Questioning Return

by Beth Kissileff

  “It’s weird. He was much better than I thought he’d be, ardent, tender, sensitive, just . . . By far the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  “Sounds good. Why weird?”

  “I don’t know . . . too intense. Does that make sense? He had been with Sam at this bookstore, and then Sam died, so Benj’s death brought it all up again, but . . . I’m just not sure about Noah. I so want to sleep with him again, and it would be so convenient to be with him this year, but . . .”

  “You’re not head over heels. If the sex is good, it’s worth it.”

  “I wish I felt that way. Maybe I’m too much of a romantic, wanting to be with someone I just feel utterly, passionately, completely intense about. Maybe that’s unrealistic,” Wendy said sadly.

  “Don’t stay with him if he isn’t what you want. Your guy is out there. Of course he could be married already by the time you find him . . .”

  “Enough. How’s Nir?”

  Orly started laughing, “Mr. Right he’s not. But he has some redeeming qualities.”

  “Nu, details?” Wendy said laughing.

  EIGHT

  Wendy and Noah: The Aftermath of Desire

  By this time, indeed you know that in the worship of the Creator, blessed be His name, it is most important that the heart truly yearn after Him and that the soul feel a longing for Him . . . The best advice for the person in whom this desire does not burn is that he consciously enthuse himself so that enthusiasm might eventually become second nature to him. External movement arouses the internal, and you certainly have more of a command over the external than the internal.

  —MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO, Mesillat Yesharim

  Friday morning a week later, Wendy and Noah were lugging bags of groceries for Shabbat dinner down Emek Refaim. As they arrived at the corner of Hananya Street, where Wendy’s favorite coffee shop, Caffit stood, there was a red light. They couldn’t cross Hananya. Cars were turning from Emek Refaim onto Hananya, the cross street. Wendy and Noah put their grocery bags down and leaned against the street sign.

  “It’s crazy. This is Hananya Street, literally the street of God’s grace, yet God can’t be merciful! I’ve lost two friends this year already!” mourned Noah.

  Wendy didn’t know how to respond, so remained silent.

  There was now a crowd waiting to cross the street. When the lights changed, the pair began to cross. There were a few cars on Hananya, now stuck behind a red light, waiting to turn onto the larger street of Emek Refaim. The third car in the line was a dark blue sedan, of indeterminate year and make but certainly over ten years old. A man with a black hat, white shirt, and dark pants, and a beard not too long, dark with a bit of gray in it, got out of his car, holding a white pamphlet with black lettering in his hand. He did not scan the crowd at all but walked in a straight line towards the group of pedestrians crossing the street. Wendy and Noah were among a crowd of perhaps fifteen people crossing Hananya Street.

  The man did not appraise the crowd but headed straight for Noah.

  The man moved past the others, looked Noah straight in the eye, said, “I want you to have this,” in perfectly inflected English, and handed him a pamphlet.

  Then, the man turned around and walked back to his car, without making eye contact with any of the other pedestrians. He got back in his car and shut the door. The light changed. All the cars moved quickly to turn onto Emek Refaim and became absorbed in the flow of traffic.

  “That was strange,” Wendy commented. “He seemed to know he should give it to you, no one else. I’ve never seen that before—usually leafletters just give their stuff out to anyone, indiscriminately.”

  Noah said, “When he looked at me it was, like, this powerful gaze.” He shuddered involuntarily. Wendy asked if she could see the pamphlet.

  Noah began to hand it to her but then started reading himself.

  It is time for you to do

  TESHUVAH!

  Have you done something you regret, deeply, in the last few weeks?

  You can repent!

  Change your life—see how inside.

  “Some crackpot religious thing. It seems personal, but it’s just a generic message. Totally phony,” said Wendy. “Maybe I should do a chapter on people recruited that way?” she mused both to herself and to Noah.

  She looked at him again. “Are you okay? Do you want to get something warm at Caffit? We’re here.”

  Noah responded, sounding distant, “Fine. We need to cook.”

  Wendy and Noah picked up their bags, crossed to the other side of Emek Refaim, and turned toward Wendy’s street.

  When they crossed, Noah told her, “You shouldn’t have said the flyer was phony.”

  “That guy probably does the same thing all day, driving around and stopping and giving his flyer to random people to make them believe they have been ‘chosen.’ It’s bogus.”

  “I felt a chill when he looked at me and when I read those words. And,” he glanced shyly at her, next to him on the street, “I have done something I regretted over the past few weeks.”

  “You’re human. It happens.”

  “I’m serious.”

  She looked at him. “Okay, so?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it here. Let’s wait till we get to your place.”

  “Have it your way.” Wendy said, annoyed. What could Noah have done that he regretted so? She told herself, It must have something to do with Sam. He didn’t help him as much as he could, or should have stopped him from getting on the bus, something like that?

  They walked in silence, down the street, the crowds of Friday morning shoppers and café patrons swirling past them. Noah could just be a speck in the crowd, surging, going nowhere, while Wendy walked with determination. At Mishael they turned right and entered Wendy’s courtyard. They went up the steps on the outside of the house, up to her apartment.

  Inside, they took the groceries out of their bags and put them away either on the counter for immediate use or in the practically bare cabinets and the fridge. Wendy asked Noah, “Before we start cooking, something to drink? Water? Juice?”

  “I like that Mango Spring.”

  Wendy opened the bottle of carbonated juice and poured some into two separate glasses. She moved her laptop and papers so she could sit at the small dining table across from him. She placed the glass of juice in front of him as she sat. “Are you going to tell me or make me guess?” she asked with a laugh, trying to set a jocular tone, despite her earlier annoyance.

  Noah took a sip of the auburn-colored liquid and began, “The night Sam was killed this summer. From the beginning. I was waiting on Mount Scopus for the bus to town. Sam was waiting too. I knew who he was; he was legendary in the department for his brilliance and being a favorite of our advisor, Joseph Levi. He asked if I’d been to this bookstore and I said no, and if I wanted to get felafel and I said sure. We took the bus downtown and had felafel and walked to Berger Books on King George.”

  “What’s terrible?”

  “Listen. We got to the bookstore and he took me to the back where the Kabbalah books are. He showed me this book with an inscription. It was . . . suggestive . . . by the male author to another man.”

  “I still don’t see what is so wrong.”

  “Then, Sam kissed me.”

  “Oh.” Wendy looked at him and waited. Her mind was blank.

  “I wasn’t planning to. I never kissed a guy, or thought about kissing a guy, but when his lips were on mine, I kissed back; I didn’t run away the way most straight guys would. Sam wanted me to go to the park—you know Independence Park is a gay meeting place—and I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I . . . didn’t know what I wanted; he came on so strong. He was mad I turned him down. He left the store. I left a few minutes later. He took one bus, and I took the next one. Now he’s gone. If I’d gone to the park with him, he’d still be alive.”

  Wendy had fury in her eyes as she recovered her thoughts and lashed out at him. “You totally lied to me, Noah. I though
t when we slept together last week it was about us, our relationship. You said you were falling in love. I felt guilty I couldn’t make some kind of equally strong declaration. But it was about Sam the whole time, not me. Not me at all.” She stared at him. “You should have told me about Sam before you slept with me. You can’t be in love with one person when you’ve kissed another.”

  “You’re . . . jealous? He’s dead.”

  “No. No, not jealous, Noah. Furious. I’m furious at you,” she yelled at him. “You lied to me.”

  “No!”

  “You said you were falling in love with me.”

  “It was true.”

  “You said it to prove you’re not gay.”

  “Sam . . . aroused feelings in me, yes. I don’t know what to do with them. I’m not sure.” He put his face in his hands and started sobbing. “I’m sorry, Wendy. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. This is such a mess.”

  They both sat at the table, silent. The anger and confusion each felt was compounded by the knowledge that their time until sundown, when they had to stop cooking and their guests would arrive, was limited.

  “Noah, leave. Call people and tell them the dinner is off. Or do it at your place. Take the food. I thought this was going to be our first dinner party, working together, shopping, cooking, having fun, sleeping together after the guests go. I don’t want to be in the same room as you right now.”

  “Shabbos is in a few hours. We can’t disinvite people. We have to do this dinner.”

  “We don’t.”

  “It’s embarrassing to invite people and then tell them they can’t come, don’t you think?”

  “You’re the one who lied to me.”

  “I didn’t have to confess.”

  “I don’t want to be with you.”

  “Please. Look at all this food. We have to do something with it.” Noah got up from the table to start readying to cook. “That pamphlet . . . don’t be so contemptuous. I may take some classes at this yeshiva. Why was I spared and Sam killed? I need to do something worthwhile.”

  “Work harder at your studies; serve food in a homeless shelter—you don’t have to have religion to have meaning in your life.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Don’t tell me I can’t understand because I’m not religious. I know what it’s about—I’m studying religious people.”

  “You can’t. You’re positioning yourself, even in this conversation, as an observer, an outsider. You’ll never know what motivates someone religious if you don’t understand Shabbat.”

  “A person can understand a group without being part of it—in fact sometimes there is a better perspective if one has distance. I’m not going to be defensive about my religious feelings or lack of them—you’re the one who lied, not me. I like Shabbat here but I’m not sure I’d want to totally change my life for it.” Wendy then asked, “Would you rather be with a religious man than a woman who isn’t?”

  “Until Sam kissed me, I never thought, really, about being with a man. But . . . I felt something when he kissed me. It was just . . . electrifying. Different from what I feel with you. I don’t know whether I prefer one or the other—maybe it was just Sam, and the whole experience, the book he showed me, the conversation about ecstasy . . .”

  “He gave you Ecstasy? Then it was date rape.”

  “Not the pill, religious ecstasy. He showed me this book, The Divine Kiss, about mystical ideas of death with ecstasy—that was his dissertation topic, and he told me that’s what he yearned for, to be in pure ecstasy with God, continually.”

  “He showed you this book and talked about God and kissed you. What an operator.”

  “He wrote a fake inscription by the author in it.”

  “How did you know it was fake?”

  “He confessed after he was injured. Now I’ll admit something else.” Noah looked at her across the kitchen counter where they were both standing now. “I kissed him, before he died. Then, he said, ‘I’ve had the kisses of God’s mouth.’ I don’t think he knew it was me. I’d like to imagine I gave him some comfort.”

  “Touching,” Wendy said with sarcasm.

  He looked at her with a glint of bewilderment in his gray-blue eyes.

  She continued, “I’m serious. I can’t believe you could kiss him knowing he lied to you about the book. I wouldn’t be so generous.”

  Noah looked at her, this time with more conviction. “I didn’t think, Wendy. I just did it. Sometimes the most important things we do aren’t the ones we obsess and agonize over, but what we instinctively feel. I couldn’t not kiss him. I had this sense that he was dying; though there wasn’t external damage, I knew there must be something internal, he was just so weak . . .” Noah began to sob. “You don’t know what it is like, Wendy, to see this transformation—someone so tough and self-confident, riding around on his red Vespa in his black leather jacket, so smart and sure of himself, stared at by every man in Jerusalem—when I walked down the street with him to the bookstore, men were staring at him; a guy even stopped his car in the middle of the street to tell him something, he was just . . . so beautiful . . . and now . . . he’s gone.” Noah kept sobbing. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for academia with all its intellectualizing. I like learning things and writing papers, but I’m just not sure if I want it to be the only focus of my life. I might like a yeshiva more—I loved Wisdom of the Heart . . .”

  “Decide. Why be in graduate school if you don’t want a career? You may as well start doing what you want. Why waste time? If I don’t get a job, I don’t know what I’ll do. That’s why I’m working as hard as I can to write an incredible dissertation so that I’ll have a shot. What do you want besides grad school?”

  “Rabbinical school?” he added. “I’d like to work with people, help them, listen to their stories. Or teach, maybe at a Jewish high school. I don’t know what kind of rabbi I’d like to be. I can’t be Orthodox if I’m gay. I’m confused. Wendy, I know you’re angry—you have a right to be—but I just need some stability now. I need you—the sex the other day was so intense because we needed to be with each other.”

  “I’m not your security blanket. I had hoped this relationship would make my year less lonely; we could do things together, talk about our work, sleep together, pleasant but not too serious. Now, I feel more lonely: you’re here but you’re not. You want me, but not me, any woman, to prove you like women.”

  He looked down at his hands. He wept again. “Wendy, this has been the hardest week of my life. Do you know that? My only moments of happiness all week were when I was with you—especially at my apartment. I wasn’t lying, about anything I said, including that I want to have kids with you. I’ve always wanted kids—just someone to give to and educate and really pour myself into nurturing. I felt this passion with Sam, but I don’t want it to take me away from my desire to be married and have kids. Or from the Jewish community. I love learning and davening, Shabbat is the highlight of my week. I always imagined myself around a table, filled with children and grandchildren, guests and friends, singing, learning, being part of a community. How can I have that if I’m gay? I’ll have to revise my entire life. But can I give up what I felt for Sam? I just don’t know,” he said hanging his head.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Noah? When you tell me how tortured you are, I feel bad for you, really. But . . . I’m in shock too. I mean, you’ve just told me that our relationship isn’t what I thought it was and I’m hurt. I have sympathy for you, but I’m upset. I’m confused about what we should do too.” Wendy paused and sipped her juice before looking at him and continuing, “Listen, I’ll do this meal with you, and then we’re done.”

  “Wendy, that’s . . . I need you now.”

  “You might have thought of that before you kissed Sam. I can’t. I don’t even know why you are asking. You’re lucky I’m agreeing to go through with this meal; that’s my concession to you. Look, Noah, it’s almost noon. We have work to do. Shabbos is coming!” Wendy sai
d with a brightness in her voice, echoing the many times she had heard it from her interviewees. Noah laughed, knowing she was speaking in parody.

  “You’re right: Shabbos is coming. We need to get ready.”

  Wendy and Noah went from the dining room table where they had been sitting into the kitchen and started their preparations. Wendy was going to make her Grandma Essie’s famous apple chocolate-chip cake, though the rest of the food would be Noah’s recipes, since the cake was at the outer limits of Wendy’s culinary repertoire. Noah had cooked many Shabbat dinners, beginning the year he was at Wisdom of the Heart, then continuing at NYU and here in Jerusalem. Noah was planning chicken soup with matzah balls, orange chicken, noodle kugel, and roast vegetables. They got through this time, each maneuvering around the other, feeling how sad it was that they weren’t really doing this together, but going through the motions in the same room. They kept the radio on to a station that had some English language programs, and managed to get the food cooked. Wendy even played sous chef to assist Noah once she had made her own recipe.

  Once finished, Noah went back to his apartment to shower and change for Shabbat. He was going to the Shir Tzion synagogue by himself, though Wendy would have met him there were they still together. The guests were set to meet in Wendy’s apartment after shul.

  After Noah had left to go home and shower, Wendy needed to set the table and ready the apartment. Had they not broken up, maybe they’d be snuggling together now, catching a nap and a cuddle, and maybe a quickie before the guests came. Now she was alone, and needed to find a suitable tablecloth and dishes for the table. If the point of a dinner was to bring people together, how could she do it so alienated from Noah, feeling deceived and angry? This dinner was a total sham—no coming together around food, a unity of purpose and conversation as at the most successful dinner parties. Wendy thought of Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse, producing a radiant effect with her triumphant Boeuf en Daube, bringing the disparate diners together with her golden haze. Yet, Wendy was lacking in servants to set the mood and table, even if she used her grandmother’s recipe—Essie’s Bronxbased to Mrs. Ramsey’s grandmother’s French cuisine.