CHAPTER 10
“One of the congregants from B’nai Tikvah stopped by to walk Rabbi Zuckerman to shul on Saturday and found him on the bathroom floor,” Mrs. Goldfarb told me in the bookstore on Monday morning. “He’s the one who called the ambulance. It must have been an awful scene, because you know it takes a lot for one of them to use the phone on Shabbat.”
“So what’s wrong with him?”
“Another stroke,” she said. “Much worse this time.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“We’re not sure yet. He still can’t talk,” she said. “They’re doing all sorts of tests to see if there’s permanent brain damage, but even if there isn’t, they’re not sure how quickly he’ll be able to recover.”
“Do they know what caused it?” I asked. I knew he was supposed to be avoiding stress—could our argument have brought this on?
“They don’t know,” Mrs. Goldfarb said. “But you remember when he had his first episode, they told him that it might happen again.”
I stood silently, replaying our fight in my head.
“I’m sorry you had to come home to this kind of news,” she said, touching my arm.
“Me, too.”
“I thought about calling you at the Zuckermans’ apartment, but I figured there was nothing anyone could do,” she said. “And I didn’t want to ruin your vacation.”
Funny, I thought, that she still talked about it belonging to the rabbi and Sophie. Although it made sense.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Not that it was really what you’d call a vacation. It was a pretty interesting weekend.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I looked at her and it dawned on me that she’d known the rabbi for many years and probably knew much more than I realized.
I decided to test her: “I met his downstairs neighbor.”
“Irene?” she asked.
Bingo.
“Yeah, Irene,” I said. “Have you met her?”
“No,” she said. “But we’ve spoken on the phone. She’s quite something, isn’t she?”
“You can say that again,” I said, staying vague.
“So, what did you two talk about?” she asked.
I started to wonder if Mrs. Goldfarb wasn’t testing me, too.
“About the rabbi, mostly,” I said.
Mrs. Goldfarb nodded. But exactly what did she know?
“And about how he won’t answer her letters or her phone calls,” I continued.
Mrs. Goldfarb looked me square in the eye, waiting to hear what else I knew.
“And about how they had planned to get married,” I said.
She blinked.
“So she told you the whole story,” Mrs. Goldfarb said.
“I suppose,” I said. “Unless there’s still more that I don’t know.”
“No, I think that’s about it,” she said.
Mrs. Goldfarb had heard about Irene for a few years. It wasn’t the rabbi who first told her about Irene, it was Sophie. Sophie who was so amazed to see how people’s paths could diverge for years only to cross again unexpectedly, Sophie who was so delighted to make a new friend so late in life, Sophie who was so pleased to see the rabbi reconnect with someone from his childhood.
“Sophie talked about Irene quite a lot,” Mrs. Goldfarb said. “Sometimes Irene would call her at the store to tell her about something that happened in Miami. And I remember Sophie spent quite a while making a big needlepoint for Irene—she only did that for people she really liked, because by that point, her eyesight wasn’t so good and her arthritis was acting up and needlepoint was pretty difficult for her.”
“Yeah, she told me they were friends,” I said.
“Very much so,” she said. “But I guess that’s all over now.”
“The rabbi won’t even talk to her?”
“Not since Sophie died,” said Mrs. Goldfarb. “At first, when Irene would call the store and the rabbi would tell me to say he wasn’t in, I thought it was all just part of his grief. Like he was too despondent to talk to anyone. So I didn’t think it was a big deal. I figured he’d get beyond that eventually.
“But then one day last spring, Irene called the store in tears,” she continued, “and she said she wanted to talk to me. We’d chatted here and there over the years, but we’d never really had a serious conversation before. She was hoping I’d be able to explain to her why Rabbi Zuckerman had cut her off. I told her I didn’t really know and that Rabbi Zuckerman really didn’t talk to me about his personal life. So Irene told me her whole story.”
“Were you surprised?” I asked.
“Definitely,” she said. “But I could empathize with both of them. I lost my husband when he was very young, so I know what it’s like to be widowed. I knew that Irene had been horribly lonely after her husband died and what a godsend it was for her to find the Zuckermans. And I knew that Rabbi Zuckerman was going to have a very difficult time without Sophie—if you’d met her, you’d understand, she truly was his better half. What the rabbi was doing didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t just resigning himself to living out his remaining years alone. He was also leaving Irene all alone. Again!”
I thought about Irene. She seemed so strong and independent. But then I remembered how I first saw her, crying in the doorway, fragile and scared.
“It’d almost have been easier for Irene if she’d never met the rabbi again,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Goldfarb. “But here, she felt like she’d somehow been lucky enough so that she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore and he went and abandoned her. Without even an explanation.”
“So what did you do?”
“I told Rabbi Zuckerman that I’d talked to Irene and that I thought he should call her,” she said. “He didn’t want to hear it. I tried to convince him that calling Irene would make both of them much happier and it wouldn’t be hurting anyone. But he didn’t want to hear that, either. So then I told him that Sophie wouldn’t have wanted him to be all alone.”
I thought back on my fight with the rabbi and remembered how bringing up Sophie had been my ultimate error.
“That probably didn’t go over well,” I said.
“You got that right,” she said. “He told me to mind my own business and stay out of his personal life. And he told me never to mention Sophie again. And I haven’t.”
“But you still talk to Irene?”
“Not for many months,” she said. “After I had that talk with Rabbi Zuckerman, I called Irene and told her that I’d tried, but I didn’t think he’d budge. Irene said she understood and she’d try not to get me more involved. She hasn’t called since. I figured she finally gave up.”
“Not quite,” I said. “She’s still sending him letters at home.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen his mail,” I said. “But he throws them all in the garbage without reading them.”
“See? Stubborn.”
“Believe me, now I know just what you mean,” I said. And I told her about my fight with the rabbi the previous week. I’d never talked to Mrs. Goldfarb about being gay, but I’d always just assumed she’d figured it out. After all, she knew me as a child; she probably knew I was gay long before I knew myself. Whether or not she’d already known for sure, or guessed, she didn’t seem taken aback by this bit of information.
“You know, Benjamin, I really thought he’d be different with you,” she said. “But I guess he fights with everyone. Sooner or later.”
I didn’t get much work done that day.
As I sat at my desk, staring at the Barry Sisters poster he’d given me, all I could think about was the rabbi. I wondered if our fight had brought on his stroke; after months of progress, with the rabbi finally learning how to relax and take care of himself, I might have unintentionally put him right back in the hospital with a ten-minute argument.
And besides, even if I wasn’t the direct cause of his stroke, the plain truth was that I
wasn’t there when he needed me. I wasn’t there to call the ambulance. I began to understand how the rabbi must have felt when he left Sophie alone: He was gone only for an hour, but that hour continued to haunt him almost two years later.
I may have forgotten the tunes to some prayers for Shabbat, and my Hebrew might have been rusty, but my sense of Jewish guilt was as keen as ever.
I called my mother—the one who’d done such a good job of instilling that guilt—and told her about the rabbi. For once, she didn’t try to get in any digs about him or tell me why I should avoid all Orthodox people. She just listened.
“It’s not your fault, Benji,” she said. “You’ve already done more for that man than anyone could have expected. You can’t be with him twenty-four hours every day. You’re not his nurse.”
“I know.”
“And you knew he was sick,” she continued. “You knew it was just a matter of time until he had another stroke, right? That’s what you told me the last time he was in the hospital. So it’s not your fault.”
“I know.”
“So if you know,” she said, “then what’s the problem?”
I explained that I felt guilty, despite everything I understood to be true.
“Guilt can be very useful,” she said, “depending on what it makes you do.”
“What do you think I should do?” I asked.
“All of a sudden you care what I think you should do?” she replied.
Touché.
“Listen,” she said, “you know that I always thought it was a bad idea to get involved with that rabbi. But now you’re involved, and it’s up to you to figure out what to do.”
She told me that she’d make a misheberach, a prayer for the sick, in synagogue that Saturday—which seemed like an unusually kind gesture until she added, “because I know you wouldn’t deign to go to services and do it yourself.”
Nice, Mom.
I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. On the one hand, I was still angry about what the rabbi had said to me the previous week. I could put up with a lot, but that kind of thoughtless bigotry, veiled in piety and sanctimony, really got my hackles up. The rabbi and I had different views of our Judaism and how it informed our lives; so why did he get to judge my life by his standards, rather than the other way around?
On the other hand, if he really was like a grandfather to me, shouldn’t I have been able to get past the arguments and forgive him? Wasn’t our bond strong enough, after these months, to withstand a few harsh words—especially at a time like this?
I didn’t have an answer yet when Mrs. Goldfarb knocked on my office door after five o’clock.
“I’m heading over to Holy Cross after work,” she said, standing in the open doorway, one hand holding a lit cigarette just outside. “Do you want to go with me?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure if I want to see him,” I said.
She was taken aback. “Look, Benjamin, if you two are going to patch things up, somebody here is going to have to make the first move. And right now, Rabbi Zuckerman can’t do it. So it’s going to have to be you.”
She waited for my answer, but I didn’t respond.
“All right, not today,” she said before she turned to leave. “But don’t wait too long. You have all the time in the world. Rabbi Zuckerman might not.”
I didn’t go to the hospital that day. Or the next day. Or the next.
By Friday, Mrs. Goldfarb had stopped asking if I wanted to go. She still stopped by every afternoon to give me an update: “He’s sitting up” or “He can hold a cup steady” or “He’s getting a few words out.” But no more talk of visiting hours at Holy Cross.
On Friday, I went straight home from the office after work. Michelle was already there, unpacking groceries.
“Still no visit?” she asked
“Nope,” I said.
She nodded. “Still pissed, huh?”
“Yup.”
That was it. No guilt, no pressure, no cross-examination. I didn’t know what Michelle really thought—or if she actually had an opinion one way or the other—about the situation. But I appreciated having someone who’d just listen without questioning me.
I went to my room and kicked off my shoes.
Michelle came in behind me and sat on my bed.
“I think I’ve got a solution to your problem,” she said.
“The rabbi?”
“You are totally obsessed with him, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m not talking about your rabbi problem. I’m talking about your man problem.”
“I have a man problem?”
“Don’t you? You’re gonna be twenty-seven this weekend and you’re still hopelessly single.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Just because you don’t have a biological clock doesn’t mean that time is on your side,” she said. “Twenty-one and single is cute. Thirty and single is pathetic.”
“Is that from Confucius? Or Sex and the City?”
“Joke all you want,” she said, getting sassy and snapping a finger in the air like she was a guest on Jerry Springer. “I don’t gotta help you. I got a man.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Help me. Please. I need all the help I can get . . . with my man problem.”
“I thought about it while you were away and I figured out what you’ve been doing wrong. You should be dating Jewish guys.”
“Why’s that?”
“You wouldn’t be having all the problems you’ve been having . . .”
I could see her point with guys like Pete, with his vaguely anti-Semitic faux-liberal politics, and Christopher, with his I-like-you-but-I- love-Jesus issues. But Frankie?
“You really think the problem with Frankie was that he wasn’t Jewish?” I asked.
“No, the problem with Frankie is that he’s a tattooed, crystal-snorting skinhead,” she said. “But can you name one tattooed, crystal-snorting skinhead who’s Jewish?”
I thought about it.
“Actually, no.”
“It’s because their mothers would die of shame. And deep inside, they know that. And they care. That’s what makes them Jewish.”
“Funny, I thought it had something to do with synagogue. Or circumcision.”
“Nope,” she said, “it’s all about Mom.”
I wasn’t convinced that it couldn’t ever work with a non-Jew, that I should just write off ninety-eight percent of the men in America.
“You know,” I said, “there might be some non-Jewish guys who aren’t drugged-up porn stars, who have good politics, who are pretty darn cute, and who actually like dating Jewish guys.”
“Like that guy you met in Miami?” she asked, folding her arms.
I flashed back on Ed. I want you to be my bagel boy. I shuddered.
“And if I date Jewish guys, all my problems with men will go away?”
“Well, not all of them, Benji,” she said. “But it’s a good place to start.”
“It’s that simple?” I asked.
“It’s working for me and Daniel Solomon Moskowitz,” she said.
“His middle name is Solomon?”
“Cute, right?”
“Very,” I said.
She went back to the kitchen to start cooking dinner for Dan, who was on his way over. I sat on the bed and thought about what Michelle had said. Date a Jew. Seemed so easy for her. I couldn’t remember her dating any non-Jewish guys, even though she wasn’t what anyone would call religious. Still, it’s different for straight people—one of the few times they actually have it tougher. My parents would have had a fit if my sister married a gentile. In truth, they didn’t like Richard much. He wasn’t afraid to disagree with them, which they always read as disrespect. Plus, as far as they were concerned, he’d taken their daughter across the country, kept her from having the successful career they’d always imagined for her, and denied them the grandchildren they felt they deserved. But even with that lingering resentment, they’d been known to console each other by
saying, “At least he’s Jewish.”
They’d never pressured me to date Jewish guys. For the most part, I was glad to have them stay out of my personal business. At the same time, this indicated to me that they took same-sex relationships less seriously. No awkward interfaith wedding to plan, no confused kids to worry about. No big deal one way or the other, just a couple of guys. Whatever makes you happy, live and let live.
They were accepting in a way that inspired jealousy in some of my friends with less liberal parents. But maybe they were too accepting—maybe they didn’t hold me to the same standards because they didn’t think my relationships mattered. I wondered: Would they even care if I brought home a Jewish guy?
I was dubious about Michelle’s easy solution, but I had to admit that what I was doing wasn’t working. I’d been dating non-Jews for years, and after a string of bad dates and forgettable hook-ups, what did I have to show for it? Another Friday night with no plans and no prospects.
I stayed home that night. But when I woke up on Saturday, I promised myself I’d find something to do that night. I couldn’t stay home the entire weekend, alone in the suburbs. There’s sad, and then there’s hopeless.
I picked up the City Paper to see if there was anything interesting going on downtown—maybe a new movie, or a concert. Anything. And then one ad caught my eye. The gay synagogue in the city was hosting a Hanukkah party Saturday evening.
It was the kind of event that I would never have considered before. But maybe, as Michelle had suggested, that was exactly why I should go. It would get me out of the house and into a new environment, where I was virtually guaranteed to meet Jewish men.
Maybe all this time I’d been trying to find a boyfriend and trying to figure out how to connect to my Jewishness, I’d missed the possibility that they were connected.
I ripped out the ad, very cautiously optimistic. After all, I told myself, Hanukkah is all about miracles.
Hanukkah was never a big deal to me. Having a December birthday meant that I never even got real Hanukkah presents as a kid; I got those “combination birthday-Hanukkah” gifts that always struck me as a total rip-off.
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