by Rhoda Lerman
Rosebud arrived at dawn every morning, hung around while the men davened, ate breakfast, took Ernie, Bingo, Slotnik’s son, and the Israelis off to the whorehouse. Yussel spent the mornings with his family, took the kids for walks up the dirt road, drove Dina to the pool in the mountains, heard hoofbeats, knew it was his heart, carried Dina in his arms when she was too tired to walk, cut wallpaper dolls from the sample books Shoshanna brought home from Woodpecker’s, bought everyone cowboy boots, cooked, cleaned, helped Shoshanna, drove her to see the mountains, to the shops in Alamosa, even to the sand dunes.
After lunch, Yussel drove over to the whorehouse. From there he couldn’t hear the music, couldn’t turn white when the phone rang, didn’t have Shoshanna watching him as if he were a new species. The men returned to the Arizona for afternoon services, ate supper, went over again, worked late into the night, strung lights so they could paint outside, tore down ceilings, put up ceilings, tore down plaster, put up plasterboard, added a wing, extended the whores’ front parlor into a long dining room so Shoshanna could have lots of company for Shabbas and holy days, doubled the size of the kitchen, installed a dairy end, a meat end, put in a storage room for freezers, put in freezers, a trashmasher, a Jacuzzi, sky-blue slabs of Brazilian granite for the kitchen counters, better then Chaim’s turquoise slab. Yussel threw himself into the work. It was such a relief to read an instruction book and know what to do. You do this; then you do that; then it works. Yussel only wished in his real life he could have such an instruction book, and realized, in shame, he had the Torah. He learned more about electrical wiring than he wanted to know, installed one stove three times, wouldn’t climb a ladder, wouldn’t help on the new roof, took apart the furnace they installed, did it over again by the instruction book. Slotnik’s son had the air vent in wrong and would have killed them all with carbon monoxide. Golems. Yussel saw the shipping cartons, the new appliances, asked seriously who was paying for this. They laughed as if he were telling a joke. It was no joke. UPS came every morning with boxes— little ones from the front of the truck, big ones from the back. Rosebud told him this was the Hopi version of the Jewish version of “God provides,” which meant Indian Joe was using Yussel’s money to build Yussel’s house, which made it easier to accept, so when Shoshanna came to inspect, kvelled with pleasure, asked how they could afford such luxury, Yussel said, “Simple, Shoshanna. God provides.” He provides a gorgeous house, another woman, a sick child, a polluted husband. Simple.
Shoshanna was worried they hadn’t heard from the Flower Child. Yussel told Shoshanna the Flower Child was a free agent, a grown woman. He questioned the Blondische, who hadn’t heard anything, was also worried. The Blondische reminded Yussel he’d hurt her feelings terribly and that’s why she’d left.
“I didn’t make her welcome,” Yussel explained to Shoshanna.
“Shame, Yussel.”
Yussel shrugged it off. “It wouldn’t work. I told her …”
“Yussel, she had no one. She had nothing. What will happen to her.”
“She’s young. She has her looks, a good head. She keeps a nice house. She’ll marry again soon. Maybe she’s in San Francisco. She has friends in San Francisco. Maybe she’s in a commune.”
“Yussel, we’re responsible.”
“She’s a big girl, Shoshanna. In no time she’ll have a husband, a rich widower. She likes alte cockers. There was nothing for her here. And it wouldn’t have worked between her and you.”
“You decided that? You don’t think she and I should have decided that?” Shoshanna looked away, shook her head. “What do you know about women?”
“Nothing. Okay? I know nothing about women and sometimes I think I know nothing about you. Coming down here before I told you to. Driving by yourself with the kids in the bus like a crazy woman.”
“You’re right.” Shoshanna threw her hands up in the air. She spoke in a tone Yussel had never heard before. “You know nothing.”
“And you know everything? You don’t need doctors for Dina?”
“Chicken pox I understand. Four of my children had it. I know it. You I don’t understand.”
“I want her to go to a doctor. I want you to find one in Denver.”
“What are you so hysterical for over the kids?”
“I want her to go to a specialist.”
“You know something I don’t know? You’re doing prophecy?”
“I’m not doing prophecy. I’m just concerned.”
“Let me take care of the children, Yussel. You have enough on your mind.”
The music was louder than loud, sadder than sad. It wrenched his gut, made his body heavy, filled his pants. He didn’t call. He didn’t answer her calls. Still Dina ran a fever in the afternoons between four and eight. Shoshanna started to talk about calling their doctor in Far Rockaway, called him. He sent a prescription by overnight mail, gave Shoshanna the name of a doctor in Denver he’d gone to medical school with, advised her not to worry, advised her to build up Dina’s resistance, suggested chicken soup, meant it. Grisha sat by Dina’s bed, told her the stories about lost princesses and kings’ sons he’d told Yussel when he was a kid. Grisha gave up playing cards so Dina would get well. Babe made him special meals, watched him like a hawk. Yussel talked to God, “Listen, I’m not calling her. Make my baby better.” He lay in bed at night, said to his father, “I’m staying away from her. What else do they want? Can’t you find out what they want from me?” His father wouldn’t talk to him. Chaim wouldn’t talk to him. Yussel dreamed an old dream about eating the wax from his ears and how it tasted like ginger. Yussel dreamed a lot of old dreams. Worse, he dreamed new ones. Pecky came once, still in his shroud, still smoking his cigar, told Yussel his father stood in line, night and day, fighting terrible decrees, everyone wants something from him, everyone has such tzuros. “Your father sent me to tell you something.” Pecky read from a scrap of parchment. “Two Jews are in a rowboat. One is drilling a hole. The other says, ‘What are you doing, drilling a hole in the rowboat?’ The driller answers, ‘Leave me alone. I’m only drilling on my side.’ That’s the message.” Pecky left. Yussel got out of bed, looked around for fire, found none. Yussel prayed, fasted, wept. When he davened he strained for attachment, strained to bring Dina back to health the way he’d made the eighteen-wheeler slow down when he’d saved Lillywhite’s life. Now when he davened, he didn’t have to make up tears, desire, sorrow. It was all there. Shoshanna said he yelled out in his sleep all the time.
The tetracycline stopped working. Yussel and Shoshanna begged Dina not to scratch her chicken pox. They made her sleep with mittens on her hands. Still there was blood in the morning. She said she didn’t scratch. Yussel finally held up the sheet one morning, yelled at her. “Where is this from? Where is this from? If you didn’t scratch.”
Shoshanna stopped him. Dina wept, choked on her tears, “Emes Adonoy, Totty. I didn’t scratch, Totty. I don’t. I’m a good girl, Totty.” She pulled Yussel’s head down to hers, opened her palm, showed him a square leaf. “It’s a secret. Don’t tell, Totty.” Yussel burst into tears. Dina’s eyes glittered with death.
Shoshanna pulled Yussel out of the bus, pinching his arm hard, “Don’t get her upset.”
Yussel hid in the cottonwoods, pulled hair from his head, lay on the ground, and beat on it. “Don’t take her. Don’t take her. I’m staying away from her. What do you want? What are you doing to my baby? Take the blood from me. Give me the fever. Give me the itch. Leave my baby alone!”
Shoshanna took Dina to sleep with her in their bed. Yussel called his uncles on a conference call. There was a long silence after he asked to borrow money, reminded them they’d offered.
Moses from Abnormal Psychology said, “We offered so you wouldn’t go out there.”
Gimbel from Brown, the Dean of Humanities, said, “The kid needs money. Who are we to deny his request?”
Nachman from Yale in Law said, “You know how much money we sunk in there for his father.”
> Moses corrected him. “For our brother.”
Gimbel from Brown said, “It’s a bottomless pit, Yussel.”
“Tell me about it,” Yussel said.
Nachman from Yale asked, “What happened to your money?” Yussel said, “I put it all in here.”
“And that wasn’t enough?” Nachman from Yale asked.
“You see,” Gimbel from Brown said, “nothing’s enough for them.”
“That’s not a personal remark, Yussel,” Moses from Oxford interrupted. “We’ve been through this with your father for years. You hang up. We’ll talk.”
They called back. “Yussel, if you come home, we’ll set you up again, pay your expenses, buy you a Ben and Jerry’s, anything you want. If you come home.”
“Maybe after the holidays.”
“When you do,” they all said, “you’ll call us.”
He called Chaim again to offer him the Arizona property and his congregation, free and clear, so Yussel could take his family back to Rockaway. Chaim wasn’t taking calls. Mendl said Chaim said Yussel should call when he has the fourteen hundred dollars, until then he doesn’t want to hear from him. Mendl then whispered into the phone that Chaim couldn’t listen to any propositions except maybe how to commit suicide and did Yussel want that on his hands also? Yussel restrained himself from answering.
He called his friends. They’d give him any amount he wanted, a blank check, but not for the shul. As a favor to Yussel they didn’t want to give him a debt he couldn’t repay. Loans like that ruin friendships.
He thought about the numbers flashing on his screen when he went to the Paradise. Hadn’t Someone put the numbers on his screen? If he had been given the numbers, maybe he had been told to gamble. Men have done worse to save a family, to save two families, his and Chaim’s, maybe more, maybe Mendl and his family, maybe all the court, who could tell? And so, finally, Yussel put on regular clothes, new cowboy boots, drove up and over the mountain to the Paradise, prayed on the way that Lillywhite wouldn’t be there. As soon as he walked in, 4 and 7 flashed on his screen. The place was filled with cowboys, polka music, a few women, no Lillywhite. The cowboys drank hard, danced with each other. Life in the Ukraine must have been like this—the women at home with the kids and the cows, the men together. In the Ukraine they wore bark shoes. Here they wore boots. Didn’t the polkas come from the same earth as his father’s music? Hadn’t he heard the same tunes at his grandfather’s table? Yussel slugged down one vodka, two, slapped a hundred-dollar bill on numbers 4 and 7, picked up fourteen hundred-dollar bills, drank two more vodkas, polkaed to the sounds of Charlie Weaver and his Chicken Man Polka Band with a cowboy named Lunchmeat, who was also very drunk. It felt like Simchas Torah. It smelled like Simchas Torah. Yussel leaped down on the floor, stomped, sweated, yelled, beat his heart with his fist, sang, raised his arms over his head, made horns with his hands through his hair, charged like a bull. The cowboys made a circle and watched him dance. They clapped, hooted, cheered him on, bought him drinks, made horns with their hands through their hair and charged Yussel like a bull. When the Chinese lanterns in the ceiling were also drunk, Lunchmeat stuffed Yussel into Bingo’s cab.
Yussel drove slowly up the mountain to her house, turned off his lights in front of her house, looked around, saw nothing in the dark, drove slowly home down the mountain to the Arizona, wrapped fourteen hundred-dollar bills with aluminum foil and freezer tape, labeled the package: LOX, Y.F. DON’T TOUCH, stuffed it toward the back of the freezer, went to sleep. In the middle of the night his screen came back. He saw Lillywhite sitting in the front of a pickup truck, kissing someone. He couldn’t see if it was another man or himself because her hair was in the way. He tried not to watch.
“What’s the matter, Yussel?”
“Shoshanna?”
“Who else?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“You yelled out.”
“What did I yell?”
“Just a sound, not a word, but a yell.”
“I’m sorry.”
Shoshanna woke him up at noon. She was smart enough not to ask any questions. Her husband was drinking and gambling, and, if she knew, she also knew to wait it out. Maybe.
Three times that week he went up to the Paradise. He drank a little, danced a little, lost a little on purpose, won a lot. By Shabbas, he had just under five grand in the freezer. Now he was a sinner, Shoshanna had grocery money, and Chaim could pay his mortgage. If he weren’t a sinner, Shoshanna wouldn’t have grocery money, Chaim would lose his property and his business. Also Someone gave him the right numbers so it couldn’t be too terrible what he was doing. He tried to figure the cause and effect, the odds, the probabilities. He does this, HaShem does that. He couldn’t figure anything out. He was in his father’s universe and he was lost. Dina was getting sicker. Shoshanna now talked about taking her back East. Not calling Lillywhite wasn’t helping Dina. Wasn’t helping Yussel. He called her from the Texaco.
“I thought we weren’t speaking. I thought you weren’t calling me.”
“I’m calling.”
“What do you want?”
“You.” He heard her sigh, knew she’d lit up a cigarette, looked out into the desert night. He looked out at the same night.
“I don’t know what to say. Anything I say is wrong.”
“I’m sorry I called, Lillywhite. I tried not to.”
“Try not to again.”
The second week of gambling, he drove over the mountain to the Paradise, went in, bet, won, leaned against the wall to watch the dancing. It was couple’s night. The polka band had been replaced by a pale thin couple in Hawaiian shirts, who played canned country music, pressed buttons, swung maracas, hummed along, told dirty jokes between numbers.
Lunchmeat pummeled Yussel on the back, pulled him into the room, pointed to Lillywhite, who was on the floor with Warren Beatty, throwing her body around like she wanted to get rid of it. He did this; she did that. He held her out, she took three turns, he brought her in. She ducked under his arm. He twisted her arms, this way, that way. The timing was perfect. They had blank faces, looked beyond each other as if they were reading the instructions off the South Pacific walls. Then Lillywhite saw Yussel, met his eyes, lost her footing. It made him sick, that bolt of lightning that went through him when she looked at him. Warren Beatty caught her before she fell.
His screen flashed 9 and 13 urgently. Still he left.
“Hey!”
Mercury lights haloed her from behind. She was running after him in high-heeled boots, clicking on the tarmac. She gulped air, grabbed his sleeve. He shook her off. “You know how they tortured white men out here in the old days? They slit their stomachs, pulled out a piece of gut, nailed it to a tree, and made the guy run in circles around the tree until he died.”
“You want to do that to me?”
“You’re doing it to me.”
A man stood on the steps, looming in the light. “Honey, you okay?”
“That’s Tom?”
“Listen, just don’t look at me like that again. Okay? It’s not fair. I’m only human.” She turned and walked back to Tom, who put his arm around her, looked back once over his shoulder at Yussel.
He remembered opening the car windows under the black night, the smell of pines, sweat drying up in the wind. He hit a jackrabbit. It flew up onto Bingo’s hood, looked at him, astonished. Yussel swerved along the road until the rabbit slid away.
At home he wrapped another package for the freezer, climbed into his bachelor bed next to Grisha’s room, couldn’t sleep, saw Lillywhite and Tom on the futon later that night, didn’t want to see what he saw. Once she said to Yussel over Tom’s heaving shoulder, “Don’t look at me like that.” Yussel walked outside up and down the road until the night faded, until Babe’s lights went on. He knocked on her door. Babe hadn’t put in her teeth, looked like a shrunken apple. He felt very sorry for her. She made coffee, came back with her teeth in. Together Babe and Yussel worried about Di
na, whether she should go back to Far Rockaway, to a good doctor, worried about money, about the water rights, about Chaim, whether Babe should stay, where her life was going, where his life was going, what they really wanted. She offered him money. He said he couldn’t take it.
Yussel wanted desperately to tell her about the square leaf, to ask her if she thought it was a sign Dina was to die. He was tempted to tell her everything, knew it would harm her to know these things. Would harm him, all of them, because after the leaf he’d tell her about Lillywhite. Near daybreak, he fell asleep in the La-Z-Boy. At seven Babe woke him to go daven.
Babe sighed, leaned toward him. “Listen, menschele, if it’s going to kill you, you should quit. I’m here to tell you that. It’s what your mother wanted me to tell you. You and Shoshanna are walking around like zombies. Schmulke’s a wild animal, wild with fear, I think. Dina needs a doctor. Go home, Yussy. Get your life in order. Go home.”
“We’ll talk about it. Maybe after the holidays. After the holidays. Maybe then.”
She didn’t believe him. “You’re just like your father. Let me at least give you the money for Chaim.” “No. It’s my problem.”
So he stayed away from Lillywhite, from the telephone, from trips up into the mountains, from drives past her house. And every day she played her music longer, louder, lonelier, sadder, calling him, surrounding him, blinding him, like fog. He wanted to climb the mountain on his knees, on his belly. Once in a while he’d see Shoshanna looking at him in an odd way and he’d ask her, “What’s wrong?” She’d say, “Nothing.” Sometimes she’d ask him, “What’s wrong?” and he’d say, “Nothing.”
25
ONE NIGHT AFTER SUPPER SHOSHANNA SAID SHE WANTED TO TALK away from the children. They walked down the road toward the mountains. Yussel tried not to look for horses or redheads, tried to stay with Shoshanna, hear her, respond to her, talk. Guilty people with torturous secrets listen very carefully. The air was cool, the sky big. Great sheets of air stretched and snapped between them. He pulled. She pulled. Choya cactus grabbed at their clothes. Except for the snow-crested mountains, the landscape looked like a dust bowl Depression movie: the sad couple, heads hanging, kicking up dust, a light wind in their clothes, something wrong between them, walking the same path, going in different directions, weighted down. The mountains loomed sharp, sullen, treacherous. Yussel yearned for a clean salty breeze from the ocean, wet sand at low tide. Shoshanna tied her scarf backward over her mouth and nose, made a joke about being a cowboy.