Paradise Park (51 page)

“Oh,” I said.

“Arise,” he said. “To Sharon.”

Gosh, I’d probably been to Sharon twice in my life. Who went out there? It was an hour’s drive! The only thing I could think was, well, it’s cheap in Sharon. You have to give it that.

“To Sharon!” Mikhail said, and spoke with such joy. I felt myself rising even then. There we were, the two of us, looking at my vision. There we were, and we had no piano, we had actually nothing, except for the most important thing anyone could possibly want. Instructions that had come from God.

So of course, there were those worrisome economic issues, like we had no money and no car, no credit rating, a baby on the way, et cetera. But at that moment there was no question in our minds that there we were dealing with a commandment, and a categorical imperative, and a bolt from the blue. This was about miracles and mystic faith, in which case you had to put aside the practicalities. You had to abandon your initial prejudices and assumptions, i.e., us move to Sharon? That suburban wasteland? And you just had to concentrate on the crux of the matter, which was that I—actually we—had together been called out of our chaos by God. Just like the Israelites. Just like the pioneers. Just like the first settlers of this country. Like the pilgrims themselves when they were called to the wilderness to dedicate themselves and to find in their own personal American desert a new Sharon, and a new Canaan. And when you looked at it that way, when you considered my dream that way, then how could it not come to pass? A dream of such flight and
divine provenance. You sat by the light of one lamp with newspapers scattered all around you and you just wondered. You were just in awe. And there I was with my husband. And there I was with my vision. Who would have thought? It had been so painful inside while it was happening, yet once told—who could have guessed?—like rocks that polish up to gems, my dream interpreted so resplendently.

The Refusniks

O
NCE
we had the word from God, we knew exactly what we had to do. Get out of debt, save up, and work and work to meet the income requirements for a Sharon apartment building. I worked extra hours at Fresh Squeezed, and since he couldn’t teach, Mikhail started driving a taxi for the Red Cab Company. Sometimes Mikhail drove all night. Sometimes both of us worked straight through the weekend. Even on Shabbat. Yet we never had any misgivings. When you have such a precious gift—a divine message—when you receive your destiny like that you don’t look back. We worked so much we barely noticed anymore that we had a space problem living with Aunt Lena; we barely noticed the lack of privacy, because we were hardly in the apartment. Those space troubles seemed like a thing of the past. In fact all our troubles seemed now to be merely temporary.

We were full of sleepless energy. Sometimes it felt as though the two of us were outrunning winter, we worked so hard; the days went so fast. And all the time I was growing. There was no getting around it. My stomach was expanding. My skin was stretching out like a balloon, and underneath there was a baby, and that baby kicked and squirmed. But the strangest thing was, my earth tattoo, which had only been about the
size of a silver dollar, began to expand as well. It stretched out bigger and bigger, and the lines grew thinner and thinner, but the earth was expanding on my belly. The earth just grew and grew.

I thought, This is what it’s like to have a baby. To stretch out taut like the head of a drum. To be the tip of a tree. To live on the edge. Late at night I would take baths. I would pile my clothes next to the damp stacks of Aunt Lena’s
New Yorker
magazines, and ease myself into the tubful of hot soapy water. My knees were two small islands, and my belly one big round one in the water. There I was, three floating islands. There I was, two knees and one planet earth. I’d learned from the Talmud that if you save a life it’s as if you are saving the whole world. There I was bringing forth a life, and I could see on my own flesh, on the ink traces of my tattoo, that this was also true: When you birth a child, it’s as if you’re saving the earth from smallness. I could see it happening, the baby transforming that flat ink-and-needle drawing on my belly into a wondrous globe.

There was such joy, even though we worked day and night. It was because we could see the future ahead of us, and we were racing toward it. Running all the time, and so fast, we almost made ourselves sick, but the difference was, we knew we were running in the right direction. Doubts and worries, Hasidic aspirations, desires for Mikhail’s pianistic glory—they’d all gone by the wayside—and it was tremendous to have thrown them off. It was like throwing off all our extra weight and ballast. We were light, we were free, we were crazy busy. That was when we started our band.

W
E
didn’t plan on a regular band, just a pickup group to play for a couple of Havurah friends, Josh and Beth, who were having a shoestring wedding. We got together once at Josh and Beth’s half a house in Belmont just to look over the music. Josh and Beth had been engaged for several years, so they were very particular about their wedding. Josh looked like the man who ate no fat, and he worked as a lab technician at MIT. Beth looked like the gal who ate no lean, and she was a technical writer for the company BB & N. Josh had dark eyes, and Beth had wide watery blue ones. Their house was a two-family that they’d bought together, and they rented out the other half to another couple.
They’d bought their furniture at estate sales. That was the kind of people they were: fiscally sound. They’d moved to Belmont for the schools.

It was going to be Mikhail on keyboard, me on vocals and guitar, and then, from our Havurah, our friend Philip on drums, and his friend Deb on clarinet. We all gathered in the living room, and Beth’s little terrier dogs were running around and barking, and had to be locked out on the screened porch, because they were jumping and nipping and worrying the music. Deb took out her clarinet and got right down to business. She was originally from Jersey, but was now a famous street musician in Harvard Square, and she had the most expressive face, with the kind of nose that in books they always call aquiline, which you have to guess must be a euphemism for big. Philip was unpacking his drum set. He was an unpublished novelist around six and a half feet tall, and he had a very small neat head up there on his shoulders, and he wore little round glasses, and khakis, and was afraid of microbes. He was so introverted and straightlaced, you would never imagine him in a band. Yet there he was fussing with a set of drums that must have cost ten thousand dollars, fiddling with the little metal stands. We all said, “Geez!” He was like someone coming to a friendly bowling get-together with his own professional bowling ball in its custom vinyl zipper case. My hands stroked the varnish sides of my beloved, yet admittedly plain vanilla guitar. Mikhail, who really was a pro, made no bones about anything, and just stood behind Beth’s electronic keyboard.

“I want you to play
‘Dodi Li,’”
Beth said. “For the processional.”

“Do you have the words?” I asked.

“No,” she said, passing out the music.

“I need the words if I’m going to sing,” I pointed out.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to sing,” said Beth.

“Oh,” I said. I’d been kind of looking forward to singing. I was a little bit disappointed. But fortunately at the bottom of the page there were words in Hebrew, and they were the lyrics. Philip set the tempo, and we plunged in. And I, who could read the words, given the hours I’d put in praying when I was a Hasid, actually did begin to sing.

“Dodi li, va-ani lo, ha-roeh, ba-shoshanim….
” I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine….

“Too fast! Too fast!” said Beth. “We want to
walk
down the aisle!”

Rehearsal with Beth around proved to be impossible, since she had an
opinion about everything, and not a great understanding of the creative process. Josh was perfectly happy to let us do our thing, but Beth could not stop interrupting. After about twenty minutes of “Too fast! … Oh, no, now it’s too slow! … Are you going to play it that softly at the ceremony?” I could sense that the energy in the room was not positive at all. I could sense a lot of resentment from my fellow musicians. She’d interrupt, and they’d raise their eyes to the ceiling. They’d mutter to them-selves. They’d sigh. Still none of them spoke up.

Finally, I had to say, “Hey, Beth?”

“What?”

“Could you cool it?”

She looked at me with those big pale blue teary eyes. All of a sudden I remembered a girl from seventh grade named Lisa Frank, except we called her Lisa Frankenstein. She’d had blue eyes just like Beth’s—the kind always threatening to cry. Frankenstein always had those tears ready. It was one of her main assets. It was like having a high water table.

“Beth,” I said, “I know it’s your wedding and all, but we need some space. This is only the first time we’ve ever played together!”

“But the wedding is Sunday!”

“But we’re a pickup band. Of your friends. Remember?” In the end we just had to put her out, like the dogs. We just had to get Josh to take her away all afternoon on errands so we could do our job.

“Thanks, Sharon,” Philip said to me, when we’d got rid of the audience.

“Alone at last!” I said. “Let’s play ball!”

And so we played. Mikhail began, and Philip took the beat, and Deb lifted up her clarinet and just whomped and wailed. We played klezmer, and Israeli folk, and corny renditions of
“Hava Nagila.”
And we played loud, and we played fast—except I gave Mikhail a dirty look when he tried to run away from the rest of us. I reined him in with one wifely glance. And we played the songs of Naomi Shemer, during which, of course, I took the lead, fronting the band. I sang
“Machar”
—Tomorrow—and
“Yerushalayim Shel Zahav”
—Jerusalem of Gold. We played all the music Beth had left us, and some she hadn’t left at all. We noodled and we improvised. We went out on a limb. We played swing and jazz. We even tried some rock ‘n’ roll. And all the time the dogs were barking and barking out on the screened porch. It was two hours of holy noise.

When we stopped, no one spoke. We were stunned. We had come together
as a few disparate musicians doing a favor to friends, and that elusive thing had happened. We had the stuff. We had that intangible thing that a million bands will strive for and never achieve. We clicked. Philip sat behind his drums. Nervously he fingered the drumsticks in his hands. Deb was standing drenched in sweat. Her whole body was depleted. She hadn’t just played every tune; she’d danced them. I looked at Mikhail and he looked at me.

“You guys,” I whispered. “We could charge money.”

“I wish we’d charged money already,” said Philip. “We shouldn’t be playing this wedding for free.”

“They should at least pay us something,” said Deb.

“No, no, they’re our friends,” I said. “Anyway they brought us together!”

“They were the instruments of fate,” said Mikhail.

“After this, we’re charging,” Deb said.

“No kidding,” I said. “A thousand bucks a pop.”

“That’s all?” said Philip. “I was thinking a thousand bucks a person.”

“Whoa,” Deb said.

We all contemplated that.

“But there’s one thing we need for starters,” I said.

“Which is?” Philip said.

“A name,” I said.

“Of course! A name!” said Mikhail.
“Bashert,”
he said.

“No way,” said Philip.

“It should start with
klez
, since we’re a klezmer band,” said Deb. “We are not only klezmer,” Mikhail objected.

“Yeah, but you have to think marketing. You have to think, the Jewish wedding market.”

“There’s a lot of good examples out there already,” Deb said. “Klez-magic, the Klezmaniacs …”

We were still brainstorming on names when Beth and Josh came home.

“Klezmaggots?”

“Klezmagma?” I suggested.

“How did it go?” Beth asked.

“Klezmagnets?” said Deb.

“These names are all too much the same,” Mikhail said.

Beth and Josh looked at each other.

“We could go scriptural,” I said. “We could do Joyful Noise. As in: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”

“That’s good,” said Deb.

“Can I tell you how much I hate that?” Philip said. “I’d rather just go off and shoot myself.”

“Maybe it sounds too Christian,” Mikhail suggested.

“You’re right. You’re right,” I said. “It’s got to say Jewish. It’s got to say folk. It’s got to say Old Country.”

“It’s a band,” said Philip. “It’s got to have an edge.”

“Hell
o?”
Beth was calling us.

I was deep in thought. Just staring at Mikhail, deep in thought. “The Refusniks,” I said.

“Woooo, baby!” screeched Deb. “That’s okay,” said Philip.

Only Mikhail looked unconvinced, because as he told me later, to him the connotations of Refusnik were of bureaucracy and paperwork, rather than Old Country rock ‘n’ roll. Yet already Deb and Philip were high-fiving me on the name. I knew I could talk Mikhail into it.