The Believers (30 page)

"Did you ever suspect before now that Dad was unfaithful?" Karla asked.

Rosa shook her head.

"Me neither. There used to be things in the papers that insinuated--"

"Oh, yeah. I always assumed that was just the right-wing press making up stuff."

Karla nodded. "I guess I did too. I remember once when I was little, I read something in the paper that called him 'a notorious ladies' man.' I asked Mom about it, and she said it meant that Dad always 'treated ladies like a perfect gentleman.'" Karla laughed. "I guess I was pretty naive."

"No you weren't!" Rosa protested. "It's not naive to trust your father--to expect him to be loyal to your mother. It's not your fault if Dad turned out to be a fraud."

"He wasn't a
fraud--
"

"Excuse me? Did you not hear what she said about that apartment? Dad paid a
bribe
to get her in there. He paid off someone so his girlfriend could jump the line for a rent-controlled love nest!"

"We don't know that for sure."

"Yes, we do! She said it, Karla!"

"Well, I'm not defending it, but...I don't know, maybe they really did love each other."

"Love!" Rosa made a disgusted face. "People use that word to rubber-stamp anything they happen to feel like doing. Love isn't about submitting to your urges because 'it feels right,' and never mind who you hurt in the process. Love is about commitment, about caring for your family, your community, about recognizing something larger and more important than your own desires."

Karla stared at a yellow hard hat that was bobbing about in the rain-water at the bottom of the pit. How lucky to be Rosa, she thought. Rosa would never be felled by her desires. Nothing Rosa had ever wanted to do had been significantly at odds with what she knew was right. Even as a little girl, she had been incorruptible. The anarchic spirit that had occasionally compelled Karla and her friends to throw their toys down the toilet, or to steal sprinkles from the kitchen cupboard, or to write FUCK very, very small in crayon on the living room wall, had never once possessed Rosa. It wasn't that she had lacked the courage for mischief. She simply hadn't seen what fun there was to be had from being bad.

"I don't understand why you're trying to deny it," Rosa said. "He was a
liar
. He betrayed us, he
stole
from us. Every time he saw that woman, he was giving her attention and time that was rightfully
ours
."

Karla considered this. Try as she might, she could not think of herself as a victim of her father's sin. Whatever energy her father had expended on Berenice, it had surely not been embezzled from a finite family supply. To the extent that Berenice had made Joel happy, it was perfectly possible that Karla and her sister--even her mother--had actually benefited from the affair. She thought about the glowing goodwill she had felt toward her patients, toward strangers on the subway--toward even Mike--during the six weeks that she had been with Khaled. Never had she been filled with so much reckless magnanimity. It was one of the discomfiting paradoxes of her adultery: sin had made her a better person.

Rosa turned to her suddenly. "I'm sorry, Karla," she said. "I don't know why I'm giving you such a hard time. You, of all people, don't need my lectures on being good."

Karla blushed. "Oh, I'm not so good."

Mrs. Mee was lying in wait when Karla got home. The way she leaped out from her front door just as Karla was getting off the elevator strongly suggested that she had been watching for her through the peephole. She wanted to discuss the latest developments in her war with the boss at her beauty salon. The letter that Karla had composed at the beginning of the summer had not succeeded in getting the old tipping system reinstated, and the women had never carried through on their threat to report the boss to the Labor Department. Now, the boss was proposing to keep the salon open until ten o'clock every night. "I told him," Mrs. Mee said, "I got a family, this is no good for me. And he just says to me, 'You don't like it, you find another job'--"

Karla raised a hand like a pupil in a classroom. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Mee, I really want to hear about this, but Mike is waiting for his dinner. Would you mind if we talked tomorrow?"

Mrs. Mee smiled sympathetically. She knew how men were about their meals. "Of course, Karla. We talk about it tomorrow."

Before Karla made it to her apartment, Mrs. Mee called out to her again.

"Karla! You want to come play bingo with me on Friday night?"

Karla pressed her index finger to her chest. "Me?"

"Yeah! You should come! Maybe you win!"

Karla shook her head. "Thanks, but I'm going to be busy that night."

"Okay," Mrs. Mee shrugged. "Maybe next week."

Mike was sitting in the kitchen, elbows on the table, knuckles at his temples, reading the paper. He had had his hair cut that afternoon, and the kitchen smelled faintly of barbershop cologne.

"Hey," he said, looking up.

Karla dumped her shopping bags on the floor. "Hey."

"Did you see her, then?"

"Yup."

"How was it?"

Karla looked away, repelled by the vampiric excitement in his voice. Mike's official posture regarding Joel's infidelity was one of deep sadness and disappointment, but there was a part of him, she knew, that had exulted in the revelation--that was still exulting. The Litvinoff family's romance of itself had been dealt a mortal blow, and he was happy.

"It was okay," she said.

"What did she say, then?"

"I don't know. A lot of things."

"What was she like?"

Karla thought for a moment. "Very...sophisticated."

Mike made a derisive clucking sound. "Ohhh."

"No"--Karla corrected herself--"I mean, unusual. Artistic."

"Did she apologize?"

"No...not outright. She said she was very concerned that this whole thing would harden our hearts against Dad."

"Duh. So, did you meet the kid?"

"No, he was out."

"And what was her apartment like?"

Karla paused. She did not want to provoke further sneering by telling Mike about the vagina picture or the baksheesh. "Just a regular apartment," she said. "What do you want for dinner?"

Mike turned back to this paper. "I'll have a shake."

Karla began unpacking the groceries. "I saw Mrs. Mee in the hall just now, and she asked me to go to bingo with her on Friday night. Can you believe it?"

Mike looked up. "You can't go Friday. You've got canvassing that night."

"I know, Mike. I wasn't thinking of going. I was just amazed that she asked me, that's all"

Mike shook his head. "That's what people like her waste their money on. Lottery tickets and bingo." He dabbed his index finger against his tongue and turned the page of his newspaper.

"No, I meant why would she think I would want to go with her?"

Mike shrugged. "Why not? You're friends, aren't you?"

"Mrs. Mee? And me? No, we're not! We're neighbors."

"Well, you're always talking to each other, sharing your little secrets."

"That's not true! I never tell her anything about my life."

"Whatever." Mike bent his head closer to his paper.

"I don't understand how you could think of Mrs. Mee as my friend," Karla said.

Mike did not reply.

The freezer door wasn't closing properly. Karla took a knife from the silverware drawer and began jabbing at the furry white ice that was jamming it. "We have nothing in common," she continued. "She's almost as old as my mother--"

"All right, Karla, I get it!" Mike said. "You don't have to make a federal case out of it!"

Karla turned around to look at him. The skin on the back of his neck was inflamed where the barber had shaved, and there were tiny bits of shorn hair stuck to the inside of his shirt collar. She had gone to sleep and woken up with this man every day for the last five years. Now she would go on doing so for what, thirty, forty more? Sooner or later, the adoption would go through, and she would become a mother. Her days would be taken up with washing baby clothes in special hypoallergenic detergents and doling out Cheerios from plastic snack bags. She would go on working part time at the hospital and doing yoga on Thursday nights, and one day, no doubt, she would surrender and start going to bingo with Mrs. Mee

She resumed hacking at the ice around the freezer door.

"Don't do it like that," Mike said irritably. "You'll get water all over the floor. Put down some newspaper."

Karla laid the knife on the counter and walked out of the room, leaving the freezer door swinging open.

In her bedroom, the furniture seemed to be crouched in malign watchfulness, waiting for what she would do next. She lay down on the bed and stared at the bulge in the ceiling where water had come through from a leaking pipe in the upstairs apartment. Mike was right, she thought. She and Mrs. Mee were well suited. They were both of them too cowardly, too wedded to their own misery, to grasp happiness when it was offered.

After a while, she heard Mike moving slowly around in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards. A wave of remorse swept over her.
Poor Mike. He could have married a beauty. He could have married someone fertile. And yet he has endured me--my fatness, my barrenness--without complaint. He has chosen to spend his life with me, not because I am beautiful or sexy, but because he believes I am a good person who shares his values and commitments. And how have I, foolish, vain woman, repaid him? By going to bed with the first man to tell me that my ugly body is attractive.

She got up and went back into the kitchen. Mike was standing at the sink, rinsing out the glass he had just been using.

"Mike," she said, "I'm sorry--"

He shook his head. "Don't worry about it."

"Mike--"

"I put away the groceries," he said quickly. "I didn't want them to go bad."

CHAPTER
21

Rabbi Reinman held up a pomegranate. "Esther, can you tell me why we eat this fruit on Rosh Hashanah?"

Twenty people were sitting around the Reinmans' dining table, grazing on the remains of the Rosh Hashanah feast. They paused now to hear Esther's reply.

"Is it because they have crowns on their heads?"

The rabbi wagged his finger at her and turned to his oldest daughter. "Rebecca, what about you? Do you know?"

Rebecca twisted uncomfortably in her seat. "I'm not sure, Daddy...I forgot."

Rosa raised her hand. "I know. It's because the pomegranate is said to have as many seeds as there are mitzvoth."

The rabbi blinked in humorous surprise. "I can see you have been doing your homework, Rosa! Since you have grown so knowledgeable, I am sure you will be able to tell me how many mitzvoth there are."

Rosa nodded. "Six hundred and thirteen."

"Oh, Rosa, that wasn't kind," Mrs. Reinman said. "Now you have deprived him of the pleasure of teaching you something."

Everyone around the table laughed. Rosa blushed with pleasure. It was hard to believe that this was the same house in which she had dined so unhappily four months ago. When she looked back on that torturous occasion now, it was with the sort of smug pleasure that a man lying in a warm, dry bed recalls his cold walk home.

"Have you ever actually counted the seeds, rabbi?" she asked.

The rabbi shook his head in benign reproof. "Now, that is a mischievous question, Rosa."

"Have you, Daddy?" Esther asked.

"I have not. But you know, Esther, there are other explanations of the pomegranate's significance on Rosh Hashanah." He glanced at Rosa slyly. "Your grandfather used to say that the seeds in a pomegranate represent all the good deeds that exist within even the least observant Jew."

Mrs. Reinman and the other women began to clear the table. Rosa got up to help, but the rabbi motioned for her to follow him out onto the deck at the back of the house.

The day was cold, and on the garden's withered lawn, Esther's plastic Wendy house was tipping from side to side in the wind. Mrs. Reinman ran out after them with a scarf for her husband.

"She always thinks I'm going to get a chill," the rabbi said with a smile when she had gone inside. "But I like some fresh air after a meal. It clears my mind." He sat down on the edge of a lounger and beckoned Rosa to take a chair. "So. I gather you are going home this afternoon."

Rosa sighed regretfully. "Yes, I'm sorry. It's terrible timing, but the girls at my program are performing in a special show, and I have to attend. I hope you understand."

The rabbi studied her thoughtfully.

"I know I'm not meant to travel today," Rosa went on, "it's just something I couldn't get out of."

He cleared his throat. "Tell me, Rosa, where do you think you are in terms of your religious progress? I know you had a little crisis in the summer that you felt you worked through. But now I get the sense that you've run into another roadblock. Am I right?"

"Not at all! I mean, my family's been going through a lot lately--"

The rabbi nodded. Rosa had told him about her father's affair.

"So I guess I've been pretty tied up with that. But going to shul and talking to you has been an enormous help to me in getting through the whole thing. I've been feeling very positive about the religious part of my life."

He nodded. "Yes, I can see that you feel 'positive.' It's comforting for you to feel some ethnic connection, to go to shul, to eat a little cholent on Friday night. I understand. But I'm talking about something more than that."

"Oh, I know--"

"Judaism is not a folkway, Rosa. It is a religion. You can't be a Jew just because you think we have some colorful holidays and some neat songs. If that's what you want--a dance and a song and a bagel with cream cheese--you should go join the Reform. They are very good at this sort of thing."

Rosa sat back, startled. The rabbi had spoken often of his contempt for the intellectual sloppiness, "the religion lite," of Reform Judaism. To steer her in this direction was an insult of the most pointed sort. "But I don't want to join the Reform," she said.

He cocked his head. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, of course."

"Because you know, if you
are
serious, Rosa--if you are looking for a real relationship with your Creator--sooner or later you have to make some sort of commitment. You have to decide whether you really want to remain part of the secular world--a world in which men behave as your father has behaved--or whether you are willing to change."

Rosa gave a little panting laugh of incredulity. "I don't understand. Is this all because I'm going back to the city this evening?"

"No, no. It's not only about this evening--it's about your general approach as I have observed it over these last months."

Rosa was furious. The rabbi was being horribly unjust. For months, he had been wooing her with patience and sympathy, letting her believe that her earnest interest was virtue enough. And now, without warning, he had turned bad cop. No more Mr. Nice Guy. It was time to shit or get off the pot. "Rabbi, forgive me, but I don't think you're being fair. I've been doing this for such a short time--"

"I understand. I am not necessarily trying to speed up your process. I simply want to make sure that you are on the right track. God wants certain things from you, and right now, you are choosing not to give them to Him. I think, intellectually, you see that Yiddishkeit works, that it is coherent. But emotionally, you are still resisting. You know that if you really commit, you will be obliged to totally change your life. And no one wants to change. It's hard."

"No," Rosa said. "No, it's the other way around. Emotionally, I do get what the frum life is about. It's intellectually that I have problems with it. You said that I should just hang in there and try to live with my discomfort. And that's what I've been doing. I have really tried. I've read the books you've recommended and I've had all these very interesting theological discussions with you and I've enjoyed them tremendously, but I'm still not sure that I am capable of living life as you do. I'm still not sure I can believe like you do."

The rabbi shrugged. "Faith is hard, Rosa. Nonbelievers often speak of faith as if it were something easy, a cop-out from the really tough business of confronting a meaningless universe, but it's not. It's doubt that's easy. The invisibility of Hashem, the fear we sometimes have that he is indifferent to earthly suffering, the explanations that science seems to offer for almost all the phenomena we once considered mysterious--these things make believing an enormous challenge. Especially for a person like you who has no inheritance to draw upon. You know, it says in the Talmud, 'In the place where ba'alei teshuvah stand, even those who were always righteous are not able to stand.' That is a recognition of how especially difficult and trying the journey is that you have undertaken. But you will not advance simply by standing on the sidelines."

"What am I meant to do? I can't join in before I'm completely sure."

"You may never be sure
unless
you join in."

Rosa was shocked. "Surely you don't want me to go through the motions without really--"

The rabbi smiled. "Do you remember what the Israelites said at Sinai? 'We shall do and we shall hear.' Their choice of syntax was meaningful, Rosa. They were expressing their willingness to do God's will before they really understood it. That is the crucial lesson of the Sinaitic revelation--God doesn't need our perfect understanding or even our perfect faith. What he wants is our commitment, our actions."

It was raining by the time Rosa set off back to New York. The Monsey bus line wasn't working because of the holiday, so she had to take a taxi to Naunset three miles away and then catch a Greyhound. When she got into the city she did not have enough money for another cab from the Port Authority, so she walked ten blocks in the rain to the GirlPower show, which was being held on Thirty-second Street. Members from the downtown and uptown divisions of the program were performing tonight, and in order to accommodate all the families and friends who were expected to attend, the program's director had hired out a shabby auditorium on the fifth floor of a commercial building. When Rosa arrived, the proceedings were already under way, and a girl was up on stage reading a poem.

You want to tell me how I should be

You always fussing and nagging at me

But I am a human bean and I need to be free.

To my heart, only I hold the key.

So go away fool, you aint the boss of me.

Rosa's heart sank as she surveyed the room. Of the seventy folding chairs that had been set out, no more than twenty-five were occupied--at least seven of them by program workers. Raphael was in the front row, grinning madly at the girl onstage. When she finished, Rosa spotted him trying valiantly to fill out the thin applause by whooping and stamping his foot.

The next act was a group of girls giggling their way through a song about being true to themselves and following their dreams.

I am special, special, special, in my own way

I have so much to give and so much to say

If I try my best I know that I will win the day...

The bleak setting could not, it seemed to Rosa, have been better calculated to cast doubt on the song's cheerful sentiments. Here in this drafty, ugly hall, the poor odds of any of these resolutely unspecial girls winning the day were cruelly manifest.

Now it came time for Rosa's group to perform their dance number. She watched approvingly as her girls filed onto the stage in T-shirts and sweatpants. (After a long struggle, she had finally succeeded in vetoing the low-neck tank tops and miniskirts for which Chianti had lobbied.) When the music started, and the girls began to gyrate their pelvises, an expression of puzzlement appeared on Rosa's face. This was not the sugary pop anthem that had been agreed upon: it was a rap song. An obscene rap song. And every one of the more provocative moves that she had personally excised from the routine during rehearsals had been reinserted. She looked over at Raphael, who was standing up, clapping in time to the music. She felt a flash of anger, succeeded by a slow wave of tired resignation. It didn't matter. None of it really mattered. She closed her eyes as the girls bent over and wagged their buttocks at the audience.

Gimme your booty, cutie
.

Shortly before the song ended, she slipped from the room. She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Raphael shouting after her.

"Where are you going, Rosa?"

"Home!" she shouted back.

"Wait!" He caught up with her on the ground floor. "You can't go yet. You haven't even congratulated the girls! They'll be really bummed if you just disappear."

Rosa smiled as she pushed the front door open. "I'm sure they'll understand if I don't congratulate them on
that
performance."

"Oh, come on," Raphael said, following her out onto the rainy street. "They just changed back a few things. Don't sulk about it."

"I'm not sulking. I just--I'm not in the mood to pat them on the back."

"It's not all about your
mood
. They've achieved something that means a lot to them, and they need to know that you're proud."

"But I'm
not
. I'm not proud. They danced a nasty little pornographic dance not very well. What's to be proud of?"

Raphael uttered a low growl of exasperation. "Would you get off your high horse for a second? It doesn't actually
matter
whether you liked their performance or not. The idea is to give these girls some self-esteem."

"I understand. But don't they have to do something estimable first?"

People hurried past, glancing at them as they stood in the downpour.
They must think we're lovers
, Rosa thought.
Only lovers would be passionate enough to argue in the rain
. She felt a sudden urge to call an end to hostilities, to have Raphael hug her and laugh fondly at her seriousness, but there seemed no way to change tack now.

"I don't get you," Raphael said. "I really don't. You say you want to help these girls, but the truth is you don't seem to actually
like
any of them. You go on about how crappy their lives are going to be--about their 'class destiny'--but you never give them an inch. If they're not going to get scholarships to Bronx Science, you consider them lost. Doesn't it wear you out, being so fucking judgmental all the time?"

She gave an odd, rueful laugh. "Yes, it does a bit."

"I'm glad you think this is funny."

She shook her head, "I don't, I'm sorry. It was just..." She looked down the rain-veiled street.

"Look, I wish I could be like you, Raphael. I wish I could feel confident that I was doing something useful with this work. But I don't. It frustrates me. It
depresses
me." She sighed with the relief of saying it at last.

"Well, then fuck off, why don't you?" Raphael shouted suddenly. "These girls deserve better. There are plenty of people who'd be thrilled to have your job and who wouldn't spend the whole time bringing everyone down with their shitty attitude. You're always dissing the way everyone else lives their life, but hello? What's so great about yours?"

She nodded. "You're right. I need to help myself before I can try to help others."

He turned away, contemptuously. "I mean it, Ro. Just fuck off. You don't belong here."