Sweet Like Sugar (6 page)
Authors: Wayne Hoffman
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #General, #Jewish Men, #Male Friendship, #Rabbis, #Jewish, #Religion, #Jewish Gay Men, #Judaism
When we pulled into his driveway, I turned off the car and got out so I could walk him to his front door.
“Thank you so much, Benji,” he said over the noise of the rain as he fumbled for his key. “Why don't you come in for a moment?”
“I really shouldâ”
“Just for a few minutes,” he interrupted. “This storm won't last long. You might as well wait until it passes.”
I glanced up at the sky, then went inside.
Heavy off-white drapes were pulled over most of the windows and mustard-colored shag carpets lined the floors. The house was damp and suffocatingly warm, the air heavy with the scent of books and mildew. Bookshelves lined nearly every wall, in the living room on the right and the dining room on the left. Looking straight ahead up the carpeted steps, I could see more shelves in the upstairs hallway.
“Please, sit down, dry off for a moment,” said the rabbi, pointing to a lumpy wingback chair in the living room. “I'll go get you a glass of water.” He walked toward the kitchen, in the back of the house, behind the staircase.
I didn't want to get his chair wet, but even more, I wanted to snoop. So I remained standing, checking out his living room.
The furniture was old and well-worn: a three-seat sofa covered in golden brown velvet with a pair of needlepoint accent pillows, the wingback chair with its threadbare tweed upholstery, a glass oval coffee table with an empty cut-glass candy dish on top. I could tell that the rabbi always sat in the same spot, at one end of the sofa, within reach of the end table and the reading lamp's pull chain; the seat cushion had a permanent indentation in that spot. There was no mess in the roomâno stacks of old newspapers, no unopened junk mail, no dirty coffee mug left behindâbut there was also a sense that the room hadn't been cleaned properly in some time. Dusting, vacuuming, airing out the drapes. We could just as easily have been returning to the rabbi's summer house after a long season away, finding the place frozen in suspended animation exactly as he'd left it six months earlier. But he'd been gone only since the morning.
On the mantel over the fireplace, alongside an empty vase and a silver menorah, sat a couple of framed photos. One was an old black-and-white picture of a man and a woman, a professional eight-by-ten portrait in a tarnished metal frame that had small roses in the corners. The other was a more recent color snapshot, in a tacky orange ceramic frame that said “Greetings from Florida” and had a small green alligator in the bottom corner, opening his grinning mouthâsouvenir alligators always grinâat the elderly couple in the photograph.
I had the Florida picture in my hand when the rabbi came in with a glass of water. He had a can of mixed nuts in his other hand. He handed me the water and emptied the nuts into the candy dish.
“That's my wife, Sophie, may she rest in peace,” he said. “She passed away last fall. That's the last picture I have of the two of us together.”
I hadn't even recognized Rabbi Zuckerman. He looked at least a decade younger and he didn't have his short gray beard; he must have grown it after she died.
“I'm sorry,” I said, putting the picture back on the mantel. Sorry that his wife was dead, and sorry to be snooping in an old man's house.
“That's us, too,” he said, pointing to the black-and-white photo. “We had that taken on our tenth anniversary, right after we moved into this house. That was 1962.”
The man in the old photo certainly resembled the man in the newer photo, even if some forty-five years separated them. Both looked proud, confident, with a flash of vigor in their smiles. But the man standing before me, wet and small and scarcely more alive than his moribund furnishings, seemed another person entirely.
He picked up the candy dish and extended it in my direction. I demurred. He frowned and sat down in his usual spot by the reading lamp.
“Cancer,” he said with a sigh. “It was terribly fast.”
He was quiet, and I didn't know how to fill the space, so I tried to change the subject.
“What are all these books?” I asked.
He didn't answer, and a silence blossomed in the room. Had I spoiled his moment? Perhaps he'd been waiting to talk to someone, anyone, about his wife, and he finally saw his chance in me. It didn't look like he had many visitors. Maybe he'd been waiting for the opportunity to invite me in and talk about her. But maybe now he was thinking that I wasn't the one, that I heard a mention of death and quickly changed the subject, preferring the mundane to the profound, the silly to the important. Too young, too shallow, not a serious man. Have a cashew and thanks for the ride.
“I think I should go lie down,” he said, rising from the sofa. “The storm sounds like it's easing up. You should be okay now.”
I took my cue, walking toward the front door and picking up my umbrella from the floor.
“I'm sorry about your wife,” I said.
“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said, waving me off while he started up his stairs.
My parents had a family snapshot on their mantel, in a bright, plastic frame much like the one in Rabbi Zuckerman's house. It was a memento of our first vacation in Florida, a trip to Disney.
I met Mickey Mouse on that trip. He was surprisingly tall.
He towered over me, a white-gloved hand extended in my direction, his face permanently molded into an open-mouthed smile, black ears blocking out the sun. He scared me. I hid behind my mom. Mickey turned to my sister, Rachel. She was twelve and thought she was too cool for this kind of thing. Physically unable to stop smiling, Mickey waved his white-gloved hand at Rachel; she rolled her eyes and offered a single pathetic wave in return, muttering, “Yeah, hi,” as if she saw Mickey Mouse on the school bus every morning and couldn't wait to be rid of him.
But we were not rid of Mickey for long. He popped up around every corner at Walt Disney WorldâMickey or one of his friends, all of whom were unexpectedly large and scary, their friendly expressions notwithstanding.
“I want to ride Space Mountain,” I told my dad.
“We just ate lunch, Benjamin,” he said. “Maybe later.”
“I want to go now,” I insisted.
He turned to my sister. “Rachel, do you want to take your brother on the roller coaster?”
She did not. She didn't want to be there, with any relatives or cartoon characters or fabulous rides, at all.
“No way,” she said.
My father shrugged as if to say, “I tried.”
“Sid, you two go,” my mother told my father. “Rachel and I are going to look in the shops.”
Shopping. The one interest my mother and sister shared.
We were off, my dad and I, to Space Mountain. Just us guys, in silence. My mom and I argued a lot but we were never at a loss for words; it was different with my dad. We weren't uncomfortable together, but we didn't usually talk much, so once we were alone, he appeared as unsure as I was about what to say without my mother to keep the conversation going. We were quiet, me pulling him by the hand through the crowd.
It was a relief, this quiet. Rachel hadn't had anything pleasant to say for months; Mom said it was just part of being twelve and she'd grow out of it. Mostly she ignored Dad and me; she sniped at Mom constantly.
But Mom wasn't fighting back this week. She was sullen and atypically silent. This Florida trip had been planned around Grandpa Jack's unveiling. When he died the previous summer of a heart attack, Mom went to Florida alone, while Dad took care of Rachel and me; the news of his death was shocking enough and they didn't think we could handle the funeral. This year, my parents planned a week in Florida for the whole family right before school started: a few days with Grandma in her Delray Beach condo, during which time we had the ceremony unveiling Grandpa's tombstone at the Magen David Memorial Grounds, followed by a few days in Orlando visiting the Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center. It was an odd combinationâa cemetery and a theme parkâbut I wasn't bothered. I was at Disney for the first time, headed for my first roller coaster, and nothing else mattered.
“Do you miss Grandpa Jack?” my father asked me while we stood on line, under the sign that said “Sixty-minute Wait from This Point.”
I did. I missed the times he took me to the playground when he visited, and the corny jokes he saved up to tell me, and the orange Tic Tacs he always had stashed in his pants pocket. He never treated me like I was Rachel's little brother, the way my parents and teachers sometimes did; he treated me like I was my own person. But I didn't really want to talk about that with my dad. I thought I might cry, and he didn't like it when I cried.
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I guess.”
“You know, Grandma is still going to come visit us, and maybe we can come down here again to see her,” he said. “Go to the beach next time, or maybe Sea World.”
“Okay,” I said, inching forward toward the people in front of us.
“You were lucky to know Grandpa Jack,” he said. “You never knew your other grandfather, my father. But that's not entirely a bad thing. He was a real SOB. Not like Jack.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I'd heard stories, mostly from my mother.
“I never knew either of my grandfathers,” he continued. “My mom's parents stayed behind in Russia, and my dad's dad died before I was born.”
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled. “How much longer till it's our turn?”
My father shook his head for a second. “I don't know, Benjamin, it could be another hour. Do you want to come back later?”
“No, I'll wait.”
The rest of the time on line, my father didn't say much. I kept checking the new watch that Grandma Gertie gave meâa digital watch with a bright orange plastic strap that said “Florida” and had a green cartoon alligator on it. The wait didn't take a full hour.
When it was time to board the roller coaster, I got a seat at the front, sitting close to the bullet-shaped car's tapered nose. My father sat directly behind me.
“The front is pretty scary,” he said into my ear. “Are you sure you want to sit there?”
I nodded.
“Hold on tight,” he said. “I'm right behind you.” And we shot off into the dark.
The ride was fast but smooth, hurtling through blackness punctuated only by the occasional flashing colored light and the glowing white streaks painted on the sides of other cars, snaking up and down all around us. Screams echoed around the inside of the mountain as we climbed and plummeted, swerved and dipped. My father was right: The front seat was a scary place to be. I tried to turn around to see if he was scared, too, but he shouted, “Face the front, Benjamin, I'm right behind you.” I reached one hand behind my head, hoping he'd grab it, but he didn't. “Hold on to the bars,” he instructed. “It's safer.”
I gripped the metal bars on each side of the car so tightly that my fingers went numb. I knew the next fall could be coming any secondâno way to prepare, yet no way to pretend it wasn't coming. I tensed my body and held my breath, darkness all around me, wishing my new watch had a stopwatch so I could count the seconds until this ride ended and I could breathe again.
“That was awesome,” a kid behind me told his friend as we stepped out onto the platform. “Let's go on again.”
I looked at my father. He was a bit unsteady on his feet, looking pale, sweating. He looked like he could barf.
“I need to sit down for a minute,” he said to me, heading for a bench by the exit. “Don't go where I can't see you.”
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