Sweet Like Sugar (10 page)

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Authors: Wayne Hoffman

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #General, #Jewish Men, #Male Friendship, #Rabbis, #Jewish, #Religion, #Jewish Gay Men, #Judaism

BOOK: Sweet Like Sugar
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“Yeah, your confession could take all day.”
“Forgive me, Father, it's been about fifteen years since my last confession, and a
lot
has happened.”
“It's not like that with the rabbi,” I said. “It's not like he's there on official rabbi business.”
“Still,” he said. “If that's the only man in your life right now, you definitely need to get out more.”
Fortunately, the fact that Phil and I were together drew men to us like magic. It's got to be some kind of hard-wired biological phenomenon: Guys who would ordinarily ignore you in a bar suddenly find you attractive when they see that someone else is talking to you. Maybe it's the idea that you're already with someone, unattainable, that makes the pursuit suddenly seem like a thrilling challenge—or, for the masochists, a hopeless misadventure. Or maybe it's men's competitive nature, trying to beat out all other suitors once they realize there are others vying for the same person. Whatever the reason, it was working. For both of us.
Phil walked over to the bar, where he was quickly grabbed by an admirer, and as soon as I was alone, a guy moved in on me, too. Christopher was his name. A staffer for a midwestern congressman. Around thirty. Great arms, terrific laugh, breath that smelled like cinnamon. And he was a redhead.
For a change.
CHAPTER 5
O
nce I'd seen the rabbi collapse in the parking lot, I knew he wasn't in any condition to be walking up or down that hill anymore. The next Monday, I stopped by the store to make sure he was all right and offered to drive him to a doctor.
“No doctors,” he barked. “I'm fine.”
“You collapsed in the parking lot.”
“It was the heat,” he said through gritted teeth. “I'm fine.”
He folded his arms. I wasn't going to win this one.
“Well, you certainly shouldn't be walking up and down these hills,” I said. “Starting tomorrow, I'll come pick you up before work and take you to the store.”
He mulled this for a few seconds, searching for a reason to object, but apparently not finding any. He accepted this arrangement with a single nod and shooed me out the door.
And so it began, me pulling into his driveway each morning and depositing him at his house each evening. Sometimes I waited for him after work while he did his shopping—at the kosher butcher, the kosher bakery, the supermarket—and then put his bags in my trunk.
Our interactions were frequent, but typically brief. Occasionally, though, he would touch on a subject in the car that would result in a longer conversation inside his house.
“You want to see where I build the sukkah every year? Come, I'll show you.”
“I'll never finish that whole challah myself. Come in, I'll wrap up half for you.”
“The sink in the kitchen is dripping again. You could maybe come inside and take a look?”
We were becoming friends. Or something. Something more than just a carpool.
Mrs. Goldfarb didn't understand. “I don't know what you see in that crotchety old man,” she said.
My mother didn't understand. “Next thing you know you'll be going to shul with him,” she said.
Michelle didn't understand. “When's the wedding?” she teased.
I didn't fully understand what we saw in each other, either. But we saw each other.
 
After that first ride, I kept the stereo off during our brief car trips. I couldn't imagine the rabbi getting down with M.I.A. or the new Rufus Wainwright.
Once, as I drove him up the hill after work, I asked him if he ever listened to music.
“Not anymore,” he said. “Music is for young people.”
“Then what about when you were young?”
He stopped and pondered the question for a moment, as if it had been years since he'd even thought about music.
“Many years ago, I did,” he said. “Sophie used to play records in the store—we had a hi-fi behind the counter.”
“What kinds of things would she play?”
“Whatever records we were selling: cantorial recordings, Hanukkah music, sometimes old Yiddish songs.”
I must have turned my nose up at this dull and predictable list, because the rabbi quickly continued: “Sometimes she played the Barry Sisters,” he said. “Sophie loved them.”
“Never heard of them, sorry,” I said.
“They were very famous,” he said defensively. “They sang Yiddish jazz.”
I wasn't impressed. “Did you listen to any
popular
music?”
“The Barry Sisters
were
popular.”
“That's not what I mean.”
“You mean did I listen to any secular music?”
“Yeah, I guess. Like stuff that was on the radio.” I was trying to imagine him doing the Twist, snapping along to Motown, arguing about which Beatle was his favorite—or whatever people did in the sixties.
“How about Sammy Davis Jr.?” he asked.
I looked at him to see if he was kidding.
“Sammy Davis Jr.?” I asked. “You?”
“Why so surprised?” he asked with a satisfied smile. “Sammy Davis Jr. was very popular when Sophie and I got married. And also a Jew.”
“I just didn't think you'd have liked that kind of thing,” I said.
“Benji, I'm not made of stone,” he said. “I also used to drive around in a car, like you, with the radio on. ‘What Kind of Fool Am I' was a wonderful, wonderful song. Do you know it?”
I shook my head. He shook his, too. “So young,” he said.
He started to sing:
“What kind of man is this—an empty shell?”
I almost went off the road as the rabbi channeled the Candy Man.
He stopped when I started to giggle.
“Frank Sinatra did this song, too,” he said. “But he was no more Sammy Davis Jr. than I am.”
I was stunned. “What else did you listen to?”
“Well, I remember putting on an Allan Sherman record once,” he said.
“He was a comedian, right?”
The rabbi started to sing again:
“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah . . .”
“Right, right,” I said.
“Also a very popular record in the early sixties—and of course he was Jewish, too,” the rabbi said. “Sophie never thought he was funny, but I did.”
“And you used to play these in your store?” I asked. It seemed so out of character, since the store always felt so serious to me.
“No,” he said. “That wouldn't have been appropriate. We played them at home. In private. Just the two of us.”
I pulled into his driveway.
“Do you still have those old records?” I asked.
“I don't know—I haven't thought about them for ages. I don't even know if I still have the phonograph,” he said. “Maybe in the basement somewhere. Come inside and you can help me look.”
 
As we got to know each other, I got increasingly curious about the rabbi's life. Fiddling around on my computer one afternoon, I Googled some of the musicians he'd named. He was right: The Barry Sisters had been popular. And Sammy Davis's version of “What Kind of Fool Am I” was better than Sinatra's.
Then I Googled the rabbi's name.
Nothing. Like he never existed.
Not so unusual for someone his age, I figured; even my parents only popped up online a handful of times—a brief mention in a community paper when they won a raffle to benefit the National Zoo, a photo of my father speaking at a county council meeting about a new highway he opposed. So I wasn't surprised.
But then I Googled his bookstore, and again found nothing. That, I thought, was simply bad business.
“You don't have a web page?” I asked him that evening.
“I don't know what that is,” he said.
I explained it to him, but to the rabbi, I was speaking a foreign language.
“Benji, I don't know from computers,” he said.
“Don't you have one in the store?”
“Linda Goldfarb does whatever needs to be done with that,” he said. “I never understood it.”
“You really should have a website for the store,” I said, explaining that it might increase his business and raise his store's profile.
“Eh, I don't have the time to worry about such things,” he said.
I offered to make a page for him. “Nothing fancy,” I said. “No online sales, no e-mail or anything. Just a simple page with directions to the store, the address and phone number, and maybe a bit about the history of the store and what you sell.”
He mulled this over. “I can't afford to be starting up all these new things,” he said.
“I'll do it for free,” I offered. “Seriously, it won't take long, and it won't even cost you fifty bucks to register the URL.”
“The what?”
“Never mind.”
“Okay,” he said. “I trust you. I have no idea what you're talking about, but if you say it's a good thing, I trust you. Some things in this world, I suppose you know more about than I do.”
It didn't take more than a few days to set up. There were no bells and whistles, no drop-down menus, no animated menorahs. Just the basics about the store, presented—if I did say so myself—in tasteful fashion: blue and white background, a few photographs I'd taken of the store displays, a picture of the rabbi and Mrs. Goldfarb side-by-side looking almost like they liked each other. There was a map to the store, a list of their most popular items with thumbnail images, and a history of the business told in first person and signed by the rabbi. It was simple, but definitely polished and professional looking.
I pulled up the page on the bookstore's computer one day at lunch. Mrs. Goldfarb was impressed. The rabbi seemed pleased, although it was clear he still didn't quite understand who might ever see this information, or how they could find it on their own computers.
“Wait, I forgot the best part,” I said.
At the bottom of the page, a gold Jewish star stood alone without any text.
“This is a little hidden feature, just for those in the know,” I said. I clicked on the star and music started to play on the computer. The Barry Sisters. I'd downloaded a greatest hits collection.
“It's a very nice song,” Mrs. Goldfarb said. “But who will ever know it's there?”
The rabbi didn't answer. He just looked at me, smiled, and winked.
 
I burned a CD of the Barry Sisters after that, and every day in the car, I'd play a different song. Sometimes a particular tune became a catalyst for a story from the rabbi's early days in Maryland—a story he'd continue in my office or in his living room.
“You really want to hear about this ancient history?” he asked once and only once.
“I do,” I said. It was true. Besides, the rabbi's spirits lifted each time he recounted these stories. He'd never had anyone to tell them to.
The music, to be honest, wasn't quite my speed. A bit hokey, overly cheerful; a little went a long way. But I loved looking at the Barry Sisters online, seeing their period-perfect album covers and publicity shots where they appeared in matching dresses and matching hairstyles, beneath multicolored block lettering. As a designer, I couldn't get enough of the visuals, even if the songs themselves quickly wore thin.
I mentioned this to the rabbi one day, when he remembered a certain song from their LP
Shalom.
“I've seen that one online,” I said. “They're getting off a plane carrying huge bouquets of flowers.”
“Yes, we sold that one in the store,” he said. “I remember it. That wasn't just any plane, Benji, it was an El Al plane.”
“All I remember is what a wonderful image it was. So sixties.”
“You weren't alive in the sixties.”
“When I see pictures like that, I can almost imagine what it was like.”
Later that week, when the rabbi got in my car at the end of the day, he handed me a rolled-up promotional poster of the Barry Sisters. It was dusty, torn, and discolored from age.
“I found this in the back of the storage closet,” he said.
“You just happened to find it? After forty years?”
He shrugged.
I unrolled it across the steering wheel, careful not to rip it further. It was beautiful.
I thanked him.
“I don't need it anymore,” he said.
“I'll hang it in my office,” I said.
“Let's go home,” he said.
 
One Wednesday morning in mid-August, I pulled into the rabbi's driveway and found the front door still closed. I checked my watch; I wasn't running early. I waited for a few minutes.
Nothing.
This wasn't like the rabbi. He was usually waiting in the doorway. I tooted the horn, but got no response.
I got out of the car and walked up his front steps, pulled open the screen door, and knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again. Still no answer.
I rang the doorbell. This time I heard a voice inside, shouting from a distance: “Who's there?”
“It's me, Rabbi,” I answered, confused.
“Me who?” the voice replied, closer.
“Benji. Benji Steiner.”
The door opened a crack and I could see the rabbi scanning me from head to toe with squinty eyes. I pushed the door open wide and found the rabbi as I'd never seen him: in loose pajamas and a rumpled bathrobe.
“I'm here to drive you to work,” I said, walking past him into the foyer, letting the screen door swing shut. “Are you feeling all right?”

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