The Outsider (3 page)

“I guess it depends on what you expect,” David said awkwardly.

“Oh? Oh, yes. Well, do make yourself comfortable here while I shower and change. Martin will be here any moment. Please get the door when he rings.”

“She's a dope,” Lucy whispered when Shelly had gone upstairs. “Don't look much like a rabbi! She must take stupid pills every morning. Myself, I must have been taking invisible pills. She didn't even know I was here.”

“She's trying hard to be nice. She's flustered.”

“All over you.”

“And you respond by being the sweet, pleasant person I know you to be.”

“Absolutely. And who's Martin? She doesn't go into details. That's not her husband, is it?”

“No. Her husband's Jack. Just be patient. We'll soon see.”

Immobile patience was not for Lucy. She prowled around the living room, a large comfortable place that had been created by knocking down walls and putting two rooms of the old farmhouse together.

“Whoever did it has a kind of taste,” Lucy admitted. “It's got that museum look. Maybe she has a brain in her head.”

The doorbell rang. Since no one else appeared, Lucy went to answer it. There on the doorstep stood a tall, skinny man of about forty or forty-two, straw-colored hair, a bony face, very pale blue eyes, and a long chin. He wore a turtleneck sweater under an old jacket, and he regarded Lucy quizzically but with pleasant admiration.

“I'm Martin Carter,” he said, “and you must be Lucy Hartman, and that must be the rabbi, there behind you.”

“Bingo,” Lucy admitted. “You know everything about us. What about you?”

Reaching past Lucy, David shook hands with the man, who said quickly, “Forgive me. I thought they told you. I'm Carter, the Congregational minister here in Leighton Ridge.”

They all moved into the living room, and from above, Shelly Osner called down, “Martin, introduce yourself and explain. I'll be down in two shakes of a lamb's tail.”

“What's to explain?” David wondered.

“Depends on how much they told you. I mean about the synagogue?”

“Only that it's falling apart,” Lucy put in.

“Oh, yes. I'm afraid so, except that the roof doesn't leak, which is a positive note. You see, it's a hundred and seventy years old, give or take a few years.” And seeing the expression on David's face, he added hastily, “No, they didn't tell you. We sold them the old Congregational church. I mean, to your committee. It's a very good buy, you know, comes with eight acres and adjoins the old parsonage.”

“You mean they bought your church to use as a synagogue?”

“I do hope that doesn't break some law or synagogue ruling or anything of that sort. I was sure they investigated, and you know, it was a very important lesson for our congregation. You would have hoped that after the war and all that went with it, there'd be some understanding among my people of what anti-Semitism actually is. Not so. I had to preach a real hellfire and brimstone sermon — which is not my style at all — to break down the resistance of two of the deacons.”

“No, there's nothing wrong with it,” David said. “Churches become synagogues, and synagogues become churches. It's been going on for a long time. I just didn't know about it. Of course, I'm very new. And I suppose the parsonage is where we'll live?”

“Much better shape than the church, thank heavens. I'm sure you know a good deal about Congregationalists, Rabbi —”

“I'm sure he does,” Lucy put in. “I don't.”

“Well, we must all have a good long talk about that one day, perhaps an interfaith service of some kind. You know, Mrs. Hartman, we're the closest thing to your faith in Protestantism. Not that that doesn't leave a wide gulf, but we are the direct descendants of the Puritans, and we've marched with some pretty good banners. We came into being in a jailhouse in fifteen sixty-six, but that's a long story for another time. Meanwhile, welcome to Leighton Ridge, and anything I can do to smooth things over — well, just let me know.”

At that moment, Shelly Osner appeared, dressed now in a bright plaid skirt and a white cashmere sweater set. “Martin, have you bothered with names? Rabbi Hartman is David Hartman, and his wife is Lucy.”

“Done. Thought of it the moment I entered.”

“And now, for heaven's sake, don't scare them off. We've had enough trouble finding a rabbi. Shall we take my car or yours?”

“Yours is larger,” Carter said.

David was watching Lucy. He was intrigued by the fact that he knew absolutely nothing at all about this girl he had married, and even more intrigued by the amount he was learning and the speed at which he was amassing this knowledge. He was aware of her distaste for people who talked across her, and he wondered whether he would have to live with the fact of Lucy and Shelly Osner as intractable antagonists. Martin Carter was another matter entirely, and David had met and lived with, during his time in the army, enough Protestant ministers to understand that the cheerful, good-sport, playing-field manner was almost a part of their training, less a self-imposed image than an actual segment of character. Yet it failed to be a statement of Martin Carter's inner self. On this first contact, David liked him, but David did not easily exercise dislike. When there was some question of character, he would advise himself, rather sternly, to wait and see.

Rolling along in the car, David in back with Lucy and Carter in the front seat with Shelly Osner, who was driving, Carter said, “Forgive me if I come off like some sort of tour-guide bore, but since they didn't bother to tell you that your synagogue is our old church, I can't imagine that they bothered to tell you much of anything about Leighton Ridge.”

“Truthfully, my coming here was all done very quickly through Rabbi Belsen, who's in charge of placement at the Institute. He was my prof in comparative religion when I was a student there, and when one asked him a question, he would sometimes say, ‘Go find the answer. God gave you eyes and brains. Use them.' I suppose he took the same attitude about my appointment here.”

“And did you inform yourself?”

“Not very much, no. I found out that Captain Leighton had been given this place as a royal grant some years before the American Revolution. Not much more.”

“There isn't very much more, you know, except that we do have the reputation of being the most New England town in Fairfield County, that is, in the picture postcard sense: beautiful old Colonial buildings, amazing stone walls, and an absolutely delightful landscape, except in winter, when it turns monstrous.”

“Oh, the winters aren't so bad,” Shelly said. “Great for snuggling down under the covers and doing what one does under the covers.”

Carter laughed.

“Silly bitch,” Lucy whispered into David's ear.

“Population just about four thousand,” Carter went on. “A mixed bag, some families who have had their holdings since the old, old days — I might mention that once there was a good deal of small manufacturing here on the Ridge, using our plentiful water power, but when electricity came in, that washed out. No more manufacturing, but people live here who have plants in Danbury. Some commuters to New York, some young folks, writers, artists, potters, people who don't have to commute, a very mixed bag, and a good shot of bigotry thrown in. We're famous for our book-burning, which comes about almost yearly when some righteous, pious citizen finds something in his child's textbook that he objects to. Then he raises the very devil, and demands that the book be removed. And then practically the whole town packs into the new church — the largest hall in town — hanging from the rafters so as to speak, and we go at it hammer and tongs.”

“That sounds pretty healthy,” David said.

“It is. We're pretty well split down the middle, and that keeps the mental hoodlums in line.”

“Why did you sell the old church?” David wondered.

“Not big enough. Also, not stylish enough for the current congregation. You know, David — you don't mind if I call you that, and you must call me Martin — people have very rigid ideas about the past. One of them is that all New England Congregational churches were built without steeples. Well, most were, because a congregation of stiff-necked Puritans regarded the steeple as part of a Papist plot to undermine Congregationalism. Some of these early churches wouldn't even permit a cross in their church, or permit it to be called a church. It was a meeting house. Well, a group of that persuasion built our old church in seventeen seventy-three. They had come over here from Rhode Island, where the citizens had permitted the construction of a small Catholic church as well as a Jewish synagogue, and when they built our church, they abjured the steeple and built a small boxlike affair instead. Well, my current congregation wanted a steeple — as they put it, a proper church steeple. Anyway, the old meeting house was too small. It can hold two hundred people, but only if they're squeezed in like sardines.”

Yet when they pulled up in front of the building, David was struck by the simple beauty of the old church or meeting house. There was a sort of magical relationship between wall and window, and, strangely, one did not miss the steeple.

“It's a good, solid structure,” Carter said. “It's framed with six-by-six oak beams —” He opened the door and let them file in, and then pointed to the beamed ceiling. “There, you can see the beams. No rot. Of course, it needs painting and new glass where the windows are boarded over, and you might want to do a few things inside, but essentially, it's all there.”

“It's a fine building,” David admitted. He had been a bit anxious over the possibility that there might be stained glass windows, but there were none, and he said softly, “Very
frum,
those who built it.
Very frum
indeed.”

“Oh?”

“
Frum
— means very Orthodox, very strict in observance of the law. The old folks in the old country
were frum.
They would have looked upon me, a rabbi of the Reform movement, as an agent of the devil.”

“I imagine the people who built this place were not so different,” Carter said. “Very
fruw
, as you put it. Proper. In our new church, we have a large brass cross behind the altar and a very healthy steeple. So you can imagine what my Puritan ancestors would have thought of that.”

“
Frum,
” Shelly said. “What an interesting word.”

“As if she never heard it before,” Lucy said under her breath, marching up the aisle to the altar. “Can we use this?” she asked David. “This old church. Is it proper?”

“The
bimah
is all right. And the altar? Proper? Sure, why not?”

“
Bimah
?”

“The step up. The platform at the front.”

“I'm getting an interesting education.”

“And I'm getting chilled,” Shelly said.

“Just a few minutes more,” Carter assured her. “I must show them the parsonage. It's small but pleasant,” he assured Lucy. “Millie — that's my wife, Millicent — Millie and I would be living there, except that she's a local girl, and her parents passed away and left her their house. Big house, and we need it, with our kids.” He led them across the lawn to the parsonage, a small white clapboard Colonial house; living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs, and then narrow stairs up to three bedrooms. It was sparsely furnished with old maple and pine pieces, and there were rag rugs on the floors.

The two of them together were alone upstairs for a minute or so, and David asked Lucy what she thought of it.

“Beats me. I'm a stranger here, David.”

“So am I. But I've been a stranger on earth since the first two Christian kids jumped me and beat the hell out of me. It's something you get used to, and in a way it has its advantages.”

“Tell me about it some time.”

“When we have more time.”

“And meanwhile we worship in a Christian church and live in a Christian house and make love in a Christian bed — unless you bring up your mother's bed. This is lumpy.”

“We'll bring up Mom's bed. And I don't think buildings partake of either faith or prejudice. Anyway, you're an atheist, so you shouldn't mind.”

“I'm a Jewish atheist.”

“Right. I'll try to remember that.”

Washing for dinner that evening, in the guest bathroom of the Osner house, Lucy said to David, “Maybe I shouldn't dislike that pissy Shelly Osner so much. After all, she bounced around with us all afternoon and then got out dinner for how many?”

“Eight, I believe.”

“Eight. And I'll bet it's delicious,” Lucy said unhappily. “I'm a lousy cook, David. I've kept that from you because I never had to cook anything for you.”

“Scrambled eggs this morning. Delicious.”

“That's not cooking. And the Osners are putting us up for the night. That's kind of nice. I guess I have a lot of quick, dumb opinions.”

“No. You're sensitive and you're worried. I guess I am too. I guess neither of us has ever been in a situation like this before, and if you feel that you can't hack it, tell me. It's not irreversible.”

“David, they sent me down to a U.S.O. in Georgia. I spent six months there. If I could take that, I can take anything. And I kind of like that little house. I always wanted to live in a parsonage, ever since going on a Brontë bender at age fifteen. And I'll tell you something else, that sweet little house isn't insulated, and it appears to have some kind of primitive hot-air heating system, and everyone's been boasting about the wonderful cold winters — so we're going to have lots of fun trying to stay warm. Did you ever hear of bundling? That's an old New England
mishegas
I read about somewhere —”

“I think we'd better go down to dinner,” David said firmly.