Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan (16 page)

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Authors: Paula Marantz Cohen

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Hal nodded.
“So, like I said, one day they brought Will along. He'd just come in from London to meet with Kit about the plays. Kit was better educated and Will had him add some touches to make them more high-class. In those days, you had to appeal to high and low together. Very demanding. So Kit would add a fancy word here, a quotation there, some Latin maybe, and Will would give him a little money and take him to dinner. So one day, one of their friends had some bad luck with the dice and they came to Poppa for help, and maybe to show me off—they knew Will had an eye for the ladies. I was crossing to the rebbe's house as they came and they stopped me and said, ‘This is our friend Will, just come from London. Won't you give him a nice smile?' Since when am I stingy with smiles? So I did, and the next thing you know, he was hanging around writing me the sonnets and telling Poppa how we should come to London for the business opportunities.”
“Did you go to London?”
“A few trips. I was already fluent in English—Poppa had had in tutors. And when we went, I even made some friends with the women there. They gave me their recipes and some pointers on how to dress. Will was very much the gentleman—took us to all the fancy places and to see a play he'd written about two families that hated each other.”
“
Romeo and Juliet
?”
“Yes. Stephanie did a beautiful job with that scene on the balcony. But who needs so much fighting? Like the Feldsteins and the Cutlers in Vineland: Rhona Feldstein fell for Michael Cutler, and her father said he'd kill them both if she didn't break off with that
lousy nogoodnik whose father had dented his Lincoln. Well, they eloped and of course the family got over it. Once the grandchild came, it was water under the bridge. Will's play didn't end so happy, which was a mistake, if you ask me. I told him, ‘People don't want the children dying; it's gloomy.' At first he was offended, but later he said I had a point. So there you have it; we fell in love.”
“And your father didn't mind?”
“He did. He said, ‘The man's a fine man, a genius even, but you can't like a nice Jewish boy, the rebbe's son, he's crazy for you? Take him; leave this playwright alone.' So I tried to take his advice. Went out with Leon a few times. It didn't take. But Will heard and so he wrote the nasty sonnets and the concoctions to the young man.”
“And then?”
“We got back together. Poppa said, ‘Okay, if it's what you want. Maybe we can get him to convert.' Will, you see, claimed he had some Jewish blood on his mother's side, way back. It might have been made up, who knows? Making things up was his profession. But it played well with Poppa. ‘A little Jewish blood goes a long way,' he liked to say.”
“Hmm,” said Hal. “I've heard stories that Shakespeare had Jewish blood—but then again, there are stories that everyone has Jewish blood.”
“That's true,” admitted Jessie.
“Though it would help my theory about his putting himself into the Shylock character,” noted Hal.
“But Shylock was very Jewish, not just a little,” objected Jessie.
“So then what?” prompted Hal, feeling that they weren't getting anywhere discussing precisely how Jewish Shakespeare might have been.
“And so it went on for a while. We had a good time: I'm happy, he's happy. That's when he wrote the other sonnets, the ones you don't know about. He gave them to me for my birthday. I kept
them under the floorboard of my room in a special box. A hundred of them, at least.”
“Hmmm,” said Hal, “a stash of lost Shakespeare sonnets … . Very interesting.” He jotted something in his notebook, and they were both silent for a moment.
“And then?” asked Hal, finally breaking the silence.
“And then, I get the letter from the Stratford woman. Said how she was his wife, married him years ago, three children, one died. Called me a ‘Hebrew harridan'—that was the phrase. I remember because it had a ring to it.”
“You felt lied to, betrayed?”
“Yes,” murmured Jessie, seeming for a moment to drift off.
“And to think of Saul Millman kissing that girl,” she remarked, out of the blue.
“What?” said Hal. “Saul who?”
“No, no,” said Jessie, shaking herself, “it's Will I'm talking about. He'd been married to that woman and never told me. Hathaway, her name was—the English had names like that. They sound made up, but they're real. Her letter came as a shock, as you can imagine.”
“And what then?”
“I broke off, what do you think—I'm going to be with a married man? A gentile was bad enough, but married with kids?” Jessie had grown agitated. “What do you take me for?”
“No, no,” said Hal, trying to calm her. “I understand.”
“That's when he wrote the play smearing Poppa and me. I know it was because he was hurt and wanted to get back—but still, it was a low blow. I never spoke to him again.”
“He tried to get back together?”
“He tried. He had Kit Marlowe come by with some sort of
fa-chochta
story: it wasn't us, just a coincidence, happens all the time, like his play,
The Jew of Malta
.” She paused here to explain: “That was a play Kit wrote about a nasty Jew and his daughter—he told
Poppa when they first met that it wasn't so much against Jews as we might think and that besides, he wrote it before he met us. We gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
Hal nodded, obviously familiar with
The Jew of Malta.
“Anyway,” continued Jessie, “Kit said that Will was just stealing from his play: ‘Just because he never went to Cambridge, he thinks he has to write everybody else's plays better,' Kit said. ‘Don't take it so personal; it's not about you. I'm the one should be insulted.' But he couldn't convince me. I knew what it was about. It was smearing Poppa and me out of spite.”
“And that was the end?”
“Oh, I heard through the grapevine how he felt bad and added that speech for the Jew, which they said was a great thing for the time. It was a good speech, I grant you, but it didn't cancel the rest.”
“So you kept track of him? You watched his career?”
“I kept abreast. We went to London again a few times for Poppa's business, and I made a point to slip away to see the plays. I knew what he was saying in them. The one in Denmark with the Jewish characters—that was spite again. My cousin Golda's husband was Guildenstern, and Poppa's partner was Rosencrantz. In the play, they betrayed the hero, didn't they, and he had them killed? Just another way of getting back. Guildenstern was a very nice man; traded in fine fabrics. We used to visit sometimes on Sunday afternoon … .”
“To get back,” said Hal.
“Oh, yes, as I said—eventually he softened. Had enough with the spite. Wanted to make peace. In the one with the black man: He shows how you can get carried away and how being an outsider makes for problems.”
“
Othello.
”
“And the plays he wrote at the end were his way of saying: ‘I'm sorry, I wish I'd done different.'”
“The late romances: plots of contrition and reconciliation.”
“The girl on the island, that was his picture of me from another angle. Poppa was the magician and Will was the wild animal that tried to take advantage. And the other one, with the jealous king who kills his wife and then has her come back to life—that was saying he was sorry for being jealous and wishing there was a second chance.”
“
The Tempest
and
The Winter's Tale
.” Hal nodded.
“He wrote me kind letters then. He was, when all was said and done, a decent man. It just wasn't meant to be between us. Who knows, but maybe I served him better by having broken off. He could make with me whatever he wanted.”
Hal nodded. “You were his Dark Lady, his muse: Jessica, betrayer of her father; Miranda, loyal to her father.”
“Yes—but always underneath it was the Jewish girl from Venice.” Jessie wiped her eyes with the corner of her napkin. She looked across at Hal and then down at his plate. “What's the matter,” she said, pointing to his sandwich, “you don't like your Reuben?”
I
t gradually
DAWNED ON CARLA THAT THE BAT MITZVAH WAS meant to exist in two kinds of time: real time, which was fleeting and unpredictable, and recorded time, which was fixed and eternal. The whole point in hiring a photographer and a videographer was to embalm the thing in the process of its taking place—a strange, even morbid paradox that she tried not to dwell upon too closely.
She had originally thought of asking an orderly at Mark's hospital, known to be good with a digital camera, to take the photographs, and have some of the cousins pass around the family's camcorder for the video. But that idea had been nixed by her friend Jill.
“You can't have just anyone do the photography and video,” said Jill. “You're going to have this forever. Stephanie will want to show it to her children and grandchildren.” (The words
forever, children,
and
grandchildren
seemed to crop up again and again in the planning of the bat mitzvah).
When it was put that way, Carla felt obliged to consider the professional options available.
For the photographer, two candidates appeared to dominate the field. One was a middle-aged man who had been doing Cherry
Hill bar mitzvahs for a hundred years and who took photos in the conventional mode (Grandma crying with pride while hugging embarrassed bat mitzvah girl; bar mitzvah boy sloppily cutting cake under mother's distressed eye; friends of bar mitzvah boy, grinning malevolently, holding him aloft in a chair, etc., etc.). This photographer's work was predictable, but predictable had its merits. Besides, he was known to be a genius with an airbrush. A couple of women at the JCC, no beauties, had praised him for making them look stunning.
The other candidate had a smaller but more vocal following, including the support of Jill Rosenberg, known to favor the cutting edge. This photographer was a young girl just out of Bennington College, a small and agile creature who could slip into nooks and crannies without being seen. Her photos were less polished than those of the veteran photographer, but they had the virtue of originality and candor. According to her supporters, she was adept at capturing moments that “summed up the essence of the event.” Typical was the photograph in Jill's album that showed her, arm lifted in admonishing gesture, mouth open, as an implacable Josh sat slumped in a chair. “I look at that photograph,” said Jill, “and everything comes back.” Carla had perused Jill's album (which included a shot of herself and Mark staring straight at the camera as if hit by a stun gun, a piece of bar mitzvah cake still clinging to the side of Mark's mouth), agreed that the young photographer was enormously gifted (her work resembling that of the famed, if also famously troubled, Diane Arbus), and quickly decided to go with the boring, middle-aged photographer.
With the videographer the choice had been simpler. In this area, there was only one name that could be considered—everyone said so: the Steven Spielberg of bar mitzvah video, Cass Sunshine. Sunshine, originally Charlie Sunberg, had graduated from Cherry Hill East High School fifteen years ago and enrolled in the USC film program in the hope of cracking the Hollywood nut. Finding that nut harder to crack than expected, he returned home with the
more modest ambition of cracking the Cherry Hill nut. Here he was successful with a vengeance. He had, as the saying goes, turned bar mitzvah videography on its head.
To begin with, in order to make the service in the synagogue interesting, he had hit on a brilliant technique: the reaction shot.
“The reaction shot,” he explained to his clients, who liked being on the inside of the cinematic process, “is the key to pulling you through the service. Usually, they show you the kid up there droning away:
Baruch ata Adonoi
, blah, blah, blah. What a drag!” (It was understood that Cass was woefully detached from his Jewish roots and had no interest in the bar mitzvah as such, but this was vaguely seen to be a mark in his favor. It demonstrated his devotion to “pure cinema.”) He continued, “You have to liven it up, show there's somebody out there—maybe listening, maybe not—who cares? You need visuals, not just the kid—
snore
.”
Cass had brought along a shopping bag full of tapes to demonstrate, and Carla realized how wise she had been to schedule the visit for the afternoon, when Mark was at the office. Her husband might have lacked patience with the Steven Spielberg of bar mitzvah video, whose artistic tendencies, it was said, needed to be indulged if he was to do right by an affair.
Eager to show Carla the livening effects of the reaction shot, Cass pulled out a tape and cued to an appropriate spot. A bar mitzvah boy was shown droning for a second or two, then the camera panned to the congregation, revealing a series of interesting vignettes—a mother fiercely chastising an unruly child; an uncle asleep, mouth open, yarmulke askew; a line of gentile faces, glazed with incomprehension, trying not to register any response for fear it might be the wrong one.
“You get the idea,” Cass drawled, popping the tape out of the VCR. “We show you what's really going on. It lightens the mood, gives you some visual interest, not just the kid with his
Baruch ata Adonai
.”
Carla had wanted to ask whether Cass had to get permissions
from the congregants so indecorously represented, but he had already moved on to a more crucial part of the video: the party following the service—which is to say, the meat of the event. He now handed Carla a card that resembled a menu in one of those restaurants where sandwiches are named for famous people or places. In this case, the listings were of great movies in the cinematic tradition that could serve as stylistic models in filming the bat mitzvah.
The Godfather:
A festive but magisterial record of your event. Maintains a sense of family dignity and holds to old-fashioned notions of decorum and prescribed liveliness.
 
 
The Fiddler on the Roof:
A boisterous rendering. Makes much of the Jewish elements of your event, focusing on tradition and on the charm of the elderly and the very young. Note: A
Fiddler
video often works best with a klezmer band.
 
 
The Annie Hall:
A whimsical approach that chooses one character, say Uncle Phil, who has a big mouth or tells a lot of jokes, and weaves his comments throughout. Adds continuity and humor to the record of the event.
 
 
The Nashville:
A stylish montage effect. Lots of cross-cutting between, say, Grandma dancing the hora and Aunt Jennie flirting with the bartender. Makes for interest and originality.
Cass had hit on the idea of cinematic models when he returned to Cherry Hill after his hiatus on the West Coast and toured some
of the new housing developments that had sprung up in his absence. It was the era of semicustom homes that were being marketed according to celebrated edifices or styles in the architectural tradition: the Sienna, the Fontainebleau, the Blenheim, etc. He realized that he might do the same semicustom marketing with the great cinematic tradition.
Cass showed Carla snippets of the sample tapes for each of the stylistic options, taking time to explain the techniques involved. After viewing the tapes, her conclusion was that the
Godfather
style was most in keeping with their family's sensibility.
“
Godfather
's classy,” pronounced Cass approvingly. “Go for it.”
“But we are having a klezmer band,” Carla noted, glancing at the menu that associated klezmer with the
Fiddler on the Roof
option.
“No problem,” said Cass. “We can customize and do a
Godfather
with
Fiddler
overtones.”
Carla said she'd consider this suggestion—along with the price tag (which approached that of a modest independent feature film)—and get back to him.

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