The Rabbi (13 page)

“Svenska?” he asked, touching one of the braids lightly. “Right?”

She looked puzzled, then she understood and she laughed.

“Wrong. Scotch-German on my mother's side and English-Yankee on my father's.” She studied him. “You're Jewish.”

“According to sociologists, you're not supposed to be able to tell that by looking. How did you know? My nose? My face? The way I talk?”

She shrugged. “I just knew.”

She had very white skin. “You're going to burn,” he said anxiously.

“My skin isn't used to the sun. By the time I finish work the
sun's gone down.” She took a bottle of lotion from her bag.

“Would you like me to put that on for you?”

“No, thank you,” she said politely. Her fingernails were short and she used colorless polish. When she put the lotion on the inside of her thighs he couldn't breathe.

“Why did you tell me yesterday that you weren't dating this summer? Do you go steady? With a Harvard boy?”

“No. I'm just a freshman. I haven't even begun at Radcllife yet. I mean, no; there isn't anybody.”

“Then why?”

“I accepted four dates with four different boys my very first week here. Do you know what happened each time we took a dozen steps into those damn woods? With four boys I hadn't known for five minutes?”

She had stopped rubbing lotion but she sat with her right palm suspended a few inches above her left calf, her body frozen, her eyes staring straight into his. Her irises were actually green. He wanted to look away but there was no where else to look.

She looked away and poured more lotion into her palm. She kept her face down, but he could see the blood rising pink on the back of her white neck. The sun was very hot. The beach was crowded and noisy with children, and not far offshore a motor launch whined; but they sat on an island of silence. She must have poured too much lotion into her hand. When she went back to rubbing it on her calf it made an intimate, liquid sound against her flesh. He ached to put his hand on her, anywhere, just to make contact. She had legs that were long and slender but very muscular.

“Are you a dancer?” he asked.

“Ballet. Very amateur.” She placed a palm beneath each calf. “Aren't they awful. It's the price you pay.”

“You know they're not. Why did you change your mind and go out with me?”

“I could tell you were different.”

His knees trembled with desire. “I'm not,” he said fiercely.

Startled, she looked up, and then she began to roar with laughter. For a moment he was ashamed and angry, but her amusement was infectious. Despite himself, he grinned. Soon he laughed with her and the tension drained away, carrying with it, regrettably, the voluptuousness.

“Let's just say,” she said, fighting for breath, “that you looked
nice but lonely like me and I figured it was safe to come to this deserted stretch of beach with you.”

She got up and held out her hand and he grabbed it as he got to his feet. Her fingers were strong but soft and warm. They picked their way through the beach blankets and the sprawled clumps of humanity.

At the water's edge out of the corners of their eyes they watched a fat brown-skinned woman enter the sea. She walked into the water until it touched the bottom of her pendulous breasts. With her hands she scooped small chunks of ocean and let them dribble and splash into the top of her bathing suit. When her chest was wet she rose and fell, now stretching high, now submerging slightly, going deeper each time, until the vastness was gone and nothing was left above the water but her round head.

“Come on down the beach,” he said. “We've got to do that.”

They walked far enough to be hidden from the fat lady's sight and then imitated her performance. The girl even splashed water into the bra of her suit. He was careful not to smile. It was a serious business and, they found, very enjoyable. When nothing remained above the ocean but her head and his, they moved together until their mouths were a foot apart on the surface of the sea.

She had grown up on a turkey farm in Clinton, Massachusetts.

She hated turkey and any other kind of fowl.

And eggs.

She loved red meat.

And Utrillo.

And Gershwin.

And Paul Whiteman.

And Sibelius.

She hated all Scotch.

She loved good sherry.

And ballet, but she wasn't enough of an artist to be professional.

She wanted to go to Radcliffe and then become a social worker and a wife and a mother, in that order.

The water was warm but finally their lips turned blue. People started to leave the beach but they sat in the water,
letting waves moving toward the beach pull them in and those washing back pull them out. Every so often they had to move a little to stay at the depth they wanted. She began to ask him questions.

Where was he going to school?
Columbia.

What was he going to major in?
Physics.

What did his father do for a living?
Supports bosoms.

Did he like New York?
I suppose so.

Was he a religious Jew?
I don't know.

What was a synagogue service like?
Like a church service performed in Hebrew, perhaps. But he couldn't really tell because he never had seen a church service.

What did it mean when something was Kosher?

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You don't have to study to become a social worker. You already work up an efficient ethnic case history.”

Her eyes became cold. “I told
you
. Anything you asked. I would have answered any of your questions. You fool, you've ruined everything.” She started out of the water but he put his hand on her arm and apologized.

“Ask me anything you want,” he said. They hunkered down in the water again. Her lips were almost white. Her face was sunburned.

Did he have any brothers or sisters?
An older sister. Ruthie.

What was Ruthie like?
A pain in the ass. She was spending the summer in Palestine.

Did he have to be vulgar?
Sometimes it feels good.

Didn't he love Ruthie though, deep down?
He didn't really think so.

Where did they live?
Queens.

Did the apartment have a dumbwaiter?
Yes.

Did he ever ride in it when he was a kid?
Of course not. Your mother keeps it locked so you won't fall in and kill yourself.

Did he like opera?
No.

Did he like ballet?
He had never seen one.

Who was his favorite writer?
Stephen Crane.

Were New York girls really fast?
Not the ones he met.

Had he ever been in love?
Not till now.

“Don't be a wise guy,” she said. “I couldn't stand it. I mean it.”

“I'm not a wise guy.” Maybe it was shock, but she stopped asking questions and by mutual agreement they left their ocean. The beach was almost deserted. The sun was setting and the air had turned chill enough to raise goose bumps on their arms and legs. When they started to run in an attempt to warm up, the stones made a little pogrom for the benefit of their soles.

She lifted a foot and bit her lip as she examined a stone bruise. “Damn rock quarry,” she said. “Give me the beach at the hotel anytime. The sand feels like silk.”

“You're joking,” he said. The hotel beach was reserved for guests. They were told constantly that if they were discovered using it the consequence would be instant dismissal.

“I swim there at night. When the hotel and the rest of the world is asleep.”

His skin prickled. “Can I join you sometime?”

She looked at him and then grinned. “You think I'm crazy? I wouldn't go within miles of the hotel beach.” She picked up her towel and began to rub herself dry. Her face was very sunburned.

“Give me your lotion,” he said. She submitted while he spread the stuff on her forehead and cheeks and neck. Her flesh was warm and resilient and he rubbed it with his fingertips long after the lotion had disappeared.

They walked back to The Sands slowly, getting there with dusk. At the grove she gave him her hand. “It was a wonderful afternoon, Mike.”

“Can I see you tonight? Maybe for a movie in town?”

“I have to be up early in the morning.”

“Then we can just take a walk.”

“Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“No night dates,” she said firmly. She hesitated. “I'm off again next Tuesday. I'd love to go back to the beach with you.”

“It's a date.” He stood and watched her walk up the path until he couldn't see her any longer. She had a wonderful walk.

He couldn't wait a week. On Wednesday he asked her out again and received a firm refusal. On Thursday, when she gave him a short “No!” that had tears as well as anger in it, he went away and sulked like a child. That night he couldn't sleep. Something she had said two days before—about swimming at the hotel beach when everyone else was asleep—kept returning to
claw at his imagination. He tried to dismiss the thought by remembering that she had turned the remark into a meaningless joke, but that bothered him even more. The joke had no meaning, and Ellen Trowbridge wasn't the kind of girl who babbled.

About one o'clock he got out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and some sneakers. He left the bunkhouse and walked down the path, past the hotel to the dark beach. At the edge of the beach he pushed off his sneakers and carried them. She was right; the sand was like silk.

The night was overcast but very hot and muggy. If she comes, he thought, it will be to the far end of the beach, away from the hotel. He walked to the lifeguard stand in that area and sat down in the soft sand behind it.

The Sands was a family hotel with a minimum of night people. There were still a few lights showing yellow through the hotel's windows, but as he watched they blinked out, one by one, like eyes closing in sleep. He sat and listened to the water hissing on the sand and wondering what he was doing there. He wanted a cigarette badly but he didn't want anyone to see the match or the glowing tip. A couple of times he fell asleep, only to jerk himself into annoyed wakefulness.

Pretty soon he stopped being impatient. It was pleasant there, digging into the silken sand with his toes. It was the kind of night when the air was silken, too, and he knew the water would feel the same way. He thought a lot, not about specific things, but about life and himself and New York and Columbia and the family and sex and books he had read and pictures he had seen, in a relaxed way that was peaceful and pleasing. It was very dark. After he had been sitting there a long, long time he heard a small noise at the water's edge and he was afraid that she was there and he didn't know it. He got up and walked toward the noise and almost stepped on three sand crabs. He curled in his toes, but they were more disturbed by his presence than he was by theirs, and they scuttled into the blackness.

She came up to the water's edge only twelve or fifteen feet from where he was kneeling and watching the crabs go away. The sand had muffled her footsteps so that he hadn't heard her until she had crossed nearly the entire beach. He was afraid to call out for fear of startling her, and then when he made up his mind to, it was too late.

He heard the sound of a zipper, and then the rustle of
clothing. In only a couple of seconds there was the whisper of the clothing hitting the sand and he could see the faint white blur of her. He heard the rasp-rasp of her nails on her skin as she scratched herself; he couldn't see where she was scratching but it was an intensely personal sound and he knew that if Ellen Trowbridge were to discover him now, kneeling in the sand like some filthy peeping tom, she would never speak to him again.

She went into the water with a splash like a dropped rock. After that there wasn't a sound. It was then that he should have gone, as quickly and as quietly as possible. But he grew afraid for her. Even the best of swimmers don't jump into the ocean alone in the middle of the night. He thought of cramps and undertows and even of the sharks that every couple of years are reported to attack swimmers. He was about to call out to her when he heard her splashing in and saw her whiteness as she left the water. Guiltily, he took advantage of the sound of an incoming wave to drop prone, his face in his arms and his stomach in the sand, while the sea hissed along his legs, wetting his jeans to his crotch.

He could no longer see her when he looked up. She must have been standing not far away, letting the warm breeze dry her body. It was very dark and very quiet except for the Atlantic Ocean. Suddenly she slapped herself on the buttock. Then he could hear her running and jumping, running and jumping. A couple of times she came dangerously close to where he lay, a white shape that rose in the air and dropped like a playful seagull. Although he had never seen a ballet on the stage, he knew that she was dancing to music that played only in her mind. He listened to the quick pant-pant of her breathing as she leaped, and he wanted to be able to throw a switch that would turn on bright lights, so he could see her in her dance, her face, her body, the jiggling of her breasts as she jumped, the place she had slapped and the places she hadn't. But there was no switch to throw and soon she grew tired and stopped leaping. She stood for another minute or two, breathing hard, and then she picked up her clothing and walked naked back where she had come from. There was an open shower just off the beach where guests could wash off the sand and salt. He heard the serpent's hiss as she stood under it and pulled the cord, and then the night was quiet.

He waited for another little while, just to make sure she was gone, and then he went back to the lifeguard stand and
picked up his sneakers. When he returned to the bunkhouse he took off his wet jeans and hung them up to dry. By the light of a match his watch said ten minutes after four. He lay down on his bunk and listened to the ugly snores of too many males sleeping under the same roof. His eyelids burned but he was desperately awake.