Christmas for Joshua - A Novel (7 page)

“
No problem. I could arrange a private tour of the Heard Museum’s Native American exhibit on Friday morning, and we’ll do Sedona after the Sabbath, maybe on Sunday?”

“
I ordered kosher meals,” Rebecca said, “for Friday night and Saturday. The deli at Chabad provides the whole meals, soup to nuts, literally, even the plates and utensils. But let’s get through the wedding first. I had your tuxedo cleaned and pressed. It’s hanging in the room with your shirt. Everything else you need is in the blue suitcase.”

“
You’re the best,” I said, meaning it.

Rebecca pierced a piece of cheese with a toothpick and held it out for me. “Tonight will be a late night, and tomorrow night Mordechai’s parents are hosting a Sheva Brachot
dinner.”

“
Seven blessings only? Can’t they afford more blessings?” I bit the cheese off the toothpick.

Debra made a face, and Rebecca said, “Come on, Rusty.”

“
What?”

“
You’ll have to hold back on your jokes. These people are very religious.”

“
Religious Jews survived for centuries on humor. That’s why they invented Yiddish—to tell jokes at the expense of the gentiles without them knowing what’s being said. For example,
Nisht geshtoygn un nisht gefloygn,
which literally means,
Didn’t climb up and didn’t fly.
A non-Jew would think they’re talking about a rodent, not about Jesus Christ and his climactic role in the New Testament, that just like he didn’t climb up onto the cross, he also didn’t fly off to heaven. See my point?”

“
Dad!
”

“
Okay. Okay.” I raised my hands. “I’ll be good. Promise.”

Rebecca and I polished off a plate of cheese while Debra told us about the bachelorette party her friends had thrown her and the little gifts Mordechai was sending every day with his mother. Debra was bursting with excitement over the wedding—the hall, the food, the important guests from Brooklyn’s rabbinical apex, and the kindness of Mordechai’s parents, who had picked up the tab for the klezmer band even though the bride’s family customarily paid for everything. I was tempted to point out that almost all of the five hundred guests were from the groom’s side, but held my tongue. It wasn’t important. Watching her so happy made me feel guilty for thinking of money. I exchanged a glance with Rebecca, and we smiled at each other. Tonight our daughter would become the happy wife of a young man she deeply loved. Nothing could spoil our joy.

The driver came in to help Rebecca and Debra with the clothes hangers and other accessories, including the wedding dress, which I helped him carry to his black Lincoln Town Car. He would take them to each appointment and wait outside—a necessary luxury in New York City.

I went up to the room and lay on the bed. Mordechai’s Talmudic seclusion at his parents’ house made him unavailable for the man-to-man talk I had always imagined having with Debra’s fiancé on the eve of their wedding:
She’s a special girl. The best!
After a dramatic pause, I’d proceed to count on my fingers the virtues I expected my daughter’s husband to exemplify during their lifetime together:
Kindness. Consideration. Respect. Generosity. Integrity.
“And if you ever cheat on her, I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your days living in a cardboard box over a subway vent.” The last sentence I spoke out loud, which sounded silly in the empty hotel room. Perhaps I could still manage to whisper my message in Mordechai’s ear when we met to sign the ketubah—the traditional marriage agreement—before the ceremony, or while we walked down the aisle to the chuppah. The boy would probably think Debra’s father was completely insane.

I tried to take a nap, but the constant hum of the city, the car horns and police sirens, were too exhilarating. Rebecca had bought a real coat, a pair of gloves, and a wool hat for me, all folded neatly over the back of a chair as if she had expected me to go out and about despite the arctic temperature.

The wind, channeled between the skyscrapers, stung my face, but the streets bustled with energy. I joined the flow of purposeful pedestrians, shook my head at offers of discount coupons for various goods and services, and waited at corner crossings as traffic flew by. I walked and walked, enjoying the vibrancy of Manhattan, reminiscent of my student years here.

After a while, the physical exertion calmed me down. I had every reason to be happy: Debra was getting married, I was gaining a son, and soon…
grandkids?
The idea made me chuckle, but I drew no attention from the New Yorkers around me.

At Rockefeller Center, I stopped to admire the enormous Christmas tree. Steps away, onlookers lined the railing over the ice rink. On an impulse, I rented a pair of shoes and went skating. Rather than fall on my ass, as I’d expected, my body found its old groove, my arms and legs adjusting to the rhythm of the steel blades on the sleek surface of the rink. From the loudspeakers, Louis Armstrong sang, “
A beautiful sight…
”

The words came to me, surfacing from deep-seated memories, and I joined him,
“We’re happy tonight…”

A kid bumped into another and knocked him down in front of me. I panicked, bending over, ready to fall, but my legs slid left and right in tandem, the blades whistling in that fresh, slashing sound of a well-executed swerve. I glanced back and saw the kid pull himself up and accelerate after his friends. I clapped, more for myself than for him. It must have been over thirty-five years since the last time I skated, back home in Tarrytown, a short train ride up the Hudson River. My mother had considered ice skating nothing less than an attempt to break your neck. “Christ is watching over us,” she had said, “but why make it harder for Him?” Still, she let me go down to the frozen pond with my friends, giving in like she’d done with all my boyish whims as long as they involved no spending of money, of which we had very little. I later understood that she felt responsible for my fatherless childhood, as if it had been her fault, as if she had instituted the draft and sent him on a one-way trip to Vietnam.

Executing another sharp swerve to avoid a man and his son, I glanced up at the spectators above, imagining my mother’s worried face, her right hand gripping the stem of the cross that never left her necklace.

Armstrong kept singing, and I remembered playing “Winter Wonderland” on the organ at church in the hours before Midnight Mass, resentful to be there while my friends played outside in the snow, getting
their
noses chilled. But even though my fingers ached from hours on the keys, Christmas had been my favorite holiday, maybe because it was my mother’s only vacation day of the year. I had asked her once why she wasn’t taking a day off on
my
birthday, to which she responded: “Christmas is the birthday of all of us.”

Mom died suddenly a couple of years after Rebecca and I had married. “Massive coronary,” the doctor in White Plains told me over the phone. “She had no chance.” It was a terrible shock to lose her, not only because she had always been the solid foundation of my life, but also because she had just turned fifty, never smoked, and wasn’t short of physical activity. In retrospect, I recalled her pressing a fist to her chest when something upset her or taking a deep breath with her eyes closed, but I had assumed those to be mannerisms, not manifestations of physical pain. I bemoaned not asking her about it. Her sudden death, and my remorse for missing those oblique signs, had contributed to my choice of a medical specialty that put me in the operating room for endless hours, re-plumbing the hearts of other people’s mothers and fathers, giving them the chance Mom didn’t get. It had been a long time, but I had lived my life as if she watched over me from above, as if she understood the choices I made and continued to love me even though I had joined the Jewish people who rejected her beloved Jesus Christ, the son of God, the Messiah who had died for her very few sins.

Skating one more time around the crowded rink, when Armstrong’s voice caressed me, “
We’ll frolic and play, the Eskimo way,
” I joined him for the last line, “
Walking in the winter wonderland
.” And as I sat down to pull off the rented shoes, sadness tightened my chest and I sighed. If only my mother was still with us to accompany Debra down the aisle in that beautiful white dress!

Silver Bells

Pillars of Joy looked like a Brooklyn version of the White House, only not as white, its marble columns blackened by soot from the heavy traffic on Flushing Avenue. A huge menorah was propped beside the front steps, all eight of its electrical candles lit up, even though Hanukkah had ended almost a month ago. Perhaps they kept it on year-round. Rebecca had told me that Pillars of Joy was the most popular wedding hall for well-to-do observant Jews in New York. Eager to enter and see for myself, I paid the cab driver and stepped onto the sidewalk, the frozen snow crunching under my dress shoes.

Despite the early darkness and freezing wind, the avenue was teeming with people, and I had to wait for a family to pass. The parents—a black couple in professional garb—each lugged a small child while two older kids carried shopping bags, chatting happily in rapid New York vernacular that I could barely follow. One of the boys, maybe twelve or thirteen, noticed me looking at them and called, “Merry Christmas, sir!”

“Thank you,” I said, buttoning my coat. “Happy Holidays!”

The steps had been swept clear of snow and lain with nonslip mats. Inside the first set of double doors, an LED sign blinked:
Levinson-Dinwall Wedding.

The second set of doors led me into a vast foyer. At the other end, Rebecca stood in her ankle-long burgundy dress and matching little hat. The high heels caused her shapely rear to peak out in a way that tempted my hand for a pat, maybe even a squeeze, but she was talking with a bearded man wearing a black coat and a black hat. As I came closer, he put down a bottle of sweet red wine and said, “I must check the crate for the label, just to make sure.”

I watched him go. “Make sure of what?”

“
He’s the
mashgiach
,” Rebecca explained. “It’s his job to verify that all the food and drinks are kosher.”

“
Kiddush wine could be non-kosher?”

“Regular kosher isn’t enough. It has to be
glatt
-kosher with a special seal from an ultra-Orthodox authority. Rabbi Mintzberg is very strict, and there will be other rabbis as well. Mordechai’s family is very prominent here.”

“
You look beautiful.” I gave Rebecca a light peck on the cheek, careful not to crack the crust of makeup that cocooned her face. “They’ll mistake you for the bride.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re religious, honey, not blind.”

I kissed her again, this time on the lips. “We’re religious, too. Reform Judaism is much more spiritual—”

“
Don’t get defensive.” Rebecca patted my tuxedoed chest. “They’ve been perfectly gracious.”

“I should wear a T-shirt.” I drew imaginary letters. “
Reform Is Not Diet Judaism.
”

“Dr. Dinwall, I presume.” A short man in a black tuxedo and a gray goatee marched toward us with his hand outstretched, smiling with familiar big teeth. “Mazal Tov!”

“Mordechai’s dad,” Rebecca murmured.

“Dr. Levinson!” I shook his hand. “We finally meet. May Hashem bless us with lots of joy in our children.”

“Amen.” He seemed pleased that I had pronounced God’s name as the Orthodox do, “Hashem,” which literally meant “The Name,” rather than uttering the actual Hebrew name of God,
Adonai
.

Turning to Rebecca, he said, “And thank you, Mrs. Dinwall, for all you’ve done to prepare for the wedding.”

Rebecca curtsied, not offering a hand. “We’re family now.”

“Almost.” He turned to watch his approaching wife, who was panting from the few front steps in a manner that reminded me of my pre-op patients. Her long-sleeved dress was a mosaic of beige and pink octagons, worn loose over a thick trunk. The longish brunette wig contrasted with her weathered face.

The two women hugged.

“
Mazal Tov!” I extended my hand, but Rebecca pushed it down.

“Traffic is terrible,” Mordechai’s mother said. “I was sure we’d be late. This year, the winter is vicious.
Vicious!
”

“In Arizona we wait for winter,” I said. “It’s the best time of the year—seventy degrees and sunny every day.”

“I’ve been to Scottsdale once,” Dr. Levinson said, “for a medical conference. It was August, and the heat was unbearable, straight out of Dante.”

“Timing is everything,” Rebecca declared, threading her arm in mine. “Debra should be ready any minute.”

The four of us proceeded across the foyer, which was lined with flowers in golden vases. A large white cardboard box waited for the wedding gifts, and a metal case with a narrow slit awaited the checks. At the back of the foyer was an armchair adorned with greenery and white roses. The sight of the bride’s throne stopped me. “She’s only twenty-one,” I said.

Mrs. Levinson waved a dismissive, bejeweled hand. “I was eighteen, and not a single regret in twenty-nine years.”