often embracing him.

  A stream of friends came to his apartment, offering condolences. Lydia brought food, as though her brother were formally sitting shiva, which he wasn’t. When the apartment emptied at the end of the evening, Gabby remained behind, struck by the absence of anyone from Thomas’s family.

  “He seldom spoke of his kin,” Chuck told her. “Somewhere in his childhood they wrote him out of their lives, and he eventually did likewise. His people live someplace near Portland, Oregon, but I wouldn't know how to contact them. What would I say anyway? “Thomas, whom you cast out because, somewhere in the genetic omelet, his X and Y chromosomes got mixed, is now dead. Come and tell us wonderful things about his childhood. Tell us how much you loved him. Tell us how much you will miss him. Help share our loss. Let’s shed tears together now because you certainly didn’t want to communicate when he was alive.”

  “Have you made decisions for the funeral?” Gabby asked, remembering that he had once approached her to perform Thomas’ funeral and, at the time, she had not thought it appropriate for a rabbi to bury a Christian. Neither Thomas nor Chuck had brought the subject up again. “Can I be of help recommending a minister?”

  A cup in his lap was filled with cold tea. She reached over to take it to the kitchen for a hot refill, but he waved her off, as though he intended to drink it cold.

  “You know, Gabby,” he said slowly, searching for words, eyes lowered over the cup, “Thomas twice told me that he wanted you to officiate at his funeral. You’re the only clergy he knew and he admired you. But in his final month, his mood changed. The doctors said he had become demented, but that wasn’t right. I think, at the end, he understood the world around him with extraordinary clarity. Shortly before he became comatose, he told me that he had entered this world naked and alone and that was the way he wanted to leave it. Even before he got sick he didn’t believe in God, and he didn’t want a funeral with disingenuous prayers to the Almighty. Instead, he asked that I take his remains to the gravesite. He figured that most of our friends would be happy not to attend another sad ritual. There have been enough of those among our friends.”

  “Can I come with you to the burial?” She looked at Chuck, willing him to meet her eyes, but he remained focused on the cup.

  “He didn’t want anyone but me.”

  “Then let me come, not to bury Thomas, but as your friend. No prayers. Not even silently. I promise to refrain from whispering anything under my breath. That’s a pledge.”

  Chuck fell into silence and seemed to drift in a distant mental world. After several minutes, he lifted his head and looked at her, as if there had been no break. “Okay. I’d like that. It will just be too sad to stand by his grave alone. I don’t think I could manage.”

  “Where will he be buried?”

  “The Rock Creek Cemetery in Northeast. You know of it, of course?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve gone there to see Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture of the Mourning Woman. I like to think of her as the Mother of Serenity. Do you know who commissioned her?”

  He became animated when challenged. “No. Should I?”

  “Not especially. It was Henry Adams, in memory of his wife, Clover.”

  “When Thomas and I went to select a gravesite, he communed silently with the figure—his head, I recall, tilted at the same angle. With her it’s hard to know where flesh ends and granite begins. We would walk around the cemetery, reading headstone inscriptions; it was a journey through American history. He liked to joke about how many of the bodies underground were gay when they were alive above it. To ensure his rest in such noble company, he spent most of his savings on his burial plot.”

  “Then may he find the peace he sought.” Gabby finally removed the cup from Chuck’s hand and, before heading to the kitchen, planted a gentle kiss on his forehead.

  The Rock Creek Cemetery

  Gabby remained purposely silent at Chuck’s side as they walked toward Thomas’ gravesite in a relatively new quadrant of the cemetery. As bees are attracted to nectar-giving flowers, so rain clouds are attracted to burials. The clouds overhead were dark and heavy with moisture, but only a light drizzle fell. Chuck wore a raincoat over his suit and Gabby wore a woolen overcoat with a high collar. Dampness seeped through the leather soles of her mud-splattered heels. They had stopped to commune with Clover Adams, whose granite repose evoked the sadness and emptiness of grief.

  Thomas's grave was open. His casket rested deep in its cavity, surrounded on three sides with freshly turned dirt. To fulfill Thomas’ wish to depart this earth alone, Chuck had requested that the cemetery personnel retire out of sight. Other than an occasional car horn in the distance, silence blanketed the grave. Gabby could not remember the last time she had not been expected either to recite psalms or say Kaddish in a cemetery. She reminded herself not to permit habit to rule and let her lips fashion those solemn words.

  Chuck stood beside the grave, gazing down as though into the earth’s core. A long interval elapsed, during which time seemed suspended. She stood behind him and could not see if there were tears in his eyes. She suspected there were, but he did not reach for a handkerchief. Finally, he retrieved a sheet of paper from an inside pocket and unfolded it with deliberate slowness. His had to clear his throat before he could read the contents aloud:

  “To the World,

  “I, Thomas George Belmont, say goodbye to life. Every moment was a gift for which I am grateful. I have lived with good people, done good things, and learned good i
deas. And now, having enjoyed the bounty of this marvelous planet, I bequeath to future generations the air I breathed, the water I drank, the food I ate, the human beings I cherished. To my successors I leave the sand under my toes, the waves on the seashore, and the stars in the firmament.

  “May they enjoy their short spans on this earth as much as I have enjoyed mine.”

  Farewell,

  “Thomas George Belmont”

  Gabby stood back to give Chuck space to mourn privately, and quietly absorbed the generosity of Thomas’s bequest. She had only come to know him during his illness, and had never suspected that a soul of such admirable largess resided in his tormented body. With the ordeal of pain and fatigue behind him, his spirit was now free to soar heavenward, leaving behind his earthly blessings for a new generation to enjoy. What a wonderful way to go, she thought to herself—to live and then to bequeath. She considered asking Chuck to publish his words in Ohav Shalom’s monthly Bulletin, but rejected the idea. The touching loneliness of this farewell could never be adequately conveyed, and it was unlikely that readers of the Bulletin would appreciate Thomas’s interment without prayers or his funeral without mourners.

  When she officiated at a funeral, she could not permit herself the luxury of weeping; here she could cry. It was a privilege to observe this final passage. Hebrew prayers, with their resonating echo of history and their intimacy with the God of Israel, seemed unnecessary. Thomas had put it perfectly. Commentary would only detract.

  Her feet were thoroughly soaked from a puddle she’d failed to avoid and ached from the unaccustomed heels. But she would not disturb the silence with movement until Chuck was ready.

  “It’s over,” he said eventually, turning to face her. “We can go now. I think it’s time to get on with my life. Enough disease. Enough death. We weren’t meant to live with such things forever. Isn’t that right, Rabbi?”

  She smiled, drawing him in with a warm hug and acknowledging his rhetorical question. “Well, yes, Chuck, I suppose it is.”

  ***

  When she entered the synagogue at 8:00 the next morning, Chuck was already there, well before his normal arrival after 9:30. She had given him as much time off as he needed to nurse Thomas and had not expected him to return immediately. But after so many months of waiting, he seemed eager to reestablish a semblance of normality.

  He rose from his desk as she stooped forward to kiss his cheek. “Thanks again for helping me yesterday,” he said in a low voice, still infused with loss.

  “An honor. Thomas’s adieu was as noble as I’ve seen. I’ve been trying to remember his words and thought to ask for permission to read them again.”

  Chuck looked surprised as he followed her into her study. “Oh, I threw the paper into his grave. Thomas asked me to do that. He didn’t want anything to remain after him. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  That struck her as odd, though not devoid of poetic significance. “Maybe it’s better that way. There’s a part of me that understands where Thomas was coming from. Life is but a fleeting moment….” She paused in mid-sentence, “Well, you know the quotation. Still, there’s a part of me that resists such fatalism.”

  She entered her study and settled at the desk, but he remained in the doorway to catch her eye. “There’s trouble brewing. Old political fires are raging,” he said. “I came to the office last night to get things ready for today. There was a lot of phone traffic between the main office and members of the Rabbinical Services Committee about a special meeting Monday night. Too much traffic for my taste.”

  She had come to rely on his political judgment and asked, “You mean the meeting to discuss Dov’s employment contract. Is there something I should know?”

  “More rumors about bad blood between you two. Be prepared.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, your report on the shootout at the rifle range. Now that you’re back in the news, people are talking again about their pistol-packing rabbi.”

  She stood up to gaze through the window into the synagogue courtyard below. It was a view she enjoyed when reflecting. After a few seconds, she replied, “It wasn’t a shootout. And I was hardly packing a sidearm. Not even a little Derringer in my garter.”

  “While you’ve been grooming for Wimbledon, Dov’s been busy building a power base, as they so delicately put it in Washington. He knows how to curry favor and has carefully cultivated supporters.”

  She was too proud to admit that Chuck had been right about Dov from the outset. “I’ll watch my backside,” she sighed. “Is that it?”

  “Some committee members are complaining that you’re spending too much time on the courts. There’s a price to pay for becoming a tennis celebrity, you know. People can understand a rabbi who plays the violin or perhaps masters the chessboard. But a tennis star? And now a markswoman/hunter? That's a showstopper.”

  She stepped back to her chair, dropping into it ungracefully. “I’m through with guns. Had my fling. And competitive tennis is self-terminating. The young babes I play are already whipping me. In a few years I’ll be in a league for senior citizens, pushing puff balls in doubles.”

  “Not according to my sister. She says you’ve never played better. Must be something about your situation.” He grinned with an omniscient expression, obviously alluding to Joel but stopping short of mentioning him.

  “Nope. It’s my tennis coach. Your sister is great,” she said, curious about what she might successfully hide from Chuck’s perception.

  “Right, boss,” he shot back, giving the impression he was reading her mind like a book.

  ***

  The meeting at the Skulkins’ home about Bart’s memorial began in a friendly, collaborative manner. Harvey and Florence Skulkin were consummate hosts, making introductions and repeating their gratitude to those who wished to remember their son. After coffee and dessert, their guests adjourned to the living room to discuss the business of Bart’s memorial. Harvey began by telling them about the letters and phone calls he and Florence continued to receive. Everybody had something touching to say, particularly students and faculty from Anacostia. Much of what they learned was new and revealing. Neither mother nor father had known much about Bart’s activities at the school.

  When it was Gabby’s turn, she told them about the struggling tennis team he had nurtured, about the determination of his young players to persevere, and about Caleb Shaboya's failure to appoint a new coach. Without professional supervision, Bart’s dream would flounder and eventually die.

  Ethel Myer Rafael, Florence’s childhood friend, had always looked upon Bart as a member of her own family. A heavyset woman with a thick neck and strident voice, she had dedicated her life to philanthropy and knew the right questions to ask about the long-term effects of a tennis project. “Tell us, Rabbi Lewyn, what you think will happen when a new crop of players sprouts at Anacostia, kids who never knew Bart personally. Maybe they won’t be as inspired as the present ones. If we fund the tennis program, what will we accomplish of lasting value? True, we might make a few boys happy this year or maybe next. But isn’t there a danger of the program subsequently collapsing? How will that sustain Bart’s memory?”

  Gabby had only a partial answer. She alluded to an Israeli cabinet minister who was once asked about his nation’s long-term goals in the light of Arab determination to destroy the Jewish state. He had replied without hesitation, “Survive for another week, at which time I’ll worry what to do for the long haul.” She continued, “If we don’t support the current team this season, there won’t be anything left to support in future years.”

  Melvin Ehrenhart was Harvey’s first cousin and his son, John, had been Bart’s earliest childhood friend. If John had not been in Peru on an archaeological expedition, he would have been present. He had also missed Bart’s funeral but had sent flowers and a beautiful letter that spoke of a friendship never to be replaced and a soul so rich that the gods, whoever they might be, must weep over his death. Melvin spoke fo
r his son.

  “Rabbi,” he said, pointing at Gabby, “if I understand correctly, you’re asking for something quite modest. Funds to pay for a tennis pro at Anacostia for a year or so. Say, perhaps, up to five years. We’re talking here of only a few thousand dollars. Do you think that will be sufficient to perpetuate Bart’s memory? You’ve conceded, if I’m not mistaken, that when the current players graduate, the next generation won’t know Bart. I return to Ethel’s question—how can that possibly achieve anything of lasting value?”

  That phrase, of lasting value, had now been used twice, and Gabby perceived that they thought in terms of a permanent structure—something tangible. Since her own long-term goal included the tennis center, she couldn’t disagree, but that would take time. “We have to help the existing team first,” she reiterated, “so there will be a basis for something more permanent.”

  When Shalom Goldman’s clothing empire issued its IPO to the public, his family made a fortune. After a few years of operating a public company, he borrowed heavily to buy back the shares and returned the firm to private ownership. Four years later, the company went public again, quadrupling the original equity overnight. Fortunately, Shalom had possessed the good sense and public decency to distribute large portions of this windfall to his employees and to community charities. He entered the conversation in a soft, self-assured voice. “Bart’s death is only the top of the iceberg, so to speak. He was the victim of urban violence that, if not stemmed, will claim more innocent people. To my mind, we’d be better advised to endow an academic chair at a local university to study the spread of guns in the inner city and the effects of crime on single parent homes.”

  Endowing a university chair had considerable philanthropic precedence and immediately found sympathizers, particularly Noah Zentner. He said, “The Zentner Foundation is prepared to contribute a generous sum to whatever enterprise we decide upon, but I must warn everybody that our charter is very specific about contributions. The Trustees may only authorize funds that match those raised by the recipients themselves. In the case of high school tennis players, I don’t think we’d require the kids to contribute personally, but we would need the Board of Education to help. In the case of an academic chair at a university, the administration must carry half the financial weight.”