The Day the Rabbi Resigned (10 page)

“I've been married, and I'd rather not repeat the experience.”

“What's wrong with it?”

“It's too confining. Two people who are always together, with each having a claim on the other, can't help getting on each other's nerves. When you get tenure—and you're practically sure to get it with Merton pushing for you—and your wife gets her divorce and separation, don't think you'll be moving in with me. I'll let you keep some of your clothes here, but I'll expect you to have a place of your own where you can go or where I can shoo you to when I find you irksome.”

“You mean even if I were free to marry, you wouldn't?”

She shook her head. “Even if she managed somehow to get an annulment. I understand you can these days even if you have cohabited. I wouldn't marry you because I'd have to leave my job, or you'd have to leave yours, since they don't allow both husband and wife to serve on the faculty.”

“And your job means that much to you?”

“It certainly does. It's the perfect job. The college is another institution that has changed. It used to be for the students, but now it's for the faculty. We get a reasonable salary in exchange for very little work. In fact, we can do just as much or as little as we please, and if you're on tenure, it's almost impossible to fire you. No, I wouldn't think of giving up my job here.”

He looked at her admiringly. “You're—you're something else. All right, I'll go home, but no need until sometime this evening. When will I see you again?”

She smiled and patted his cheek as she might fondle a puppy. “Maybe Monday if we feel like it,” she said.

14

In the year following her graduation from Boston University, Clara Lerner had held four jobs, not difficult in Massachusetts, where the unemployment rate at the time was among the lowest in the country. Her father and mother, both of whom were attorneys practicing in nearby Lynn, had wanted her to go on to law school after graduation, but she had refused. “I'm tired of studying. I'd like to read a book just because I want to and not because I have to,” she had said.

The first three jobs had been relatively local, that is, within a fifteen-minute drive from her home in the Charleton section of Barnard's Crossing. The first job, clerk/typist/receptionist in an art gallery, she had left after a month because it had changed ownership and she didn't like her new boss. “He's a pig. He scratches himself all the time and he picks his nose.” Her next job carried the title of Office Manager. It was a boat company, which bought, sold, and leased boats, and whose offices were right on the harbor. Her work, however, consisted of typing, filing, and occasionally greeting customers, offering them coffee, and telling them that “Mr. Williams will be with you shortly.” For long periods of time, however, when Mr. Williams went out to look at a boat, or to have a drink with a potential customer, she was alone with no one to talk to, and nothing to do but stare out of the window at the harbor below. “I got sick of just looking at the ocean,” she explained.

Then she got a job as a receptionist in a doctor's office, which offered the advantage of being in the Charleton section and hence within walking distance of her house. Unfortunately, it was its only advantage, and after a few months she quit, this time to take a job in Boston. When her folks asked her about it, she replied noncommittally, “It's all right.” But after a week she called to say she would be working late and would have dinner in town. The following week she told them she was considering living in the city if she could find a congenial roommate to share the expense of an apartment. However, while she continued to live at home, she nevertheless found it necessary to stay in town late several nights a week.

“I hope they're paying you for all this overtime,” her father commented.

But it was her mother who guessed the truth. “You're seeing someone in town, aren't you?”

“Well … I have been having dinner several nights a week with someone.”

“Someone from your office?” asked her mother.

“Then you haven't been working overtime,” said her father.

“No, I haven't, and no, he isn't.”

“You mean this guy has been taking you out to dinner every night—”

“It hasn't been every night. Only three times last week. And he hasn't been taking me. We go Dutch.”

Her father was aghast. “You go Dutch. You mean—”

“He doesn't earn very much, and rather than have him take me out once a week, I'd rather we went Dutch so we could see each other more often.”

“That sounds serious,” her mother remarked. “Are you serious about him?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And is he serious about you?”

“I—I think so. Yes, I'm sure of it.”

“What does he do?”

“What's he look like?”

“What's his name?”

“When are we going to see him?”

“Why haven't you invited him to have dinner with us so we can get a look at him?”

“He's old-fashioned about these things. He feels that if he should come to dinner here with my parents, it's like announcing our engagement.”

“Well, what's wrong with announcing your engagement if you're serious?”

“Where'd you meet him?”

“How long have you known him?”

“I met him when I was still at school and he was doing graduate work at Harvard. We met at a party and we went out together a few times. He didn't have much time. He was working on his thesis and studying for his orals. And he didn't have much money either, I suspect. Then I bumped into him in town one day, and he asked me to have dinner with him. And we've been seeing each other ever since.”

“But what does he do?” her father insisted.

“He's a teacher,” she said defensively. “He's a professor, an assistant professor of English at Windermere Christian.”

“Windermere Christian?”

“Windermere Christian is nonsectarian, you know. And his name is Mordecai Jacobs.”

Further questioning elicited the information that right now he was uncertain of his future; and that while it had been hinted to him by the head of the department that he would in all probability get tenure at the end of the year, he'd prefer to wait until he had actually received it.

“But we want to see him,” her mother urged. “All right, I can understand about his reluctance to come to dinner here, sort of. But I have an idea. Why doesn't he come to Ben's Bar Mitzvah party Saturday night? The whole family will be here, but there'll also be a lot of friends of the family, so his presence won't be noticed.”

“I had the same idea,” said Clara, “and I sent him an invitation. The trouble is that the Windermere faculty is having a dinner that same night, and it was intimated to him that he ought to be there. It's going to be held at the Breverton Country Club. He thinks he might be able to get away early, but he can't promise.”

Later, alone with Clara in her bedroom, Mrs. Lerner asked, “What's he like? Is he tall? Is he good-looking?”

“He is to me,” said Clara stoutly. “He's not tall, but he's not short either. Sort of medium. At least, I don't have to tilt my head back to talk to him. And he's not, you know, movie-actor handsome, but he's nice-looking. He's nice and warm and friendly, and fun to be with, and I'm going to marry him.”

“Have you met his folks? Are they from around here?”

“No, he comes from a small town in Pennsylvania, so—”

“But he wants you to meet them, doesn't he?”

“Sure, but where they live so far away, it will have to wait until we can arrange it.”

“But he's right here,” Mrs. Lerner insisted, “so there's no reason why we can't meet him. Now look, Clara, I want you to tell him that he can come to see us Saturday night, no matter how late his faculty dinner ends. There'll be people here even after midnight.”

“All right, I'll tell him.”

15

As the rabbi and Miriam dawdled over their second cup of coffee at breakfast, the mail came, and Miriam went to gather it up from the floor beneath the chute. As she came back to the table she said, “The usual junk mail: a couple of mail-order catalogues, pleas for donations from the local public broadcasting station and from—let's see—from Support the Children, AIDS research, and the Heart Fund: a chance to win a Cadillac by just going up to visit Forest Park, the new vacation homesite. We don't seem to get any regular mail anymore.”

“It could be,” the rabbi agreed. “I remember in my course in Economics there was a theory—no, it was a law, Gresham's Law, that's it—that said bad money drives out good money. So maybe junk mail drives out good mail.”

“Oh, here's one from the University of Chicago,” said Miriam, who had continued to slit envelopes. “It must be from Simcha.”

She handed it to the rabbi and he read it aloud for her benefit.

“Dear David:

Unless something comes up to prevent it, I shall be in your area in early June for the meeting of the Anthropological Society. The first session is on Monday, June eleventh. The next day I am to receive the Dreyfus Medal and read a paper. I will be coming in the week before, on Friday, June first, because I have to attend a wedding in Gloucester on the second. It is the granddaughter of Martha's sister Sarah, the unpleasant one. So why do I have to go? Because according to Martha, if Sarah hears that I was in the area and did not come to her granddaughter's wedding, she will be indignant and be even more unpleasant than she usually is and cause all sorts of ill-feeling in the family. And how will she know that I was in the area? Because I will be receiving the Dreyfus Medal and Martha is sure it will be in the newspapers.

“Martha will not accompany me; I will be coming alone. Ellen is going into the hospital for a hysterectomy. Nothing serious, I am assured, but requiring a stay in the hospital for a week or ten days. So Martha will be taking care of Ellen's children for that week, which lets her off the hook for the wedding.

“I note, by checking the map of your state, that Gloucester is only about thirty or forty miles from Barnard's Crossing. So you could easily drive up there Sunday morning and we could spend the day together.

“I have been making inquiries about your little problem from various knowledgeable people around here, and perhaps I can be of some help to you. In any case, hold June third open and let's get together.

“Regards to Miriam—all the best, Simcha. “P.S. I'll call you from Gloucester to make specific arrangements.”

“Oh David, do you think he knows of a job for you?”

Her husband shook his head. “It doesn't sound like it. I think he would have said so if he had anything definite. He's probably got the names of a few colleges that have Judaica departments, and perhaps some rumors of some people in those departments who might be leaving or retiring.”

“But suppose he did have a job for you, wouldn't it be apt to be somewhere in the Midwest? Would you want to leave New England?”

“Well, I'd have to think hard about it, and it would have to be a pretty good job. But it makes no difference; I'd like to see Simcha anyway. I don't like the idea of driving all the way up to Gloucester—”

“It's only about thirty miles, less than an hour, and on a Sunday morning there's not likely to be much traffic.”

“Unless it's a sunny day. Tell you what, Miriam, why don't you inquire around and find out about train or bus service. Maybe there's a bus that runs between Gloucester and Barnard's Crossing, or a train from Gloucester that stops at the Swampscott station. Then when he calls, I can suggest that he take one or the other here instead of my going up there to pick him up.”

16

From the time of his appointment, Mark Levine had been conscientious in attending the meetings of the Board of Trustees of Windermere College. Not that he was particularly interested in the college, but because it gave him an excuse to escape the boisterous optimism of his associates in Texas for the quieter charms of Boston. He would arrive on Saturday and spend the day in the company of his friend, Don Macomber, and sometimes Macomber's daughter, who lived in Rockport and would come down to see “Uncle Mark.” They would have dinner at the Ritz Carleton, where Mark stayed, and then go on to the theatre or a concert. Macomber's daughter would stay over at the president's house in the college, and then on Sunday they might all drive to her home in Rockport and spend the day there going through the various art galleries in which the town abounded. Monday, he would take care of any business he might have, or if the weather were fine, just walk the streets of the city. Tuesday morning he attended the board meeting. He could easily have come to Boston any time the spirit moved him, but he felt it was frivolous to leave his business without a specific reason, and the board meeting provided that.

But now he was in Boston on his own. He had come up in the middle of the week, and he had to fly back the next morning. He was taking dinner at the president's house, and it was a plainer meal than the Ritz dining room afforded because it had been prepared by the housekeeper, who also did the cooking for Macomber. They had just finished, and Levine lit a cigar. “How are things going at the school?” he asked.

“All right so far, but applications for admission are down. Oh, there are a lot more applications than we can accommodate. I mean, even of those who are acceptable, but the trend is down.”

“Young people getting disenchanted with the idea of coming to Windermere?”

“Oh, it's national. It's not just us. Tuition is up everywhere, student loans harder to get because of government cutbacks, and there's a decline in the number of young people of college age in the population as a whole.”

“You mean you're worried about next year and the year after?”