The Watchmaker's Daughter: A Memoir (16 page)

And this Irish boy is somehow familiar and familial to me. Brendan’s hair is black, like mine, his face pale like mine, and his cheeks and lips are flushed with blood. His dorm room is black and red, and he is passion and precision, Jesuitical exactitude and keening violins. Brendan has eyebrows like Jack Nicholson’s and a mouth like a wicked Cupid. He is hot and hostile, languid and passionate. There is no understanding him; he is an almost untamable creature. He is a grown-up Billy, my playground tormentor, the one who shoved dirt into my impossible Hebraic mouth.

Brendan’s desire for me temporarily, fleetingly, alters him, and the game changes me, too. I develop—and have never lost—a love of the lovely failure, a nostalgie de la boue. I think of dying for him, dropping off my Jewish perfection pedestal and into a state of luscious entropy.

He is a classics scholar, a boy from an elite Catholic prep school right across the street from my own East Side Jewish one. At Columbia he reads Greek and Roman, he quotes Ovid and Sophocles. I appreciate his learnedness; yeshiva made me a linguist and a textual analyst, too. He is intricate, a Dionysian Talmudist. We meet at the Metropolitan Museum, among the orange and black urns commemorating eternal strength and beauty. He is a black and orange urn to me, emblem of a timeless passion.

Brendan tells me that he knows he will die young, strong, and beautiful. I am mesmerized. He kisses me after he says this, and I don’t want the kiss to end. I want to keep it alive, I want to keep him alive. The fact that our breaths must part inflames me. Despite my courtesanal façade, he is the first man I actually desire. Now I understand the dark, lustful feelings I have long (and calculatedly) inspired in others. Now there is no calculation; now there is instinct and wildness—all new to me, and soon as necessary as air. Also new to me is the pain that such feelings can cause, a new pain that makes the divide between the sexes seem as unbridgeable (and as necessary for me to bridge) as that between one people and another.

When Brendan is drunk, he talks like a genius, slowly, with slurred but at the same time carefully pronounced words that thrill me (my father has never been drunk, nor has Jacob). His mother punished him harshly throughout his childhood—he is often in a deep, untouchable state of apartness. She often put him in the closet where he sobbed and then was still.

So bring him to me, the big healer.

That is my motto. My heart is a tuning fork to those who have been hurt. The tired, the lonely, the hungry, the poor. Bring them to me, and I will tame these wounded creatures. Journey to my shores, welcome to my tent of love and surrender. Look how they rest their lunatic-lover-poet heads on my breasts. Look how they don’t want to roam anymore, or bite anyone. I am a danger-tamer.

Frighteningly, Brendan wants to see my apartment up in Washington Heights. I suppose in some ways I am as exotic to him as he is to me. I try to talk him out of it, sure that a view of our humble abode of chicken fat and
Fiddler
albums will not add to the turn-on package I have so carefully created. But no.

The deep, sonorous tones of the Westminster chimes within my parents’ apartment, which sound every fifteen minutes, have made a lasting impression on him. Whenever I have gone home for holidays and the occasional Sabbath dinner, I’ve called Brendan, and although I can no longer really hear this deep-voiced clock, although I am inured to its ceaseless accounting of the hours, Brendan has become enchanted by the sounds, particularly when we talk at midnight, which is often when we talk. After the usual, long introduction to the full hour, the Westminster chimes toll heavily, twelve times. Each tone reverberates over and over, overlapping the previous one, lingering to the next. It is a languid, continuous river of time:

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

God, it does take forever when you notice it.

“Brendan?” I say, in the night.

“Shhh ...”

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

“Brendan?”

Bong......................

“What?”

“I don’t think you should come over here.”

“Why? Are your parents that old-fashioned?”

“Yes.”

“Do they hate me because I am a goy?” he says, and I can hear him smile, enjoying the full flavor of this Jewish word, so absurd and “ethnic” to him.

“No, but they would mind if they knew we were together.”

Both my parents have lectured me since childhood about how much I need to restore and perpetuate our ravaged people. They want me to marry a Jewish man and have lots of Jewish children to restore the lost six million. They have told me stories about parents who have refused to attend their children’s weddings to non Jews. The scene in
Fiddler
in which one daughter marries a non-Jew and is banished is not entirely dated. To traditional, war-torn parents, these renegade children are almost as bad as the pogroms or Hitler. The choices they make reduce and destroy the Jewish people. They are, in short, traitors deserving excommunication.

Every time I have heard these moral tales, a part of me has discounted them. I know that with the Orthodox, the mother’s religion determines that of the child. Any child of mine would thus be Jewish, no matter whom I married. By marrying “out,” I could even add an ally to the poor, beleaguered tribe, drawing into its circle an invulnerable man who would be my husband and my children’s father. This is my private survival algorithm: Jew plus non-Jew equals safety. And not just safety in numbers. Real safety. I always imagine a blue-eyed hero, rushing in to turn back the clock and save the lost.

Not that Brendan personifies any kind of practical plan. I’m dipping my toe into the waters of the exogamous, and the waters happen, in this case, to be part of a maelstrom. Now he wants to charge into my world before I’m ready.

“Could I come over when they’re not there?”

“I guess,” I hesitate, thinking of the tiny two-bedroom with the plastic on the couch, and the sofa bed that was my brother’s small domain. Manny is now independent; he is in law school and has his own place, but Brendan knows he exists and will ask, like everyone else, where his room is.

“What is it? You sound sad.”

“Me? No, it’s fine.” I’m also thinking about the knickknacks and doodads from our first trip to Israel and my parents’ subsequent trips there. There are big wooden plaques on the wall, three-dimensional folk carvings of people carrying grape-bunches on their shoulders. There are circular metallic plates, which contain, within them, the Hebrew words:
Chai
(life) and
Bracha
(blessing). There are olivewood coasters and knife sets, prominently displayed in the living room, as though they were treasures instead of ubiquitous tourist kitsch. To my parents, these mementos are priceless; they speak of life and art and industry in the Holy Land. But what will they look like to a classics scholar who frequents not only the Metropolitan Museum but also the Frick?

“No, no, it’s fine,” I say; I never let anyone know how sad or difficult anything is, or how freakish my lot. It’s fine, come right in, I’m perfectly happy taking on the weight of the world as well as normal people’s opinions on that weight and how I take it on.

Will Brendan meet my now totally bald father, with the weird, large-featured face and deep voice, wearing a sleeveless undershirt (the better to reveal his frightening arms and shoulders) and a belted pair of trousers? Will he greet my damp-faced, round-cheeked mother in her housedress, wearing pink kid
shlurkes
on her feet as she spreads the dust around with a lint cloth or boils up some exhausted white chicken?

Despite my misgivings, which of course I can’t express, we agree to come over after classes on a weekday.

So in we walk, just as the clock tolls five. Brendan, slim-hipped and cool in jeans and a black T-shirt, heads straight over to the breakfront, which covers most of one wall in the living room. How could he not? When you enter the apartment, it’s half of what you see. The other half, on the opposite wall, is that plastic-smothered sofa. This day I notice that even the plastic is, if this is possible, worse-looking than ever—it is yellowed and cracking.

Brendan looks surprised by what he sees. He must realize that the stately sounds he has heard for months never emerged from a huge, strong grandfather clock, but from a mantel clock atop a walnut wall unit. It’s something like hearing deafening croaks from the side of a body of water. Sure that you’ve found a proud, frightening, and perhaps primeval life-form, you search for the source of the sound—and it’s only a wee bullfrog, lonely, calling for a mate.

“This
is the clock that makes all the chimes?”

“Yep.”

“You know, the deep tolling sounds—”

“Yep. I know the sounds. This is it.”

This is it. This is me; this is the shit-hole ghetto I temporarily crawled out of. I am the lonely wee bullfrog. Brendan lets his dark blue eyes travel around, surveying my poverty. Standing in that room, he has already taken in a large share of the apartment. There is only a kitchen, a master bedroom, my sliver of a room, and a tiny bathroom with light blue tiles of which I used to be proud.

“Wow. Everything’s so small here.”

“Yep.”

Amid my shame, I feel bad for my mother. She thought our living room was elegant and sophisticated. Look at the bronze-colored, thick, wall-to-wall carpet. Look at the coffee table, shaped like an oval, beveled glass on top of walnut (to match the breakfront). Appreciate the matching lamps, with their frosted globes of deep yellow glass. Each one twists on its own stalk in a very modern way. Look at the drapes, ivory, with green patterns like Greek keys. Like Greek keys, Brendan, you classics major! And even though the sofa is covered with plastic, look at its elegant bone-whiteness, its precious threads of gold. It is only in plastic to protect its fragile beauty. Look at the square pillows, with buttons in their center, like accepting friends. The pillows are gold, too; can’t you see they match everything?

But Brendan’s eyes are fixed on this breakfront. Now I see what he sees. In the very center of the massive wall unit, in the place to which we never really pay attention, there is a “slide-out bar.” When you pull open the glass doors, a light goes on, like magic. Then you can see a cunning array of little stemmed glasses, party-pretty and delicate, a few short glasses, and two snifters. You can slide these glasses out, lift them out of the shallow, green velvet circles in which they stand. The whole display reminds me of the showcases at my parents’ store, rarely opened, the contents rarely dislodged, and then only for a buying customer.

“What kind of booze do you have?” Brendan’s eyes brighten with pleasure.

“What kind of—”

“Do you have any gin?”

“What kind?” I’m stalling. Of course we don’t have any gin! We’re Jews!

“Gilbey’s? Bombay? Tanqueray?”

Brendan is really fluent in a language I don’t speak.

“Uh, no, I don’t think we have ... um ...”

I slide open one of the large rectangular drawers on each side of the breakfront. Here, packed in next to my parents few records and my brother’s many rock albums, is where I know they keep the liqueurs and the schnapps for special occasions. The only time I’ve seen my father drink is the obligatory four cups at a seder (and he prefers grape juice to wine), or at the synagogue, toasting the Sabbath with a tiny plastic cup of Manischewitz and a square of sponge cake, or, very occasionally, having a glass of good brandy.

“Hey, look!” I say, affecting cheer. “Would you like some slivovitz? And—what’s this—oh, this is good—Cherry Heering? It tastes like cherries, but it’s—it’s got quite a little kick—”

My mother offers this to her fanciest guests, say if the ones from Riverdale were to visit for some reason. Out would come the Cherry Heering, imported from Denmark. The men would have slivovitz, an old-world shot of pure alcohol, flavored with plum.

“You must be kidding.”

“No, uh uh, I’m serious.”

“No scotch? No gin? No tonic?”

I’m not sure what tonic is, exactly, but remind him that he can always have some seltzer water. We always have that.

“And here’s something I bet you never had,” I add, still trying to act excited about ravaging my parents’ things.

I pick up a liqueur that is housed in something shaped like a genie’s bottle. The label is a beautiful, Eilat-stone turquoise, mixed with gold.

“What on earth is that?” Brendan smiles, laughs a little. “It really looks tacky. And you know I hate sweet drinks.”

“It’s Sabra, the liqueur of Israel.” The bottle is at least a decade old; a little primordial stickiness from the last use keeps me from easily opening it.

“Would you help me twist this off?”

I hand the bottle to Brendan, who takes it up with a trace of his smirk, and tries to pry open the glucose-glued top.

This is what my mother sees when she enters the house:

Me and a boy, a boy with hair as black as mine, about to share a nip of Sabra, Israel’s contribution to the world of liqueur.

To my great relief, she smiles encouragingly at me, as though to say:

Nice setup. Another guy came running up the hill. And this one is handsomer than the last one. And what’s wrong with a little drink from Israel at the end of the day. It could be very pleasant.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking: Brendan-the-goy can pass!

“You’re home early,” I say, casually. Brendan is still working with the cap. With one final twist, he sets the genie bottle free.

“Mazel tov!” says my mother.

“L’chaim!” says Brendan, merrily, again with that little laugh.

“So give me just a little, and what is your name?”

Taking a crystal stemmed glass out, Brendan pours my mother a drop of the elixir of Israel. He is smart enough to hesitate about his name, because Brendan is not the most Semitic name anyone can ever think of.