For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories Read online

  “First history,” Zalman said. He slipped off a sandal. “Your mother’s not Jewish?”

  “No, no one. Ever. Not that I know.”

  “This is also possible,” Rabbi Zalman said. “It may be only that your soul was at Sinai. Maybe an Egyptian slave that came along. But once the soul witnessed the miracles at Sinai, accepted there the word, well, it became a Jewish soul. Do you believe in the soul, Mr. Luger?”

  “I’m beginning to.”

  “All I’m saying is that the soul doesn’t live or die. It’s not an organic thing like the body. It is there. And it has a history.”

  “And mine belonged to a Jew?”

  “No, no. That’s exactly the point. Jew, non-Jew, doesn’t matter. The body doesn’t matter. It is the soul itself that is Jewish.”

  They talked for over an hour. Zalman gave him books, The Chosen, A Hedge of Roses, and a copy of The Code of Jewish Law. Charles agreed to cancel his shrink appointment for the next day, and Zalman would come to his office to study with him. There would be payment, of course. A minor fee, expenses, some for charity and ensured good luck. The money was not the important thing, Zalman assured him. The crucial thing was having a guide to help him through his transformation. And who better than Zalman, a man who’d come to the Jewish religion the same way? Miserable in Bolinas, addicted to sorrow and drugs, he was on the brink when he discovered his Jewish soul. “And you never needed a formal conversion?” Charles asked, astounded. “No,” Zalman said. “Such things are for others, for the litigious and stiff minded; such rituals are not needed for those who are called by their souls.”

  “Tell me then,” Charles said. He spoke out of the side of his mouth, feeling confident and chummy. “Where’d you get the shtick from? You look Jewish, you talk Jewish—the authentic article. I turn Jewish and get nothing. You come from Bolinas and sound like you’ve never been out of Brooklyn.”

  “And if I’d discovered I was Italian, I’d play bocci like a pro. Such is my nature, Mr. Luger. I am most open to letting take form that which is truly inside.”

  This was, of course, a matter of personal experience. Zalman’s own. Charles’s would inevitably be different. Unique. If it was slower—the change—then let it be so. After all, Zalman counseled, the laws were not to be devoured like bonbons but to be embraced as he was ready. Hadn’t it taken him fifty-five years to learn he was Jewish? Yes, everything in good time.

  “Except,” Zalman said, standing up. “You must tell your wife first thing. Kosher can wait. Tefillin can wait. But there is one thing the tender soul can’t bear—the sacrifice of Jewish pride.”

  Sue had a root canal after work. She came home late, carrying a pint of ice cream. Charles had already set the table and served dinner on the off chance she might be able to eat.

  “How was it?” he asked, lighting a candle, pouring the wine.

  He did not tease her, did not say a word about her slurred speech or sagging face. He pretended it was a permanent injury, that it was nerve damage, acted as if it were a business dinner and Sue were a client with a crippled lip.

  Sue approached the table and lifted the bottle. “Well you’re not leaving me, I can tell that much. You’d never have opened your precious Haut-Brion to tell me you were running off to Greece with your secretary.”

  “True,” he said. “I’d have saved it to drink on our veranda in Mykonos.”

  “Glad to see,” she said, standing on her toes and planting a wet and pitifully slack kiss on his cheek, “that the fantasy has already gotten that far.”

  “The wine’s actually a feeble attempt at topic broaching.”

  Sue pried the top off her ice cream and placed the carton in the center of her plate. They both sat down.

  “Do tell,” she said.

  “I’m Jewish.” That easy. It was not, after all, the first time.

  “Is there a punch line?” she asked. “Or am I supposed to supply that?”

  He said nothing.

  “OK. Let’s try it again. I’ll play along. Go, give me your line.”

  “In the cab yesterday. I just knew. I understood, felt it for real. And—” He looked at her face, contorted, dead with anesthesia. A surreal expression to receive in return for surreal news. “And it hasn’t caused me any grief. Except for my fear of telling you. Otherwise, I actually feel sort of good about it. Different. But like things, big things, are finally right.”

  “Let’s get something out of the way first.” She made a face, a horrible face. Charles thought maybe she was trying to bite her lip—or scowl. “OK?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What you’re really trying to tell me is: Honey, I’m having a nervous breakdown and this is the best way to tell you. Correct?” She plunged a teaspoon into the ice cream and came up with a massive spoonful. “If it’s not a nervous breakdown, I want to know if you feel like you’re clinically insane.”

  “I didn’t expect this to go smoothly,” Charles said.

  “You pretend that you knew I’d react badly.” Sue spoke quickly and (Charles tried not to notice) drooled. “Really though, with your tireless optimism, you thought I would smile and tell you to be Jewish. That’s what you thought, Charles.” She jammed her spoon back into the carton, left it buried. “Let me tell you, this time you were way off. Wrong in your heart and right in your head. It couldn’t have gone smoothly. Do you know why? Do you know?”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because what you’re telling me, out of the blue, out of nowhere, because what you’re telling me is, inherently, crazy.”

  Charles nodded repeatedly, as if a bitter truth were confirmed.

  “He said you would say that.”

  “Who said, Charles?”

  “The rabbi.”

  “You’ve started with rabbis?” She pressed at her sleeping lip.

  “Of course, rabbis. Who else gives advice to a Jew?”

  Charles read the books at work the next day and filled a legal pad with notes. When the secretary buzzed with Dr. Birnbaum on the line inquiring about the sudden cancelation, Charles, for the first time since he’d begun his treatment fifteen thousand dollars before, did not take the doctor’s call. He didn’t take any, absorbed in reading A Hedge of Roses, the definitive guide to a healthy marriage through ritual purity, and waiting for Rabbi Zalman.

  When Charles heard Zalman outside his office, he buzzed his secretary. This was a first, as well. Charles never buzzed the secretary until she had buzzed him first. There was a protocol for entry to his office. It’s good for a visitor to hear buzz and counterbuzz. It sets a tone.

  “So,” Zalman said, seating himself. “Did you tell her?”

  Charles placed his fountain pen back in its holder. He straightened the base with two hands. “She sort of half believes me. Enough to worry. Not enough to tear my head off. But she knows I’m not kidding. And she does think I’m crazy.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “Content.” Charles leaned back in his swivel chair, his arms dangling over the sides. “Jewish and content. Excited. Still excited. The whole thing’s ludicrous. I was one thing and now I’m another. But neither holds any real meaning. It’s only that when I discovered I was Jewish, I think I also discovered God.”

  “Like Abraham,” Zalman said, with a worshipful look at the ceiling. “Now its time to smash some idols.” He pulled out a serious-looking book, leather bound and gold embossed. A book full of secrets, Charles was sure. They studied until Charles told Zalman he had to get back to work. “No fifty-minute hour here,” Zalman said, taking a swipe at the psychologist. They agreed to meet daily and shook hands twice before Zalman left.

  He wasn’t gone long enough to have reached the elevators when Walter, the CEO, barged into Charles’s office, stopping immediately inside the door.

  “Who’s the fiddler on the roof?” Walter said.

  “Broker.”

  “Of what?” Walter tapped his wedding band against the nameplate on the door.r />
  “Commodities,” Charles said. “Metals.”

  “Metals.” Another tap of the ring. A knowing wink.“Promise me something, Charley. This guy tries to sell you the steel out of the Brooklyn Bridge, at least bargain with the man.”

  There had been a few nights of relative quiet and a string of dinners with nonconfrontational foods. Among them: a risotto and then a blackened trout, a spaghetti squash with an eye-watering vegetable marinara, and—in response to a craving of Sue’s—a red snapper with tomato and those little bits of caramelized garlic the maid did so well.

  Sue had, for all intents and purposes, ignored Charles’s admission and, mostly, ignored Charles. Charles spent his time in the study reading the books Zalman had brought him.

  This was how the couple functioned until the day the maid left a pot of beef bourguignon.

  “The meat isn’t kosher and neither is the wine,” Charles said, referring to the wine both in and out of his dinner. “There’s a pound of bacon fat in this. I’m not complaining, only letting you know. Really. Bread will do me fine.” He reached over and took a few slices from the basket, refilled his wineglass with water.

  Sue glared at him.

  “You’re not complaining?”

  “No,” he said, and reached for the butter.

  “Well, I’m complaining! I’m complaining right now!” Sue slammed a fist down so that her glass tipped over, spilling wine onto the tablecloth she loved. They both watched the tablecloth soak up the wine, the lace and the stitching, which fattened and swelled, the color spreading along the workmanship as if through a series of veins. Neither moved.

  “Sue, your tablecloth.”

  “Fuck my tablecloth,” she said.

  “Oh my.” He took a sip of water.

  “Oh my is right. You bet, mister.” She made a noise that Charles considered to be a growl. His wife of twenty-seven years had growled at him.

  “If you think I’ll ever forgive you for starting this when I was crippled with Novocain. Attacking me when I could hardly talk. If you think,” she said, “if you think I’m going to start paying twelve dollars and fifty cents for a roast chicken, you are terribly, terribly wrong.”

  “What is this about chickens?” Charles did not raise his voice.

  “The religious lady at work. She puts in orders on Wednesday. Every week she orders the same goddamn meal. A twelve-dollar-and-fifty-cent roast chicken.” Sue shook her head. “You should have married an airline chef if you wanted kosher meals.”

  “Different fight, Sue. We’re due for a fight, but I think you’re veering toward the wrong one.”

  “Why don’t you tell me then,” she said. “Since all has been revealed to you, why don’t you enlighten me as to the nature of the conflict.”

  “Honestly, I think you’re threatened. So I want you to know. I still love you. You’re still my wife. This should make you happy for me. I’ve found God.”

  “Exactly the problem. You didn’t find our God. I’d have been good about it if you found our God—or even a less demanding one. A deity less queer.” She scanned the table again, as if to find one of his transgressions left out absent-mindedly like house keys. “Today the cheese is gone. You threw out all the cheese, Charles. How could God hate cheese?”

  “A woman who thinks peaches are too suggestive for the fruit bowl could give in on a quirk or two.”

  “You think I don’t notice what’s going on, that I don’t notice you making ablutions in the morning?” Sue dipped her napkin into her water glass. “I’ve been waiting for your midlife crisis. But I expected something I could handle, a small test. An imposition. Something to rise above and prove my love for you in a grand display of resilience. Why couldn’t you have turned into a vegan? Or a liberal Democrat? Slept with your secretary for real.” Sue dabbed at the wine stain. “Any of those and I would’ve made do.”

  Charles scrutinized her.

  “So essentially you’re saying it would be OK if I changed into a West Side Jew. Like if we suddenly lived in the Apthorp.”

  Sue thought about it.

  “Well, if you have to be Jewish, why so Jewish? Why not like the Browns in six-K? Their kid goes to Haverford. Why,” she said, closing her eyes and pressing two fingers to her temple, “why do people who find religion always have to be so goddamn extreme?”

  “Extreme,” Charles felt, was too extreme a word considering all there was to know and all the laws he had yet to implement. He hadn’t been to synagogue. He hadn’t yet observed the Sabbath. He had only changed his diet and said a few prayers.

  For this he’d been driven from his own bedroom.

  Occasionally Sue sought him out, always with impeccable timing. She came into the den the first morning he donned prayer shawl and phylacteries, which even to Charles looked especially strange. The leather box and the strap twirled tightly around his arm, another box planted square in the center of his head. He was in the midst of the Eighteen Benedictions when Sue entered, and was forced to listen to her tirade in silence.

  “My Charley, always topping them all,” she said, watching as he rocked back and forth, his lips moving. “I’ve heard of wolf men and people being possessed. I’ve even seen modern vampires on TV. Real people who drink blood. But this beats all.” She left him and then returned with a mug of coffee in hand.

  “I spoke to Dr. Birnbaum. I was going to call him myself, to see how he was dealing with your change.” She blew on her coffee. “Guess what, Charley. He calls me first. Apologizes for crossing boundaries, then tells me you’ve stopped coming, that you won’t take his calls. Oh, I say, that’s because Charley’s Jewish and is very busy meeting with the rabbi. He’s good, your shrink. Remains calm. And then, completely deadpan, he asks me—as if it makes any difference—what kind of rabbi. I told him what you told me, word for word. The kind from Bolinas. The kind who doesn’t need to be ordained because he’s been a rabbi in his past nine lives. And what, I asked him, does one man, one man himself ten generations a rabbi, what does he need with anyone’s diploma?” Sue put the mug down on a lamp stand.

  “Dr. Birnbaum’s coming to dinner next week. On Monday. I even ordered kosher food, paper plates, the whole deal. You’ll be able to eat in your own house like a human being. An evening free of antagonism where we can discuss this like adults. His idea. He said to order kosher food once first before leaving you. So I placed an order.” She smoothed down her eyebrows, waited for a response. “You can stop your praying, Charles”—she turned to leave—“your chickens are on the way.”

  Charles had no suits left. Shatnez, the mixing of linen and wool, is strictly forbidden. On Zalman’s recommendation, he sent his wardrobe to Royal Hills for testing and was forced to go to work the next day in slacks and suspenders, white shirt, and tie. Walter hadn’t left him alone since he’d arrived. “It ain’t Friday, Charley,” he kept saying. “Casual day is only once a week.” This he interchanged with “Why go to so much trouble? A nicely pressed bathrobe would be fine.”

  Charles had worked himself into a funk by the time Zalman entered his office. He’d accomplished nothing all morning.

  “I am weakening,” Charles said. “The revelation lasts about a second, comes and goes, a hot flash in the back of a taxi. But the headache it leaves you with—a whopper of a headache—that persists.”

  Zalman scratched at his nostril with a pinkie, a sort of refined form of picking. “Were you in a fraternity in college?”

  “Of course,” Charles said.

  “Then consider this pledging. You’ve been tapped, given a bid, and now is the hard part before all the good stuff. Now’s when you buy the letters on the sly and try them on at home in front of the mirror.”

  “Wonderful, Zalman. Well put. But not so simple. I’ve got to tell my boss something soon. And tensions have risen at home. We’re having dinner on Monday. My wife and my shrink versus me. She’s even ordered kosher food, trying to be friendly about it.”

  “Kosher food.” A knee-s
lapper, a big laugh. “The first step. Doesn’t sound anything but positive to me. By any chance, has she gone to the ritual bath yet?”

  Charles spun his chair around, looked out the window, then, slowly, spun it back.

  “Zalman,” he said, “that’s a tough one. And it sort of makes me think you’re not following. Sue refuses to go for a couple of reasons. One because she hates me, and our marriage is falling apart. And two, she maintains—and it’s a valid point, a fairly good argument—that she’s not Jewish.”

  “I see.”

  “I want you to come on Monday, Zalman. A voice of reason will come in handy after the weekend. I’m going to keep my first Shabbos. And if Sue remains true to form, I’m in for a doozy.”

  “Find out where the food is from. If it’s really kosher catered, I’ll be there.”

  The clocks had not changed for the season, and Shabbos still came early. Charles put on his suit jacket—deemed kosher—and his coat and went home without explanation. He didn’t touch the candlesticks on the mantelpiece, didn’t risk raising Sue’s ire. Instead he dug a pair, dented and tarnished, from a low cabinet in the overstuffed and unused butler’s pantry. The maid passed, said nothing. She took her pocketbook and the day’s garbage into the service hall.

  In the absence of wife or daughter, the honor of ushering in the Sabbath falls upon the lone man. Charles cleared a space on the windowsill in the study and, covering his eyes before the lit candles, made the blessing. He paused at the place where the woman is permitted to petition the Lord with wishes and private blessings, and stood, palms cool against his eyes, picturing Sue.

  The candles flickered next to the window, burning lopsided and fast.

  Charles extended the footrest on his recliner. He closed his eyes and thought back to his first night away from home, sleeping on a mattress next to his cousin’s bed. He was four or five, and his cousin, older, slept with the bedroom door shut tight, not even a crack of light from the hallway. It was the closest to this experience, the closest he could remember to losing and gaining a world.