A Wonderful Goodbye

credit: Biggaboss

He has not spoken to his wife in four days. This is tolerable. After 38 years of her mounting nervous energy, a little peace and quiet is not unpleasant.

They are driving through the empty streets of Forestfield. The dark car is filled with the heavy odor of her perfume.

Rabbi Yaakov Kaplan would like his wife to say something now, some useless worry or inane aside. He would like her to acknowledge that tonight she has to be pleasant. Her silence is so uncharacteristic, he’s almost worried she won’t behave.

“Don’t hit the policeman,” he mutters to himself, as a cop car brakes sharply in front of them. She waits until he’s released the brake, after the policeman has moved forward a block, before she does speak.

“Did I tell you? Adina called, she’s coming?”

He nods his head, acknowledging her voice, her acquiescence to the demands of the evening.

Adina, Yaakov thinks, as he turns his banged up 92 Chevy Beretta into the JCC garage. The thought of her makes his jaw tense up and his heart jump a little. Anger and hope. They are always together when he thinks of her, which is why he’d rather not think of her. Anger is a beast Yaakov learned to best many years ago. He does not tolerate its reappearance. He is a disciple of the great rabbis of pre-war Europe, his education received through their holy books and teachings. In the tradition of the great Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, his life’s work has been the examination of character, the conquering of internal evils. That and paying the bills for eleven children in yeshivas and penniless marriages.

Yitty has driven in from Lakewood, and Elisha, and their youngest child, Rivka, who still lives with them, is also there. Victoria, Yaakov calls her in his mind, her English name. He has always treasured his small stabs of independence. They all call her Rivky anyhow. Rivky. He hates that nickname. Every Rivky he’s ever known has been fat.

“Hi,” this is Yitty’s greeting, with a solemn nod, not unlike his own. Her shaitel is silky and straight, and she’s wearing a black suit that makes her look like she’s sitting shiva. This is the style nowadays, for women. All black. She moves to his wife’s side and they walk off into the crowd of congregants and community leaders. Yitty seems so much taller than his wife. She walks with her back stiff and straight, and she’s still slim.

Yitty is also angry at him. They are all angry at him, all of these children, with their deep, insolent brown eyes so much like – but there is the anger. He will not think of those eyes, of the woman from long ago that they remind him of. He will not be angry. He slides his hand under his suit jacket and hitches his belt over his belly.

“Rabbi, Rabbi,” Mrs. Plotstein trills, rushing up to him, clasping her veined hands to her chest. “How is Forestfield going to survive without you? Isn’t this sad? Isn’t this a lovely goodbye?” She gestures to the tables of wine and desserts, the crowds. He needs to urinate. The urge descends upon him with the unrelenting frequency of old age. He tenses his groin, gives Mrs. Plotstein his gentlest smile and asks after her ailing mother.

“Isn’t this a wonderful goodbye?” she asks her husband, an alcoholic poorly disguised as a lawyer who has ambled over with a glass of wine clutched in his hand. Mr. Plotstein nods his doughy face in mild agreement. He isn’t interested. His wife started covering her hair with a beret after two years of Yaakov’s chumash classes, and he’s never forgiven the Rabbi. The Jews of Forestfield have so little appreciation for the gains Yaakov has made, the successes for God.

Are they even successes?

Dr. Stein rushes over to Yaakov, grabbing his hand for a vigorous shake, his eyes wet with emotion as he stumbles over the Hebrew words, “Yasha co-ak, yasha co-ak”.

Did he really do everything he could have done? He wonders. So many failures. The joint Bais Din. The Goldschmidt affair. The shule addition. The board disintegration in 1984 and 2002. So many failures, but finally, he is extricating himself, he is saying goodbye. A wonderful goodbye, he has been assured by Mrs. Plotstein.

A wonderful goodbye. Do you know what would be a wonderful goodbye, he thinks, as he finally gets to release his bladder. Kill them all! He allows himself to mutter that, in his best mock-diabolical voice – kill them all! He is in the stall. The men lined up side by side at the wall don’t hear him. A rabbi needs the dignity of a stall for urination. Although, he considers, as he flushes with a piece of toilet paper wrapped around his hand, even if he hadn’t been trapped in this thankless, parasitical career, he would never be comfortable at a urinal. He washes his hands and carefully places his crumpled paper towel in the garbage, noting with disdain the trash on the floor. Some people have no respect.

The hallway is empty and he relishes the silence before he has to plunge back into the crowd with his smile pasted on. If only he could leave without having to say another word to these people who have ignored too many of his words for so many years.

And then there she is. His oasis. In a peasant skirt and a violently pink sweater, her short hair brushed in one direction so it floats off her head to the right, her earrings, large sculls, dangling to her shoulders.

“Rebbe!” she shrieks. She’s a shrieker. And she calls him Rebbe. Congregants have called him Rabbi Kaplan to his face, using the delightful third person due to a Rabbi, which he has, as a representative of God, appreciated on His behalf. He has even been called Rebbe before. Joe Stinger, the big black truckdriver he converted eleven years ago, used to call him that, and the shule treasurer calls him that as well. But no other woman. And no one uses that title of respect and devotion with quite as much exuberance as Meredith.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks her.

She rolls her eyes.

“This crap? Shii– excuse me, Rebbe,” with that twinkle at the corner of her mouth. “Shoot! Gimme a coupla beers and I’ll leave the–” she waves with her hand at the ballroom behind them. “I’ll leave all of that. What do you think of the hoi polloi?”

“They should all be clobbered,” he mutters. She laughs. She is not afraid of a little violence. She is not afraid of the firm unbending nature of reality. He has always thought that her rough, tough nature is what drew her to religion initially. Sick of the weakness of modern society, she hungered for the unapologetics that are only offered in army bootcamps and Orthodox Judaism.

Walking with Meredith back to the crowd, back to the party they tell him is in honor of his retirement as rabbi of the largest synagogue in Forestfield, Conneticut, he feels a little lighter. Meredith is a bouncing sunbeam. Just standing beside her warms him a little, gives him a little hope, a little room to breathe.

“I’ll catch you later, Rebbe,” she says, as a gaggle of neighborhood rabbis catch sight of him and stream in his direction. When she bounds off, it takes a little more energy to keep his shoulders squared, his stance as strong and straight as he always ensures it is.

He exchanges pleasantries, accepts accolades, shakes the hands of the petty men who arrogantly believe they have some understanding of God’s will, who have stymied his efforts these past few decades. They are trying, he reminds himself. We are all trying to do God’s will.

Adina is across the room. He sees her as he wades forward into more handshakes, more tearful appreciations and goodbyes. She has appeared, as she always does, in the same way she disappears, instantly and completely. She looks pretty. Her hair is long and straight. She is dressed modestly, but her arm is intertwined with her husband’s. She rests her head on his shoulder for a moment as they chat with someone. Always, always she must make some rebellious statement. It is so insecure, these public displays of affection. So vulgar. It is impossible for that girl to get beyond herself. She is incapable of respecting others. She must always remind him that she is untrustworthy.

A moment later she is at his side, alone. Those eyes. When she was younger, Yaakov loved those eyes, so grateful, so hungry to please. Now, they have grown a layer of malice. They are like the eyes of the other one, the one he won’t think about.

“Hi.” Her smile wavers a little at the edge.

“Thank you for coming,” he bows formally from the waist.

“Sure, it’s good to come back. I haven’t been here in so long.”

“Have you had something to eat?” He is stiff with her, always. The hope won’t release his heart. Hope. As if hope could turn a brash woman of 27 into a girl of 8.

What can he say to her? A man of words, yet he is hesitant with her.

“How was your drive in from New York?” he asks.

“It was good. Mike drove most of the way. I don’t really drive.”

He catches a flash of light in the corner of his eye.

“Oh, there’s someone I want you to meet,” he tells her, relieved he can pull some brightness, some release in the conversation. “A friend of mine, she’s a real character. She has a mouth like a sailor. A real individual, not the kind of person you come across nowadays. Meredith!”

Meredith whirls around and approaches, eager.

“I’d like you to meet each other,” he turns from Meredith’s affectionate eyes to Adina’s cool stare, caught between the two women, he is struck with a vision of Bayoo, like a visual blow.

Bayoo, whom he hadn’t thought of for thirty years, whom he only remembers now in brief, painful moments around Adina.
How did his obedient little girl come to resemble Bayoo?

His younger sister was a net of bristling resentment from the moment she was born. When she left the family forever to marry her non-Jewish boyfriend in an explosion of 60’s “liberation” insanity, it was no surprise. But Adina, growing from a delightful, pious child into a messy secular woman — that had been a shock. His eyes swim in the past as he gestures to the woman on his left, “This is my daughter-–” He is pointing in the wrong direction. He must pull himself together. “Excuse me, this,” he turns his hand back to Adina, “is Adina, my daughter, Meredith, this is Meredith, a friend of mine.” He is old, weak, overwhelmed. He lets himself get pulled away by the chairman of the board, bowing, excusing himself.

This is what it amounts too, he thinks, as he settles into bed later that night, his heavy bones sinking into the mattress, the sharp coils under the sheets pressing into his flesh. 34 years of ceaseless service to the community. Crying child after crying child at home, with expense after expense. It all adds up to nothing. Was that paltry dinner supposed to be some reflection of the decades of hard labor he put in for the Jews of Forestfield? Half-thawed garlic chicken and two and a half potatoes as thanks for the hundreds of late night visits to some congregant’s side, in death or sickness?

His wife does not call good night to him from her bed. She isn’t talking to him again, now that they are home, away from the stage where they must perform as Rabbi and Rebbetzin. Eventually she will forgive him. She can’t stay angry forever. She resents that Yaakov accepted a job in Spokane, Washington, after 34 years in the wilderness of Forestfield, Conneticut. She had hoped that they’d move to Flatbush or Lakewood, to be with the children and the grandchildren. But what does she understand of earning a paycheck? What does she know of supporting their old age, which is swallowing them whole, piece by piece, with bills that rise in direct proportion to their inability to pay them? She and their children who have sided with her don’t understand. All of his life he has been a slave to his job, forced to stay to pay the bills. Finally, he has a moment of freedom — the last thing he wants is a crowded shteibel in some Flatbush garage, where again, he would be under pressure, where again, he’d be unappreciated.

He releases a groan, a low sound that melts into the night. His wife has had her freedom her whole life, spending her days baking cookies and cakes, raising babies. She has never stared down a corrupt butcher. She has never confronted a furious board of directors. She has never guided a depressed divorcee away from the brink of sin and despair. Nothing, he mutters into the pillow. That woman understands nothing.