An Unorthodox Match

by Naomi Ragen

  For the first time since they had met at the hospital, Yaakov Lehman admitted to himself that he could not get Leah Howard out of his mind. Often, before he fell asleep at night, the color of her hair passed through his mind, or the shape of her cheek, or even her battered backpack with its sewn-on patches and labels from all over the world. She was young and unencumbered. Like Rachel, she, too, was beyond his reach.

  The matchmakers had started calling again. Through his mother-in-law, he was constantly put under pressure to meet this one or that one or think again about those he had already met and rejected. Sooner or later, he supposed, he’d have to give in. He didn’t expect to be alone the rest of his life. And in their world, to have the companionship of a woman meant marriage, no more and no less.

  How he dreaded getting on that merry-go-round again! The entry into the homes of strangers, the confrontation with the anxious, pleading eyes of desperate women, the vulnerability of putting himself on the line for rejection! Something inside him rebelled against it. Always, always he had done what was expected of him. He had followed the laws, written and unwritten, of his world. He thought of Zissele. If only he had not! If only he had been stronger, more assertive, done for her what she needed instead of what was expected. If only he hadn’t given in to social pressure! He had failed her, failed his children. And now he was being pressured again.

  He picked up Leah Howard’s letter. Could there be something between the lines? He had to find out. He owed her that. He owed himself that.

  20

  “How would you like it if we invited Leah to come for Shabbos?” Yaakov asked Chasya one morning as he was helping her get ready for kindergarten.

  The child looked up at him with her big, soft brown eyes, her small lips quivering. “Oh, Tateh!” she cried. “Can we?”

  Shaindele stopped combing Mordechai Shalom’s hair, her hands going numb. “Tateh, you can’t mean it!”

  He turned to his daughter, his nostrils flaring. “And why not? She does so much for us, and we give nothing back. Is that hakoras tovah?”

  Shaindele bit her lip, devastated at his anger, but even more so at his total incomprehension of what a truly terrible idea this was in all ways. Hakoras tovah—gratitude! And what about his gratitude to her, his own daughter? How could he put her in such a position?

  Not only was Leah Howard an unmarried girl and he, her father, a widower, but Leah Howard was also a baalas teshuva born into a nonreligious home, who had spent her whole life up to now involved in all kinds of pritzus; a woman with wild, curly, red-gold hair that although tied back neatly in a ponytail still hung halfway down her back; a woman who every time she opened her mouth made it clear she was not one of them.

  While she correctly and piously used expressions like Baruch HaShem, she couldn’t get the ch sound right. It came out like a k or an h instead of the guttural sound akin to clearing the back of your throat, an instant giveaway someone was a hopeless outsider. She said humash instead of chumash. She would say, staying at their house, instead of staying by them. She would say she was studying, instead of learning, going to classes instead of going to shiurim. And once, when she wanted to bentsch, she said she needed to say grace after meals. She might as well be a shiksa! Even English she didn’t talk good! More than once, Shaindele had caught her saying in front of the children words like cool, or oh, man, or dude, or gosh. Shaindele had no idea what these words could mean but suspected it was nivul peh.

  Inviting Leah Howard to join the family for Shabbos was like putting up a neon billboard on Eighteenth Avenue announcing that this woman, this outsider, was not just a piously motivated do-gooder who came in on weekdays to do the chores and babysit but was a friend, practically a member of their family!

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the perfect face of Freidel Halpern, her blue eyes wide with shock and condemnation. She contemplated the speed with which the word would go out from Freidel to Freidel’s brothers and then to her distinguished parents, spreading like contagion to all the matchmakers, killing off any chance she might have had in finding the wonderful shidduch of her dreams. Instead of a handsome, distinguished scholar, she’d be offered plain, short, overweight men, middling learners from nondescript families. As for the Halpern brothers, she might as well yearn for a trip to the moon.

  Even without Leah Howard, their family had image problems. Only the family’s impressive yichus from both sides had protected them so far from the natural fallout over her mother’s mysterious death. But even now, she could feel the slow leak of air from the puncture holes in that life raft keeping them afloat, destabilizing their position moment by moment. Now, instead of doing all in his power to keep the boat steady and steer them toward a safe shore, her father had inexplicably decided to stand up and jump up and down by inviting Leah Howard for Shabbos, deliberately trying to drown them all!

  “Tateh, you don’t understand,” she pleaded.

  “Didn’t we have this talk, Shaindele? I’m surprised at you.” His eyes were hot with anger and disappointment.

  Shaindele quickly looked down, tears of helpless fury overflowing and racing down her cheeks. She wiped them away as fast as she could.

  He was overcome by misery. He’d allowed himself to believe she’d had a change of heart, sincerely repenting her slanderous lies and gossip-mongering. But now he saw clearly that was simply wishful thinking. Her obedience had been nothing more than a fear of punishment.

  Of all the things that were most important to Yaakov Lehman, raising his children to observe not only the letter but the spirit of the Torah’s laws was supreme. The ability to instill good values, honesty, benevolence, and loving-kindness in the souls entrusted to his care by his beloved Creator was a sacred obligation and his supreme duty, even more than Torah learning. After all, one learned in order to do.

  As he looked at his furious, ungrateful child, weeping out of snobbery because her father wanted to show appreciation to a good woman who had worked so hard to help their unfortunate family in their hour of need, he felt his heart sink with an acute sense of failure.

  “Shaindele, Shaindele.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes moist and downcast. “After our last talk, I was so encouraged. You’ve been so kind, so helpful, I felt sure it meant that you had uprooted the causeless hatred toward Leah from your heart. But I see now that is not yet true. I take the blame entirely upon myself. I have failed you and your mother. It was up to me to bring you up to be the fine person your mother and I both saw in you from such a young age. What has happened to my kind, loving Shaindele?” He looked at her tenderly, sorrow and disappointment etched in his mouth and eyes.

  It pierced her heart. A week ago, even a day ago, she would have melted with contrition under such a look, her heart aching, doing whatever he asked of her. But now, she simply didn’t care. She longed to open her mouth and spit out the truth in his face: how he, in his recklessness, was endangering her entire future! But for Shaindele Lehman to do such a thing would be like a lamb suddenly roaring like a lion. Raised to respect her parents the way she respected God Himself, the words stuck in her throat. Instead, silent tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks.

  Stricken and helpless, Yaakov reached out to smooth back the shiny, dark hair on his daughter’s head. She flinched. He drew back his hand, almost feeling his heart shrivel like a grape left out in the sun, his warm sympathy evaporating.

  “Do you remember how hard it was right after Mameh died? How you had to stay home from school? How the house was upside down, the children crying day and night?” His voice was hard and demanding.

  She nodded unhappily.

  “Can’t you see what a difference she’s made to us all?”

  Shaindele said nothing. She finished combing her brother’s hair, clipping his skullcap firmly to his head. “Come,” she told the child, turning away from her father, “I’ll get your bag. I’ll take you to cheder.”

  “Please, Shaindele,” Yaakov called after her.

  She ignor
ed him, hurrying down the stairs with her brother in her arms, away from his words and his voice, which were swallowed up by the roar of fury in her ears and the noise of her shoes slamming against the pavement. While her heart was full to bursting, her lips, dammed by law, custom, tradition, and respect, could let nothing out. Only her mind and thoughts were free. No one could command them.

  How could he be so stupid? she thought. Her intelligent, kind father whom she had always respected for his wisdom and piety, who always knew exactly the right thing to do? What was wrong with him?

  Now she knew the truth. She had lost both mother and father, she mourned. She was all alone, with no one to look out for her interests. Her mind worked feverishly to find a solution. And then, instinctively, she understood exactly what to do.

  It was late June. The heat from the sun pouring into her classroom in the old school building was stifling. Nechamke Solomon was sitting by an open window, the sun baking her head. When she got up to go to the blackboard, she stumbled, then fainted. The class was in an uproar. Without thinking twice, Shaindele also got up, put one foot in front of the other, then gracefully fell to the floor as well.

  She felt the school nurse patting her face. Someone else put an arm around her back and lifted her up, placing a glass of ice water in her hand and sticking a straw into her mouth.

  “We’re going to call your father to come pick you up,” Mrs. Erlich, Rabbi Halpern’s secretary, told her as she lay in the nurse’s office on a cot next to Nechamke.

  “No! He’s … he’s … far away. In Lakewood. Call my grandmother.”

  Fruma Esther came as fast as her orthopedic shoes would carry her.

  “What’s this, Shaindele?”

  She sat up. Her bubbee wasn’t the kind of cuddly grandmother that sided with children against their parents. Sensing just a whiff of rebellion or disrespect, her grandmother could be harsher and more punishing than her father and all her teachers rolled into one. And once her grandmother got it into her head that a child was lacking in character and piety, she never forgot, targeting the offender with countless admonitions and lectures and maybe worse … Besser an erlecher patsh fin a faltshen kuss. Better an honest slap than a deceitful kiss, she would often say. Still, this was an emergency.

  “Bubbee, I need to talk … to tell you…”

  She glanced up at Mrs. Erlich, then catching hold of her grandmother’s eye, gave a tiny, meaningful shake of her head before lying back down.

  Fruma Esther was no dummy.

  “Mertsishem, she’ll be fine. I’ll take care of her, Rebbitzen Erlich.”

  The woman reluctantly backed off. “A zai gezunt.”

  Checking that Nechamke was really asleep, Shaindele whispered to her grandmother the entire, sordid tale of the Shabbos invitation to Leah Howard.

  Fruma Esther patted the white, soft hand of her granddaughter, who looked so much like her Zissele. “Chas v’shalom!” she said firmly. “Bli neder, mein kindt, your bubbee will take care of this.”

  Shaindele felt an enormous weight roll off her heart. She sat up, then stood.

  “Where are you going, child?”

  “Baruch HaShem, I’m feeling better now. I’ll go back to class.”

  “Are you sure, shefelah?”

  She leaned down and kissed the old woman’s worn cheek, etched with a half century of wrinkles, one for every challenge and every trouble she had faced down in battle.

  “I feel fine now.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t easy getting old, Fruma Esther told herself as she sat up in bed the next morning, massaging her knees. Every day, something else that had been working just fine stopped. Now, it was her knees. First it was the back of them, the hamstrings pulling her calves like vicious hoodlums; and then it was the front, the kneecap aching with every step. She rubbed them with Bengay. The odor made her feel faint.

  She got up, getting dressed slowly, every movement accompanied by aches and pains. And when she stretched her arms over her shoulders to pull up her zipper, she felt her back give out.

  “Oy, oy, oy!” she moaned, falling back heavily on the bed. Now she had done it, she couldn’t move. She tried to talk herself out of it.

  “Who will help your Zissele’s family if you don’t get involved? You have to get up! You have to talk some sense into your choson before he finishes off the family’s reputation! Before poor Shaindele’s chances for a good shidduch are ruined!”

  Her back listened but was not impressed. It stayed put, reacting to any attempt on her part to get up with a punishing swiftness that took her breath away.

  Now she was sorry she didn’t have one of those little telephones people kept close to them. Yaakov, too, was without one. For some reason she didn’t fully understand, the rabbis were against the little phones. Something about pritzus. But now she heard, they had kosher phones. How easy it would have been to simply dial his number and have him pick up! She could tell him everything without moving more than her fingertips!

  She lay there helplessly, hoping it would pass, imagining the conversation.

  “My dear Yaakov,” she would begin warmly. “I know how hard it has been for you and how you are struggling since losing my Zissele; God should watch over us and save us from more pain. Chas v’chalilah, I don’t want to criticize, but if there was a snake crawling under the kitchen table while you and the children sat around singing Shabbos songs, would you want me to control myself from warning you? There is a snake in your home, a young woman that has wormed her way into your lives. Who is she? What do you know about her, really? Like a stray cat, she comes into our neighborhood. Who were her parents, her grandparents? So now, she is religious. She wears long skirts and shirts that cover her elbows and button under her chin. But when an alley cat wants something, it can be clever. It can come into your home and pretend to be a house cat, but it will never escape its nature. Who knows what dangerous things she is bringing into your home, into the minds of your children when you are not there, things picked up roaming the streets? You should listen to Shaindele, who hears what goes on. She is sick with worry, your Shaindele. She fainted in school…”

  Well, maybe not that part about the alley cat. Yaakov was such a tzaddik. He would immediately complain it was loshon hara, which of course it was, but for a worthy cause! One had to protect the family. There was no higher value than that.

  “People are talking,” she would tell him, even though, strictly speaking, that wasn’t exactly true. But she imagined that it wasn’t far from the truth! How could they not talk? A young woman, newly religious, a young widower, and she with those ridiculous long, red curls like Esau! She was practically living in his house. As long as it remained a business relationship, the tongues would wag more slowly. But the moment she started coming over for intimate Shabbos meals like one of the family, any shackles on their tongues and their imaginations would be set free.

  The thought so alarmed her that she wrenched her body into a sitting position. The result was agonizing. But strangely, the pain seemed to exhaust itself, lifting and taking some time off.

  “Baruch HaShem.” She sighed, slowly bending down to tie her shoelaces. Adjusting her wig, she hurried out the door.

  Outside, the sun bore down on her, casting its blazing clarity over her plans. Where was she going? she thought. To the kollel? Was that what the family needed, a public confrontation in front of all the students? The very thought horrified her. She could try to talk to Rav Alter again. But honestly, he hadn’t been much help the last time she went that route. True, Yaakov had agreed to start the shidduch process, but look what had come of it! Nothing. And then, just as she was turning the corner, another thought struck her. Taking a slight detour, she headed toward her friend Rebbitzen Basha.

  She pressed the intercom.

  “Yes,” a fuzzy voice came through.

  “Basha, it’s me, Fruma Esther. Can I come up?”

  “Such a question!” The buzzer immediately sounded.

&n
bsp; She pushed open the door and stood at the foot of the steps wondering how her old friend still navigated them. Sighing, she held on to the bannister, pulling herself up. She was breathless when she reached the door, which was already open, Rebbitzen Basha standing there with a half smile on her face. The two friends embraced.

  “Such a shlep!” Fruma Esther wheezed. “How do you manage without an elevator?”

  “B’li ayin hara, Baruch HaShem, my feet are still good!”

  “Kaynahora.”

  “Come zits sich, Fruma Esther.”

  “Thank you. So hot. I’m shmoiling!”

  “I’ll bring you a cold drink.”

  “I’m taking up your time?”

  “A pleasure to give you my time,” Basha called from the kitchen, soon returning with a pitcher of iced tea and a plate of rugelach.

  Fruma took a drink gratefully, then bit off a piece of rugelach. “You made these yourself, or it’s from the bakery?”

  “What bakery? I’m cooking and baking like a meshuggener.”

  Fruma Esther suddenly looked around. The house was in an uproar, boxes of food and good china piled up everywhere.

  “B’ezras HaShem, the vort for my grandson is tomorrow.”

  Heshy’s engagement party! “I forgot all about it! Mazel tov! Such a lovely girl. I know it wasn’t easy, but you see it all turned out for the best for Heshy.”

  The two women sighed, nodding. Heshy, born with a clubfoot, still had a slight limp. The girl, too, had a bit of a problem with cross-eyes. But the two families’ great-grandparents were both from the same little town in Hungary, and the girl’s father was a wine merchant who was taking Heshy into the business as soon as he finished a few years of learning. Besides, she was a sweet, modest girl who was grateful to Heshy and adored him. The engagement had been joyful for both sides.