“Right.”
“But the rabbi wasn’t even being honest with himself,” I said. “Who was his bashert? Sophie? Or Irene? Who was the one person he was destined to be with?”
“Maybe you can have more than one.”
“No way,” I said. “If one person can have more than one bashert, then there’s got to be a lot of people who don’t have any. Think about it.”
She scrunched up her face dismissively. “I don’t have to think about it. There’s totally someone out there for you.”
Looking at Michelle, I could tell she honestly believed this. And that was somehow heartening.
“Is Dan your bashert?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she said.
We spent the rest of my special birthday brunch talking about Michelle’s relationship. This wasn’t unusual for us. But one thing was different: Michelle didn’t have any complaints about Dan this time. In fact, any worries she had were due to the fact that she had never been in this situation before—a situation where instead of finding reasons to call it quits, she was trying to figure out what it meant to stay together. What was their next step? When would they be ready? How would she know? Would Dan know, too?
Michelle paid the bill—this was also unusual, but it was my birthday—and we headed outside. She was adjusting her scarf, trying to wrap it just right, when I heard someone call my name.
I turned around and saw a blond guy with a silver earring. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
“I’m Jamie,” he said. “From your flight to Miami . . . ?”
The cute flight attendant. He looked even better wearing jeans and plaid flannel.
“Right!” I said.
He gave me a hug and I introduced him to Michelle, who quickly excused herself to check her voicemail on her cell phone several paces away—a simple ploy to give us some space while still being close enough to eavesdrop.
He asked about Miami and I told him it was an “interesting” trip, without offering any specific details. I asked about Caracas and he said it was hard to remember, since he’d been on a half dozen trips since then.
“So, do you live down here?” he asked.
“No, I live out in Wheaton with Michelle.” I braced myself for the next question: “Wheaton? Where’s that?” But that wasn’t his response.
“That’s cool,” he said instead. “I share a place out near White Flint. Other end of the red line.”
Another suburbanite. And apparently unashamed.
Michelle was done “checking her voicemail.” She walked back up beside me and hooked her arm through my elbow.
“Did he tell you it’s his birthday?” she asked.
“It’s your birthday? Hey, happy birthday, Benji.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen, I’m on my way to meet a friend,” he said, “but maybe we can get together this week and I can buy you a belated birthday dinner?”
“That sounds great,” I said. Michelle squeezed my arm. Real subtle.
“I’m off for a few days,” he said. “So just give me a call.”
He fumbled in his pocket, looking for something to write on. Michelle seized the moment, reaching into her purse and grabbing a pen and a scrap of paper. He wrote down his name and number, gave me a hug good-bye, and was on his way.
“You didn’t tell me about him,” Michelle teased. “I thought you only met that one guy in Florida—that ‘bagel boy’ weirdo.”
“Yeah, I guess I forgot,” I said. “I didn’t even get his last name and I didn’t know he lived in D.C., so I figured I’d never see him again.”
“Quite a coincidence,” she said with a smirk, as if she’d planned the whole encounter. “We come downtown to a place we’ve never been and he just happens to be walking down the sidewalk?”
I looked down at the paper in my hand and noticed—in addition to the suburban area code—his name: Jamie Cohen.
I held the paper up in front of Michelle’s face.
“Bashert,” I said.
My parents called that afternoon to wish me a happy birthday.
“We got you one of those new iPods,” my mother said, “the kind they advertise on TV.”
“The one with the little video screen,” my father added, talking on the extension.
“It’s a combination birthday-Hanukkah present,” my mother said.
December birthdays suck.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve really wanted to get one of those.”
This was true.
“I don’t know how you can see anything on that tiny little screen,” my mother said, “but what do I know?”
My father asked about the latest news on the rabbi. I told him what Mrs. Goldfarb had told me. Secondhand news.
“You still haven’t been to visit him?” he asked.
“No.”
“Benji . . .” my mother said, with that disappointed tone in her voice.
“I thought you’d be happy,” I said. “You didn’t want me seeing him and now I’m not seeing him.”
My father took over.
“Benji,” he began. “I know how you feel. You’re angry because of what he said to you. And I don’t blame you.”
I didn’t respond.
“But you have to remember that the rabbi is very sick,” he continued. “I’m not saying you should be taking care of him—he has doctors for that. I’m saying you should be taking care of yourself. And part of taking care of yourself is getting past this anger while you still have the chance. If you wait another week or another month, the rabbi might not be around, and you’ll have to live with this unresolved anger forever. And on top of that, you’ll have to carry around the guilt of knowing that you didn’t see him while you still had the chance.”
I already felt guilty—that I hadn’t been there when he’d had his stroke and that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to visit him in the week since I got back to Maryland.
“You never knew my father,” he said, “because he died before you were born. But you’ve heard us tell stories about him.”
I had, and they were never pleasant.
“Let’s just say that he was a difficult man,” my father continued.
“You can say that again!” my mother added.
I laughed. She’s the one who had talked about him the most. Nothing positive.
“He was always telling me what to do, treating me like I was still a kid, even when I was a grown-up,” he said. “What kind of car I should drive, how I should spend my money, where I should look for a better job.”
Mom jumped in: “He always had all the answers.”
I remembered the stories I’d heard since childhood, about his unsolicited bits of “advice” to my dad that had always started the same way: Sid, you gotta listen to me . . .
“You guys have told me about him,” I said.
“I know,” my father said, “but I don’t think I ever told you about our last big fight.”
“No,” I said.
“After my mother died, he came to visit alone, and as usual, he started a fight in my own house. I had enough. I told him I was an adult with a career and a family and I wouldn’t have him treating me that way anymore—and I kicked him out. We stopped speaking.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“For good,” he said. “My mother wasn’t around to smooth things over anymore, so your Uncle Larry kept trying to patch things up, but neither of us would budge. When my father got sick a few months later and had to go into a nursing home, Larry handled it. I didn’t visit him once. When he had a heart attack and went into the hospital, I still didn’t go visit. And then he died. And we never had the chance to make things right.”
“It sounds like he deserved it, though,” I said.
“He did,” my mother interjected.
“He probably did deserve it,” my father said. “And yes, life was a lot easier for a while without him bossing me around all the time and ma
king me feel like crap. But you know what? I felt better for a little while, but I’ve felt horrible for thirty years now. Horrible that I didn’t try to bury the hatchet with him while he was still alive. Because now it’s too late.”
“I get it,” I said.
“I’m not saying you need to be his best friend,” my father said. “Make up with him, scream at him, or just forgive him and move on. Do whatever you need to do. Just don’t wait too long to do it.”
My father was never the kind to offer unsolicited advice, so I took this to heart. It had been a week. How much longer did I have?
“You’re coming tomorrow night to light candles for Hanukkah?” my mother asked before we hung up.
“I’ll be there,” I said. Then, after a moment, I added: “But I might be a little late.”
The rabbi looked awful. Worse than I’d ever seen him.
He hadn’t heard me open his door, so I stood in the doorway and observed him silently. His beard was scraggly and unkempt, his hair uncombed, his blue hospital gown stained with whatever he’d had for breakfast and lunch. He was noticeably thinner, his paunch a thing of the past, the skin on his arms loose and blotchy.
“Rabbi Zuckerman?” I said.
He turned and looked at me, squinting beneath the bright fluorescent hospital lights.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Was he trying to conjure the right words to ask my forgiveness, or to throw me out? Perhaps he’d forgotten about our fight—or perhaps he’d forgotten who I was altogether.
Or maybe he just couldn’t speak. Mrs. Goldfarb said he could manage a few words. But what does “a few” mean? He was never what anyone would call a man of many words.
“Rabbi Zuckerman,” I repeated. “It’s me, Benji.”
“Ben-ji,” he said, slowly and deliberately. No inflection, no glint of recognition or surprise or dismay. The simple act of getting two syllables out of his mouth was all he could manage. His brow was furrowed, not out of anger, it seemed, but out of sheer concentration.
Since I hadn’t been thrown out, I approached his bed.
“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you this week,” I said.
He looked at me blankly. I could tell this was going to be a one-sided conversation.
“I’m still angry at you,” I said.
He looked away from me.
“You said some awful things to me last time I saw you,” I continued. “I don’t know if you remember.”
Still quiet, he turned back to face me, but he didn’t open his mouth or raise a finger.
“I remember,” I said, and I could feel my face getting hot as I recalled that awful scene in his living room.
But knowing he couldn’t talk much made it much easier for me, since this couldn’t escalate into a screaming match or an argument. We weren’t going to pick up that argument where we left off. There was no way for him to attack me again, no reason for me to get defensive. I exhaled.
“But I didn’t come here today to fight,” I said. “I came because tonight’s the first night of Hanukkah and I knew you’d want to light candles.”
I reached into my backpack and removed the “travel-size” aluminum Hanukkah menorah I’d bought at his bookstore that afternoon and two blue candles. I set them up on his wheeled dinner table. I put one candle in the right-most candleholder and lit the other one with a plastic lighter I had in my pocket.
“This is against the rules, so we’ll have to be quiet,” I said. He looked at me with quiet disbelief and nodded.
I took the burning candle and lit the other one and started to sing the Hanukkah blessing.
“Baruch atah Adonai . . .”
The rabbi started to make noises, low staccato moans, attempting to sing along. I slowed way down and started over. He closed his eyes and sang along. He only got a few words right and this seemed to frustrate him; his right hand clenched into a fist. But when we were done, he opened his eyes and sighed. Then he pointed at me and tried to say something else.
I didn’t understand.
He repeated himself, but I didn’t understand again. He was, literally, talking nonsense.
He looked at me again, and this time a look of utter exasperation came over his face—not frustration at his lack of simple speaking abilities, but exasperation that I was being so stupid. That’s when I knew that the rabbi was still in there somewhere, inside this elderly stroke patient. Nobody else could have made that expression.
“M-m-mah,” he said. I nodded.
“O-o-oz,” he said. I nodded.
“Ts-s-sur,” he said.
“Oh, ‘Maoz Tsur,’ ” I said. “You want to sing ‘Maoz Tsur.’ ”
He shook his head and pointed his finger at me.
“Oh, you want me to sing ‘Maoz Tsur.’ ”
He nodded. He couldn’t sing along, we both realized, but he didn’t want to skip this part of the holiday ritual. So I sang for him. Good thing I remembered the words. Hebrew school must have been good for something, after all.
“Maoz tsur yeshuati,” I began, looking at the rabbi’s face as I sang the cheerful melody. “Lecha na’eh leshabeach.”
The rabbi didn’t look back at me. Instead he stared straight ahead at the candles, tiny flames flickering in his eyes.
CHAPTER 11
I could smell my mother’s latkes cooking in the kitchen, the scent of frying potatoes and onions drifting up the stairs to my old bedroom. I only had a few minutes before they were ready—and really, what good is a cold latke?—but I needed to make a quick call.
“It’s bad,” I said.
“How bad?” asked Irene.
“Bad,” I repeated. “He can barely talk and he looks awful.”
I told her about the rabbi’s stammering, his shoddy appearance, how he cried. She listened, without interrupting to ask questions. While I talked on my parents’ cordless phone, I played with the plastic dreidel Mrs. Goldfarb had given me that afternoon, spinning it on my desk and taking note of how it fell. Nun. Nun. Gimel. Nun. Shin.
I had kept Irene up to date by phone for a solid week, relating whatever Mrs. Goldfarb told me about the rabbi’s condition. During that time, Irene had never once pressured me to visit him, nor had she ever asked why I wanted to stay away. As someone who knew how it felt to be snubbed by the rabbi, to be drawn closer only to be pushed away, she probably understood my feelings better than anyone else.
But as I sat at the desk in my old bedroom in my parents’ house, barely an hour after I first saw the rabbi in the hospital, I found that my feelings had changed.
“I’m glad I went to see him,” I told her.
“That’s good, dear,” she said.
“I think you should go, too,” I said.
Irene was quiet for a moment, clearly surprised by my change of heart.
“It’s been a whole year since he’s spoken to me,” she said. “I don’t know why he’d want to see me now.”
There was no anger in her voice. Determination, perhaps, or resignation. But no anger.
“I honestly don’t know what he wants,” I replied. “But I think I know what he needs.”
I went to Holy Cross again the next evening. The rabbi’s hospital room stank of disinfectant and boiled corn. And it was quiet; was he the first hospital patient in history who didn’t ever turn on his television?
“Benji,” said the rabbi, still speaking in single words although his stammering was already starting to subside.
“I’m back,” I said.
“Candles?” he asked.
I put my backpack on a chair and pulled out the menorah and the candles again. And once again, I recited the blessing and sang “Maoz Tsur” while the rabbi listened.
“I brought you something else,” I said, while the candles burned on his table.
He raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Nu? What is it?”
“I thought a lot about you when I was in Florida,” I said.
I checked to see if he’d betray surprise that I’d
actually gone to Miami after our fight. Nothing. Maybe Mrs. Goldfarb had already told him.
“I learned a lot down there,” I said. “And I got some good advice. From Sophie.”
Now he opened his mouth again. “Sophie.”
“She made a needlepoint with a quotation from Hillel. Do you remember?”
He nodded.
“I think there’s a lot of wisdom in those words.”
“Benji,” he said.
“You gave me a wonderful present for my birthday by sending me to Miami,” I said. “And now I want to give you a present. For Hanukkah.”
I walked over to the door and opened it and there stood Irene. She’d flown in that afternoon with a ticket I’d bought for her.
Seeing the rabbi in such a state must have shocked Irene—she hadn’t seen him in quite some time. But she didn’t let on; she looked at him as if he were still a handsome, smooth-talking teenager taking her for a stroll through Van Vorst Park.
“Zisel,” she said, taking his hand as she stood by his bedside.
“Irene,” he said.
“If not now, when?” I said. And I turned to leave the two of them alone.
When Jamie asked me to pick a place for my belated birthday dinner—our first date—I named a couple of options in the District: a French place in Georgetown, a Caribbean cafe in Adams Morgan. “We both live in the suburbs,” he said. “Why don’t we just stay out here?”
Sharing a bowl of kimchi in a Korean grill in Wheaton, I told Jamie the whole story about the rabbi, and Irene, who’d arrived just a few hours before. I didn’t want to bore him with tales about a couple of old people he’d never even met, especially on our first date, but he kept asking questions and prodding me to continue. So I did.
I waited for him to pull a Michelle, to interrupt and change the subject back to himself. But he never did. Not when our main courses arrived, not when the dessert arrived, not when the check arrived. He just listened, for an hour and a half.
“I’m not used to talking so much,” I said as we left the restaurant.
“You seemed like you needed to talk,” he said.
“Next time we’ll talk about you,” I said. “Promise.”
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