I tried to tell them I was the wrong man for the job and marshaled all the fool-for-a-client arguments I could think of. They looked at me closely. “It’s just that I knew her,” I told them lamely. “I couldn’t be objective.”
“Those other times,” Fanny Tupperman said, “those were objective funerals?”
Shelley asked me to do it. “If not for me, then for Joan Cohen. She’d have wanted it that way.”
“Boy,” I said, “every Tom, Dick and Harry knows what dead people have in their heads, what they’ve got up their sleeves and would get off their chests. Why do they draw up wills? What do we need lawyers?”
“Jerry,” Shull confided, “I’m picking up the expenses on this one. The deluxe mahogany. Down stuffing in the satin lining. I’m going all out.”
“What, you are?”
“My pleasure,” he said.
“Your pleasure? That’s very kind, Sam.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. My pleasure. I dated her.”
“I see,” I said.
“Twenty grand I must have spent on that woman. At least twenty grand. I was the one who put her into all those suedes and Harris tweeds she wore. The tiny pinstripes. I dressed her for success. What the hell? What’s a few thousand more? Still, well, you know, if we had to bring in another rabbi …”
That she’d never married. That she left no survivors. That was the angle I meant to punch up. Working her childlessness, working her spinsterhood, working the theme we were all her survivors.
Her singing. I’d bring in her singing. Her musical Judaism. And sketch her, powerfully clapping, bounding round the campfire, draw her generous kibbutz heart. A cheerful, reliable, companionable sort, her soul in the backpack with the provisions. This echt Sabra, some maiden Jewess, say, who might have been there with Moses on the long voyage out from Egypt to the Promised Land. Some slim, dark au pair of the wilderness who kept an eye on the kids and helped with the tents. Though this, of course, was not how I really saw her. (Oh, how I really saw her! Never mind how I really saw her!) Though you know? In a way I did.
Her good-sport mode, I mean, and elegant outdoor ways. Which got her killed for her trouble, slaughtered for her style. And led her out into the very fields and locales where models posed for their pictures, out into the unfenced surreal, that deer-stalked, fox-hunted, cony-catchered bluegrass where you could almost have anticipated the sniper would be.
And that’s not how I really saw her either.
One time — this was two years ago — Shelley came to me, very excited.
“We’ve got a gig-e-le.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A gig-e-le, a booking. It’s a show biz-e-le term.”
“Who does?”
“We do, the girls. The Chaverot.”
“Oh,” I said, “that’s nice.”
“It is,” she said. “Jack Perloff finally popped the question. Miriam doesn’t have to be a divorcee anymore.”
“Well, that is good news,” I said. Jack Perloff had an automobile dealership in the Oranges. He and Miriam had been seeing each other for years. There was a question about his intentions. Until Shelley’s announcement it was understood that, officially, they were only “going steady.”
“They’re getting married in Philadelphia. His parents live there. Miriam wants the Chaverot to entertain. Of course, we couldn’t think of charging anything. It’s a professional courtesy.”
“Of course you can’t charge them,” I said. “It will be your wedding present.”
“Oh, no,” Shelley said, “we have to get them a gift. Anyway, we’re all invited. The Chaverot spouses too. We could go down on Friday. The wedding’s Saturday night and we can drive back Sunday. The ceremony’s in this wonderful new hotel, which is supposed to be very nice. They have a weekend special. Miriam says the groom’s people will make all the arrangements. Can we, Jerry, can we?”
Why not? Every once in a while every now and then you have to make a weekend of it. I say this in my rabbi mode.
So we drove — the Chaverot colleagues, the Chaverot husbands — the eighty or so miles down to Philly in three of our big cars and checked into the hotel. The Barry Bernstein bar mitzvah was posted on a black hotel reader board in the lobby, Lou and Gloria Kaplan’s Silver Wedding Anniversary was. An announcement for the Mindy Weintraub Sweet Sixteen party was up on an easel. (Shelley was right, I thought, it was a wonderful hotel. Understand me, when I say that every once in a while every now and then you have to make a weekend of it, I don’t mean you must get away. The opposite, rather. You have to go back. You must ground yourself in the familiar, settle back in the thick, sweet old gravity of things.)
There were a dozen of us, five men and seven women. Miriam and the lucky man had gone down before us and would be staying with the Perloffs. Fanny Tupperman (divorced, she was Fanny Lewis then) shared a room with Joan Cohen, who was also single. (I’d never met Joan’s husband, and until that weekend hadn’t realized she hadn’t any.)
We’d hardly unpacked when there was a knock on the door. It was Jack Perloff, big in the doorway, rubbing his hands, kibitzing, bullying welcome. “How is it,” he asked, stepping inside, “is it all right? Is it going to be big enough? Oh, yes, it’s a nice size. Jesus, you could sleep three in the front and five in the back in here,” the car dealer remarked amiably. “What about closet space? Got enough? What’s this, a walk-in? Oh, yeah, terrific. Swell threads. Gorgeous gown, Shelley. Am I marrying the wrong chick, or what? Hey, how about these soaps? That’s some classy odor. Very delicate. You don’t have to use ’em, you know. Take them home if you want. With the shampoo and the shower cap. Souvenirs. Call the desk, say the maid didn’t leave you any. Have them send up some more. Wait a minute. Something’s amiss here. Where’s your rose? There’s supposed to be a long-stemmed rose in this room.”
“That’s all right.”
“The hell it’s all right! It’s part of the deal. Listen, you don’t have to do a thing. When I’m in the lobby, I’ll speak to the concierge. There won’t be any trouble. Oh, wait a minute. You got the fruit. Some get the fruit, some get the flower. Would you rather have the flower or would you rather have the fruit? I know the Iglauers got a rose. Maybe you could trade. There’s your TV. Look, they’ve got a movie channel. If you’re still up at three, they show an X-rated film. If you slipped the kid a fin, I bet they’d probably run it for you now. Sure, all they do is throw it up on their VCR and just plug you in. You’re too shy, I’ll say something on your behalf myself. Rabbi, and give him the finif, too, for that matter.”