Sweet Like Sugar (16 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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I asked how his holiday was. I knew it was his first Rosh Hashanah as a widower. But he seemed less maudlin than I'd seen him in weeks. He told me he had walked to shul each day. I gave him a scolding look, to remind him that such exertion was not good for him, but I didn't say a word.
And that was it. His big holiday: walking to synagogue a couple of times and a few slices of store-bought apple cake.
He seemed happy. Perhaps he didn't expect anything more elaborate.
“And you?” he asked tentatively.
“I went to services with my family,” I said. He seemed relieved—could he even imagine a Jew
not
going to services on Rosh Hashanah?
“At Congregation Beth Shalom,” I continued. Did a Conservative synagogue count?
“In Rockville. Linda Goldfarb's congregation. Rabbi Adler,” he said, as if reciting information off an index card. “He sends us many customers.”
I didn't detect any disapproval in his voice at all. Maybe he was more open-minded than I thought. Or maybe, I thought, religion is religion but business is business.
“And how was his service?” the rabbi asked.
Without going into detail, I said simply: “Boring.”
“How can such a service be boring?”
“It just was. It always is.”
“But how? We look back on our deeds from the past year, we ask the Lord,
baruch hashem
, to inscribe us in the book of life for another year. It is a time to think deeply, to pray that we are worthy of another year on this earth.”
I wondered what Sophie did that made her unworthy of another year. But I didn't dare say that aloud. I wondered if the rabbi prayed for another year alone on this earth, or if he secretly wished to join his wife before the next High Holiday season. But I didn't dare say that, either.
“I guess I'm just not a synagogue person,” I said, a bit sheepishly.
“You don't have to go to synagogue to be a good Jew,” he said.
I looked at him quizzically. This wasn't what I was expecting to hear from a rabbi. An Orthodox rabbi.
“Benji, this is a new year. It is a chance to start over, to give your faith another chance. You don't want to light candles. You do not want to go to synagogue. Fine, this I understand. But I also know that you are a kind person, a good son, a young man with strong morals, a true mensch who does good deeds without being asked in advance or demanding anything in return. You do not know it, but already you are on the path of righteousness. You are already, in many ways, a good Jew.”
“I don't feel like a very good Jew.” This was true. I didn't keep kosher, go to synagogue regularly, donate money to B'nai Brith—I didn't do any of the things I was raised to believe were the most important things for a Jew to do.
“Then your journey is to find out how to connect your Judaism with your deeds,” he said. “This means finding God in everything you already do, and doing everything with God in your heart. Once you have done this, then you will feel differently about synagogue, keeping kosher, lighting candles for Shabbat.”
I had never heard the rabbi speak with such openness. I wished he had led our Rosh Hashanah services instead of Rabbi Adler.
I told him I'd think about what he said—and I meant it. After all, even if I wasn't sure the rabbi was the person to help me find my way as I tried to figure out how being Jewish fit into my life, at least he understood the journey I was on.
Then I said I had to get going.
“Michelle is coming back from Philadelphia tonight and I want to hear how her holiday went.”
“Who is Michelle?”
“My roommate.”
“You never told me you had a roommate,” he said.
Gently, but with a matter-of-fact tone, I replied: “You never asked.”
 
Apparently, the rabbi took this remark to heart, because the next evening when I stopped by, he invited me in for another slice of apple cake and this time, for the first time, he asked
me
a lot of questions.
He started with my family. I told him about my parents, and my sister, and growing up in Rockville. Public school, Hebrew school, having Mrs. Goldfarb as a teacher. (He found this last item particularly interesting: “Ah, so this explains your inexplicable bond!”)
He asked about my work. I told him about my previous jobs, and opening my own office. I told him about a few of my clients: the gardening newsletter, the rock club posters. I didn't mention Paradise.
Then we got to the subject I think he most wanted to discuss all along: Michelle.
“You are not married, but you are living together?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
“You said she is Jewish?”
I had mentioned her going home for Rosh Hashanah.
“Yes.”
“Benji, I am glad she is Jewish, but you know this is still not right. Living together without being married. This is very serious. You don't keep kosher or observe Shabbat? You are the only one who can make this decision. But living with a woman who is not your wife is completely different—here you are not only breaking rules, but you are encouraging someone else to break the rules. And you are making light of a deeply sacred human bond.”
“It's not like that,” I said. “We're just roommates.”
“I do not understand.”
“Separate bedrooms. We just share an apartment.”
“A man and a woman do not just share an apartment,” he said. “With such intimacy, there is always temptation to do the wrong thing.”
“Believe me, there's no temptation,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I could have simply come out and told him I was gay. But I didn't. I don't know why I hesitated. I wasn't ashamed of being gay. I wasn't deferring to my parents' sensitivities, the way I did at synagogue. But I did look up to the rabbi, as someone whose opinion mattered, someone whose feelings needed to be considered. This might be too much for him to handle, I told myself, and anyway, it wasn't necessary for him to know everything.
“Michelle isn't my type,” I said, figuring that would suffice.
“And how do you know she is not interested in you?” he asked.
“Oh, we've been down that road before, in college. It, um, didn't work out.”
He looked at me, confused. Did he know what road I was talking about? Did I need to spell it all out: the awkward kiss, the hurt feelings, the whole it's-not-you-it's-me speech? I decided to leave it at that.
“There are many things I do not understand about young people today,” said the rabbi.
“Trust me, it works,” I said. I considered making a reference to
Will & Grace,
but quickly realized it would go right over his head.
We continued to talk, and the rabbi kept the focus on me. We talked about the uncomfortable family dinner I'd endured on Rosh Hashanah after services. We discussed my relationship with Rachel and Richard. We discussed—very gingerly—the war in Iraq, the upcoming presidential primary season, and my connection to Israel. He kept the questions coming and I kept providing answers.
But some things I did not tell him. I didn't tell him that his apple cake had gotten stale. I didn't tell him that I was pretty sure I didn't believe in God. And I certainly didn't tell him that I had a date the next night—just days before Yom Kippur—with a tattooed skinhead named Frankie, a non-Jewish guy who was the half-naked model for my latest ad promoting Paradise, a venue where homosexuals gathered to drink excessively and pick one another up.
Some things, I reasoned, a rabbi just didn't need to know.
CHAPTER 7
B
usiness picked up dramatically in late September, as the little website I started for the rabbi paid off. I sent it out as a sample of my work to land a new client, who offered me a job designing graphics for a start-up website where local bands would sell digital downloads of their music. Along with the perk of giving me a lot of new music to listen to, the gig paid well, and seemed likely to help me land other online jobs and expand my business.
Not that I really had time to do it. My plate was already pretty full and the website's deadlines were brutally short—it was set to launch before Thanksgiving. There were more than twenty bands involved and each one had had a page that required its own distinctive graphic design; it was a logistical nightmare. I figured I'd have to work nights and weekends for a couple of months to get it all done on time.
I didn't give up my other clients: the gardening group, the rock club, Paradise. By this point, most of this work had its own momentum and offered me regular paychecks.
I didn't stop visiting the rabbi—although I usually went back to the office after I dropped off his mail. He needed me: He wanted to build a sukkah, as he'd done every year in his backyard for Sukkot. I knew he couldn't do it alone, but I also knew he'd never ask for help. So I simply helped, unasked, for a few minutes every evening, screwing together the old metal frame, stringing fruit to hang inside, or laying fronds across the open roof. When the holiday arrived and we'd finished, I'd sit in the sukkah with him and share a snack from the bakery—at his insistence.
I didn't stop dating Frankie. The fact that I was working long hours didn't interfere with our plans, since he was a night owl who usually didn't even think about going out before ten. And going out with him was a great way to blow off steam. We didn't have long conversations at romantic restaurants; we were more likely to down several drinks and go dancing at noisy clubs until two in the morning, and then head back to his place and stay up for another hour or two, even on weeknights. Often, at the end of a long day, that's just what I needed. I certainly wasn't going to cut a hot man out of my schedule.
Something had to give. And that something, most of the time, was sleep.
 
By the end of October, I was exhausted. I'd catch myself staring into space at the office, half-awake. One more month, I'd tell myself. One more month.
“Man, you always poop out just when things are getting going,” Frankie admonished me the fourth or fifth time I suggested leaving a club before he was ready. “It's like I'm dating an old man.”
“You're never around anymore,” Michelle would whine when I'd come home late. She was concerned. Or maybe she was just lonely. Either way, Dan started spending more time at our place on weekends, since they pretty much had the place to themselves.
“You're going to make yourself sick,” my mother warned several times over the phone, claiming she could hear the exhaustion in my voice. I told her that I'd be able to take a breath around Thanksgiving. But she didn't like that answer: “You need to take it easy,” she'd say, “before you give yourself an ulcer.” Then she'd ask me over for Shabbat dinner, as if that was the most relaxing, fun thing I could possibly imagine doing. Once or twice, I said yes.
I knew things were serious when my sister called to invite me to visit her in Seattle for Thanksgiving. She had undoubtedly been prompted by my mother; Rachel and I preferred to communicate by e-mail, which made the time difference less annoying, so phone calls were usually saved for birthdays and the occasional “big news.” There was no big news to report this time. “You can stay in the guest room and use my car,” she said. “You've never been out here, you know, and Seattle has a pretty good gay scene from what I hear.” She had never invited me to visit, which is why I sensed my mother's intervention. Still, it was tempting, despite the fact that I didn't really want my sister giving me listings of gay bars with directions printed up from Mapquest, and then asking me for the details in the morning over coffee. But who the hell wants to go to Seattle in November, when it's cold and dark and rainy? Thanks, but no thanks.
Unfortunately, I knew they were right. I was working too hard. I needed a break before I wore myself out.
 
The rabbi had a photo album open on his coffee table when I came to visit one evening.
He invited me to sit and look at some pictures with him. I politely demurred, even though I was interested. “I'm sorry, I really can't tonight,” I said, standing in the foyer, my voice hoarse from lack of sleep. “I've got to get back to the office.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You're working too hard,” the rabbi told me. “Every night this week you've gone right back to the office after you bring the mail. And you're not sleeping enough. I can tell. This isn't right.”
“What else can I do?” I asked him, covering a yawn with my hand. “It's my business.”
“Benji, this is very funny coming from you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed. “Because you are the one who convinced me to take time away from my business. You are the one who convinced me that there were things that were more important than work. And you were right.”
He took a seat on his couch, eating salted almonds from the candy dish. His brow was unfurrowed, his shoulders relaxed, his eyes bright. He was positively peaceful, pure contentment wrapped in a gray cardigan.
“If I had not taken this time away from work, who knows where I'd be today,” he said. “Probably back in that hospital. But thanks to you, I have been resting, thinking about other things besides work. And I feel better than I've felt in months.”
In the beginning, it had been hard for him to distance himself from the store, but after the High Holidays, his attitude changed and he relaxed into his new routine. He'd recently begun talking about going back to work one or two days a week, but without any sense of urgency—maybe November, maybe December. He was a changed man.
“You taught me this lesson,” he said. “And now I will try to teach you your own lesson in return. You need to take some time off from work.”
“I guess you're right,” I conceded. “I'll think of a place to go once work quiets down.”
The rabbi took off his glasses, thinking for a moment.
“Wait one minute,” he said, getting up and walking into the kitchen. I heard him open a drawer, fumbling around for a few seconds. Then he came back to the living room with his fist closed. He walked over to where I stood and opened his fist.
He dangled a keychain in front of me.
“What are these?” I asked, reaching out to take the keys.
“Keys to the condo in Miami Beach,” he said.
I looked down at the keys in my open palm.
“I don't know,” I said.
“Wait, I'll show you a picture,” he said, fetching the photo album from the table. Standing with me by the front door, he flipped a few pages until he reached a pair of snapshots: one of Sophie standing on a balcony and one of the rabbi and Sophie together at a dining room table—Sophie looking at the camera, the rabbi looking at Sophie. In the first picture, clearly taken years earlier, Sophie stood tall, eyes bright behind her glasses, a broad smile spreading wrinkles across her cheeks, her short hair dyed that rust color that hair salons save for women of a certain age. In the other picture, her illness was already visible: She was thinner, paler, pink rouge doing little to disguise her pallor. Her hair was incongruously dark, brunette waves sweeping across her forehead; after noticing that it was identical to the hairstyle she had in the Florida photo on the rabbi's mantel, I surmised it must have been a wig, perhaps to cover the effects of her medical treatments. Her smile, whether genuine or simply a pose, was undiminished.
I wondered: Who took that photo in the dining room? And then I wondered: Who picked that wallpaper?
“I can't use your condo,” I said.
“Why can't you?” he asked, closing the album.
I couldn't tell him my reasons: If I went to Florida for a vacation, I didn't want to be stuck in some old man's musty apartment. And it wasn't just his apartment—it was Sophie's, too. I didn't want to get more deeply involved in his grief by visiting a place so emotionally charged that he couldn't even visit it himself. I didn't believe in ghosts, but if ghosts existed, I was sure Sophie would be waiting for me in Florida.
But before I could answer, he continued: “It's a lovely place, Benji. I cannot go, but somebody should use it. And it's the least I can do, after all you've done for me. So go.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but I can't.”
He wasn't about to take no for an answer.
“Benji, when is your birthday?”
“December second,” I said. “I'll be twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven,” he said to the ceiling, incredulous. “I'm old enough to be his grandfather.”
I didn't ask him exactly how old he was, but I figured his math was pretty much correct.
“December second? Then the timing is perfect,” he said, looking back at me. “Let this be my early birthday present to you.”
Handing him back his key, I thanked him and told him I'd consider it. He nodded as if to say he already knew what the answer would be.
 
I hadn't been to Florida since eighth-grade spring break. That was the last time I saw my grandmother.
Grandma Gertie had been too sick to come to Passover that year, so the next week, my mom and dad dragged me down to her condo in Delray Beach, where she'd lived alone since Grandpa Jack died.
Aside from the metal entry gates topped with security lights and cameras, Grandma's retirement complex looked like a cheap motel: Six or seven rows of one-story attached condominiums radiated off the semicircular asphalt parking lot, strips of tan stucco separated by a cracked sidewalk and two thin ribbons of grass. The parking spaces were filled with Oldsmobiles and Lincolns; senior citizens still bought big sedans, American made. On the far side of the complex stood the clubhouse—where residents played bridge and bingo, or napped on the sofa next to a pair of unused exercise bikes—and the pool, surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence.
It wasn't beautiful. But the weather was warm, the condo was easy to maintain, and my grandmother had befriended a few other women there. She didn't complain. Not about the noisy air-conditioning, or the neighbor's cat who was constantly digging up the flowers by her front door, or the cancer that had already taken both her breasts and showed few signs of giving up, radiation treatments notwithstanding.
Rachel, who was graduating high school the next month, was relieved of her family obligations, allowing her to spend spring break in Ocean City with her friends. So I slept alone on the foldout couch in Grandma's living room, awakened every morning at five thirty, when my grandmother would get up to read the paper. My parents, in the guest room, could sleep later—sometimes until nearly seven—but I was up at dawn with Grandma. Not because I wanted to wake up, but because I had to fold up my bed so she could read the paper on the couch.
This was not the image that most people conjured when they heard the phrase “spring break.” But there I was: stiff-necked and sleepy, pouring prune juice for a sick old lady in an apartment that smelled of burnt coffee and farts and Glade PlugIns. Let the good times roll.
I was the youngest person at the Royal Floridian Senior Village, by several decades, except for a guy I saw by the pool one afternoon. He was a few years older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Dirty blond hair, unkempt and shaggy, hung over his eyes. His skin was fair but sun-freckled. His feet, his hands, his Adam's apple, his baggy black swim trunks were all too big for his skinny frame. He looked about as excited to be there as I was.
We didn't introduce ourselves. He was with a man I assumed was his grandfather. I was across the pool with my father; my mother had taken my grandmother to the doctor. But he did nod in my direction, an acknowledgment of shared frustration, of both of us being somewhere we didn't want to be, somewhere boring and hopelessly uncool. I nodded back, lips pursed. I know, I know.
A couple days later, my parents had mercy on me and took me to the beach. Being at the beach with Mom and Dad wasn't exactly a thrill, but at least I had a few hours away from Little Old Lady Land. I spent most of the day in the ocean, neck-deep in the water, letting the waves carry me.
It wasn't until late afternoon, when we loaded up the rental car to head back to Grandma's, that I heard the news on the radio: Kurt Cobain was dead.
“Who's that, Benji? Someone you listen to?” my mother asked, turning to face me in the backseat. I shushed her and told her to turn up the radio.

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