The Saturday Wife (15 page)

A
nd so, a little over five months after Chaim’s shirt-button sermon, as they were walking home after yet another shiva call (they’d been averaging one or two a month), Delilah turned to her new husband and said, “I can’t stand this anymore.”

Chaim looked at his new bride, astonished. “What’s wrong?”

She turned her ring around her finger nervously. “What’s
right
? This shul is falling apart, and the people are going with it. It’s going to bury us alive. And this crumby apartment in this old building. The Bronx! And the polluted air. I want my own house. A backyard for the children… .”

He stopped dead in his tracks, focusing only on her last words. Was she trying to tell him some happy news? Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful! His face lit up.

“Uff, don’t be an idiot! I’m not pregnant, and there is no way I’m getting pregnant in this neighborhood, in this apartment. A child in this shul would be like one of those wonders in Believe It or Not museums. I’m
tired of going to funerals! I’m tired of being nice to talkative old biddies who have nothing to do all day but crochet you sweaters that don’t fit and bake me cakes that would turn me into a fat old cow, just like them, if I ate a fraction of them!”

He looked crushed. Could this really be coming out of the mouth of his dear, delicate young wife? Such cruelty, such ungenerous words, about people who had done nothing but shower them with kindness? People who listened appreciatively to his sermons? Who treated Delilah like a favorite granddaughter? He stared down at the pavement, slowly putting one foot in front of the other.

Everything had been going so well, he’d thought. He’d been incredibly lucky to have a job so quickly. Most of his fellow classmates were still scrounging around for some teaching job in a yeshiva day school, which—if they were lucky—could be finessed into an assistant rabbi job five years down the line. He was already there, with a synagogue primed for him to take over.

And the apartment, what was wrong with the apartment? It was big enough for the two of them, after all. How much room did two people need? They even had an extra bedroom they were hardly using, a place for guests… . He glanced over at his wife, annoyed, then noticed two big tears snaking down her cheeks. He was alarmed, confused, his heart melting.

“Please, Delilah. Don’t.” He handed her a crumpled tissue. “What is it you want me to do?” he asked her helplessly.

“Find another job! Somewhere out of the city, in some nice little community with lots of pretty houses and trees.”

Chaim, who only a few months before had wanted nothing more than to do just that, was suddenly loath to consider the idea. Despite his earlier fears, he now found himself almost addicted to the easy adoration of this congregation. Their warmth and praise were a balm for his jittery fears of inadequacy, fears that had plagued him all during his rabbinical studies. Like a child cuddled in the bosomy warmth of maternal approval, the longer he stayed, the more reluctant he became even to consider wrenching himself away by sending out his résumé.

He was succeeding. He had as much money as he thought he needed. Why take chances? Besides, it was by no means certain there really was any other place out there that would be eager to take him in.

“I can’t believe you want me to give up my place in my grandfather’s
synagogue. Why, it would break his heart. Besides, when he retires, I’m in line to take over. I have no competition.”

“If they keep losing members at the rate they’re going, when
he
goes, there won’t be a congregation!”

“But I could attract new people, young people! Don’t you see? It’s a wonderful opportunity, Delilah! Besides, I’ve heard stories about how the boards of some synagogues treat their rabbis. You are constantly under their thumbs or they’ll cut off your head and cancel your contract. If you try to do your job, actually teach them something, deepen their observance, get them actively involved in supporting Israel, they get tired of you, and then they get annoyed, and then they get vengeful. And out you go, back on the unemployment line. At least here, we have Grandfather to stand buffer. They wouldn’t dare fire Reb Abraham’s grandson. We’re safe here, darling.”

“So, what are you telling me? That for the rest of my life all I have to look forward to is another roach-infested apartment in yet another Bronx walk-up? Is that it?”

What could he say to that? As long as he was connected to this synagogue, they would always have to live in a neighborhood within easy walking distance, because Orthodox Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath. “I’m sure we could find something nicer. Maybe not Riverdale, but something—”

“Riverdale is the only place in the Bronx worth living, and this synagogue is nowhere near Riverdale and never will be, and you know it! It’s in the Bronx. THE BRONX!” She raised her voice, causing passersby to pause a moment and look their way. They hurried forward in silence, waiting to continue in the privacy of their own home.

They drew the curtains and closed the windows.

“I didn’t marry you to live in some dusty slum! I have my own plans, my own dreams, and if you really loved me, you’d want me to be happy!”

“Of course I want you to be happy. But what in all of this didn’t you expect? I told you everything: about my grandfather and his synagogue and the offer he’d made me. We picked out this apartment together. I don’t understand you, Delilah! None of this was forced on you; you agreed to everything!”

Delilah was quiet, trying to think of a reply that wouldn’t make her the bad one, the selfish materialistic one. But she couldn’t. Everything Chaim
said was absolutely true. When faced with this reality, there was only one thing for her to do, one thing every wife can and must do when forced into such a corner:
change the subject.
The more irrelevant and unrelated the topic, the better, especially if it allows one to hurl hurtful truths that are sure to make one’s husband blow his top, saying things he’d never believe himself capable of, things that will appall him when he calms down, making him forget what the argument was about in the first place, and forcing him to beg forgiveness, eat dust, and crawl for a very long time.

“If he wasn’t your grandfather, they would have fired you already! Those sermons… . Buttons! Who wants to hear about buttons? The world is going up in smoke, terrorist attacks, natural disasters left and right, and you? You talk about buttons. Don’t you see how you put them all to sleep, even the ones who try to stay awake? You get away with it because they don’t dare fire you. You are just afraid to go to a place that will judge you like anybody else, a place where you’ll have to stand on your own two feet!”

Chaim turned white and sat down. “Is that what you really think? Is that really true?”

She was braced for insults, not immediate surrender. It was their first fight and his quick capitulation filled her with equal parts of regret and contempt. She calmed down, afraid she’d overplayed her hand. After all, the last thing she wanted was to undermine his confidence. How would that help her get on the fast track? “Oh, it was just that one sermon. You’ve been getting better, really, like last week—when you talked about the ten tribes… .” She only vaguely remembered that, since she automatically tuned him out whenever he got up to speak now.

He looked devastated, but it couldn’t be helped. She was entitled to the life she wanted. And it couldn’t be lived in a Bronx apartment as the wife of a rabbi who spent his time at funerals. “You have so much to give. You could change lives. The people here… their lives are behind them. You need to be in a place with young people, young families. You could do so much good.”

“They slept through it? Is that true?” he repeated, his eyes glassy, not hearing a word. Perhaps she was right. He
was
a dismal failure. He knew he
wasn’t all that
bright, but he had worked so hard. This was his first congregation, and they were used to his brilliant, pious grandfather. Still, he had thought he was holding his own. At least he hadn’t heard any complaints. But maybe they just didn’t want to hurt his grandfather’s feelings.
Perhaps all this time they too had been laughing at him behind his back, just like his wife.

Delilah and Chaim didn’t speak for the next few days, except for business.

“Pick up the challahs.”

“Don’t forget the dry cleaning.”

“Mrs. Farbish called and wants you to visit her husband in the hospital.”

The pangs of regret began to hit Delilah about the third day. She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done. She was sorry that this had been the result. Only one thing was worse than being stuck in this dump with Chaim; being stuck in it with a Chaim who wasn’t speaking to her.

She wanted things to go back to normal. She wanted things to change completely. What she needed, she thought, was a plan.

Rivkie and Josh, she thought.

She’d last seen them three months before at their wedding, which was held at a posh country club in Westchester. Josh was now assistant rabbi in a beautiful synagogue there, a place with seven hundred young families, all of them professionals who lived within walking distance of the synagogue. She was dying to see Rivkie’s house. And Josh had connections in the rabbinic and yeshiva world. He was from a rich prominent family. He might know which one of the jobs listed on Bernstein’s Rabbinic Alumnus Employment Bulletin would be willing to take Chaim, with the proper references, which clearly, as a friend, he would be able to supply. It wouldn’t be asking much. Just a little help. After all, Josh already had a job in some leafy suburb. Why would he begrudge the same to a dear, close friend like Chaim?

It wasn’t being needy and pushy, she told herself as she dialed Rivkie’s number. It was networking.

“I think we have no choice but to invite them,” Rivkie told Josh.

He put down his pen and looked up from his book. “Rivkie, you are such a wonderful, kind person, but really,
is
this necessary?”

Rivkie nodded. “Yes, I think it is.”

Delilah, who had made no effort to stay in touch since her wedding, had suddenly begun a relentless campaign to become her best friend. She called three times a week, long, rambling, intimate conversations about things Rivkie didn’t want to know. If the information had been about others,
Rivkie would have been able to beg off by truthfully claiming she didn’t listen to gossip. But as it was, Delilah was talking about herself. Her latest purchases. Her sex life. Her brilliant innovations in the wonderful classic old synagogue where her husband, Chaim, would soon take over as rabbi. And always, she had ended the calls by saying how much she missed Rivkie. How she was dying to come out and spend some time with her. This had been going on for weeks. Until finally, her facade of giddy success and self-congratulatory pride gone, replaced by raw misery, Delilah had said point-blank, “Chaim has next Shabbes off; can we come to you? If I spend one more weekend with these old folks, I’m going to get bunions and grow a mustache.”

“I can’t just blow her off. After all, we were their matchmakers.”

He shifted uncomfortably.

Chaim had never been a close friend, just an acquaintance for whom he—and most of his classmates—had felt a sort of undefined pity: he tried so hard, and achieved so little, always hanging on by his fingernails. Now he had married a girl with a checkered reputation, blond hair, and a pretty face, a girl whom no one—except Chaim—thought a suitable wife. It was like being forced to eat a dish full of bad ingredients prepared by a lousy chef simply because you’d lent someone a cookbook.

“Chaim is a fine person,” Josh said carefully.

“Apparently, he’s very unhappy with his job. It seems to be mostly with seniors.”

“Seniors are wonderful. I’ll take ten seniors for every teenager,” he grumbled.

He was sitting at the dining room table perusing a lengthy Talmudic discussion from which he planned to prepare a program for his teenage Saturday afternoon discussion group. They were a difficult bunch, full of questions, doubts, and heresies, especially the girls, who were a hard sell on anything to do with the place of women in the traditional Orthodox synagogue service. You couldn’t really blame them, since women had no place at all in the traditional Orthodox synagogue service, except as observers behind bars, lacy curtains, pretty wooden screens, or other inventive methods of keeping them at bay. Go explain that to intelligent teenage girls, many of whom were fluent in Hebrew from their expensive day school educations. Explain why they couldn’t read the Torah, couldn’t be called up for any of the shul honors, couldn’t even kiss the cover of the
Torah as it was paraded around the men’s section, barely visible to the women behind the partition.

The rabbi, who had tried a number of times to talk to this group, now refused to go back, as did the other two teachers hired for the Sunday school and Bar Mitzva program. As assistant rabbi and newcomer, the task had fallen to him. Just the thought of facing them filled him with aggravation. And now this.

“Why are they so desperate for our company all of a sudden? They haven’t been in touch for months.”