A Funny Guy

Often, on her way to the welfare office, Mrs. Stein drove through the Syrian neighborhood. It was full of large opulent houses, the same ugly Mercedes station wagon in every driveway and dozens of Mexican housekeepers. Her friends joked that they only taught Spanish in Syrian yeshivas so the students could speak to their maids.

Occasionally she’d catch sight of a pretty Syrian lady in heels and spandex pants that showed a round derriere formed from hours on an elliptical, paying the grocery delivery man. How lucky that woman was, Mrs. Stein always thought. Her husband goes to work all day. Her kids go to school all day. The Mexicans clean the house and prepare the food. She telephones for her groceries from Kosher Korner and the diminutive delivery guy brings them to her door. Mrs. Tawil has all the time she needs to sweat off the weight from childbearing, so she will look fit enough to seduce her husband and keep Mr. Tawil’s eyes off his secretaries.

Mrs. Stein felt too young to have a stomach forced to seek refuge behind a girdle. She was only 26 and if she hadn’t started having kids at 19, she might still have her beauty. At least, she thought, if her marriage had turned out the way she’d hoped, she’d be content. The light turned green and her clunky Dodge minivan lumbered into a left turn. Her children ransacked the back. Crumbs and chocolate-soiled wrappers littered the floor. The kids battered each other and when they complained to her, she turned up the cassette player until it belted out a Jewish tune loud enough to drown them out. She’d reduced parenting to “leave me be,” and “deal with it.” The kids’ll raise themselves somehow, she figured. Isn’t that what all the parenting books said?

As horrid as her marriage was, she refused to divorce her husband. Mrs. Stein’s father frowned in all the wedding pictures, wishing she’d married someone more familiar to her family. She had grown up Chasidic in Monsey and had met Asher through a friend’s husband. He studied at a yeshiva in Borough Park. She was young, and desperate to show her father she could make her own decisions. If she divorced Asher, she knew her parents would lecture her about knowing better.

She pulled up at the ghastly new condo complex built especially for heimishe families. Her kids were grazing in the front yard of Mrs. Sutton’s house. Fortunately, Mrs. Sutton let Mrs. Stein dump the kids on her for a while. Mrs. Stein entered the messy duplex decorated with photos of rabbis she’d never met and didn’t know much about.

Asher was at the table reading one of Dr. Dovid Feinberg’s self-help books. The pink of his panties was peeking out behind his mess of tzitzis.

“What if the kids had been here?” she scolded him. He quickly fixed himself as Mrs. Stein fumbled with an overflowing garbage bag. “Can’t you at least take out the trash?”

Asher didn’t look up from his book. When she returned, she removed three frozen dinners and preheated the oven. Asher got up, walked into his bedroom and returned with a bottle of wine and a mischievous grin she’d seen many times before. He was offering sex.

Nobody would suspect their marriage was a joke. On the surface, it didn’t look that different from the marriages of their friends and family. None of the men in their community held their wives’ hands or slept in the same bed. But for the Steins, sex was a tradeoff. Mrs. Stein stared at the bottle of wine and collected her fantasies. This time he wanted to go to one of Dr. Feinberg’s conventions in Monsey. He hocked her about it as he winoed up, then chased the bottle with a Fresca.

It was only seven minutes of one way, passionless fucking. Asher couldn’t show even the slightest emotion. She grinded away as he drunkenly did his part by keeping his circumcised anatomical dildo at full salute. She lay naked in her bed as Asher silently redressed. He slid into an expensive pink corset.

“Nu, you buy for yourself but you can’t buy me something nice?”

Asher looked towards her blankly and looked down as he slid back into his stockings.

“I don’t know what you like,” he muttered. “I don’t even know your size.”

“Well, if you buy yourself some nice lingerie, you could buy me something. I like to look pretty too. Can I try on yours?”

Asher looked at her blankly. His friends in yeshiva had said he was a funny guy with great wit and personality. These traits she never got to see. Every day, Asher woke up and went to the mikva and to daven. After that he went to learn until noon. From noon to seven he stocked shelves and delivered for the butcher. They paid him in cash each day, plus tips. If the butcher didn’t need him for the day, Asher locked himself in his study reading Dr. Feinberg’s golden advice on living a heimishe life and answering back missionaries.

Mrs. Stein had never seen a Jew for Jesus and neither had her husband. Nevertheless, Mrs. Stein tolerated her husband using all his money to buy Dr. Feinberg’s books, tapes, and other tchotchkes. Asher reciprocated by doing the bare minimum she could ask of him.

The next morning, Mrs. Stein woke to find a note on the kitchen table:

Dr. Feinberg’s convention was moved to Baltimore.
Took the minivan. Go rent a car for the week. I left you some money.

It wasn’t moved. He’d lied as usual. She wouldn’t have cared anyway. She dropped her kids off with the pretty teenage redhead from down the hall whose name she always forgot, while she went to rent a car.

At the rental lot she perused the minivans. She hated the thought of driving around in another minibus. In the corner of the lot sat one of those ugly Mercedes station wagons all the Syrian ladies drove. She approached it as if it were the burning bush, trembling in the presence of a car driven only by the privileged and not by the pious. She inspected the leather-wrapped interior. It was shabby and the leather was cracking and the wood warping, but it was a Mercedes. She cringed when she thought of the price.

A smiling olive-skinned orthodox man wearing a black vest came towards her.

“Hello, this car is for rent!” he cheerfully informed her.

“It’s probably way to expensive for me. I should really look at one of those older minivans.”

“A lady crashed into a pole. It was rebuilt under warranty. My neighbor got it and drove it. Everywhere. Canada, Mexico. California a couple of times. This car’s been everywhere. It has 250,000 miles on the clock so I decided to put it here on the lot to rent. It’s very worn, but hey—it’s a Mercedes, right?”

Mrs. Stein drove back home with an ear to ear grin. She imagined herself driving one of those small Mercedes convertibles like a middle-aged Italian man. She took a detour to Gravesend and patrolled the neighborhood waving at the Syrian ladies loading their kids into their ugly Mercedes wagons. Most smiled back uneasily. Some waved back frantically with wide smiles wondering: was that Mrs. Tawil?

The Mercedes had modern technology: seat warmers and electronics she never knew existed. She’d driven for almost two hours when she realized the nameless redhead teenager watching her kids would be cross. In front of her condo was a big parking spot. It took her a few attempts to park her prized Mercedes. She would learn. She had a week before Asher returned with their minivan and she planned to make the best of it.

Her children and their teenage babysitter greeted her at the door. Mrs. Stein gave the babysitter some money and asked her to take the kids out for just a little longer. As soon as the house was quiet, Mrs. Stein stripped naked, jumped into her bed and masturbated fervently several times until she was panting as if she’d ran a marathon. When her kids arrived home, she introduced them to the new Mercedes. She took them for a ride around the block and they explored its features.

That week with the Mercedes, Mrs. Stein’s life was different. Everyday a spot in front of her condo was free. The car seemed to make her kids want to behave. Every day, before she took them out to run her errands, they would quietly choose one Yiddish DVD to watch during the ride. All drinks stayed in the cupholders; upon debarking all areas were checked for grime and wrappers. For Shabbos shopping Mrs. Stein even went to the supermarket all the Syrians ordered their groceries from.

When she got home, her heart sank when she saw the parking spot in front of her apartment, which God had kept open for her all week, now occupied by a black hubcap-less, dented, Dodge minivan. Asher sat clean-shaven on the couch with a book. The kids ran to greet their father who kissed them each on the head and handed them a fifty-state coin collection kit. She smiled. Sometimes he could be so human. The kids settled into their gifts and Asher resumed reading. Mrs. Stein’s contempt returned swiftly as, as usual, he didn’t help or bother to ask about her week.

“So you return again shaven?”

“I’ll regrow it, I uhh… mangled it and I had to shave. Moshe Pipik will get over it.”

The kids switched on a DVD and began dancing around the living room. Asher rose to return to his study.

“Asher,” she called to him, “don’t forget to check on the kids. I gotta return my rental car.”

The same olive-skinned religious man was there, and he smiled to her cheerfully.

“Did you enjoy the car?”

“Oh, I loved it… my kids loved it too!”

“Did your husband like it?”

“Uh… yeah, he liked the seat warmers. Out of curiosity, how much would you sell it for?”

“You are a nice lady. I’d give it to you to for eight and a half.”

“That’s a lot.”

“This model with less miles goes for over twenty! And it’s been perfectly maintained.”

When she returned home, the kids sat quietly on the couch reading. They nodded in acceptance of a dinner menu of fried fish. She had to knock on the door to her husband’s study several times before he answered.

“What?”

“You want fried fish for dinner?”

“I picked up cholent and kishka from Eisenstein’s. I have food.”

In the middle of the night, she suddenly jolted awake. Her clock read 4:10. She put her hair in a snood, wrapped herself in a robe and went to inspect her hibernating cave. After checking on each child, she walked out onto the terrace. The brisk wind rustled the trees amongst the street lamps. She looked down and noticed their Dodge wasn’t there. She went upstairs to see if her husband had left a note.

The door to his bathroom was closed, but the light was on. Curious, she entered to find a note covered by a key. She picked up the note and a polaroid picture fell out and landed face side up. Her eyes widened. It was a photo of Dr. Dovid Feinberg and her baby-faced husband dressed like a goyishe teenaged girl, sitting in Dr. Feinberg’s lap, holding a divorce certificate dedicated to Mrs. Feinberg. Everybody was in good spirits.

Chavi,
I left. I will give you a get, no question.
I was trapped my whole life and for once I am free. I am sure you will feel the same.
I would like to see the children. Someday I will have my operation. And we’ll have to explain it.
Love, Asher/Ashley

Mrs. Stein walked to her husband’s study where he regularly slept and slowly unlocked the door. Timidly, she entered and scanned the room. She slid open the first side of the closet. There was nothing but a line of suits, his shtremiel box, and a white kittel still wrapped in plastic from the dry cleaners.

“He could’ve left me something…”

She opened the other side, revealing dozens of ladies outfits. Expensive ones too. Probably gifts from Dr. Feinberg. Shoes and jewelry galore. She spun around and noticed the computer on the desk, along with dozens of pictures of Dr. Feinberg and Asher—Ashley, now—and a brown envelope.

Inside the envelope was a pile of cash and another note:

Never needed to use SS money so it’s all here.
Please don’t expose Dr. Feinberg and me.
Will send more for kids.

Over 80 grand. She jumped back to the closet and began trying on all his clothing. They fit! All of his stuff fit her! She let her hair out and examined herself in the mirror, dressed elegantly, wearing sparkly jeans or spandex pants and heels.

The Mercedes. She needed it.

As soon as it was morning, Mrs. Stein ran to the rental center and purchased the Mercedes. She was cruising Gravesend when a loud boom sent the car sputtering and spewing smoke from the crevices of the hood. She stepped out glaring at the noxious fumes of her overheated German car.

Then she smiled. She strolled to one of the Syrian mansions and rang the bell. A fat Mexican lady answered the door. Mrs Stein invited herself in and marveled at the beauty and wealth inside.

“I am Mrs. Tawil,” she told the Mexican lady.

“Es la casa del familia Dwek,” the Mexican woman said.

Mrs. Stein waltzed around the kitchen in a gleeful daze.

“Estoy llamando a la policía!”

Mrs. Stein ignored her, climbed the stairs and entered the lavish bedroom. She undressed and lay down on the bed under the blankets. Any minute Mr. Tawil will be home. He will be home to lie in bed with her. He will buy her a new Mercedes. The fumes of her burning car billowed into the bedroom. In the distance the fire engines blared. The fat Mexican lady yelled in Spanish. Mr. Tawil will be home any minute.