"I looked at them. I've got them right here. I'm sure they're orange. Just a minute." He pulled open a desk drawer and took out the envelope that contained the bottle of pills, he uncapped the bottle and shook a few pills out on the desktop, there was no mistake. Oval they were, but they were also unmistakably orange. "Now wouldn't you call them orange?" he asked.
"Let me see that bottle." The doctor read the label aloud: "J. Kestler, Limpidine two hundred fifty, one tablet four times a day. Dr. D. Cohen."
"That's what you prescribed?" The doctor nodded.
"And those are the pills? What did you call them— Limpidine?"
"I always thought they were pink. Look, I’ve got a book at home that the pharmaceutical industry issues every year to all doctors. It has all the information on the medicines they manufacture as well as colored plates of the pills. I could swear that Limpidine is pink but I'll look it up as soon as I get home."
"You do that, Doctor, and call me back. I'll be here for a little while."
Dr. Cohen managed to observe the speed limits all the way home, but just barely, he parked his car in the garage and then hurried to his study without bothering to take off his coat, he opened the Physician's Desk Reference and stared at the colored plate, he was right! The Limpidine was pink, the orange pill was actually a form of penicillin put out by the same house. Somehow Aptaker had made a mistake and issued the penicillin pill, and of course the old man had reacted to it, since he was sensitive to the medicine. So the mistake was the druggist's, and he was in the clear!
His heart sang within him. It had happened! He had gone to the retreat; he had prayed, truly prayed perhaps for the first time in his life; and the very next day, this great depressing weight had been miraculously lifted.
He reached for the telephone.
The problems of parents with their children, all seemingly requiring nothing less than a rabbinic decision or at least an opinion, were many and various. Rabbi Small saw each parent in turn while the rest waited outside on a settee near his study.
"... I know it isn't terribly important, but kids are sensitive, and when Malcolm Studnick was given the part in the play, where everybody said my Ronald was so much better in the tryouts, he was hurt...."
"... You know how it is with girls, Rabbi. Being popular is important to them. It can affect their whole personality. So dancing class and tennis lessons, they're part of her necessary development as a woman...."
"... It isn't that my Sumner is not interested. Rabbi. It's just that he hasn't got the time...."
"... Right now, Rabbi, where he's been sickly almost since he was a baby, my husband feels, and I do too of course, he should be outdoors as much as possible. I thank God for Little League. If it weren't for Little League, he'd be moping around the house all the time, that's why I was so interested in the camp when my husband came home and told me about it Wednesday night. Now if he could get his Judaism there during the summer—" "What camp is that, Mrs. Robinson?"
"You know, the place up in Petersville, as I understand it, it's to be used not only as a retreat for adults, but there'll be opportunity for the children to go up there for a couple of weeks in the summer."
"But that's not for the immediate future. Mrs. Robinson, it's just being discussed."
"Oh no, Rabbi, according to my husband they discussed it thoroughly at the retreat yesterday, and they were going to vote on it today."
"Oh, I see." Rabbi Small managed to curb his impatience and gave no indication that he was anxious to get rid of her, but when the conference was over and he saw Mrs. Robinson to the door, he said to the woman who was about to enter, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kalbfuss, but I have to go to the board meeting."
"But it's over. Rabbi, they all left a little while ago." He looked down the corridor, and sure enough, the dooa to the boardroom was open and the room was empty.
As he was driving home. Chester Kaplan spotted Dr. Cohen raking leaves on his front lawn and drew up to the curb. "Hi. Doctor,” he called. "Sorry I had to rush off this morning without saying good-bye."
"Oh, that's all right," said Cohen, approaching the car, rake in hand.
"How was it? Did you like it?" Kaplan asked eagerly.
"It was fine," said the doctor, his face expanding in a broad grin. "Real fine, kind of wonderful, in fact. Reminds me, I haven't paid you yet. If you've got a minute, I'll go in and make out a check, or come in if you like."
"No, that's all right. You send it to me. I've got to run along. I'm glad you had a nice time."
"Oh yeah, it was a real experience."
When he got home, Kaplan immediately went to his study and typed a letter on temple stationery to Marcus Aptaker, Town-Line Drugs, informing him that the board of directors of the temple had voted unanimously to sell tha Goralsky Block and the adjacent land to William Safferstein, 258 Minerva Road. Barnard's Crossing, and that he should address his request for renewal of his lease to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Don't do it, David," Miriam urged. "Kaplan put one over on you. Don't give him the added satisfaction of showing him that you're hurt."
"I can't just let it pass," the rabbi said, but he took his hand off the telephone.
"But you don't know what happened, all you know is what some woman told you they were going to do at the meeting. You don't know if they actually did it. Why not wait until they tell you officially?"
Her husband sat down, and since he appeared receptive, she continued. "You think they voted to buy that place up in Petersville, well, what if they did? They have a right to, haven't they? They don't need your permission. You're just invited to attend board meetings as a guest. You weren't elected to the board."
He nodded. "No, of course not, and if thev want to buv a piece of land up-country for some ordinary purpose—"
"Like what?"
"Well, even for investment. I might have some thoughts on the wisdom of the move, but no real interest as rabbi of the congregation. But on the basis of what Kaplan has let drop the last couple of months, I am reasonably sure they plan to use the place as a retreat. Now that does concern me."
"Well, I suppose since it's a religious thing—"
He looked at her in surprise. "It's more than that. It's not just something that I feel they should have asked me about, like— like whether to buy a new Scroll of the Law. This retreat idea involves a change in the direction that the temple is taking. Suppose they're considering doing away with the Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen in favor of a confirmation at fifteen or sixteen as is the case in many Reform temples. Or suppose they decided to institute a new seating arrangement where women would be separated from men as in Orthodox synagogues. Those are not the kinds of things where just my opinion or advice is involved. In matters of that sort which indicate a basic change in the temple, it is my consent that they must get."
"And if they refuse?"
"Then I resign, of course," he said simply. "I say, in effect, I am a Conservative rabbi and as such accepted a position with a Conservative congregation. Now you wish to become a Reform congregation or an Orthodox congregation. Very well, it is your right, but I cannot continue to serve."
Miriam was troubled. "Aren't you overreacting, David?" she hazarded. "If a few members of your congregation want to go into the woods and pray on their own—"
"It's not a few members. It's the president and the board of directors of the temple, presumably acting for the congregation as a whole, and using congregation monies, and they're not just going into the woods to pray, they're setting up a branch of the temple and are engaging this rabbi, of whose views I know nothing, to guide them." He got up and went to the telephone.