The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

by Thomas J. Hubschman

  As he was washing his hands in the small sink set almost flush against the toilet’s one ancient urinal, he noted there were dark rings under his eyes. His skin seemed sallow and lifeless in comparison with the way it had looked when he had examined himself at Charlie Weeks’. His face was certainly not any longer a young man’s, although he had never noticed before, or cared about, the obvious signs of aging. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been on a debauch instead of an innocent visit to his mother. Margaret would take one look at him and try to put him to bed. His mother hadn’t seemed to notice his fatigue, having other matters on her mind. There was a time when she would have kept him home from school at the slightest sign of a cold or upset stomach. He had had to resist her pamperings lest she turn him an invalid, if only in his own mind. But now he could drop dead before she took note of any debilitation. In effect, he decided, staring glumly at the middle-aged man in the cracked mirror, he no longer had a mother.

  He began to cry. One moment he was drying his hands on a piece of brown paper toweling, and the next his face was contorted with misery, a child’s hopeless grief made all the more grotesque by his forty-year-old features. A geyser of self-pity had erupted inside him, carrying with it all the pain and humiliation he had not allowed himself to feel at his mother’s betrayal or Martha’s cold rejection. He was a friendless middle-aged priest, more than halfway to the grave, errand-boy for a senile monsignor who cared more about squeezing an extra few dollars out of his bovine congregation than about ministering to the sick and poor.

  What had become of the fire that had filled his youth, that enthusiasm for winning souls to Christ and realizing the kingdom of heaven? How had he come to be so bogged down in incidentals? And how had he arrived at this sorry state of friendlessness, cut off from his fellow human beings, unloved and—the shame of it brought fresh tears to his eyes—apparently incapable of loving?

  “Ketchup?”

  “Please.”

  “Right there.” The woman, surprisingly pretty for such a dead-end job, pushed a half-filled bottle toward his plate. “Give a yell if you want anything else,” she said, returning to the kitchen.

  He ate mechanically. When he was through he left payment on the counter.

  He started the car and shifted into reverse. But as he began backing toward the road, checking his rearview mirror for the improbable oncoming vehicle, he realized he didn’t know which direction he should take. It was still only midweek. He had three days vacation left—four, counting today. He had no desire to return to the Catskills. The shore was out of the question. He shifted back into park, placed his arms across the top of the steering wheel, and laid his head on them. A vent blew lukewarm air at him from the dashboard. The hot sun beat down through the windshield. He pressed his lips together until they hurt and stared down the highway to where it vanished behind a stand of scrub pine. After almost forty years, all spent in virtually the same locale in daily contact with scores of different people, he had no place and no one to turn to. He had lost touch with all his old friends, not just Frank Willet and Charlie Weeks, but even seminarians and priests he had befriended, and he had failed to make any new ones. Even his mother had begun a new life that did not include him. His only brother lived three thousand miles away. Every time he searched the landscape of his mind for a place to light, the only welcoming image he could come up with was Margaret’s. She, at least, would be glad to see him. She would not betray, deceive or molest him. In return, though, he must play her game, assume the role of buffoon and pet. Was that the best he could do? Other men had homes to go to when the rest of the world rejected them. Were a domineering housekeeper and musty rectory all that he could count on?

  He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the highway, heading north. He drove slowly, well below the local speed limit, reluctant to shorten the journey back to Holy Name. The air-conditioning now blew cooler air at his face and feet. The engine purred efficiently. Not much chance of a breakdown in this car. Before long he would be on the streets of his parish. However he chose to while away the next three days, after Sunday he would resume his old life again. No more adventures as Mr. Nobody. No more excursions into the world of ordinary people with its uncertain jogs and disappointments. Life—all that remained until it ended in one of those dreary old-age homes for priests or in an equally claustrophobic Catholic hospital—would go on as before. He would continue to serve as assistant pastor, bogged down in the minutiae of account books and fund-raising, until the monsignor finally died or he was reassigned to a different parish. Perhaps he would receive a pastorship of his own while he was still relatively young and had his wits about him. Then he too would administer the diocesan will until he began to lose his place saying Mass, a rite that had already lost most of its meaning for him. Then some eager young curate would take over for him in the hopes of inheriting the parish or one like it, just as he had hoped to take over from the Monsignor. Between that day of dotage and this he could look forward to innumerable tea parties with the Catholic Daughters of America, thousands of hours in the stuffy confessional which only old maids and innocent children seemed to frequent any more, year after year of contending with dishonest vendors, fawning morticians, crooked police, effeminate sextons and scrupling, overworked but incurably hero-worshipping nuns.

  Rosalie had been right to question all that. As the first refinery towns appeared beside the highway, belching tongues of flame into the afternoon sky, he recalled the conversations they had had about Jesus and Lazarus’ sisters. He had spoken more eloquently to her than he ever did while preaching. His sermons seemed cribbed homework assignments by comparison. Rosalie would never know what she had inspired.

  As a huge tractor-trailer roared past him, he wished he could speak like that any time he chose. Perhaps if he had an audience as interested, even though antagonistic, he could. But no one in Holy Name Parish cared that deeply about Christ. They accepted whatever they were told like schoolchildren—dull, unquestioning children. They didn’t like everything they heard—the pope’s policy on birth control, the celibate priesthood—but there were no budding Martin Luthers among them. That type had either left the Church altogether or had been frightened out of their natural curiosity by the nuns’ hellfire. Preaching to what was left, the vacant-eyed old folks and their spineless children, was like reading astrology charts to movie stars.

  He blinked hard. Even during the most trying periods of his priesthood he had never put together such an indictment of his church. If anything, he had been all too willing to rationalize its shortcomings, contenting himself with private bitching. He had never dared to question the basics. How could he, when the line between freedom of thought and sin was drawn so fine that neither he nor anyone but a Jesuit could know how far it was permissible to go? The church was supposed to have changed since the Council. But as far as he could see, the only people Vatican II had affected were those who had removed themselves altogether from the church’s authority. For the rest, for him and all the other so-called faithful, it was business as usual under a post-Council veneer of vernacularism and ecumenical pretense.

  The car’s air conditioning was going full-blast, but sweat had broken out on his brow. He was approaching an exit near Newark. He had, it seemed, only a short time left to think such thoughts, to decide whether he would return to his old life or try to begin over again. But how, and where? He flipped on the directional signal and pulled into the rightmost lane. He needed to slow down, literally and mentally.

  He followed a winding exit ramp to the intersection of a four-lane truck route. A green-and-white sign indicated mileages to points west and east. One of the towns listed caught his eye, but it wasn’t until the light had turned green that he recalled why it stood out. He was out of lane for a left-hand turn, but held his ground against the chorus of horns sounding behind him until he had a clear path onto the west bound highway. It wasn’t until then, his heart pounding as if he had just run a red light, that he gave conscious t
hought to what he had done. He spotted a Burger King and turned in for a cup of coffee.

  It was not yet dinnertime and he had the place almost to himself. He sat down in a booth facing the westbound lanes of the highway. A steady procession of rush-hour traffic passed by. On the other side of the road a restaurant in the shape of a Chinese temple flashed a neon welcome. Beside it stood an electronics store. He sipped his coffee and recalled the sweet corn and ham Martha had served him a week ago. He was no longer welcome there, thanks to the poison Anne-Marie had poured in their ears and because of his own innocent deception about his identity. Or had it been innocent? Did he have any right to expect people not to feel outraged if he deliberately kept from them who he really was? Could he expect them to understand his notions about going native for a few days? Martha’s censure today had burned him as much as if he were guilty of some truly criminal act or of having succumbed to Anne-Marie’s obscene propositions. Only Rosalie had known what he was and accepted him for the man beneath the roman collar. He ought to have answered her call to the rectory. His fear of what Margaret might think had stopped him—Margaret, that overbearing old maid with no life of her own beyond the rectory and its three hostages to her will. Wasn’t it time he emancipated himself from his housekeeper? Forty was late to be asserting his independence, but better now and late than never at all.

  He left the coffee half-drunk in its plastic container.

  There was a public telephone outside the restaurant’s rear entrance. He began fishing in his pants pocket for the telephone number Margaret had handed him when he returned from the retreat house, but then realized he already knew it by heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “All this happened just this past week?”

  He was sitting in Rosalie’s kitchen, finishing a plate of coq au vin. He hadn’t expected she would have an entire house to herself. He had imagined her in a studio or one-bedroom apartment.

  “You’ve certainly bounced around. It’s a wonder you’re not in a hospital yourself,” she said, pouring him more wine against his half-hearted objection. “I’m sorry about my leaving Sylvia’s like that.”

  “You had to get back to your job.”

  “Well, yes...and no. It could have kept till Monday. Just some purchasing orders I forgot to tell my assistant about.”

  “I understand.”

  She regarded him critically.

  “No, you don’t. You thought me very rude for taking off without any explanation. And you’re right. You deserve an explanation, and an apology. Only”—she shrugged her shoulders—“I don’t have any...explanation, I mean.”

  He would prefer she dropped the subject. The memory of her shivering body against his own was still quite vivid.

  “Could I trouble you for some coffee?”

  “Of course,” she replied, snapping out of her dark muse. “Black, right?

  “One thing I don’t understand,” she said after they had moved to the living room, a snug, well-furnished room which reminded him of the house where he had grown up. There was a staircase leading to the second floor and an upright piano standing against the base of it. He used to play on the rug of a room just like this. The family Christmas tree sometimes stood in the corner beside the piano, which his brother took lessons on for a couple years but then abandoned. He used to feel sorry for that lonely piano. “Why didn’t you ask Charlie to pick you up instead of taking a bus from Toms River?”

  “I had reasons for not going into how I had ended up at the shore.”

  “Why? Your car broke down, so you decided to spend a little time looking around before returning to your parish. What’s so terrible about that?” She was curled up on a high-backed easy chair, in much the same feline attitude he had first seen her at Charlie’s. Only, tonight she was wearing a pair of slacks and a sweater. “Because as a priest you aren’t supposed to get notions like that—visiting your adolescent stomping grounds?”

  “That’s part of it.””

  “What’s the other?”

  He crossed one foot over the other and slumped down on the sofa. He was flattered and discomforted by her questions. It felt good to unburden himself of these innocent secrets; but such frankness, at least with a lay person, was new for him.

  “I’m not sure I can explain so you’d understand.”

  “Try me.” Her eyes took on the hard glint they had shown at Charlie’s dinner table. He had reacted pompously then, the result of too much wine. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself again.

  “I guess I was afraid he’d think I was acting irresponsibly.”

  “You care so much what Charlie Weeks thinks?”

  “Indirectly, I do. Sure.”

  She regarded him with a curious smile. The nasty sparkle was gone from her eyes.

  “You must have thought yourself quite the bad little boy. Do you still feel that way?”

  “Not any more.”

  She showed him the back yard, where she had planted rose bushes and tried unsuccessfully to get tomato plants to bear fruit. “I must have bought all male plants—or all female.” A flock of sparrows were quarreling in a lilac bush. Other shrubbery gave the yard a sense of privacy from those abutting it, even of seclusion. They sat down on garden chairs in the middle of a ragged lawn. It was his favorite part of the day and his favorite place to spend it, reminiscent of that precious time of childhood between supper and bedtime when he had been allowed to play out-of-doors during the long summer evenings.

  “So, it’s back to the old grind on Monday,” she said, sipping wine she had brought with her from the house.

  “But you have this lovely garden to come home to,” he replied. “The roses and tomato plants. You even have your own birds to keep you company.”

  “Some company. You should hear them at six a.m. when all you want is a few minutes extra sleep.”

  He thought of his static-ridden clock radio and the smell of Margaret’s unpalatable coffee.

  “You have a little Eden here, Rosalie. Some people would give their right arm for this.”

  She looked around the yard as if for the first time.

  “Even with the grass chewed up like it is?”

  “Of course. This is what Americans work all their lives for—a house with a yard, some flowers, a couple tomato plants.”

  “Actually, I hardly ever come out here by myself. Maybe that’s why I don’t appreciate it. I don’t enjoy doing things alone. What do you look forward to? Apart from these wild excursions you take in the summer.”

  He laughed. If someone had told him a few hours ago he would feel this contented before the day was over, he would have thought them insane.

  “Nothing as idyllic as this.” He contemplated the lilac bush, its flowers long-gone but its leaves showing a rich green. He tried to think of some pleasure comparable, but again had to go back to his childhood to come up with any thing. “Sometimes the work itself,” he said finally. “Doing something well. Being able to help when someone needs it.” He turned toward her. “Golf. Or at least golf courses. I guess I’m in love with grass, the more the better.”

  “There’s a couple nice courses near here. Maybe we could play them sometime.”

  “Why not?”

  They said nothing for a while. But the silence did not seem awkward, as he continued to enjoy the yard’s muted beauty and Rosalie seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

  Then she said, “I wasn’t quite telling the truth when I said I had no explanation for the way I left Sylvia’s. I know exactly why I left, and I want to tell you.”

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. He was afraid what she was about to say might ruin the sparrow’s chatter and darken the summer light prematurely. She sat up straight in her garden chair, causing its plastic straps to creak ominously. Her face, ordinarily lineless as a child’s, was creased with tension.

  “Charlie is having an affair,” she said matter-of-factly. “Nothing serious. Nothing likely to break up his marriage. A girl in the of
fice, fresh out of college. He told me the day before you arrived.”

  “He told you?”

  “Sylvia doesn’t know anything. At first I thought she did.”

  “But why was he telling you?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Why me? What did I have to do with his seedy little interlude? I was a friend of the bride.”

  “My God, he and Sylvia are only married—how long?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “And already he’s playing around?”

  “Right. But the question I kept asking myself was, Why bother telling anyone? But then I put two and two together: I was the one who introduced him to Sylvia. And I was Nancy’s—his first wife’s—friend as well. In Charlie’s twisted brain that all must add up to my being some kind of father confessor, you should pardon the expression.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “What could I say? I was shocked, embarrassed. The only thought in my head was, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’ But then he told me he had invited you to spend a few days with us. He made no secret about your being a priest, so I figured you would let me off the hook. I mean, I wasn’t morally outraged by his peccadillo. I just didn’t want to get involved. I’ve got my own life to worry about. Besides, how could I be a friend to Sylvia and also be a party to Charlie’s little secret?”

  All the time she had been talking, his mind had been going back to his walk with Charlie on the beach. Was this what Charlie had been leading up to? Suddenly he could no longer hear the birds’ chatter. He looked around the yard and saw that the sparrows had indeed departed. “He never said a word to me. Not about any girl in the office—or any other, either. Maybe he was too busy straightening me out about his marriages. I didn’t realize he had remarried.”

  “You never met Nancy?”

  “No.”

  “So, you thought…”