Never Too Late for Love

by Warren Adler

  "Do you think he really looks Irish?" Heshy asked.

  "Exactly like my brother Sean, my mother said."

  "Poor guy. With a name like Leventhal."

  On the day before Pat was to come home from the hospital, she told Heshy that his parents had been there.

  "I saw them. I was standing by the window when these two older people came in. I was standing right next to them and they were pointing and tapping at the window at your son."

  "You didn't introduce yourself?"

  "My knees were shaking. Besides, they were very upset. Marvin was crying his lungs out and your mother complained to the nurse."

  "Complained?"

  "She insisted that the Leventhal baby was being ignored. The nurse was fit to be tied. I heard her say: 'That stupid Shiksa nurse.'"

  "That's my mother."

  "And she said one more thing."

  "Can I guess?"

  Pat smiled and nodded.

  "She said: 'Thank God, he looks Jewish.'"

  "You got that right."

  "She didn't stop to see you?"

  "One dumb Shiksa was enough for the day. Besides, I hid in the bathroom."

  A week after Pat got home from the hospital, Heshy's parents arrived in their small apartment. Their visit was not spontaneous, requiring some heavy negotiations and compromises on both sides between his mother and him. Phone calls were exchanged and Heshy's reactions were heavily laden with guilt. He knew his mother was sorely tempted to see the baby and troubled in her heart that she was still allowing her pride to dominate her desires. Naturally, his tactic was to make it appear that she was responding to his entreaties.

  "How can you ignore your grandchild?"

  "He's only half mine."

  "That is absurd," Heshy said. Finally, after a long exchange in that vein, Heshy played what he sensed was his trump card.

  "You want to deprive your own grandson of ever getting to know his grandparents? Let it be on your head." It was a bullet to the heart. Two days later, his parents came, laden with baby clothes, blankets, rattles and teething rings.

  "Just act natural," he told Pat. "No matter what. Chances are she won't even acknowledge your name."

  "As long as she doesn't call me Mrs. Leventhal."

  "That's the last thing on Earth she'll call you."

  "Or the Shiksa."

  "In her heart, that will be your name."

  The visit lived up to Heshy's expectations. His mother briefly acknowledged Pat's presence with a thin smile and turned her attention immediately to little Marvin, whose diaper she insisted on changing. Heshy could see his mother was happy and his father beamed and winked at Pat, when his wife wasn't looking. The high point of their visit was when little Marvin peed in his grandmother's face as she changed his diaper.

  "Well, you've been officially christened," Heshy exclaimed. Pat kicked him in the shins, and Mrs. Leventhal ignored the remark.

  "Boys do that," she said with some authority. "My Heshy did that to me all the time."

  The important thing to both of them was that the ice was broken and the story of little Marvin peeing in his grandmother's eye became part of the folklore of their lives.

  As for Pat's parents, they melted in a different way. It was Pat's father that could not stay away from his grandson, although he always visited during the day when Heshy was at work.

  "I noticed there are a bunch of beer bottles in the ice box," Heshy said one day. "You feeding the kid beer?"

  "You know the Irish and their beer. They start young."

  "You're kidding."

  "Of course, you ninny, it's for my father when he comes over to see the baby. He can't keep away from him." Heshy could see that she was pleased, and he was happy for the reconciliation.

  "He calls him Paddy," Pat said.

  "And me?"

  "You've graduated from kike to smart Jewboy."

  "I can just see him in the saloon telling all the micks about his daughter marrying this smart Jewboy."

  "You're the smart Jewboy and I'm the Shiksa."

  Perhaps it was the memories of those earlier days that prompted Pat Leventhal to continue to reject the idea of moving to Sunset Village. None of Heshy's mother's forebodings had ever come to pass. Actually, the fact that they were named Leventhal set the pattern for their lives. When the children were still in school, they moved to Jackson Heights. By then, they had had another child, a daughter. They had lived in the same apartment for thirty-five years. Heshy never made lots of money and often regretted that he had not gone to college. But he made certain that both his children graduated. They had a very small circle of friends and, although they did not practice any religion, they were "the Leventhals." It was rare that she was ever referred to as "a Shiksa." Even Heshy's mother ceased to use the term and, when Pat would joke that "she was just a dumb Shiksa," the older Mrs. Leventhal would counter with a strenuous rebuke.

  "You must never say such a thing," she would say, and from her tone it was obvious she meant it. At the end, her last thoughts were whispered to her son.

  "Be good to my Patty," she said. Remembering that always brought tears to his eyes.

  Because they had so few friends, they knew no one when they finally arrived in Sunset Village. They learned immediately that it would be impossible to be alone, nor did they want to be.

  "Make friends," Marvin had said. "Don't be standoffish."

  The day they arrived and waiting for the furniture truck, their next-door neighbors, the Bermans, invited them in for coffee. Abe Berman was a big man who used to be a plumber and his wife, Sadie, was a tiny woman with a graveled voice and a cigarette always dangling from her lips. She was also, as Heshy observed from the force of her interrogation, a yenta, a dyed-in-the-wool yenta.

  "You're from New York?" she asked, settling a squinty glare on Pat as she poured the coffee and offered a plate of brownies.

  "Jackson Heights."

  "We came from Crown Heights."

  "We lived in the same apartment for thirty-five years," Pat said. But Heshy sensed that Sadie Berman caught the scent of something that needed corroboration. Besides, one couldn't mistake Pat's antecedents. It had been a long time since they had been subjected to such scrutiny.

  "We looked at a place once in Jackson Heights," Sadie Berman said. "But there were too many goyem."

  Both Heshy and Pat ignored the reference, looking at each other with understanding.

  "You know," Sadie Berman volunteered, "there used to be goyem in Sunset Village. As a matter of fact, it started with goyem."

  "Not now," her husband said. "Besides, they're more comfortable with their own."

  Heshy felt discomfort, although Pat's glance told him that all was under control.

  "I'm a Shiksa," she said suddenly. The Bermans looked at each other in embarrassment.

  "Oi," Sadie Berman said quickly. "I said the wrong thing. I have a big mouth."

  "That, I'll vote for," her husband said.

  "I didn't mean to be a yenta," Sadie Berman said with what seemed to be sincere embarrassment. "There are plenty of Shiksas here, married to Jewish husbands."

  "Why not?" Abe Berman said. "They make the best husbands."

  "I'll say yea to that," Pat said.

  "Nowadays, what does it matter?" Sadie said, sensing perhaps that she had bridged the awkward moment.

  Later, when the moving truck had come and they finally settled down in their own bed, Heshy turned to his wife and hugged her.

  "Well, what do you think?" he asked.

  "I think that all Jewish men should marry Shiksas." She held him closely and he felt warm and at home in the strange new environment.

  They were too busy to do much socializing during the first weeks at Sunset Village, their time taken up by decorating their one-bedroom condominium and learning their way around the area. Sadie Berman would come in occasionally with offers of help, but it struck them both as more of a bread-and-butter courtesy than a sincere offer.

/>   Before long, Heshy was called upon by the leaders of rival Synagogues that had been established in Sunset Village. The representative of the Orthodox took one look at Pat and politely left the apartment, but the Conservative, a Mr. Horowitz, an ex-lawyer, was determined to lead them to commitment.

  "We have a number of intermarriages," he said pompously. "And our Rabbi has a great understanding of the problems attendant thereto." Obviously, the man had not forgotten his legal training, Heshy observed.

  "I'm sorry, we're simply not religious," he said.

  "Your wife did not adopt the Jewish faith?" Mr. Horowitz asked.

  "No."

  "Is she a Catholic?" Mr. Horowits asked, lowering his voice as if Pat was not within earshot. She was puttering around in the kitchen, but Heshy knew she was listening.

  "No."

  "Well, then," Mr. Horowitz seemed to puff up like a giant bird, his beak pointed into the air. "What do you consider yourselves?"

  "We're people," Heshy said. "We consider ourselves people."

  Mr. Horowitz harumphed politely into his fist, gathering his dignity, until he could muster the courage to leave.

  "Your fuse is getting short," Pat said, stroking Heshy's thigh.

  "I know," he said, feeling not the slightest twinge of regret.

  In the laundry building one day, he met Abe Berman, who was standing with a group of men. There seemed to be an odd sense of camaraderie about the group, a kind of cliquishness, that reminded him of his Brooklyn days when the boys hung around the candy store, something he had never done. Again, he felt the old envy, the wish to belong. Abe Berman came over to him, tucked an arm under his and dragged him to the group.

  "My wash," Heshy protested.

  "Who worries about the wash?" Abe said. "This is Heshy Leventhal." The men nodded recognition. He rattled off a series of names, nicknames which might have come from earlier days, "Natie, Solly, Izzie." One other man was named Heshy.

  "That's what they call me," Heshy volunteered. "My family never called me anything else. My real name is Harold."

  "His wife calls him Heshy too and she's a Shiksa," Abe said, imparting the information with some pride.

  "How lucky can you get?" the man called Natie said. "The best, absolutely the best."

  "I wanted to marry a Shiksa," one of the men said. "But my mother threatened to kill herself by throwing herself out of the window."

  "Jewish women," another man said. "They've been put on Earth to torture us. Do this. Do that. Gimme this. Gimme that. Buy me this. Buy me that. You marry a Shiksa and they do for you."

  "That's because they got a goyishe kop," a woman who overheard them interjected. She waved a finger at them. "Nothing like a good Jewish wife."

  "In the next life, I'll take a Shiksa anytime,"Abe Berman said. Heshy, feeling the discomfort of their remarks, went back to his wash, riveting his attention on the tumbling clothes. When he finished the laundry, he stuffed it into his bag and, without a word to Abe Berman, left for home. He did not tell Pat about the incident.

  They began to go to the pool every day. Pat wore a big hat and large sunglasses, smearing her thin Irish skin with layers of creams for protection. Poolside was always crowded and there seemed to bean unwritten rule that one could stamp out his turf and it would, by silent consent, be their place. They made little effort to make friends, but could not shut out the chattering around them as they concentrated on their paperbacks and observed the people from behind their glasses.

  A group of women sat near them, part of a regular clique of yentas. They were rarely silent as they replayed their card games of the night before and gossiped continuously about their neighbors, their past lives, punctuated by homilies and incantations. They agreed on little except, of course, their universal distaste and contempt for "goyem." When they discussed the outer world and its personalities, they were sure to extract an ethnic identification before pursuing the subject.

  "I used to love Cary Grant in the movies," one of them might say.

  "You know he's Jewish."

  "Really?"

  Actually, they were amused by most of the talk. But sometimes the conversation of the yentas took an odd direction, and Heshy would watch his wife stiffen and poke her nose deeper into her book.

  "I don't know what's happening in the world," one of the women said. Having run out of local gossip, their talk had turned to politics, and had drifted back to what was the central issue, always the central issue--Jews.

  "I don't know what's happening,"the woman repeated. She had a large face with heavy hanging jowls and pockets of chicken skin around her eyes. "Remember when Nixon was president? This Blumenthal married a Shiksa and became a Presbyterian. Schlesinger married a Shiksa and became a Lutheran. Henry Kissinger married a Shiksa."

  "That's why he was so rotten to Israel," one of the women interjected. "Once they get their hooks into a man, that's the end of it."

  "I don't know what they see in them," the first woman said. "When they get old, they all look alike."

  "Like the Chinese," the second woman said.

  "Ben Gurion's son married a Shiksa," another woman said.

  "And look what happened to Ben Gurion."

  "What happened?"

  "It's too long ago. I forgot."

  Heshy smiled and looked at Pat. She acknowledged his glance with a smile, but he knew that her amusement was tinged with sadness.

  "A Shiksa is bad business," the first woman said. "They go after a Jewish husband and take everything they can take."

  "And the children are always a mess."

  "Always."

  It was not that anyone was impolite, or even unfriendly. What was said with such passion never translated itself into personal enmity. But the idea, like a virus, was loose in the firmament of Sunset Village. The Shiksa was an alien. The goyem were never to be trusted. It is safer among your own. The Jews must help themselves. Under every goyem beats the heart of an anti-Semite.

  "It can make you paranoid," Pat said one day after returning home from shopping. "People look at you and you can't help thinking that they know. 'There goes the Shiksa, Mrs. Leventhal.'"

  "It's your imagination."

  "I wish it were. I met the wonderful Mrs. Berman and we walked with our cart down the aisles. When I put in a jar of Polish sausage, I'd thought she'd vomit."

  "You eat that?" she asked.

  "And you said?"

  "I said nothing. But I wanted to say: 'Yes, we eat that when we get too drunk to taste anything.'"

  "You didn't?" Heshy laughed.

  The knowledge that such an idea was loose was enough to inhibit their wanting to search out friends. So they kept to themselves. It was not what they would have liked and they viewed it as a failing in themselves.

  One morning, just as they had finished their coffee and were preparing to wash the dishes, they heard a frantic knock on the door. It was Mrs. Berman.

  Her eyes were puffy and red and she clutched shards of tissue in her hands.

  "I'm going crazy," she said. "I have to talk to you."

  "Is it Abe?" Heshy asked. They dried their hands and sat down beside her on the couch.

  "Not Abe, Danny." She looked up. "My son, Danny."

  They waited as the woman gathered her strength, getting her breathing under control. She blew her nose. Her hands were gnarled, spotted with liver blotches, hard-working hands. On one finger gleamed an old-fashioned thin diamond wedding ring.

  "He's getting married," she began, sighing, the pause tentative.

  "That's wonderful," Heshy said, feeling the obligation to fill the void.

  "Wonderful?" Mrs. Berman shook her head. "Not so wonderful. That's why I came to you. He's going to marry a Shiksa." She dissolved in tears. Pat bent over to comfort her with a hand on her back, looking at Heshy and shrugging. The woman recovered herself finally and looked at Pat.

  "He said he's in love." Heshy remembered, smiling to himself at the woman's exaggerated sense of pain.

>   "Love," the woman said with contempt. The quick stab of anger, sobered her, and her tears dried. "I came here to ask a favor."

  "A favor?"

  "I want you to talk to Danny." Heshy was not sure who she was addressing. "Both of you," she clarified.

  "About what?" Pat asked.

  "I want you to tell him the truth."

  "The truth."

  "He'll only respond if he gets it from the horse's mouth. Not that it will make much of a difference, but at least it's a try." They looked at each other, but the woman was under control now, determined. "I want you to tell him how difficult it has been. The hardships. The problems for the children. I know you have children. The confusion. The suffering. I'm sure you can tell him about the suffering. No matter what I say, he pays no attention. You think I don't know how terrible it must have been."

  She raised her head and looked deeply at them. Her pain was quite palpable and she was convinced of her logic. Heshy was tempted to show the woman the door, but that would have been impolitic, he reasoned. No sense making an enemy, he decided, his initial anger dissolving into pity.

  "Of course, we'll talk to him," Pat said. The woman leaned against Pat and put her arms around her.

  "I knew you would," she said. "I told Abe that."

  "How is he taking it?" Heshy asked, disguising his sarcasm.

  "Worse than me."

  "Danny will be here tonight. I made him promise to come talk to us before he got married." She stood up and smoothed her house dress with her gnarled hands. "I really appreciate this," she said, moving toward the door.

  "It could have been worse," Heshy said, as she opened the door, standing in the doorway. Pat stepped on his toes but it wouldn't deter him.

  "She could have been black," he said. Mrs. Berman nodded in serious agreement and dosed the door behind her.

  "Black and Jewish," he called after her, completing the thought, knowing the woman could not hear him.

  "I knew it was coming," Pat said. Heshy pointed after her.

  "Could you believe it?"

  "What will we say to the boy?" Pat asked.

  "We'll tell him how terrible it's been," he mimicked. "The pain. The confusion. And we'll serve him polish sausages and beer and you'll sing old Irish ditties and talk about having married a white Jew, someone who couldn't possibly be in on the murder of Christ."