D
elilah, the phone has been ringing off the hook. I have had at least twelve different people in the synagogue call me up, furious. You aren’t returning phone calls! You aren’t giving me their messages! You aren’t taking their envelopes, or answering their questions, or discussing their matchmaking needs! They say you are rude. That you’ve stopped inviting people over, that you aren’t going out into the community enough, making enough of an effort to attract new members to join the synagogue.”
Delilah listened, her face impassive. When he was finished, she looked up calmly. “I’m really, really sorry to hear that, Chaim. I have some suggestions for them. Why don’t you tell them all that they can just kiss my mezuzah!”
“Delilah!”
She leaned back indifferently, taking out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one up, and blowing large smoke rings toward the ceiling. She’d taken up
smoking again. She was trying to imitate Joie, how she held a cigarette, the way she tilted her head
hack just so,
exhaling with world-weary ennui.
Chaim’s arms waved frantically, dispersing the smoke in all directions. “And what is this with the smoking already? If you don’t care about yourself, think about me, about the baby, for goodness’ sake. You’re filling
our
lungs with tar and nicotine deposits too.”
“So, I’ll smoke outside.”
“Please, Delilah. What’s gotten into you? The shul has been so generous. They’ve paid for household help, a babysitter, and time off. Is this how you show your appreciation? Be fair!”
“Fair? You want
me
to be fair? Tell me this, Chaim, while we’re talking about being fair. How fair is it that some women get husbands who buy them Harry Winston diamond bracelets and some get men who grit their teeth when they shell out fifty-nine ninety-nine for gold earrings at Macy’s during the Presidents’ Day sales? How fair is it that some wives have cooks and chauffeurs, and—oh, four or five maids, and some have to beg and be grateful for four hours of housecleaning a week, if that much? That some women get their hair colored in Frederic Fekkai, and some do it themselves over the bathroom sink?”
She threw back her head, took another deep puff, and exhaled, studying Chaim through the haze of smoke, watching as his body and face faded, becoming blurry and indistinct, like some screen saver disappearing from a computer screen. Who was this guy, she thought, surprised, this person she was tied to for the rest of her life, who didn’t provide her with a single thing she really wanted?
“Delilah, what’s gotten into you?” Chaim shouted, astonished.
She didn’t want to be a rabbi’s wife, she suddenly realized. She wanted to be the wife of a rich man who would spoil her, the way all the women in her congregation were spoiled. The way Joie Shammanov was spoiled. Why did she have to be the good one, the moral one, the kind one, the generous one, the hard worker, the woman of virtue? Had she ever pretended to have
any
of these qualities, ever valued them, or aspired toward them, like the goody-goodies in Cedar Heights, the ones with the calf-length skirts who stayed after school for extra brainwashing in
mussar
and how to improve your judgmental skills and guilt quotient? No, it was all just a big accident, a big celestial joke—and it was on her, she realized.
“They are complaining that you are spending all your time with Mrs. Shammanov—who isn’t even a member of our congregation—doing who
knows what: neglecting the congregation, not to mention your family. That you are acting like some airhead high school girl. It’s got to stop!”
Finally, miraculously, she was having a little fun, enjoying the pleasures she would only get to have in this life vicariously if at all, and there was a conspiracy afoot to deprive her even of that! She stubbed out the cigarette viciously into the carpet. “Look, get this through your skullcap. Joie Shammanov is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Why should I give her up—give any of it up? So that you can keep on playing social worker, psychiatrist, and Catskills entertainer to a bunch of self-indulgent whining
mâchers
and their wives who treat us both like low-level employees? They may own you, but they don’t own me.”
Just then, the phone rang. Chaim picked it up.
“Hello, Solange, how are you? . . . Good, good. Yes, well
now
is really
not
a good… Of course, of course. I understand. She’s right here. I’ll put her on.” Apprehensively, he handed Delilah the phone.
Please,
his eyes implored.
“Solange, Delilah here… . Well, let me just interrupt you, Solange, to tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that the sisterhood meeting should really go back to being at the synagogue where it belongs… . Oh, you like it better in someone’s house? Well, then, Solange, maybe you can have it at yours. And while you’re at it, you can get your chef and five slaves to decide the menu and the theme, and cook it and serve it and clean up afterward. And then the sisterhood can check out
your
hair dye and steal
your
plates!” She slammed down the phone.
Chaim went white.
They didn’t speak for three days. And then Chaim came home early. He brought a bottle of wine, some flowers, lit some candles, brought in take-out someone had picked up for him especially from the Broadway Deli in Manhattan: Delilah’s favorite restaurant, he remembered. He arranged for a babysitter. “Come, let’s have a quiet dinner and talk, Delilah,” he coaxed her.
He sat down across from her. They ate in silence. “Delilah, I’ve straightened it out. I called Arthur Malin. He is such a mensch. And he knows Solange can be a bit of a character—”
“Shes a
klafta.
”
He took a deep breath. “Now, now, don’t be unkind, dear.”
Chaim groveled. He apologized. He explained. He was as nice and understanding as he could possibly be. He even apologized for not having
thought himself of moving the sisterhood meetings back to the shul or somewhere else. He even, in the end, agreed, that Solange Malin was, and had always been, a
klafta.
Delilah listened wordlessly, amazed. “Well, I have to say this for you: you’re trying.”
He certainly was. After an emergency call from Arthur, the two men had sat together and decided the best course to take. He was now taking it.
“I have an idea, my dear.”
OK, she thought, putting down her pastrami on rye, which brought back some mixed memories. She swallowed and tapped her mouth with a napkin, all the better to open it good and wide if circumstances should so require.
“Maybe you could influence the Shammanovs to join our synagogue. The board would be thrilled. Everyone has been dying to meet them. And then, perhaps, if the Shammanovs became more active, in a little while I could ask for a raise, and all the other things… . We would be able to afford more household help, child care—”
“You want me to talk them into coming to our synagogue?!”
“Yes, why not? Didn’t you tell me there is a boy who is almost Bar Mitzva age?”
“But they’re not religious at all! She’s a convert!”
“Think about it, Delilah. I know you’ve become her friend. Now, as her friend, wouldn’t you be helping her by bringing her and her family closer to their roots, their heritage? The Jewish people are strengthened every time another family joins a synagogue and becomes part of the community. And of course, I admit it, this would be such a good thing for us—for the synagogue, of course—but not just that. Even rich people can be lonely. Why don’t you invite them over for Friday-night dinner? We’ll invite the board. You can even have it catered if it’s too much for you to manage.”
Somewhere inside she understood that all this was perfectly reasonable. But the truth was, she felt stingy about sharing her friend, about destroying the special relationship they shared. Most of all, she didn’t want to introduce Joie Shammanov to Rebbitzin Levi; she wanted to keep the two worlds separate.
“Please, Delilah?”
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him squarely. “Chaim, I also have an idea. How would you feel about not being a rabbi?”
He looked at her blankly. “Not be a rabbi? What would I be then?”
“Well, you could be many things. A businessman, for example.”
“I don’t know anything about business.”
“What’s there to know? Do these people look like such geniuses to you? Listen to this business: You go to some clothing line, you know, some jeans manufacturer, Diesel.”
“Diesel?”
“Or another one, whatever,” she said irritably. Was it Joie or her mother who had told her all about this? Never mind, she told herself. Even Marilyn knew something some of the time. “It doesn’t matter. And you buy the rights to the name. And then you get some cheap belts or watches from some factory in China, and get them to put Diesel on it, or any other name, and you sell it in all the big department stores. You just have to tell them how to make the watch or the belt look. And that’s easy. I could do that myself.”
“You want me to be a watchmaker?” He shrugged helplessly.
“You are totally missing the point! What I’m saying is that these business ideas are a dime a dozen. They are easy. You just have to understand how to do it. You need a friend in the business world to help you get started. I’m sure Mr. Shammanov—” She had never actually met the elusive husband of her friend, but Chaim didn’t have to know that.
“But I don’t want to be a businessman, Delilah, I want to be a rabbi. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wouldn’t be good at anything else.” He cradled his head in his hands, his shoulders round with defeat. “Delilah, what do you want me to do?”
This simple question, asked in all innocence, which should have touched her heart and filled her with remorse and pity, alas, did just the opposite.
“To do
? What do I want you
to do
? Well, I’ll tell you. For starters, I want you to put up office hours and unlist our home phone. I want you to get a day off every two weeks so we can go somewhere together. I want you to arrange for more than a measly one-week vacation during the summer. I want you to demand they get a junior rabbi to take over the youth minyan and the Bar Mitzva program!”
He lifted his head and stared at her. “Are you deliberately trying to get me fired? Is that it? Because if you are, you’d better think about it. I took this job because you wanted me to. And when I did, I became a pariah. If I need another job, I’ve got the mark of Cain on my forehead. We’ll wind up in some tiny community with no Jewish school and a twenty-member
congregation that meets in our basement. You’ll be baking all the cakes and making
cholent
for the entire congregation every Saturday. And everyone will have to stay with us until the Sabbath is over because it will be too cold and too far for them to walk home. Heck, they might sleep over Friday nights too, with their entire families.”
She listened to him in horror, her heart skipping a beat. “No one is going to fire you. I mean”—she hesitated—”what makes you think that? You are doing well, aren’t you? I mean, I haven’t heard anything—”
“Delilah, you aren’t listening. There is a whole group that wants to get rid of me. They never wanted me in the first place. Some say I’m not serious enough. Not enough of a scholar. Not bright enough. And the others are complaining I’m too serious. They are furious I closed down the kiddush Club, that custom they had of going out before the Torah reading and finishing off a few bottles of Scotch and then staggering back in.”
“Why did you close it down?”
“Well, remember that Shabbes when I said ‘How are you?’ to Selwyn Goldbart and he said, ‘F—you?’ Whereupon I reminded him that the traditional greeting was Good Shabbes?”
She nodded.
“That’s when I decided the drinking had to stop.”
“I don’t see why that means
I
have to do things differently.”
“Because”—he paused ominously—”I’m not the only one they’re complaining about.”
There was silence, the information sinking in with a large thud.
“You mean to say—after all I’ve been doing—that they’ve still been… someone has been complaining… about me?”
“I kept defending you, but I can’t anymore. You haven’t offered to teach any classes for the women, your dresses are too short, and your wigs are too long. And you aren’t setting a good example to the other wives and mothers because of all the time you are spending having fun. Be realistic. All they need is a good excuse, and you are giving it to them.”
“So, after all I’ve put up with! And this is what they say about me?” A little plume of red smoke wafted in front of her eyes that wasn’t coming from her cigarette. “Who, exactly, did you hear this from?”
He shook his head and shrugged.
She grabbed him by the shirtfront. “Tell me!”
“Well, the Grodins.”
“Amber and Stuart? What’s their problem?”
“You aren’t taking an active enough role socially, to bring people together.”
“So he can pick their brains and empty their pockets. Who else?”
“Mariette.”
She was wounded. “Mariette?”
“Well, you never did follow through with the designer handbag thing—”
“I’ve been busy!”
“And Felice Borenberg mentioned something to her husband about your wardrobe being inappropriate for the rabbi’s wife. And Solange said the same thing to Arthur.”
“They’re just jealous because I look so good,” she said, with no small measure of truth. Nevertheless, she felt a stab of panic. The entire board was complaining about her! What would she do if they fired Chaim? If she had to leave Swallow Lake, just now, when everything was going so well? Where would they go?
She studied her perfect manicure.
Why, those little shits, she thought. Who did they think they were dealing with,
mikva
-pure Shira Metzenbaum? Maybe one day she and Chaim would walk off into the sunset into something far more lucrative and less intrusive. But no one was going to send them packing, not if she could help it.
She thought of the dinner party she would arrange and the phone call to Solange Malin she would have to make. She considered how she would introduce the board to Viktor and Joie, and how on a visit to their home she would give the women of Swallow Lake something to drool over that would fill their hearts with discontent and their minds with greedy visions of what was possible, if only their husbands could approach the wealth of the Shammanovs. They would never again be happy with their 3,000 square feet once they saw the Shammanov’s 45,000 square feet, their acres of lakefront property, their Japanese gardens. If she never accomplished another thing, that was an experience she felt sure would do their souls good (she knew it would do
her
soul good). And if Joie and Viktor really did become active members of the synagogue, they would no doubt be invited to join the board, replacing some of the others. And then no one would dare
to
criticize her or even suggest firing Chaim.