The Rabbi (56 page)

Michael grinned. “Your predecessor,
alev hasholom
, once said the same thing to me, Milt,” he said. “Only the way Sher put it was, ‘I've got a lousy job for you.'” They both laughed.

“It's a congregation that has just voted itself Reform,” Rabbi Greenfield said. “After a kind of civil war.”

“Is there anything left of it?”

“Almost one third of its members are Orthodox. In addition to your regular duties you would probably have to officiate at
Shaharit, Mincha
, and
Maariv
every day. You'd have to serve as rabbi to the pious as well as the liberal.”

“I think I'd like that,” Michael said.

On the following week end he flew to Massachusetts and two weeks after that he and Leslie drove to Woodborough with Rachel in a car bed and Max in the back seat. They found the big old Victorian house that looked as though it were haunted by the ghost of Hawthorne, with windows like wise eyes and an apple tree outside the back door. The tree had dead boughs that needed pruning, and there was a swing for Max made of a threadbare tire hung with heavy rope from a high branch.

Best of all, he liked the temple. Beth Sholom was old and small. There were no Chagalls or Lipschitzes, but it smelled of floor wax and tattered prayer books and dry woodwork and twenty-five years of people seeking God.

BOOK IV:
The Promised Land

43

Woodborough, Massachusetts
December 1964

Columbia College Alumni Association
116th Street and Broadway
New York, New York 10027

Gentlemen:

The following is my autobiographical contribution to the Quarter-Century Book of the class of '41:

It is incredible to think that almost twenty-five years have vanished since we all left Morningside Heights
.

I am a rabbi. I have filled Reform pulpits in Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where I now live in Woodborough with my wife, the former Leslie Rawlins (Wellesley, '46) of Hartford, Connecticut, and our son Max, 16, and our daughter Rachel, 8
.

I find myself looking with surprising anticipation toward the twenty-fifth reunion. The present is so busy, we don't often enough have the opportunity to look back at the past. Yet it is the past which guides us into the future. As a clergyman in a religion almost six thousand years old, I am increasingly aware of this fact
.

It has been my experience that faith, far from being an anachronism, is more important than ever in enabling modern man to grope his way into tomorrow
.

As for me, I am thankful that God gives me the opportunity to grope. I have kept a fearful eye for the flash in the sky, even as you; I have given up smoking of late and have developed a paunch; recently I have noticed that a great many grown men have taken to using the expression Sir
.

But deep down I am confident that the bomb will never go off. I do not feel that I will be stricken by cancer, at least
until I am very old; today, forty-five is a toddling age. And who wants a flat stomach? Are we a society of beach boys?

Enough of sermons; on to soda water; I promise not to open my mouth at Reunion, except of course to have another drink and to join in the singing of “Who Owns New York?
”

Your classmate
,

Rabbi Michael Kind
Temple Beth Sholom
Woodborough, Massachusetts

He had fallen asleep, finally, sitting fully clothed and slumped over on his desk, his head in his arms.

All night long, the telephone was silent

At 6:36
A.M
. it rang.

“We haven't seen her,” Dr. Bernstein said.

“Neither have I.” It was a cold morning, with the radiators gasping and clanking under a full head of steam, and it occurred to him to ask Dan how she had been dressed, whether she had been protected against the elements.

Her heavy blue coat and gloves and boots and kerchief were missing with her, Dan said. Somehow the information made him feel better: someone so sensibly bundled was hardly a Desdemona in the snow.

“I'll keep in touch,” Dr. Bernstein said.

“Please.”

Sleeping in the chair had made him stiff and uncomfortable and he spent a long time under the hot shower and then he dressed and woke the children and made certain they were ready for school.

“Will you come to PTA tonight?” Rachel asked him. “Each room gets two points for fathers. I take part. My name is on the program.”

“What do you do?”

“If you want to know, you have to come and see.”

“All right,” he promised.

He drove to the temple in time to lead the
minyan
through the
kaddish
. Then he shut himself in his study and worked on a sermon. He kept busy.

Just before eleven o'clock Dan called him again. “According
to the State Police she spent the night at the YWCA. She signed the register with her own name.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don't know. The detective said she left the Y early this morning.”

She may have gone home, he thought; she may be there now. The children were at school and Anna was not due to come in until it was time for her to prepare the evening meal.

He thanked Dan and hung up, then he told his secretary that he would be working at home for the rest of the day.

But as he left the office the telephone rang and a moment later she ran out after him.

“It's Western Union, Rabbi,” she said.

MICHAEL DARLING
I
'
M
GOING OFF BY MYSELF FOR A FEW DAYS. PLEASE DON'T WORRY. I LOVE YOU. LESLIE

He went home anyway and sat in the silent kitchen drinking hot coffee and thinking.

Where would she get the money to go away with, and to live on? He had their bank book in his pocket. So far as he knew, she had only a few dollars in her purse.

He was worrying the question like a dog with a bone when the telephone rang, and when he heard the Long Distance operator he started to pray. But then he recognized his father's voice on the line through a crackle and sputter of electronic noise.

“Michael?” Abe said.

“Hello, Pop? I can't hear you.”

“I hear you,” Abe said accusingly. “You want me to ask the operator?”

“No, now I can hear. How are things in Atlantic City?”

“I'll speak louder,” Abe shouted. “I'm not in Atlantic City. I'm—” There was a burst of static.

“Hello?”

“
Miami
. I decided at the last minute. I'm calling to let you know, you shouldn't worry. I'm at 12 Lucerne Drive.” He spelled Lucerne. “Care of Aisner,” spelling that, too.

Michael wrote it down. “What is it, Pop, a boardinghouse? A motel?”

“A private home. I'm visiting a friend.” Abe hesitated for a moment. “How are the kids? And Leslie?”

“Just fine.”

“And you? How are you?”

“Fine, Pop. We're all fine. How are
you
?”

“Michael. I'm going to get married.”

“What did you say?” he said, although there had been no static and he had heard his father. “Married, you said?”

“You're angry?” his father said. “You think it's a
mishugineh
thing to do, an old man like me?”

“I think it's wonderful, marvelous! Who is she?” He felt as much relief as delight and he realized guiltily that it might not be wonderful at all, that Abe might be mixed up with who knew what kind of woman. “What's her name?”

“Like I said, Aisner. Her first name is Lillian. She's a widow, same as me. Get this, she's the woman I rent the apartment from in Atlantic City. How's that for a move?”

“Shrewd. Very shrewd.” He grinned into the phone. Ah, Pop.

“Her husband was Ted Aisner. Maybe the name is familiar? He had a dozen Jewish bakeries in Jersey. A baker's dozen.”

“No,” Michael said.

“It wasn't to me, either. He passed away in fifty-nine. She's a sweet person, Michael. I think you'll like her.”

“If
you
do, that's enough for me. When will you be married?”

“We figured in March. There's no hurry, both of us are well past the age of impetuosity.” From the way Abe said this, Michael guessed he was repeating something he had heard Lillian Aisner say, perhaps to her own children.

“Does she have a family?”

“Hey, you'll never guess,” Abe said. “She's got a son who's a rabbi. Only Orthodox. He's got a
shul
in Albany, New York. Melvin, Rabbi Melvin Aisner.”

“I don't know him.”

“Well, he's Orthodox, you probably wouldn't cross paths. Lillian says he's very well thought of. A nice guy. She's got another son, Phil, I can't wait to avoid him. Even
she
says he's a
shnook
. He had me investigated. The damn fool, I hope it cost him a fortune.”

Suddenly Michael was sad, remembering the double stone of hewn granite his father had had placed on his mother's grave, with Abe's name engraved next to hers and the last date left blank. “You can't blame him for protecting his mother,” he said.
“Say, is she there? I'd like to tell her about the gigolo she's getting.”

“No, she's out shopping for dinner,” Abe said. “I figure well take a little honeymoon in Israel. See Ruthie and her family.”

“Would you like to have the wedding here?” Michael asked, forgetting for the moment his own complicating problems.

“She's strictly kosher. She wouldn't eat in your house.”

“Hey. Tell her I'm going to have
her
investigated.”

Abe chuckled; it occurred to Michael that he sounded younger, more buoyant than he had sounded in years. “You know what I wish for you,” Michael said.

“I know.” He cleared his throat. “I better hang up, Michael, that
shnook
Phil shouldn't think I'm running up his mother's phone bill on purpose.”

“Take care of yourself, Pop.”

“You, too. Leslie isn't there to wish me
mazel tov
?”

“No. She's out, too.”

“Give her my love. And the kids, give them a kiss from the
zaydeh
. I sent them each a check, Chanukah money.”

“You shouldn't do that,” he said, but the line was dead.

He replaced the telephone in its cradle and simply sat. Abe Kind, survivor. That was the lesson of the day, the heritage passed from father to son: how to keep going, how to crash from today into tomorrow. It was a proud lesson. He knew men of Abe Kind's age and circumstance who chose to become permanent sleepwalkers, sinking into torpor as secure as death. His father had chosen life's pain, the double bed instead of the double grave. He poured another cup of coffee while he wondered what Lillian looked like; and as he drank it he pondered such matters as whether a double stone had been erected over Ted Aisner.

At seven-thirty he drove Rachel to the Woodrow Wilson School and she abandoned him in the corridor. He accepted a mimeographed program from a serious boy in long trousers and walked into the auditorium. Sitting alone in the center of the middle row was Jean Mendelsohn.

“Hello,” he said, joining her.

“Why, Rabbi! What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, I imagine. How's Jerry?”

“Not as bad as I was afraid he would be. He misses the leg. But it's not like stories I've heard about how they still feel the missing parts, how the toes cramp even though they're not there any more. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“It isn't like that. At least not with Jerry.”

“That's good. How are his spirits?”

“Could be worse, could be better. I spend a lot of time with him. My kid sister Lois came in from New York. She's sixteen, wonderful with the kids.”

“One of your children is on the program?”

“My Toby, the devil.” She appeared to be flustered at the admission, and when he looked down at the program in his hand, he understood. The school was holding its annual Christmas pageant, an event he had expected to be able to skip when he had first seen the PTA schedule. The last line of the program listed Rachel as a property girl. “My Toby is going to be a Wise Man,” Thelma said in a glum rush, getting it over with. “These children. They drive you crazy. She asked us if she could. We told her she
knew
how we felt, to make up her own mind.”

“So she's a Wise Man,” Michael said, smiling.

She nodded. “In Rome they tell us we don't have to feel guilty, and in Woodborough my daughter is a Wise Man.”

The hall had filled. Miss McTiernan, the school principal, all bosom and steel-colored hair, stood at the front of the room. “On behalf of the pupils and teachers of the Woodrow Wilson School, I am happy to welcome you to our annual Christmas pageant. For weeks your children have been preparing costumes and rehearsing. The Christmas pageant is a tradition of long standing at this school, and all the pupils take great pride in it. I'm sure when you see the program, you will, too.” She sat to loud applause, and the children marched down the aisles in costumes, nervous Shepherds with tall crooks, self-conscious Wise Men in wispy beards, giggling Angels bearing on their shoulders marvelous papier-mâché wings. After the costumed players trooped the pupils of the fifth and sixth grades, each boy wearing dark slacks and white shirt and tie and each girl in skirt and sweater. Rachel carried sheet music which she passed out to the rest of the children when they reached their seats, then she walked to the piano and stood there.