Christmas for Joshua - A Novel (28 page)

“
Home is where your heart is
,” I quoted an old song by The Sounds. “By the way, did you see the e-mail from Rabbi Rachel?”

“Yes. She tried to call you, and when you didn’t answer, she called me.”

“What did she say?”

I heard Debra in the background, and Rebecca declared, “It’s gorgeous! Wait a minute, I’m talking to Daddy.” Back on the phone, she said, “The rabbi was terribly embarrassed. She had written the e-mail earlier, but realized it was hostile and inappropriate. She wanted to delete it, but mistakenly pressed
Send
.”

“
A high-tech Freudian slip?”

“
That’s what she said. Didn’t you see her follow-up e-mail?”

“Not yet.” There was no point in trying to explain what had happened to my Blackberry.

“
She sent a follow-up e-mail to everyone, apologizing for the error, but still insisted that the name change is a sellout and a forewarning for worse things to come, and asked members to call on the leadership to rise above the temptation of easy money.”

“
Rise above?”

“
That’s the phrase she used.”

“
Did her e-mail include any yeast?”

A series of hard knocks shook the office door.

“
See you at home,” I said and hung up.

When I opened the door, Jose was tripping all over his words, mixing Spanish and English. I followed him to the front of the synagogue and paused at the sight of a dump truck backing up to the curb. Pinky was directing it with hand motions while the other crew members watched from the roof. She saw me and yelled, “Surprise!”

“What’s this?”

The answer came from the rear of the truck. As the box began to tilt upward, the hinged horizontal door cracked open, and snow poured out.

Snow!

It fell in thick globs, like egg beat pouring out from a baker’s bowl. Pinky signaled the driver, and the box stopped rising. He came out of the cabin with a shovel and flattened the pile to create a wider base.

I finally found my voice. “What in the world is this?”

“
Roy threw it in for you,” Pinky said, turning her baseball cap with the visor backward. “It’s part of our premium options. How can you celebrate Christmas without snow?”

“But…how
?”

“
We truck it down from Flagstaff. People love it. Nothing like a pile of fresh snow in the desert!”

“
Won’t it melt?”

“
Slowly.” Pinky gestured at the setting sun. “The temperature will be down in the fifties within an hour. You’ll still have a pile here tomorrow morning.”

A car horn sounded. I looked up and saw Rabbi Rachel’s Honda stop at the curb. She got out and hurried over. “What’s going on here?”

“
Getting ready for the dinner party.” I pointed at the snow. “How do you like this?”

But she was already looking at the bundled wires of fiber optic lights, the rows of figurines awaiting placement along the building, and the modular Christmas tree rising by the entrance. She beckoned Jose to come over, but he pretended not to notice, keeping busy with a rake. To preempt her next burst of questions, I said, “That was quite an e-mail you sent around.”

“
What’s with these decorations?” Rabbi Rachel’s voice was more bewildered than angry. “You’re turning my synagogue into Macy’s?”

The comparison was funny, except for the way she said it:
My
synagogue.

“
The synagogue belongs to all of us,” I said as Pinky stepped away and the driver climbed back into the cabin of the truck. “And it’s our family’s event tonight, so please bear with me—”

“
A Christmas tree? And all these gentile trinkets?” She pointed at the
Lights4U
truck. “What are they doing here? Is this one of your jokes?”

“
Not at all. We’ll be celebrating tolerance tonight.”

The truck’s engine revved up, and the box began to tilt farther up.

“
By propping up a pagan display in front of a Jewish place of worship? Are you crazy?”

“
My mental capacity isn’t impaired.” I used my hand to fan away the fumes from the truck exhaust. Snow began to trickle down. “I’m following all those sermons you’ve given about respecting different points of view.”

She shook her head, the mane of curls trembling. “Do you know what Christmas represents? Have you any idea how much hate this stunt could instigate?”

The snow was pouring out faster, and I took her arm to get her out of the way. But my touch caused the rabbi to react as if my hand carried a deadly electrical current. She bolted backward, her ankle caught on the edge of the pile, and she fell over.

Before either of us managed to move, the box of the truck reached its top angle, tilted all the way up with a bang and a shake, and let out an avalanche of snow that buried Rabbi Rachel completely.

“
Hey!” Pinky ran to the front of the truck and waved her arms wildly, yelling to the driver, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

I leaped forward and began to dig in. The three guys shouted at each other as they scrambled to get down from the roof. Another surge of snow fell on top of me, knocking me down. As I struggled to get free from the pressing, cold bulk, my left arm hurt sharply, and a jolt of pain shot through my shoulder, worse than when I had struggled to set up the tree in our living room yesterday.

By now, all of them were on top of us—the driver with his shovel, Jose with a rake, and Pinky and the three guys with their hands. I tried to help, but my left side hurt too much, and I could barely breathe. Within seconds they pulled Rabbi Rachel out and helped her sit up while she spat snow and moaned pitifully.

I crawled across the curb and sat on the ground, holding my left arm and catching my breath.

It was unclear who called the police, but someone had, and soon we heard sirens approaching.

Jose took off at a fast trot toward the church down the street.

Two cruisers arrived, followed by an ambulance. They concentrated on Rabbi Rachel, whose leg was bent unnaturally. One of the medics asked if I was hurt, and I assured him it was only a pulled muscle.

Concluding that the driver had done nothing wrong, the police officers left. The ambulance took off with Rabbi Rachel. My relief at getting rid of her was salted with a few grains of guilt, but I brushed it off and watched the rest of the Flagstaff snow pile up on the desert landscape in front of the synagogue.

It was half past five in the evening, and I decided to go home and spruce myself up in preparation for a most interesting night.

Home for the Holidays

Before leaving the synagogue, I sent one of Pinky’s crewmen to fetch Jose from the church. Our custodian showed up, still holding the rake, his eyes scanning the street. “No worry,” I said, “the police is long gone, okay?”

He nodded.

“
You work for me tonight.” I handed him a one hundred dollar bill. “Help these guys with the installation, get the caterer anything she needs, and when the guests start to arrive, direct the parking.”

Jose kept looking away, grimacing, as if he didn’t understand fully what was required of him. Pinky spoke to him in Spanish, translating my words, but I knew he wasn’t confused. He was spooked by my open argument with the rabbi, followed by her injury. He revered the rabbi on a primal, superstitious level, perceiving her to be God’s personal representative on earth, the long arm of the divine law. I wanted to explain to Jose that his reverence was misplaced. Unlike Catholic priests or Orthodox rabbis, a Reform Rabbi functioned not as God’s personal representative, but rather as an employee of the synagogue, whose job was to lead services and officiate in life-cycle events such as circumcisions, Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, weddings, and burials. But this wasn’t the right time to attempt such a discussion with our nervous custodian.

“
You work for me,” I repeated, my finger going between Jose and my own chest, back and forth. “Police and rabbi not coming back.
Comprender?
”

“
Okay, Señor Doctor.”

Pinky patted his shoulder.

Driving off, I felt sorry for causing Jose so much anxiety. With our tight budget, he alone had to handle every aspect of the building, equipment, and landscape. With Jonathan’s donation, however, perhaps we could hire a lawyer to help Jose obtain legal immigration status and start paying him an appropriate salary and benefits. We could also hire more staff as well as a marketing person to drive up membership. But before I would commit myself to the next phase of rebuilding our congregation, there was tonight’s test, which would determine not only the future of my marriage and relationship with Debra, but could redefine my past, exposing as illusory much of what I had believed about my place in this world.

The western sky went from a golden glow to embers red. The departure of sunshine brought an evening chill that made me shudder in my short-sleeved cotton shirt. Stopping at a red light, I pressed the button to close the roof.

On the radio, Perry Como sang, “
I met a man who lives in Tennessee, and he was headin’ for Pennsylvania
.”

When we first moved here, I used to miss New York and its East Coast culture of intense pace and intellectual energy. This longing had gone away, taking with it any thought of leaving Arizona. But what if my Christmas Nosh turned sour? What if rejection confronted me on all fronts? Would I have the guts to accept reality, devastating as it might be? And the strength to start a new life someplace else?

Fear overcame me. Was I making a terrible mistake? Was I putting everyone to an extravagantly impossible trial of tolerance and approval?

Turning into my street, I brushed away the negative thoughts. This was my home, my family, and my community. I was loved and respected, especially after practically saving the synagogue from its prolonged cash shortage. Tonight everyone would come around to share my holiday spirit with good food, merry singing, and recitation of the traditional seven blessings in honor of my daughter’s marriage.

I entered the house and declared, “Home sweet home!”

“
We’re here,” Debra called.

I found the three of them in the kitchen. Debra wore a long turquoise dress with a white collar, white cuffs at the end of the long sleeves, and a white belt with a delicate silver buckle. Mordechai sat at the table with an open textbook in front of him and a pen between his teeth, but his eyes were on Debra, who pirouetted to show off the dress, its price tag dangling from the back zipper.

“
Very nice,” I said, catching her for a quick hug. “I like it.”

“
You should,” Rebecca said, pulling another dress off a hanger, “you paid for it.”

“
Me and you, partner.” I kissed her on the lips. “Do we have any money left?”

Rebecca, who handled all our banking and bills, could usually tell me the balance in our joint account within a few dollars. But now she only shrugged and said, “We have credit cards.”

Debra and Mordechai laughed, mistaking her answer for humor. Rebecca and I looked at each other and also started laughing. We had always regretted our inability to have more children, but financially speaking, this wedding-wrapped-in-college-tuition, together with the prospect of Debra’s med school costs, made me appreciate the single-child parenting experience.

Mordechai glanced at his watch. “Time for the evening prayer.”

Debra followed him out of the kitchen.

I looked at Rebecca. “Where’s she going?”

“
They pray together.” My wife seemed proud. “Three times a day in accordance with Halacha. It’s very sweet, isn’t it?”

“
True love.” Seeing my daughter follow her young husband to recite the evening prayer on a weekday, an excessive religious practice that we Reform Jews never followed, my strategy became clear: Rather than try to draw Debra away from
his
way of life, I should pull Mordechai to the middle, and she would happily follow him toward a more moderate level of observance. “Time for my evening shower,” I said. “If you join me, we can pray together while soaping each other’s back.”

“
Ha.”

Upstairs in our bathroom, my arm and shoulder still hurting, I popped two orange Motrin pills into my mouth and swallowed them with tap water. As I reached into the shower to turn it on, I changed my mind and turned on the bath faucet instead, pressing down to engage the bath drain.

While the water ran, I peered at my face in the mirror. The whites of my eyes were pink, my face sallow, and a bruise adorned my forehead, probably from the avalanche that had buried Rabbi Rachel. Should I have accompanied her to the hospital? Probably, but there was too much on my plate already, and the rabbi hadn’t exactly been considerate or thoughtful toward me either. Perhaps her snow accident was God’s way of making things right.

Immersing in the hot water felt wonderful. I poured in liquid soap and left the faucet running until the water rose to cover my body with a layer of bubbles. I folded a towel and used it to cushion the back of my head against the rim of the bath. I exhaled, letting out all the pent-up stress that had built up inside me.