An Almost Perfect Moment
Binnie Kirshenbaum
For Richard Howard
and David Alexander, dear friends
There once was a man who was fixated on, obsessed you could say, with images of the Virgin Mary. He spent his entire life traveling all over the world—to Rome, to Paris, to Mexico City—to study the paintings and carvings and marble statues of the Madonna. When he died, he went to heaven, and there he asked Saint Peter if he could meet the Blessed Virgin. Saint Peter saw no reason to deny this good man’s request, and so he brought the man to her. “I have just one question,” the man said. “I have studied your face, every rendition of it, for my entire life. Why, in all those countless paintings and carvings and marble statues, do you always look so sad?”
“Well,” said Mary, “to tell you the truth, I really wanted a daughter.”
Is it permitted to utter a mystery?
—
THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP
In Brooklyn, in a part of Brooklyn that was the…
Third period of the school day, Valentine took her seat…
Over the traditional Sunday-morning meal, a table laden with the…
When Valentine stopped running, she found herself back at the…
Literally overnight the weather turned from cold to a freezing…
The sun set and Valentine lit the candles to commemorate…
Decidedly peeved about having to work the day after Christmas—It’s…
It was that darkest of hours, no sign of the…
During the week which began with the Purification of the…
In this year, as it happened, Valentine’s Day fell on…
All that remained for Joanne Clarke to do was slip…
Calling in sick that Monday was an option, but when…
On the afternoon of the first night of Passover, while…
A cold and wet April was followed by a cold…
Valentine took the chair beside Miss Marks, and Dr. Stern…
The way Adam begat Seth and Seth begat Enos and…
Miriam tapped her teeth with the eraser end of her…
A long with end-of-term forms to fill out, grade sheets…
Summer days somehow operate on a different equation for time…
Summer, with its way of lazing along, as if it…
As the gourds and pumpkins that would soon decorate porch…
Shortly before the game was due to break up for…
The light of dawn blanketed the bed, swathing across Valentine…
Cardboard cutouts of Santa Claus and elves and giant candy…
By the dozens, maybe the hundreds, maybe more, they came.
With one shopping day until Christmas remaining, the stores were…
I
n Brooklyn, in a part of Brooklyn that was the last stop on the LL train and a million miles away from Manhattan, a part of Brooklyn—an enclave, almost—composed of modest homes and two-family houses set on lawns the size of postage stamps, out front the occasional plaster-of-paris saint or a birdbath, a short bus ride away from the new paradise known as the Kings County Mall, a part of Brooklyn where the turbulent sixties never quite touched down, but at this point in time, on the cusp of the great age of disco, when this part of Brooklyn would come into its own, as if during the years before it had been aestivating like a mudfish, lying in wait for the blast, for the glitter, the platform shoes, Gloria Gaynor, for doing the hustle, for its day in the sun, this part of Brooklyn was home to Miriam Kessler and her daughter Valentine, who was fifteen and three-quarter years old, which is to be neither here nor yet there as far as life is concerned.
Therefore, on this Tuesday afternoon, mid-November, it was in
a way both figurative and literal that Valentine stood at the threshold between the foyer and the living room, observing Miriam and her three girlfriends—she, Miriam, called them that, despite their middling years,
my girlfriends,
or simply,
The Girls
—who were seated around the card table, attending closely to their game.
Four Bam against Six Crak, the mah-jongg tiles clacking into one another sounded like typewriter keys or fingernails tapping on a tabletop, something like anticipation, as if like Morse code, a message would be revealed, the inside track to the next step on the ladder to womanhood, such as the achievement of the big O or the use of feminine hygiene products, things Valentine had heard tell of but had yet to experience, things for
later, when you’re older
.
For Miriam and The Girls, mah-jongg was not recreation, but passion. Nonetheless, and in their Brooklyn parlance, a nasal articulation, they were able to play while carrying on a conversation, which was not so much like juggling two oranges, because, for them, talking was as natural as breathing.
“Am I telling the truth?” Judy Weinstein said. “I’m telling the truth. Could she be a decorator or what?”
“She’s right, Miriam. You could be a decorator. Two Dragon. It’s a showplace here.”
“When I’m right, I’m right. She could be a decorator.”
Even if her taste wasn’t to your liking, there was no doubt Miriam had an eye for placement and color. The living room, recently redecorated, was stunning, in an Oriental motif. Red plush carpeting picked up the red of the wallpaper that was flocked with velveteen flowers. A pair of cloisonné lamps capped with silk bell-shaped shades sat on black enamel end tables flanking the gold brocade couch. A series of three Chinese watercolors—lily pads and orange carp—framed in ersatz bamboo hung on the far wall. A bon
sai tree, the cutest little thing that grew itty-bitty oranges which were supposedly edible, was the coffee-table centerpiece.
“This room takes my breath away. I ask you, does she have the eye for decorating or what?”
“They make good money, those interior decorators.”
Waving off foolish talk, Miriam asked, “Are we playing or are we gabbing?” To fix up her own home was one thing. To go out in the world as a professional,
who needs the headache
?
Miriam took one tile—Seven Dot—which was of no help at all, from Sunny Shapiro, while Sunny Shapiro with a face that, in Miriam’s words, could stop a clock, applied, on a mouth that was starting to wizen like a raisin, a fresh coat of coral-colored lipstick, the exact shade of coral as the beaded sweater she wore.
Studying her tiles, a losing hand if ever there was one, Miriam Kessler fed a slice of Entenmann’s walnut ring into her mouth. Like she was performing a magic trick, Miriam could make a slice of cake, indeed an entire cake, vanish before your very eyes. Miriam swallowed the cake, her pleasure, and then there was no pleasure left until the next piece of cake.
Her grief cloaked in layers of fat, Miriam Kessler was pushing 239 pounds when she last stepped on the bathroom scale back in September or maybe it was August. Mostly she wore dresses of the muumuu variety, but nonetheless, Miriam Kessler was beautifully groomed. Every Thursday, she was at the beauty parlor for her wash and set, forty-five minutes under the dryer, hair teased and sprayed into the bouffant of her youth; the same hairdo she’d had since she was seventeen, only the color had changed from a God-given warm brown to a Lady Clairol deep auburn.
Despite that Miriam never skimped on the heat, rather she kept the thermostat at a steady seventy-two degrees, Edith Zuckerman
snuggled with her white mink stole, and so what if it was as old as Methuselah, and from a generation ago, hardly with-it. The white mink stole was the first truly beautiful thing Edith had ever owned and she wore it as if the beauty of it were a talisman. As if nothing bad could ever happen to a woman wearing a white mink stole, never mind that she had the one son with the learning problems and her husband’s business having had its share of ups and downs.
Oh-such-glamorous dames, adorned in style which peaked and froze at their high-school proms, The Girls were as dolled up as if on their way to romance or to the last nights of the Copacabana nightclub, as if they refused to let go of the splendor.
But it was Judy Weinstein who seemed to command the lion’s share of Valentine’s attention. Judy Judy Judy was a vision in a gold lamé jumpsuit. Not the gold lamé as precursor to the Mylar of Studio 54, but lamé,
lahr-may
, they called it, of the fashion flash of the fabulous fifties. And her hair, Judy’s hair was bleached to a platinum blond and woven as intricately and high on her head as a queen’s crown. Her fingernails, dragon-lady long, were lacquered a frosted white.
Some seven or eight years back, on a Friday morning, it must have been during the summer or some school holiday because Valentine was at home, Miriam had said to her daughter, “Go and ask Judy if she’s got a stick of butter I can borrow.” Miriam was baking an apricot strudel, the recipe calling for two sticks of butter when Miriam discovered she had but one. Valentine knocked on the Weinsteins’ door, and Judy called out, “Come in.” It was that way still, this part of Brooklyn, like a small town where there was no need for police locks and Medeco locks and home alarm systems.
Although Judy did sometimes go for the silver lamé and also had
in her closet a breathtaking copper lamé sweater set, the gold lamé was her trademark, and when Valentine went through the Weinsteins’ living room into the kitchen, behold! There was Judy in a gold lamé hostess gown, her feet shod in gold shoes, pointy with three-inch spiked heels, her face was fully made up, eyeliner whipped into cattails, fuchsia-pink lipstick, enough mascara to trap flies. Diamond earrings dangled from her lobes, which shimmered as if made of pearls instead of mere flesh, while her hands were confidently braiding dough for the Sabbath challah bread. Valentine must’ve been so overwhelmed by the glory that was Judy Weinstein that she seemed to forget entirely why she was there, what it was her mother had wanted. True, Valentine had set eyes on Mrs. Weinstein pretty much every day, but this might have been the first time she saw light like sunbeams reflecting off the gold and platinum, light radiating like that of the pictures in her book of Bible stories. All Valentine managed to do was gape until Judy phoned Miriam and said, “Valentine is standing in my kitchen with her mouth hanging open. Butter? Sure. I’ve got butter.”
Now Miriam licked the residue of the sugar icing off her fingers and exchanged two of the tiles on her rack for two from the center of the table. So absorbed were they with their game and their talk, not one of these four women had heard Valentine come in the door or noticed that she’d come near to them.
Not until Edith Zuckerman called Five Dot did any of them look up, and only then did they see Valentine. See Valentine and gush. With words detouring through the sinuses and in voices husky from years of smoking Newport mentholated cigarettes, Juicy Fruit gum snapping, they carried on, “Will you look at her? Every day she gets more beautiful.”
“What a face. I ask you. Is that a face?”
“She’s right. That’s some face. Gorgeous. Ab-so-lute-ly gorgeous.”
“Honest to Gawd, Miriam, you should put her in the movies with that face. Quint. I’ve got a cousin who knows somebody big with the studios. I’ll give him a call for you because, really, the kid could be a star with that face. I ask you, am I right?”
“She’s right. When she’s right, she’s right.”
“I’m telling you, I’m right. She even looks like that actress, Olivia Whatshername.”
“Olivia Newton-John? She looks nothing like Olivia Newton-John.”
“No. No. Not that Olivia. The other one. From
Romeo and Juliet
. The one who was Juliet in the movie. Olivia Whatshername.”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“Girls. Girls. Are we gabbing or are we playing?”
“All I’m saying is that the kid is gorgeous. Is she gorgeous or what?”
“The kid is gorgeous.”
“Mah-jongg.”
All tiles were dumped to the center and flipped facedown to be washed, which is the mah-jongg equivalent to shuffling a deck of cards. Sunny Shapiro was East, the one to go first this round, and when the women looked up again, Valentine was gone. Even though Miriam knew that the plush carpeting, wall-to-wall, muffled the sound of footfalls, it sometimes threw her for a loop the way Valentine moved silently, as if the kid walked on air, the way she appeared and disappeared without warning, as if she were something you imagined instead of a person.
Although Edith Zuckerman would never say so, not even under
torture, because she loved Miriam like a sister, Valentine gave Edith the creeps, the way the kid looked as if she knew everything, as if she had imbibed the wisdom of the ages, as if she knew all your secrets, including the ones you didn’t dare admit even to yourself. Yet, at the very same time, she managed to look like a moron, as if the most ordinary things—a Dixie cup, the television set, a doorknob—took her by complete surprise, as if she’d never seen such remarkable things, as if she were a plastic doll with wide eyes painted on and a hollow head.
In this part of Brooklyn, rarely did girls dream big, and Valentine had not, to the best of anyone’s recollection, ever articulated desire to be a movie star. Not tempted by fame and fortune, but perhaps by some kind of crazy hope to step outside of the world she knew. When she was thirteen, Valentine wrote a telling essay for school. In response to the question—How Do I See Myself in Ten Years’ Time?—she wrote:
A teacher. A kindergarten teacher or maybe first grade. Or maybe I’d like to be floating on my back in a big blue swimming pool warmed by the sun forever and ever. I would like it if there were palm trees around the pool
.
She did resemble Olivia Whatshername.
She also resembled Walt Disney’s Snow White.
But Valentine Kessler was the spitting image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she appeared to Bernadette at Lourdes.
Neither Miriam Kessler nor her girlfriends were at all aware of Valentine’s likeness to Mary, Mother of Jesus as she appeared on idols, icons, and Christmas cards even though they had seen this
particular rendition of Mary countless times, hanging in the kitchens of many of their neighbors. They saw these holy pictures, but they never really looked at them. Instead, they looked past them and around them and through them because who knew for sure, maybe to really look was to risk God’s ire or something worse.
The Girls, Miriam included, were not especially devout; certainly they were far less observant than their own mothers had been, as if each generation had further diluted the formalities of faith. Even Judy, who did prepare a Shabbes meal which included home-baked challah bread, did not keep holy the Sabbath day. Their piety was pretty much limited to temple on the High Holidays, the Hadassah sisterhood, and for the kids there was Jewish Youth Group led by Rabbi Gold, a youngish rabbi from the Havarah movement, which was mostly about commitment to social justice. For those of The Girls who had sons, there were lavish bar mitzvahs such as the one to which Judy Weinstein was referring when she asked, “Did you get your invitation to the Solomon affair? Two Bam. I hear they’re having a double-decker Viennese table.”
“Three Dragon. Of course I got my invitation. Are you going?”
“Of course I’m going. What about you, Miriam? Are you going?”
“Five Dot. I’m going.”
These were the ways they kept the faith, but make no mistake about it. They were Jewish women, and they lived in a bifurcated world: Jewish and not Jewish. For them, each and every person, place, or thing was Jewish or not Jewish. Like this: Doctors were Jewish, politicians were not. New England was for the
goyim
, New York for the Jews. Books were Jewish, guns were worse than
trayf
.
And not just the nouns, but verbs too, as in walking was Jewish, but skydiving was
not on your life
. Far greater than their belief in God, these women believed fervently in
why take chances if you don’t have to
. So while Miriam thought nothing of having coffee in Angela Sabatini’s kitchen—she had a good heart, that Angela Sabatini even if the fried dough she served with the coffee gave Miriam such indigestion, repeating on her like a defective parrot—Miriam would avert her eyes from the picture of the Virgin Mary or Saint Whoever-It-Was that hung over the kitchen counter.
Valentine, however, had to have been cognizant of her similitude to Mary at least since the previous Holy Family Summer Festival, a weeklong affair held on East Ninety-eighth Street off Flatlands Avenue every August. The Holy Family Summer Festival was closer in kind to an afternoon at Coney Island than to a sectarian fete. Pretty much the whole neighborhood attended, not just the Catholics. There were amusement park rides and games of skill and games of chance where you could win plush toys—poodles or teddy bears in revolting shades of neon blue and hot pink. Rumor had it that there was gambling, real gambling for money, in the church basement, but Valentine and her friends dared not enter there just as they dared not eat a sausage and pepper sandwich, not so much in obedience to dietary laws but rather because who knew what went into those things. They were content to stuff themselves with cannolis and nougat candy that stuck to their teeth, all the while strolling the block on the lookout for cute boys.