Sweet Like Sugar

by Wayne Hoffman

“I really don’t care what we talk about,” he said. “As long as there’s a next time.”

  The rabbi went home from the hospital later that week. Irene went with him.

  She moved into his study, across the hall from his bedroom, sleeping on the foldout couch.

  Irene arranged for a visiting nurse to come every day after lunch—to give the rabbi his medication, check his vital signs, and help him bathe—and a speech therapist who would help him regain his ability to talk. The rest of the time, she planned to take care of him herself, cooking his meals, washing his clothes, and, most importantly, keeping him company day after day.

  Within a few days, Irene had the rabbi’s schedule running smoothly and she walked down the hill to the shopping center one afternoon, while the others were attending to him. After she picked up a few things at the supermarket and the bakery, she stopped in the bookstore to chat with Mrs. Goldfarb, whom she’d finally gotten to meet face-to-face earlier in the week at Holy Cross. And when she was done with Mrs. Goldfarb, she came around to the back of the shopping center and knocked on my door.

  A hug and a kiss and I ushered her in. My couch was too big for her; her feet dangled several inches above the carpet. But she made herself at home there.

  “Oh, the Barry Sisters, I used to love them,” she said, pointing to the poster.

  “The rabbi gave that to me,” I said.

  “He was never big on gifts,” she said. “He must really like you.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said. “Before.”

  She told me about the rabbi’s health, how he’d already progressed from single words to short phrases. While the stroke had caused aphasia—loss of the ability to produce words—the rabbi was recovering quite well and, she noted, he had never lost his ability to comprehend other people’s words, spoken or written. He was physically weak—some-what shaky on his feet, he spent most of the day in bed or sitting in his living room—but his spirits, she said, were strong and he was very nearly his old self again.

  “He still davens every morning,” she told me. “And he still spends hours a day reading his books. But that was always Zisel. Forever with his books. I guess even a stroke couldn’t change who he was.”

  For better or worse, I thought.

  I drove Irene back up the hill when we were done chatting. As we pulled into the rabbi’s driveway, she asked me to come in, “just for a minute, to say hello.”

  “You know that I can’t,” I said.

  “I thought you were past that,” she said. “You visited him in the hospital.”

  “That was different,” I said. “He made it perfectly clear that I’m not welcome in his house.”

  “But that was before all this,” she said.

  “I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen,” I said, “forgive and forget.”

  She turned to face me from the passenger seat.

  “That’s not what this is all about, kiddo,” she said. “Nobody’s asking anyone to forgive or forget. Do you think I’ve forgotten what Zisel did to me? Or that I’ve forgiven him? Think again. I’m here because I love him—in spite of what he did to me.

  “You should never forget what he said to you—only a fool forgets,” she continued. “And forgiveness—that’s something you get from God. Or your mother. You don’t have to forgive him, or pretend this never happened.”

  I folded my arms. “So what do I have to do?”

  “You need to understand him, and accept him on his own terms, and get beyond all this,” she said. “You need to get over it.”

  “Get over it?” I asked, incredulous. “He condemns my entire life and I’m supposed to just get over it?”

  “Sweetheart, if I can get over what he did to me, you can do it, too,” she said.

  She did have a point.

  “And what about him?” I asked. “He gets to crap on everyone in his life and we all just look past it and keep taking care of him?”

  “Oh, no, Benji, it’s not like that at all,” she said, index finger in the air. “There’s plenty that he needs to get over. Plenty. And if you think I’m not telling him the same thing every day, then you don’t know Irene Faber.”

  I sat for a moment, wondering what exactly Irene was saying to the rabbi as he sat on the living room couch.

  “Come inside,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  I wasn’t ready to go back inside that house. I told her: “Not today.”

  “You’re just as bad as he is,” she said gruffly, giving up the argument and grabbing her bags from my backseat. Then, looking at my face, seeing that I was more wounded than upset, she quickly softened: “I’ll see you tomorrow, same time,” she said, and she blew me a kiss against her brown leather glove.

  “I just can’t do it,” I explained to Jamie that night over dinner at an Italian restaurant around the corner from his apartment. “I can’t go back inside that house.”

  Jamie was a good listener. Despite my earlier promise, I found myself doing most of the talking on our second date. And once again, he let me.

  My relationship with the rabbi was particularly intriguing to him. My feelings toward the rabbi had begun to shift. I wasn’t feeling guilty anymore: I knew that I’d done everything I could to look out for the rabbi—and now that he had Irene or the nurse with him twenty-four/seven, he didn’t need me checking up on his physical or emotional health. I wasn’t even angry by this point. Yes, his words had stung, and yes, I was pissed that my months of friendship seemed to count for nothing in his Torah-blind eyes, but that feeling, too, had lifted after I confronted him in the hospital, however briefly. Just letting him know that he’d hurt me was enough to unburden myself.

  By this point, I mostly pitied him. No matter how many times I’d thought otherwise, Mrs. Goldfarb had been right about him from the start: He was a rigid man who’d pushed away everyone who ever cared about him. He’d rejected every bit of kindness and sympathy, not only with indifference, but with snubs and dismissal. If he’d been left completely alone, he’d have deserved it; the fact that he had Irene by his side was actually more than he deserved.

  “Everyone told me that I needed to make the first move,” I said. “Well, I did. I went to see him in the hospital and I brought Irene here to stay with him. That’s a pretty big move.”

  Jamie nodded.

  “But I tell you, the next move is his. If he wants me to come visit him at home, he’s got to invite me personally. He’s the one who kicked me out, he’s the one who’s going to have to ask me back in. Irene keeps saying that it’s all fine now, that I should just get over it. But it’s not that simple.”

  “Why not?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m still hurt,” I clarified. “Look, I’m twenty-seven. I’m a grown man. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone. I don’t need to defend my existence as a gay man to some homo-phobic rabbi. He’s not my dad. He’s not even my rabbi. Who is he to judge me? Why do I care what he thinks?”

  I was getting agitated. Jamie was calm. “Why do you care?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure of the answer.

  “Okay, before the fight,” Jamie said, “why did you take such an interest in him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because he let me, and he trusted me.”

  “He treated you like family,” Jamie offered.

  “Only he didn’t make as many demands,” I said. “And he didn’t tell me what not to do.”

  “He doesn’t sound so bad,” Jamie said.

  “Great, now you’re taking his side,” I said.

  “I’m not taking anyone’s side. All I know is that if you hadn’t met the rabbi, you never would have flown to Miami over Thanksgiving,” he said. “I never would have met you, and I wouldn’t be sitting here now thinking about how sweet you are and hoping that you’ll want to skip dessert so we can go home already.”

  I looked into his eyes and realized I’d spent the better part of dinner talking about a sick old man when I had an adorable young guy sitting a
cross the table from me. One had kicked me out of his house, while the other was inviting me into his.

  I caught the waiter’s eye and motioned for the check.

  Jamie was unlike anyone I’d dated before, I soon realized.

  He was funny and cute and bright—but I’d dated other men who possessed these qualities, albeit not usually all three simultaneously. We shared similar tastes in music, politics, and clothes, although, again, the same could be said of several erstwhile prospective boyfriends of mine.

  What was different about Jamie is that he asked questions, real questions, and persisted until I gave him real answers.

  Other guys had looked at my graphic design projects and said they liked them, sometimes offering a hint of enthusiasm or a relatively specific bit of praise. But Jamie was the first to ask why I’d made certain choices—why this color, why that font, why those images—in a way that showed real interest. He listened to my answers as I explained some basic principles behind my work, eager to learn more. And he wasn’t afraid to be critical, in a gentle way, if he didn’t like what I’d done.

  He was equally curious about my personal relationships—and not just with the rabbi. He wasn’t particularly close to his parents, who had recently retired and moved to Arizona; they weren’t as intrusive as my folks just a few miles away, but they also weren’t as accepting of their gay son. Jamie didn’t have a Michelle in his life, either: His roommate was just a random guy he’d found online and he’d lost touch with his college friends, most of whom lived thousands of miles away.

  Jamie had grown up in Minneapolis. Both his parents worked at the state university there: his father as a professor in the biology department, his mother as an administrator in the registrar’s office. Mr. Cohen was Jewish, tracing his lineage to Lithuania by way of Toronto. Mrs. Cohen—née Lindstrom—was a Lutheran of Swedish heritage. Rejected by both families and both religious communities because of their interfaith coupling, the Cohens raised Jamie and his sister in a household that was both Christian and Jewish and yet neither at the same time. They had a Christmas tree, but never went to church; they ate matzoh instead of bread on Passover but never had a seder. Jamie had a bris, but no bar mitzvah; he went to a Christian private school and a Reform synagogue’s Sunday school through sixth grade, when he switched to public school and got his Sundays back.

  It was only when he got to Berkeley that Jamie embraced his Judaism. He took a Jewish studies class, went to Shabbat dinners at the Chabad house on campus, checked out a few of Hillel’s holiday events. There were always a few naysayers who told him that he wasn’t really a Jew—because his mother was a gentile, because he’d never been bar mitzvahed—yet for the first time in his life, Jamie felt Jewish. Whatever that meant.

  But the usual means of association weren’t there: Synagogue was alien to Jamie, and he didn’t have any personal connection to traditional holiday rituals. He wasn’t about to join a JCC or subscribe to the local Jewish newspaper. So once he left Berkeley, and there were no more classes or events or Friday night dinners, he was on his own again. Questions remained, but he didn’t have anyone to give him answers.

  He found a group in Washington for “interfaith” Jews, but it was aimed at couples from different religious back-grounds—not individuals who had dual backgrounds. He went to the gay synagogue a few times, but that felt more like a place for gay people who already felt connected to their faith, who were just looking to transplant it elsewhere; Jamie didn’t fit in.

  Then he met me. Jamie found a source of information about Judaism—in me, of all people.

  He’d ask questions about holidays and I usually knew at least the short version of the answer. He’d ask about Israeli politics, a Yiddish word, a seemingly incomprehensible restriction on behavior, and more often than not, I knew what to say. I was the answer man. I’ll take Judaica for four hundred, Alex.

  I helped him get in touch with his Jewishness. He helped me get back in touch with mine. And I liked that.

  Jamie had to get up early for a flight to Mexico City, so I headed home around midnight. Michelle was waiting up for me in the living room.

  She clicked off the television and ran over to give me a big hug.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, completely unconvincingly.

  She hugged me again and a grin spread across her face like I’d never seen before. She was bouncing up and down on her the balls of her feet, taking both my hands in hers. She was wound up so tightly, it looked like she might twirl around the room like a top just to relieve the tension.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  “Notice anything different?” she asked. I dropped her hands and took a step back to examine her.

  “Different? It’s not your hair. It’s not your clothes . . .”

  “Keep guessing,” she said, slowly raising her hands in front of her face and wiggling her fingers until I noticed the diamond ring.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “We’re engaged!” she screamed, throwing her arms around my neck.

  I hugged her back and squeezed her tight.

  “When did Dan propose?”

  “Tonight at dinner. I was totally surprised. He’d worked it all out with the waiter ahead of time, so when he brought dessert out, he gave me a plate with this ring on it. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And Dan said he wanted to marry me. And at first, I was like, am I on some kind of reality show? Have I just been Punk’d?”

  Apparently, Dan had been considering popping the question for a few months; the trip to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving was his way of seeing if his parents approved. And they did.

  Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew that Michelle getting married was going to change my life in a profound way. We wouldn’t be roommates anymore, wherever we’d both be living. I wouldn’t get to see her every day. I hadn’t spent so much as a week without her since we’d met; who could possibly take her place?

  But I knew this was not the time to be thinking about my own impending loss, my own purely selfish concerns. Michelle was getting married—and to a pretty great guy. I was thrilled for her.

  She started rattling off details about the wedding, all of them still tentative: “We might do it in June, or we might wait till next fall. . . . We’ll do it in Philly, unless we can convince my parents to do it here. . . . We’re thinking about a little ceremony, but then again, we have so many people we want to invite. . . .” Michelle was already talking in first-person plural.

  “So I guess Dan’s your bashert after all,” I said.

  She must have seen a hint of dejection on my face.

  “No, actually, I decided that you’re wrong,” she said. “There isn’t just one person for each of us. You can have more than one person you’re destined to spend your life with. The same way your rabbi had his wife and Irene. I have two basherts: Dan and you.”

  That was Michelle’s way of telling me that she wasn’t going to abandon me, that we’d always be together in some way, even if we didn’t share a home. I should have known that all along.

  During our freshman year at Maryland, Michelle and I split about nine hundred pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—to relieve stress, alleviate boredom, celebrate handing in a paper, anything really. In a related vein, we started going to the school gym together to get rid of all that Chunky Monkey.

  One afternoon, toward the end of our first semester—about a month after I’d come out to her and a few weeks into our intimately platonic friendship—we had really overdone it at the gym, taking an aerobics class that we had no business taking. “What does advanced aerobics mean?” Michelle had asked. “Like we can’t take the fucking class until we have a master’s degree?” We quickly learned that we were, in the world of aerobics, beginners.

  Back in Michelle’s dorm room, her back cramped up on her and I offered her a massage. An innocent massage.

  She took off her T-shirt and lay facedown on her fut
on.

  “This’d be easier without your bra,” I said.

  I reached down to unhook it. She turned and looked up at me.

  “You’re sure you’re gay?” she teased, slipping the straps over her arms.

  “I’m sure now,” I teased back, tossing the bra aside.

  There was nothing electric about the moment, but I felt an ease, a comfort with Michelle I had never experienced with anyone else.

  I straddled her, in my gym shorts and tank top, and looked down at her body: smooth skin, narrow waist, soft shoulders. Ten thousand men on campus would have been ecstatic to be in my position.

  I found the knot in Michelle’s lower back and started gently kneading it. She sighed and relaxed into the futon.

  We didn’t even hear the key in the lock, as Michelle’s straitlaced roommate, Kelly, opened the door. She gasped. Knocking me off her, Michelle shot up on the futon and covered her breasts with the pillow. I turned red. “I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t realize . . .” Kelly said, backing out and closing the door behind her.

  I started to giggle uncontrollably.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Michelle.

  “She thinks she just walked in on something dirty,” I said. “It’s just funny because she doesn’t know that I’m gay.”

  “No, it’s even funnier,” said Michelle, “because she does know that you’re gay.”

  Apparently, while I’d been fretting over how to tell my roommate, my dormmates, my classmates, Michelle had been coming out for me. She’d already told most of the girls on her floor, who’d noticed how much time we spent together and had asked her what was up.

  At first, I was peeved, but I quickly came to be grateful. Michelle gave me the push to come out by showing me that it wasn’t such a big deal; for the most part, people didn’t care one way or the other.

  “But what happens if someone does care?” I asked her. “What if I tell someone and they’re totally homophobic about it?”

  “Then you tell them to go fuck themselves,” she said. “This isn’t high school, Benji. You don’t need to waste your time trying to accommodate assholes anymore. Live your life, be yourself, and don’t worry about those people. They don’t like you? Good riddance.”