Sweet Like Sugar (7 page)

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Authors: Wayne Hoffman

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #General, #Jewish Men, #Male Friendship, #Rabbis, #Jewish, #Religion, #Jewish Gay Men, #Judaism

BOOK: Sweet Like Sugar
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I turned around and saw Mickey Mouse standing by the doors, Japanese tourists taking his photo. When they dispersed, he spotted me, perhaps remembering me from an earlier hour. He spread his arms, both his hands open. I looked back at my father, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief; he wasn't watching. I turned around and ran toward Mickey, putting my numb hands in his white-gloved paws for a moment. He squeezed my hands; I felt it. Then I threw my arms around Mickey and pushed my head against his stomach, hugging him tight. And he put his hands on my shoulders and hugged me back.
 
The following day the rabbi didn't come to work. I didn't realize it until the end of the day, when Mrs. Goldfarb knocked on my door as she passed on her way to her car.
“You've got the car to yourself today, Benjamin,” she said. “Rabbi Zuckerman stayed home.”
“Is he sick?” I asked. I wondered if he'd caught a cold from the previous day's downpour. Had I covered him enough with my umbrella?
“He didn't sound too bad when he called this morning, maybe just a little under the weather,” she said. “I wouldn't worry. It's probably better for him to take a day off now and then anyway, at his age. I can run the store just fine without him.”
She left.
Mrs. Goldfarb might not have been concerned about him, but I was. I drove up to his house alone and parked in the driveway. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.
He opened the front door, dressed not in a bathrobe or pajamas, but in the exact same clothes he usually wore to work. Including the hard shoes.
“Benji? What are you doing here?” he asked through the screen door.
“Mrs. Goldfarb told me you were home sick and I wanted to stop by and make sure you were all right.”
He opened the screen door and ushered me in. “You were worried about me?” he asked, perhaps hopeful, perhaps incredulous.
“I thought maybe you might need something from the store, some medicine or some food, if you're sick,” I said. Then, simply: “Yes, I was worried about you.”
He offered me the wingback chair again and the same dish of old nuts. I accepted this time. “I'll get you a glass of water,” he said, excusing himself to go to the kitchen for what must have been his automatic response to houseguests.
He returned with two glasses and sat on the sofa across from me.
“So are you sick?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” he said.
I looked at him quizzically.
“My body is fine, old and feeble, but fine,” he said, looking down at his glass. “It's my heart that is sick. I've just been thinking about my Sophie.”
Sure, I thought, ever since yesterday's awkward visit. But here was my second chance.
“What was she like?” I asked.
He brushed me off. “You don't want to hear about her.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
He lifted his head to look into my eyes. I nodded, and he began.
“I met her in 1951, when I was teaching at a yeshiva in Brooklyn. She was such a beauty—long brown hair and the most delicate hands, but eyes so sad and far away,” he said. “But after all they had seen . . .”
Sophie had arrived in America only a few years before, the sole member of her extended family to survive the Holocaust. After all the indignities and offenses she had witnessed during the war, she had to suffer still more in peacetime: She couldn't go home to her village in Poland and instead had to enjoy her so-called freedom in a displaced persons camp in Germany. It was there, in the camp, that she befriended an American soldier, a medic, a Jew who spoke to her in Yiddish. Although she was a beautiful young woman, almost twenty at the time, and the soldier was only seven or eight years older and as handsome as all kind, healthy American soldiers must have seemed, their connection was not romantic.
“They were like brother and sister,” Rabbi Zuckerman explained. “They would talk in Yiddish, but he also began to teach her English words. She would stay near him during the day, watching him work, and keeping up to date on the news of the world. New people arrived at the camp, and others left for Palestine or America, but Sophie had nowhere to go.”
When it was time for the soldier to end his tour of duty and return stateside, he made arrangements with a Jewish aid agency to bring Sophie to America. The soldier's family took her in as one of their own, essentially adopting her and giving her a whole new set of brothers and sisters and parents, and the soldier set her up to train as a nurse's aide.
“She was working in the clinic at the girls' school across the street from my yeshiva, when I first saw her,” the rabbi recalled. “I had spent years at that yeshiva, teaching boys prayers and Torah lessons, and studying with the other rabbis in the evenings. But once I saw Sophie, I couldn't think about anything else. She was my
bashert.
”
“Your what?” I asked.
“My
bashert,
” he repeated. “The one I was destined to meet, to share my life with.”
“You really believe that?” This came out sounding sharper than I'd intended, and the rabbi cocked his head at me, stung.
“I do,” he said. “You'll see. You'll meet the right girl one day.”
“I doubt it,” I said, leaving it at that.
“We are all destined to have someone special come into our lives, Benji,” he said gently but with conviction, like a teacher explaining something utterly simple to a particularly dim student. “Even you.”
CHAPTER 4
T
he rabbi's words stayed with me for days. Was there really someone I was destined to meet?
Obviously, I hadn't met my
bashert
yet. Or maybe I had met him, but didn't even know it. Maybe I'd already dated him but had cast him aside for some ridiculous reason: he bit his fingernails, he wore the wrong shoes, he didn't like
The Kids in the Hall.
Maybe I'd blown my only chance.
Would I know my
bashert
if I saw him? Would I recognize him?
I sat at my desk on Saturday morning, scanning the photos of a dozen different models the photographer had suggested to be the devil in the Paradise ad. I wasn't thrilled to be at my office on a weekend, but the bar manager seemed serious about deadlines, and I wanted to impress him—I needed the job. Besides, looking at photos of hot guys wasn't such a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.
As I flipped through the pictures, I searched for my
bashert.
Was this him—the curly-haired boy with the dimpled chin and perfect eyebrows? Or this one, a daddy type with a trim goatee and a shaved head? Or the blond one with the blue eyes? I'd always had a thing for blonds; was this because my
bashert
was blond, or because he was anything but blond— the universe's churlish way of throwing me off my future husband's track?
The blonds I'd dated weren't exactly a parade of winners.
There was Rick, my boyfriend senior year at Maryland. A psych major. Seemed like a catch: funny as hell, well-read, the body of an athlete without any of the actual annoying athletics. We dated most of spring semester before I realized that Rick was studying psychology for a reason—because he was crazy.
Brad lasted half a summer after graduation. He was gaga over me, bringing me flowers and cooking me dinner and giving me massages every night. Too bad I didn't find him sexually attractive. I mean, I tried, I really tried. But at some point you have to open your eyes. Literally.
Gordy was a dog groomer. Sexual attraction was definitely not a problem with him. Men would stop in their tracks and peer over their sunglasses to get a gander at Gordy. “I don't even notice those other guys,” he'd say. “You're the only one for me.” I believed that for a solid six weeks, until he gave me a case of something itchy that he assured me were fleas, but turned out to be crabs.
A bunch of blonds. And me, still single, without anyone whose photo belonged in a tacky frame over my fireplace.
Should I have taken the hint? Or kept trying until I found the right blond?
I went over the photos for Paradise again, imagining how each model might look in the ad, trying to see which one could most convincingly represent pure evil. Surprise, surprise: The blond guy—with his coolly mischievous eyes and broad shoulders—turned me on. I took a Magic Marker and drew horns and a tail on his eight-by-ten glossy. It was a good look on him.
Better the devil you know, I thought. I called the photographer and told him the blond was my favorite.
“He's hot, right?” the photographer said.
“Hot as hell,” I said.
As I pulled my car around to head home, services at B'nai Tikvah were letting out across the parking lot.
Black yarmulke. Black yarmulke. Black yarmulke.
I stopped at the end of a row to see if Rabbi Zuckerman would appear in the doorway. He did, again, lagging behind the other men. As I looked at him, he looked up and met my eyes through the windshield. And then, a second later, his knees gave out and he crumpled to the ground.
One young congregant saw it happen; he turned and ran back to assist Rabbi Zuckerman, calling several other young men to come with him. I pulled into the nearest parking space and raced to the rabbi.
The men had pulled the rabbi to his feet by the time I approached. He was leaning against the wall of the synagogue, his hands trembling, his face pale even for him. One of the young men was using the rabbi's hat to fan him.
“Rabbi, are you okay?” I asked.
All the black yarmulkes turned and stared. They said nothing; they wouldn't have known where to begin to engage me in conversation. I was wearing camouflage shorts and a powder blue T-shirt that said “Rehoboth Beach.” No suit, no hat, no yarmulke. I might as well have been naked.
“I'm fine, Benji,” said the rabbi. “Just a little lightheaded.”
If anything could have surprised the congregants more than me rushing to the rabbi's side, it was finding out that the rabbi knew me by name. Their confusion was evident in their expressions.
“I work right behind his bookstore,” I said to them.
No response, except for fewer raised eyebrows.
“Benjamin Steiner,” the rabbi said to them, gesturing toward me with one shaky hand, to introduce me. And to indicate by mentioning my name that I, too, was a Jew. Not quite one of them, but not quite not, either.
After a minute or two, the rabbi's color had started to return and his breathing was steady, but he still didn't look ready to tackle the hill to his house.
“I think I just need to get off my feet for a moment,” he said.
One of the congregants opened the door to B'nai Tikvah, while another took the rabbi's elbow to lead him back inside the synagogue. A wall of backs turned to me.
“You could lie down on my couch,” I offered to the backs of their heads.
The rabbi stopped. Turned. Nodded at me once.
Had he chosen me over his fellow worshippers? Or merely my cushioned futon over B'nai Tikvah's wooden benches? The man at the rabbi's side stepped back and I took the rabbi's arm, walking him slowly toward my office. The congregants stood for a moment, waiting.
“Thank you very much,” the rabbi said to them without looking back.
“Gut Shabbes.”
And they dispersed.
Leaning on me for support as we walked across the parking lot, past his closed bookstore, the rabbi had no words for me until we reached my office. Then he spoke.
“You were at work this morning?” he asked while I unlocked the door. “On Saturday?”
I nodded. He shook his head. I opened the door.
“No lights,” he said, holding up his hand to stop me as I reached for the switch. “It's Shabbat.”
We weren't stuck in the dark; I simply opened the blinds and let in the daylight. But I quickly realized that “no lights” had other implications: Observing the Sabbath meant no computer, no phone, no writing. No work. What was I supposed to do while he was there lying down?
We could talk. That, at least, was allowed.
He kicked off his shoes, put his hat on my desk, and draped his suit jacket over the doorknob. His white shirt was missing a button and his collar was stained from sweat.
Then he lay down on my couch. He hadn't been there for weeks.
“So what happened?” I asked him finally.
“What happened?” he repeated. “I fell.”
“I know you fell. But why?”
He shrugged.
“Are you sick?”
He shook his head.
“It can't be the heat this time,” I said. It was a gorgeous eighty-degree day, the kind Washingtonians long for all summer.
Another shrug. This wasn't going to be a heartfelt dialogue, I could tell. It was more like pulling teeth.
I asked the rabbi if he wanted a glass of water. He said no.
I asked the rabbi if he'd eaten anything. He said no. He'd forgotten.
I told the rabbi I'd get him something from the sandwich shop. He said no. It was forbidden to use money on Shabbat. Besides, everything in that shop, he said, was
treyf.
“They have veggie subs,” I said. “Mrs. Goldfarb says those are kosher.”
“She is wrong,” he said.
I'd forgotten about the thousand degrees of kosher. For some Jews, the ingredients had to be kosher; for others, the pots and pans and dishes had to be, too. Some were concerned only about the food, while others demanded certification of the entire restaurant from a central authority. No matter where you fell, one person would think your rules were unnecessarily strict, while another would consider them too lax.
I'd been eating bacon cheeseburgers so long, I'd forgotten about how, when I was growing up, my family had our own mishmash of rules, not unusual for a Conservative Jewish household. We checked packaged goods for a “K” certifying they were kosher, bought meat at a kosher butcher, and never had pork in the house. But Chinese food containing shrimp was granted a special exemption as long as it was eaten directly from cardboard carryout containers with plastic forks. And while my mother would never mix meat and dairy on the same plate, she'd serve kosher ice cream for dessert after a kosher chicken dinner. When I mentioned all this to my sixth-grade Hebrew school teacher, she told me that there was no such thing as “sort-of” kosher, so my mother might as well have served us pork chops and pepperoni pizza. What would the rabbi have said about that? What would he say if he knew I'd eaten sausage just hours before, as part of a pork-laden breakfast sandwich I bought at the drive-through at the very Temple of
Treyf,
McDonald's? I didn't want to know.
“You have to eat something,” I said. “That's why you're feeling weak.”
“I'm not hungry,” he said.
“What's wrong?”
He wouldn't look at me.
“Why aren't you eating?” I asked.
“My Sophie used to cook for me.” He sighed.
I wondered: This is an explanation? I looked at him and realized that it was.
He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and rolled away from me on the futon, his back to me. Were there tears in his eyes? I could not see.
He rested, perhaps ten minutes, long enough to stop that conversation from going any further. Then he rolled back over, opened his eyes, and said, “It is time to go home.”
“I'll get the car and drive you,” I said.
“It is Shabbat,” he said. Driving—even riding in a car—was forbidden.
“You're not strong enough to walk up that hill,” I said. “I think God will understand.”
“It is Shabbat,” he repeated. Translation: God will most certainly not understand.
So I helped the rabbi put on his suit jacket, handed him his hat, took him by the elbow, and walked him out the door. Past my Corolla, which had a folder filled with semiporno-graphic photos on the passenger seat, and clear across the parking lot. I walked him up the hill, slowly, stopping periodically so he could lean against a street sign and catch his breath. It took almost fifteen minutes to walk the four blocks to his house.
When we got to his door, we both went inside, and I made him a sandwich.
 
Sitting next to the wall at his small kitchen table, under a plastic wall clock that had Hebrew letters instead of numbers, Rabbi Zuckerman ate slowly. Perhaps he wanted some company and figured I'd stay as long as he was eating. Or perhaps the sandwich I'd prepared left him unimpressed—prepackaged salami was the best thing I could find in his refrigerator.
At least the rye bread looked good. From a bakery.
“My father was a baker,” the rabbi told me between bites. “To this day, I only buy fresh bread. Never from a supermarket.”
I asked about his father, and he told me how his parents had come to the States after the First World War, with a young son and an infant daughter who had been born in Poland. They settled in Jersey City, where his father opened a bakery. And then, a few years later, came Jacob, the baby who would one day become a rabbi, the only member of his family born in America.
“My brother and sister didn't remember anything about Europe—they came as tiny children,” he explained. “In the house, we spoke Yiddish with our parents, but we all spoke perfect English, too. Still, I used to tease them and tell them I couldn't understand their accent. I called them ‘my brother and sister from Poland.' ”

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