Light Fell (17 page)

With Shlomi’s departure, Joseph’s spirits lift. He is flattered by the young doorman’s advances, mercenary though they may have been, and pleased with his own artful handling of this tricky affair. He is especially relieved that Shlomi approached him and not Pepe.

*

After covering and refrigerating the cooled food, Joseph checks the answering machine. Nothing. He reviews his to-do list. The queen-sized bed for Gidi and his wife still worries him. The building superintendent has secured a single mattress that Joseph can stow behind the door of that bedroom, in case the couple is in the period of
niddah
, when they are forbidden to one another. Perhaps he should switch them to the other guest bedroom after all, the one with the twin beds separated by a chest of drawers. But it seems such a shame to separate them if they are in fact permitted to one another, and besides, he supposes he cannot very well put his other sons in a bed together, so the sleeping plan stays as it is.

Joseph circles through all the bedrooms, inspecting each well-made bed, and places a tiny chocolate basket filled with speckled jelly beans on each pillow. He recalls the Hasidic story about a childless couple told by their
rebbe
to purchase a baby carriage as a sign of faith that God will eventually respond to their prayers. Joseph cannot bear to believe that one of his boys will not be with him this weekend, so he has gone diligently through all the motions of preparing for a full house. At the queen-size bed he stops and sits abruptly, clutching a pillow to his chest. He is worried and his mind floats and drifts.

Joseph rises too quickly from the edge of the bed and swoons a bit before catching himself. His refrigerator is full of food, the kitchen is clean, the dining-room table set for seven, the beds and bathrooms topped up with fresh linens and towels. He has considered every detail and made a thousand small decisions over several weeks to reach this point. Now all that remains for him to do is flip a few switches to usher his home from clean and organized to Sabbath-ready, and then, more difficult than all the shopping and cooking and cleaning and fretting, to push himself, warily, into Shabbat. Joseph prays—to himself, to the sky, perhaps to the clock on the kitchen wall—that this last hour of solitude before his sons begin to arrive will pass slowly and with dignity, and that it will bring him some measure of peace and wisdom and clarity.

FRIDAY, MARCH 1 – SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1996

J
OSEPH STARES FROM THE
depths of a pillowed armchair pulled close to the sliding glass doors of the terrace at the dark orange sun that has plunged through the thick ceiling of gray clouds, well on its descent into evening. His senses seem to have abandoned their usual posts and gone to carouse with one another: the orange of the sun roars in his ears, he can see the scent of simmering soup wafting from the kitchen, and a melody he cannot name leaves a peculiar salty taste on his lips and tongue. A crinkled letter lies splayed across his lap.

In the last hour his sons and daughter-in-law arrived and then, before he could finish showering, deserted him for services at an ultra-Orthodox synagogue of Gidi’s bidding. He had felt unhinged at the first knock and staggered to the front door in a stupor of emotions at what he might find on the other side. He was met by a large luggage cart crammed full of crumpled shopping bags and cardboard boxes, clothes on hangers, and two small and battered suitcases. A newish doorman, whose name escaped Joseph, stood to the side, his face pulled into a look of surprised amusement.

“Good afternoon, sir.” The doorman hesitated, waiting for a sign from Joseph that he was indeed delivering this unlikely baggage and the guests who went with it to the right place.

“Well, yes, good afternoon, young man. Come in, come in. Let’s get these deposited as quickly as possible.” Only as the cart rolled past him did Joseph catch sight of his youngest son, Gidi, and his bride standing motionless between the elevator and a towering potted palm.

When Gidi was five he had filched one of his older brothers’ bicycles for a cruise down the sloping road that led from the family home past the moshav’s citrus groves and ended at the village cemetery. But the bike had hand brakes—a mechanism Gidi did not yet know existed—so his furious backpedaling did nothing to stop him or even slow him down. In the ensuing crash he lost two baby teeth, mangled his chin, and suffered a medium-deep gash over his left eye. That cigar-shaped scar, still present on his twenty-two-year-old face, reassured Joseph that this was, in fact, his son. Gidi had been a robust child, nearly chubby, but now, encased in the shin-length double-breasted black coat of the ultra-Orthodox, he looked somehow depleted, long and thin like a stick of licorice. The only color in his face was the flush that came from wearing too many clothes in an overheated building. His beard—blond and boyish, a scraggly fuzz that barely straddled his jawbone—made him look more Amish than Jewish.

Batya was a pleasant surprise. Her eyebrows gave her away as a redhead, even though Joseph could not see a single hair on her meticulously covered head. He imagined her to have been a beautiful child, with a mane of wild hair the color of a summer sunset in a rush of wind behind her as she ran and played and squealed with life and energy. She, too, was quite thin, causing Joseph to wonder whether they ate enough; surely they would enjoy the meals he had prepared, and he would send food home with them, too. Batya was the first to break their stunned silence.

“Shalom, Professor Licht,” she said in a breathless, child-like voice as she took a small step in his general direction.

She did not seem to know how to continue, but Joseph rescued her, saying, “I’m so glad we finally meet, Batya,” and he really did feel glad. “Please come in. And do call me Joseph.”

Batya followed Gidi, who had not yet uttered a word. Joseph showed them and the doorman to their room, a bright, frivolous explosion of pastel prints and lace with plush pillows and a wildflower quilt on the queen-size bed. Joseph noted the flicker of joy on Batya’s face and followed her gaze to a framed snapshot of the twins at their fourth birthday party, her husband nearly twenty years earlier.

“This won’t do.” Gidi addressed this comment to the bed or the luggage cart; Joseph was not quite sure which. The doorman stopped unloading the luggage cart mid-bend.

“We’ll need an extra room.” Gidi did not elaborate. Joseph looked to Batya but her head was bent and her face offered no explanation, only humiliation. The doorman straightened, looking to Joseph for instruction.

“The superintendent has promised to bring up an extra mattress, if that’s the problem. . . .” Joseph said this under his breath, eager to avoid embarrassing his daughter-in-law.

“An extra mattress won’t do. We need an extra room.” Gidi’s face had reddened, causing the cigar-shaped scar to fade.

Joseph felt a sudden longing for Pepe, a solid presence to whom he could anchor himself. His brain felt like an elevator jammed between floors. He could no better reassess the bed-room assignments than deal with the fact that his son had not yet said hello, only barked a complaint. What to address first? He was formulating answers to these questions when he realized that Gidi was busy instructing the doorman to replace a number of the boxes and bags on the luggage cart and wheel them to the kitchen. Surely he did not plan to sleep in there?

Joseph mutely followed the two men, leaving Batya rooted to the guest bedroom floor. He knew she would enjoy the room as soon as her husband relaxed.

Gidi took one look around the cavernous kitchen, removed a large towel from one of the bags, and placed it on the cooking island in the middle of the room, indicating to the doorman he could unload there. The doorman did not wait for Joseph to agree, sensing who was boss at the moment.

A whole kitchen emerged from the luggage cart: plates, serving dishes, utensils, vegetables in plastic bags, loaves of challah, wine, a hot plate. Salt and pepper shakers, a thermos, hand towels. A store-bought cake in an aluminum baking tin.

Joseph briskly dismissed the doorman through the service entrance, forgetting to tip him. He composed himself before speaking, wishing to sound rational, not hurt or insulted. “I’ve kashered the kitchen, bought and toiveled new cookery and cutlery, purchased and prepared everything according to your standards of kashrut.” He lowered his voice to avoid sounding shrill. “Do you mean to tell me that you plan to eat your own food at my dinner table?”

Gidi addressed his father for the first time. “We could eat alone in the kitchen and save us all a lot of discomfort.”

Just then the buzzer rang, the other doorman announcing the arrival of two more guests. Joseph reprimanded him, in a low, threatening hiss from the kitchen intercom: “I left clear instructions not to detain my sons with your exaggerated security.” He was nearly choked with anger. “Send them up right away!” He wheeled around without looking at Gidi and strode to the front door. Out in the hallway he took several deep breaths, then checked his composure in the mirror. By the time Daniel and Ethan reached his floor he had returned to a forced equilibrium, managing a smile for his two eldest sons.

Ethan returned Joseph’s smile; Daniel did not. Ethan’s small, flattened backpack fell to the floor as he hugged his father. Joseph knew better than to expect the same from Daniel. Instead he squeezed Daniel’s shoulder and pulled him into the apartment.

The boys went to greet Gidi, and Joseph, returning to the guest room, found Batya shoeless, awash in a sea of lace and plump pillows, examining the photograph of her husband from a different life. She sprang to a sitting position when he entered, tucking her stockinged legs under the quilted blanket. Joseph ignored this, hoping to make her feel more comfortable. He resolved to let her sleep in this most feminine of rooms no matter what her husband might decide, despite the waste of a bed when they would be so pressed for space.

“How could you tell them apart?” Her freckled forehead wrinkled with worry lines, her thin, gingery eyebrows like two circumflexes over cinnamon brown eyes.

Joseph’s lips curved into a small smile as he contemplated the sweet, innocent face before him. He could not resist the thought that even their attempts at neutralizing their good looks would not prevent Batya and Gidi from producing anything but gorgeous children. “Well, their mother never had a problem, but they could certainly fool me,” he said in a warmly conspiratorial tone.

Batya forgot her reticence and unfolded her legs. “I wanted to paint them each a different color,” she said, pointing to her toenails, “but my husband wouldn’t let me. Only clear nail polish. Even though nobody would ever see my toes.” She blushed and smiled, looking up at Joseph. “Well, almost nobody.”

“Don’t worry. I’m your father-in-law. Almost nobody.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, nodding, wide eyed.

Ethan appeared in the doorway. “Hello, Batya,” he said with a big, warm smile. “Everything all set for Shabbat, Dad? Lights, timers, hot plates? Have you put out precut toilet paper? Did you open the seals on the wine bottles? Gidi wants to know which of the outlets in the kitchen are on the Shabbat timer. He’s setting up his own hot plate.”

Joseph excused himself and headed back toward the kitchen, with Ethan close behind. As he passed through the living room he ran into Gidi’s twin, Gavriel, just entering the front door. Gavri’s beard was neater than Gidi’s and his face fuller. Ritual
tzitzit
fringes hung long from the white shirt flowing loose from his belt. “Shalom, Father,” he said politely.

“Hey, little brother!” Ethan had always been Gavri’s buddy, his chief defender against Daniel, who usually took Gidi’s side in fights. “We missed you at the station.”

“Don’t people in Tel Aviv listen to the news? There was a shooting incident in Hebron this afternoon and the roads were blocked for more than an hour. I missed the last bus from Jerusalem and thought about turning around and going home. I knew you’d kill me, though, so I caught a ride with this weird old couple. Well, never mind. I made it here; that’s what’s important.”

Gidi’s superkosher corner in the kitchen reminded Joseph of the shrines in miniature he had seen in the Far East: choice delicacies in small quantities offered to the gods, everything laid out in perfect rows or at right angles. He has his grandfather’s German love of order, Joseph thought. Gidi would have a fit at these comparisons: Buddhists and Germans, idol worshippers and Jew murderers. Joseph would share these musings with no one, since his other sons would be offended and come to the defense of their little brother, while Pepe would agree only too quickly, forcing Joseph to explain and justify his son’s odd behavior. He showed Gideon what he needed to know, flipped the switches on several Shabbat timers, and called Batya to show her the candlesticks he had arranged for her in the dining room.

He enjoyed the hustle and bustle of last-minute Shabbat preparations with his sons and his new daughter-in-law, even though he recognized their teamwork for what it was: an illusion, the lot of them thrown together but not truly together, colliding, interacting, but separate. He worried as the sun dipped dangerously low to the horizon and Noam had not yet arrived.

When Joseph announced he was going to shower no one responded. He was glad to be in his bathroom, behind a locked door where he could undress or cry or hide his weary, worried face in his hands. They will warm up; the meal will melt them, he told himself. Gideon and Batya can eat what they like. Who cares?

It took a moment for Joseph to hear the pounding through the torrent of hot water coursing its way from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. He shut off the water and listened. “Father, Noam’s downstairs, just in from Spain. We’re all going to some
shtiebl
that Gidi has picked out for us to pray at. So Shabbat Shalom.”

Joseph did not respond. Not because he did not know which son was speaking to him. Not because he knew it was improper to offer Sabbath greetings in the nude, from the shower. It was because they were sneaking out. So they were embarrassed to sit with their father in a shul? He would have been happy to go if asked, had convinced himself during the course of the afternoon that he should accompany them to the local synagogue. He would even have agreed to this hovel of black-hatted ultra-Orthodox; that would not have scared him off. But they had planned it without him, left without inviting him. Joseph had not even had a second to acknowledge Noam’s arrival, which meant the five of them would be present, all his sons on hand for the celebration.

He waited until he was sure they were gone before emerging from the shower. He put on the pale yellow oxford shirt he had ironed earlier, the staid blue trousers. He unfolded his white
kipa
, the one he had worn at his wedding, but he did not place it on his head. Not yet. He would wait until they returned, until they said the blessings over the wine and the bread. He would suffer his freedom until the last possible minute.

“Sixteen floors. This is going to be a lot of fun to climb back up.”

When the elevator spills Daniel, Ethan, Gavri, Gidi, and Batya into the lobby, they find Noam with his back to the guards’ desk, a tall blonde in a Lycra dress and strappy heels pressed up close to him. The guards on duty are too entranced by Noam and the blonde to notice the arrival of the rest of the Licht family.

“No, I never promised I would call.” Noam’s voice is steady and quiet, as though they have been through this several times already. “In fact, I wanted to call, but you wrote your number on some little scrap of paper I put through the laundry.”

“You are so cute,” she says with a malicious passion as she leans in to place a short kiss on his lips. Her heels clack as she slinks toward the front door, clearly aware that Noam and the guards and all these people who have stepped off the elevator are watching her. The guard nearest the entrance remembers his duty too late and leaps up to open the door only when her hand is already poised to push it. She lets him sweep it open for her, then turns to face Noam. “Your driver’s license. I wrote it on the back of your driver’s license. Don’t bother to call unless you can find a
serious
way to make it up to me. I mean true
groveling
, not just a silly bouquet of flowers or some stale chocolates. Ta!” She throws a bright, sassy smile to Noam and a wave to the rest of the crowd and disappears into the street.

“Jeez, I don’t even remember her name,” says Noam, shaking his head.

“Ah, don’t bother,” says the stouter of the two doormen. “She lives with an old geezer on the eighth floor. Areal bitch, if you’ll excuse me. Pretends she’s a lady, but she tossed the old guy’s kids out and now she cheats on him.”