The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (7 page)

   “
There’s no
first name. Just Weeks.”

   
He hadn’t seen
Charlie Weeks, a high school classmate since the night eight years
ago they spent together when Charlie had been passing through.
Charlie had promised to keep in touch, but didn’t.

   “
What’s the
message?”

   “
No message.
Just a telephone number. You’d better call him, don’t you think,
Father?”

   “
Yes, Margaret.
I will.”

   “
Charge it to
the rectory. What the heck.”

   “
I’ll take care
of it.”

   “
Shall I tell
the man you’re interested?”

   “
What
man?”

   “
The one who
wants to sell you that lovely blue car.”

   “
Sure, Margaret.
Why don’t you do that.”

    CHAPTER FIVE

   
The area code
was for the southern part of the state.

   
Charlie
had a horror of big cities, New York in particular. He grew up near
Paterson but attended the same high school with Richard Walther in
Jersey City. Sometimes Charlie and some other St. Francis students
took the PATH train into Greenwich Village. Young Richard joined
them a couple times—a contingent of obvious out-of-towners come to
ogle the big-city girls (mostly suburbanites like themselves) and
snicker at the homosexuals on Christopher Street. He could not
recall any of them—Charlie Weeks, Frank Willet and a few
others—ever saying a word to any female; and they certainly didn’t
badger the homosexuals. They merely wandered the narrow streets,
frequently getting lost, and argued about which of them should ask
a stranger how to get back to the train station.

   
Charlie’s own interest in New York was limited to the legal
beer he could order when he turned eighteen. His heart never left
New Jersey. Even Paterson was too citified to suit him. He came
into his own when his family moved to a big house on a lake near
Morristown. Father Walther had spent a couple weekends there,
fishing for carp and shooting at tin cans with Charlie’s .22. After
graduation when, to no one’s surprise, Richard entered the diocesan
seminary, Charlie headed for an engineering school in upstate New
York. For a while they corresponded. He was invited to Charlie’s
wedding but was unable to attend because he was receiving minor
orders the same day. Later he sent Charlie an invitation to his
final ordination. Other graduates of St. Francis showed up, but not
Charlie. It was almost a year before Charlie brought his bride to
meet him at his first parish assignment in Ridgefield Park. It was
two more years before he turned up again, this time alone at Holy
Name, to reminisce about old times. Both visits were
unannounced.

   
He decided to
try his mother once more before returning Charlie’s call. He still
could not believe she would change her plans without consulting
him. Margaret might even have gotten the message backward: his
mother might have returned home ahead of time. God knew he
encouraged her often enough to get away from the senior citizen’s
housing whenever she had the chance. But she always resisted,
citing one or another of her fellow tenants who would not have
anyone to go to the store or talk to if she left even for a few
days. Her building, a modern tower planted between a shopping
center and a horse farm, seemed more like a nursing home than a
residence. Many of the tenants were too sick, alcoholic or
depressed to properly care for themselves. His mother played nurse,
go-fer, and father confessor to them—an admirable response on her
part, but even a saint needed a break sometimes from the world’s
misery.

   
There
was no answer. He would try again later. He dialed Charlie Weeks’
number.

   
A woman
answered. He identified himself, making every effort to sound
cordial (he could not for the life of him remember Mrs. Weeks’
first name), but she cut him off to call Charlie to the phone.
There was a long pause before someone picked up again.

   “
Hello?”

   
The voice was
tentative, suspicious.

   “
It’s Richard.
Richard Walther.”

   
Charlie’s tone
immediately softened. He apologized for not keeping in touch, more
so than was necessary. After all, the sum total of their
relationship since high school amounted to just a few hours light
conversation.

   “
I
should have sent you my new address. I’m really sorry.”

   “
It’s alright.
No harm done.”

   “
Which brings us
right to the point.” Charlie said he had bought a house at the
shore and wanted Father Walther to spend some time there. “It’s
only a couple hours from your parish. The gentleman who took my
message told me you went to see your mother. How is your mother, by
the way?”

   
He felt
he should be jumping at this invitation. But how was he to explain
how he had ended up in Toms River? On the surface, his story was
simple: a breakdown on the Turnpike, the demise of his car, his
mother’s change of plans. But he could not admit to the crazy
notion he had indulged of visiting Fords Pointe—not, at any rate,
until Charlie and he became better reacquainted. A priest did not
just wander off like that (not to mention—not to mention—his
episode with Anne-Marie).

   “
As it happens,
I still have some vacation left.”

   “Great. Hop in your car.”

   “I’ll have to take a bus. My old
Ford gave up the ghost.”

   “
No
problem. I’ll meet you at the bus stop. Just give me an
ETA.”

   
It was
scarcely nine a.m. He figured he could probably get a bus by
afternoon.

   “
There’s
a phone right next to the bus stop. We’ll expect you for
supper.”

   “
Sounds
wonderful.”

   “
Our pleasure,
old man.”

   
Charlie
looked much the same as he had a decade earlier. His short hair
(when everyone else was long-haired he wore a crew cut) was the
same sandy brown Father Walther remembered from their school days.
His face seemed more angular, at least it did in profile as they
sped up the decrepit highway from the bus stop. But everything else
about him looked remarkably unchanged.

   “
Nice
car,” Father Walther offered. Charlie had never been much of a
talker. The confidences they shared in adolescence were always
highlighted by long periods of silence. But that was a long time
ago. “Rides well.” Actually, it was a sumptuous vehicle, and in
comparison with his Ford, rode like a dream. The seats were
upholstered with real fabric instead of vinyl. The windshield was
tinted, and a symphony orchestra seemed to be concealed behind the
padded dashboard.

   “Costs an arm and a leg to keep
up.”

   Father Walther would have liked to
relate his car problems, but was afraid that if he mentioned the
breakdown he would be drawn into telling everything that
followed—or worse, attempting to cover it up. There was time for
all that later. He asked about Charlie’s house.

   “
Bought
it last year. Got tired of wondering every year where to spend my
vacation,” he said, straight-arming the steering wheel. “We still
take a little trip out of state now and then. But I do enough
traveling for my job. When I get a couple weeks off, I like to know
there’s a place waiting where all I have to do is open the door and
step out on the beach.”

   “You’re an engineer, but I don’t
remember what kind.”

   “Civil,” he said, grinning
sheepishly. “Just like my daddy.”

   
He
shifted to a lower gear, though the priest saw no crossroad to turn
onto. The car braked suddenly, locking the restraining belts across
their chests, then turned sharply onto a dirt—it looked more like
sand—road. Unlike the path Anne-Marie had turned down, this one was
free of any confining vegetation. It was sand and sand dune all
around. A few hundred yards further in—east, if his sense of
direction was working—stood a scattering of houses, not
single-level bungalows like those in Fords Pointe, but customized
structures the like of which he had seen only in magazines. The
road ended at a clearing behind one of them.

   “
Not
this one,” Charlie said, turning off the engine. “I wish. This
baby’s solar-heated, finished basement...the works.”

   
They
climbed to the top of a big dune, then descended into a valley of
sand, keeping to an almost submerged boardwalk. Father Walther had
read somewhere that dunes “wandered,” sometimes covering entire
houses. He wondered if parked cars ever suffered the same
fate.

   
At the
top of a second rise the sea came into view. The priest paused, his
black vinyl suitcase in hand. He had seen the ocean during a bus
outing just the previous Saturday. But that was Asbury Park, and he
had been too busy keeping an eye on his altar boys to admire it.
Besides, this was a different stretch of water entirely, almost a
different ocean—a free, untamed Atlantic, not just the backdrop to
a crowded boardwalk and badly littered beach. He stood admiring the
play of sunlight on waves and the darkening sky to the
east.

   “
This is
it,” Charlie said when Father Walther joined him on the next set of
dunes, his shoes now full of sand. To his eye the structure ahead
looked no less grand than the one Charlie had just coveted. It
stood three stories high if you counted the substructure anchoring
it to the sand, and the front had an unobstructed view of the
ocean. As he followed Charlie up a narrow wooden staircase, his
friend’s diffidence reminded him of the pose the Willets used to
strike, always insisting they were struggling just to get by, while
their neighbors were all rolling in money. Even in those days,
people assumed a moral pose in his presence, making him feel
already set apart.

   
They
entered by way of a large kitchen outfitted with the latest model
stove, refrigerator, and—it was open and full of clean
china—dishwasher, all enameled in the same rust color. A young
woman (thirty had begun to look young) was removing plates from the
dishwasher. She did not turn to greet them, but because of the
energy with which she was working he suspected her lack of
hospitality was due not to bad manners but nerves.

   “
This is
Sylvia.”

   
The woman dried
her hands hurriedly on the apron she was wearing over a pair of
shorts.

   “
Do I call you
Father...or what?”

   “
Richie will
do.”

   
She blushed and
looked to Charlie as if hoping to catch a cue. But her husband was
already headed toward the other side of the house.

   “
I’d better
finish the tour,” Father Walther said.

   
Sylvia
managed a smile, but her eyes were full.

   “
That’s
about it,” Charlie said, indicating a well-furnished living
room—Scandinavian, as best the priest could tell. “There’s two
bedrooms upstairs. Plus a deck. That’s where I set up my
scopes.”

   
Charlie
had been president of St. Francis’ astronomy and radio clubs. He
used to drag Richard off regularly to glimpse a new comet or view
the conjunction of two planets. Richard had enjoyed looking at the
mountains of the moon and sometimes even shared Charlie’s
enthusiasm when he caught an impressive star cluster in his lens.
The young priest-to-be had no interest in building telescopes
himself or standing around in the cold waiting for Venus to rise,
but those stargazing expeditions provided a context for their
adolescent gabfests. They discussed everything from the structure
of the atom (Charlie’s purview) to proofs for the existence of God.
Charlie also talked about his love life— always tempestuous. They
even discussed Richard’s vocation, or at least the peripheral
subjects relating to it, like celibacy (unnatural, according to
Charlie). But, for all the lengthy talks they had, Father Walther
could not recall one in which he ever bared his heart the way
Charlie did. His role even then was that of listener,
counselor.

   
Charlie
opened a set of sliding glass doors, and they stepped out onto a
balcony. There was nothing between the house and water but
beach.

   “
The sunrise
must be magnificent.”

   
There was
nothing apologetic about Charlie now. If anything, his look was
proprietary, as if his friend had just guessed the real reason for
his latching on to this particular piece of real estate—the house
was just a shelter; a tent would serve as well.

   
The
guest room was not large, not by comparison with the motel where he
had spent the previous night. But it managed to contain a double
bed, dresser, night table and two straight-back chairs. Everything
was new. Best of all, when he parted the orange curtains, there was
an ocean view.

   
Charlie
had suggested a swim, so he changed into his trunks. They were
old-fashioned, dark blue and full-cut—baggy, really, the same kind
his father wore thirty years ago. No seminary mentor ever told him
not to wear tight-fitting or flashy trunks (some of the younger
clergy did), just as no one ever had to tell him to wear pants
beneath his cassock despite all the jokes on that subject. You knew
such things by instinct, or should.