Christmas for Joshua - A Novel (24 page)

“
It’s not just the houses.” He sheltered his eyes from the sun. “Look at that pool. It’s got waterfalls! They also have a tennis court, and over there, their own putting green! And baseball batting cage!”

“
This is nothing.” I rotated my left arm, which seemed to help with the ache. “A few miles up the road there’s a group of mansions with their own airstrip. They land their private planes and taxi them into attached hangars the way we drive our car into the garage.”

Mordechai whistled. “I have a feeling we’re not in Brooklyn anymore.”

An hour later, the top of the trail offered a magnificent view of the brown desert landscape, patched up with green golf courses surrounded by red roofs. Rebecca pointed out different locations for Mordechai, beginning with the barren cliffs of the McDowell Mountains. “It’s a huge nature preserve,” she explained, “full of wildlife. Sometimes the animals come down into town—foxes, coyotes, javelinas, which are wild pigs that move in packs, and even bears and mountain lions.”

I had to sit on a rock and contend with a stitch that stabbed my ribs. My Blackberry vibrated against my hip. There was a new e-mail from Judy Levy, sent to all the members of the King Solomon Synagogue:

I forwarded Judy’s e-mail to Jonathan Warnick with a brief note:

“
Are you okay?” Debra crouched next to me while Rebecca continued pointing out the sights to Mordechai.

“
With you around, life is good.” I holstered my Blackberry and leaned on her as I stood up.

“
You don’t look well.”

“
Not enough sleep. And I’m still recovering from New York.”

“
Oh, about that, Mrs. Levinson was going to ask the photographer to paste your image into the chuppah photos. He could use the images he got earlier, when you stood near the entrance.”

“
He’ll doctor the photos to add a doctor?”

“
It’s a simple operation, easy to do with digital images.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because I don’t believe the upset stomach story.” Debra paused, looking at the distant mountains, waiting for me to protest, which I didn’t. What could I say?

“
You would have been there, right next to me, correct?”

I remained silent. How could I deny it?

“
If it was only a physical thing, a sickness, you would have dragged yourself over somehow or had Aaron give you a piggyback ride.”

“
He’s too short. My hands would drag on the floor.”

“
Then you would have sat on the floor under the chuppah or in a chair next to me. You would have put on diapers if you had to, no matter what anyone said. You wouldn’t miss it for anything!”

The last few words Debra cried out, causing Rebecca to stop her tour-guide routine and turn.

I caressed Debra’s cheek. “It’s better that you keep thinking of it as an upset stomach.”

“
My dad taught me that it’s always better to tell the truth.”

“
Yes.” I sighed. “It is.”

“
Then tell me the truth!”

“
I’d rather let Mordechai tell you what happened.”

When he stood before his bride, I could see that Mordechai was as nervous as he had been in the ketubah room. The boy had a lot to explain, and I felt sorry for him. But it was their marriage he now had to save, and I had enough trouble with my own wife. I threaded my arm in Rebecca’s, and we started on the path downhill.

No one spoke as we drove away from Pinnacle Peak. I put down the top to let in the sun but kept the windows up to shelter us from the wind. In the back seat, Debra looked out the window, sniffling, and Mordechai sat with his face in his hands. The atmosphere resembled the ketubah room, only now I was in the driver’s seat.

Instead of turning south on Pima Road toward home, I headed north to Desert Mountain in the hope that the beautiful scenery and sunny weather would somehow elevate everyone’s mood.

After a while, the sniffling stopped, though Debra kept facing away from Mordechai. I was preparing to say something that would instigate a discussion, but Rebecca, who was still getting lost regularly despite having lived here for so long, somehow recognized my meandering and asked, “Where are you going?”

“
A little detour.” I pointed at the hills of Carefree. “It’s a beautiful drive.”

“
Get us home please!”

“That’s what I’m doing,” I said innocently. “It’s just a little longer.”

“
Rusty!
”

There was my opening. “Christian is my name.”

“I won’t call you by that name.”

“Why not? It’s my given name. Christian. You want to see my driver’s license?”

“No.”

“How about our State of New York marriage license? Says it right there next to Rebecca Greenbaum.
Christian Dinwall
.”

“Don’t be a smart ass!”

“Facts are facts.”

Behind me, Debra blew her nose.

Rebecca took off her sunglasses and glared at me. “Will you stop this idiotic name-change campaign? You were Rusty when I met you, and you’ve been Rusty ever since. I will never, never, never call you by that name!”

In the rearview mirror I saw expressions of alarm on both Debra’s and Mordechai’s faces. But I wasn’t going to drop the argument, not now that I got Rebecca to discuss it. “Tell me why?”

“You know why.”

“
Azoi?
” I assumed the nasal, accented voice of Rabbi Mintzberg: “But why not,
Rey-bay-kah?
”

Mordechai chuckled behind me, but Rebecca didn’t see the humor. “I won’t address my own husband with an adjective that means
Non-Jewish! Goy! Shaygetz!
” She was yelling now, and tears flowed down her cheeks.

It was painful for me to do this, but I had to. “A word with multiple meanings only means what you want it to mean.” Steering the car to the shoulder, I stopped, put on my hazards, and pressed the button that closed the power top. “The word ‘Christian’ could be used to describe someone who believes in Jesus Christ. That’s true. But I don’t believe that he was the Messiah, so I’m not a Christian and therefore the religious meaning does not apply to me. Rather, when I’m called Christian, it’s just a name, not an adjective, okay?”

“Never!”

“What if my name was Mohammed? Or Buddha? Or Dick?” I checked the roofline above the windshield to make sure it closed properly. “Would you also refuse to—”

“Dick is fine,” she said. “I’ll call you Dick, because you are a dick!”

“At least I’m
your
dick.”

Laughter came from the back seat.

“It’s my right,” I pressed on, “my unalienable human right to choose how people call me.”

“
You already chose Rusty. I like Rusty.” Rebecca looked at me. “I even love Rusty.”

Love. Present tense. That’s good.
“And I love you too,” I said. “But I don’t want to be Rusty anymore. Rusty is a redhead mechanic or a used-car salesman or a tattooed porn star. But I’m not Rusty. I’m Christian Dinwall, and I’ll continue to correct you until you’re too tired to resist.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll call you Christian. Or Dick. Whichever you prefer.”

“
Yes. I will.
Christian. Christian. Christian.
Happy?”

“
Very happy. What’s the catch?”

“
You can’t call me Rebecca anymore. From now on, you must call me Satan. That’s my name from now on: Satan Dinwall.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not the same.”

“But it is,” Rebecca said. “For me, if I have to call you Christian, then I might as well salute you.” She raised her right hand. “
Heil Hitler!
”

“Mom, please!” Debra leaned forward between the backs of the front seats, the way she used to do as a little girl, and I almost yelled,
Buckle up, Debbie!

“What?” Rebecca half-turned and realized that Mordechai was laughing into his hands. “What’s so funny?”

“The Nazis,” he said. “Every time an argument heats up between Jews, we accuse each other of being like the Nazis. It’s sick!”

“Sick,” Rebecca gestured at me, “is when a husband demands that his Jewish wife call him Christian. That’s sick!”

“You’re like two children,” Debra said. “It’s embarrassing. Enough already!”

“
Don’t be rude,” Rebecca said.

“
Then start calling Daddy by his real name. Call him Christian. Who cares?”

Rebecca was taken aback. “Don’t you care?”

“No.” Debra looked at Mordechai. “Do you?”

He eagerly shook his head. “It’s just a name.”

“Well,” Rebecca turned and looked forward, her jaws set stubbornly, “I care!”

Even though Rebecca had not yet changed her mind, I drove on with the satisfaction that we had broken through the wall she had erected to prevent any discussion of the matter. Another achievement was Mordechai’s clear indication that he was unfazed by my name, despite its secondary meaning. I knew that his acquiescence was owed in no small part to temporary circumstances. He was in the doghouse, and he would do anything to ingratiate himself to Debra and earn back her trust after failing to tell her the truth about why I had gone MIA from the wedding. It was a big challenge, and I decided to help him. Stopping at a traffic light, I said, “It was my insistence that no one told you the truth.”

In my rearview mirror, Debra’s nose was still red, but her eyes were dry. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. It was still a lie.”

“But I didn’t lie,” Mordechai said. “Your dad’s friend, Dr. Brutsky, he told you.”

“And you kept quiet,” she said, “even though you knew how important it was for me to have my father next to me, or at least to know the truth about why he wasn’t there.”

Rebecca glanced at me, and I said, “He couldn’t tell you. Part of the deal was that they promised not to tell you. The whole reason I caved in to
Mean-Zeh-Berg
was to prevent any disruption, to make sure that your wedding day remained happy.”

“It was happy,” Debra said. “But what’s the point of a marriage if I can’t trust my husband?”

“
But we had to keep it from you!” Mordechai’s voice sounded as if he was about to cry. “Making the bride happy is the biggest mitzvah, the most important thing under Halacha! How could I upset my own bride? And break a vow I’d made to her father? And violate my rabbi’s instructions? How could I?”

“
You could,” Rebecca suddenly intervened. “And you should. Your wife comes first.”

A car honked behind me, and I sped up to keep with traffic.

“
Even your rabbi would know,” Rebecca continued, “what Torah says about marriage:
And so a man shall leave his father and mother, and he shall come to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Have you studied this quote?”

Mordechai nodded, but Rebecca was looking at me, expecting me to also confirm that I felt bound by that rule of forgoing one’s parents and home in favor of a wife.

“
It’s an interesting point,” I said. “Does it apply to a wife also?”

“
It does,” Rebecca said. “That’s why I stuck with you even though my parents cried and begged me to change my mind and find a Jewish guy.”

Mordechai looked at Debra. “I wanted to tell you about it the next morning. But you were so happy, and I was afraid to spoil it.”

“
You should have,” she said.

“
You’re right. I made a mistake. We’re one flesh now. Everything I know, you have the right to know. I’ll never hide anything from you, never betray your trust again.” His voice cracked. “Please give me a chance.”

Debra’s face softened, and they smiled at each other, framed in my rearview mirror the same way I remembered their faces framed by the Skype screen on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Had it only been three months?

We reached the house, and the two of them disappeared into Debra’s room.