“But what about his Hebrew education? Surely, you of all people would not want to leave him in the hands of—of outsiders, would you?” Rabbi Tayson rose up in his chair.
“If you mean gentiles, you needn’t worry, Rabbi. It’s a very Jewish neighborhood, the school is over eighty percent Jews,” Sharon lied again, pulling numbers from the air. “It’s one of those progressive schools, not more than ten children to a classroom,” she added, knowing full well that at the Shimon bar Yohai Yeshiva for the children of mystical Jews, students were packed thirty-five to a room.
“Our master will be very disappointed in you,” Rabbi Tayson parried quickly.
Sharon blushed. So he knew how she felt about Rabbi Joachim. The contemptuous smile on his face told her so.
“I don’t want to inconvenience anyone with my personal problems,” she said lamely. The conversation was getting dangerously out of hand. “Least of all, Rabbi Joachim.” That, too, hadn’t come out right; she was stumbling, falling fast.
“For you? Come now, I’m sure he’ll be willing to make an exception. Hasn’t he always, where you’re concerned?” Rabbi Tayson cocked an eyebrow at her.
“What do you want me to do, then?”
“Five dollars a month,” he shot at her crassly, looking at his watch.
She was wrong, the basketball hadn’t move so much as an inch from the base of the footlocker. She’d only imagined it.
Rabbi Tayson riffled through the papers on his desk to let her know he was finished with her. “To defray the cost of the psychologist,” he said without looking up.
“Three dollars,” Sharon snapped back.
His neck reddening above his stiff white shirt collar, the rabbi said, “Very well, then, three dollars, if that’s all you can afford at this time. We are well aware of your devotion to—to the Center, and we wouldn’t want to be too harsh about the money. Nonetheless, the boy is a problem and needs special attention.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Sharon said. She stood up and began to head for the door.
Rabbi Tayson likewise got up from his chair, walked around the desk and—as Rabbi Joachim never would—clasped her hand in his.
NINE
WITH PINNIE HOVERING OVER HER mopping up imaginary crumbs, Sharon sat at the kitchen table reading a book on Chinese medicinal plants.
“Well, what’s it to be?” Pinnie had stopped pretending to clean the table and was standing in front of her with her hands on her ample hips.
“What are you talking about?”
“Paulie, that’s what.”
“He stays in,” Sharon said, without looking up from her book.
“What did you do, twist Tayson’s arm?” her mother laughed coarsely.
“Shush, I’m reading.”
“All of a sudden I’ve got an intellectual for a daughter. If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
Seeing as her mother was in a good mood, Sharon thought it better not to tell her about the three-dollar-a-month tuition fee. In the dim hope that everything would work itself out on Rabbi Joachim’s return, she dismissed the problem of getting the extra money from Barney. The most important thing was that her son would remain at day camp. Sharon’s lingering anger over her conversation with Rabbi Tayson had caused her to reprimand Paulie more harshly than she’d intended, and he’d responded tearfully, “Barney doesn’t care about us anymore, and Grandma Pinnie likes Phyllis better than me. I wish you were home more often, Mama, you’re the only one around here who cares about me.”
Guiltily acknowledging her son’s wise assessment of her motherly shortcomings, she’d kissed him on the ear and recklessly increased his allowance by a dollar. Though bribery had never been her preferred way of dealing with Paulie. Nor was substituting junk food and toys for love. In fact, Sharon had always loved her son more because he was difficult, not in spite of it. And because he reminded her of her tempestuous father, who’d referred to himself as an “unfinished symphony” lacking the patience to finish what he started—not even managing to stay alive long enough to guide her away from the perilous, crooked paths of love. She and Barney had already been sleeping in separate beds by the time Paulie turned five. A late attempt at reconciliation had resulted in Phyllis being born. But by then it was clear that no amount of patching would fix the tear in the marriage, and Paulie had borne the brunt of it. Sharon tried her best but had failed utterly at shielding him, and later Phyllis, from the anger and resentment she harbored for Barney. By withdrawing and leaving their mothering to Pinnie, she’d unintentionally leveraged her rage on her children instead. Now she feared it was too late to undo the damage.
Later that afternoon, while Pinnie played cards with a neighbor, she took her book on Chinese herbs out to the porch where she could read while snatching glances at Phyllis asleep in her stroller. At four o’clock, after Pinnie had returned from her card game, Sharon went to the Center to check for telephone messages and found only two—both from telemarketers. With Rabbi Joachim gone, all the life seemed to have been drained from the office. Except for a heavier layer of dust, nothing had changed. The bathroom window sash was still stuck, and the same green rim of grime still circled the drain in the sink. Even a plastic spoon under a pile of sooty receipts remained where it had been carelessly stashed and forgotten three weeks before. Saddened by the emptiness of the place, Sharon quickly pocketed the mail and went home to give herself a permanent. When that didn’t improve her mood, she impulsively bought a black and brown spotted Basset Hound puppy she’d seen pining in the window of a Coney Island Avenue pet shop—only to return it two hours later. Too much time on her hands was making her reckless. Unable to stand being alone any longer, she called her sister and suggested they go to a movie. Arleen said she was busy but invited Sharon out on a double date the next night. Arleen’s boyfriend Les would bring along his friend Dave for Sharon. She reluctantly agreed to meet them on the southwest corner of St. Mark’s Place and Second Avenue.
EMERGING FROM THE SUBWAY UNPREPARED for the sultry squalor of the East Village on a summer night, Sharon held her breath as she hurried past a barefoot derelict lying facedown on the sidewalk. At the Cooper Square traffic island, a group of teenaged panhandlers pleaded with her for change. When she waved them away, a beautiful porcelain-skinned blond girl told her to go fuck herself. A policeman sitting on a horse nearby heard her and laughed, then turned his horse in the opposite direction and trotted off, leaving an enormous pile of turds behind him. Never mind, Sharon thought, unlike the derelict or the teenaged panhandlers, you at least have Pinnie, an apartment in a house on a tree-lined street, children who are still too young to panhandle, and thanks to Rabbi Joachim, a spiritual life. Then, as if her master were mocking her for her smugness, a hollow-eyed girl who could have been Paulie’s age accosted her.
“Please, miss, I haven’t eaten for three days, please, miss, please.”
Dropping a dollar bill into the girl’s outstretched hand, Sharon hurried on, breaking into a run past a leather shop and a food stand where a withered slice of pizza rotated on a tray under a red bulb.
Arleen, who had promised to wear a skirt, was dressed in blue denim overalls and a white t-shirt, which meant that in her high-heeled shoes and tailored blue linen suit, Sharon was overdressed. Never mind. She’d barely been introduced to Dave and was already sorry she’d come. When she’d asked him his last name, he’d laughed in her face and refused to tell her.
“Are you wanted by the police?” Sharon asked sarcastically.
Dave laughed again. “Not that I know of, but you gotta be careful. Never tell your full name to anyone on the street.”
Dave’s furtive eyes matched his paranoia. His other notable characteristics were a shiny pink bald dome that was not unlike Barney’s except for some long, scraggly side hairs that he had gathered into a ponytail and tied with a leather thong, stale cigarette breath, and tobacco-stained fingers.
Arleen, whose tastes had never included men in suits, had surpri
sed Sharon by hooking up with Les, a portrait painter by choice and textile designer by necessity, who, despite the heat, was wearing a corduroy suit. Arleen had always thrived on contradictions.
The four of them were standing on the corner deciding where to go when a a woman leading a Great Dane on a short leash stormed out of the candy store behind them.
“Honky, honky dirt!” she hissed. “Overcharging me ’cause I’m black, that’s what!” Then, stopping in her tracks only a hair’s breadth from Les, she screamed, “What you lookin’ at, white man? You got somethin’ to say to me, you say it, hear!”
“I wasn’t looking at you,” Les was foolish enough to yell back at her.
A small knot of onlookers gathered around them. The dog’s mouth hung open, disclosing a long pink tongue lathered with drool. Excited at the prospect of seeing the beast unleashed and Les mauled, three skateboarders began goading the woman on. At that moment a quartet of policemen emerged from a patrol car parked across the street.
“Move along, move along, nothing here for you to see. Let’s go!” Brandishing nightsticks, they dispersed the crowd and spoiled the show.
Sharon was instantly reminded of Officer Pols—and then, of Junior Cantana.
“How about a Chinese movie?” Dave asked as they headed downtown. “I hear they’re full of gorgeous naked Oriental chicks and cool samurai violence.”
“Samurai are Japanese,” said Arleen.
“I’ll see anything,” said Les, wedging himself between the two women.
“How about you, Sharon?”
“Huh?” Dave’s question had caught her in the middle of remembering Junior Cantana at Coney Island karate-kicking Jorge Diaz into the sand.
“Do you want to see a Chinese movie?” Arleen asked pettishly.
“Anything you decide is fine with me.”
“Don’t be so wishy-washy, Sharon. Do you or don’t you want to see a Chinese movie?”
“Sibling rivalry already, and the evening’s only just begun,” Les chuckled.
“Oh, never mind,” Arleen said, waving her hand in disgust. “You won’t get a straight answer out of her anyway. You never do.” She pulled Les ahead, leaving Sharon and Dave to fend for themselves.
When they couldn’t find four seats together in the crowded Chinatown movie theater, Dave volunteered to take the last two empty ones in the front row. Furious at him for not consulting her, Sharon pulled away and scrunched into the farthest corner of her seat with her head tilted upward, pretending to be absorbed in the swordplay on the screen. Feeling another migraine coming on, she’d lowered her head and was just starting to nod off when she felt Dave’s fingers digging into her thigh. Sitting this close to him and breathing the same stale air had been bad enough, more than Arleen had the right to ask of her. “All in the spirit of good sportsmanship,” a phrase Arleen had thrown at her as kids, playing to Sharon’s childhood terror of “not being fair” to her younger sister. But this went beyond fairness. The first man’s hands on her body after Barney not to be those of Rabbi Joachim—it was too much to bear. But no, she was wrong; Dave wasn’t the first—only three days ago Rabbi Tayson had given her a clammy handshake.
“Please stop,” she whispered, pushing Dave’s hand off her thigh.
“Loosen up, girl.”
“No.”
Dave hardened his grip. “Come on, Sharon don’t give me that virgin crap. Arleen told me you were divorced. You know what it’s all about, baby.”
Sharon looked around to see if the man sitting next to her had heard them. But he was slumped against the back of his seat, asleep with his mouth open.
“Please, I mean it,” she said urgently, again trying to loosen Dave’s grip. He was digging his fingers deeper into the flesh of her thigh, hurting her. (In a parallel drama on the screen the movie’s heroine, a frail Chinese princess, was being assaulted by a loathsome, beetle-browed villain.)
“No, you don’t understand me,” Sharon whispered loudly.
Dave angrily got up from his seat and headed for the lobby.
Sharon was on the verge of leaving when he returned with two jumbo bags of popcorn and handed her one.
“Peace offering,” he mumbled, seating himself stiffly at a distance from her.
Sitting there quietly eating her popcorn, Sharon mused on her inability to walk away from men who treated her badly.
The movie ordeal finally came to an end, and Arleen, Dave, and Les stood in front of the theater debating where to eat. Sharon stood apart from them watching a Chinese couple with a sleeping baby in a pouch slung over the man’s chest share a bar of sesame candy.
Arleen broke away from Les and Dave to inform her that they’d decided to pick up some Chinese take-out and eat at Dave’s place.
“I can’t go; I have to be in court tomorrow,” Sharon shot back quickly.
Arleen gave her a sour look.
“Told you she was a narc,” cried Les, laughter turning his eyes to slits.
“Court?” Arleen snapped. “You never told me anything about having to go to court. What about that job you’re married to? Does that maniac boss of yours even give you time off for court?”
“Jury duty, I have to,” Sharon stammered, now desperate to get away.
“Jury duty? You mean to tell me that people still go? Tell’em you’re a housewife, and they’ll excuse you. I know everything there is to know about jury duty. I was even on a jury once myself—saved a spade’s ass,” Dave chortled, taking her arm.
Eyeing the creepy late-night hordes and beer-sloshing men sprawled on the surrounding tenement stoops in their tank tops, Sharon relented.
The men led the way, each of them carrying a plastic bag stuffed with Chinese take-out containers. As they walked along Avenue A, Sharon noticed that a group of firefighters had just finished hosing down an abandoned car that had been set ablaze.
“Here we are,” Dave called out, oblivious to the smoky aftermath of the fire. “Home at last.” Unlocking the bolted door of what looked to Sharon like an abandoned factory, he led them into the dimly-lit front hall and up three flights of stairs to his apartment—a cavernous warehouse with floor-to-ceiling plywood shelves crammed to bursting with old LPs, books, magazines, cardboard boxes, tools, and every imaginable synthetic and natural material for drawing, sawing, sculpting, hammering, and building. Enormous worktables were strewn with half-finished projects made of balsa wood; geometric paper models were propped up to catch the light cast by bulbs painted blue and orange and red. Dave flipped a switch and activated three chartreuse and indigo light-boxes he’d fashioned from discarded or stolen X-ray screens; a shimmering frenzy of strobe lights; sewing machine parts; electro-cardiograms featuring blood-red heart failures in a grotesque variety of zigzag patterns; a cacophony of rotary telephones set to ringing at intervals.
Les threw himself down on a ticked mattress pressed against a wall. “This is great, man, really cool,” he said, clicking his tongue against his teeth.
At Dave’s invitation, Arleen flipped a switch and, to her delight, set off another miniature light show.
Sharon sat down stiffly on the edge of an empty juice crate facing the mattress.
“Anyone want beer or wine with dinner?” In his own domain, Dave had lost his cynical demeanor and grown affable, gathering his guests around the mattress, doling out the food and drinks, making sure not to let Sharon’s container of vegetable lo mein get mixed up with the shrimp and pork dishes after she’d timidly informed him she was Kosher.
“Can you turn some of those lights off?”
“What’s wrong, do my light shows make you nervous?”
“No, but, but,” Sharon had no intention of telling Dave that blinking lights gave her migraines. Spotting a record album lying open on the floor, she chose to divert him instead. “I haven’t seen an LP in ages and you have such a great vintage album collection; I thought it might be nice to listen to one of your records.”
“Did you set up the stereo system your
self ?” Arleen had switched off the light show and was now surveying the speakers hung in every corner of the room.
Dave picked up the record album Sharon had pointed to and placed it on the stereo player.
They scare me—all three of them, Sharon thought. Even my sister.
“I’m technologically oriented, as you can see,” Dave grinned.
“Man, that’s an understatement!”
“How much wattage does this take?”
“About a hundred and fifty volts.”
“No kidding?”
“Looks like a dump from the outside, but it’s Oz in here.”
“Have you exhibited any of your work?”
“I didn’t see any light boxes nearly as good as yours at the Electronic Age Show.”
They babbled on, leaving Sharon to hum along in her increasingly woozy head to the LP’s synthesizer version of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos. Her second glass of wine was starting to give her a buzz, and Dave’s toys reminded her of the circus, Sunday afternoons at Radio City, and all the other good times she’d had with her father. She got up and wove her way toward a door marked W.C.
Hunched high above the toilet seat, she peed, flushed, and washed her hands. Lingering so as to avoid unnecessary contact with the trio beyond the W.C. door, she studied the strips of photographic negatives Dave had hung from clips lined up along the naked shower curtain bar. Then she spent five minutes staring at her face in the toothpaste-stained mirror over the sink, recalling the Sunday her father had tipped a chubby museum matron with wrinkled elbows to take her to the ladies’ room to pee. The matron had lifted Sharon to the sink so she could wash her hands. “What a lovely little girl, and such good manners, too. You ought to be very proud of her,” the woman had crooned to Sharon’s father upon returning his daughter to him.
“I am,” Daddy had brushed aside his cowlick and taken Sharon’s small, sweaty hand in his. “I’m very proud of her.”
The Kabbalah Master Page 8