Dark Plums

by Maria Espinosa

What had her life been like with Alfredo, he wondered, and what had she done for a living. He did not want to pry, nor did he really care what she had done. He would simply love and cherish her, as he had promised in the marriage vows. Like a rose she would blossom, and in time she might grow to love him. How strange this service must seem to her.

  Rabbi Zimmerman had begun to read from the Torah. The men near Max swayed slightly as they chanted under their breaths.

  Giving into the moment, he was flooded with hope. God forgives. After all these years of atonement for his wife, no, his former wife, and children, God had brought Adrianne into his life as a precious gift. The lovemaking had gone even better than he dared hope, but he had a foreboding that things would not continue like this for long.

  Upstairs in the balcony, surrounded by other women, Adrianne opened her prayer book to the page that her neighbor pointed out. The rabbi’s speech sounded harsh, as if he were accusing her of something. She knew that her father’s ancestors had been Jewish. Perhaps the memory of this service was in her genes.

  She read the first two verses of the chapter on the side of the page that was printed in English.

  “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron … offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not.

  “And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them.”

  She glanced at the mysterious marks in Hebrew on the other side of the page. This was the language of her ancestors.

  What kind of god would kill men for offering strange fire? Such a god must be cruel. Perhaps God and the Devil merged into a huge shadowy force. Had the gypsies really exorcised what was inside her? All these questions went through her head, making her conclude that perhaps Alfredo was right in his beliefs.

  The new golden wedding ring on her finger gleamed. She twisted the other ring, the silver ring that Alfredo had bought her on Bleecker Street long ago. Against all reason, she still hungered for him. But she vowed to make Max happy, if she could.

  Around her, the women whispered among themselves as they turned pages. Sometimes they chanted.

  The cantor’s deep voice rang through the hall. He was half-chanting and half-singing, unaccompanied by any instruments. The music resonated with a strange familiarity, although she had never heard it before.

  An ache rose in her throat. She wanted to cry out, “I am one of you. My father’s family was of your tribe.” But she had lost the key. She would never belong to these people. Besides, her mother’s family was Catholic.

  She felt outside of everything.

  “Papá, can you hear me?” she prayed. She sensed Julio’s spirit hovering over her. She could almost see his face. His thin brows and the set of his eyes were like hers. “Adriana, you are my daughter, and no other man can have you,” Julio seemed to whisper. Even though he had paid her little attention during his life, he had been silently possessive.

  What would her mother say if she knew that Adrianne was here at the synagogue? Elena did not like Jews and always had held that part of her father’s ancestry against him.

  “God, love me,” Adrianne prayed. But she could not sense God’s love. She felt the sadness and longing of the people here.

  Beneath her sat the men, their heads covered with yarmulkahs. When she looked for Max, he was not visible. She had a sudden urge to run out of the synagogue and back to Alfredo. Despite how he had treated her, she ached to be with him again. He connected with her in a way that no one else ever had. He knew her desires, her fears, her vulnerablities. She couldn’t con him, as she could poor Max.

  Then the dream-mother of her childhood wafted through to her, the dream-mother of otter-soft walls. Her rich dark fur enveloped Adrianne. The dream-mother whispered, “I love you.” Then she added, “Accept Max’s love.”

  The women around her were standing up, and Adrianne stood, too, smoothing out her white wool dress. She noticed that most of them were middle-aged and old, dressed in clothing that looked many years out of style. They began to sing a plaintive melody.

  The English words in the prayer book swam and danced in front of her. Lifting her eyes, she looked about the room. It was fairly large, with light green walls and a high ceiling. Its dark linoleum floors gave off a stale, gingery odor. There were folding metal chairs. How dingy the place was, Adrianne realized. How poorly the room was heated. She wrapped her black rabbit coat more tightly around her shoulders. Through small side windows she could see it had grown dark outside. Again she had an urge to run, to escape the collective sorrow of these women all around her.

  Her neighbor nudged her and once again pointed to a page number. The woman was scrutinizing Adrianne, her eyes flashing as if to say, “I can see through you. You are an imposter.”

  Now the rabbi was speaking in English, but Adrianne could not concentrate on his words. Then she seemed to hear the faint sound of laughter. Apparently, no one else heard. Tremors ran through her nerves.

  At last the service ended. Women buttoned their coats, readjusted their hats, and put on their gloves as they prepared to leave. Adrianne wanted to reach Max right away, but she had to follow the women who walked sedately, with muffled voices. Max was waiting for her by the foot of the stairs. He was engaged in conversation with another elderly man, but his eyes kept darting upwards.

  “Adrianne!” he cried when he saw her. “Benjamin, I want that you meet my new wife!”

  A strained look came over the man’s face as he stiffly shook her hand.

  She sensed people pointing her out and speaking about her. Some spoke in undertones while others did not bother to lower their voices.

  “… a shikse young enough to be his daughter …”

  “… a man his age … crazy in the head. His mother would turn over in her grave.”

  “She is Jewish?” Benjamin asked dubiously.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “She has met the rabbi?” Benjamin, too, had a marked European accent.

  “Here he is now,” said Max. “Adrianne, this is Rabbi Zimmerman. Rabbi, my wife, Adrianne.”

  “Hello,” said the rabbi. When Adrianne reached out to shake the rabbi’s hand, his arms remained at his sides. “A woman does not shake the rabbi’s hand,” Max whispered.

  “Are you Jewish?” asked the rabbi.

  “No,” said Adrianne.

  The rabbi’s look was severe. “If she is not Jewish, you cannot be married in this synagogue.”

  “We were married in City Hall,” said Max. “Good evening, rabbi. Shalom shabbat.”

  “Shalom shabbat.”

  Max elbowed Adrianne out of the building into the streets. “They do not understand. For them it is a scandal you are not Jewish.”

  “Do you want me to become Jewish?”

  “No,” he said angrily. She had never seen him angry before. “Narrow minds they have. It is better we move to the country far away from these people. All these years it is this synagogue that keeps me in the city.”

  “My father’s family was Jewish long ago, before they converted.”

  “Oh?” Max exclaimed eagerly. “Your mother’s people, too?”

  “She’s Catholic.”

  “Then you are goyim.”

  They continued walking. He was breathing jerkily, and she could tell he was still angry.

  “I have been with this synagogue for many years, for almost as many years as you are alive, Adrianne. But now is time to cut the old ties and move away.”

  “I thought you wanted to move anyway.”

  “This synagogue, this rabbi I thought was my friend, all were keeping me here.”

  “Max, wait! Have you forgotten me?” They turned to see who was calling him. A plump elderly man in an overcoat and yarmulkah ran up to them. He heaved, catching his breath, and he and Max embraced. The man’s spectacles had slid to the end of his nose, and he pushed them up. Under the street light, Adrianne could see that the man had a kind, ruddy face.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the young l
ady they say is your new wife?” While this man, too, spoke with an accent, it was less marked than Benjamin’s.

  “Ah, she is indeed my wife. Adrianne, this is my good friend of many years—perhaps now my only friend—Morris Kaplan.”

  “Also his attorney,” said Morris. “I have to stay on good terms with my client.” He chuckled and gave Max a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  Both men took off their black satin yarmulkahs and folded them into their vest pockets.

  “We’ll go out for a drink to celebrate this marriage. We’ll have some schnapps, a cognac, perhaps a pastry for the young lady,” said Morris. “I’m inviting you to Steinberg’s Delicatessen.”

  “I accept,” said Max. “Is all right with you, Adrianne, meine liebe?”

  “Of course.” She walked between the two men. It had grown much colder, and their breaths were frosty in the night air. When she slipped on a patch of ice, Max grabbed her arm.

  Chapter 35

  A month later Max and Adrianne rented a furnished house in Vermont, and at the end of May they moved in. Built late in the last century on the slope of a hill, the dwelling consisted of a living room, a small dining room and two bedrooms, one of which Max used as his study. The kitchen and bathroom had old fashioned fixtures. Faded wallpaper with tiny roses covered the walls of their bedroom.

  They were about a quarter-mile from the center of a tiny village with a general store and a post office. In front of their house stretched a narrow tar road. No other houses were visible, and all around them grew thickly planted trees.

  “Like the Black Forest,” said Max with a sigh of contentment.

  Adrianne, on the contrary, felt a menacing quality to the trees, and for a long time she felt ill at ease amidst the isolation, which was unlike anything she had ever known.

  The menace of the trees manifested at night when she and Max went to bed. She tried to please him, to ignore her body’s needs. It was hard. At times she sobbed quietly while he slept.

  One night the jagged edge of his nail scratched her vagina so that she cried out with pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Meine liebchen, did I hurt you?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  His mouth pressed down on hers. She held back a wave of nausea as she inhaled his sour old man’s breath. “Be a good whore, baby,” Alfredo whispered in her mind.

  Max had lowered his flaccid body and was licking her vulva. He had no sense of where her nerve endings were. She guided him with her hands, holding his scalp with the fine, wispy hair. After a few minutes he raised his body. “Is the first time I do so to a woman,” he whispered, and she cringed from his voice in her ear.

  “Fuck me,” she murmured.

  She stroked him until he hardened enough to enter her, but she wanted to cry out with frustration when he came too quickly, with a thin spurt of semen.

  During the day, their life followed a calm routine. Breakfast was between eight and nine in the morning. They had Sanka and frozen orange juice, usually with scrambled eggs and coffeecake which Adrianne baked to satisfy Max’s sweet tooth. He had stopped following his diet so strictly. While she prepared their meal, he would read his newspapers and smoke a cigar. Sometimes he would turn on the radio to a Middlebury station that played classical music. In rhythm with the music, he would sway back and forth, a satisfied expression on his face, as he looked out onto the trees.

  Lunch was at eleven-thirty, which Adrianne found a trifle early. His insistence on schedules annoyed her a bit, since this habit of his had not been apparent before they married. For the midday meal they usually had cold cuts, cottage cheese, or soup with vegetables.

  Supper around five-thirty in the evening consisted of a roast or stew with potatoes, cooked vegetables or a salad, and fruit. After a little reading or listening to classical music on the radio, they would retire.

  It was an uneventful life, but after a while Adrianne began to find a curious comfort in its regularity. In the afternoon she would go for walks in the woods. When Max accompanied her, they had to stop frequently so that he could catch his breath.

  “We must buy a car,” he said shortly after they moved into the house. “Often I must see Doctor Goldfarb in New York, and it is a long trip by bus.”

  He arranged for driving lessons. Three times a week a young man drove out from Burlington, and they practiced driving. After several lessons, Adrianne, who had driven several years earlier in Houston, was ready for her license. Max took longer. “Many years ago, before the war, I drove a friend’s car in Hamburg. But it was so long ago. Most people then did not own cars.”

  Twice he failed the vision test, so he had to get new glasses. After he finally obtained his license, he bought a used Chrysler with only seven thousand miles on it.

  There were times Adrianne longed to call Alfredo. She would stare at the phone until it was all she could do to keep from picking it up to call him. The golden wedding ring on her finger gleamed in the light. On her other hand she still wore Alfredo’s silver ring. Whenever she thought about taking it off and putting it away in a drawer, something prevented her.

  “Tell me, meine liebe, what is the matter? Something is troubling you, what is it? Tell me,” Max said.

  “Nothing,” she murmured. “You’re a good man. I love you.” Her lips brushed his cheek. Then she ran into the bedroom for her outdoor clothing, as she wanted to walk in the woods.

  She contrasted Max’s thoughtfulness—despite his clumsy manners, despite the occasional food spills on his shirt or trousers, despite his broodings over the past—with Alfredo’s treatment of her. Max cared about her in a way no one, including her mother and father, ever had before.

  Max used to sit in his rocking chair by the window in his study and half-close his eyes while he listened to music on the radio. Sometimes Adrianne would come in to talk to him while he was listening. One morning when she approached him, he slowly opened his eyes and said, “You startled me. I was dozing. I was thinking about you, Adrianne. Come here and hold my hand.”

  She had grown fuller, and she was now as heavy as when they had first met. Ah, how her fleshiness delighted him. She was wearing a navy sweater, a full grey skirt, and tiny hoop earrings. Her golden hair surrounded her face like an aura. She sat down in his lap. He reached out for one of her hands and turned it over in both of his. Her deep blue eyes seemed luminous. She was not stupid, nor was she as passive as she appeared to be.

  “I feel peaceful here, Max,” she said.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “But for you I think something is missing,” he said.

  Despite all her pretense, he sensed her true feelings about their sexual life. Last night was one of the few times he was certain that she had experienced orgasm. He knew it from the relaxation that spread over her body and from how she had slept afterwards with the quiet, rhythmic breathing of a child. For a while he had watched her in the moonlight.

  “No, Max. Nothing is missing.”

  He shook his head. “I do not think that is the truth,” he said. “Adrianne, such happiness you give to me. I want that you too feel happiness. Is it college or books or a job … or friends your own age? I am content with this life, but what are you doing to fill up the day? It is not enough to cook and clean and please an old man. Meine liebchen, you are young.”

  His tenderness moved her. After reflecting, she said, “I’d like to take piano lessons. When I was a child, I played the piano and had lessons from the time I was nine until I was twelve. Then my father died, and my mother sold the piano. I’ve always missed it.”

  “Meine liebchen, I shall buy you a piano.”

  “Oh, Max. Really!”

  “My retirement money is not that much, but if a piano will bring you joy, we get one tomorrow.” He stroked her breasts, enjoying their softness.

  The next afternoon they drove to a music store in Burlington where Max rented a Baldwin baby grand, with an option to buy it. The piano nearly filled up their
small living room. To make space, they pushed the coffee table and two overstuffed armchairs against the wall.

  As she wanted to review everything from the beginning, Adrianne bought stacks of elementary music books. She began to practice Hanon finger exercises.

  “You’re so good to me, Max.”

  He beamed with happiness.

  To her surprise, the daily routine of their life propelled her into practicing with an intensity she had never before experienced. She found herself gaining an ever deepening pleasure from her music. Each morning after the breakfast dishes were done, she would play. The first two weeks she reviewed several Clementi studies and a Bach prelude she had learned years ago. The third week she went on to practice a Schubert sonata.

  Max would listen, nodding drowsily as he smoked his pipe, sometimes falling asleep, sometimes beating his fingers in rhythm. He enjoyed hearing her practice, he said, and no, it didn’t bother him to hear her repeat over and over again the same chords, the same melodic fragments, and the same scale exercises.

  Her wrist and finger muscles grew tired from practicing. She learned to be patient, as with daily effort the music began to sound beautiful.

  Max suggested that she study with a teacher. They found a sparrow-like elderly woman in Middlebury who had once been a concert pianist. During Adrianne’s first lesson, Max listened proudly.

  Adrianne played the piano all day and into the evening, stopping only to make their meals and take occasional walks. It was getting colder; the days were getting shorter. Snow fell, covering the branches and coming up as high as the windows. She and Max bought snowshoes. Sometimes they would be snowed in for a day or two after a storm.

  “You must memorize all that you learn,” her teacher said at the beginning of the second lesson. “That way the music will always be with you.”

  “It takes so much time.”

  “You will develop the capacity to memorize. Your memory is like an unused muscle. If you are serious, you will think and dream music. You must go to concerts and hear musicians perform. It’s quite different from just listening to a record. Will your father take you?”