Too Jewish (12 page)

I could hear female voices in the kitchen, but I couldn't tell what they were saying, and I couldn't tell if they were angry or friendly. I also couldn't tell them apart; Letty was going to sound just like her mother as she aged, but I couldn't know it then. After a few minutes they stopped, then Letty's palm hit the swinging connecting door and she came through with her mother trailing her. She stepped over the footstool and flounced down on it in a pretty terrific impression of what the world would want Princess Elizabeth to be, though Letty was probably more of a Princess Margaret.

"You're a hard-headed girl," Mrs. Adler said.

Letty nodded.

Mrs. Adler turned to her husband. "She's old enough to marry without permission, you know." He grimaced. "She said they'd just go across the river if we weren't going to give them a wedding."

"Fine," Mr. Adler said. "I don't approve of this marriage. I think you should at least put it off until summer."

"That's just your way of hoping Bernie will disappear," Letty said.

"So go across the river," her father said.

"I told Mama that was no problem, but we'll have to do it on a weekday. I'm sure Mr. Kern won't have any problem giving Bernie a day off." Letty grinned.

Her father stood up. "Hold on here. Kern? Kern at Krauss's? He's one of my biggest clients."

"No kidding," Letty said.

"I told you she was hard-headed," Mrs. Adler said.

"I'm sure he won't think any the less of you for letting me get married on a shoestring. Tell you what, maybe we'll ask him to be our witness," Letty said.

Mr. Adler turned to me. "You put her up to this, didn't you?"

"Sir, haven't you known Letty a long time?" I said.

Mrs. Adler started laughing; Mr. Adler pressed his lips together to keep himself from giving me that satisfaction. I'd made a little headway. But I wasn't going to care.

* * *

Letty said that she was going to plan a wedding, and I was going to plan a marriage, and all in all her part was infinitesimally small. "It's one day," she said.

"So why don't we make it just one hour?" I said. I liked the idea of crossing the river. I even suggested a fine compromise, of asking for a long lunch break, pretending I had to go to the doctor. If a wedding carried no meaning, I said, then make it a business transaction. "Okay, I admit it," Letty said. "I want to be a bride."

"Okay, I admit it," I said. "I want to live in New York."

She smiled, but only for a second. She realized I wasn't joking. "You're frightening me," she said.

"I thought you understood that tacitly," I said. "I didn't have to come out and say it."

"You know I can't leave my parents."

Her response surprised me. "I can understand many reasons for not wanting to leave home, but not that one," I said.

It was her turn to look surprised. "What other reason would I have? It isn't like I have a job."

"I would think you would be aching to leave your parents," I said. "Wouldn't you want to get as far away from them as possible?"

"Think about it," she said. "Could you leave your mother?"

I looked at her as if she'd slapped me. I could see immediately that she'd forgotten to whom she was speaking. "My mother was kind and loving to me every day of my life," I said. The subtext was that her mother was not. I was forgiving the cruelty of her mistake.

"I'm sorry, that was such an unfair question," she said. She was close to tears. "But you have to understand. I have to prove myself to them. Did you see how well I did about getting married? As long as I'm here, I know the day will come when they'll see what a good person I am. I have nothing to learn from them. They have everything to learn from me. Don't you see how right I am?"

I wasn't a student of psychology, but I knew enough to realize that if she won it would be a pyrrhic victory. That wasn't something I could tell her. "You could prove yourself in New York," I said.

Letty pulled herself up straight. "No, I couldn't! It's their rules, right here! Just for starts, there's nobody like them in New York."

I had no idea what she meant. I told her she was making no sense.

"Please don't make me say it," she said.

Sometimes we didn't need words. When I looked at her, she knew she had no choice.

"They'd tell me everybody in New York is too Jewish," she said. "If I went there, they'd say I chose to ruin my life. Anything I did in New York would be a failure. I only can prove myself here. They're going to love me for what I become right here."

"What about me?"

"We're going to be a couple," she said.

That had to be enough.

* * *

I allowed her to make arrangements, concentrated instead on finding us a place to live and finding a way to live in it. My landlady was willing to send me away to somewhere better; she was that kind of woman. "You take that chest of drawers as a wedding gift," she said. She'd moved in that chest of drawers only a few weeks earlier, and I had my suspicions. She'd probably intended to give it to me all along. She had no children of her own but a lot of antecedents.

Letty set a date, told me to write it on my calendar. All I had to do was show up at her parents' house at eleven-thirty, and the wedding would start at noon. It was customary for the groom not to see the bride, so I would stay downstairs until the ceremony.

"What about the ketuba?" I said. Letty had no idea what that was, of course, and I explained that it was a contract signed together before the ceremony.

"But that's bad luck," she said.

"But that's the way it's always been done," I said. I let it go because I already knew I was going to have to attend a synagogue where no one wore yarmulkes.

I went to write the wedding date on my calendar. It was a Saturday.

I phoned Letty.

"I can do some things, but not get married on a Saturday," I said.

"Oh," she said, accepting. "But how come the rabbi said he could come right after services?"

"Because
he
could," I said.

"Oh," she said.

* * *

I went to see Rabbi Feibelman the next day.

"I remember you," he said when I walked in. "You're the soldier who recited kaddish."

""You can remember that?" I said. "That was years ago."

"But it's the only time anyone's known the Hebrew in all the years I've been at this temple."

"I guess that's why I'm here," I said. "I'm supposed to get married on Shabbat. I can't do that."

"So we'll do it on Sunday, no problem."

"Will the Adlers have a chuppah?"

"Have you met the Adlers?"

"Oh, yes," I said.

"Then you have your answer. As for that ketuba you want, I suppose I could make both of you happy by doing it the day before, but it will be my first one."

"And the service?"

"Son, you're lucky these people let me use the name of God. There's strictly no Hebrew prayer in the service they've selected."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You will eventually. But you do get one concession. You get to smash the glass. No matter what, Jewish families love to smash the glass. They won't say mazel tov, but they will smash the glass."

"So they don't like me because I'm Jewish?"

"They don't like
themselves
because
they're
Jewish."

I asked him if he knew Letty. I had to remind myself that I was marrying Letty. Yes, he had known Letty ever since he came to Sinai. She had a lot of sense. "You know the difference between objective and subjective thinking?" I nodded. I liked that he didn't think my accent made me a mental defective. "Letty is an objective thinker. She understands."

"So this wedding will be horrible, but this marriage will be fine," I said, more to me than to him.

The rabbi was silent for a little too long. "I'll do my best for the wedding," was all he said.

I majored in psychology because I needed to major in psychology. I didn't know it back then, of course. I just thought it was something different from high school. But now I can see how I figure everything out, like why I picked my major.  I've had a lot to figure out.

For instance, I can deal with being part of an oral history of Jews in the South. It's not so much the matter of being considered a Jew in the South. Though I have to admit that I'm confused by how I feel about my ethnic identity. It's more the oral history part, which connotes the discomfort of holding forth about my life. Almost as if I were in a therapist's office. But Bernie did his oral history three years ago. He told me how he eased himself into delving into his painful past by talking a little about his present. He chose three facts about himself, and he opened right up. I even remember his answers, but that's only because I understand him from those answers. His favorite TV show was
The $64,000 Question.
Anyway, I never took clinical psychology because I didn't want to be all self-conscious about how I think. I just like to figure out how people tick, even how I tick. It will probably emerge along with bits of local history as I remember things.

I'm starting with three facts about myself. I admit I've put a lot of thought into them.

First, I like to stay home. By that I mean I don't like to go away, which probably has to do with my childhood. I didn't enjoy trips when I was a girl. Obviously in a way that affected me a great deal.

Second, I don't care what people think about me, but I don't want anyone to get me wrong. I'm not messy, and I'm not rude. But no one should expect me to be a phony.

Third, my favorite TV show of all times is
The Honeymooners.
Bernie chose his favorite, so I choose mine.

No sooner do I give this list than I remember something: Bernie's third thing about himself. He didn't want his story told until he was long dead. I have to think about that. He was protecting our daughter, so I wonder. Do I have anyone to protect? I'm not telling about the horrors of war, but I'm probably telling family secrets. Oh, wait, I forget my second thing about myself. I don't care what people think about me. It might do some people good to read this, though my parents aren't the reading kind. And my daughter Darby is no fool: she wouldn't be surprised.

* * *

I said I like to stay home. I might as well try for self-understanding, and that means going to childhood. Well, girlhood.

. My mother took me on extravagant trips when I was a girl, and I did a lot of thinking. Even when I was small, I wondered what the fun part was supposed to be. Looking at landmarks was too much like school. Shopping was too much like being dragged to Canal Street. I did like ships with other children when I was younger. And desserts in Italy were good in hot summer. The water and pigeons in Venice pleased me too much, I guess. Water and pigeons weren't educational is how my mother explained it. My mother didn't get a kick out of my joy: that's probably closer to the truth, because we never went back to Venice. I was thirteen in 1939 when my mother and I did a grand tour of France. My father thought it was a bad idea: war was breaking out. If my father objected, that made it an excellent idea for my mother.

In my house when I was young, the favorite family game seemed to be antagonism. If one parent wanted something, it was a wonderful tactic to do the opposite. They enjoyed themselves thoroughly, playing that game.

"Oh, the bargains," she said several times a day during that 1939 trip. We were taxiing all over Paris. It was late August, and the city seemed dark, the people seemed dark. But my mother's dollars made them happy. She bought my father a watch; she bought me far too many dresses. But I wouldn't try them on: I liked skirts and blouses. It wasn't that I liked to play the antagonism game; I really didn't like dresses. My mother didn't care. She assumed I still had growing to do. She took me to the Opera to see
Faust
Saturday night, and I figured it was punishment for having no enthusiasm for shopping for what my mother tried to call
haute couture.
Hote cootoor.

I was crazy with fighting sleep at intermission. "Come on, come on," she said. I didn't want to get out of my seat, but she wouldn't leave me there. The crowd was thick with so many people who agreed with my mother about the war. It was late August in 1939: they acted as if there was nothing to worry about. Go to the opera! She tugged me away from the crowd to the space under the grand staircase, and she pulled a cablegram out from her purse. "How'd you get that?" I said. No one had approached her. "Oh, it came to the hotel this morning," she said. "I haven't opened it."

"What if somebody's dead?" I said.

"Look through the window. It's from your daddy," she said. "It can't be important. If he sent it, he's not dead, so nobody who matters is dead."

I stood by while she opened it. Now I wasn't fighting sleep. Of course it was short, and her squawk of laughter came fast. "What," I said.

"Listen to this," she said. "'War is imminent. Get out of Europe immediately.'" She looked at me, but I knew nothing about the world. "I ask you, who's in Europe, him or me?"