For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories (19 page)

“I can’t do any of this.”

“Then plan B. Gennaro?” Lili screamed to her husband. “Gennaro, get over here.” They heard his footsteps as he approached the curtain that split the rest of the room from the salon.

“What?” he said through the fabric.

Gitta propped herself up on her elbows. “Do not, Lili. Do not start this yet. Not as a joke, not as a threat. Because I really might want it. If we do it, we do it for real.”

“What?” Gennaro said.

“Put on the rice. Go put on the rice for dinner.” They were silent while he walked off. Then Lili whispered, “You go explain to that midget. You go tell the matchmaker that he better beat a divorce out of your husband before you make the problem disappear. Tell him whatever you need to tell him, Widow Floog. Because you’ve got three choices. The matchmaker, Gennaro’s cousin, or shutting your mouth. If you’re never going to do anything, then save us both some energy. At least keep your mouth shut so I can do my work.”

Lili guided the needle. “Back to the matchmaker,” she said, and she pressed the pedal and held it down until Gitta thought she saw smoke.

Knocking did not bring him so Gitta looked round the alley for something with heft. Next to a Dumpster she found a pipe with a joint on the end and tested its weight. This she swung against the metal door at the back of the matchmaker’s apartment. Each blow left a dent and made a noise that carried. She raised the pipe for a third swing when Liebman peered through the grimy window and then opened the door to the back room. He had an arm raised. Gitta was a large woman, and even a small foe with such a weapon—well, he would not put anything past her. The old suspicion.

“Put that thing down.” Liebman cowered. “I’ve got a front door, too, you already know.”

“Not trying to complicate,” Gitta said. “Not trying to make extra trouble for you. You hide me in the back room, I’ll keep myself hidden. I’m interested only in finishing our business.”

“Business we don’t have. You want your money back you can have it. I admit your match was no success.”

Gitta dropped the pipe, pushed past Liebman, and made her way to the crumpled sheet on the ratty couch.

Liebman wrung his hands. “I can’t help you,” he said. “What could you be back for but to hear it again?”

“Do you know what my life is?” she said. “Do you know how it is?”

Liebman thought about this. He sort of did, he thought. He kind of knew. She was trapped. She was a woman anchored to a foul husband, a married widow or maybe a divorced wife. He was also aware of the superstition that surrounded her, mothers stepping between Gitta’s crooked gaze and their newlywed daughters. She was a woman who raised whispers. Yes, he thought he understood.

“I know they talk about you,” he said, “that all this time and they still talk.”

“You think I don’t hear the nonsense.” Gitta turned red.
“They treat me like a witch. They say Berel snapped, chased me around the house with a razor, and kicked me out in a rage. They say I made a deal with the devil and was suddenly free of hair and husband—but like any devil deal it went horribly wrong.” She covered her mouth. “I got rid of it to be pretty. The day I left. Got rid of it to maybe meet a new husband, have a child or two, and start a nice life.”

“And?”

And what should she tell him, that Berel had won if winning meant ruining her life and losing meant seeing her happy and free?

Gitta told him what she needed to see the job done: “Maybe it
is
late, Liebman, maybe, you think, sad. But I’m here to tell you”—she smoothed her skirt, looked away—“Gitta Floog has fallen in love.”

“Can’t be,” Liebman said, so surprised he didn’t consider the insult involved.

“A shock, I’m sure. But such things happen on their own. Even to me. I’m in love, Liebman. And like our mother Sarah, even the greater wonder, I’m pregnant. When my period did not come, I thought it had gone, but fifty-four years old and I discover it’s otherwise.”

“Not Berel’s?” was all Liebman could say. The scandal!

“A genius you are, Liebman. A detective. No, it’s not Berel’s. But the father is in our community, a hot-tempered man.” She went on, though Liebman looked as though he might die. “We won’t have our baby born a bastard.”

“Then there really is a man?”

“Modern times, Liebman. Modern times. Still, in some form or another there’s generally a man. Listen to me, he has found someone from outside, someone to make me a widow. Berel would be dead already if I hadn’t begged a chance to talk with you. My companion is already decided. ‘On Liebman’s head’ is what he told me. ‘The whole mess, it’s butter sitting
on Liebman’s head. Only Little Liebman can keep it from melting into his eyes.’ ”

“Who is he?” Liebman buttoned and unbuttoned his collar.

“When it’s done, you’ll know. You’ll be the first invited to the wedding. Right now, though, it’s time for violence. Only two facts that concern you. We’ll kill him and I’m pregnant. So take your pick. Take your pick for what’s more urgent. Take your pick for why it needs to get done. But the butter sits on your head, softening already.”

Not long after Gitta stepped out of the alley, looked both ways, and crossed the street, a new rumor about Gitta Floog began to spread. Maybe it was someone who looked down from a narrow bathroom window with the banging of the pipe, or the sometimes homeless Akiva peering out from a Dumpster when the back door closed. Any number of people might have seen Gitta step out of Liebman’s alley into the bright light of day. But the base of the rumor, the meat of it, well, only one person, only Little Liebman, could be guilty of letting it slip.

Proportion was the first thing to go. Even before the rumor had reached proper dispatch it ballooned past belief and had to be scaled back to an absorbable size. There were stylistic variations, of course, but one detail stuck, providing the rumor with unassailable authenticity. It was the addition of Liebman’s name as father of the child and Gitta’s secret man. It was a twist Liebman hadn’t thought of, an advantage of which Gitta hadn’t dreamed.

From that instant on, no one needed it over more than Liebman. What parent would trust a matchmaker caught up in a scandal? How to let him judge a prospective son-in-law’s character if he can’t seem to manage his own? No, the deal was done. Liebman was fully involved.

II

T
hree windows faced the street in Gitta’s efficiency. The one over the dormant radiator was open a crack. On the other side of the long room was a kitchen area, the front door, and a panel with the buzzer in between.

It was after the first beating, and Gitta sat in a chair in the center of her apartment. This was the best she could do.

Berel was screaming outside. His voice carried up the three stories and made its way through the crack in the window. It was a terrible effect. Gitta’s blinds were drawn, and the voice, localized and harsh, taunted her from that corner, as if Berel were somehow floating outside her window and yelling in. Then he’d pause—a second’s silence—and the buzzer would start screeching on her other side. Again, this sense of his presence, Berel standing in the hallway leaning on a button right outside the door.

She had no television and no radio. She couldn’t concentrate on her reading or the Psalms. So she had pulled a chair to the middle of the room as far as she could get from Berel on both sides.

And she sat there, head in her hands, trapped between him.

Lili flicked the switch on her machine and hit the side panel until the power light glowed.

Gitta was spread out on the table.

“Repetitive nightmares like my father used to have about Siberia. Sometimes Berel comes through the window and sometimes through the door. It’s an elopement. Berel is in a suit. I’m gowned and veiled and clutching a bouquet. Every night he carries me away, either by the door or down a ladder, always with the flowers in my arms. And always, whether from
their windows or lining the hallway, the neighbors are watching and wishing us luck. From the outside it looks like perfect romance. And I can see why they confuse the bride’s weak moaning—all of them smiling and waving at my call for help. They stand there cooing while Berel rips my dress off, tears it all off right there in front of them, everything but the veil.”

“Under the veil?” Lili wants to know. “What’s under the veil?”

“Hairless,” Gitta says. “No prettier or uglier and can’t tell you my age. But hairless, hairless I am sure.”

Lili smiles at that, goes after a stray follicle between Gitta’s eyebrows, lands the needle, strikes a nerve so that Gitta’s left lid flutters and she feels a strange comfort, as if her face has been split appropriately and magically in two.

“He showed up again after the second beating, showed up out my window, buzzing at my door. This time he stayed longer. It was supposed to improve, Lili, but it’s made my life only worse. Every bit of punishment he gets, he takes out on me tenfold. Hard-hearted, my Berel. That’s what the matchmaker says. He keeps calling to tell me Berel will never give in.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say exactly as we practiced: ‘There are two ways to free an agunah. One is for the husband to give a get. And the other, to bring proof of his death. One way or the other, Liebman. One way or the other.’ ”

“Oh, that’s good, Gitta. That last ‘one way’ is very good.”

Berel was returning from a night trip to the supermarket. One moment he was walking and the next in a car with four other men—his groceries left spilled on the sidewalk.

The men wore children’s plastic masks with tight swirls of yellow hair and red, red lips, little Queen Esther masks on each one. But the disguises did not sufficiently cover their
grown-up faces. Black beards burst out from behind bulbous rouged cheeks. Sidelocks stuck out like pigtails from under elastic bands.

They punched Berel and smacked him before anyone said a word.

Then the one in the front passenger seat, the smallest by far, turned to talk to Berel, restrained between two Esthers in the back.

“Hard to find people willing to beat you anymore, Berel. Not out of mercy, but because it’s become such a chore.”

“Such a tiny, tiny thug,” Berel said, “I was wondering. And then the familiar voice. Since when are you so bold, Little Liebman, as to place yourself at the scene of the crime?”

“Maybe this time I don’t leave anyone to talk.”

Little Liebman motioned to the two Esthers and they wrestled Berel onto his stomach and taped his hands to his ankles so that they might carry him like a bundle. The one on the right unlocked his door. “This ride,” Liebman said, “I’m making it clear. Tonight we make progress.”

“You want progress, Liebman? I’ve got some of my own. As soon as you let me loose, I’m headed straight for the newspapers. I’m going to tip the goyim off to the injustice that goes on.”

“The newspapers?” Liebman laughed. “Yes, have them report it. Just the kind of Jewish story the papers love.”

“It will ruin you, Liebman.”

“If only you heard the rumors. My name is already ruined. Let them run it on the front page. In New York you’ll find no sympathy for a man who enslaves his wife. The feminists will bring me a medal for beating you. The mayor will put me on a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade.”

The car headed out on the highway, a change in rhythm. Every few seconds a seam in the road so that the smoothness of speed was broken, the constancy interrupted by a rhythmic
thuck
.

The car door by his head opened and Berel was lowered toward the flowing script of road. He worried not over disfigurement but loss of senses, being rubbed clean of eyes or tongue, being rolled into the alley without his ears. Berel screamed into the wind and was pulled back in.

“Now give the get or we head out to drown you at Jones Beach. Two to hold you under the water and two kosher witnesses to watch.”

“You won’t do it,” Berel said. “You’re a matchmaker, not a murderer. You understand the sanctity of unions. Like in nature, Liebman. Like it says about pigeons. You kill one, you have to kill its mate. To make it kosher you’ve got to kill both, me and Gitta both.”

Berel was once again lowered. Dangerously close. A pebble shot from a tire hit Berel in the cheek. He moved his tongue to try and find it in his mouth, sure the stone had cut through. They lifted him back in.

“With arranged marriages,” Liebman said, “a good match is as difficult as separating the earth from the sky. Don’t you think? A wonder they ever hold.”

Berel buried his face in the warmth of the right-hand Esther’s lap.

“Gitta is desperate, Berel. Desperate. At this point she feels it’s your life or hers. And we can’t have another generation ruined by this marriage. Royal Hills doesn’t need another mamzer. No, we cannot have a bastard born because of you.”

“A bastard?” This was too much. “If she’s pregnant, I’ll tear it from her womb.” Berel went mad, fought like a tiger, put on quite a show for a man with arms and legs tied behind his back. There was a struggle to control him. They slammed Berel’s head against the door until Liebman screamed for them to stop. He thought they might knock the life from the body, as if the soul were a filling to be loosed from a tooth.