Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  * * *

  —

  It was evening when they got to shul, and they found a few men milling about the sanctuary, and a few more studying the Talmud in back.

  When the service began, Pru and her mother watched through the mechitza as the man up front recited Barchu. Soon the rest of the congregants were saying the Shema, and Pru and her mother were saying it with them.

  When it came to Judaism, Pru had arrived at feminism late. She hadn’t cared, growing up, that the girls didn’t read the Torah or lead services; she could play hooky from synagogue, spend Saturday mornings in the bleachers of the local high school, which never would have been tolerated if she’d been a boy. She’d liked tradition: the men on one side, the women on the other, the men saying Kiddush on Friday nights, the women lighting the Shabbat candles. In her twenties, she was a member of not one but two synagogues, but she didn’t go to either of them, so she canceled her memberships. It wasn’t until Sarah reached school age that her interest in Judaism was rekindled and, like a plant that had long been assumed dead, she enrolled Sarah in Hebrew school so she could have a Bat Mitzvah. Friday nights they would go to services together, but the synagogue they went to was large and progressive; it wasn’t the kind of synagogue her father would have liked. The synagogue she was in now, to say Kaddish for him, was small and Orthodox, like her father himself. It was where he would have wanted her to go, and she preferred the anonymity, besides, knowing she wouldn’t run into anyone.

  Another woman was saying Kaddish, too, but she was reciting it so softly Pru couldn’t hear her.

  When the service was over, the rabbi walked through the aisles, straightening up. “Are you new here?”

  “No,” Pru said. “Actually, yes. I mean, sort of.”

  “That’s a lot of answers.”

  What could she tell him? That she was new to this synagogue but not to synagogues in general? That she wasn’t even new to this synagogue, having come here a couple of times over the years? That she had grown up in a kosher home? That her father had kept kosher until the day he died? That her mother—she introduced her now to the rabbi—still kept kosher? That when she’d moved in with Spence, the first thing they’d done was kosher the kitchen, call in those men with their blowtorches and beards? That three decades later, though her kitchen was traif, she still made an annual contribution to Go Kosher? It was too much information, as people liked to say, and also not enough. So she told the rabbi the truth: she was here to say Kaddish for her father.

  “We welcome newcomers,” the rabbi said.

  “I remember.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  She nodded. She recalled a Rosh Hashanah service and a random Shabbat when she’d woken up overcome by a long-dormant spiritual longing. She thought of synagogue worship like punctuated equilibrium, bursts of attendance followed by long periods of lying fallow.

  “Welcoming but forgetful,” the rabbi said.

  “It was years ago,” she assured him.

  “I’m not good with faces. It’s not the best quality in a rabbi.” He pulled on his jacket sleeves. He didn’t have a beard, but there was something rabbinic-seeming about him nonetheless—the yarmulke, of course, and the dark jacket, the close-cropped hair, an open manner that she could only call pastoral. He was about her age. She wondered if he was married. For an instant she imagined being his wife, going to shul every Shabbat, living a different life entirely.

  “When you were saying Kaddish before? That’s the way to belt it out.”

  “I’m Pru,” she said. “Hear me roar.”

  “As in pru u’rvu,” the rabbi said. “Be fruitful and multiply.”

  She finished the verse for him: “Oo’meeloo et ha’aretz v’chivshuha.”

  “So you have a Jewish education.”

  “Nine years of Torah Academy,” Pru’s mother said.

  “Your parents taught you well,” the rabbi told Pru.

  “The things you remember from when you were a child.”

  Now it was the rabbi’s turn to quote Hebrew to her. “Ha’lomaid yeled, l’mah hoo domeh? L’dyo kitoovah al neeyar chadash. V’ha’lomaid zakain, l’mah hoo domeh? L’dyo kitoovah al neeyar machuk.”

  Pru knew these verses, too. He who learns as a child, what is that like? It’s like ink written on new paper. And he who learns as an old person, what is that like? It’s like ink written on erased paper. She’d studied Pirkei Avot with her father, a chapter a week on Shabbat afternoons.

  The rabbi stepped back into the sanctuary. “We’re open every day!” he called out. “We’re even better than the post office! We’re open Sundays and holidays too!”

  Out on the street, Pru opened her bag and found an apple. She ate it down to the core, thinking of her father, who used to eat his apples down to the pits. And then he ate the pits too, leaving only the stem.

  * * *

  —

  “How are you?” Camille said when Pru got to her apartment. More than thirty years later, Pru and Camille were still best friends.

  “Lonely,” Pru said. She was lonely without Spence and—this was worse—she was lonely with him. Spence was the person she talked to, and now she couldn’t talk to him anymore.

  “You can talk to me,” Camille said. “I know it’s not the same thing…”

  It wasn’t, Pru thought, but it wasn’t nothing either. She had known Camille since they were eighteen.

  She heard a banging. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the next-door neighbor’s boy. Retaliation for all those years when I played my music too loud.”

  “In my old age,” Pru said, “I’ve developed the hearing of a bat.”

  “Now, don’t you go pretending you’re getting old, too. Whatever Spence has, it’s not contagious.”

  Camille’s cat jumped onto her lap.

  “Seriously, Camille, I’m only fifty-four, but taking care of Spence makes me feel like I’m seventy-four. And look at you, fifty-four and you’re out having sex.”

  “You’re not having sex?”

  “It hasn’t happened in months.”

  “Spence doesn’t want to?”

  “I don’t even know if he’s capable anymore.”

  Camille was quiet.

  “You’d be handling this differently if you were me.”

  “How would I be handling it?”

  “More effortlessly. More gallantly.”

  Camille laughed. “I’m the least gallant companion in the world. Why do you think I live alone?” The cat stretched out on Camille’s lap. He was a new cat. There was always a new cat, just as there was always a new boyfriend. Though Camille was between boyfriends now.

  “You could still get married,” Pru said. “You’d have the pick of the litter.”

  “I already do.” Camille lifted the cat and brought him into the kitchen, where she poured him a bowl of food.

  18

  One morning Pru said to Spence, “I don’t know if you’ll be teaching next term.”

  “Of course I’ll be teaching. They’ll have to bury me beneath my office before I retire.”

  Maybe by the time classes started he’d be so bad off he wouldn’t realize he wasn’t teaching. Was that what she was hoping for, a decline so steep he wouldn’t understand?

  “Am I going to die from this?” he asked her one night.

  “I hope not.”

  “But will I?”

  She couldn’t bear to answer him.

  “I apologize for getting sick.”

  “Oh, darling, it’s not your fault.”

  One day, when he was more clearheaded than he’d been in weeks, he said, “I’d rather kill myself than let this disease take me.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “To be robbed of my mind? I’ve never meant anything
more.”

  He’d always insisted he would never die. Now there was this.

  He took out a bread knife to cut a bagel, and she screamed, “What are you doing? Watch out!”

  He just looked at her, bewildered.

  “Give me that!” she said, and she took the knife and cut the bagel for him.

  After that, she put away the knives and the household medications. She removed a strand of rope from the utility closet.

  * * *

  —

  She called Sarah in L.A.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Some days better, some days worse. How are you doing?”

  “Terrible. I’ve been going on neurology rounds. It’s a lot of brain tumors and stroke victims, and who cares about that?”

  “I’m sure the patients do. And their families. Seriously, darling, you’re doing God’s work.”

  “I’m in the library all night reading medical journals. Plaque, tau, ApoE4, ApoE3.”

  “I don’t even begin to understand.”

  “No one does. If they did, they’d have a cure.”

  “At least you left me a stethoscope. And a blood pressure cuff.”

  Sarah laughed darkly. “My daughter went to med school and all I got was this lousy blood pressure cuff.”

  Pru didn’t speak.

  “How is his blood pressure?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “And his heart?”

  “It’s beating.”

  “Any problems at all, I want you to call me. Two in the morning, three in the morning, I don’t care.”

  * * *

  —

  Pru came home one night and found him lying on the couch. “How was your day?”

  “Fine.”

  “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn to do what?”

  “Your turn to ask me how my day was.”

  “How was your day?”

  “My day was horrible. In the morning, I called donors and got hung up on. In the afternoon, I wrote pitch letter after pitch letter. I might as well have been writing to the moon.”

  Spence closed his eyes.

  “You see? You never cared about my work. You don’t think what I do is worth anything.”

  “What you do is worth something.”

  “Do you even know what I do?”

  He hesitated.

  “Tell me what I do when I go to work.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “The school is called Barnard, Spence. If colleges didn’t raise money, professors wouldn’t get paid. People sneer at development, but we’re the air you breathe.”

  “I’m nothing without you.” He started to cry.

  Afterward, she said to herself, Are you crazy? Testing the memory of a demented man? Blaming him for your unpleasant job?

  * * *

  —

  Spence carried a pen wherever he went, taking notes like a stenographer. “Your birthday’s in November, right?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “When in November?”

  She gave him the date.

  “Tell me all the things I’m going to forget.”

  “With every person it’s different.”

  “Will I forget to love you?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Don’t let me forget to love you.” But now he was back to his notebook, writing something down.

  * * *

  —

  Every day he would ask about her birthday, though November was ten months off.

  “Professor,” Ginny said, “what are you worried about? Do you want to make sure you buy Pru a gift?”

  “I want to buy her a nightgown.”

  “You can buy her one when the date gets closer.”

  But he wanted to buy her one now.

  So Ginny took him shopping, but when they got to the department store, he insisted on going in alone. She waited for him outside, but when he didn’t come out, she went in to find him.

  She spotted him in the leather department, running his hands over a pair of shoes. “Professor, if you want to buy a nightgown you have to look in lingerie.”

  “It’s so disorganized in here.”

  “It’s a department store, Professor.”

  He followed her up the escalator, but when they got to lingerie he again asked her to step aside.

  She was uncomfortable standing in lingerie—uncomfortable for them both. But she was even more uncomfortable seeing him across the floor, staring vacantly at the nightgowns. His very stillness looked like lechery.

  A saleswoman approached him. “It’s okay!” Ginny called out. “He’s with me!” She ran across the floor and took him by the arm.

  Now he seemed more confused than ever. There were rows and rows of nightgowns, and he was made immobile by the choice. “It’s the thought that counts, Professor. It doesn’t matter which one you buy.”

  But it mattered to him.

  “Do you know what size she is?”

  He did not.

  She removed a nightgown from the rack and held it up to herself. She was bigger than Pru: heftier, taller. But if she continued like this, Spence would ask her to try it on.

  She pointed to a random nightgown. “What do you think of that one?”

  He was exhausted now, indifferent to choice.

  “Well, I like it,” she said. “I’m sure Pru will, too.”

  When they got home, Spence handed Pru the box. “Happy birthday,” he said.

  “Darling, my birthday isn’t for months.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be alive on your birthday.”

  “Of course you’ll be alive.” You could be alive for years, she wanted to say, but would that even be a comfort?

  That night, she wore the nightgown to bed, but in the morning Spence said, “What can I get you for your birthday?”

  “You already got me something, darling.”

  “What?”

  “This nightgown.”

  He just stared at her. “I’ve never seen it in my life.”

  * * *

  —

  She’d been having a hankering for Ethiopian food, so she made a reservation at an Ethiopian restaurant. But immediately she regretted it, because Spence had never had an adventurous palate.

  When the food came, he looked down in astonishment and disarray. “Where are the utensils?”

  She pointed at the injera. “You just scoop up the food with the bread.”

  Spence was a fastidious eater—he’d never so much as spotted his shirt—and now she was telling him to eat with his hands.

  She removed a plastic fork from her pocketbook, and he sawed at the injera before giving up.

  “Next time, we can go out to the movies and eat pizza.”

  “What if there isn’t a next time?” Spence said.

  She wondered: was he thinking about suicide again?

  * * *

  —

  She found him one morning at the stove, dropping silverware into a pot. “Jesus, Spence, what are you doing?”

  “I’m koshering our kitchen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when your mother visits she’ll want to eat.” But he just stood there, not knowing what to do, and she removed the pot from the flame.

  “You should divorce me,” he said.

  “Why? Because I wouldn’t let you kosher our kitchen?”

  “Because you have to take care of me. Would you want me to have to take care of you?”

  “I wouldn’t want you to have to, but I know you would.”

  “You’ve always been better off without me.”

  “Spence, you’re crazy.”

  He just looked at her as if she wer
e far away.

  * * *

  —

  She called Camille and said, “He talks about suicide, he talks about divorce. I’ve had to hide the knives so he won’t kill himself.”

  “Alzheimer’s patients rarely kill themselves.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked a neurologist.”

  Why, Pru wondered, hadn’t she asked a neurologist herself? Was she afraid that he might take Spence away from her, put him in an institution?

  “You should have him see a therapist,” Camille said.

  Pru laughed. Spence? Talking about his feelings with a stranger? Talking about his feelings with anyone but her?

  “It might help him.”

  Of course it might help him. But only if he was a willing participant. Before he’d gotten sick, he’d been the most stubborn person she knew. Now he was even more so.

  “You should see a therapist,” Camille said.

  “Oh, Camille.” She had neither the money nor the time for a therapist. She went to work in the morning and came home at night. She would have fallen asleep on the therapist’s couch.

  * * *

  —

  She googled “Alzheimer’s” and “suicide” and found an article about a professor with Alzheimer’s who had, in fact, killed herself.

  Afterward, she found Spence lying asleep in the living room, so still he might as well have been dead. “Spence, darling?”

  He didn’t respond.

  She touched his cheek, but he still didn’t move, so she put her forefinger under his nose to make sure he was still breathing.

  19

  At first the loneliness was the hardest part, because Sarah was back in L.A. and everyone was going about their lives. She hadn’t told her classmates about her father. She didn’t want their sympathy.

  She started to skip classes. She had sex with a guy she barely knew. She cut her hair short. She hadn’t worn earrings in years, but she bought a pair and jammed them through the holes. What would she do next, start to smoke, like some 1950s doctor? Get a nose ring? A tattoo? Thank God she was afraid of needles.