The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (23 page)

   “
You never met
Nancy?”

   “
No.”

   “
So, you
thought…”

   “…
Sylvia was
Nancy, yes. Maybe when he saw my shock he got second thoughts about
anything else he had planned to say. Or maybe he never intended to
share his secret in the first place. Come to think of it, Charlie
was always pretty selective about what he chose to confide. I guess
he hasn’t changed. But I’m sorry,” he added, “for you.”

   “
What for? I was
the one who left you holding the bag. I’m the one who should
apologize. After...my nightmare I thought you’d think...Well, I
didn’t know what you’d think. But I didn’t have the nerve to stick
around and find out. Anyhow, I want you to know I’m really glad you
came by this evening. I feel a lot better about myself.”

   “
I’m glad
too.”

   “
Where will you
go when you leave here? Back to your rectory?”

   “
I don’t think
so. Much as I miss Margaret’s cooking.”

   “
Surely
after—what is it, seven years?—you could force down some more pot
roast.”

   “
I suppose. But
you forget I still have two days vacation.”

   “
Another chance
to go to hell with yourself. What sort of escapade will it be this
time? A debauch in Secaucus? An interlude in
Hackensack?”

   
They both
laughed.

   “
A little peace
and quiet would be nice.”

   “
And green
grass?”

   “
Yes,” he said.
“That would be delightful.”

   “
There’s a motel
down the road where you could pitch your tent. We could be out on
the first tee by seven.”

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN

   
The sun was just
reaching its zenith. But on the veranda where they were seated a
strong breeze made the midday heat bearable. Below them, a
nine-iron shot away, a threesome was getting ready to hit off the
first tee.

   “
Mad dogs and
Englishmen.”

   
A waiter arrived
with sandwiches and tall glasses of iced tea. They hadn’t eaten
since breakfast four hours earlier, but Rosalie was only nibbling
at her tuna salad, while the priest tore into his club sandwich
with an appetite.

   “
Was I right
about the course?” she asked.

   “
Beautiful. As
fine as any I’ve seen.”

   
She took another
dainty bite and stared across the ninth fairway shimmering in the
heat.

   “
This place used
to be the best-kept secret in the county. But no more.”

   
He followed her
gaze over the wide grass. “How long have you been playing
here?”

   “
About three
years. Almost from the day it opened.” She chewed contemplatively,
took a sip of tea and added, “I had someone to play with in those
days—a regular partner, I mean.”

   “
Oh?”

   
She sipped
again. Most of her sandwich still lay untouched. His own had long
since vanished. “We broke up.”

   
It hadn’t
occurred to him that by partner she had meant a boyfriend. Her
attention had again drifted to the hot fairways or, rather, to
whatever memories those acres of green grass summoned up. He found
himself wishing she would return to the present. When she noticed
his expression, she laughed. “It wasn’t especially serious. At
least, not for him.”

   “
But it was for
you,” he replied in his confession-box tone.

   “
I didn’t know
then that you could fall in love with someone without their
returning the compliment.” She smiled. “It seems like a long time
ago.”

   
The breeze that
had made the veranda bearable died abruptly. They moved indoors to
the bar-cum-restaurant, which also offered a good view of the
course. Although technically it was still lunchtime, the place was
deserted. The majority of golfers had finished their rounds and
rushed home to work on the house or take the wife to the shopping
mall. The few tables in use were occupied by older couples without
family obligations or lawns to mow.

   “
Happy?” Rosalie
asked. At first the question didn’t register. He understood her
meaning, but it was as if layers of dense matter that hadn’t been
breached in decades, if ever, had to be penetrated before the query
made sense. She was regarding him with a benevolent smile, and that
benediction alone seemed to fill him with a sense of
well-being.

   “
Yes. I
am.”

   “
Me too. I guess
you don’t have to win the lottery. That’s hard to understand when
you’re young. Ten years ago nothing short of a magic-carpet ride
could make me believe I was happy.”

   “
Did you have
many—magic-carpet rides?”

   “
A couple. At
least they seemed that way at the time. Now I’d probably get
airsick. How about yourself?”

   
He tried to
translate the experience she seemed to have in mind into something
relevant to his life as a priest. But all he could think of was his
first masses. “There were moments when I was newly
ordained.”

   “
What kind of
moments?” She leaned expectantly across the table. “I won’t make
fun. Honest.” Her eyes were shining the way they had in the
candlelight at Charlie’s.

   “
Moments of
religious feeling,” he said. “I used to get them when I was a kid
too, after receiving communion.”

   “
But not
anymore?”

   “
No.”

   
She patted his
hands, which were joined on the table between them. It was a
mocking gesture, but her face was free of ridicule.

   “
Welcome to the
club, Richie.”

   
He smiled wanly.
Did he really have to accept spiritual coma the same way he had to
resign himself to the apathy of middle age? He had assumed that his
dearth of enthusiasm was due to some spiritual deficiency, some
moral failure which honest effort and grace would eventually cure.
But his inertia might be due to something as simple and plebeian as
the aging process. Were his tearful responses to holding the
consecrated body of Christ in his young hands equivalent to those
adolescent love affairs Rosalie had alluded to? Did he have nothing
but thirty years of dull routine ahead of him? He wasn’t sure he
could face that sort of future with the resignation Rosalie seemed
to have achieved.

   “
Time for a
beer, I’d say.” She turned to get the waitress’s attention. A
foursome fresh from the last hole waved back at her. As they
approached the table the older of the two men put his arm around
Rosalie and kissed her warmly. Then his wife or girlfriend did the
same.

   “
Where have you
been keeping yourself?” the man asked, squeezing her hand fondly.
“You look fabulous.”

   
Rosalie turned
toward the priest.

   “
Les and Sherry,
this is my friend Richie.”

   
Father Walther
started to get up, but Les waved him back to his seat with one hand
while pumping his palm vigorously with the other. “A
pleasure.”

   
The second
couple was introduced, and all four were invited to sit down.
Despite the extravagance of their greeting, it turned out that Les
and Rosalie had known each other less than a year before she had
left the hospital where Les was still head accountant. Sherry—she
was his wife, although her ring looked like something out of a
gumball machine—worked in a law firm. She was short and mousy but
seemed not in the least unsure of herself or of her exuberant
husband. The other couple stayed in the background while Rosalie
and Les brought themselves up to date. Finally, Les apologized for
excluding everyone else from the conversation.

   “
Let’s all go
back to my house,” Rosalie said. “We can throw a couple steaks on
the grille.”

   “
I have a better
idea,” Les countered. “We head over to my place for Tom Collinses
and then have dinner at my club. Tonight’s cabaret night.” He
glanced at Father Walther and the other couple, none of whom had
yet contracted his enthusiasm. “On me,” he added, as if that were
all that had held them back from assenting.

   “
Say yes,
Richie,” Rosalie urged, taking his hand.

   “
I really should
get a move on. Besides, I don’t have any clothes but the ones I’m
wearing.” He fingered his blue sport shirt.

   “
No problem.”
Les sized him up, weaving from side to side like a comic tailor. “I
make you a forty-two, regular.”

   “
More or less.
But...”

   “
No problem at
all. I have a couple jackets left over from my”—he patted his
modest pot—“slimmer days. Shirts too. How about it, old man? You
won’t disappoint my best girl Rosie?”

   
Les’s house was
itself scarcely less grand than a country club. Set on a piece of
land not much wider than a city lot, it ran very deep into a long
yard that ended in a meticulously kept tennis court. There was no
swimming pool, but the basement contained both a hot tub and steam
room. There were also regulation-size billiard and pool tables and
a universal exercise machine. Considering the flab the man had
flaunted, the house hardly seemed one that he would be the owner
of.

   
The upper floors
seemed better suited to the man’s personality. The living room
could have doubled as a small ballroom. It was designed for
entertaining, and “entertaining” in this house obviously meant food
and alcohol. Even before the house tour began, pitchers of martinis
and tall glasses of Tom Collinses appeared as if spontaneously on
the lustrous end tables. With the drinks came canapés of cold cuts,
dips and finger sandwiches reminiscent of the fare the Catholic
Daughters provided when they were trying to impress each other.
Only, here the opulence seemed a matter of course.

   
Father Walther
was still hungry from his exercise that morning. His host pressed
more food on him. No one else seemed to have much of an appetite,
although they threw down gin like it was lemonade. He had been in
expensive houses before, but this one made him feel as if he had
never seen the way people of means lived. The homes of his
parishioners, even those of lawyers and other professionals, seemed
deliberately subdued. The furniture, even when well made, seemed
diffident, as if even that much conspicuous display were only a
professional requisite, like the furnishings of a doctor’s waiting
room. Here the display was unabashed: marble flooring, oriental
carpets, a “conversation pit,” red velvet wall covering. There was
nothing apologetic about the room, or about anything else about the
house. It bespoke hard cash without embarrassment or restraint. As
he sat eating and listening to the conversations going on around
him, he couldn’t decide which was worse—extravagance of this sort
or his parishioners’ hypocritical reserve.

   
Les suggested a
dip in the hot tub. There were no takers, just a barrage of jokes
about the host’s prurient interests.

   “
Alright, then,
how about some steam? Girls first.”

   “
No, you boys go
ahead,” his wife said. “I want to show Rosalie and Tara the
curtains for the bedroom.”

   “
No guts, no
glory. Come on, guys. Bring your drinks.”

   
A few minutes
later Father Walther was seated in a small basement room so filled
with steam that he could barely see his companion a couple feet
away. They had nothing on but terrycloth towels. Les remained
outside, regulating the controls.

   “
If you think
this is bad,” Bernie said, “wait till you hit the cold
shower.”

   “
What’s that
for?”

   “
Close the pores
or something. It’s all voodoo to me.”

   
Father Walther
tried to make out his companion through the hot fog, but all he
could distinguish was a shifting shadow. He had sat opposite Bernie
in the living room a little while ago but had been unable to get
two consecutive words out of him.

   “
You do this
often?” the priest asked.

   “
Only when Les
forces me. You may have noticed, he’s a very insistent
person.”

   
They could hear
the host cursing his inability to satisfactorily manipulate the
controls.

   “
He’s not happy
unless he gets it so hot you can’t breathe. Claims it cleans out
the system. I’ll say one thing for a steam bath: If you’ve got any
alcohol in you when you enter one, you won’t when you
leave.”

   “
Is that a
fact?”

   “
It makes heavy
drinkers like Les feel less guilty about how much they
comsume.”

   “
God damn
fuck!”

   
They sat in
silence as the heat continued to build. Father Walther tried to
remember what kind of latch the door had and wondered if it was apt
to jam.

   “
He’s only had
it a month,” Bernie went on. Then, after another hiatus, “What line
of work are you in?”

   
Father Walther
hadn’t given any thought to how he would answer this question. He
assumed that at some point Rosalie would identify his occupation.
But she had not done so thus far, and he wasn’t sure if that was by
design. He didn’t want to get involved in another deception of the
kind which had led to the dressing down he received in Martha’s
dining room, but he was reluctant to cause everyone to stiffen up
the way they usually did when they found a clergyman in their
midst.