The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

by Thomas J. Hubschman

  She said, “Did you and Sidney have dinner?”

  “As a matter of fact, we did.”

  He waited for her to say something more, but she merely stared at the wall opposite the bed.

  “He seems like a pleasant fellow,” he added. Again, he waited for a response, but she continued staring. “Quite a car he’s got there.”

  Still no response, not even a blink.

  “We had Italian food.”

  She sighed, resumed scratching her thumb, sighed again.

  “Did I miss something?” he asked finally.

  She turned toward him abruptly. “’Miss’?”

  “About Sidney—Mr. Small.”

  Her brow creased ominously. “What do you mean?”

  His cheerful smile abandoned him. He could not recall his mother ever looking at him the way she was at the moment. It sent a thrill of—was it really fear?—fluttering through his bowels.

  “I didn’t mean anything in particular. I was only...making a joke.”

  “A joke? You think Mr. Small is a joke?”

  “No, of course not.... “

  She was staring hard at him. Her color was high. “You don’t approve of him. Because he has money. And because he’s a Jew.”

  He was too stunned to reply.

  “Well, let me tell you something,” she went on, raising her head from the pillow. “You may think I’m just an old lady with only a few years left to live. But I happen to appreciate the sort of attention Sidney shows me. Those people in the project can watch someone drop dead and not bat an eyelash. Half of them are alcoholics and the other half are senile. I get tired of playing nursemaid. I spend half the night sitting up with one of them, and the next day they don’t even say hello to you in the hallway.”

  “Mother, I had no idea...“

  “It’s no bed of roses,” she went on, dropping her head back on the pillow. “Not that I’m complaining. I can’t afford to complain. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t have the right to enjoy myself when I get the opportunity. God knows it doesn’t come my way that often.”

  He started to speak but realized he was having trouble breathing. He tried again.

  “Mother, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then, say nothing. Think what you want. But say nothing.”

  “I wish I knew why you’re so upset.”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just tired of worrying about what ‘other people’ will think. I’m tired of not having a life I can call my own. I’m not complaining. I made my bed, and I knew it was my duty to sleep in it. I did what a wife was supposed to do. I did my best to raise you boys properly. Now all I ask is that I be allowed to enjoy the few years I have remaining. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not hurting anyone.”

  He could not believe what he was hearing. It was as if she were denying everything he had come to believe about her marriage to his father, as if that union and the loving family of his memories had been a kind of fraud.

  “Mother, I don’t know what to say. “I think you should try to rest.”

  She had fixed her eyes on the ceiling. He put his trembling hand on her own. She did not respond.

  He had no appetite for supper. Nor did he any longer feel comfortable in his mother’s apartment. He told himself this was because he felt ill at ease there alone. But he knew his restlessness was really due to the way she had spoken to him that afternoon. She had never confronted him like that before. And yet the fear he had felt, a sense that the floor of his identity was quaking and fissuring, now seemed oddly familiar, not as something he had ever been consciously aware of but as an experience so constant, however latent, that until now it had passed unnoticed.

  Eventually he ate some cold cuts and made a cup of tea. He watched the evening news but could not keep his attention on any of the situation comedies that followed. His mother had told him it was not necessary for him to return to the hospital that evening, but he knew she didn’t mean what she said and, besides, why had he made the trip here if not to be with her? He knew Sidney Small would also be present. He wanted very much to avoid further contact with that man. He hoped his mother would not make any foolish decisions about that man. But she had made it clear that what she chose to do was nobody’s business but her own.

  He washed his plate and replaced them in the cabinet over the stove. His mother’s china, he realized, was no longer familiar. The set he would have recognized—sets, actually, since she used to change her dishes even more frequently than she bought new furniture— were long gone, replaced shortly after he entered seminary. Only her original silverware remained: thick oversize knives and forks that seemed as antique as anything in a museum. They looked amazingly awkward beside the cheap but manageable steel knife and fork he had just used. He had grown up with that heavy dinnerware, embossed with fancy designs that must have seemed the height of elegance in his mother’s youth.

  His second visit to the hospital was uneventful but no less disturbing. It was as if the woman he had confronted that afternoon, clearly an imposter, had been removed and the one he recognized as his true mother had been put in her place. They talked about all the usual things in the usual calm way, with no reference to Sidney Small, her lifetime of “duty” or any of the other issues she had become so emotional about earlier.

  But he knew the woman he had visited that afternoon had not been an imposter. Worse, he now suspected that the easy-going person he was chatting with this evening about all the usual things, his parish work, his brother’s family, was the imposter, a character she playing for his benefit, and had been playing for some time, perhaps his entire life.

  After this second visit he went straight to bed on the unopened couch. He knew he should try to eat something more but had no appetite. Nor was he especially tired. If he had been back in the rectory he would have watched television. But even her television set now seemed alien. He was afraid that when he turned it on he would see not the face of a popular comedian but his dead father’s image staring back at him, confirming the lie he and his wife had perpetrated on their sons for so long. He decided to spend the day’s last conscious moments in the dark.

  His mother had seemed subdued, apologetic even, in contrast to the embittered, belligerent woman he had faced earlier—more, in short, like the easy-going person he recognized as Katherine Walther. He knew that Sidney Small, who had sat at the foot of her bed tonight well out of hand-holding range, was largely responsible for the change. As the three of them sat chatting about the weather and his parish, he realized that he would never again see his mother as a docile, passive woman. All the years she had pretended to be a contented with her lot when both he and his father were urging her to involve herself in something other than her family and housework, she must have been longing for a different sort of life entirely, one which did not include her loving but humdrum husband. He could not believe she ever entertained thoughts which amounted to infidelity, but the seeds of rebellion must have been sown long ago in order to produce the kind of complaint she had voiced this afternoon.

  As it turned out, he was grateful for Small’s presence tonight. He had not wanted to face his mother alone. He was also grateful to Small for not asking if he had contacted his friend with the car dealership. Small, in fact, had behaved with a deference that would have been more appropriate twenty-four hours ago. He now knew that this man and his mother were...well, lovers. If there had been any doubt, her outburst that afternoon had swept it away.

  When Small got up to leave so the priest and his mother could spend the last minutes of visiting hours together, Father Walther had insisted that he remain seated. Instead, he left as well.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  With little more than a homing instinct to guide him, he had not only tracked down the hamlet where Sonny’s Garage was located, but had also found the back road where the old house stood. The collection of abandoned, rusting vehicles was unaltered, as fixed as a museum exhibit. The same corn was baking under the midda
y sun. The sun itself seemed not to have moved since the hour a week ago when the mechanic brought him here for lunch.

  There was no reason for him to remain in Maryland now that his mother was on the mend and Sidney Small was there to look after her. Why should he waste the last few days of his vacation jostling for position at her bedside? Besides, this sparsely settled track of New Jersey was the only place where he had known any peace. Here he had felt obliged to act like no one but himself, a stranded traveler accepting the hospitality of strangers. No one had challenged, goaded or deferred to him. Nor (with the exception of that woman Anne-Marie) had anyone made any demands upon him. Everything he wanted from a vacation he had, by pure accident, found with Martha and Sonny.

  A big dog he didn’t recall seeing last week began barking angrily at him from the yard. It was tethered, but so large and menacing that he hesitated before pulling all the way up to the house. When he was satisfied the animal could not break the chain holding it to a stake midway between a derelict pickup and the rotting cousin of Sonny’s old Plymouth, he got out of his new blue sedan and approached the screen door at the side of the house.

  He looked for a bell, but saw none. He rapped hard at the splintery jam. No one answered. The dog, infuriated now, was barking so loud that the priest had to cover his ears. He knocked again, but in response received only more maniacal barking. He had no desire to test the tensile strength of that chain any longer than was necessary. He decided he would try to find his way back to the garage.

  As he was backing toward the road the nose of the mechanic’s old car appeared in his rearview mirror. Both cars had to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. Even the dog was momentarily shocked into silence.

  “Hello, Martha, Sonny,” he greeted them after the two cars were safely parked in the shade alongside the big frame house. “I was heading back north and thought I’d stop by to say hello,” he went on as if he were talking to two old friends from his parish. Only, he didn’t know anyone in Holy Name’s congregation he would be this glad to see. The mechanic nodded and followed his wife toward the screen door. When he reached it he looked back at his visitor, still standing in the dusty driveway.

  “Care to come on in?”

  The house’s interior was as cool and homey as he remembered it. The same Victorian belles were suspended midway through their swing out of the wallpaper. The old plates in the hutch were untouched. He had thought frequently about this room in the past couple days. After the shock of his experience with Anne-Marie and his disappointing visit to Fords Pointe, he had lumped together everything between his breakdown on the Turnpike and his arrival at Charlie Weeks’ house into one eminently forgettable episode. But since his trip to Maryland, and especially during his ride north this morning, he had begun to distinguish between the good and the bad moments. Anne-Marie, of course, and the mendacious store keeper were not among his fonder memories, although even these were no longer as distressing to recall as they had been. But the mechanic and his wife and the boy who drove him to Tom’s River were warm, even cherished recollections. In a way, he was grateful to Sidney Small for coming along when he did. The trip to Maryland had become more of a chore than a pleasure. It was not that he loved his mother any less; they simply did not have as much in common anymore. She was a good, God-fearing woman. But she was entitled to live her life as she saw fit, just as he—he had decided that morning as he was approaching the Delaware border—was entitled to live his own.

  Such a conclusion would not have been possible for him two weeks ago. At that point he didn’t even have a clear idea what his own desires were—except for a need to go incognito for a couple days. And even that modest ambition he only dared realize inadvertently, using the excuse of the long drive to Maryland to achieve it. It was not until Martha and her husband took him in that his ambition became something more than a clerical daydream. All priests wondered what it would be like to be free of their priestly identity and be treated like other, normal men. Some, like himself, indulged their fantasy by taking off the roman collar for a few hours. But was that anything but childish pretending, no more realistic than a kid’s dressing up as a goblin for Halloween? Real life, acceptance into the world that lay people inhabited, was something he had experienced only after the control of his own fate had been taken out of his hands. Reality was Martha’s anger at her son’s untimely death, however she obscured the details. Reality was the storekeeper’s cruelty and, yes, it was that woman Anne-Marie’s unvarnished lust.

  Martha and Sonny had left him alone in the dining room. He could hear their voices in the kitchen but could not make out what they were saying. He was content to sit at the big round table and enjoy the room’s churchlike coolness. He felt more at home here than he had at his mother’s, even in those years prior to the appearance of Sidney Small.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Martha asked. “I have iced tea.”

  “Iced tea would be fine. Thank you.”

  She returned to the kitchen, but from the sounds of footsteps on the ceiling, he surmised the mechanic had slipped upstairs.

  “Don’t have much call to keep fancy stuff in the house,” she said when she returned. “I could offer you beer, but I don’t suppose you’d much care for that.”

  He accepted the iced tea and thanked her. “No, I’m not much for beer, I’m afraid. This will do just fine.”

  She stood near the big circular table, her arms folded across her faded housedress, watching him. Her vigilance made him feel like he was a child again, eating or drinking under his mother’s attentive gaze.

  “Somehow I didn’t figure you for a drinking man.”

  He swallowed and looked up. There was no sign of humor on her tight mouth, and her eyes had the same steely look they had taken on when he had suggested that God had taken her son for His own purposes. “I’ve thought a lot about what you and your husband did for me last week. I wanted to stop by to thank you again. I hope I didn’t pick a bad time.”

  She regarded him carefully for a moment, then said, “One day’s the same as any other. We’re just what we seem to be. We don’t try to pretend to something we ain’t.”

  “That’s always best,” he offered as an amen and finished his drink. He could have drunk more, but she didn’t offer, nor did she take the empty glass from him. She simply remained standing a few feet away, her arms crossed against her chest.

  “See you got yourself a new car.”

  “Just renting, for the time being. It’s secondhand,” he added. “I’ll be on my way soon,” he said, although he had hoped to spend the rest of the day with her and her husband. If invited, he would gladly have remained for the rest of the week. When she failed to respond with an invitation to dinner, his heart fell. He couldn’t understand how he could have fallen so much from grace in one short week. He was the same man he had been when they took him in as a stranded motorist. Had the bond he felt with them been an illusion?

  “We don’t take kindly to deceivers, Mr. Walther. Or should I call you Reverend?”

  That was what Anne-Marie had called him.

  “We heard about your little dalliance with Miss Sutherland. So, we know what kind of minister you must be. We don’t ask who or what a body is before we take him in. The Lord said, ‘Do until others,’ and that’s what we aim for. But we like to be dealt with fair and square, just like the next person. You didn’t deal with us fair and square, Mr. Walther. No, you didn’t.”

  He took a moment to collect himself. He was experiencing the same difficulty breathing he had felt in his mother’s hospital room the previous afternoon.

  “I didn’t think it mattered, my being a priest,” he said finally. “I really didn’t.”

  “Come, now, Mr. Walther,” she said, unfolding her arms and taking a half-step toward him. “You know I’m not talking about you being of the cloth. We’re not Catholics, but we wouldn’t turn someone away for that reason. I’m talking about the lies you spread about us and”—her lip
s suddenly began to quiver—“our boy.”

  “Your boy? I didn’t...”

  “Never mind explaining, Mr. Walther—Reverend Walther, if you prefer. You have nothing to explain. I was a fool to trust a stranger with our private business. It’s my own fault if you went and drug it through the mud with that whore Sutherland!”

  Suddenly she began to weep, covering her face with the small flowered apron she was wearing. He was at a loss what to do. He was still too shocked by her accusation to assume the role of comforter which came natural to him around people in grief. Besides, according to Martha it was he who was the cause of her distress, a circumstance he had never had to face when dealing with any of his parishioners.

  The mechanic appeared at the other side of the room. He took in the situation, darted an unfriendly glance toward the priest, then drew a protective arm around his wife.

  “I’m very sorry,” Father Walther said. He knew he was innocent of whatever slander Anne-Marie had spread about him, but the force of Martha’s accusation still overwhelmed him.

  “Please leave our house,” the mechanic said.

  After driving for half an hour he realized he was heading in the wrong direction. He pulled into the parking lot of a diner to turn around, at first thinking the place closed because there was no other car about. But then he noticed a waitress wiping down the deserted counter, and he decided to stop for coffee. He looked around for other signs of life, but the diner, a gray bullet-shaped structure that looked like an old-fashioned Pullman car, seemed to have been plunked down arbitrarily on some cinders at the side of the road. Nothing else was near it, or even in sight, just more of the underused concrete he had seen so much of during the past week.

  He ordered coffee, then despite a lack of appetite, a hamburger as well. The waitress disappeared into the kitchen, apparently to cook it herself. He took the opportunity to visit the men’s room.