by Howard Fast
“I am glad to see both of you,” he said. “So glad. Mom, you look absolutely beautiful.”
“Because she is beautiful,” David said.
“Sure. Absolutely.” He was measuring both of them, and David realized that the boy hadn’t known what to expect.
“Aaron, listen,” David said softly. “Your mother and I love each other. We will always love each other. The fact that each of us must go his own way in his own place doesn’t change the fact that we love each other. Can you understand that?”
“Not too well.” He stared at them for a long moment. “I’ll try.”
“All right. Now tell us about yourself.”
“Do you have enough to eat?” Lucy asked him.
“There’s plenty of food, and it’s pretty good. They treat us all right. The prison’s on the shore of the lake, so that helps, and we get outside. There are enough kids in here for the same reason that I’m in here for me to have friends and people to talk to. You know, this is the place where they send the crooked politicians, you know, even congressmen like J. Parnell Thomas, who once ran the Un-American Committee — he did time here — so in that way it’s considered the real Class A top-dog prison in the United States. That doesn’t mean it’s any country club, but it’s all right. It’s not like those places you see in the movies.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Lucy said. “I had visions of something dreadful.”
“It’s okay. You go back to California?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I have eight months more. Pop is right here, so I get to see him, but will I see you again before I’m released?”
“I promise you. At least twice more. And when you’re out, you’ll come to California.”
“And Sarah? How is she?
“Just great. I didn’t bring her because I thought this prison was so much worse. I’ll bring her next time.”
“When I get out, I have two years of service. I think I start at Danbury Hospital here, but maybe I can get that switched to California. I know, Pop,” he said to David. “But I’ve been seeing you right along. Mom and Sarah are three thousand miles away. Are you still going to marry Bob Greene?” he demanded, turning to Lucy.
“Yes.”
“Well, I mean being here — you and Pop are so friendly. You said you love each other.”
“We can’t live together,” Lucy said. “Someday you’ll understand why.”
“I don’t understand,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t understand it at all. I know that if I loved a girl, I’d want to live with her.”
“Suppose she had both feet firmly planted in midair,” David said. “How would you ever get her down?”
They all laughed at that. It did David good to watch Aaron laugh, and somehow it shifted the subject to college. Aaron brought that up. “Talk about midair, I’ve just barely finished one year at Yale. Do you suppose I could do the hospital work and college at the same time? And what college? I’m not sure I want to go back to Yale. You know, if I wanted to be a doctor, the hospital service would make some sense.”
“What do you want to do with your life?”
“I think I want to be an engineer. I don’t want to deal with philosophy, any kind of philosophy. I want to learn to build something. There are plenty of Jewish doctors and lawyers, but there was a woman here from Israel — headhunters, they call them — and she spoke at Yale. She was recruiting engineers, and what they desperately wanted in Israel was an electric-utility engineer, and do you know she couldn’t find one Jewish electric-utility engineer in the United States? I might go to Israel if I could build something there that no one else could.”
At three o’clock, visiting hours were over. Lucy clung desperately to Aaron. He was as tall as David, so much taller than his mother, reassuring her, “Mom, I’m going to be all right. Nothing’s going to happen to me. When you come right down to it, this jail is the safest place in the world.”
“Visiting time is over,” a guard called out. “Three o’clock. Visiting time is over.”
“I forgot to tell you,” Aaron said. “I’m learning another language. Spanish.”
“Why?”
“It’s the California language. Who knows where I’ll be?”
Outside, crying again, Lucy said, “How can he laugh about it?”
“He was laughing because we were there, because it made him feel good. Lucy, he’s young and strong and full of the future. And he’s alive.”
“I know.” They were at David’s car in the parking lot now. The bright sunshine had gone, and now the sky was covered with heavy, dark clouds. “Oh, David, I think he’ll want to come to California, and then you’d have no one here. I mean, why else would he try to learn Spanish?”
“French was his important language in school. He’s not going to France. Who knows where he’ll go? He might go to Israel.”
“Oh, no. David, I’m cold.”
He put an arm around her, holding her to him while he rummaged in his pocket for the car keys.
“Let’s get away from here. I hate this place. It’s an ugly place.” In the car, however, she added, “But I will come back. I didn’t mean I wouldn’t come to see him again. David, all that about the electric-utility engineer in Israel — what makes him so Jewish?”
“He is Jewish.”
“I don’t mean that. There’s something I feel about him that I don’t even feel about you, and it’s not in anything he says or does. Do you remember, when he was a Bar Mitzvah, he handled the Torah with such love. Does he have a girl?” she demanded suddenly.
“He certainly does, a beauty. She lives in New Haven. But for heaven’s sake, Lucy, he’s just a kid, only nineteen, so this is no candidate for marriage. Just a girl.”
“Is she Jewish?”
“I never thought to ask.”
“You never thought to ask!”
“Lucy, what difference does it make?”
“You’re a rabbi, and you ask me what difference does it make?”
“And you’re a self-proclaimed atheist.”
“Don’t confuse me, David. Being an atheist has nothing to do with my feelings about being Jewish. What’s the girl’s name?”
“I think — yes, Susan Andrews.”
“Susan Andrews. And you don’t know whether she’s Jewish.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but let me tell you something about your son. Do you remember — think he was about twelve — he came down with an awful case of poison ivy, all over his face and arms, and he invented some silly story about how it happened.”
“I’m not likely to forget that. It was terrible.”
“What actually happened was that three boys, three fine young men, each of them a year or two older than Aaron, began to bait him, calling him a dirty Jew and a Christ killer — yes, right in Leighton Ridge, where such a thing could never possibly happen — and when he resisted their pushing him around, they grabbed him and rolled him in the poison ivy. A year later, the year of his puberty, having grown and filled out, he took on each of the three boys separately and beat them. He gave each of them a bad beating.”
“How do you know this? Did he tell you?”
“No, he hasn’t mentioned it to this day. That was just before you left for California with the kids. No, I got the story from Martin. The father of one of the boys came to him, knowing we were friends — in a rage, I may say, for the way his son was beaten — and I was so shocked I was sick over it, after a lifetime of living and preaching nonviolence. But then I talked to the boy, and then Martin and I got the three boys together and put all the pieces together. I don’t condone what he did. There are moments when it frightens me to think about it. But you asked me why he seems so Jewish, and he is, in a way that’s hard for you or me to comprehend.”
“You never spoke to him about it?”
“No. It’s nothing I could discuss with him, and I can’t sit in judgment.”
“It’s so strange,
” Lucy said, “so inexplicable. We raise two children and they’re strangers to us, and we live together for years with each other, and still we’re strangers to each other.”
“Is that true of Sarah?”
After some hesitation, Lucy nodded and said, “Yes. It’s true of Sarah. There’s a wall between us. I try to understand her. I try.”
“Was she happy this past summer?”
“I know you wanted her with you, David, but believe me, I didn’t influence her either way.”
“I know that.”
“She wanted the Oklahoma thing. She said, ‘Mom, I’m going to be an archeologist, and this is a chance to begin, and I can’t miss it,’ and the truth is she was as excited as a kid with a new doll about uncovering an Indian mound in Oklahoma. And David, do you know what she took with her as luggage and wardrobe? Four pairs of denims, cut off above the knee, and when I offered to hem them, she said absolutely not — well, four pairs of denims and eight T-shirts and two pairs of sandals, and that was it. No socks, no lipstick even, and she’s such a beautiful kid, oh, yes, tampons, and she comes back burned brown, with that marvelous strawberry-blond hair of hers all streaked and discolored by the sun, and when I tried to send her to my hairdresser, she just looked at me as if I were out of my mind.”
“And how does she feel about Aaron’s being in jail?”
“Didn’t she write to you?”
“Not about that.”
“He’s her hero. Not only that, but it makes points for her, as she puts it, with her friends, a brother who had the guts to go to prison. That’s the hero of the moment. She and the other girls hung a huge poster outside their dorm with that slogan that the kids have — Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?”
“She never told me about that. Why didn’t she? Doesn’t she trust me?”
“David, you’re her father, but you’re also the rabbi. The kids adore you, but you’re far away. You’re always far away. You were always far away from me.”
“No, oh, no.”
“I’m sorry.”
They were almost back at Leighton Ridge when David said to her, “I’ll drive you to the airport tomorrow.”
“I’d like that.”
“I thought you might like to have dinner with me. Mrs. Holtzman prepared enough food.”
“David, I wish you had asked me before. I can’t. Martin and Millie are expecting me to have dinner with them.” She thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I could get out of it. Or you could join us. I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you.”
“No, let it be. I’ll see you in the morning.”
At the Carters’ he didn’t get out of the car. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and by the time he pulled up at his own place, he was thoroughly depressed. In the house, Mrs. Holtzman called to him from the kitchen, “Shall I set two places, Rabbi?”
“One. Just one.”
“I’m sorry. I thought Mrs. Hartman would be eating with you.”
“No.”
“Your telephone messages are on your desk.”
He went upstairs to his study, feeling as lonely and abandoned as ever in his entire life. One of the messages was from Della Klein. He picked up the telephone and dialed her number.
“David,” she said, “you sound terrible. Did the prison get to you?”
“No. I think life got to me.”
“That’s the worst, isn’t it? Positively the pits, but one can’t resign. After all, what’s the alternative? How’s Aaron?”
“All right. Just fine.”
“So the trouble’s with you and Lucy. Are you having dinner with her?”
“No. She’s at the Carters’.”
“Good. Let’s you and me go out to some luscious place for dinner. We’ll find something elegant if we have to drive twenty miles, and maybe we can take your mind off misery.”
“Thank you. You’re a nice lady. I’ll take a rain check.”
“Don’t ever call me a nice lady.”
When David finally sat down to eat his dinner alone, Mrs. Holtzman brought in a steaming platter and told him, “I made pot roast, brisket the way you tell me your mother made it.”
“It smells wonderful.”
“Rabbi, I shouldn’t talk like this, I have no right to, but it breaks my heart to see you eating here alone like this, night after night.”
“Delicious,” David said, tasting the meat. “It’s not night after night, really, Mrs. Holtzman, but you’re very kind to be so concerned. Never more than three times a week. I’m not forgotten. If I accepted even half the invitations from families in the congregation, I’d never have an opportunity to be alone. And I need to be alone now and then.”
“I know, Rabbi. Believe me.”
He slept poorly that night. He always slept poorly when he had an early rising hour, and in one of those short intervals of sleep, he dreamed once again of Dachau. He frequently had dreams of the concentration camp — sometimes terrifying nightmares, sometimes more placid dreams. This was a nightmare. In his dream, he was once again at the huge open mass grave where the bodies of Jews were piled like cordwood. In his dream, as so often before, he was one of the bodies in the grave, and though his eyes were open and though he was positioned so as to be able to look up and see the edge of the grave, his body was nevertheless stiff and immobilized with rigor mortis. As he lay there, chilled through and through with the icy cold of death, American soldiers began to gather at the edge of the grave. He shouted to them. He screamed at them. But no sound came, and now he saw that the American soldiers had shovels, and they began to shovel dirt into the grave. This had never happened in the previous dreams of the open grave. David exerted every effort to turn his screaming into sound, and suddenly he was awakened by his own screams, awake and trembling and covered with cold sweat.
For all of that, he felt quite refreshed in the morning, observing himself curiously as he shaved. Just short of fifty, he still was on the better side of baldness. His pale blue eyes were cradled in nests of tiny wrinkles, and lines were being etched between his nose and his mouth. His old army uniform still fit him, and if he had gained weight, it was no more than a pound or two.
Mrs. Holtzman had heard him scream. “You had a bad dream, Rabbi,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The concentration camp again?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“You remember, Rabbi, I told you that I was at Dachau when you and the other young men from America came and liberated us.” Her eyes filled with tears. It was always so when she spoke about Dachau.
“Yes, of course.”
She looked at him lovingly. She had created a script in her mind in which he was sometimes her child and sometimes her lover. “You know, Rabbi, I also had the most terrible dreams about Dachau, but you know what happened? When you told me how you were there with the beautiful young men who liberated us, the bad dreams stopped. In my mind, what you told me was like a blessing. A blessing can make miracles, yes?”
“Sometimes.”
She didn’t know how to continue from there, and David sensed she felt she had said too much. She fed him instead, and he sat regarding with despair the huge breakfast she placed in front of him. He was late and he had to rush off, he explained, as apology for the food he left untouched.
Martin and Millie came outside with Lucy, Martin carrying her bags. It was a cold October morning, the air so clean and fresh that it almost crackled, the frost of the night still crunching underfoot.
“We’ll be going to Toronto in a month or so,” Martin said. “It’s been too long since we’ve seen Joe, and then, since we’re partway across, we’d like to go on to California. We’ve never been there, and Millie is a dedicated movie fan —”
“What nonsense! Dedicated! But Lucy, if we come, could you truly get us into a studio?”
“I think so.”
The two women embraced and clung to each other. Martin shivered in the cold, and David reminded
Lucy of the time. She was weeping again when she sat down in David’s car.
“But why?”
“You think I have no feelings? Part of my life is here. Maybe some of it was the best part. I don’t know.” Then, after a few minutes, she said, “It’s no use. You can’t go back. You can’t, can you, David?”
“I don’t know.”
“David, if I ask you a question, could you give me a truthful answer, free of pity or guilt?”
“I think I could.”
“All right. What would your answer be if I said, David, I don’t want to go back to California. I want to stay here. I want to marry you again. I want to be your wife and live here with you.”
David was silent for a while, intent on his driving, while Lucy stared at his profile. Then, speaking slowly, “I’d have to say that I’m very flattered. And excited. Because I think I will always love you more than any other woman. I’m grateful, too, because in all honesty I felt rejected and abandoned. On the other hand, in two weeks or so, you would begin to hate me. You would hate yourself, because nothing evokes self-hatred as much as an act of self-destruction. You would be bored. As you said, you would hate the smallness of everything, the cold, the endless, miserable freezing winter, the fact that you have to drive twenty miles to see a film and sixty-five miles to a theater or a really good restaurant. You wouldn’t have the children to care for or to distract you, and since we can’t fire the teacher we hired to replace you, you wouldn’t have that either.”
“Good God,” Lucy whispered.
“Perhaps I laid it on too thick.”
“Oh, no,” Lucy said. “Not at all. You’re absolutely right. What a terrifying, dismal prospect! But you are right.”