The Day the Rabbi Resigned (4 page)

But they did not see her at Christmas. Word came that she was in the infirmary with a touch of pneumonia, and it was thought best not to move her. They thought they ought to go up to see her, but by the time they found a convenient day, she had called to say that she was out of the infirmary and was up and around. She came home for the April vacation, however.

Margaret felt closer to her aunt than she did to her uncle because she was a woman and she saw more of her. It was her aunt who went into Boston with her and got her outfitted for the coming school year. So it was in her aunt that she confided, and left it to her to tell her uncle.

“She says she has a vocation and wants to enter a convent.”

“You mean after she graduates?”

“No, right now. She doesn't want to continue at school.”

“That's ridiculous. We can't have her doing anything like that. It means turning away from the world before she's ever experienced it. Maybe we made a mistake in sending her to a women's college. We should have had her go to a coed college where she'd have had a chance to meet boys. I'll get her to transfer to Windermere. If there's any problem of credits, I ought to be able to fix it.”

“But if she feels she has a vocation, Cyrus—”

“Well, if it's a real vocation, it'll keep for a couple of years. Lots of girls think they have a vocation when they just want to get away from their folks, or a love affair has gone sour, or maybe she just doesn't have any friends at her school. I guess it was a mistake to send her there. She ought to meet some boys. That's what she ought to be thinking of—boys and dates and parties and getting married—”

“Getting married? At her age?”

“Sure. Why not? She's nineteen and will be twenty soon. It's a good age to marry. That's been the trouble with us Mertons. We've always married late, and that's why there were so few of us. Maybe in the old country we had to wait because we just couldn't support a wife and family until we were pretty well along in years, and then there was no push behind it. Like me and like you. I got caught up in my real estate business and you in your civil service job. But she's not involved in anything, not in any profession, or even in her studies. She's got nothing to do except mope around. She should be married and have kids, lots of kids. She's the last of the Mertons. If she goes into a convent, it means the end of us, the end of the line. The Merton genes or chromosomes or whatever they are will end. It's a terrible thought. And this estate I've built up, what happens to that after we're gone?”

“But let's face it, Cyrus. She's pretty plain.”

“So what? Plenty of plain girls get married. If they didn't, where would the plain kids come from? She's a good girl, a sensible girl, and will make someone a good wife. So she's plain. So what? She has expectations. She'll inherit from us, and there's enough to make her beautiful in plenty of men's eyes. Dammit, I'll get her a husband, I've got contacts at the college and through my business. I could have her married off within the year.”

5

Weekdays, the morning service at the temple began at half past seven—providing, of course, the necessary ten showed up, which was by no means certain in bad weather. On Sundays, however, the service began at nine, and there was never any trouble getting the ten needed for a minyan, for classes in the Religious School began at that hour. Fathers brought their children and then could be prevailed upon to come to the minyan since they had to wait until classes were over anyway to drive them home.

The weekly meeting of the Board of Directors of the temple was held at ten o'clock. The room set aside for their meeting was in the vestry in the basement of the temple, as was, indeed; the Religious School and the small chapel where the morning prayers were said. The members drifted in after the prayer service, those who had attended, and sat around talking, arguing, shmoosing as they were joined by those who came straight from home.

At ten o'clock the president, Al Bergson, rapped sharply on the table with his knuckles. He had a gavel, but he rarely used it. He liked to keep the meetings informal. “This meeting will now come to order,” he announced.

“Ron Berlin said he'd be along a little late this morning,” said Aaron Schneider.

“So he'll be along,” said Bergson. “We have a quorum and I'm calling the meeting to order right now. If we waited for everyone who said they'd be here to show up, there'd be no time to transact business. The secretary will now read his report of the previous meeting.”

The secretary, Bill Leftow, dutifully rose and read, “The meeting was called at 10:05.… House Committee reported on measures required to repair leak in roof … Discussion on whether new roof needed … Ritual Committee … Entertainment Committee … Discussion during Old Business … Motion to set up committee to investigate costs … Norman Rath appointed a Committee of One to report by April fifteenth … Meeting adjourned 11:47. Respectfully submitted …”

“Discussion on the Secretary's Report? If not—”

“Seems to me, someone made a motion on starting a lecture series.”

“That was in Good and Welfare.”

“No, I'm sure someone made a motion.”

“Yes, Arthur Edelweiss made a motion that we start a lecture series, but it was two weeks ago,” said the secretary. “You weren't here. Last week he mentioned it in Good and Welfare.”

“Well, I think we ought to discuss it.”

“It was discussed two weeks ago.” The secretary leafed through his book. “And it was put to a vote and was defeated seventeen to three.”

“Well, I think we ought to discuss it some more.”

“You can move for reconsideration, or make another motion.”

“Just a second. I don't think anyone can move for reconsideration two weeks after a motion is defeated, and I think it has to be made by someone who was on the winning side, that is, one who voted to defeat.”

“All right, so he can make another motion.”

“Not in Old Business, he can't.”

“So, he'll make it in New Business.”

It was almost noon when the meeting ended. Since the day was mild, the rabbi had walked to the temple, and now refused all offers of a lift home. Bergson, the president, lived only a couple blocks beyond the rabbi, and he, too, had chosen to walk.

As they walked along together, Bergson said, “Do you ever wonder, David, why you bother to attend the board meetings every week?”

“I attend because at the beginning of the year you invited me to attend.”

“You mean, because having been invited, it would be ungracious not to.”

“No … not really. Not just for that.”

“But you must be bored out of your mind, as I am most of the time. Why do we have them every week? We don't transact any business to speak of most of the time, maybe once every five or six meetings. Why don't we hold them once a month, instead of weekly?”

“I suppose,” said the rabbi thoughtfully, “it's because it gives us, some of us, a chance to get together and … and just be with each other. You see, it's not like living in a big city where there are apartment houses and there are clusters of Jews living near each other and seeing each other regularly. Here, in Barnard's Crossing, there are only one-family houses and we Jews are scattered all over the town. Sure, we see each other at parties like yours the other night, but then they're all people who know each other and are of the same general class. It's different from living in the Jewish section of a large city where you are aware that all your neighbors, all the people walking along the street are Jewish. They may disagree with you on politics, on—on morals and ethics, on all sorts of things, but on certain things—like the safety of Israel, like their pride in a Jew who has done something meritorious like win a Nobel prize, or the unease when one of us is guilty of some crime that is splashed all over the newspapers; you know they feel as you do.”

“But all the talk—”

“Oh, that's only the human way of maintaining contact. Apes and monkeys do it by touching and grooming each other, we do it by talking—of the weather, of politics, of baseball, of almost anything. All that business at the meeting this morning, the arguing whether something should be brought up in Old Business or New Business, the very subjects: should we set up a lecture series? a book fair? a summer camp? That's all just human grooming.”

“And is that why you attend the meetings regularly, David?”

The rabbi grinned. “Certainly not for the business that's transacted.”

6

Assistant Professor Victor Joyce, a tall, handsome Irishman with light blue eyes at curious variance with his mop of jet-black hair and the bluish jowls he showed even after the closest shave, was one of the two candidates for the one tenured position vacant in the English Department of Windermere Christian College. The other candidate, Assistant Professor Mordecai Jacobs, was presumed to have the edge because he was from Harvard and his field was Linguistics, which was considered more scholarly than Modern Literature, in which Joyce had taken his degree; and most of all because he had published in the prestigious JML,
Journal of Modern Languages.

But just how one secured tenure was something of a mystery and differed from department to department. According to the scuttlebutt in the faculty lounge, it was wise in any case to make contact with the chairman of the Committee on Faculty of the Board of Trustees.

“Who is it?”

“A guy named Merton, Cyrus Merton.”

“What do I do? Call and make an appointment? Go to his house?”

“Nah. He's sort of retired, so he hangs around here a lot, usually in Prex's office, in the outer office talking to the secretary while waiting to see Prex.”

“So what do I do? Go up to him and introduce myself?”

“You don't have to. If you go to Prex's office, and you see this little guy, around sixty, with rimless eyeglasses sitting there, that will be Cyrus Merton. You sit there, and unless the secretary sends you in to Prex right away, he'll begin talking to you. Then you tell him you wanted to see Prex about your chances of getting tenure, and that'll do it.”

So in the next few days, whenever he had a free period, Joyce made a point of looking in the president's office. Finally, one Friday afternoon, he saw the little guy, around sixty, with rimless eyeglasses. And that's how Victor Joyce got to meet Cyrus Merton. He didn't get to see the president that day, and neither did Cyrus Merton. In fact, within minutes after Joyce mentioned that he had got his doctorate from Boston College, a Catholic college, and that he had written his dissertation on Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theatre, Merton said, “Look, I happened to be in town for the day, and I thought President Macomber might care to go out for a beer, but it looks as though he's going to be tied up for a while. Do you drink beer? You don't have a class now, do you?”

Over beer—and Merton encouraged Joyce to have several—the younger man told of his problems getting a job and his fears that he might not get tenure at Windermere, “because my degree is from B.C. and they think because it's a Catholic college, their standards are not as high as those of Harvard, or Tufts, or B.U. But let me tell you, the guy who supervised my dissertation at B.C., a Jesuit, was as good a scholar as anybody they've got at Harvard, and …”

And Merton talked about how he had got started, about his present situation and his real estate holdings, about his sister who ran his household, and about his niece, the only Merton left besides him and his sister. “She's a very spiritual girl.” From which Joyce immediately deduced that she was plain. “In fact, she wanted to become a nun.”

“I thought of taking orders myself,” said Joyce, and then with a smile that just avoided becoming a leer, “but I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the vow of celibacy.”

“I'm sure your wife is happy about that,” said Merton.

“Oh, I'm not married,” said Joyce, and added, “Can't even think of it without tenure.”

“Maybe something can be done about that,” said Merton, his eyes twinkling roguishly behind his rimless glasses.

Their meeting lasted a couple of hours and ended with an invitation from Merton to Sunday dinner. “Or better yet, come out tomorrow afternoon, and I'll show you around the town. You don't know Barnard's Crossing, do you? Lovely old colonial town. Stay the night, and you can join us Sunday morning for Mass and dinner afterward.”

When Joyce climbed up to his fourth-floor room in the brownstone house on Commonwealth Avenue, he was quite drunk, not from the beer he had consumed, but with the prospects that he saw opening up before him. Later, he went out to a local restaurant for a meager dinner; and then, to celebrate, he went to a single's bar where he let himself be picked up by a woman a good ten years his senior and to be taken back to her flat to spend the night. She was short and plump and cuddly, with a mop of blond curls. Her name was Marcia Skinner, and she said she was a buyer for Consolidated Stores. When she thought he appeared doubtful, she gave him her card, which did indeed say, Consolidated Stores, Marcia Skinner, Buyer of Junior Sportswear, and her office telephone number. She was not displeased when she saw him copying down the number of the telephone in the apartment.

Although she had hoped to keep him with her for the weekend, he managed to extricate himself a little before noon, pleading an important engagement. He hurried home, where he showered and shaved, going over his face twice, followed by after-shave lotion and then patting on talcum powder to reduce the blueness of his jowls. Then, in accordance with the instructions he had received from Merton, he took a train to Swampscott and from there a cab to the Point of Barnard's Crossing. As they drove along the Point, Joyce could see that the houses were large and commodious and suggested money, lots of money. All had large well-kept lawns with patches of carefully tended shrubbery. The Merton house was no exception. It was a two-story frame house with a broad veranda on the side facing the ocean.