The Kabbalah Master

by Besserman, Perle;

  “That clock...” Pinnie said, looking wistfully at the ugly face with its oversized, radium-painted numbers, “I’ll never throw it out. It was the first piece of ‘furniture’ your father and I bought when we were married.”

  “And the radio? Isn’t it time you got a new one, that gothic church thing over there went out after World War Two.”

  “Why give it away, it’s still good. Better than the modern one you and Arleen bought me, the alarm radio doohickey.” Pinnie tossed her head and made a mock disgusted face. “Static and noise, and it only gets the all-news station anyway. Who needs news all day long? It can drive you crazy, this world.”

  Sharon smiled. It was comforting sitting next to her mother, their body heat mingling in the kitchen. Outside, beyond the open window, the full moon was shining on the porch and their neighbor’s aging bulldog was barking asthmatically. Pinnie had set aside her glass of tea and brought her manicure tray to the table. Sharon sat with one hand soaking in the bowl of pleasantly tepid scented water while her mother coated and rubbed the other with Lady Jergens pink and creamy lotion. Pinnie knew about pressure points, and when she applied them—especially in the soft fleshy skin behind the thumb—it was like having your whole body massaged. Pinnie had wonderful hands, rough, blunt-nailed, horny with work and creeping arthritis, miraculous healing hands that had kneaded Sharon’s aching shoulders with warm alcohol and Vicks Vapo-Rub and Ben-Gay, and every other foul smelling liniment when she was sick or aching after dreaded gym classes or had nearly drowned at the local Y—where every weekday afternoon she had desperately and unsuccessfully tried to learn to swim.

  “Stop making mouths,” Sharon said, unconsciously lapsing into her grandmother’s un-translatable Yiddish expression for “Don’t distort your face.”

  Ignoring her, Pinnie went right on distorting her face and rubbing Lady Jergens lotion into Sharon’s hands. She had worked briefly in a beauty salon and was marveling just then at how little one forgets in one’s lifetime. The body seemed to fall into the old grooves without even trying. Ach, a worn record of daily habits, she thought, all the way to the grave. Still, she could not help smiling as she admired her own professional manicurist’s stroke.

  “You know you’re still pretty, Pinnie,” said Sharon, “a little on the fat side, but still pretty.”

  Pinnie pretended to hit her. “I’ll give you fat!” she laughed, flapping her hands in the air.

  Sharon pretended to duck the blows, her vigorous movements causing soapy water to slosh over the sides of the bowl onto the table, the wall, and one side of the refrigerator.

  “Don’t get soapsuds in my tea,” Pinnie said, lifting her glass with one hand and kneading Sharon’s wrist with the other.

  “Mmm, the glass is slippery,” Sharon removed her hand from the water, making an awkward attempt to set aside her own glass of tea. Pinnie clucked her tongue and moved Sharon’s glass for her. She didn’t have Pinnie’s deftness, tended to drop things—jars, knives. She was accident-prone, too, catching her fingers in doors and electric can openers. She never cleaned house without injuring herself and was continuously afflicted by paper cuts at work.

  “Remember when you were a kid and told me you wanted to be a rich lady in a mansion with a maid? You always had your nose in a book, so I didn’t make you help me around the house. I made you lazy. It’s my fault; I take the blame.”

  Sharon put her hand back into the bowl of soapy water.

  “So, who’s this Italian boy you brought home the other night?” Without looking up, Pinnie continued massaging Sharon’s other hand.

  “He’s a friend from court, from my case—now don’t start,” Sharon threatened to remove her hand from her mother’s grasp.

  “Easy, you’ll spill the water,” Pinnie warned, now feinting, now parrying carefully around what she had privately come to consider the “Italian situation.”

  “The water’s cold, and so is the tea,” Sharon said in her mother-terrorizing tone of voice.

  “I am not looking to creep into your heart, Sharon.”

  “Then stop creeping,” Sharon snapped.

  “When was it that you turned so mean? Been taking lessons maybe from your sister, the artist?”

  “Please, Ma, let’s not have another one of those—”

  “Listen, if you think it’s his religion that bothers me, you’re one hundred percent wrong. It’s the age difference. Yetta Solow was only five years older than Harvey and don’t you think the minute she didn’t watch herself and put on a pound here and a pound there he wasn’t out roaming around?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah...”

  Pinnie went on, “Who knows, maybe your generation is different, like Arleen keeps telling me—that is, if and when she decides to talk to me. Hippies, drug addicts, women with purple hair and tattoos—who understands these things anymore? I have daughters? Snakes that spit poison in my face when I try to give them a little—”

  “Enough, enough!” Sharon pulled one hand out of the water and the other away from her mother. “And you wonder why Arleen doesn’t want to talk to you. ”

  “No respect anymore, not even to a mother. Never mind ‘not even,’ especially not to a mother.” Pinnie stood up and emptied the soapy bowl of water in the sink. A pile of late-night supper dishes was drying in the rack; the ugly clock ticked its way ten-ward.

  Sharon had to force herself to stay awake, listening to Pinnie’s onslaught while sleeping with her eyes open—a trick she’d developed as a child knowing that her mother had high blood pressure and wasn’t supposed to get excited. Feeling the old childhood guilt creep up on her, she watched Pinnie unscrew the cap of the orange medicine bottle on the shelf over the sink with trembling hands and pop a pill in her mouth. She was close to seventy now, getting older by the day. What if Pinnie were to die tonight? A moment of panic ensued. Sharon didn’t want to think about that—no matter how problematic her mother was the idea of losing her was worse. She would think only positive thoughts and push aside the morbid ones. How? By using one of Rabbi Joachim’s “de-stressing exercises.” She half-heartedly tried visualizing Pinnie’s criticism as words being tossed into the ocean and swallowed up letter by letter. No, maybe it would be better to stave off the guilt by tuning in on her mother’s ramblings for a change.

  “You’d say I was crazy to listen to her the way I did in those days,” Pinnie was murmuring to herself. “Your grandmother was some force in all our lives, not one of us ever dared to question her. Nobody dared to question parents in my time. A good slap in the face I got from my stepfather when he came home from work and caught me trying on my mother’s high-heeled shoes. Those were only the small things, too. You know we were four kids, four of us—and the brother, he was king because he was the only boy. He got everything without even lifting a finger. That’s the way the old folks did things in those days. Boys were kings and girls were born to serve them. Me and my sisters went to work at age sixteen! That’s right; we didn’t even get to finish high school.” Pinnie’s eyes glistened with unspilled tears. Forgetting to dry the bowl, she tossed it back into the cupboard while it was still wet, closed the door with a clatter, and sat down again at the table.

  She is, in spite of her coarseness, a disciplined woman, Sharon thought. Not like me.

  “I had an Italian boyfriend once,” Pinnie blurted out suddenly after a long pause. “My ‘first love,’” she emphasized the words mockingly. “And Mama took care of that one fast enough. You remember how religious she was? She worked plenty fast on that first love of mine—none of this sitting together at the table, all palsy-walsy and pussyfooting around. You know what she did, your grandmother?”

  Sharon shook her head.

  “Well, I worked in a bank then; that was where I met him. I was eighteen, he was twenty-four. No, Mama didn’t believe in any psychology, ‘shmycology’—Mama didn’t read Freud or listen to Dr. Alexander on the radio. She just marched into that bank one afternoon with a bottle of rat poison in her
fist, went right up to Tony’s window—he was a teller in the foreign money department—and threatened to drink down the whole bottle in front of his eyes if he kept on seeing me.” Pinnie tapped herself lightly on the forehead with her finger. “Do you think it even entered my mind to question her? To tell her off? My mother’s word was law. Not even a peep did she hear from me. Do you think I even so much as challenged my older sister, who I knew, as God is my witness, was the very same person who told Mama about Tony behind my back? My sister Martha? Nothing!” Pinnie smacked the table with her open palm. “I just quit my job, turned around, walked out of the bank, and never laid eyes on Tony again.”

  “But—”

  “And don’t think my heart wasn’t breaking into pieces every minute. But Mama’s word was law, I tell you.”

  “Grandma was a monster, and I never knew it,” Sharon said bitterly.

  “You shut up with that disrespectful talk.”

  Enraged, Sharon narrowed her eyes and spat out, “Maybe you ought to get yourself over to the market and buy yourself some rat poison then, because Junior Cantana has invited me to spend the weekend with him in Pennsylvania and I’m going!”

  “What does your rabbi with the big black hat and the crazy eyes have to say to that, may I ask?” Pinnie replied sarcastically, her face flushed and her hands trembling.

  “You may ask all you like—and it’s damned rotten of you to talk to me like that. In case you forgot, next week is my birthday—I’ll be thirty-five!” Sharon yelled, forgetting about Pinnie’s blood pressure rising at the mention of Rabbi Joachim.

  “All the more reason you should know better. This Junior Cantana, a boy you picked up on a bench in Coney Island, and that other one, a married man, a rabbi, no less! Feh! It’s disgusting the way you’ve been carrying on lately.”

  “He’s twenty-eight, will you stop calling him a boy? I’m going to Pennsylvania with him next weekend, to an inn. And I’ll share his room—and his bed—if I feel like it.”

  “Go! Go to hell if you feel like it!”

  Sharon jumped up from her chair, pushed it away from the table, and stormed out of the kitchen. Pinnie ran after her but could not catch up. By the time she reached the bedroom, Sharon had slammed the door in her mother’s face. Suddenly remembering the still-wet bowl in the cupboard, Pinnie returned to the kitchen and removed it. Staring vacantly at the clock on the refrigerator, she stood rubbing the bowl with a dishtowel until her prickling fingers reminded her to stop.

  Sharon, meanwhile, had dropped into bed and fallen asleep without bothering to take off her clothes. In her dream, the staircase leading to her office at the Center for Mystical Judaism was covered from top to bottom with wet green horse droppings left by a blue-faced Officer Pols sitting stiffly on his chestnut policeman’s mount in the entranceway. Standing on the staircase knee-deep in horseshit, Sharon was waving at him, trying to get his attention. But Officer Pols didn’t recognize her. Scowling at the mess on the stairs, he turned the horse around and galloped off in the opposite direction.

  FOURTEEN

  FALL COMES EARLY TO THE PENNSYLVANIA countryside this year. In mid-July, the leaves stiffen on the trees and applaud themselves in the wind. Nuts and hard sour apples fall to the roadways with a smack and split in two. Preparing for the cold, an industrious squirrel carries off the remains of an apple, quarreling noisily with her rivals as she hurries to eat the meatiest parts. Stout, buff-colored mourning doves, novice aviators rehearsing for their first foul weather flight, climb into the air after an awkward running start, gaining altitude with much laborious churning of wings. A groundhog, very brown and very fat, scuttles for cover at the approach of a passing car and dives headlong into a mound of dried leaves. The summer’s languor departs quickly here; although the animals, who would have it otherwise, attempt to prolong the season—some even going so far as to ignore its passing. But the trees and meadows and woodland riding trails concede early, announcing their surrender to autumn in blinding yellow and orange before quickly turning brown and balding. This is a place where red worms slither out after a rainstorm, and where the sky shimmers in phosphorescent violets and oranges before sunset.

  And there is death here too, furry road kill, Sharon thought as she and Junior drove through the countryside in his borrowed Volkswagen Beetle. Reminded by the sight and smell of a flattened skunk in the road, she was still agonizing over the suicide of Jorge Diaz, which, as she’d learned earlier that morning, was the reason for the judge’s final dismissal of the case against him. Was it her fault for letting Officer Pols convince her to bring the case to court in the first place? Waiting for her in the car in front of the courthouse in his gray pants, navy blue blazer, white pullover, and white moccasins, Junior looked so young and full of life that Sharon didn’t have the heart to tell him that Jorge Diaz hadn’t shown up for trial because he’d hung himself in his cell the night before. Not wanting to bring death into their weekend together, she’d made a stupid comment about Junior’s outfit instead.

  “Not a sparrow falls that God doesn’t see.” Now she was sitting next to Junior mentally quoting Rabbi Joachim to herself, biting into the loose raw skin of the blister on her ring finger that had begun to heal. She was wondering what kind of God let nineteen-year-old boys get hooked on drugs and hang themselves or stood by, as animals were carelessly smashed bypassing cars, their moist red guts scattered across leaf-dappled roads.

  It had been a pleasant drive, with almost no traffic, a Bob Dylan tape playing, and little conversation. Suddenly, as if reading her thoughts, Junior had turned down the volume and asked, “You didn’t tell me what happened in court. Did Jorge show?”

  “He’s still confounding the lawyers.” Sharon hoped her indirect answer would prevent further questions. “Now the Civil Liberties people are in it too. What a mess,” she added, avoiding Junior’s eyes.

  “So Jorge Diaz still manages to hold up the works? I knew he’d never show up. I guess I can’t blame him. Knowing what I do about the justice system now, I’d probably do the same.”

  Sharon shuddered. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, at the Willow Grove exit, they met a camouflaged-convoy of army vehicles traveling in the opposite direction with their lights on. Sharon counted ten in all. Junior held up two fingers in a V, exchanging peace signs with the driver of the first truck.

  “When we first met, I thought you were a rightwing military fanatic,” Sharon said.

  “And now what do you think I am?”

  “Oh, a lefty peacenik.”

  “Are you sorry you met me?” Junior gave her a brief but meaningful glance.

  “Do you want me to say ‘no’—because I’m happy now, because I’m delighted to have met you, and because, though you still know so little about me, really, you’re about to take me to bed with you?”

  Junior nodded, grinning. “I’m a patient type of guy.”

  “Okay, no, I’m not sorry I met you,” Sharon said, turning her face to him.

  “Good, neither am I,” Junior said, and stroked her cheek.

  The plan was to pick up Junior’s friends Icaro, an army doctor, and his wife Wendy, an army nurse, at the Veterans’ Hospital in Valley Forge. The four of them would picnic in the State Park and then drive to the Purple Hen Inn in Buck’s County, where Junior had made dinner reservations and booked a room for the night. He’d enthusiastically described it to her as they neared Valley Forge: the big four-poster bed with its goose-down quilt and crisp, crackly white linens, the country wallpaper patterned with rose-bowered cottages set amid gently rising slopes of a valley. The wallpaper would be ever so slightly faded, but charming, and the varnished wooden floorboards would be cool under your naked toes. There would be a rocker in the corner by the window, a bowed weeping willow outside, and a view of the lazy Delaware Canal from a balcony so narrow it could only hold one person at a time. The bathroom would be spotless, with an old-fashioned, clawfoot tub...

  Their
car passed through the hospital gates, and Junior pointed out the Officer’s Club, the Commissary and the PX. The M.P. at the gate brusquely demanded to see his pass, and Junior, annoyed, but smiling, opened his wallet and flashed his ID. Sharon imagined what Rabbi Joachim would have done in the same situation and almost burst out laughing at how, ignoring the sentry, he’d have floored the gas pedal and barreled his red Volvo right past the gate.

  With its shaded walks and flower gardens, the hospital resembled a college campus except that the patients wandering aimlessly across the grounds were wearing slippers and striped bathrobes, the heavily medicated ones ashen-faced and stupefied. Most were hopelessly young, jug-eared, and soft-skinned. Sharon’s heart clenched.

  “Why are some patients wearing black pajamas?” she asked after Junior had parked the car in a space marked Military Personnel Only and they were walking toward the main building.

  “They have T.B. It’s to distinguish them from the others. You know, I never thought about it before.”

  “What did you wear when you were here?”

  “Me? When I was well enough, I wore civvies and worked.”

  “You worked? A patient recovering from a battle wound?” Sharon asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, it was part of my rehab. The docs didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to sit around, so they had me painting signs in the workshop. I’m an artist, so they figured I’d want to paint something.”

  “Oh, yes—army logic, right?”

  Junior pushed open the heavy front door and waited for Sharon to step into a corridor smelling heavily of disinfectant. Lowering her eyes so as not to stare at the maimed, limbless, bandaged, and wheelchair-bound men in the corridor, she took his hand. But it was impossible not to look at the wounded men. Like Jorge Diaz, they would haunt her dreams—today, tomorrow, forever. It was cruel of Junior to bring her inside. Why didn’t he let her wait in the car? Sharon was about to tell him this when a small, dark man with a handle-bar mustache wearing a white coat with a stethoscope sticking out of the pocket rushed at Junior from the other end of the corridor and gave him a hug. Under the white coat he was wearing a mustard-colored corduroy jacket, a blue denim shirt, and a rumpled pair of chinos; a woman in riding boots carrying a small fluffy white dog in her arms was following close behind him.