The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (11 page)

   “
O ye of
little faith.” She smiled as brightly as if it had been her own
shot. But he suspected she was far too self-critical to lavish that
kind of congratulation on herself.

   “
You
know, you could be a good golfer. Not tour class, maybe, but
there’s no reason why you couldn’t shoot in the low eighties.” They
were sitting in a roadside bar. Two green bottles of beer stood
perspiring between them. “All you need is a few hours
instruction.”

   
She
paused to take a pull at her beer, which she was drinking directly
from the bottle. He sipped his own from a tumbler. They had played
the entire eighteen holes without a break. Rosalie’s game improved
steadily through the early holes. By the time they completed the
front nine it was commanding. She faltered for a while on the back
nine, so pumped up that she started to overswing and hook the ball.
But then she settled down and added three more pars before bogeying
the last hole. By the time he bungled his own way to the eighteenth
hole he was so exhausted he didn’t object when she suggested they
stop for a drink.

   
There was no one
in the bar but themselves and a fat man in overalls whose pickup
was parked outside. He was busy exchanging small talk with the
bartender. Despite his fatigue, Father Walther had the same sense
of playing the spy that he had felt earlier that week. No one was
showing him undue deference, not even Rosalie who knew him to be a
priest. He might have been any middle-aged duffer cooling off after
a day in the hot sun. But what would the Monsignor say if he could
see his assistant pastor? Would the bishop take disciplinary
action? Would Margaret’s colossal priest-worship be shaken?
Whatever, it felt good to sip cold beer in this anonymous
roadhouse. It even felt good listening to Rosalie’s preposterous
scheme to make a sub-hundred golfer out of him.
Dignum et justum est,
he thought,
recalling the words of the old Latin mass.

   “
You’re not
paying attention.”

   
She emptied what
was left of the bottle into his glass, then waved the empty at the
bartender, who was still jawing with the man in overalls. Before
the priest understood the purpose of her gesture, the bartender was
approaching with two fresh bottles. He covered his glass, but
Rosalie simply removed his hand and poured more beer into
it.

   “
What’s
so funny?” she asked after a second attempt to get him to sign up
for golf lessons.

   “
Do you
have any idea what my schedule is like—I mean during the fifty
weeks of the year I’m not escorting young women around golf
courses?”

   “
You don’t look
overworked.”

   “
Maybe not. But
I’m lucky if I get one day a week off—and that’s usually on a
Tuesday or Wednesday, when there’s nothing to do but play catch
with the kids in the schoolyard. Still,” he reflected, turning the
green bottle slowly, “I shouldn’t complain. Nuns have it harder: up
at dawn, teach all day, then prepare lessons and do housework. More
chores after supper until late prayers and bed.”

   “
Those women
aren’t any better than slaves!”

   “
Actually, their
lot has improved. Since the Vatican Council. But you see,” he said,
putting the bottle aside and hunching his shoulders over the table,
“the whole idea is precisely to give of yourself—become a slave, if
you will. I’m not saying nuns haven’t been driven too hard. There’s
still a lot of sexism in the church. Theoretically, priests are
freed from the drudgeries of housekeeping because our work is
spiritual—the administration of sacraments, and so forth. A
question of Marthas and Marys, I guess.”

   “
I know
that story. Why should one woman do housework while the other does
nothing but philosophize?”

   “So you do know something about
the Gospels.”

   “Very little. I don’t happen to
like your Jesus. He was a sexist and a prude.”

   
He took
a sip of the fresh beer he had resolved not to touch.

   “
Actually, he was a great friend to women. Do you remember
when their brother Lazarus died? Jesus was still on the road when
Martha ran out to tell him. But he had no reaction—told her to go
back home. Then her sister Mary did the same thing—threw herself at
his feet and wept. Same dead brother, same reaction on the woman’s
part,” he said, sipping again, his eyes filling up. “But the
evangelist tells us this time Jesus broke down and
cried.”

   
Rosalie
observed him closely for a moment, then said, “That story is real
to you. You actually believe it.”

   “
Yes, I believe
it. Of course.”

   “
That’s
remarkable.”

   “
Yes. It
is.”

   “
I mean, you’re
remarkable.”

   “
Me? No, I’m not
remarkable. I’m ordinary,” he said, contemplating the beer left in
his glass. “Very ordinary.”

   
When
they got back to the house she invited him to join her for a swim.
But the combination of sun and alcohol had given him a headache. He
decided to lie down, then finish his office before Charlie and
Sylvia returned.

   
He fell
asleep. When he awoke his headache was gone but he felt like he was
trying to break through the surface of a sea of molasses. He forced
himself to sit up. His head cleared gradually, but his heart was
pounding like he had just sprinted up a long flight of stairs. He
got up and splashed cold water on his face. Still in his stocking
feet, he headed down to the living room. Someone had closed the
curtains of the glass doors leading to the balcony, apparently to
keep out the sun. Rosalie was not in the living room or the
adjoining kitchen. There was no sign of his hosts. He put some
water on to boil.

   
The
electric coil heated slowly. He returned to the living room,
feeling better now that he was up and about. The air conditioning
also helped—he had left a window open in the bedroom when he lay
down. He started toward the balcony to open the heavy curtain,
since the sun was now well to the west. The drawstrings were
located all the way to the right where the curtains had not
completely closed, letting a thin strip of daylight in. He reached
for the cord, but hesitated when he saw that someone was on the
balcony. It was Rosalie, of course, sunbathing on a lounge chair.
Her eyes were closed. A book lay face-down on her bare
stomach.

   
By the
time he had taken all this in he had decided to leave the curtains
be so as not to disturb her. But then he noticed that the bottom
half of her bathing suit was undone. An unbroken line of flesh,
pale where the tie had secured it, extended from her ribcage all
the way to her thigh. He assumed the suit had opened accidentally
until he saw that her left hand lay beneath the fabric. As he
watched, her fingers arched, causing the material to ride downward.
He had never before seen a woman’s pubic hair. Then he realized
that her fingers were not just idling there but were depressing the
flesh and moving it up and down. He looked at her face. The
expression on it was absurdly like a communicant’s waiting for the
host to be placed on her tongue.

   
He
returned to the kitchen where the water he had put up was coming to
a boil. He poured it into a cup, spilling some onto the stovetop.
He spilled some more before he reached the living room, and again
on the heavily carpeted stairs as he made his way back
upstairs.

   “
Feel
better?” she asked. She had changed out of her bathing suit into a
blouse and wrap-around skirt. Something was sizzling on the stove.
She reached on tiptoe into the cabinet above the sink.

   “
Much better.
Can I help?”

   
But she had
located the spice she wanted and began shaking it over the
simmering saucepan. When she had finished seasoning the sauce she
took a bowl of large white mushrooms out of the refrigerator and
put them down on the dining table. “You can start with these.” She
showed him what to do, then returned to the saucepan. He hadn’t
helped someone prepare a meal—at least not one as elaborate as
Rosalie was about—since he had peeled potatoes for his mother’s
stews. Margaret certainly wasn’t about to let him into her own
kitchen. In any case, Margaret wouldn’t know a mushroom from a
zucchini.

   “
Why are you
smiling?”

   
He shared the
image he had of peeling mushrooms in his rectory kitchen, then went
on to describe his housekeeper’s fondness for blue along with some
of her other quirks. What he had witnessed on the balcony a short
while ago now seemed like a bizarre dream.

   “
It
sounds like your Margaret runs the place like a drill
sergeant.”

   “I guess you could say she takes
her job seriously.”

   She added something to the
skillet, causing it to sizzle in protest.

   “You don’t mind, her running your
life like that?”

   “I wouldn’t exactly say she runs
our lives. Margaret’s pretty typical as housekeepers go—actually a
good deal better than some,” he added, recalling the woman who had
kept house in his first parish, a harridan who used to complain
that he changed his underwear too often.

   “
I can’t
imagine letting someone decide what color curtains I can have or
choosing the food I’ll eat.”

   “
You
adjust,” he said, although he had never gotten used to pot roast
twice a week or to Margaret’s insistence on putting his socks in
the third drawer of his dresser instead of in the top drawer where
his mother had always kept them. “She has our best interests at
heart.”

   
Rosalie
stirred the concoction on the stove, then laid the wooden spoon
down and dried her hands on the apron she was wearing.

   “
Will Charlie
and Sylvia be back for dinner?” he asked.

   “
They called
while you were napping. They’ve decided to stay over and drive back
in the morning.” She placed a gleaming copper cover on the bubbling
skillet. Then she picked up the cooking spoon, inserted it into the
skillet, and drew it out steaming. “Something about his mother.
Nothing serious,” she added with sauce in her mouth, as if Mrs.
Weeks’ condition were the only matter that might concern the
priest.

   “
But
what about...?” Playing a round of golf with an attractive stranger
was one thing; spending a night alone in the same house with her
quite another. Nothing would happen, but the situation looked bad.
A priest had to be concerned with appearance as well as
reality.

   “
I’ll
see that we don’t starve,” she said. “I may not be up to Margaret’s
high standards, but I’m no slouch.”

   
He raised the
corners of his mouth weakly.

   “
By the way, I
hope you like manicotti.”

   
It was
damned inconsiderate of Charlie to leave him in this fix. One
couldn’t anticipate emergencies, but Charlie hadn’t bothered to
mention the trip to Philadelphia until he was practically on his
way out the door. Charlie should know better. There was a time when
the same woman he had gone to visit today would have throttled him
if he had left two young people alone in their house in Morristown.
She once caught Charlie there with a girl and demanded,
successfully, that he never see her again. (Richard had thought her
reaction excessive.) Today’s emergency had better be nothing short
of life and death.

   “
Not
like that,” Rosalie said, reversing the positions of the forks and
knives he had just arranged on place mats. “Didn’t your mother
teach you how to set a table?”

   
Of what
value was knowledge of place settings, unless one expected to
become a Jesuit? His mother did teach him how to iron handkerchiefs
and shirts. She also taught him how to darn a pair of socks and sew
on a button. Of these skills, only the latter proved of any use;
and Margaret would deny him even that small expression of
self-sufficiency if she suspected what he was up to on long winter
evenings.

   
The same
candles were lit that had graced last night’s table. Rosalie
removed her apron and brought in a platter of manicotti topped with
red sauce. She sat down, but immediately got up. A few moments
later she returned with a bottle of Chianti.

   “
Where did you
get that?”

   “
I ran down to
the village when you were napping. Care to do the honors?” She
handed him the straw-sheathed bottle and a chrome corkscrew. He
removed the cork without difficulty and poured a full glass for
her, much less for himself.

   
The
manicotti was good, as was the salad, where some of the mushrooms
he had peeled turned up to advantage. The conversation was relaxed.
They discussed politics, golf, education, but not religion. After
dinner they agreed to a walk on the beach. By now he realized he
had misjudged the woman. He had often noticed that some people wore
two faces, one for third parties—Rosalie’s sulking or needling
facade—and another which they only showed in private. He found such
behavior odd, even schizoid, but common.

   “
Have
you known Charlie long?” she asked as they strolled toward the
amber glow of a town to the south.

   “
Since high
school. Almost twenty years.”