The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  “Young doctor,” Johnny said. “He has been here eight months. I have been here twenty-two years.” The buzzer sounded and he slid the elevator door shut.

  He opened the newspaper and tried to read Herb Caen’s column. In a couple of minutes the elevator was back. Johnny came into the waiting room and took a seat near the door where he could hear the buzzer. He lit up one of the cigarillos. “What do you do?” he asked. “For a living?”

  “I’m a rabbi.”

  “Is that a fact?” He puffed for a few moments. “Maybe you can tell me something. Is it true that when a Jew boy is a certain age they hold a party and he becomes a man?”

  “The bar mitzvah? Yes, at thirteen.”

  “Well, is it true that all the other Jews come to the party and they bring money and they give it to the boy to open up a business?”

  Before he was through laughing a nurse stood in the doorway. “Mister Kind?” she said.

  “He’s a rabbi,” Johnny said.

  “Well, Rabbi Kind, then,” she said tiredly, “congratulations, your wife just had a little boy.”

  When he bent to kiss her the smell of ether almost took his breath away. Her face was flushed and her eyes were closed and she looked dead. But she opened her eyes and smiled at him and when he took her hand she held it tightly.

  “Did you see him?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh, he’s lovely,” she whispered. “He’s got a penis. I asked the doctor to check.”

  “How do you feel?” he asked, but she was asleep. In a few minutes Doctor Lubowitz came in, still wearing delivery-room greens. “How is she?” Michael asked him.

  “Fine. They’re both fine. Baby’s eight pounds. Damn these women,” he said. “They won’t learn it’s easier to grow ’em big once the baby is outside. Make the doctor work like a horse.” He shook Michael’s hand and walked away.

  “Do you want to see him?” the nurse asked. He waited outside the nursery while she picked out the proper bassinet and then as she held the baby close to the glass he saw with a shock that it was a very ugly infant, with eyes that were red swollen slits and a broad, flat nose. How will I ever love him, he thought, and the baby yawned, stretching his lips and displaying the pink ridges of tiny gums, and then started to cry, and he loved him.

  When he let himself out of the hospital the sun was up. He stood on the curb and in a little while he hailed a taxi. The driver was a plump, gray-haired woman and the cab was very clean. There was a nosegay of spicy-smelling flowers in a vase attached to the back of the front seat. Zinnias, he thought.

  “Where to, Mister?” the woman said.

  He looked at her stupidly and then he threw back his head and laughed, stopping when she looked frightened.

  “I don’t know where I left my car,” he explained.

  34

  Leslie was awake when he returned to the hospital that afternoon. She wore fresh makeup and a lace-trimmed nightgown and had a blue ribbon in her brushed hair.

  “What will we name him?” he asked as he kissed her.

  “How about Max?”

  “That’s the homeliest, most unassimilated, shtetl-type name I can think of,” he objected, tremendously pleased.

  “I like it myself.”

  He kissed her again.

  A nurse brought the baby into the room. Leslie held him gingerly. “He’s so beautiful,” she whispered, while Michael looked at her with pity.

  But over the next few days the baby’s appearance altered. The birth-swelling subsided from his eyelids, revealing eyes that were large and blue. The nose grew less flattened and more a nose. The red over-all color was replaced by a delicate pink-white.

  “He’s not ugly at all,” Michael said in amazement one evening, giving his wife a headache.

  The Plymouth eventually was found with the help of the San Francisco Police Department, parked where they had abandoned it. Only the hubcaps were missing. Their cost, and the fifteen-dollar fine which Michael had to pay three days later for parking in a forbidden area (taxi stand), he wrote off cheerfully as birthing expenses.

  Abe and Dorothy Kind could not come to California in time to see their new grandson circumcised. But if they missed the bris they did not miss the pidyon haben. Dorothy refused to fly. They took a compartment on the City of San Francisco. For three nights and two days Dorothy knitted her way across the country. Three sets of booties and a little cap. Abe read magazines, he drank Scotch, he discussed life and politics with a freckled Pullman porter named Oscar Browning, and as a student of human behavior he watched with interest and admiration the progress of an Air Force corporal who two hours out of New York sat next to a haughty blonde in the dining car and was sharing her compartment when the train pulled into San Francisco.

  Dorothy was ecstatic when she saw her grandson. “He looks like a little movie star,” she said.

  “He’s got ears like Clark Gable,” Abe agreed. The grandfather took over the job of bubbling Max after each feeding, carefully spreading a clean diaper over his shoulder and back to protect himself from spit-up, and invariably ending up with a wide wet splotch on his sleeve in the area of the elbow. “Pisherkeh,” he called the baby, a name spoken in equal parts of love and outrage.

  He and Dorothy stayed in California ten days. They attended two Friday-evening services at the temple, sitting stiffly with their daughter-in-law between them, the three of them pretending that the empty seats around them did not exist. “He should have been a radio announcer,” Abe whispered to Leslie after the first sermon.

  On the evening before their return to New York, Michael and his father went for a walk. “Come, Dorothy?” Abe asked.

  “No, you go. I’ll stay with Leslie and Max,” she said, her hand fluttering at her chest.

  “What’s the matter?” he said, frowning. “The same business? You want me to call a doctor?”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” she said. “Go, go.”

  “What same business?” Michael asked when they were out on the street. “Has she been unwell?”

  “Ah.” Abe sighed. “She kvetches. I kvetch. Our friends kvetch. You know what it is? We’re growing old.”

  “We’re all growing older,” Michael said uncomfortably. “But you and Momma aren’t old. I’ll bet you still lift weights in your bedroom. Don’t you?”

  “I lift,” Abe admitted, smacking his flat belly with his hand.

  “It’s been nice having you here, Pop,” Michael said. “I hate to see you go back. We don’t see each other enough.”

  “We’ll see you more from now on,” Abe said. “I’m selling the business.”

  He was more surprised than he had a right to be. “Why, that’s great,” he said. “What will you do?”

  “Travel. Enjoy life. Give your mother some pleasure.” Abe was silent for a moment. “You know, our marriage was one of those late-starters. It took us a long time to really appreciate one another.” He shrugged. “Now I want her to enjoy herself. Florida in the winter. In the summer, we’ll visit a few weeks with you kids. Every couple of years a trip to Israel to see Ruthie, the damn Arabs should only let us.”

  “Who’s buying Kind Foundations?”

  “Two of the big outfits have made me offers in the last couple of years. I’ll sell to the highest bidder.”

  “I’m glad for you,” Michael said. “It sounds perfect.”

  “I figured it out so it would be,” Abe said. “Just don’t tell your mother. I want it to be a surprise.”

  In the morning there was an argument about whether Michael should take them to the train. “I don’t like long goodbys in a railroad station,” Dorothy said. “Kiss me here like a good son and let us take a cab like sensible people.”

  But Michael overruled her. He drove them to the station and bought magazines and cigars for his father and a box of candy for his mother. “Oy, I can’t even eat it,” she said. “I’m on a diet.” She gave him a little push. “You go home now,” she said. “Or to
your temple. Get out of here.” He looked at her and decided it would be better to do as she said.

  “Good-by, Momma. Pop,” he said, kissing them both on the cheek. He walked away quickly.

  “Why did you do that?” Abe asked, annoyed. “He could have stayed with us another ten-fifteen minutes.”

  “Because I didn’t want to start crying in a railroad station, that’s why,” she said, starting to cry.

  She was better by the time they boarded the train. She knitted, saying little, until it was lunchtime. On the way to the diner Abe saw that Oscar Browning, the porter with freckles, was on board, too.

  “Hello, Mr. Kind,” the porter said. “Glad to have you returning with us.”

  “How much did you tip that man on the way out?” Dorothy asked when they reached the next car.

  “No more than usual.”

  “So how come he remembers you?”

  “We had a long conversation on the way out. He’s a smart man.”

  “He sure is,” she said.

  In the diner he ordered a steak and a bottle of beer. Dorothy ordered only tea and toast.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes. There was a white line around her mouth. “I feel nisht gut. Nauseous. It’s this train. It keeps going from side to side.”

  “I told you we should fly,” he said. He watched her tensely. In a little while the white line disappeared and the color came back. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll all right.” She smiled at him and patted his hand. The waiter came and left their food and she watched him eating. “Now I’m getting hungry,” she said.

  “Want a steak?” he asked, relieved. “Or some of this one?”

  “No,” she said. “Order me some strawberries, will you?” He did and they came as he was finishing his sirloin.

  “I always think of that market basket and the ball of twine when I see you eating strawberries,” he said.

  “Remember, Abe?” she said. “You were courting me and we used to go out all the time with that Helen Cohen, who lived next door and her boy friend, what was his name?”

  “Pulda. Herman Pulda.”

  “That’s right, Pulda. They used to call him Herky. They broke up later and he went into the meat business on Sixteenth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. Non-kosher. But every night the two of you would bring us a bag of fruit, not only strawberries, but bing cherries, peaches, pears, pineapples, every night something different. And you’d whistle, and we’d lower the basket on the twine from the third-floor window. Oy, my heart would thump.”

  “Your bedroom window.”

  “Sometime’s Helen’s. She was a pretty girl. Stunning.”

  “Couldn’t compare with you. Not even today.”

  “Yeh. Just look at me.” She sighed. “It seems like yesterday, but look at me, hair all gray, four times a grandmother.”

  “Beautiful.” Under the table he squeezed her polkeh. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”

  “Stop it,” she said, but he saw that she wasn’t mad and he gave her leg another squeeze before he took his hand away.

  After lunch they played gin rummy until she began to yawn. “You know what I’d like?” she said. “I’d like to take a nap.”

  “So, take a nap,” he said.

  She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the seat. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll have Oscar make up the berth.”

  “I don’t need it,” she said. “You’ll have to tip him.”

  “I’ll tip him anyway,” he said, annoyed.

  She took two Bufferin tablets and after Oscar made the berth she took off her dress and her girdle and got under the covers in her slip and slept until last call for dinner, when he woke her as gently as he knew how. The nap had rested her and she was hungry. At dinner she ordered fried chicken and apple pie and coffee. That night, however, she tossed and turned, keeping him awake as well.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked her.

  “I shouldn’t eat fried foods. I have a heartburn,” she said. He got up and gave her an Alka Seltzer. By morning she felt better. They went to the dining car very early and had juice and black coffee and then they went back to the compartment and Dorothy picked up her knitting again. It was attached to a tremendous ball of blue yarn.

  “What are you making now?” he asked.

  “Afghan, for Max.”

  He tried to read while she knitted but he wasn’t a great reader to begin with and he was tired of reading. After a time he took a walk through the swaying train, ending in the men’s lounge where Oscar Browning was stacking towels and counting small bars of soap.

  “Won’t be long before we reach Chicago, will it?” he asked as he sat down near the porter.

  “’Bout two hours now, Mr. Kind.”

  “I used to sell that town years ago,” he said. “Marshal Field. Carson, Pirie and Scott. Goldblatt’s. That’s quite a town.”

  “Yes, sir,” the porter said. “I live there.”

  “Do you?” Abe said. He thought for a while. “Any kids?”

  “Four.”

  “Must be hard, traveling all the time.”

  “It ain’t easy,” the porter said. “But when I get home, Chicago is it.”

  “Why don’t you get a job in Chicago?”

  “Railroad pays me more loot than I could earn in Chicago. I’d rather come home to those four kids once in a while with money for new shoes than see ’em every day with no money for new shoes. Make sense?”

  “It makes sense,” Abe said. They both grinned. “You must see a lot of life on this job,” Abe said. “Men and women stuff.”

  “To some people, travelin’ makes ’em itchy down there. An’ a train is worse than a ship. There’s not much else to do.” For a while they told each other stories, corset stories and railroad stories. Then Oscar ran out of towels and soap and Abe went back to the compartment.

  The ball of blue yarn had rolled all the way to the door when it had dropped from her lap. “Dorothy?” he said. He picked it up and carried it to her. “Dorothy,” he said again, shaking her, but he knew right away, and he leaned down hard on the button summoning the porter. She would have looked asleep except that her eyes were open. They looked sightlessly at the blank green wall straight ahead.

  Oscar came through the open door.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Kind?” he said. He stared for a moment. “Our merciful Lord Jesus,” he said softly.

  Abe put the ball of yarn in her lap.

  “Mr. Kind,” Oscar said. “You better sit down, sir.” He took Abe’s elbow but Abe shook off his hand.

  “I’ll go find a doctor,” the porter said uncertainly.

  Abe listened to him move away and then he dropped to his knees. Through the carpet on the floor he could feel the vibration of the tracks and the straining and the swaying of the train. He picked up her hand and held it against his wet cheek.

  “I’m going to retire, Dorothy,” he said.

  35

  Ruthie arrived ten hours too late for the funeral. They were sitting on stools in the Kind living room when the doorbell rang and she let herself in and walked over and put her arms around Abe, who began to shake with deep, gasping sobs.

  “I don’t know why I rang the bell,” she said, and then she began to weep, quietly, her head twisting from side to side on her father’s shoulder.

  When things had quieted down she kissed her brother and Michael introduced Leslie. “How’s your family?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She blew her nose and looked around. All the mirrors had been shrouded at Abe’s request, despite Michael’s insistence that this was not necessary. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  Michael nodded. “This morning. I’ll take you out there tomorrow.”

  “All right.” Her eyes were puffed and reddened from weeping. She was deeply tanned and there was gray in her black hair. The combination of dark tan and graying hair was very attractive, but she was overweight, with more than a sug
gestion of double chin. And her legs had thickened. She was no longer his sleek American sister, he saw with dismay.

  People began to arrive.

  By eight o’clock the apartment was filled. The women covered the table with things to eat. Michael started to go into his old bedroom to get cigarettes and two of his father’s customers were sitting on the brass bed with their backs to the door, drinking Scotch.

  “A rabbi and he married a shickseh. Can you tie that one?”

  “My God, what a combination.”

  He closed the door softly and went back to sit next to Leslie and hold her hand.

  At one o’clock in the morning, when everyone had gone, they sat alone at last in the kitchen and drank coffee.

  “Why don’t you go to bed, Ruthie?” Abe pleaded. “You had that long plane trip. You must be exhausted.”

  “What are you going to do, Poppa?” she asked him.

  “Do?” he said. His fingers crumbled a toll-house cookie that had been baked by the wife of one of his cutters. “No problem. My daughter and her husband and their kids are going to move here from Israel and we’ll be very happy. I’m selling Kind Foundations. There’ll be enough money for Saul to go into any business he wants. Equal partners. Or if he wants to teach, let him go back to college for more degrees. We got kids here need teachers.”

  “Poppa,” she said. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “To live in Israel you don’t have to be a pioneer. You’d be like Rockefeller. If you come back with me there’s a place near us with a little whitewashed courtyard shaded by olive trees,” she said. “You can have a garden. You can exercise with your weights in the sun. Your grandchildren will come every day and teach you Hebrew.”

  Abe laughed without smiling. “Go let your kid marry a foreigner.” He looked at her. “I would write lots of letters. Too many letters. It would take me ten days to know whether the Yankees beat the Red Sox or the Red Sox beat the Yankees. And sometimes they play two games in one day.

  “You can’t even buy a Women’s Wear Daily there. I know, I tried the last time Momma and I—” He got to his feet and walked quickly into the bathroom. They heard the toilet flush as soon as he closed the door behind him.