One other person was greatly affected by Rifka’s illness: the other Moshe, the Locksmith from upstairs. He, too, visited Rifka frequently, and soon his visits became an excessive burden on her. Was it asking too much to die in peace? Why was everyone around her all the time? Why must her deathbed be as crowded as a train station platform?
She instructed her husband to let no one in anymore, no one except Dr. Ginsky. One night, the Locksmith came to the apartment, drunk, rapping against the door and calling Rifka’s name. Laibl went out to talk to him. Muffled sounds wafted into the small apartment. Rifka told Moshe to go see what was going on.
Moshe ran outside and saw the bear of a Locksmith holding Laibl in a headlock, spanking his behind. Laibl’s face was bright red with pain and indignation. “Let go of me!” he yelled, “you klutz, you mieskeit!”
“I want to see her!” roared the Locksmith.
“Out of the question!”
“I love her!” the Locksmith yelled. Other apartment doors opened and the neighbors looked on with great interest.
“Kish mir in tuches!” yelled Laibl.
The Locksmith continued to spank the rabbi. Laibl howled like an animal. Moshe tried to tear the men apart, but it was useless. He felt like a fly trying to move a rock. Eventually, he heard a voice:
“Stop it,” said Rifka weakly. She was leaning against the doorframe, a pale imitation of her former self.
“Rifka,” said the Locksmith, releasing his grip on the rabbi. Laibl fell to the floor.
The Locksmith approached Rifka, and for a moment Moshe thought he was going to break his mother in half. But he stopped in front of her and raised his large, paw-like hands. They were shaking. Then, very gently, he touched her cheek with one hand, as if she were made of porcelain and he was afraid to break her.
“Let go of my wife,” cried the rabbi.
Rifka looked at the Locksmith and said, “He’s right. You have to let go of me.”
“But . . .” stammered the Locksmith. He withdrew his hands.
She took his large fingers into her hands and gently stroked them. “Let go of me,” she repeated.
Suddenly, a deep sob emerged from the Locksmith’s colossal body. He fell down on his knees in front of her and pressed his head against her body.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“Do I look like I want to?”
After a few more sobs, the Locksmith calmed down. He looked at her with unending sadness. Then he got up and went back upstairs. Shivering, Rifka drew her nightgown closer. She turned to Laibl and Moshe, who had watched the scene in silence.
“Can we go to bed now, please?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” said the rabbi.
“Why must he be such a noisy oaf?” Rifka asked.
“Also, he takes a lot of time on the toilet,” her husband opined, but Rifka shot him a menacing look, and he shut up.
Death came on a winter morning. Rifka woke up from an uneasy sleep feeling cold, and asked for a hot water bottle. Moshe prepared one for her, but she remained cold. She asked for more blankets, but still the cold wouldn’t leave her. It was the chill of death.
“Moshe . . .” she said weakly.
“Yes?”
“Where is my husband?”
“He’s not here,” said Moshe. “He’s out drinking with the goyim, where they don’t keep kosher. At U Fleků.”
“I am dying and he drinks?” Rifka said indignantly.
“Yes,” Moshe replied, somewhat ashamed. “He went with the Locksmith.”
For a moment, Rifka seemed puzzled. Then she said to Moshe, “Hold my hand.”
He did.
Then, Rifka said, “Hold me. I’m so cold.”
Moshe climbed up into his mother’s bed. He pressed his small body against hers and wrapped his arms around her.
“One day soon,” Rifka said, “you will be a man. And you will have a wife, and she will be safe and warm in your arms.” Rifka stared at the wall, the paint peeling off, and it irked her that the last thing she should see was this ugly wall.
She closed her eyes, and heard her son crying softly.
“I’ve lost you,” Moshe said.
“Sing me a song,” Rifka said.
And Moshe started singing the song that she had sung for him when he was a baby in his crib:
Far above in the distant sky
The wind carried a lonely cry
Far above, where eagles fly
Rifka’s heart rose when she heard the familiar melody. She tried singing along, but all she could muster was a whisper.
A sorrowful and lonely sound
Why do I have to die?
Cried a lamb, tightly bound
She knew the song well. As a child, she had always thought that she was an eagle, not a lamb. Now she knew better. All of mankind was the lamb.
Far above in the distant sky
Far above, where eagles fly
Moshe’s voice grew stronger and more confident. Rifka felt a surge of motherly pride. This was her son, her life, her gift to the world. His fingers clutched hers. She could feel the warmth of his body, and it was the only thing she still felt. Then she saw her husband standing in the doorway, looking much as he had upon returning from the Great War nine years ago. Drunk now and smelling of schnapps, he approached her bed, saying nothing, as Moshe continued to sing:
Why can’t I fly through the sky?
Why, oh Lord, why?
Like an eagle in the sky
By the time Moshe had finished, his mother was no longer breathing.
THE SWEET LIFE
Max carefully pushed the record back into its sleeve and turned it around. On the back, he saw the list of the “greatest tricks” that the man in the silver toga had to offer: THE WONDERS OF THE FAKIR, Max read, MAGICAL NUMBERS, TOAD MAGIC, and, all the way at the bottom: THE SPELL OF ETERNAL LOVE. Apparently, the whole point of the record was to explain magic spells to the listener, for “the amazement of family and friends . . . and to change your life!” It was just what he needed. The wheels started turning inside Max’s head. Eternal love?
“Can I keep this?” he asked his dad.
“Sure,” Harry Cohn said with a sigh. He continued gathering up the items that had fallen out of the box and were scattered over the front lawn.
A short while later, the movers finished loading the last box. The moment of departure had arrived.
When Dad gave him a final hug, Max was already cooking up his plan.
“Bye, Dad,” he mumbled.
“Okay . . .” Dad said weakly. “I’ll be in touch.” He looked at his son with helpless desperation. He felt there were a million things to say. Waves of words and feelings ebbed and flowed through his heart. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again. The waves receded. He was at a loss, and simply waved at Max.
Max didn’t wave back.
“So Dad finally moved out,” Max said to Joey Shapiro the next day in school. “Took him long enough.”
“Yeah,” Joey said.
“About time,” Max added.
They were standing in line in the student cafeteria, food trays in hand.
Max got chicken teriyaki dippers and cornbread. Joey had a salad.
“I’m trying to cut out carbs,” Joey said. Max nodded, even though he wasn’t sure what that meant.
They took their trays outside and sat down at a table at the edge of the schoolyard. Behind them, they could see the rolling hills of Silver Lake.
Max told Joey about his find, the mysterious record. “There are magic spells on it, by a guy named Zabbatini,” he said. “If you play it, the spells are supposed to . . .” He cleared his throat.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something’s supposed to happen. Magic, whatever.”
“And how are you planning to play this record?” Joey asked.
“No idea,” Max said with a shrug. “I’ll ask Mom.” But first, he had to do some more research.
Who was the Great Zabbatini? Where had this record actually come from? Max decided to ask Dad this weekend. His father was staying at Grandma’s house in Encino while searching for a new place. This was bad news for Max, because it meant that whenever he wanted to see Dad, he had to put up with Grandma. And Grandma was really annoying. Apparently, some bad stuff had happened to her when she was young, in “the Old Country.” As a child, she had been rescued from “the Camps.” Ever since then, she considered life highly precarious, a privilege that might be revoked at any moment. She managed to slip that information into almost any conversation. The worst of the Camps was a place she called “the Suitcase Factory.” She was always itching to tell her tale of the Suitcase Factory, but no one in the family wanted to hear it anymore. Especially not Max.
“When they sent me to the Suitcase Factory . . .” she began telling him one Saturday afternoon, after making Max some lemonade.
“Grandma!” Max called out, rolling his eyes. “I’m trying to watch Scooby-Doo!”
She shot him a dirty look. “I survived the Camps for this?” she asked.
Max, too, had survived a camp, Camp Isaiah in Redondo Beach, where he had been forced to go on hikes and listen to counselors play Cat Stevens on the guitar. “Matzo ball soup for the soul,” they called it.
Grandma had made it clear that the Camps were even more unpleasant. They were “Death Camps,” which, as it turned out, had absolutely nothing to do with the Death Star in Star Wars. “They brought us there to be killed,” she said simply and wiped a stain off the counter. This information, Max felt, cast a cold chill on an otherwise perfectly pleasant summer day.
“In the Suitcase Factory as well?”
“Especially the Suitcase Factory.”
He was sitting in Grandma’s fastidiously clean kitchen, at her Formica table, his feet barely touching the linoleum, drinking lemonade and staring out into her garden at a lemon tree, from which the lemonade came, watching its leaves sway ever so slightly in the summer breeze.
Max stared into his glass. A lemon seed was drifting to the surface.
Grandma sat across from him, seemingly frozen.
“Grandma?” he asked.
She didn’t respond. His hand reached out to her, and even though she was sitting right at the other side of the table, she seemed to be in another world. Max realized for the first time that people had wounds you couldn’t see.
Her second husband, Herman, aka “Grandpa,” had died some years ago. His death was an event that had barely registered with Max, who didn’t fully realize that the dead stay that way. Grandpa had suffered from dementia, and hadn’t played a very important part in Max’s life. He had merely been an extra to Max, not a leading actor. He hadn’t even been his real grandpa. Max remembered the funeral only vaguely. He had dim memories of a distant and somewhat unpleasant day at temple—aren’t they all, though?—that ended with a large crate being lowered into the ground. Afterward, there was boring food and countless adults pinching him on the cheek.
Grandpa’s death, however, brought about a remarkable change in Grandma. She bought new, gold-rimmed glasses, started dyeing her beehive blue, and took to wearing brightly colored jogging outfits, even though she never jogged. She began attending Mexican cooking classes and subjected her family to forays into the art of tofu tamales and kosher enchiladas. Also, she had affairs—a phrase Max was beginning to understand all too clearly—with some of the men she met at the temple’s senior citizens’ activities program. Apparently, these activities included Grandma peeling out of her athletic suit and doing the nasty with some decrepit geezer.
Now that Dad was living with her, the atmosphere was even weirder. Grandma’s formerly ordered and structured environment was now cluttered with Dad’s trail of papers, files, and pens. Two worlds collided. Max had never liked Grandma’s house. There was something stuffy about it. Dad being there only made it worse.
When Max visited his father that weekend, they went out for Thai food with Grandma, Uncle Bernie, and Aunt Heidi. Grandma didn’t like Aunt Heidi and always called her “the shiksa.” Uncle Bernie and Aunt Heidi had brought their bratty kids with them, Max’s cousins Esther, Mike, and Lucas. Everyone always assumed that Max would be eager to talk to and play with other kids, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Other kids, his pudgy cousins in particular, were stupid, and Max tried to keep their interactions to a minimum, like neighboring nations trying to avoid a war.
Pattaya Bay was a small, run-down restaurant in a strip mall on Victory Boulevard in Burbank. Its walls were adorned with panorama wallpaper depicting tropical beaches, and plastic plants stood before the windows. On the left side as you entered was a giant fish tank, with only one fish inside, an eight-year old pacu named Bhumibol, a large, monstrous, and somewhat sad-looking creature. Max often thought that Bhumibol must be very lonely, all alone in his fish tank. Above Bhumibol’s tank, next to the karaoke machine, were framed portraits of the king and queen of Thailand. As it turned out, the king was also named Bhumibol. The fish reminded Max of a king in exile.
“Is there any shrimp paste in this curry?” Aunt Heidi asked the waitress, pointing at the menu.
The waitress smiled and nodded.
“Shrimp paste,” Aunt Heidi declared indignantly.
“Yes,” said the waitress.
“Shrimp paste is bad,” Uncle Bernie explained. “No shrimp paste.”
Bernie, Dad’s older brother, was an odd man, oddly shaped and oddly proud of it. Whenever he came home, he would immediately disrobe, much to the dismay of Aunt Heidi, and lounge about in a silk kimono, his ample belly sticking out, before grabbing a beer from the fridge.
“Yes,” said the waitress. “Shrimp paste bad.”
“No,” said Aunt Heidi. “Bad.”
“Yes,” said the waitress. “No.”
She turned around and left, seeming to have no idea what Aunt Heidi was talking about. Like most people, Max thought. He looked at his dad. It seemed like a good time to pose the question that had been on his mind.
“Dad,” Max began, “about this record I found . . .”
“Yes . . .” Dad said, and took a sip of water.
“Where did it come from?”
Dad told him that the Great Zabbatini had been a somewhat popular stage magician when he was a boy.
“He was often on the radio,” Uncle Bernie interjected. In the seventies, when Bernie and Harry were young boys, he had made the switch to television, more or less successfully.
Dad nodded. “We used to see him on The Tonight Show.”
“He could predict the future. He was a mind reader,” added Uncle Bernie.
“A ganef,” Grandma said. She turned to Max and pointed her chopsticks at him. “Your father and your uncle were crazy about this man. Harry even wanted him to come to his bar mitzvah.”
“What happened?” Max asked.
“What, I’m going to ask some schmuck to come to my boy’s bar mitzvah? What am I, an idiot?”
“I wrote him a letter,” Dad said with a melancholic air. “But Zabbatini never came.”
“Your grandfather, God rest his soul, bought him a record instead. That stupid thing. Money out the window.”
She took a sip of her Thai iced tea. Then she shook her head and said, “This is awful. Just like in the Camps.”
“They had Thai iced tea?” Max asked.
“No,” Grandma said. “You see, when they sent me to the Suitcase Factory . . .”
“Not again!” Dad said, rolling his eyes.
Everyone moaned dramatically. Moaning at Grandma was one of the few family activities everyone could agree upon.
“Did
you ever listen to it?” Max asked Grandma. “The record, I mean.”
“I should listen to this crap?” She shook her head and cleared her throat.
The waitress came with the food. Aunt Heidi, a convert to Judaism and therefore much more observant than the rest of the family, reiterated her desire that there be no shrimp paste. She continued questioning the waitress on each individual ingredient. With an impatient gesture, Uncle Bernie put a stop to the interrogation. His wife didn’t need to know that he occasionally indulged in a shrimp or two, sometimes even a prawn, behind her back. If she didn’t know it, then neither did God.
Grandma was annoyed because the shiksa was, once again, making a scene. And, as always, she took it out on her eldest son.
“Sit up straight,” she said to Uncle Bernie. “You’re thirty-nine years old and still slouching? For this I survived the Camps?”
Bernie sighed, shrugged, and slouched even more.
“What was on the record?” Max asked, trying to steer the conversation back to more important things.
“Zabbatini gave instructions about the spells, explaining them step by step. And if you followed the instructions to a T, you could do magic,” Dad said and winked at Max.
“Really?” Max asked excitedly.
“No,” Grandma said. “It’s all nonsense.”
Max looked imploringly at his father. “Dad?”
Dad said nothing. He simply gave a resigned shrug. Aunt Heidi called the waitress over to complain that there was shrimp paste in her curry.
She could definitely taste it.
The weekend was agonizing. Dad and Grandma were always getting into arguments. On top of that, Max had to sleep in Grandpa’s old study, a den in the back of the house overlooking a concrete patio and a sad-looking, empty swimming pool that was only used by raccoons who would rummage around the garbage can at night and then wash their finds in the few drops of stale water at the bottom. Grandpa’s study had fake wood paneling and an oil painting of an old man with a beard, whose eyes seemed to follow Max’s every movement. Also, Max didn’t like the bed he was sleeping in. He knew that Grandpa had died in it.
The Trick Page 4