The Sacrifice of Tamar (39 page)

Tamar stared at him.
Kedushah
. Holiness. Sincerity strained his brows, wrinkling his high, smooth forehead. His stiff collar was dazzlingly white, his brand-new black suit immaculate. Only his black, curly hair remained outside his perfectly maintained and disciplined appearance, wandering across his forehead like a stranger who’d lost his way. It gave him the look of an American teenager, she thought, undermining all his efforts to resemble a serious young sage. She brushed the hair out of his eyes, tucking it lovingly beneath his dark skullcap.

The girl had been telling the truth! He had agreed. Her two main, objective, impersonal arguments had now been thrown
out the window, forcing her to deal with the very personal nastiness of her irrational dislike.

“But what did you think of her otherwise?”

“Otherwise,” she hemmed. “Otherwise… she’s got nice hair and eyes. She knows her mind.”

“Yes, I know.” He nodded enthusiastically. “I realize now how childish the other girl was. You were so right. I didn’t realize it at the time…”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss it with your father,” she hedged, grabbing on to small roots on the smooth mountain wall, trying not to slip into the chasm. “In fact, I have very serious doubts about…” She saw his face fall alarmingly.

And it suddenly struck her that she was a character in a farce. The mother has to meet the girl! The mother has the right to choose her son’s wife, to approve or disapprove! Looking at his face, she understood that the choice had been made and that the only way she could change it would be to break Aaron’s heart.

“. . . serious doubts about staying in Brooklyn if you decide to move to Israel! I would have to talk
Aba
into coming, too. She’s a special girl, I can see that.”

“Really,
Ima?
And you do like her, don’t you?”

“My future daughter-in-law? I know I will learn to love her, the way I love you, my son.”

He took her in his arms for a grateful embrace, and the strong bones of his slim young man’s body surprised and embarrassed her. Her little boy. A tall, handsome young man. What a blessing he had been to them, all these years! Blessed child! Blessed, blessed child. Never anything but good had come from him. She smoothed the black unruly curls from his forehead. Her fingers trembled.

Chapter twenty-five

“They want to make the wedding at the end of the month,” Tamar shouted into the phone. Josh sounded a million miles away.

“So, tell me about Gitta Chana…”

“Your son Aaron has chosen her for a wife, what’s to tell?”

There was a pause. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that it’s probably
beshert
. That a
bas kol
went out of heaven forty days before Aaron’s conception announcing Gitta Chana was waiting for him when the time came…”

“Probably
beshert?
Only that?”

“Josh, please don’t push me. I’ve never married off a son before. I’m doing my best,” she yelled with something like desperation.

“So, that bad,” his faraway voice resounded with displeasure. “I’m surprised.”

“The first time I looked at her, I just had this feeling, I don’t know, like something hard had gotten stuck in my throat. She wants to live in Israel, to be a
kollel
wife…”

“This is not a reason to dislike a person! We should all be
lucky enough to live in
Eretz Hakodesh
, we should all be lucky enough to find pious, hardworking women for our sons to marry, women who will help them grow in Torah,” he chastised her. “
Die kallah ist zu shoen?
Is that your complaint?” He sounded impatient.

The bride is too pretty, a perfect Yiddish expression defining complaints such as hers! She felt the fight drain out of her.

“If you could just give me some normal idea, some objective problem we could discuss, maybe I could try to talk Aaron out of it…”

“I don’t want you to talk him out of it! This makes him happy! She’s a very nice girl from a very nice family. You know I didn’t like the others, either. I’ll probably never find one I like enough for my son. Let him be happy!” she finally capitulated, acknowledging defeat. Her objection was not reasonable or rational. It was something she just couldn’t put her finger on.

This was what her son wanted. This was something her husband approved of. What difference did it make that the girl set her teeth on edge? The son had to live with her, not the mother.

“Anyway, Josh,
you’ll
like her.”

“If this is the case, if it’s settled, then let’s make the wedding at the end of next month. You better stay there and make the arrangements.”

“But how will you and the girls manage?”

“It’s too expensive to fly back and forth. Better use the money to help Aaron get settled. My mother will help. We’ll manage.”

“I miss you,” she whispered.

“And I miss you.
Tzchi le mitzvos
. Stay there and settle everything.”

She hung up, forlorn. She hadn’t realized how much the separation from Josh had bothered her. But now, hearing his voice
fade in the rasping echo of underwater cables stretching beneath vast seas, she realized how much she needed him.

Not that he would actually do anything, take care of anything, if he was with her, she tried to comfort herself. The engagement party, the wedding, Aaron’s apartment, it would all fall on her shoulders either way. She would do the talking, the negotiating, the shopping. He would sit back and approve or disapprove of the results, giving his opinion on the spiritual level of her decisions. Had she bargained too hard, offending the merchants? Had she been honest enough in the terms she laid down? If, for example, she contracted a carpenter to build kitchen cabinets, had she insisted on a deadline with monetary penalties if he failed to finish on time, and might this not encourage the carpenter to desecrate the Sabbath in order to meet it? Josh would smooth his beard down and consider, perhaps making her call back the wily tradesmen and renegotiate, giving him numerous ways to rob them blind.

But still, he was her husband. She loved him.

The bride is too pretty.

Somehow, she didn’t think so.

She rented a small apartment in Sanhedria, one of Jerusalem’s most religious neighborhoods, and spent her days like a business tycoon, phone in hand, finding Aaron an apartment with a reasonable rent (later they would help him buy something), arranging for furniture and appliances, negotiating with the caterers over the menu, the photographer, the band. Buying the bride her wedding gifts…

She tried to feel a little more kindly toward her future daughter-in-law, softening at the many lovely reminders of her own happy days as a bride-to-be. She could see the girl’s delight, which rose from her like an almost visible cloudy essence, warm breath exhaled on a winter night. But shopping with her, she felt the renewed nudge of the little hard rock that lay in her throat
and wouldn’t budge. Gitta Chana went from store to store looking at engagement rings, trying to find the one with the smallest diamond, proof of her spiritual loftiness, of her dedication to her future calling as the tight-fisted, practical helpmate who would allow her husband to support his family on a
kollel
man’s stingy stipend. But she would have liked her more if she had taken a bigger stone and if she had not asked that the gold bracelet Tamar selected for her be exchanged for a clothes dryer. (“With many children, I will have no time to wear gold,” the girl had loftily informed her.)

Still, she kept trying. She acknowledged Gitta Chana’s piety, her strong, consistent virtues. She worked hard to convince herself such things deserved her love, admiration, and attention.

But mostly she tried to keep busy.

It was not good, she found, to think too much.

Only at night, she would sometimes wake and walk to the window of the little rented apartment in Sanhedria, looking out at the dark rolling hills of Judea, the dark overarching sky whose small lights, like knowing eyes, blinked at her in amazement.

The days went quickly. And then, suddenly, the wedding was only eight days away. Josh and the girls were to arrive in four days. Her outfit, a simple suit of pink and cream, custom made by a local seamstress, had already been taken in twice, as the pounds dropped away from sheer excited exertion.

It was midafternoon. She had spent the day shopping for a good set of china in B’nai Brak with Gitta Chana and her mother, a wedding gift from the groom’s parents. The bride, as usual, had selected a local product that was highly unbreakable, inexpensive, and ugly.

As she got out of the taxi that had returned her to Jerusalem, Tamar felt exhausted from the failed effort to convince the girl to buy the imported china from Germany or Japan, with its lovely translucence and delicate gold edging. She felt sad she had spent
so little on the dishes; sad she’d failed to convince Gitta Chana to splurge foolishly and smile about it with a bride’s unbridled joy.

As she walked toward the bus stop on Straus Street to get the bus home, the vision of cooking dinner on the simple gas burners in the rented apartment was suddenly too much to deal with. Besides, she told herself with no small degree of irony, you saved so much money on the dishes. You can afford to buy take-out food.

There was a long line at Chaim’s Glatt Kosher Home-Cooked Take-Out. There was always a long line. Not because of the gourmet quality of the pale chickens and thick, brown kugels, but because Chaim, a Belzer Hasid with a long gray beard, was universally trusted by even the most exacting
haredim
to adhere strictly to the laws of kashruth.

She shifted from foot to foot as the long line wound slowly toward the counter. She thought she imagined the tap on her shoulder. But then it happened again.

She turned.

At first she thought it might be one of Gitta Chana’s friends she had met briefly at the engagement party or one of the other family celebrations. But then she looked closer. It was a woman her own age, her limbs lean and shapely, with hardly an ounce of extra padding. Only the little lines around the lively green eyes, the soft folds of skin above the eyelids, betrayed the two decades her body hid so gracefully. She wore a long black wig that looked almost exactly as her hair had when she was in high school. She had hardly changed at all.

Tamar felt her throat suddenly cake dry, tears stinging her eyes. She stood there, frozen for a moment in stupid loyalty to the stance of anger she had maintained but had never really felt. But the pretense of coldness was impossible to sustain. She hung
her head, her eyes overflowing, her heart filled with longing and shame for having treated a dear, loyal friend so badly.

“Jenny,” she whispered finally, crashing through the barrier and finding, to her surprise, no obstruction.

Jenny’s familiar soft cheek pressed against her own. “Come, let’s get out of here.” She took Tamar by the hand, tugging her out of the store. Wordlessly they walked up Straus Street toward the bustling center of modern Jerusalem. They walked past the elaborate facade of the old Bikur Cholim Hospital, up King George Street, turning down the Ben Yehudah pedestrian mall with its colorful gift shops and open-air cafes. It was crowded with unemployed Russian immigrants playing violins and accordions, with street vendors selling jewelry and oil paintings of the Western Wall. It had the atmosphere of muted celebration. They said nothing, but they gripped each other’s hands with a kind of fearful love, as if afraid of being torn apart at any moment.

“Someplace quiet,” Tamar said hoarsely, not trusting her voice.

Jenny took her down a small side street and inside a quiet indoor coffeehouse. They made their way to the back. It was empty and cool and quiet, smelling of wood and fresh tomatoes. They ordered warm drinks and held the cups with one hand, the other hand still gripped in an entreating handshake. Tamar looked down into her cup. She felt so ashamed.

“You look so pretty. The same pretty little girl,” Jenny told her.

She looked up, startled, and laughed. “About twenty pounds heavier!”

“The face is the same. A good girl’s pretty face.” Jenny smiled.

“I’ve had a good life. Blessing after blessing,” Tamar said with a shock of recognition at having voiced some deep truth. A good life, despite it all. Husband, children, a position of respect
in the community. Blessing after blessing. “And now my son, Aaron, is getting married.”

“Mazel tov!” Jenny said.

Tamar looked at her, her eyes welling with tears. “And if it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t have been an Aaron. If I had listened to Hadassah… if I had done what I wanted to do…” She shuddered. “My fine, precious son. Never to have known him. To have killed him because of my fears…”

“Your memory is not good! You were the one who decided to go through with it! Hadassah and I didn’t give you any help at all. So it’s worked out for you?”

“Baruch Hashem!”

“Thank G-d!”

The two sat silently, searching through their memories like a beacon of light searching out ghostly ships on the dark horizon.

“And you never told?”

Tamar shook her head. “It was pointless. I saved them all such trouble and worry. My husband, my family. And of course now there is nothing left to tell.”

Jenny’s eyebrows pinched together unhappily. She started to say something and then stopped. She squeezed Tamar’s hand. “It’s so
good
to see you! I’ve missed you.”

“I don’t deserve it. I treated you so badly. I just couldn’t stand the idea… the idea of someone knowing. Can you understand that? It was nothing you did.”

“I figured that out long ago. That’s why I stopped writing. But I always asked about you. I knew you had two beautiful daughters. You’re very famous in Orchard Park, Rebbetzin Finegold, you know! Considered a real
tzdakis!”

Tamar blushed, pleased. “And what about you? Do you have a family?”

“I have the best husband and three great kids!”

“How wonderful! My children are also wonderful…”