Authors: Wayne Hoffman

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #General, #Jewish Men, #Male Friendship, #Rabbis, #Jewish, #Religion, #Jewish Gay Men, #Judaism

Sweet Like Sugar (13 page)

What did I want? Why wasn't this a simple question?

“No,” I told him, leaving him alone in the bathroom, but still remembering how it felt to hold him in my clutching fingers.

I ducked out of my office around lunchtime on Friday and stopped by the rabbi's house. He'd given me his house keys, so I let myself in.

It was the first time I'd been in his house alone. Free to look around at my leisure.

The books fascinated me. There were so manyâthousands, surely, spread throughout the whole houseâthat I literally didn't know where to start. When I looked closely, however, I noticed that the rabbi did have a sort of system, a rhyme and reason that dictated which books went where.

Books of scripture and religious commentary crowded his officeâthese volumes looked like they'd been frequently read, their spines cracked and often crumbling. The living room had books on Jewish history, ancient and recent, in English and Hebrew and a few in Yiddish; the Holocaust made up a predictably large segment of these books. The dining room held oversize books of photography and art, coffee table books about Israeli archaeology and bygone shtetl life in Eastern Europe. Cookbooks, naturally, crowded the kitchen, covering recipes for every Jewish holiday, representing Jewish communities from around the world:
Hanukkah Specialties from Morocco, Passover Cooking Israeli Style, Shabbes with Bubbe: My Grandmother's Recipes from the Old Country,
and so on. (These books had been gathering dust, I surmised, since Sophie had passed away.) When I dared to enter the bedroom, its bed still unmade, I saw shelves of how-to and why-do-we-do-such-and-such booksâabout weddings, funerals, educating children. There was also a single shelf of poetry booksâJewish poetryâon one side of the bed. Were these Sophie's books? Did she get a shelf for herself, I wondered, and did the rabbi ever read these poems over her shoulder in bed?

The rabbi and I had no books in common in our respective homes. No surprise hereâmy own tastes ran to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Barbara Ehrenreich and Al Franken, Dennis Cooper and Michael Cunningham. But what surprised me was how different the rabbi's collection was from my parents'. In my parents' living room in Rockville, there was a fairly extensive collection of Jewish books, but in a very different vein. Fiction by Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Sholom Aleichem was predominant. Their photo books contained nostalgic paintings by Marc Chagall and sepia-toned photographs from Ellis Island. Their cookbooks had titles like
Kosher Chinese Cuisine
and
The Modern Israeli Kitchen
. There was a copy of the Old Testament and a battered siddur that I'd used in Hebrew school, but that was about as far as our liturgy went. And their bookshelves held a host of non-Jewish books, from the Tom Clancy novels my mother devoured to the Civil War histories my father preferred, with the occasional biography of Bill Clinton or Martin Luther King Jr. thrown in for variety.

Two Jewish households.

I went to the rabbi's study to fetch his things. Alone in the room, I could have opened his drawers, rifled through his papers, discovered his most shameful secrets. But what kinds of secrets could an eighty-something widowed rabbi have? A resin-coated bong? A stash of Asian porn? Not Rabbi Zuckerman, I figured. This man didn't have any secrets.

I grabbed his glasses and his prayer book and left, locking the door behind me. Then I took the mail out of the mailbox at the end of his driveway and headed to Holy Cross.

The rabbi was napping when I arrived, but he quickly awoke when I sat down in the chair by his bedside.

“The doctors say I should be released very soon,” he said. “Not tomorrowâI told them I would have no way to get home on Shabbat. But maybe Sunday.”

“That's good news.”

“Yes. I am tired of this place. Awful food. And this ridiculous gown. And no books.”

I asked if the tests had revealed anything.

“They do not see any permanent damage,” he said. “But they also said that these things often happen more than once.”

“And that is the bad news,” I said.

“The good and bad often come together,” he said. Very sagelike, I thought.

I handed him his glasses and his siddur, which brought a smile to his face.

“I brought over your mail, too,” I said.

He put on his reading glasses and I began announcing his mail piece by piece as I handed him each item, like I was his personal mailman.

“Bill.”

“Valpak coupons.”

“PBS solicitation.”

“Bill.”

“Bank statement.”

“Preapproved credit card application.”

I had only one piece of mail left in my hand, a small lavender envelope with a handwritten address made out to Zisel Zuckerman. The rabbi's first name was Jacob. I held up the letter for a moment and asked him, “Who's Zisel?”

His arm shot out at me with surprising speed and snatched the envelope from my hand. He tore it in half and tossed it in the wastebasket next to his bed.

“Benji!” he snapped, a scowl on his face. “Don't be a snoop!”

CHAPTER 6

B
y the time he left the hospital, the rabbi was back to his old self mentally. But physically he seemed frail, weaker.

The doctor told him that he needed more rest and that he should think about taking some time off from work. He wasn't convinced.

I visited him the Sunday he came home and told him that the doctor was right: He should take a break from work.

“How can I stay home? It's my store,” he said, sitting in his usual spot on his sofa.

“It's only temporary,” I answered. “Just a little time off.”

He shook his head. “I can't.”

“You must have taken time off at some point,” I said. “When's the last time you got away from the store?”

“Oh, Sophie and I used to go away a lot,” he said. “She loved it. If I ever said that I couldn't leave because I needed to work, she used to tell me, âEven the good Lord,
baruch hashem,
set aside a time to rest.' ”

“Where did you go?”

He rattled off a list of destinations. Los Angeles, where he had two nephews. New York, of course, to see Sophie's family. Israel, many times. London. Paris. Montreal. A kosher cruise once, through the Caribbean. And, as might be expected for Jews of a certain age, Florida. Over and over.

“Who used to watch the store while you were away?”

“Linda Goldfarb.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Sophie trusted her,” he clarified. “And I trust her, too.”

“That's not how it usually sounds,” I said.

“She has worked for me for many years, Benji. Of course I trust her,” he said. “That does not mean that I must also
like
her.”

“I see.”

“Although she is much easier to like when she is far away.”

A smile crept across his face and I saw that he was softening.

I told him I'd drop off any mail or important papers at his house at the end of each day so he could keep an eye on things.

“What if, God forbid, there should be an emergency?” he asked.

“If there's an emergency, just call me and I'll come pick you up,” I said, although I couldn't imagine what might constitute an emergency at the bookstore. Dust on the dust jackets? A strike at the yarmulke factory?

“That's very nice of you, but . . .”

As he spoke, he leaned forward to get up off his sofa, but quickly found that even this simple task was not so simple. He tried a second time, and a third before I reached over and offered my hand to pull him up and steady his balance. He was silent for a moment, embarrassed.

“Okay, Benji, I'll try,” he said, conceding. “Just until I get my strength back.”

The first day the rabbi stayed home, I stopped in the bookstore late in the afternoon to fetch the mail. Mrs. Goldfarb stopped what she was doingâputting together a special display of shofars and honey dishes and greeting cards for the High Holidays, which were coming early that yearâand stepped behind the front counter. She put three bills in a manila folder, and then she wrote the day's total sales on a piece of memo paper, which she folded in quarters and slipped into the folder, as well.

“I don't know how you managed it, Benjamin,” she said. “I've been telling him for months to take some time off, and he's never listened to me.”

“Doesn't it mean more work for you?” I asked.

“That's a small price to pay,” she said without elaborating.

I couldn't quite figure why they didn't get along. Mrs. Goldfarb had once told me that she and the rabbi were just “two very different people,” but I didn't buy it. Maybe the real problem was that they were too similar: bossy, opinionated, strong-willed. But I didn't dare suggest that to her.

“If you don't get along, why do you work here?” I asked.

“It wasn't always like this,” she said. “When Mrs. Zuckerman was alive, this was a very nice place to work. She was a wonderful woman. And he was a whole different person when she was around. But ever since she died . . .”

She trailed off. I didn't say anything.

“Years ago, he couldn't have run the store without her,” Mrs. Goldfarb continued. “Today, he couldn't run the store without me. We both know it. That's what keeps me here. And that's why he resents me.”

“I don't know if he resents you,” I offered.

“Benjamin, please. I can handle it. He's a very angry old man. But you, he seems to like,” she said. “Oh, that reminds me. He wanted me to give you something.”

She took a small dish off the counter and handed it to me. It was ceramic, with a single red apple in the center and tiny yellow bees around the edge.

“Sorry I didn't wrap it for you,” she said. “I told him I would.”

“What's this for?”

“It's a honey dish. You dip apples in it. For Rosh Hashanah.”

“I know it's a honey dish, but why are you giving it to me?”

“Rabbi Zuckerman called this morning and asked me to give it to you for him,” she said. “As a gift.”

“That doesn't sound like him.”

“You're telling me. In all the years I've known him, this is the very first time he's ever given away something from his store as a present.”

I studied her for a moment, to see if she was pulling my leg. She wasn't. She shrugged.

“First time for everything,” she said.

I held out the dish and rubbed my thumb over the apple.

“I don't get it,” I said.

“You don't?”

I shook my head.

“You're like the grandson he never had.”

The rabbi wasn't the easiest person to thank. I tried, but he was difficult.

“Mrs. Goldfarb gave me your present,” I said that evening as he scanned the day's bills.

“It's nothing, Benji,” he said without looking up, “a tiny gesture.”

“Yes, but it's really not necessary.”

“It is necessary,” he said. “You need a honey dish.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn't have one,” he said. He put the bills down and peered over his glasses. “Am I right?”

He had me there, circular logic and all.

“Now you do. And now you can have a sweet new year.”

I smiled. “Well, thank you.”

He nodded and went back to his paperwork. And without a word, the subject was closed.

Even though the rabbi wasn't going to work, he got dressed every day in the same slacks and button-down shirt he would have worn to the store. I viewed this as a positive sign.

Some afternoons when I stopped by, he'd invite me in and we'd chat. Other times, he was in the middle of somethingâtypically reading upstairs in his studyâand he'd take the papers from my hand with a quick “thank you” while we stood in the doorway, then I'd simply turn around and drive home.

Either way, his strength was improving and his spirits seemed fine. Calm and relaxed.

He was even making jokes. Once, just after Labor Day, when I handed him the day's bills, he held them up to his nose and sniffed them. I asked what he was doing, and he said, “I'm just checking to see if Linda Goldfarb is smoking in the store.”

“I'm sure she isn't,” I said, although I didn't honestly know.

“She's probably too busy popping open bottles of champagne because I'm not there,” he said.

I tried to reassure him: “No, I'm sure she'sâ”

“I don't mind,” he said, interrupting me. “I'm so happy not to see her every day, I'd be drinking champagne myself if my doctor would let me.”

He smiled, and I realized that he was putting me on.

“Fortunately, at my age, good old-fashioned ginger ale pretty much does the trick,” he said. “I pour a bit of Canada Dry into a wineglass before dinner and drink a toast to Linda Goldfarb in absentia, and it's almost like New Year's Eve in here. Actually, it's better than New Year's Eve. It's like Sukkot!”

“I think those bubbles are going straight to your head,” I said, joining him in a chuckle.

“You know, Benji, maybe this was a good idea after all, taking some time off,” he told me as we sat in his living room. “I haven't had a vacation in ages.”

Vacation. It wasn't the word I'd have used to describe the rabbi's situation. For most people, “vacation” involves lounging on a beach with a cocktail, toes digging tracks in the sand. Sitting home alone, taking blood thinners, studying Talmud or Torah or whatever the rabbi was studyingâthat wouldn't be what most people would call a vacation. But I went along with it.

“What was your favorite place to go on vacation?” I asked.

“Sophie loved Miami Beach,” he said. “We bought a condo there about fifteen years ago. We were getting too old to schlep our luggage from hotel to hotel every time we went, so we got our own place. We would go down every Passover, and for a week every January, and over Thanksgiving. Sometimes just for a long weekend, too, if the cold weather got bad.”

“Sounds like a nice place,” I said.

“It is,” he said. “It was. Sophie used to talk about retiring there.”

I couldn't imagine the rabbi retiring. What would he do? Play shuffleboard with the other old rabbis?

“When's the last time you went?” I asked.

“I haven't been there since Sophie passed away. I could never go back.”

“Well, you could alwaysâ”

“Never,” he interrupted, poking the air with his index finger, pointing straight up. “End of discussion.”

“He's taking advantage of you, Benji.”

My mother. On the phone.

“He's not taking advantage of me, Mom. This whole thing was my idea.”

“Then maybe you're the one who needs to see a doctor,” she replied. “To have your head examined.”

“What's the big deal? It's hardly out of my way to drop off his mail.”

“So you're a rabbi's servant now?”

“He doesn't have anyone else, Mom.”

“Maybe there's a reason for that.”

“I'm sorry I brought it up.”

“Benji, it doesn't make any sense what you're doing. What he needs is a home health aide or something, whatever they're called. You know, a nurse to keep an eye on him.”

“He doesn't need a nurse.”

“You said he was in the hospital.”

“Yes, he had a little stroke, but he's fine now.”

“And you're suddenly an expert in strokes? I didn't realize you were premed at Maryland.”

“Come on.”

“Look, he's got you running his errands for him, driving him around, delivering his mail. And what's he paying you?”

I paused. “Nothing.”

“Exactly. He's taking advantage of you.”

“It's not like that.”

“Explain to me how it's not.”

“I can't explain it, Mom. I guess I kind of feel sorry for him. He's all alone, with no real friends, and no relatives nearby. All he really wants is someone to talk to once in a while.”

“So let him pay a shrink.”

I stopped to think of a better way to get through to her.

I began: “If you died andâ”

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