CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Father Walther assumed that the party was over. His host was certainly in no shape for more jollifying, and when he returned upstairs he discovered Bernie and his wife had gone home. It was just as well, he decided.
But Les wouldn’t hear of his leaving.
“All I needed was that little nap. I’m as good as new.”
To demonstrate his recovery, he took hold of his wife and executed an ambitious dance step. Herself a couple sheets to the wind, she allowed him to spin her until dizziness forced them both to give it up. “Wait till you see us tonight.”
Upstairs in his Hollywood bedroom Les selected a powder-blue sports jacket from what looked like a rainbow of fabric in the closet.
“Perfect.”
Father Walther turned toward the mirror on the back of the closet door. There was another one behind Tara’s vanity, ringed with frosted light bulbs, and yet another on the ceiling over their immense oval-shaped bed. “You don’t think it’s too...loud?”
“Are you kidding?”
Les began rooting through the closet, pushing aside suits and shirts as if they were tree branches. “I’ll show you loud.” He pulled out a bright red shirt shot through with blue, green and yellow streaks. “That’s loud.” He draped it across his arm as if offering it for sale, then stroked his chin and mused, “I wonder if I shouldn’t wear it tonight.” But then he replaced it on the rack. “Better save it for the Halloween bash.”
The blue jacket did not look bad with Father Walther’s chinos, which Les said were in style anyway. The blue sport shirt he selected was alright too.
“But the socks definitely got to go. Black is for weddings and funerals. You don’t have another pair of shoes?”
“No.”
Les stroked his chin again as he considered his guest’s nine double-Es.
“You’d swim in my loafers. I’m afraid I can’t help in the shoe department.”
Rosalie had changed into one of Tara’s dresses, a summery shift made of some gossamer material almost the same shade as the jacket Les had given Father Walther. He had never seen her in a dress. It seemed a perfect fit, but she looked somehow out of uniform, like an athlete in a tuxedo.
“You look snazzy,” she said.
He grinned self-consciously. He felt as if they both had on disguises.
“You look pretty snazzy yourself.”
The club was in a belt of rolling hills. The golf course looked like a postcard, so well laid out and lush that it was hard to picture anyone actually playing it; only, as they were pulling into the parking lot he spotted a foursome ambling off the eighteenth green.
“Why would you ever want to play anywhere else?” he asked, remembering the long wait to tee off that morning.
“We play it, alright,” Les replied, yanking up the hand brake. “Play all the time. Sometimes we just like to get off the reservation. Go someplace where we don’t know every face we meet, and vice versa. Meet new people. Besides,” he said, locking the car door, a maroon Volvo station wagon, “sometimes this place looks like a geriatric colony. We’re not ready yet for the electric go-cart.”
Inside, the main dining room was decorated with paper lanterns. French doors were open on a terrace done up in the same fashion. The guests were equally divided between indoors and the terrace. Many were indeed elderly, but most were in Les’s own generation. He asked if anyone preferred sitting inside. Everyone agreed that outside was preferable. It was a cool evening, but without a breeze. Besides, the band was outside.
Father Walther had agreed to come along merely to please Rosalie. He had no intention of going beyond the role of observer, clerical invisible man on holiday. Only Rosalie knew his real identity. In that sense, only she could see him. To everyone else, to his hosts, to the other guests, he was Mr. Nobody. He trusted to Rosalie’s discretion.
“Will Bernie be joining us?” he asked after a waitress took their orders.
Les took a pull at his Scotch-and-water.
“Not a chance. That bird never leaves his house. I was surprised he agreed to play golf with us this morning. Do you know what he shot? Seventy-nine. And he claims he hasn’t played since last fall.”
“My God, he could be a pro,” Rosalie said.
“Bernie could be a lot of things. Including a millionaire. He’s a fucking genius. He’s wasting himself teaching in the public school system. He could be doing research at MIT. Did you know he’s an ex-priest? A Jesuit. You know how brainy those guys are.”
“Why did he leave the priesthood?” Rosalie asked with one eye on Father Walther. She did not seem surprised by Les’s revelation.
Les popped an ice cube into his mouth and sucked meditatively.
“Beats me. I’ve known the guy five years, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea what makes him tick. What’s your take, Richie?”
Father Walther shrugged. He considered what was said to him in the steam room to be privileged information.
“Slightly flipped-out is my diagnosis,” Les went on, crunching. “Don’t get me wrong. I love the son of a bitch. But he’s obviously got a problem. If I had half his brain power I’d be driving a Mercedes and rubbing elbows with big shots.”
“Money isn’t everything,” his wife said. Although it was Rosalie who was wearing a borrowed dress, Tara looked as if what she had on belonged to an older sister.
“Maybe. But money sure as hell don’t hurt. Priest or no priest, we all have to eat. If he wants to play Saint Francis, that’s fine. But what about his kids? Can he send them to good schools on a teacher’s salary?
“Does his wife work?”
“Part-time. Bernie thinks she should be home with the kids.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Tara said.
Her husband popped another ice cube.
“All I’m saying is, his decision to live the life of a humble high-school teacher is something his kids’ll have to pay for eventually.
“Maybe they’ll get scholarships.”
“Maybe. And maybe they’ll end up at second-rate public colleges. Am I right or wrong, Richie?”
The subject, at least from this side of the pulpit, suggested no easy answers. He was having enough trouble trying to match Les’s version of Bernie as a secular mendicant with the cynic he had shared a steam bath with. “He may believe that somehow God will provide,” he offered half-heartedly.
Les gave him a look containing more injury than if he had offered an outright insult. He drew a deep breath and shook his head. “I figured you for sterner stuff, Richie. You surprise me.”
“I’m only suggesting how Bernie might see it. After all, he is an ex-priest. And a Jesuit at that.”
But Les only continued shaking his head at his empty Scotch glass. “The world used to be an easier place to make sense of. My old man worked seven days a week so his kids could go to the best schools. Was he a fool? Wasting his whole life working himself into an early grave for nothing?”
“Of course not. But what was right for him may not be right for his children. My father worked hard too.”
“Wouldn’t you work just as hard for your kids?”
“I don’t know if I would or not. I think I would try to give them whatever I thought was good for them. Maybe Bernie believes he’s giving his children something more enduring than a diploma from Harvard or Princeton.”
Les said nothing. His color was high, though whether from the effects of the Scotch or from the argument, Father Walther couldn’t tell. “It beats me,” he said finally. “A man gives his whole life. For what?”
“You would do for your children exactly as your father did for you?”
Les looked up in surprise. “I have no intention of having children,” he replied. “I don’t happen to think this world a fit place to bring children into.”
“It’s a good thing for the human race somebody goes on having them,” Tara said.
Her husband turned toward her with the same look h
e had shown Father Walther, more of injury than defiance.
“Haven’t you heard there’s a population explosion?” he said.
“Not for middle-class Jews there ain’t.”
“Who wants to dance?” Rosalie asked. She glanced toward Father Walther before getting to her feet. “Come on, Les.”
Still grumpy, the host pushed back his chair and stood up. Rosalie led him out to a vacant section of the terrace. He looked about as willing as a trained bear being called on to perform. But as soon as he began to move, his lumbering manner dropped away and he seemed to glide like a skater across the flagstones.
“He’s good,” Father Walther said.
Tara regarded her husband skeptically. “It’s the only thing he really enjoys doing. I’m a terrible dancer myself.”
Les and Rosalie were circling the other couples in wide ballroom-style steps. Some of them stopped dancing themselves to watch. The band picked up the beat.
“We used to go dancing every week. Sometimes twice a week. I even took lessons for a while, but they didn’t help. I learned how to waltz, and I can do the foxtrot, but that’s about it.” Les and Rosalie had settled down in one place to execute a series of intricate Latin moves that were drawing applause from their audience. “I used to feel jealous. But no more. He enjoys himself too much.” She watched her husband execute an especially ambitious dip. The other guests clapped enthusiastically. “Rosalie is a good partner for him.”
For the priest, to whom social dancing was a ritual proper to the mating process, the idea of dancing for fun with whatever partner was available seemed a novel idea. He wondered if he could achieve Tara’s objectivity if it had been his own spouse in someone else’s arms. As he watched Rosalie collapse breathlessly into Les’s embrace, he doubted he could.
“That was fun,” she said, flushed and perspiring as she swept moist hair back from her forehead. “I haven’t had that much exercise in months.”
Les was also red-faced but seemed none the worse otherwise. He drained the melted ice from his glass, then waved it at a passing waiter. “’Stamina ain’t what it used to be.”
“You did fine,” Father Walther said. “Both of you. You could start an act.”
“Thanks. But a workout like that will hold me till Christmas.”
They ate prime ribs and baked potatoes. Apart from the meal Rosalie had made for him, this was the first decent food the priest had eaten in a week. He finished all of it, including the red wine Rosalie ordered. Les offered him a cigar, but he declined. He needed nothing to complete his sense of well-being. The day had been nearly perfect—golf, good company and food, and he had been able to enjoy it without having to endure the self-conscious posturing usually accorded him. This was the kind of day he had scarcely dared hope for when he had set out from his rectory two long weeks ago.
The band settled into a series of slow numbers. A procession of middle-aged couples began circling the dance floor. They all seemed marvelously contented. It was impossible to imagine any of them ever contemplating divorce, running around with girls from the stock room or even exchanging harsh words. A cool breeze had come up as if on order for the happy couples. The paper lanterns above their heads swung in time with the lazy beat of the band. Behind the dancers and the oasis of light that was the clubhouse terrace, the dark fairways lay peacefully contemplating a moonlit sky.
“Come on, T. It’s time for your exercise.”
Les was already on his feet, but his wife was demurring. “Do I have to? You know I’m all left feet.”
“Think of it as a duty fuck.”
Father Walther was surprised by the man’s language, but there seemed no insult intended and Tara didn’t seem to take it amiss. She allowed herself to be led to the dance floor and then began proving true everything she had said about her awkwardness as she tried with a number of jerky half-steps to follow her husband’s own smooth footwork.
“She really can’t dance,” Father Walther said. “I thought she was exaggerating.”
“Nope.”
“You do pretty well yourself, though.”
“Thanks,” Rosalie said. “It’s not that hard. Just a matter of letting go.”
“Relaxing.”
“Sort of. Letting the music take over.”
“That’s all?”
“Plus a few basic steps.”
He watched Tara trip over her own feet as her husband tried to dip her gently backward. She didn’t fall, but after she recovered he had to restrain her from leaving the dance floor.
“Care to try?”
“Me?” He hadn’t danced since high school, although he had seen other priests dance at weddings and parish socials. He supposed there was no harm as long as one kept one’s distance. “I...don’t think so.”
Rosalie turned her attention back to the dance floor. Her face had taken on a look of deliberate unconcern. It was a small thing she asked, and she had done so much for him.
“Sure,” he said, “what the heck.”
When he attended those high school mixers at St. Francis, he was not one of those who hung back, too timid to ask any of the girls to dance. By then he was already dedicated to a life of perfect chastity; he believed he had nothing to fear from the gaggles of shy young women in those school gymnasiums that never lost the smell of basketballs and tumbling mats. More often than not, he was the one to break the ice for the other boys, venturing across the no-man’s-land separating the sexes to invite one of the girls—neither the most attractive nor her opposite—to join him. His friends teased him, saying his gesture didn’t count because, unlike themselves, the opposite sex meant nothing to him. That wasn’t true. He was quite conscious of the cold, or occasionally hot hand of his partner and the flesh at the small of her back against his palm. It didn’t arouse him the way it did the other boys who alternately bragged about or were ridiculed for their inability to keep their bodies under control. But his vocation did seem to act as proof against any further temptation. He was one of the few who actually talked with his dance partner. The others, too frozen by their sexual urgency, endured rather than enjoyed their few minutes in the company of the opposite sex.
He felt self-conscious tonight, though, as Rosalie led him into the crowd on the terrace. In high school he had acted in a kind of official capacity, much as he would do years later celebrating mass. But tonight he was no one’s representative but his own, just a man like any other, and his partner, around whose slim waist he tentatively put his arm, was not just an anonymous face he had chosen from among a cluster of anonymous young women.
“It’s been a while,” he said as someone bumped them.
“You mean you don’t dance with those blue-haired ladies in the Rosary Society? I bet they’d love it.”
Her small, slender hand fit into his palm like a child’s. It was warm, like the hollow in her back where Tara’s sheer dress clung. An aroma of scent and womanliness filled the air around her.
“I guess that’s one advantage of being a celibate.”
They kept a clear space between them without making it obvious they were avoiding contact. When the song ended the band segued into another.
“Were you surprised when Les said Bernie is an ex-priest?” she asked.
“He said something in the steam room. Did you know it yourself?”
“No. Of course not.”
They danced quietly for a while. Then she said, “What do you think of Les and Tara?”
“I like them. They’re very different from the sort of couples I’m used to at Holy Name.”
She laughed. “I should think so.”
“They’re Jewish?”
“Yes. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not. I just wasn’t sure.”
She stared back as if to bring him into better focus. “That was what he meant about getting away from this sort of place and meeting different kinds of people.”
He stole a glance at the other couples on the dance floor, then at those sea
ted at table.
“It’s a Jewish club, Richie. You didn’t notice?”
“Actually, I didn’t.”
She laughed again. “You are a funny bird.”
“Because I didn’t realize? They look like perfectly ordinary Americans to me.”
“They are. That’s why they want to belong to a country club, just like other ordinary Americans of their class.”
“No gentiles belong to this club?”
“None in their right minds.”
“Why? They’re not allowed to join?”
She laughed again.
“You’ve got it backward. The gentiles keep the Jews out of their country clubs, so the Jews start clubs of their own.”
“I thought that all went out twenty years ago.”
“Only legally. How many blacks have you seen in this neighborhood?”
“None. I thought that was because they just don’t live in these parts.”
She shook her head in amusement.
“Aptly put. You could be a politician. Well, you’re a good golfer, Richie Walther, and your dancing ain’t half-bad either,” she said, suddenly laying her head on his chest. At almost the same moment the song came to an end. She looked up and smiled, her eyes moist. “Sorry,” she said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I have a confession to make too,” he said. They were back at Rosalie’s house. There had been no question tonight about his spending the night in a motel. “This was just the sort of day I hoped to have on my vacation. But I didn’t believe it would happen.”
She tucked a wildly patterned sheet into the sofa cushions and smiled. She had drunk a good deal more wine than he, but was not showing it.
“I’ll tell you something else,” he went on. “That day we played golf?” She grinned as she forced a big down pillow into its case. Then she laid a topsheet across the sofa cushions and dropped a light blanket, still folded, next to the armrest. “That was the happiest day of my life—especially the talks we had. Until today.”
The Jew's Wife & Other Stories Page 17