Never Too Late for Love (24 page)

"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."

"You Jews are all crazy," Pat said, laughing.
"My father was right."

But getting through the day was no laughing matter to
either of them. Heshy felt the tension as the day progressed. They stayed home
eschewing the pool, had a light lunch, took a nap, watched television for a
while.