by Ruby Namdar
17
The standard gift of IBM shares that Walter and Ethel Cohen gave their newborn sons was less a calculated economic investment than a symbol of the normative, responsible, middle-class ethos of work and saving. For the young Cohens as for most of their generation, the idea of freedom, so central to the American experience, meant above all freedom from want—or, to put it differently, from anxiety about tomorrow. Along with the archaic dress, the docile body language, and the ceaselessly muttered prayers of the ghetto, the new American Jew had put aside the grinding, never-ending worry of his forebearers, who scurried frantically through the narrow streets of the shtetl—no more than a rural slum, really—without knowing from where, if anywhere, their children’s next meal would come. The farthest ahead they could think under such unimaginably difficult circumstances was the coming Sabbath, for which they hoped to scrape together enough for a piece of carp, the cheapest of fish, so pathetic it would be sent back to the kitchen of any American restaurant if served as a main course. The savings plan and the life insurance policy, however pitifully small, became the icons of American Jewish culture. Their symbolic value was huge, almost religious; into them was funneled all the spiritual energy once concentrated on ritual objects. Their almost fetishistic power expressed the determination of men and women who had experienced hunger, deprivation, and an uncertain future to make sure these never recurred and to shield their children, if need be with the headlong aggressiveness of animals protecting their young, from the demon of scarcity that had plagued their parents and robbed them of their own childhoods.
The slow but steady rise in the value of IBM shares spelled the fulfillment of Walter’s middle-class dream. The stock’s success, which lifted many a Jewish family through the glass ceiling separating the lower-middle from the middle class, strengthened Walter’s bourgeois values by endowing them with an objective, pseudoscientific validity. It was ironic, therefore, that the one impulsive, spur-of-the-moment investment he ever made, a purchase of Conair stock against his better judgment, was to determine more than anything the economic fortunes of his family.
What happened next was also taken from a Philip Roth novel. Walter was irritated when Ethel’s younger brother Jake, who had landed a job as an assistant broker on Wall Street (the vague nature of which caused Walter to relabel it as “assistant goniff”), talked him into buying, on the basis of what he presented as inside information, one hundred shares of Conair for each of his two sons. The stock’s subsequently fabled, meteoric rise seriously undermined Walter’s view of the world. Although in hindsight it might have seemed predictable, a sensible investment that worked out exceptionally well, it was a poisoned apple for Walter Cohen. Conair’s dizzying success raised a specter from the grave that his entire respectable, middle-class life had been a bulwark against: the speculator’s dream of easy profits, the eternal mirage of the shtetl’s luftmensch. Chaplinesque, a pauper’s wild throw of the dice, such gambles were the behavior of those ready to bet everything on the first harebrained scheme to come along because they had nothing to lose anyway.
But there was no arguing with success. When Jake, by now an independent broker living with his wife Mira in a nice colonial house on an acre and a half in Scarsdale, recommended one day that Walter sell Conair and immediately buy, without delay, all the RTC shares that he could, resistance would have been futile. Since then the years had gone by, the children were grown, and the mortgage on the New Rochelle house was paid off. Jake, having traded his black Lincoln for a silver, latest-model Cadillac and bought a summer place in Cape May, called every few weeks to chat with Ethel before asking for Walter and recommending the purchase, without delay, of this or that stock for his sons. Matthew’s and Andrew’s portfolios prospered, especially once—for now, too, success could not be gainsaid—they were put entirely in the hands of Uncle Jake, who had meanwhile divorced Aunt Mira, married Ms. Robertson, his twenty-seven-year-old secretary, bought her a Mustang convertible, and moved to a mansion in Greenwich. Inasmuch as Walter had invested in Jake’s tips none of his own hard-earned money, which he put not in stocks but in the solidest of savings plans and insurance policies so that his family would have the maximum protection against illness, accidents, and death that any responsible husband and father could give it, the paradoxical situation ensued that his two sons, even before going to college and without having worked a day in their lives, were richer than forty years of wise, responsible, day-in-and-day-out work had made him.
Walter stayed in the same house, in the same neighborhood he had raised his children in, even after it lost its charm and began to deteriorate. An independent man proud of his achievements, he refused to accept the help that his sons would gladly have given him, at no great inconvenience to themselves, for the purchase of a nicer, more modern home. He had even insisted on buying the assisted living unit in Florida, to whose large, attractive two bedrooms he and Ethel moved after his retirement, entirely with his own savings, using them to make up for the depreciated value of the New Rochelle house. Only after his death, when Ethel’s Alzheimer’s worsened and it was decided to bring her back to New York, did Andrew and Matthew participate in the cost of a nursing home—and even then their contribution was largely symbolic, since together with the medical insurance, the remainder of Walter’s savings, the nest egg put away dollar by dollar by a strong, unyielding man, covered the expense. Their nominal payments, it sometimes seemed to them, had been carefully planned, like everything else, so that they could chip in at no real cost to themselves. Walter had no more wanted money to be an issue after his death than before it.
A subject never discussed, Andrew’s portfolio remained active in the investment house. Like a fireplace in winter, it crackled quietly away with a warm flame. Without radically changing his life, it enhanced it. He lived modestly, or at least modestly enough not to be a conspicuous spender, getting along for the most part on his professor’s salary, that of a tenured position at a major American university. Yet something about the easy, aristocratic way he carried himself had a whiff of wealth nonetheless. The confidence provided by the safety net of his substantial assets helped give him the aloof, ethereal air of a man so utterly disinterested in financial matters and material possessions that he never even thought of them. The idea of Andrew P. Cohen dwelling on or even uttering the word “money” was inconceivable—and it was as odd to picture him depositing a check or coming out of a bank with a wallet full of bills as it was to think of a monk ordering a meal in a restaurant or buying a ticket for the theater. Imagining him conferring at length with his investment adviser about increasing the returns on his capital seemed little short of obscene.
This adviser, Mitchell, was an old friend from Berkeley, an ex-California beach boy who had gone through college as a spaced-out rebel with flowers in his curly hair, his hands pawing his latest girlfriend at this or that love-in having more to do with politics than love, only to be reincarnated as a financial genius, a Wall Street wonder child. So vertiginous was Mitchell’s ascent in the world of finance that he had no time to lose his winning hippie ways, which included, while schmoozing about underground politics, alternative culture, and ecology, smoking the obligatory joint (the best, homegrown sinsemilla, nothing less) whenever he and Andrew met to discuss investment strategy. It made them feel like they weren’t taking the making of money too seriously, turning it into a kind of game.
Rachel, whose own investment portfolio, opened for her by her parents when she was young, made her a financially secure graduate student, toyed for a while with moving her stocks and bonds to a socially and ecologically aware firm that promised to invest none of its clients’ money in companies exploiting third-world workers, damaging the environment, ignoring international treaties and regulations, or operating in corrupt and dictatorial countries. The firm’s directors, so its promotional literature declared, were prepared to forgo a modest, not unreasonable amount of profit to avoid compromising their own and their clients’ beliefs.
Rachel’s desire to transfer her account, and with it, she implied, her family’s, created an awkward situation, since the progressive views she had been raised to hold by her parents clashed with other values, such as loyalty to the family adviser and the need for a responsible managing of funds that were an unearned heirloom. Thinking of them as her own private property to be disposed of as she wished was rather embarrassing, and although Andrew did not openly disapprove of her initiative, she concluded it was best to put it off. This decision came as a relief to her, though not one she was willing to acknowledge.
18
Park Slope, a neighborhood of well-maintained two-story town houses dating back to the start of the twentieth century, looked lovely as usual. The trees lining its streets were kept neatly pruned, their leaves bright against the brownstone buildings. There were small backyards, front steps flanked by flowerpots, mosaic doormats, cafés and restaurants, and old jewelry and fashion boutiques. Vibrant and safe, it was an island of upper-middle-class contentment in the gray wilderness of Brooklyn’s vast slums. Andrew found a parking spot right across the street from Congregation Beth Elohim—a large, impressive building with Gothic windows and a broad entrance—which was nothing short of an urban miracle.
What a wonderful morning! The balmy air was seasoned with sunshine and the scent of flowers. He felt limber and full of joyful energy, the way one can be made to feel by a glass of chilled white wine in the summer. The unexpected gift of fifteen long minutes was like a sudden, leisurely vacation. He felt an eager sense of anticipation that was concentrated for some reason in his mouth, as if he had sniffed a freshly baked pastry or was about to sit down to a holiday meal. The bakery, he thought. I have time to go to the bakery. The word “bakery” aroused in him the ravenous, carefree appetite of a child. Andrew loved his younger daughter, Alison, greatly. The time the two of them spent together was a joy for him. The friendly, liberal-minded arrangement he had with Linda made life easier. It would have been pointless to make the child divide her time between two homes. It wasn’t necessary and she wouldn’t have liked it, anyway.
Ten to twelve. Andrew clutched the brown paper bag full of baked goods to his chest. The stairway to the synagogue’s second floor exhaled its usual cavernous coolness. Muffled sounds of laughter. Children singing. Sounds of prayer. Her classroom was empty. Could they be below, in the sanctuary? Drawings hung on the walls, the names of the children scrawled on them in touchingly uneven letters. Long rows of chest-high coat hangers. Windows with grilles. Hebrew letters on the blackboard. An old wistfulness came over him. A child’s hands traveling down a smooth banister. Knees pressed against a hard desk. The square, backward, right-to-left letters. The strange, guttural sound of the Heth and the Kaph. Blessed art Thou, O Lord. Bagels with cream cheese and jelly. Syrupy orange juice in paper cups. Little League baseball. Dressing rooms. The nice, itchy feeling of the inside of a fielder’s glove. Mom’s big old wood-paneled Roadmaster that cruised the roads like an old ship. She piloted it like a captain, its big wheel held tightly in her delicate, energetic hands.
“Good morning, Professor Cohen. You’re a bit early today.” Betty, the secretary, never skipped an honorific in addressing a parent. “The children went to prayer early because we had an emergency evacuation drill, and you know what it’s like to get them back upstairs when they love running around so much. It’s our third drill this year. That sounds like a lot, I know, but you can’t be too careful. You can wait here if you’d like, or else in the small hall on the ground floor. Alison must have taken her things with her. She knows that today is your day to come for her.” Betty liked to demonstrate her command of the schedules of the children’s families, especially when the parents were divorced or separated.
The sound of singing grew louder as Andrew approached the doors of the sanctuary, chimes of bright laughter punctuating the lilting voices. For a minute, he stood outside the shut door. Then, unable to resist temptation, he peered through its glass panel. A brisk young woman rabbi with a knit yarmulke led the prayer, accompanying herself on a guitar. The children sat in rows on either side of the aisle, in old wooden pews with prayer book racks. The front rows, closer to the podium, were reserved for the younger ones, while those approaching bar and bat mitzvah age sat farther back, pinching and tickling each other or otherwise evincing the disinterest that came with their age. The same smell, the same stained-glass windows with their Judaized neoclassical illustrations of sturdy men with long beards and robes standing in heroic positions, the same Hebraic-looking English letters spelling Tsedek, Emet, and Chesed. Justice, Truth, and Charity. Rabbi Schindler in his three-piece suit and broad, brightly striped tie. Always the same suit and tie. Oreos. The religious families said they had lard and wouldn’t let them into their homes. We ate them secretly during prayer. Held them in our mouths without chewing, letting them slowly dissolve on our tongues without moving the jaws so that Rabbi Schindler wouldn’t see. I hope Alison doesn’t turn around and see me. I’d have killed my mother if she’d done this, peeking through the window to see her. How many years since my bar mitzvah? Thirty-nine, no less.
The tremulous feeling he had had all morning was growing stronger, closer to something like tears or a fever. He had goose pimples. Longing churned in the pit of his stomach. Other eyes and ears were seeing and hearing for him. The singing was becoming more distant, but also very near, clear and uniform. The jangly, unpracticed chords of the guitar grew more harmonious, were joined by the strains of deep, poignantly yearning voices. He felt he was no longer in his body—not entirely, anyway, not enough to keep him from noticing how the real and the unreal had merged. Golden flecks of light glittered on the walls of the temple. Bright shafts of sunshine streamed in, fiery spears piercing the clouds of incense midway between the gold altar and the ceiling of the sanctuary. The blood stormed in his veins. An aromatic scent swept his nostrils and went to his head. The song rode the incense as a ship at sea rides the waves. Row after row, the children stood praying, bowing deeply, comically, poking each other mischievously with stifled laughs. Andrew stared at them, stirred by the sight of another, primal reality that shone through their fragmentary movements—the Whole that lay behind the broken bits of a vessel that now seemed never to have been smashed. The temple was bathed in majesty. Multitudes. They filled the gallery. They stood shoulder to shoulder, hardly able to move, yet there was room for them all when they prostrated themselves on the ground, as if space had stretched itself for them. A voice was heard on high. A great voice rumbled like thunder down the desert’s declivities to the distant green treetops of Jericho. The voice of the High Priest declaiming the Holy Name on the Day of Atonement. Where was it coming from? It sounded so close. It was coming from within him, from himself! Whence these sounds, these scorched, seething syllables? He was making them! He was uttering the great Name aloud, stressing its consonants and lengthening its vowels as taught to do by the whispering elders, closeted with them in an inner chamber. And when the priests and the multitudes in the gallery heard the awesome and venerable Name emerge whole from the High Priest’s mouth in holiness and in purity, then fell they to their knees and upon their faces and did cry: Blessed be the glory of His kingdom forever and ever. Shaken, in a tumult, he thought his heartstrings would snap. Happy is the eye that has seen all this, happy the people that such is its lot.
The heavy wood doors of the sanctuary swung forcefully open, almost knocking Andrew over as he stood with his eye to the glass panel. He jumped back, abruptly returned to a humdrum reality, his eyes searching wildly for the other, glowing world he had glimpsed through the panel. A strange yet familiar face appeared in front of him. It belonged to a Mediterranean-looking man in his thirties whose designer glasses contrasted risibly with his rough-hewn features. Leaving the sanctuary, he removed the skullcap from his head and tossed it nonchalantly into a basket by the door. For a moment, his and Andrew’s glances met, lingered on each other, and passed on. Who could he be? Andrew was sure he kne
w him from somewhere. The man paused for another fraction of a second, as though debating whether to say something, then thought better of it and turned to the corridor leading to the street. Andrew watched him go, trying to remember where he had seen him. Although he couldn’t explain or make sense of it, he felt their encounter had something unusual, perhaps even crucial about it. He thought of the overwhelming pageant he had seen, ejected from it by a swinging door. Who opened doors like that, wham, without thinking who might be on their other side? The man. It was he who had opened it. He was a foreigner, not American. That explained it. An Israeli, he spoke Hebrew! The man from 110th Street with the two playful dogs, one white and one brown. What could he be doing here in Brooklyn? Did he teach Hebrew or something?