The Rabbi of Lud

six

WHERE,” I asked, “could we go?”

“Shh,” Shelley said afterward as we lay in each other’s arms in the dark. “Shh.”

“You told Connie we’d leave Lud. And do what? Where? How?”

“Shh. Shah. Ay le lu lu.”

“Where, Shelley? What would I do?”

“Later-le.”

“Later-le’s too late. Right-e-le now.”

“Leave-e-le now?”

“Talk-e-le now, ask-e-le questions afterward.”

Because it’s one thing to calm your kid down with easy promises, but I’m not talking about eat your greens, sweetheart, we’ll go get 31 flavors. Connie’s no fool. She had real problems, even — I say it — legitimate gripes. Not all that death prattle, of course, ghosts in the drinking water, phantoms in her pants. Not even my failure with God in the Stanley Bloom affair, nothing metaphysical. She had flawed birthrights, I think. A misser-out on the gemütlich circumstance, the curled and comfy lap-robe life. I don’t know, maybe it would have been better for her if she’d had an aversion to the four food groups, better if we could have done business, traded and bribed her, appetite for appetite, taken her to the mall more, kept her up past her bedtime, made nests for her in the back of the car and driven her home in the dark. Maybe we should have turned the radio low and shifted from texture to texture for her on the highways, playing the percussives and hypnotics of different road surfaces like some long, cozy organ, the dash’s soft glow and the averted headlamps of oncoming cars like light skimming along the walls and ceilings of dark bedrooms. But still her stinted birthright. She was an only child. She had no grandparents, no cousins, no uncles, no aunts. Was this mild orphan of relation. (“I’m the last of your line,” she told us once. “When I marry there’ll be no more Goldkorns,” she’d said, and burst into tears. “Please don’t cry,” Shelley said, “I’m the same as you are.” “Me too,” I said, “the fall of the House of Usherkorn.”) But another thing altogether to offer to change their life.

Which is what I’d been trying to impress upon Shelley.

“What?” I asked. “Where?”

“Anywhere,” she said drowsily.

“Anywhere. Shell?”

“Mnn?”

“What?”

“Anything-e-ling-e-ding-e-ling-e,” she murmured and then, I swear it, actually yawned in that pidgin Yiddish or whatever the hell else it was she thought she was speaking.

“Shelley, wake up, we’ve got to talk.” I shook my wife.

“What,” she said, “what is it?”

“A couple of days ago you told Connie we’d leave Lud and she believed you. Jesus, Shell, I believed you. All right, the kid hasn’t made a fuss, she hasn’t even brought it up again, but I see her watching me. Yesterday I told her I hadn’t had time to type up my resume yet but that I was working on it. Working on it. It would take me ten minutes! Two minutes to write and eight to find the envelope to stick it in, address, and drink the glass of water to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth from sealing it and licking the stamp. Only I’ll tell you, Shelley,” I said, “I’m fresh the hell out of ideas.”

“Poor Jerry.”

“Shelley, you don’t know.”

“Poor Jerry. So much on his head.”

“I mean really,” I said, “what experience have I had?”

“Thinking about Talmud all day. Talmud Talmud Talmud.”

“A man my age. It’s worse than being fired. Really,” I said, “it is. It really is.”

“Tch tch. Should I say something to Connie? I’ll say something to Connie. You want me to say something?”

“No,” I said, “the kid’s got real problems. You think I’d go along with any of this if I didn’t believe she had real problems?”

“She said ‘goddamn.’ She said ‘asshole’ to her papa.”

“They lay you off, at least they offer to retrain you. They teach you computer programming, give you a hundred dollars and a new suit.”

“Everything’s going to be fine. You worry too much.”

“Talmud Talmud Talmud.”

“I know,” Shelley said.

“So here’s what I’ve come up with.”

“What’s that?”

“We emigrate to Israel. They’d have to take us in. It’s the Law of the Return.”

“Emigrate? To Israel?”

“Sure,” I said. “It won’t be so bad. They set us up in a suitable kibbutz.”

“We emigrate to Israel?”

“I thought you’d be pleased. You’d be an Israel-e-li.”

“But Jerry,” she said, “all we have to do is move to Fairlawn.”

“What?”

“Or Ridgewood.”

“What?”

“Or any of dozens of towns. We’ve got all northern Jersey to choose from.”

“Jesus,” I said, “northern Jersey!”

“Sure,” Shelley said, “I asked one of the girls in The Chaverot to be on the lookout, to tell me if she heard of a place. Elaine Iglauer?”

“Elaine Iglauer. The one who moves. Yes?”

“You should have heard the leads she came up with just off the top of her head.”

“Sure,” I said, “she knows her stuff.”

“She really does.”

“You’re telling me,” I said. “Seven houses in six different towns.”

“Oh, you’re behind. They’ve just closed on their eighth.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “That’s marvelous, that’s really wonderful.”

“Of course we’d have to buy,” she said. “We wouldn’t have the kind of deal we have here.”

“Utilities and taxes? No,” I said, “are you kidding? Who could expect to? Not me.”

“Joan Cohen said she’d shop around for a temple once Elaine’s found a place for us.”

“Joan Cohen,” I said. “The one who shops.”

A person’s so single-minded. When Shelley told Connie we’d leave Lud, I thought … But a person’s so single-minded. Our problems were solved. If it cost us a few bucks then it cost us a few bucks. Hey, you don’t get bth, lg lvng rm w/fr pic, rmdld kchn, scrnd brzway, rbi’s stdy, grg, patio & swmng pl, convnt to grvs, crpts, tmbs & mslms? Of course it would take a hefty chunk out of the savings to replace something like that, but I could always take Klein and Charney up on their offer. In fact, I all the way through life on the arm. Who knew better than I? Wasn’t that what so many of my eulogies were about? Sacrifice? Being there for others? I had no problems with that. Anyway, hadn’t we been able to put a little something by? Weren’t we okay in that department? No mortgage payments, no rent, living scot-free years in a big white Colonial, 5 bdm, 31/2would, and decided to call them first thing in the morning. No, to call them that night and leave a message on their machine, to call Shull and Tober, too, and leave a message on theirs, that they could start drawing up the fancy new contracts with the no-cut clauses. (Of course a person has to sacrifice, but if he plays his cards right he might not even have to dip into capital.)

And hadn’t I, misunderstanding or no misunderstanding, and despite my relief — my relief came afterward, a solidly come-by, legitimately earned relief — already shown that willingness to sacrifice which ought, if it already wasn’t, to be all that God ever actually outright required of anyone—vide Abraham, vide Isaac — just that momentary glimpse of the revealed soul like a private part? Hadn’t I already fixed it in my head to go to the wall for my spooked daughter? Even unto such lengths that I was going to uproot everything I knew or was good at, as if everything I knew or was good at were some tainted husbandry, the rotten fruits of a bad season, and the wall was the wailing one. Next month, say, in Jerusalem? So never mind I was relieved. I knew what was in store for us if we emigrated. To humiliate myself and endanger my family. Jersey Jerry Goldkorn, the Klutz of the Kibbutz like a court jester, terrified of incoming on the northern border, terrified of incoming, period. Suspicious of ancient Arab ladies and gentlemen on the buses, suspicious of everyone, innocent-looking kids, the more innocent-looking the guiltier, as if an entire population had become suspects in a mystery, everyone, rabbis and shamuses and balebatish providers, a potentially turned Jew, trust and belief vitiated until all that there was left to believe in were the up-for-grab loyalties, some remarkable shifting double agency. (Besides, I was an American and not only had no use for terrorists but no business in politics. An American’s politics is his standard of living, and I say God bless him for that. Money and comfort. All else is vanity.)

I got out of bed, left the sleeping Shelley, and made my calls, but instead of leaving a complicated message on the machine about having finally decided to take Charney and Klein up on their offer to push grave lots because we were thinking of buying a house and would need the extra income, I simply left my name and asked if they could get back to me in the morning.

I couldn’t get over it. A person’s so single-minded, so committed to one avenue of thought he really can’t see the forest for the trees. Shelley’d told the kid we’d pick up and leave Lud, and I’d thought she meant it was all up with me in the rabbi business, that I couldn’t be Rabbi of Lud anymore. I couldn’t get over it, I really couldn’t. I’m thinking life after Lud, she’s thinking Ridgewood.

And so I’m lying there beside my sleeping Shelley, all stimulated and pleased with how things work out and, if you want to know, actually looking forward to the new duties I’d be taking on if we were to avoid being kicked in the head financially. And kicking ideas around in my head, things I could say to the people I’d be dealing with, the folks whose names Klein and Charney would have given me as leads. For openers — I’d have on my yarmulke, to show the flag, you know? — I’d say, I’d say, oh, “Shalom, shalom. How are you today, Mr. Fishbone? Mrs. Fishbone? I’m Rabbi Jerome Goldkorn, the Rabbi of Lud. Mr. Charney suggested I speak with you. Mr. Charney? Charney and Klein? Realities? What, did I say ‘realities?’ I meant realtors, but face it, it’s realities we’re really talking about here, isn’t it?”

Working variations in my head, versions of the instructions they dictated to their machines, reprises of the messages I had left on them, until, one thing leading to the other as it does in the act of drifting off, I lost my place and fell asleep.

And when the phone woke me the next morning and I heard Emile Tober’s voice, it was as if it had been a perfectly seamless night.

“Yes, Emile,” I said, “thanks for getting back to me. It’s about—”

“I know what it’s about! Just what in the hell is wrong with that lunatic daughter of yours? Has she fucking gone crazy?!”