Til the Real Thing Comes Along (44 page)

When the door opened and the doctor entered, R.J. was surprised at how young he looked. Maybe he was in his early thirties,
not much more, with dark wavy hair and dark-brown eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. His face was very serious.

“Mrs. Rabinowitz?” he said to Rifke.

“Huh?” Rifke answered.

The doctor, who was used to people who had hearing problems, moved closer to Rifke and knelt near her chair so his face was
just below hers and he could look up into her eyes.

“I’m Doctor Feld,” he said, and R.J. had to stifle a laugh when Rifke, who had a mouthful of smoke and didn’t know what to
do with it, let it go right in his face.

The doctor didn’t flinch. “I’ve looked at the results of your tests,” he went on. “I’m going to examine you now. All right?”
Rifke nodded. “So,” he said, “perhaps you should put out your cigarette.”

Rifke held the cigarette up above her head as if she were the Statue of Liberty and it was her torch, and R.J. took it from
her. The young doctor busied himself with his equipment. Something that looked like a flashlight with a small inside-out funnel
at the end of it.

There was no ashtray, so R.J. ran some water from the faucet into the stainless-steel counter sink, then threw the soggy remainder
of the L&M into a nearby step-on can while the doctor put the pointed end of the funnel in Rifke’s ear, turned on the light,
and said, “Hmm?” with a
question mark at the end of it in a way that worried R.J. Then he looked in Rifke’s left ear and said nothing. Then he turned
off the light and knelt again in the same way he had before and looked deeply into Rifke’s eyes.

“Mrs. Rabinowitz,” he said. “Your stapes, which is a bone that’s responsible for transmitting sound, has had a new growth
of bone, so it no longer vibrates the way it should, causing you to need amplification of sound intensity. There are two ways
to better the situation. One is to surgically remove the stapes bone and replace it with a small wire. The alternative, and
what I’d like to suggest, is something that may improve your hearing somewhat, and that’s the use of a hearing aid. Nowadays
they no longer have to be unattractive or cumbersome, as I’m sure you’re aware. For example, I see that you wear eyeglasses.
Well, in that case, a tiny mechanism can simply be affixed to the stem of those glasses, allowing the appliance to go completely
unnoticed and yet enhancing your ability to detect sound.”

Rifke’s face was expressionless as she listened, but she was nodding almost imperceptibly in that way R.J. knew so well, which
meant: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to the point already.”

“So,” the doctor said, standing—and R.J. noticed now that he wasn’t very tall, maybe only five seven or five eight—“I’m going
to suggest the following. What I think you should do is talk this over at home and make a decision about whether or not you’d
like to purchase a hearing aid. And if your decision is affirmative”—a little stuffy, R.J. thought—“please let my office know
and I’ll arrange to have you fitted for one. Do you have any questions?”

“Yeah,” Rifke said. “I got one very important question.”

“Fine,” the doctor said, assuming a posture that indicated he was ready to listen. “What is it?”

“My question is…” Rifke said, pausing as if to give herself time to decide whether or not to ask it, “are you single?”

R.J. looked down at the floor. No, Ma. For God’s sake, don’t do this. The doctor drew himself up for a moment, as if he wasn’t
sure he’d heard her correctly. Then every possible-pain of stuffiness fell away, and he shook his head and laughed a laugh
that moved his whole body. After a
few seconds Rifke laughed, and R.J. laughed too. With relief. My God, she was embarrassed.

“Yes,” he said, “I am.”

“So is my daughter, who likes to be called R.J. because it’s more modern than Rosie Jane.” Rifke said. Doctor Feld turned
to look at Rosie, really look at her this time. After a moment, his eyes held hers, and for some reason there was such a curiously
strong connection between them that years later she jokingly described it as Tony and Maria’s meeting at the dance at the
gym in
West Side Story.

“Isn’t she a doll?” she heard her mother’s voice ask from somewhere.

“I’d say so,” the doctor answered.

“I’ll be sure to bring her back for a hearing aid if you think that’s what’s called for,” R.J. said, trying to chance the
subject and hoping the doctor couldn’t tell how humiliated she felt, and wondering in a panic how she looked. She had run
home from a rehearsal in her jeans and black sweater to get Rifke here and home again so she could rush back to school and
do some more work on her play.

“Wonderful,” the doctor said—about what she wasn’t sure. “I’ll tell my nurse that you’ll call to set a time.” He turned to
go, but turned back again, took Rifke’s hand and patted it. “Nice meeting you, Mrs. Rabinowitz. And thank you for the introduction
to your daughter.”

“It was her pleasure,” Rifke said.

When he was gone, Rifke lit another L&M, held it thoughtfully, after the first puff, between her stained index and third finger,
and said to her daughter: “How you gonna find out if you don’t ask?”

R.J., thrilled to have her mother’s diagnosis be less than severe, and still shaking a little from embarrassment and a little
from the doctor’s long look, helped her mother on with her coat, took her arm, and walked her to the bus stop.

When they got back to the grocery store, Uncle Shulke was standing by the counter eating an apple.

“Nu,
Rifkele? What did the doctor say?” Juice spurted out of the sides of his mouth.

“He said he was single,” Rifke answered with a smile.

“I mean, what did he say about your ear?” Shulke asked.

“About my ear.” Rifke told him as she put on her apron to get back to work, “he said it was a nerve pressing.”

The next day R.J. couldn’t get Doctor Feld’s face out of her mind. Alvin Feld. That’s what it said on the bill he’d given
her, which she’d presented to Uncle Shulke. A doctor. That look he’d given her. Older. How old? Maybe even thirty-two. Ten
years older. Old. Her senior play was being rehearsed in the studio theater. She would sit quietly in the back row of the
cinder-block building, making notes on her script in the darkness. Sometimes she hated the readings the actors gave her words,
wondered how they could be so stupid as not to understand how she’d heard them in her head. Other times she heard meanings
in what they said that even she hadn’t realized were there, and it thrilled her. Once in a while, for a few minutes she would
try to dissociate herself from it, to pretend that it wasn’t a rehearsal but a performance, and she was hearing the words,
seeing the actors for the first time. Was it boring? Did it work? Was it funny? Alvin Feld. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in love
with someone and have him come to the play with her when it opened, and when it was over, hold her close and say, “It was
wonderful and I love you”?

“He called!” Rifke said before R.J. was halfway up the stairs that night.

Rifke stood at the top of the stairs, wearing a babushka around her recently washed and pincurled hair. She looked more and
more like Bubbe every day.

He called. R.J. felt a rush of
please, please, please, let her mean.
…

“The ear doctor.” Hooray.

“But he wasn’t talking ears. And such a gentleman. How are
you,
Mrs. Rabinowitz? And how’s your ringing? And is your single daughter by any chance at home? I said no. He said when? I said
eleven. He said, Is that too late for me to call? I said don’t be silly, call anytime. He said thank you. It’s two minutes
before eleven. You better get ready.”

R.J. laughed. “What ready? I should get dressed up?”

Rifke laughed. The phone rang. Rifke raised an eyebrow and looked at her daughter as if to say
go get him.

Before the second hearing-clinic appointment, Alvin Feld was R.J.’s big romance. He courted her with flowers and romantic
dinners in restaurants, and called her every night. And she loved that he was so grown up. A man. A
Doctor. Whose word was important. People respected him. She respected him, and he loved her. They were in love.

Every week now he bought the groceries for his tiny apartment in Shulke’s store. He showed up every Sunday morning, after
a visit to the deli, with lox and bagels. He took both mother and daughter to the movies once a week. And when the day came
a few weeks later, after he and R.J. had convinced Rifke that wearing a hearing aid didn’t mean you were “an old kocker,”
and the now-trusted Dr. Feld turned up the volume on the newly installed appliance, the first words Rifke heard him say were
“I want to many your daughter.”

Needless to say, Rifke’s delight in being able to hear so well for the first time in years couldn’t compare to the ecstasy
she felt in having landed this boy for Rosie. She blurted out the first words she could think of: “Oy, thank God.”

Alvin Feld loved telling their friends that story. The night of the dress rehearsal, R.J. told it to her girlfriends in the
drama department, and they all laughed, because to them it was a Joke about how a Jewish mother already thinks that her twenty-two-year-old
daughter is an old Which they all knew was ridiculous, because they were all going on to New York to be actresses, or to rep
companies in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., to be apprentices to set designers, or costume designers, and marriage wasn’t
even a consideration.

R.J. didn’t tell them that she laughed at
“Oy,
thank God,” because those words expressed her feelings too. Because the truth was, she was afraid to try to be a writer for
a living. She still harbored a deep fear that her admission to the drama department had been a clerical error—that they’d
meant to stuff a regrets letter into her envelope and had enclosed an acceptance by mistake. Writing, Shulke. Maybe Uncle
Shulke knew the answers after all, and she should have a teaching degree.

On the opening night of her play, she felt feverish. It was that same weak sick feeling she got when she had the flu. Her
face was flushed with heat, and she was shivering at the same time. Maybe she shouldn’t sit in the third row between her mother
and Alvin. What if she had to vomit? What If something in the play? didn’t woik and she let out an invbhintaiy “no”? Maybe
She should stay in the back of
the theater and pace the way she envisioned Broadway playwrights doing? But now Alvin was moving her along, into the third
row behind her mother, toward their seats, and she was stuck. Trapped in her feverish panic. The lights were dimming. Thank
God. At least the lights were dimming, so she wouldn’t have long to wait for the torture to begin.

It felt like an interminably long time before the curtain went up, and she held on to the sleeve of Alvin’s seersucker jacket.
Dr. Feld. Dr. and Mrs. Alvin Feld. God, if she said yes, they could be that as soon after graduation as she chose. Married.
The curtain—thank God the curtain was going up. There was some polite applause for the set, and suddenly the play was moving
along. Her own words bounced around in her head. Already it was the second scene and it was starting to be funny. The audience
was getting it. With some laughs bigger than she’d expected. Bigger than at any of the rehearsals, when only a few people
from the drama department watched. Jaded. Those people were jaded. But these people tonight, these people were a real audience,
and they were loving it.

There was no act break. It was a ninety-minute piece, and she was afraid the audience would get restless. Her back was stiff
as she arched to listen, tried to hear if anyone in the audience was whispering or shuffling uncomfortably. But no one seemed
to be. Her mother, now a new woman with a hearing aid, smiled constantly at the stage and nodded. R.J. was relieved, since
she’d feared that the subject matter might be too sexy for Rifke’s old-world ideas. The play was about girls in a dormitory.
They spent a lot of time talking about losing their virginity. Rifke seemed amused through it all. But Alvin! Alvin was another
story. He never once changed his position in his seat. Never once looked at R.J. as if to say he was enjoying it. The play
was nearly halfway over and he’d never laughed once.

The fever rose again when that realization hit her, and her stomach ached. He hated it. Obviously. Probably thought she’d
been lying to him when she’d told him all those many weeks ago, embarrassed because she felt as if she were too old, that
she was a virgin and wasn’t ready to give up her virginity. How could she know so much about diaphragms and sexual situations?
Now, when she looked and saw the frown on his face, she wanted to stop the play for a few
minutes, just long enough to tell him how she’d listened night after night when she was studying in the living room at the
dorm, to story after story, and heard the various approaches of the various girls to their own questions about sex and promiscuity,
and found it so funny and so moving that she’d had to write about it. Alvin. He coughed. A big cough. She’d known him for
nearly two months and she’d never heard him cough like that. Maybe he was coughing to drown out the words that were coming
out of the actors’ mouths, because he knew they were R.J.’s words and he didn’t approve. When the lights came up and she looked
into his eyes, she would know.

The last few scenes went quickly, with even bigger laughs. But instead of enjoying them, R.J. noticed only that Alvin never
even cracked a smile.

“I’m amazed a girl like you lasted this long,” he had said to her after their third date, when she had told him about her
virginity. “How is it you’ve never had sexual intercourse?” It sounded very doctorly when he said it that way.

“I was too poor,” she joked.

“I don’t think it costs any money,” he laughed, holding her.

“I guess I mean, I already felt self-conscious about being that girl from the other side of the tracks. I didn’t want to take
the chance of being that tramp from the other side of the tracks. People talk and exaggerate, and it’s too important.”