Sweet Like Sugar (33 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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“Jeremiah Wright,” my father offered.
“A real bigot,” she continued. “And that's who's giving him spiritual guidance?”
“I've heard your rabbi say plenty of awful things,” I said.
My mother pursed her lips.
“It's not the same, Benji,” my father said.
“Take a few sound bites out of context and it's not so different,” I said.
The conversation then devolved into an argument over whose campaign had been nastier, whose strategy sounder. But in the end, everyone at the table agreed that whoever won the nomination would get their vote in November.
“We've got to get the Republicans out,” my father said. “That's the main thing here and we can all agree on that.”
Jamie looked at my mother and asked, “So you'll vote for Obama, if he wins the nomination?”
She nodded. “Jews don't vote Republican,” she said plainly—meaning non-Orthodox Jews.
“A few of them do,” Jamie said. “I mean, not me. But a few of them.”
“Maybe a few who are so rich that they don't care about anyone but themselves,” she said with disgust. Then she looked at Jamie and smiled: “But nobody I'd want at my seder.”
 
Politics didn't last long as the main topic of conversation. Everyone at the table had travel-related questions for Jamie and he didn't let them down. He recommended a hotel in Puerto Rico for the Frishmans' upcoming vacation, gave my cousin the name of a popular dance club in London—where he was planning to spend the summer—and suggested a way for my Uncle Larry to save a bundle on his business trips to Boston by flying into Providence and taking the commuter rail instead of flying direct to Logan. By the time we were done with the turkey, all the guests had taken a liking to Jamie.
But my parents were the only ones who really mattered. He won them over while we ate dessert.
My father asked him if he liked traveling for work. “It must not be much fun after a while,” my father said.
Jamie told him, “You're right, but whose job is always fun? What I love about my work is that there's always something for me to learn, always something new to see. You know, some people I work with never get past the airports and the hotels they stick us in. They just watch pay-per-view and use the hotel gym and wait until they can fly back as soon as they can. I'd rather get out and see where I am. Whether it's the Grand Canyon or the pyramids in Mexico, or finding a cool jazz club in San Francisco or a barbecue joint in Kansas City. There's always something to learn, if you're willing to go looking for it.”
My mother asked, “So, if you've traveled so much, what's the place you've liked the most?”
Jamie didn't hesitate. “Israel,” he said.
“Oh, us, too,” my mother said. “We took the kids there when Rachel was in college.”
“Benji told me,” Jamie said, provoking a pleased look from both my parents.
“So what did you like best about it?” my father asked.
Jamie had told me about dancing at a fantastic disco in Haifa, and getting stoned on the beach in Eilat, and cruising Independence Park in Tel Aviv—years after I'd stolen a glimpse from my hotel window. But those weren't the kind of stories that would impress my parents. I hoped he realized that.
He did.
“I've never felt so close to my Jewishness,” he said. “It's not just the ancient sites—the Western Wall or Masada or Rachel's tomb. It's the people. It's seeing people from all over the world, dressing differently and speaking different languages and eating different foods, and knowing that we're all connected.”
“Very true,” said my father, who still had a decidedly romantic view of the Jewish state—one that evoked images of flowers blooming in the desert while barefooted kibbutzniks danced the hora in a circle. Sure, he read news reports about armed settlers and racist politicians and Ethiopian immigrants living in poverty, economic problems and ethnic strife and ongoing military conflicts, but these never displaced the picture that had been fixed in his mind since the sixties.
Having already gotten my father in his corner, Jamie turned to my mother and added: “Plus, can we talk about the shopping in Tel Aviv? I got this Swiss watch for like twenty bucks on Sheinkin Street. I've seen the same one at White Flint for ten times that!”
“You're kidding!” my mother blurted out. “Let me see that watch.”
He had them both in the palm of his hand before we ever opened the door for Elijah.
As we were leaving, my father shook Jamie's hand and told him, “I hope you'll come back and visit again.” My mother kissed me on the cheek and whispered quickly in my ear: “I like him.”
Someone my mother would like. The highest praise.
Jamie knew that he'd made a good impression. On the drive home, he said, “Well, I've met your parents, I've met Phil, and I've met Michelle. I guess the only person left to meet is the rabbi.”
This wasn't the first time Jamie had expressed an interest in meeting the rabbi; he'd asked several times if he could join me for one of our “classes.” I thought it might be too much for the rabbi to handle: One sodomite might be excused, but two? How much could one old man take? But Jamie was persistent.
As I'd told him many times before, I said I'd think about it. Jamie wanted to meet the rabbi and I wanted them to meet; I just wasn't sure the rabbi was up to it. Irene always said I shouldn't underestimate him, but I'd overestimated him once before. I didn't want to push it.
I dropped Jamie off at his apartment and went home. My place was empty; Michelle had taken Dan to her parents' house in Philadelphia for Passover. It was late, but I'd promised to tell her how the big night had gone. So I sent her a short text message on her cell phone: “He's the one.”
 
Mrs. Goldfarb knocked on my office door and then walked in before I had a chance to get up from my desk. I hadn't seen her for a week; the bookstore had only reopened that morning after being closed for Passover.
“Benjamin,” she said with a tone more urgent than cheerful. “Come with me. We have to go to Holy Cross.”
Remembering what the rabbi had told me about her smoky car, I offered to drive. Sitting in my passenger seat, Mrs. Goldfarb cracked a window and, without asking, lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside. On the way to the hospital, she told me what had happened: Irene had called the store that morning. The rabbi had suffered another attack that morning after davening, probably another stroke. An ambulance had taken him to Holy Cross on a stretcher, unconscious, with Irene riding alongside him. Irene had asked Mrs. Goldfarb to give me the news.
The rabbi hadn't regained consciousness. When we arrived, he was breathing on his own, but his eyes were closed.
Irene hugged us both. Her eyes were red, but she was not crying. “He's not going to make it,” she said.
“What do the doctors say?” Mrs. Goldfarb asked.
“Another stroke,” said Irene. “Very bad.”
“Isn't there anything they can do?” I asked.
“He didn't want any heroics,” she replied. “It's time. He knew it. I know it.”
In the time he'd had Irene with him, the rabbi had gotten all his personal papers in order. Per his explicit wishes, the rabbi was never hooked up to machines. And although Irene sat and held his hand for hours by his bedside, he never moved, or spoke, or squeezed her hand back.
Mrs. Goldfarb and I had already left the two of them alone when the end came. Another stroke. Cardiac arrest. No heroics. Call the shul—they have a committee.
 
According to Jewish law, nobody needed to sit shiva for the rabbi. He didn't have any children and his wife and siblings were dead.
Irene sat shiva anyway. “Let them try and stop me,” she said. Even though she'd grown up Reform and raised her kids—at her husband's insistence—as Conservative, after living in North Beach for a few years among the Orthodox, she was used to
frum
people telling her how things should be done, so she had no problem telling them where they could stick their rules.
Every evening for a week, she had a small gathering at the rabbi's house. Mrs. Goldfarb led a short service. I came, with Jamie. (Irene insisted.) The owner of the bakery came. The rabbi's next-door neighbors, who were not Jewish, brought dinner for Irene so she wouldn't have to cook. A handful of people from B'nai Tikvah came—far fewer than had come a year earlier when the rabbi sat shiva for Sophie; these few came out of respect for their stalwart fellow congregant, but when they saw that a woman would be leading the mourners' service, they made their apologies and left.
When the week ended, I drove to the rabbi's house to pick up Irene and take her to the airport. The azaleas were in bloom in every front yard. The street had never looked lovelier.
Irene's suitcases were packed and waiting by the front door. The house was still, lifeless, vacuum cleaner tracks visible in the carpets. She motioned for me to come upstairs with her.
“The synagogue is going to pack up all of his things,” she said, two steps ahead of me.
“That's nice of them,” I said, genuinely surprised. I couldn't imagine Congregation Beth Shalom doing that.
“Nice,
shmice,
” she said. “It's the least they could do. He left them all his money.”
“Wonder what they'll do with it,” I said.
She reached the top step and turned to me. “They're going to buy a Torah in his memory.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Sounds about right.”
She shrugged back and waved dismissively.
“They can do whatever they want with the money,” she said. “But he left you something, too.”
We walked into the study. Irene flicked on the light and pointed to the top left bookshelf. A Post-it note hanging from the shelf read, in shaky block letters: “Benji, start here.” I walked up to the bookcase to get a closer look. That shelf contained what might be called Jewish 101 books: basic information about holidays, rituals, history, scripture. From there the shelves grew progressively more advanced.
“He worked on this for weeks,” she said as I ran my finger across the spines, reading title after title. “Rearranged all his books, just for you. So you could keep studying after he was gone.”
I stood in stunned silence.
Irene gave me a minute to take it all in before she reminded me that she was on a tight schedule.
“Once those synagogue people get here, they're going to take everything,” she said. “So you need to pick up some boxes and come back tonight with Jamie and take these books. He wanted you to have them.”
Without turning away from the books, I nodded.
“Now let's go, dear, or I'll miss my flight.”
We didn't talk much on the drive to the airport. It was only when we arrived at the terminal and I was helping Irene with her bags that I realized I might not see her again. I'd spent so much of the previous week thinking about the rabbi that I hadn't stopped to think that I'd be losing Irene, too. She had come into my life so unexpectedly, and suddenly—and just as suddenly, she was leaving.
As usual, though, Irene seemed to be able to read my mind.
She gave me a kiss on the cheek and touched my face with her hand, letting it linger for a few seconds.
“No good-bye,” she said. “I expect to see you for the White Party. And bring Jamie.”
 
I don't know if I believe that each of us has a
bashert
—someone we're supposed to spend our lives with. But I do believe that certain people are fated to meet each other, to teach each other something essential, or show each other something important. I can't believe it's all a coincidence.
Jamie and I live together now, in the apartment I used to share with Michelle. And the rabbi's books line the walls of our study—the room that used to be Michelle's bedroom.
She and Dan bought a little house in Rockville, not far from my parents. “It's really almost Potomac,” she told me with a knowing wink when they moved in. Sometimes, on weekends, Jamie and I go to visit Michelle and Dan—“the newlyweds,” as we will probably
always
call them. She's pregnant with twins and she's already talking about sending them to my old elementary school.
Jamie and I have expanded our family, too. We adopted a cat. He's black and white, and his name is Zisel. Appropriately enough, he naps on top of the bookcase in our study, gazing down on us as we read and discuss the rabbi's books. It'll take years for us to get through all of them, but we're in no rush.
The night that Jamie and I went to the rabbi's house to box up those books, I also grabbed a few little things to remember him by: the photo in the alligator frame from his mantel, the pillow that sat on his sofa, his old Allan Sherman records. And the two framed needlepoints that used to hang outside the upstairs bathroom: We sent the one with the flowers to Irene in Florida. The other one, with the apple tree, we hung over our bed.

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