The Saturday Wife (30 page)

Then she thought: fund-raising.

That had all kinds of fun possibilities. Dressing up in fabulous new clothes and having your hair professionally colored and styled in order to hit the malls for free “favors,” getting jewelry and nice clothes and vacations donated for raffle tickets. There was only one main problem. You had to have something to raise money for.

Well, Israel, of course. There was always someone over there who was recovering from some horrible outrage, physical or emotional. Poor kids. Better: poor Black Jewish kids. Hospitals. Terror victims. Better: poor terror victims just out of hospitals who were unemployed, divorced, or widowed with children (two terror victims!) with empty refrigerators. Victims of left-wing government atrocities who’d had their homes bulldozed, the same homes that previous left-wing governments had built with other charity money.

Whatever. Israel was a gold mine.

But then, like any gold mine, you had many miners: The six-figure salaried professionals in expensive suits from United Jewish Communities and Israel Bonds, people whose expense accounts and cushy business-class trips and overnight stays at fancy hotels were on the line. People with motivation. Or the powerhouse women volunteers from Hadassah. People who knew what they were doing, who had experience and connections.

A rank amateur couldn’t very well compete with them and win. Besides, when she dropped the idea casually on Solange Malin, her reaction had been pointed and hostile: Perhaps if the rebbitzin had time on her hands, she might consider fund-raising for the shul. Yeah, to raise the rabbi’s salary. Talk about worthy causes! But you couldn’t very well consider that a
chesed
project, now could you?

“Too tacky, even for us.” Chaim shook his head.

So, there she was, with no acceptable
chesed
project. And she the rabbi’s wife, the community role model for sainthood.

It bore down on her, the weight of unmet expectations, of disappointed desires, of unearned admiration. She wanted desperately to make a good impression.

She knew that Chaim had not been their first choice. That they’d wanted the grandson of the legendary European rabbi who had founded the famous Yeshiva. As it turned out, the community who’d won him, had gotten much more—or much less—than they’d bargained for. He’d wound up embroiling them in a major scandal involving after-hours rabbinical “counseling” to widows, divorcees, and, yes, married women in good standing. He would have gone on his merry way if one hadn’t become obsessed, stalking him wherever he went, so that even his wife, Rebbitzin Clueless, finally had to wake up and say, Whoa. Now lawyers and lawsuits were pelting them like hail.

So, as she saw it, Chaim had been quite a bargain. For aside from not being particularly bright, and not really having all that much to contribute to his congregation’s spiritual life, he was basically harmless. He told some good jokes and didn’t make enemies by pushing unpleasant agendas, like forcefully denouncing intermarriages or scolding people for not sending their kids to Israeli summer programs. He was happy to give eulogies and make short speeches at Bar and Bat Mitzvas—in which he invented Nobel Prize-winning accomplishments and character traits for twelve-and thirteen-year-olds. As far as she could tell, he was well liked by most everyone except the chronic complainers, who exist in every shul filled with unreasonable expectations, who wanted a rabbi who is a mentor, a leader, blah, blah.

As if. Congregations didn’t want leaders; they wanted shleppers, rabbis who were always scurrying to catch up with their fickle needs. Today, they wanted the women called up to the Torah. Tomorrow, they’d want sushi at shul events. The next day they’d want armed guards with Uzis to roam the shul complex… and the rabbi was expected to fall in and support the powers that be. Except that those powers were always shifting.

Their lives, she realized, were built on beach sand. And she, no less than he, was responsible for keeping the powers that be from washing them out to sea.

The unexpected situation she had fallen into by becoming the wife of a rabbi had dawned on Delilah in stages. Stage one, she had been filled with the romantic illusions carefully nurtured in the classrooms of her youth, places where rabbis and rabbis’ wives held sway. Life, they’d explained, was to be lived in order to earn great rewards that could only be cashed in after you died, in the “next life.” A woman, unable to earn much spiritual change on her own with the measly religious duties that fell her
way—drops from the great ocean that washed over the men—could nevertheless increase her bottom line by supporting her husband’s myriad religious duties. And the greater the husband, the more credit the wife earned. The wife of a rabbi who was a scholar, head of a great congregation, a leader of men, never had to worry about her spot in the World to Come. It would be an orchestra seat, center stage.

For this, sacrifices had to be made. Like not being able to express yourself freely, having to dress and behave like a dowdy pious matron. Most of all, you had to defer to your husband, helping to feed the myth that every word that fell from his mouth was a pearl of wisdom.

And then came stage two, the realization that a rabbi was just a man, a husband, who had his moments, good and bad, all that Talmud study notwithstanding. That when he pronounced “too much salt in the kugel” or “that dress seems a little too tight around the hips,” it was not the word of God. That he was capable of locking himself in his study for hours to compose a sermon about the virtues of compassion, kindness, and peacemaking, only to emerge and threaten the rowdy kids next door with bodily harm if they didn’t shut up.

But, then, there were also the times when she saw him secretly donate money from his own pocket to help out divorced moms, or send kids to summer camp, or pull strings to get teens into rehab centers. Times when she felt she might actually be earning World-to-Come credits by supporting him and being part of his work.

And then came the last stage in which the shocking realization dawned that, like it or not, she had no choice: being married to the rabbi, she, too, was an employee of the shul. It was two for the price of one. A package deal. The salary he was paid, and the good life they enjoyed, devolved on her shoulders as well.

She looked out to the back porch where her mother was sitting, with its view of the forests and backyard swings. At first, just the idea of a backyard and front yard, of your own trees and plants, had made her so happy, she’d find herself just sitting outside, tearing up over her good fortune. But now, she was already beginning to feel the small ping of discontent. The beautiful lake view was blocked. The backyard was adequate but small. There was no swimming pool. No Jacuzzi. No sauna.

And while the bedroom was three times the size of the one they’d had in the city, their bathroom had one sink, not two, and it was tiled with
plain-colored tiles, nothing imported from Spain or Mexico or Portugal. The refrigerator was a Westinghouse, not a Sub-Zero.

Despite the twinges of discontent, Delilah was still telling herself that she was happy. And in many ways, she was.

Why, just that morning she had lain in bed examining the cards and gifts that had not stopped pouring in. There was a gorgeous sequined diaper bag by Isabella Fiore from Mariette Rolland, who had exquisite taste in everything. The Malins had sent over a classic pram, navy and white patent leather with an adjustable backrest, an air flow adjustment device, and a genuine porcelain medallion, a gift of the congregation. The Grodins had sent over their novelty bears, about ninety-five different models, while the Borenbergs had sent clothing by Minimun, which, someone had explained to Delilah, looked ordinary but cost a fortune.

Despite her sore body, she’d leaned back, sighing with satisfaction and happiness. Even though she was married to a man who catered to the needs of endless strangers, people who claimed and received his time, energy, worry, and interest twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, she felt she could make her marriage, and her life, work in a place like Swallow Lake.

“Why don’t you ask some of the women tonight about a suitable
chesed
project? Maybe they’ll have an idea,” Chaim had suggested that morning. She’d stared at him, stunned. Finally, her husband had a good idea. This alone, she thought, was worth a celebratory dinner.

SEVENTEEN

T
he Grodins arrived first, bearing a bottle of expensive wine. Amber was a large woman who wore custom-made clothes that seemed to float over her body benignly, giving away no secrets. Like many heavy women, she had a strikingly lovely face that people bemoaned, as if it were a tragedy. “Such a shame!” they’d say. “Such a beautiful face! If only she could lose a little weight, she’d be such a knockout.” Since Amber had been overweight from the age of thirteen months, she had been waiting her entire life for someone to call her beautiful without an addendum.

Her husband, Stuart, was equally heavy and gave the impression of being a laid-back guy with a killer sense of humor. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Far from being easygoing and self-satisfied, he was the opposite: a kind of fat Richard Dreyfuss in
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,
constantly looking for a new angle to exploit, seeing in every social relationship the hidden opportunity for scoring.

Whenever he was together with the rich birds in his neighborhood, he
never ceased hoping they’d molt when he was around, leaving behind some golden feather he could scavenge and cash in. Sometimes it was a stock tip, but often it was just the small talk that went on between very wealthy men, about investment advisers and commodities and real estate opportunities. He lunged for the information like a Venus flytrap, before anyone could catch on.

He was always a little nervous around people like the Malins, feeling that he was a fake, a one-trick pony, who had had some luck that could always peter out. He and Amber had been in the novelty business for years—producing instantly breakable and forgettable objects—until they hit the jackpot with the bears.

“Delilah, sweetheart, mazel tov! Let me see the baby… . Oh, Stuart, look at this baby!” Amber cooed, looking him over. They had one grown son who lived in Miami whom no one had ever seen. There didn’t seem to be a daughter-in-law in the offing or a grandchild on the horizon.

“Cute,” Stuart agreed, giving the baby a quick little look over, then nervously canvassing the room. “Are we the first?”

Delilah nodded. “But they’ll be home from shul soon. Please, sit down.”

She didn’t offer them anything, because traditionally one didn’t eat or drink Friday nights before hearing kiddush over the wine, which would only take place when the rabbi walked in and the meal began.

The Borenbergs came next. Felice was in her late forties, but you would never have guessed it. She was tiny and wore her hair down her back almost to her waist, like a fairy princess. The cost of dye necessary to keep it that shade of platinum could have put a deserving student through medical school, Amber once snickered to Solange, who was only too happy to join in, resenting the woman’s overt sexiness along with everything else about Felice.

Women of a certain age, Amber and Solange were in whispered agreement, should cut their hair to a sensible length instead of running around like Venus on the half shell. Whenever Felice walked into the women’s section, the two of them—and many many others—seethed at the way the head of every man in the synagogue turned to look at her. Men never realized how tacky that kind of behavior was, Solange and Amber agreed. But they never said any of these things to her face because Felice was constantly throwing the most wonderful parties in her exquisite home. She always had the best cook, the most wonderful gardener and florist, the most
efficient and pleasant household help that stayed with her for years. Amber and Solange would have been devastated to be cut from her guest list.

Felice was also a terror on the StairMaster and never skipped her private pilates and yoga sessions, giving her the figure of a junior high school cheerleader. That was bad enough. But what was truly unforgivable was that she had actually founded the multimillion-dollar company that allowed her to maintain her lifestyle at Swallow Lake, rather than having married the man who did.