The Sacrifice of Tamar (26 page)

“So, listen to this. A few days later I get up and he sort of sits up in bed and tells me this: ‘In the hall closet are some presents. Take one every time you’re not feeling appreciated.’ ”

“Lord!” Jenny laughed, covering her face with both hands.

“I love it!” Tamar said, forgetting herself, letting a giggle escape.

“Okay, stop laughing now. Yes, it’s true. You know where
that’s from, that thickheadedness? It’s yeshiva-itis. A common disease. They learn the Law, all the exact dry legalities. Do this, do that. It’s all abstract. They forget that what they’re doing has some basis in the real world, that they’re doing it because it’s just or kind. And if there isn’t an exact law which tells them exactly what to do, then they’re lost.

“So this is what happened. The day he said that to me, something snapped. I just started to laugh. I laughed so hard, I thought I would throw up and pee in my pants. I just couldn’t stop! And every time I looked up and saw him standing there in his neat little pajamas and neat little beard and this creased forehead, saying with that Yiddish-accented Oxford English, ‘You’re being very rude. Really, very rude, Hadassah,’ I cracked up again and got hysterical. It was just so…
ridiculous!

“Finally, I just walked out. I didn’t even call the school to say I wouldn’t be in or I was sick or something. Didn’t bother. I just took the train into Manhattan and spent the morning in the Metropolitan Museum. I sort of wandered back to the Gauguins and spent some time with them. And then I started taking buses, asking for transfers. I wound up on Madison Avenue and kept walking, down to Park and then onto Fifth, crossing over to Central Park. It was late April, an early spring day that started out like winter and warmed up fast. All my clothes suddenly felt so heavy. I remember reaching down and pulling up my sweater over my head, and I remember having this funny feeling, like ‘Is anybody watching me? I’m embarrassed to be undressing’ and at the same time ‘Is anybody watching me? I hope he thinks I’m beautiful.’

“I got on the bus, and there were these two men in front of me. One had neatly combed graying hair and a very cultured voice, and he was speaking in these very sincere low tones, saying something like ‘My daughter is producing it, it’s her production.’ He was talking to the guy next to him, who was dressed in an
old blue raincoat with a frazzled ski cap on his head. A ski cap! It was seventy degrees outside and he was wearing a ski cap! And I kept thinking, Why would a man in a nice suit who has a daughter who’s a producer be talking to someone wearing a ski cap on a Fifth Avenue bus? And I tried to imagine all kinds of scenarios, like some kind of rare medical condition for the ski cap guy. And then I thought: He’s probably some rich powerful eccentric, like the publisher of
Time
magazine or the owner of the Waldorf or something. And I thought: This is New York City. You can do any damn thing you want here. Anything! Even wear a ski cap in the heat!

“And that’s when I decided to do it. To go all the way.

“I went to the Plaza Hotel and checked in with my American Express card. I ordered up room service and had this tall glass of orange juice—I was still being very careful not to touch anything that wasn’t kosher—and I put on the TV. It was the week Martin Luther King was assassinated, and there were pictures of the riots. There was an advertisement for the musical
Hair
and another one for
2001: A Space Odyssey
. I thought about buying tickets for both, and then I sort of decided I’d better call my parents. I was talking to them, telling them I wanted a divorce and my own apartment, and to enroll in New York University, and they were talking back, not really hysterical, but firm, you know, tough. And I kept looking out the window, thinking about the play and the movie and the ski cap guy and how I could do anything I wanted, and I finally said, ‘I’m hanging up. I’m fine. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll talk more.’ ”

“How long were you there?” Jenny asked.

“About a week. I wouldn’t tell them where I was. I had a great time in the city. I saw
Hair
and sang ‘Age of Aquarius’ everywhere I went. I remember looking at the tulips in front of the Plaza, all those little red and yellow caps, lined up like little soldiers, already in overbloom and beginning to fade. That sort
of scared me, because you always think about the bloom but never about the overbloom, the time when it’s all over, and how fast that happens. And I knew I was in bloom. I was pretty gorgeous. I got bumped into and smiled at and asked the time fifty times a day by all these purple-jowled businessmen in the Plaza. It made me laugh. I’d just flash my wedding ring at them and they’d go away quietly.

“At the end of the week, I called my parents again and they told me Yehoshua had canceled all my credit cards. They said they wouldn’t help me with anything, and if I didn’t want to wind up in jail for not paying my bills, I better come home.”

“I can’t believe your parents would threaten you like that!” Jenny said, horrified.

Hadassah shrugged. “Believe it. Luckily, I still had some money in this engagement account that was in my name. I took out a bunch and paid the hotel bill in cash. Then I called my parents and told them if they wouldn’t help me, I’d do it on my own.

“The first thing I did was check out of the Plaza and go down to Abraham and Straus’s employment office. They offered me a job on the spot as a saleswoman in some teen boutique. I guess they liked the way I looked. Without help, there was no way I could afford NYU tuition or Manhattan rents, so that same day I found out about Brooklyn College’s summer program. It was just before open admissions turned the place into a zoo. The campus was still green and fairly well kept. After that, I just wandered around looking for signs in windows that said
FOR RENT
. I saw one on Ocean Avenue. In fact, I actually saw the super hanging the sign out. It was a studio—one big room, a tiny kitchen behind louver doors and a bathroom with a dressing alcove. The building even had a doorman, a Jewish guy who worked as a cantor on the weekends.

“Of course the super said he had a long list of people
interested, but I smiled and kind of… well… you know, was very nice about it and told him I’d be living there alone…

“He rented it to me and even helped me buy some furniture very cheap from some of the other neighbors who were redecorating. I guess they liked the way I looked, too.

“I worked at A and S during the day, and when summer session started, I went to classes in the evening. Music 101, History of Art 101, English 101—all the 101’s. Brooklyn College was perfect. It even had a Student Union Building—SUBO to the natives—with a cafeteria full of Glatt kosher dispensing machines. Kosher corned beef on rye. Kosher hot dogs, knishes.

“I wasn’t in touch with my parents at all. And then I started seeing these Hasidim popping up everywhere. At first I thought it was my imagination. But there is nothing more conspicuous than a Hasid in a teen boutique. They don’t exactly fade into the woodwork. One even knocked on my door and told me to call my father. I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d call the cops.

“And then one day, I was sitting in SUBO peacefully eating my Glatt kosher something, when this woman sits down next to me. Very Orchard Park. Stiffly sprayed wig, seamed stockings, expensive designer suit… the one who tells all the little kids to shut up in shul during the service. Well, she starts in on me! ‘A religious girl, such an important family. Your parents are ill, such disgrace, such shame, your poor heartbroken husband…’

“Well, girls, that was, as they say, the very last pickle in the barrel. Which reminds me of this saying: Life is like a pickle—you start out fresh and green and end up wrinkled and sour. Anyway, that was it. I realized a little brainpower was called for here, a little cold-blooded strategy.

“So I called my parents. My mother cried. My father spoke very softly and painfully and seriously—I’d never heard him speak like that before. He asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted a divorce, a property settlement.

“Divorce!!
Oy-oy-oy!
That word, that word! Don’t even say the word! The
shandah
, the disgrace, the…

“Welllll, what can I tellya? There were a few more phone calls, another visit from the seamed-stocking emissary. Finally, we came to an understanding. I’d come back home and my father would get rid of Yehoshua—that is, he’d get me a
get
. He’d arrange for a generous settlement and monthly alimony.

“So I went back home.

“Who said you can’t go home again? That sloppy fat Southerner, right? Tom something with the messy, brilliant, rambling thousand-page books? He was right, old Tom. It was like being slowly sautéed. The stares. The averted eyes. Old friends crossing the street. Remember that, Tamar?”

“I’m sorry,” Tamar said in a small voice.

“Now, now, don’t go all red on me. No hard feelings. You were just conforming, doing the acceptable, respectable thing, right?

“Yehoshua went back to whence he had cometh. I’m sure he’s had at least two children by now with some very pious, very short, very accommodating new bride…

“So, my bank account was full. I had my religious divorce and my civil one. I left my parents a short note—basically, Thanks for the help, but you don’t own me—and then I split.

“But this time, I did it smart. No more Brooklyn. It was too easy to find me. I went straight to Manhattan, enrolled in fall session at NYU, and dormed.

“It was the
best!
One big party. This sweetish kind of smoke filled the halls. I think someone even figured out a way to put marijuana on their toothpaste. Every other day there was another demonstration, sit-ins in the dean’s office. What fun! The guys walked around shirtless, with all this long, wavy hair. Tall blonds, very Troy Donahue, except with brains and commitment. Everything was questioned. It was wonderful. No rules, make them up
as you go along. No bras. Bounce and be happy. No dress codes… beads, feathers, microminis in psychedelic pinks and oranges, Indian saris, Nehru jackets, hair going from stick straight to wild curls.

“I loved it. It was everything I was looking for. Complete freedom. Try anything. Think anything. Turn the world upside down and shake it out. No conformance. No convention. Do it. Try it.

“I met this guy. His name was Cliff. He was about six feet four and blond with these fantastic blue eyes. He looked so slim and… well, perfect. All my roommates were into group gropes, you know, communal things, sharing beds, casual onetime flings. Black men were very in. Every black man enrolled in NYU had about fifty girlfriends each.

“I wasn’t into any of that. But Cliff and I would have these long discussions about how religion is just mind control, how it causes wars and hatred, and how the world would be better off if there was no god, but just people believing in each other, helping each other.

“I don’t know if I really bought any of it, it’s really amateurish compared to my father. But it sort of fit into what I wanted to do anyway, so I let myself relax. I ate a crab. No big deal, it tastes just like chicken. I ate sweet-and-sour pork—that was delicious, girls. Perfecto mundo. I tried ham, but the color repulsed me. Cheeseburgers were the best, though, especially if washed down with a large milk shake…”

Tamar gasped.

“Spare us, please,” Jenny murmured.

“I smoked pot, but it just gave me a headache and stuffed up my nose. No… well… to be perfectly honest… it did a little more than that. It sort of loosens you up, you know? Makes you relax.

“And then I discovered sex for fun. Girls, let me tell you,
it’s not the same as the ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ sex I had with Yehoshua the butler. It bears no resemblance. This guy was so gorgeous, just watching him was… Well.”

“Let’s draw the shower curtain at this point, shall we, Hadassah? Friendship has its limits,
n’est-ce pas?
” Jenny shook her head, amused and mildly shocked.

“Please,” Tamar agreed, horrified.

“Okay then… My parents were still trying to find me. Every once in a while you would call, Jenny, and tell me this and that. But you never told them where I was, did you? You could have, easily, and earned yourself two thousand kosher brownie points with my father. But you didn’t. I tip my wigless head to you. It was a gutsy thing to do.”

Jenny nodded back. “It never even occurred to me, Hadassah.”

“Really? I’m surprised and gratified. Where was I? . . . Yes. Cliff. Cliff was tired of school. He said we should start living out all our ideas about love and building a new world. There was this commune he knew about in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He knew some people, who knew some people.”

“And it didn’t bother you at all that he wasn’t Jewish?” Tamar asked, trying not to sound shocked and judgmental. She failed.

“I don’t make separations between people based on race, religion, or national origin,” Hadassah responded a little haughtily, then suddenly smiled. “If the guy is blond and tall, he’s my race and my religion. Besides, it didn’t last very long. Cliff, it turned out, was a jerk who was interested in exploring new worlds as long as the planet he landed on believed in ten girls every night to every guy, ten
different
girls, mind you, and surfing and lying on the beach during the day. I mean, the commune was great for the guys, but for the girls, it was ‘wash, cook, clean up, and get pawed’ city. It was being wify, except without the hubby who
worked all day and protected you from your lecherous neighbors in suburbia. I had some bad… Well, it doesn’t matter now. I learned how to take care of myself.

“But Hawaii was everything I dreamed of. It was that painting at the Met, Gauguin’s
Ia Orana Maria
, come to life. The plants, they are just so big! Lush. It’s all that volcanic ash. Very fertile. The colors, so bright—like some kid with a Crayola box going crazy: oranges, reds, greens, nothing muted or washed out or halfway. And the people, dark, a little Chinese, partly Asian, a touch of Indian here and there. All mixed up and nobody looking twice or giving a damn. I was happy in Hawaii…”