Herself

by Leslie Carroll

  “Is that true?” Jamie asks me.

  “I have no idea,” I whisper back. “I know all about atoning for your sins on Yom Kippur, which falls in a few days, but I’ve never heard of Shabbat Shuva. I do know this: since your mother thinks I have no faith, it’s unlikely that this boring rabbi is going to get me to perform a religious one-eighty, which puts me at risk, according to him, of getting blue-penciled out of next year’s edition of the Book of Life. So maybe we should say our good-byes now.”

  He smiles. “Take your tongue out of your cheek, gorl, and listen to what the man has to say for himself.”

  “Now, whyyy,” whines Rabbi Shulman, “should we put a damper on the biggest day of Jacob’s and Emily’s lives since the one that brought them into this world, after their mother travailed for thirty-six hours in labor?” Imogen, in a cream-colored Christian Dior suit, simpers and blushes.

  “It was thirty-seven hours!” Dr. Beckstein calls out.

  The congregation titters.

  “But to answer the question…the entire history of the Jewish people is one that is full of sorrow and pain—of suffering—in equal mea sure with joy and celebration. In the world of theology, the Jews are ‘the little engine that could.’ It was faith in his ability to triumph that took the little engine that could to the end of his journey, despite the doubters and detractors. Our story is much the same. Our faith in Hashem has enabled us to survive the worst odds over the millennia. Shabbat Shuva calls upon us to return to our faith in God—or else.

  “Or else what, you ask. The parsha that Jacob and Emily will share today, which coincidentally mentions the biblical Jacob, so the Becksteinal Jacob will chant that portion, is Chapter 52 of the Book of Deuteronomy. In it—for those of you who don’t speak Hebrew, God castigates the children of Israel for their failure to keep their faith with Him. He is terribly vengeful and angry, vowing to hide Himself from their decadent and irreligious lives so that, absent His intervention to protect them, all nonbelievers will end up destroyed in a way that these days would resemble a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. He promises lots of explosions, cataclysmic eruptions, brutal tortures, and vicious murders.”

  “Brutal tortures and vicious murders are more along Quentin Tarantino’s line, I think. See, this is why I’m not religious—or ever could be,” I whisper to Jamie. “What kind of a God is this? At least your people believe that ‘God is Love.’”

  “Oh, our God’s a guilt-inducing SOB sometimes, too.”

  “In Chapter 52,” the rabbi continues, “God calls these children of Israel ‘a very froward generation in whom there is no faith.’”

  I catch Maureen glancing at me. “I’m beginning to take this personally,” I mutter, and Jamie slips his hand into mine.

  “What does froward mean?” he murmurs.

  “Disobedient,” Brigid whispers back.

  “And what is the punishment that Hashem has in store for Moses?” asks Rabbi Shulman rhetorically. “This is a God who doesn’t want to know ‘what have you done for me lately, but what are you doing for me now?’ Leading his people through the desert for forty years might as well be ancient history in Chapter 52 of Deuteronomy. Because Moses trespassed against Hashem in the wilderness of Zin, he will be shown the vista of Canaan—the Promised Land—from the mountaintop, but he will never be allowed to enter it himself. Although his flock will be permitted to go forth, Moses will die without ever setting foot in the Promised Land because he abandoned his faith in God.

  “Now what does that have to do with us today, sitting here in comfort and contentment, about to usher Jacob into manhood and Emily into womanhood? Despite their new distinction, they will still have responsibilities: responsibilities to their parents—even if it’s just getting good grades and not running up cell phone charges—and responsibilities to Hashem to ‘keep the faith’ as they used to say when I was a seminary student in the 1960s. This is the time of year to repent the occasions when our lack of faith in God kept us from walking in His way, and to atone for the sins we committed in the past year.”

  “You guys ask forgiveness for your sins only once a year?” Brigid is amazed.

  “Yeah, we stockpile them until the High Holy days. Yom Kippur, specifically. And when we do atone in temple, we do it collectively, reciting the words in that book you’re holding, unless we’re exhorted to engage in silent prayer.”

  “No confession?”

  I nod my head. “We don’t tell a rabbi what we’ve done the way you confess your sins to a priest every week.”

  “I wonder why the Church has never tried that.”

  “Hmph. This rabbi’s speech is almost Baptist; tonally, anyway.” I nudge Jamie. “Did you read this?” I point to the English translation of the Deuteronomy parsha. “It’s full of fire and brimstone!”

  The woman sitting behind me raps me on the shoulder with her program. “Shhh!”

  “This is also the time of year for remembrance and reflection, as well as for repentance,” Rabbi Shulman intones in his soporific singsong. “Have we been all that we could be to our families, our coworkers, and our friends? Have we been good neighbors this past year? Have we balked at giving generously to charity, claiming that money is tight, and yet that same month we somehow find the cash to buy a six-hundred-dollar pair of shoes?”

  I glance around the room to see if anyone is squirming, but they all have poker tushes, their body language giving nothing away.

  The Beckstein twins are charming, perhaps Emily a bit more so, as she seems to be enjoying herself more and sounds less tone deaf on the parsha. Funny how musical instincts aren’t always democratically passed down through the DNA. Proving there’s no justice in genealogy, both kids, unfortunately, have inherited their mother’s overbite.

  Following the service, we gather in the lobby “for a little nosh,” as Imogen bills it. This so-called snack consists of seemingly limitless bounty from the appetizing department, from dozens of bagels to pounds of whitefish salad to slabs of sliced Nova Scotia to platters overflowing with honey cake and rugelach.

  “Eat up!” exhorts Dr. Beckstein, “for in twenty minutes we travel to Bridgehampton for the reception—and I refuse to let anyone leave on an empty stomach!”

  I notice several old ladies, dressed to the teeth, but obviously from the old school that never passes up an opportunity to take anything ostensibly free, or at the very least, deeply discounted. They’re carefully wrapping paper napkins around their bagels with cream cheese and nova and stuffing the booty into their purses. No wonder they were schlepping such oversized bags with their Jaeger suits.

  Dr. Beckstein rushes around making sure that those with cars have the directions to the reception, and those without have directions to those with cars. I’ve rented a vehicle for the day. Since I rarely have the need for one, I don’t own a car. Where I live it costs almost as much to insure and garage one as it does to rent an apartment.

  The periodontist brandishes a white handkerchief and waves us off, as one by one our autos leave the parking lot. Having behaved during the nosh like a Catskills tummler, he suddenly switches gears from Yiddish to British. “Pip-pip, cheerio, folks! We’ll see you at the polo match!”

  Twenty-three

  During the hour-and-a-half drive to Bridgehampton, small talk reveals that none of the four of us has ever seen a polo match. “I doubt we’ll see anything approaching the genuine article today, either,” I surmise.

  But I should not have underestimated Imogen—and Roger, whom I have yet to meet. Upon our arrival at the polo club I keep staring at every guy who looks official or industrious, wondering if he’s my cousin’s younger man. My imagination has cast him as the heterosexual version of a Chelsea Boy, but every one of those I spot appears to be a cater-waiter or one of the professional Argentinean polo players hired by the Becksteins for the afternoon to teach the kids the game.

  “All right, who wants to play polo?” shouts Dr. Beckstein. He has changed out of his three-piece suit and into an
ensemble entirely out of a Ralph Lauren ad. On him it looks like a costume. His salt-and-pepper brush moustache, male pattern baldness, and somewhat zaftig physique give the lie to his desire to create the impression that he is to the manner (or even manor) born.

  Fortuitously, enough of the teens chicken out of saddling up to leave a number perfectly divisible by eight, as there are four players to a side, and of course there are two sides to everything. But as the Becksteins are hosting a reception for three hundred people, more than a quarter of which are Jacob and Emily’s friends, acquaintances, and classmates with whom they participate (or against whom they compete) in myriad after-school and weekend activities, this polo match could go on till dawn. With six chukkers in a polo match, the Argentine coaches and umpires decide that each group of eight kids will play two seven-minute chukkers, and there will be two full matches, with the official five-minute halftime in between.

  “At least it’ll keep them from getting into the scotch,” Jamie quips.

  The kids have been equipped with protective gear, including special rounded spurs and a whip, and have been outfitted in team jerseys (numbered 1 through 4, to denote the player’s position). The young teens will be playing for either Jacob’s Ladder or Emily’s List—Imogen’s idea. I get the feeling that if the twins themselves had chosen the team names they would have been something like Jacob’s Demons and Emily’s Hellions.

  A waiter strolls by with dishes of strawberries and cream while another offers us a choice between a glass of champagne or a Pimms Cup. The three Doyles and I accept the latter, and make ourselves comfortable on one of the checkered picnic blankets which Imogen has been distributing to various clusters of guests. “Tally ho!” she says in the worst English accent I’ve ever heard in my life.

  Jamie raises his glass in a toast. “Up yours.”

  I crook my finger at my cousin and she bends down to speak to me. Like her husband, she is on to ensemble number two: a tight pair of breeches, tall boots, and the type of bright red (officially called “pink”) jacket worn by the men who fox hunt and call “Riders up!” during the triple crown. “So, which one is Roger? I’ve been dying to know since I got here.”

  “I can’t point,” she replies, her jaw clenched into a frozen smile, as though she’s pretending that she isn’t actually speaking or received a shot of Botox not two minutes ago. “It’s impolite.”

  “Then gesture with your riding crop.”

  “He’s over by the grownups’ beverage table, talking to the bartender. Wait—don’t let anyone know you’re looking,” she hisses desperately.

  “What difference does it make if someone sees me turn my head toward the bar? Maybe I’m looking to see if they put out any Grey Goose. Maybe I’m even looking to see what Roger looks like because I might want to plan an event of my own. After all, now that I’m running for Congress, I’ll need to host a lot of fund-raisers in the next few weeks.”

  “Ohmigod, how’s that going? Mazel tov on that, by the way.”

  I cup my hand to my ear. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the thundering of hooves.” I can’t believe how fast this game is. I’m impressed that no one has fallen off their horse yet, and some of those kids are incredibly brutal. If they’re still this ruthless when they grow up, I despair for our future. There are a lot of anger issues out on that field.

  Imogen raises her voice, at which point she could probably be heard by people playing polo in Poughkeepsie. “I said congratulations, Tess! And how’s it going so far?”

  “I’m getting my bearings, building a war chest. I’m going to need a big one, even with the matching donations from the campaign finance board, if I have a chance of getting my message out there…” Okay, now I see who she’s talking about. If the guy I’m looking at is Roger, he’s tall, dark haired, slender…seems quite promising. He’s the physical inverse of Imogen’s husband. My focus is broken when the man turns around. I nearly gasp. To me, Roger looks like a young Jeff Goldblum. I try not to look too stunned. “Sorry…lost my train of thought for a minute. Your…friend looks very…tall.”

  “You don’t think he’s a hunk?” Imogen is devastated by the thought that I might not share her taste in men.

  “If he makes you wild with euphoria, then that makes me happy too. Though at some point you might want to seriously rethink your marriage. So where was I?”

  “You were talking about needing money.”

  “Right. So Dobson’s got more money than a Saudi prince—well, maybe not quite that much—but he’s prepared to spend what ever it takes to win. If he could go door to door and hand each registered voter a check for a grand if they’d vote for him, I’m sure he’d do it. Meanwhile, I’ve got an ad agency writing commercials for me and we shoot the first one next week. I just hope we can pay for it. It’ll be an uphill battle to introduce me to the voters on a relative shoestring.”

  “Good luck. I’m waiting, you know.”

  “For what?”

  Imogen takes a sip of my drink. The smacking noise she makes with her lips appears to be a sign of approval. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

  “My what?”

  “For a Harvard graduate you can be so dense sometimes. Your man.”

  “Oh, God, of course. Forgive me.” I introduce Imogen to Jamie and then to his mother and sister, and Imogen gushes over how pretty Brigid is and how all the young men (she means the ones over thirteen and under thirty) will go wild over her. This remark makes me suddenly realize I never told Imogen that Jamie’s sister is on her way to becoming one. Then she pulls me to my feet and drags me off toward the edge of the tent.

  “You didn’t tell me he was so adorable! He’s no Roger, of course, but I’ve never gone in for shaigetses. Except for David, you always seem to go for the non-Jewish ones. So tell me, does he…is he…?”

  “You’re blushing. Yes, he is. He was born here, not in Ireland and in our generation they did it in the hospital to every boy, regardless of religion, unless you told them you wanted to wait eight days and have a bris.”

  “Just checking,” she giggles. “I was watching you two at the nosh after the ser vice. You looked very happy together.”

  “We are,” I sigh. “We’d be even happier if his mother went home.”

  A P.A. announcement interrupts our little tête-a-tête. “Señors y señoras y señoritas, it is halftime now…and you know what that means…”

  Dr. Beckstein grabs the mic from the Argentinean. “All right folks, everybody up on your feet! It’s time for a little divot stomping!”

  Amilcar Bauttista, the professional polo player, explains what all this means—in effect, any willing spectators get out onto the field and tamp down the overturned turf with their tootsies. With this crowd, it’s more amusing than it sounds, as women are urged to dig in their Choos (which probably does the ground more harm than good) and the men are encouraged to get out there in their Ballys and Maglis and (in Dr. Beckstein’s word) partaaaayyy!

  “This much I know,” Jamie murmurs to me as we stomp away, “women aren’t supposed to wear the pink coat.” He chuckles, but can’t contain his laughter. “What’s your cousin dressed for? Halloween? I think she thinks polo is the same as a fox hunt.”

  “I think she thinks red is her color,” I say.

  With the halftime over, the adults return to their blankets, to be greeted by setups for a proper afternoon tea: tiered stands displaying finger sandwiches, scones, and little tea cakes. The condiments—ramekins of clotted cream, lemon curd, and jam, along with a plate of lemon wedges, a cream pitcher, and a sugar pot are delivered upon our arrival, and then the tuxedoed cater-waiters go from blanket to blanket with pots of tea. It’s all terribly civilized here in the shade. On the field, however, some of the kids still look like they want to brain each other with their polo mallets.

  To my delight, finesse triumphs over brute strength, when by the end of the afternoon, Emily’s List emerges the winner of most of the chukkers. Although several of
the rungs of Jacob’s Ladder demonstrated a remarkable propensity for violence, which is apparently par for a polo course—the sport is not as genteel as I’d imagined—many of Emily’s friends take riding lessons, and thus are better equestrians than their male counterparts. The girls are over the moon when they each receive a kiss on the cheek from swarthy Amilcar and his Argentinean buddies.

  As if they worry that we’ll stop having fun if we stop eating, after the matches the Becksteins urge everyone to step inside and freshen up for round three—the cocktail reception. Followed, naturally, by a multicourse dinner.

  The invitations had suggested that a change of clothes might be in order (the better to have more to shop for and show up in), but only the Becksteins dressed up for the polo matches. The rest of us adults who wore tasteful silk suits and subtle brocaded jackets suitable for a synagogue at 9 A.M. had the option of either remaining so clad until the dinner winds down sometime around midnight, or to bring along something flashy for the night shift. Of course Maureen and Brigid weren’t prepared for this. I’ve loaned Jamie’s sister a short-sleeved black cocktail dress which sets off her ivory complexion like a dream, but I own nothing that would have fit Maureen and didn’t think it was right for her to have to go to the trouble of purchasing something for the occasion. We ended up finding a lovely designer label suit at the local thrift shop. It was in superb condition and a bargain at any price, so I made her a gift of it, and she’s elected to wear it all day. Most of the men will be changing into tuxes this evening, but Jamie’s wardrobe lacks such formality. He wore a tweed sport coat and dark slacks to the temple this morning, yet feeling the need to do me proud in front of my family, surprised me by going out and renting a tux for the occasion.