The Sacrifice of Tamar (49 page)

She began to wonder if Josh had not been right…

Would anyone come except her, the girls, Josh and Aaron, Jenny and her family, and the baby?

Then she began to wonder. Would Josh come? Would Aaron come? And if Aaron didn’t come, how would she get the baby? The hospital wouldn’t release the baby without Aaron or Gitta Chana.

She had a hall for four hundred people. She had a
mohel
. But now she wasn’t sure she had a baby.

Even though she and Josh continued to share the same bedroom, they hardly spoke and were careful not to touch each other. She kept waiting for him to tell her how it was going with Aaron. She wasn’t even sure where Aaron was. She kept telling herself that if there was a problem, Josh would tell her. But now the bris was hours away.

She woke him up. “Josh, is Aaron going to come? He’s got to bring the baby, to bring it to the hall. Otherwise…”

“I don’t know, Tamar. I don’t know. I’m trying.”

“Trying!”

He looked at her levelly. “I’m doing the best that I can under the circumstances,” he said with almost belligerent calmness, immovable.

“Then I’ll go. Tell me, where is he?”

He swung his feet off the bed, his fingertips lodging in the bridge above his eye sockets, his palms meeting, closing over his suddenly lined and sagging face. “No. I’ll go.” And something in the way he said it made her understand this was how it had to be.

He washed, he dressed, and then he prayed in the little
shteibel
around the corner. He folded his prayer shawl and put his tefillin back into a little velvet bag, kissing them, the same as every morning of his life as far back as he could remember. He tried not to let his thoughts interfere with his devotions, his heartfelt words of praise and supplication. He tried not to notice the faces of people gone suddenly aloof and distant. He smiled at friends and acquaintances, and for the most part, they nodded and smiled back in respectful, friendly acknowledgment that had, he saw, a touch of compassion.

The streets still had that early morning serenity. He found it helpful as he walked down the block to Aaron’s apartment building, to the home his son had once shared with Gitta Chana. She had gone home to her parents, Josh knew. Aaron was alone.

The steps up seemed higher to him, the floor more distant. He felt his heart pumping wildly, straining with the effort to reach Aaron’s door. And then it was in front of him. He looked at the little wooden plaque he himself had fastened to the front of it: “The Finegold Family.” His own name. His father’s name. He was glad the sign was still up, that Aaron had not taken it down.

He knocked.

A hard, brief shuffling sound came through the door, and then silence.

“Aaron! Please! Open the door for me.”

Soft footfalls, and then the lock turning.

Aaron stood there, shockingly pale, his dark hair matted, his clothes wrinkled and stained with coffee and perspiration, smelling of something gone rancid. His small dark eyes looked at the floor.

“You shouldn’t be here,
Aba!
Go home, please!”

“I’m not going home,” Josh said quietly, firmly. “What are you doing to yourself? Just look… look at yourself. What’s going to be with you? Aaron…”

“
Aba
. . .” His voice caught in his throat. “If it’s about the bris, I already told you.
Ima
can’t do this… not only to me, but to you… You don’t owe me anything… Please,
Aba
, go home! I don’t want anyone to see you here!”

“Why didn’t you come to shul this morning? Have you washed, prayed? And when was the last time you put something into your mouth to eat?” Josh continued, ignoring his entreaties.

Aaron shook his head dumbly.

Josh took him by the shoulders, steering him toward the bedroom as he would a small, reluctant child. “Go, son. Wash, change, pray. I’ll make you something to eat. And then we’ll talk.”

Aaron walked away slowly, with strange obedience. Josh went into the kitchen, looking around at the foreign territory, not knowing where to begin. He found eggs and margarine and a frying pan. As the eggs sizzled, he heard the reassuring sound of splashing water, of shoes scuffing against the floor and closet doors opening and closing. He heard the sound of prayer: short, bitter, muffled.

The eggs browned at the edges and stuck to the pan. He scraped them into a plate and put up water to boil.

Aaron stood in front of him, his hair wet, his clothes clean. Only the look on his face of accident and mourning had not washed away.

“I can’t find the coffee cups…”

“I’m not hungry,
Aba
.”

“But I am. Come, sit and eat with me a minute.”

Aaron got the cups and made coffee, splashing the milk in a little pool around the saucers.

They sat in silence, looking at each other across the bad, hastily prepared meal. Aaron took a few obligatory mouthfuls, then sat with his hands gripped hard around the hot cup.

“
Ima
is pressuring you, isn’t she? Why can’t she leave me alone? I can’t take it anymore—”

“Aaron, come sit and learn with me a little bit,” Josh suddenly interrupted him. “The way we always did, remember? In the mornings, before you went to school?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked into the living room and reached up to the large volumes of Talmud that dominated the room. He took one down and sat on the couch, opening it.

Aaron stood in a corner, watching him.

“Come, son.” He beckoned him. “Come, sit.” He patted the space next to him. “
Talmud chullin, Resh Pay Heh
,” Josh began in the lovely singsong of learning so dear to them both. “ ‘An ox or a sheep, you shall not slaughter father and son on the same day. How do we know who is the father? And who is called a son? He who clings to his father, who walks in his footsteps…’ ” He felt the sudden weight of Aaron’s shoulder pressing into his.

“Now, let us look at another
sugiya. Chullin Yod Aleph
. ‘A son is born to a man and his wife. And we shall nor harbor any suspicions that the woman has strayed and borne to another. Her husband is the father of the child… And even if evil gossip slanders the woman, and everyone speaks vilely of her, still, the husband is the father of the child… And even if the woman is
the most promiscuous of all women, still her husband is considered the father of the child…”

“
Aba
. . .” Aaron whispered, choking.

“This is the
halacha
, Aaron. You are my son. Mine. I will never give you up, I will never turn my back on you or pretend otherwise.”

“Why didn’t she just get rid of me? Why did she let me be born? I’m a monster. I had no right to be born! Why did G-d let me be born? Why did He let me have a child, another monster?”

“Do you remember the story of Ruth?” Josh interrupted him, his hand on his shoulder.

Aaron looked up, confused. Every little child knew the story. How Elimelech the rich farmer from Bethlehem had left Israel during the famine so as not to share his wealth with the many poor. How he and his wife, Naomi, and two sons had settled in Sodom. How the boys had intermarried with girls from the hated Moabites, the people G-d had told the Israelites never to marry because they’d denied them bread and water when they were hungry and thirsty in the desert. How Eli and his two sons had died, and how Ruth, the Moabite daughter-in-law, daughter of the king of Moab himself, refused to leave the widowed Naomi, declaring: Wherever you go, I’ll go. Your people will be my people. Your G-d my G-d… How Ruth had married Boaz, Naomi’s relative, and became King David’s grandmother…

“I remember once asking my own rebbe why King David had to have a grandmother who was not only a convert, but the daughter of the hated king of Moab himself, known for his selfishness and cruelty? Why had G-d arranged it that way? And my rebbe told me this: Even in the cruel king of Moab there was a small spark of kindness, of goodness. G-d had wanted to redeem that spark, to carry it on before it was extinguished completely, by bringing it into a people known for their compassion. Ruth carried that spark, that gene. She brought it into the Jewish people,
she passed it on to her children, and their children. That spark gave us King David, the psalms, King Solomon. And one day it will bring the Messiah himself. It was all G-d’s will.”

“
Aba
. . . the
rabbaim
at Lonovitch are good people. No one will ask you to leave. As long as I go away, your life doesn’t have to change… Why should it change? I have to go anyway. There is nothing left for me here… nothing… Gitta Chana… after the way I acted… she’ll never… And even if I hadn’t been so cruel, such an idiot, I could still only give her more children like the one she has and doesn’t want… I’ll never find another wife among B’nai Torah… I can never have more children… I’ll never be allowed to teach… It’ll be better for everyone if you all just forget about me. I’ll go to some town in America. I’ll get a job. I’ll be like everybody else…”

“You can do that,” Josh admitted. “But I think… I really think… it would kill me.”

Aaron stared at him hard, astonished.

“All my life I have spent teaching Torah. But only one student ever took all I was able to give. Ever lived up to my highest ideals. That’s you, Aaron. You’ve acted foolishly. You’ve made some mistakes. But if you abandon everything I taught you, if you choose to live a faithless life without purpose, without family, without Torah, without mitzvot… if you disappear, it will kill me,” he repeated with simple honesty that couldn’t be doubted.

“
Aba
, what else can I do?”

“You can be yourself! You can keep learning. You can find work teaching. You can find your
beshert
, a truly G-d-fearing woman, you can have more children…”

“Black children!”

“Good children, the children of their good parents… who will be any color G-d chooses to make them.”

Like a breakwater giving way before the tremendous force
of nature, something broke inside Aaron Finegold. He sobbed, the big, gulping, strangled sobs of a man who does not cry. “
Aba
. . .”

Josh held him tight. They sat there for a long time.

Then Josh released him. “Come now. It’s time for you to fulfill your obligations to your son. Come. Your mother and sisters are waiting. Come now, my son. Whatever has to be done, we’ll do it together.”

In the hospital, Aaron signed the papers. The nurse wheeled the baby out in its bassinet.

“You take it,
Ima
. I don’t know anything about babies,” Aaron said.

Tamar looked down at the small, swathed creature and suddenly froze.

She had gotten caught up in the beauty of the deed, the feeling behind it. All the right feelings. And on the wave of that good feeling, she had done everything she was supposed to. But she had never considered the details, the actual, practical physical details of accomplishing what she wanted to. It had been an idea, a righteous, compassionate idea. And now it was real, a deed. Now, she had to hold this baby. She had to look at this baby. She wanted to. She wanted to be the kind of person who would be able to love it, no matter what.

But would she succeed? After talking everyone else into love, into tolerance, into being open and kind and compassionate… would she herself be able to reach out to this child, to look into his strange, foreign-looking face, his small dark eyes? Or would it forever remind her of another face, another stranger, no kin? She reached down to lift it, trying to see past its differentness, to the softness of its skin, its small perfect limbs, its perfect baby’s head. But as hard as she tried, she could see nothing but its color.

She cringed.

“Saraleh, take it!” she begged her daughter.

Sara reached into the bassinet without hesitation, tenderly lifting the sleeping infant.

“Can I see him?” Malka asked.

Tamar nodded uneasily, her whole body inflexible with tension as they folded back the blanket.

She watched their soft, pretty blond heads hover over the infant.

Saraleh and Malkaleh, she thought, her heart aching. Princesses dethroned. Did they understand as they looked at the small, sleeping infant, their little nephew, that he had destroyed their world, their future, like a bomb? They were now grade B, grade C, on the
shidduch
lists? Who would want them now? Widowers, divorced men with bad histories? The newly observant from irreligious families? Nobodies. The finest families, the most educated and promising boys, were forever beyond their reach.

“He has Aaron’s eyes,” Sara said, letting the baby’s fist clutch her finger.

“And a small chin, like Rebbetzin Kleinman.” Malka giggled, touching the baby’s chin. “And your cheekbones,
Ima
, look! And a dimple just like Sara’s.” She laughed.

How was it possible for them to accept this child so easily? Tamar wondered. What magic lens had made their vision so kind? Youth, perhaps, or innocence. Or simply good, kind hearts that saw nothing bad in a good world, a world still full of that precious shine.

And then, for no reason at all, she felt sudden hope. Her beautiful daughters! Perhaps it was not over. Perhaps something magical would happen, some lovely transformation outside the realm of predictability and understanding. A miracle.

She walked behind them out to the waiting taxi.

Chapter thirty-six

The cab let them off in front of the hall.

Malka ran happily inside and then back out. It was ten o’clock. Tamar was afraid to ask how many people were already inside.

“The
mohel’s
inside. And a friend of yours, and a few kids,” Malka informed her.

Her heart sank. She was afraid to walk into the hall and see all its vast array of food, all the vast long empty tables.

“People are always late,” a familiar voice soothed, as if reading her mind.

“Jen! Thanks for coming. For everything.”

A small wheelchair whizzed past them. Jenny grabbed the handles, laughing. “Menachem, this is not a playground!” she said with her best try at severity. “Come, where are your manners. Stop a minute on your journeys and wish Tamar mazel tov.”