Fiction Archives

                                                 The Succulent
                                        By Meredith Brody

            

 

            Squeezing the last few drops from my yogurt tube into my mouth, I pivot and pretend to slam dunk it in the trash bin.  Reaching up, I stroke the bristles of my new crew cut and straighten out my yarmulke.  Mom is drumming her fingers on the counter, smiling at me. Drum, drum. Tap, tap, tap.  She goes back to her writing.  If she can’t tap on her keyboard, she’ll find something else to tap on. 

            “Bye, Ma.  I’m late for the bus.”

            “Dovid, you need a coat. Winter is here, my dear,” chides my mother, the poet.  She throws my puffy green coat over my shoulders and tries to kiss the top of my head as I open the door.  But my head just smashes into her mouth.  When I look back, she’s dabbing the back of her hand against a dot of blood on her lip.

            “Sorry,” I yell, backpedaling towards the bus stop.  She waves her left hand.  The right one is resting against the door frame, fingers drumming to the rhythm of the traffic on our city street.

            On the bus, I think about my Mom.  Alma Feldman.  Sheesh.  Even her name invokes the concept of being “all mom.” And of course, my thinking leads me back to the same place it always does: If Mom had had more kids, I wouldn’t be the constant focus of her attention.  Then, I inevitably get angry that my father was niftar when I was six.  The only thing I remember about him is his prickly red beard.  He would always stroke it proudly, as if having facial hair was an accomplishment in itself.

           

At school, I see Moshe in the hallway so I stop him on our way in to Science class.  “Did I ever tell you that my Grandfather coined the phrase ‘All’s well that ends well?’”  I ask him, adjusting the waist of my pants.

            Moshe looks at me skeptically.  I hear a piece of hard candy in his mouth crackle between two teeth.  “Let’s go sit down.  Did your mother decide whether or not you could go on the class ski trip?”  His eyes widen waiting for my reply.

            “She has to think about it.”  I picture Mom at home pulling a stubborn, matted disk of my hair from the shower drain.  Then maybe she goes into my room and sweeps up the dirt under my night stand where my Jade plant sits- the one she bought me last Hannukah.  She’s probably tending to any one of my many little household disturbances, just tiny, comforting  reminders that I live there.

            Just before lunch time my throat starts feeling itchy.  Moshe tells me I look like I just crawled out of the grave and my breath smells like I swallowed a bunch of tacks.  My forehead is warm. In the nurse’s office there’s a boy waiting to get his insulin shot and another boy crying, clutching his stomach.  I hope to get out of there before the tater tots lunch special makes an appearance.

The nurse says I have a fever.  Though my mother doesn’t answer the phone, any student over sixteen is permitted to leave on their own if they normally take public transportation to and from school.  Moshe walks me out to the bus stop and I wait for the number nine cross town.

            “Feel better,” he says, zipping up my coat for me and flapping the hood over my head.

            “Thanks!” I call out as the bus belches to a stop in front of me.

            I’m surprised Mom isn’t there when I get home.  I let myself in and go call her cell phone.  No answer.  Helping myself to a cup of orange juice, I head to my room, and plop down on the bed with my newly purchased copy of Garden of Emunah.  A splash of juice lands on my sleeve but I suck it out of the cloth.  I don’t get very far before passing out, but a few minutes later I think I hear the door open.  Then tapping.  But delirium and fever overcome me and I wonder if I’m dreaming the noises.  Too tired to figure it out.  First I’m freezing, then sweat pours off me like an IV drip.  I reach my arm out and feel the thick, swollen leaves of my jade plant.  I stick my thumbnail through the skin of a wet, fleshy leaf, and a sweet smell washes up.  Where is Mom?  I can’t remember the last time I asked this question.

            A little while later, someone is trying to sit me up.  “Open wide….and your fever will subside,” Mom says, putting two chalky, grape flavored tablets into my mouth.  For once the rhyming is more comforting than annoying.  She sits down next to me on the bed.  “Sorry I missed your phone calls.  I went to check out the venue for my book signing next month and I had no cell reception.”

            I sit up.  “Your book signing?  I didn’t realize this was actually happening.  I mean, I knew you had some sort of deal going on.  Your collection’s getting published?  I’m sorry…I”

            “Don’t worry, honey.  We all get wrapped up in our own lives.  It’s hard to keep up with everyone these days.  Now lay back down until the Tylenol kicks in.”  She gets up and fingers the plant.  “Wow, this succulent has really flourished.”

            “Succulent?  I thought it was a Jade plant.”

            “It is, but it belongs to the larger category called succulents.  They retain water so they only need it about once a month depending on the season.  Frequent watering could kill it.  Very low maintenance.”  She starts towards the door.

            “But they still have to be maintained.  They can’t be completely ignored,” I accidentally almost shout.

            Mom stops at the door and reaches up to tap the frame, pausing in thought.  She turns around and smiles.  “I suppose it’s a fine balance.”

            I hear Mom pick up the phone and call what sounds like her book agent.  I wait for my precious Tylenol to kick in, the sweet grape flavor still lingering on my tongue.

 











                                       The Principal of Rivington Street

                                       By Henry F. Mazel

 

He was an educated man. Today, no doubt, he would have been a university professor of some renown, but in those days a grade school teacher was more than respectable. Louis Bloom, through hard work and dedication, became the principal of P.S. 20 on Rivington Street. There, after the Great War, he made a career, and apparently was content. Why he chose to upend his life in such a way was incomprehensible to everyone except Bloom himself.

Now it so happens that Public School 20 had some illustrious graduates. Mostly, they were Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century to escape a pogrom, here and there, or fathers avoiding conscription into the army, or the general promise of a better life in America. Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni, the film and stage actors; the future Senator, Jacob Javits; George and Ira Gershwin; and the journalist Harry Golden all attended P.S. 20 around the same time. Quite a graduating class.

Edward G. Robinson and others, well-known and not so well-known, were Rumanian Jews. They were congregants of the First Romanian-American Synagogue, Shaarey Shamoyim (Hebrew for Gates of Heaven), also located on Rivington Street at number 89. At its zenith, it had a seating capacity of over 1,600 people. And it was, if I may use the word, a Mecca for all the great cantors of the day, and nurtured the careers of operatic tenors Jan Peerce (nee Perelmuth) and Richard Tucker.

This dizzying proximity to such an overabundance of talent was most likely the cause of what they later called Louis Bloom’s deep descent.  Certainly a man takes stock in his middle years, particularly a bachelor, but a career as a singer in show business? No, just not done.  Intellectually, Louis Bloom understood he was an educator, but in his heart he was a hassan.  Unfortunately for Bloom, the really bad part was he couldn’t sing, not a note.

Bloom had many fine qualities: A first-rate mind, a dedicated man who gave all his attention to the task at hand -- perhaps too much attention. These days he might even be called an obsessive personality.  He wrote in a notebook every detail of life in his school: The number of seats in each class, the pieces of chalk sitting on the sills of blackboards, a count of the halls where chipped paint had become a problem; and most importantly, the names of the teachers’ wives and children, their ages, hair color, habits if any – and there was a special place in the notebook reserved for everything he could think of or notice about his students. In this way he hoped to be liked, to be paid attention to.

 In the sixth year of his tenure as principal of P.S. 20, his diligence appeared to wane. He often was not available in the afternoon, and this was noticed by his staff. It was gradual at first. People thought perhaps he had become ill, but it became clear his focus was elsewhere – what had been a helpful obsession, that is his work at the school, had turned into another, darker, secret, magical obsession.

Once a week, later twice, and eventually even three times, he walked to Houston Street where he took the subway to the 42nd Street stop at Broadway, paid his admission, and was mesmerized by the singers, dancers, comedians and novelty acts at the Morosco theater. For weeks he would attend the matinee, delighting in the same acts over and over again. He was so engrossed that P.S. 20, for that period of time, didn’t exist for him. At a certain point, it became an absolute necessity in Bloom’s mind to meet and talk with the show people who plied their magic on stage.

On a sunlit November day, in the middle of the week, he stayed for four shows. It was a drab winter night when he finally left, but he did not go home. Instead he went to the alleyway behind the Morosco. He waited in the cold until a trickle of vaudevillians emerged. He tipped his worn, black felt hat to each in turn. The few women who emerged shuttled past quickly without acknowledging him, though a few of the men nodded to him. 

Life turns on small points.  And when Bert Savoy, the female impersonator  -- who Bloom immediately recognized  -- emerged from the shadows of the stage door, the scrawny principal straightened up as he had when called to attention in the 119th Infantry Brigade of the American Expeditionary Force. As Savoy, with a man’s swagger and the swish of a woman, came close, Louis Bloom spoke. It was more of a surprise to Bloom than Savoy.

“Good Evening, Mr. Savoy,” Bloom said, with surprising equanimity.

Slipping on his lambskin gloves, and without paying much attention to Bloom, Bert Savoy responded. “Good evening, good evening.” 

He was well past the principal when Bloom almost shouted, “Wait, there is something important that I must say to you.”

“. . . Yes?” Savoy sighed audibly, stopped and turned around.

“First, I want to say how much I admire you and your great talent. I have seen you many times and am always enthralled . . . There is something I need to say, and I’m not sure where or how this entered my mind. Or who placed it there. I am not a  wholly religious man, but I can only think it is He who placed it there.”

“Come, come, man, what do you have to say?”

“I fear for your life.”

Savoy blanched. “And why is that? Is it perhaps you that means me harm?”

“No, no, please believe that. It comes to me as a daydream, but more real. It is so hard to explain. I am not a criminal so you should have no questions about me. As I said, I admire your talent – and I, even at my age, wish to be on stage. But I am compelled to tell you this, even at the risk that you’d think me a lunatic.”

Savoy was outwardly calm, but he did not move on. He himself had had forebodings, which he was not about to share with Bloom. He was known on the Orpheim circuit, vaudeville’s most prominent, as someone who had an uncanny knack for prediction. Although he now worked as a single, his ex-partner, Joe Brennan, claimed Savoy was psychic.  “What is your name?”

“Bloom. Louis Bloom, principal of school P.S. 20 on Rivington Street.”

“And what do you see about me, Mr. Bloom, eh?”

“I would not want to talk here,” Bloom said. “May I buy you a glass of tea?”

Savoy laughed a genuine hearty laugh. “Tea?! I’m a female impersonator on stage, Bloom, but that’s where it ends. If it’s gin you are offering me, that’s another story. I’ll hear you out and hope we both don’t have the same premonition.”

They walked to a nearby saloon in silence -- each wanting to speak, yet shards of anxiety kept them silent. Once inside the speakeasy, The Club Napoleon, a spectacular Beaux Arts mansion, Bloom was awestruck by the interior. Club Napoleon was quite a famous gin mill known to everyone, except, apparently, to Bloom. The principal’s eyes seemed to scan the place in two directions, one eye looking this way and the other taking in a wholly different portion of the plush, oak-paneled great room, with its portraits of the famous and the dead.  Bloom, since he was a child, had had a thyroid condition that created the illusion, in times of stress, that he was looking in more than one direction at a time. His eyes also tended to bulge disconcertingly.

Even taking into account this disturbing continence, Bloom was completely out of place at the Napoleon -- both in his slightly disheveled appearance as well as his bearing. Yet Bloom was beside himself with excitement. This speakeasy, that Bloom had known nothing of, and would most likely cost him all the money in his pocket, was filled with entertainers and Broadway hounds.  He thought he recognized half the crowd. “Is that George Raft?!” Bloom asked, half an octave above his normal speaking voice.

“No, it’s Sophie Tucker in a tux. Now sit down and order that drink you offered. And get something for yourself . . .  and for Lord sake don’t order tea. My reputation is at stake here, Bloom.”

There were two gins delivered to the table, then two more, and after that another two. Louis Bloom was woozy drunk, which was a decided advantage for Bert Savoy, as long as Bloom didn’t pass out.

“All right, Mr. Bloom,” Bert Savoy said in a quiet determined tone, “ what do you see for me?”

“Water.”

“Water?  Are you too drunk to carry on a conversation?  Would you like water?”

“No, I see water. I see you and water and darkness. Something very ominous and you are there in my daydream . . . and there is water and death.”

Savoy sat silent, staring at Bloom for quite some time.  “How long have you had this daydream as you call it?” he finally asked.

“Long enough. Ever since I envisioned myself as singing at the Gates of Heaven Synagogue, and, of course, at the Morosco theater like yourself.

“This is all the world needs, another singing Jew. You would think Jolson and Cantor would be enough.” Savoy shrugged, gesturing that he meant no offense. “Well, that aside, Bloom, I want you to tell me -- how long has it been?”

“You mean my premonition, how long?  Several months now.”

“And it always involves me? Always?”

“Yes. You and the water. I’m afraid so”

“Gypsies have portents of the future. Is it the same with Jews? . . . Bloom, I want you to sing for me.”

“What? Now? Here?”

“Yes, now. Maybe you are a lunatic. Sing. If you have some talent then my own thoughts about the future may be true after all. But I believe you have none and I am known for my intuition, Mr. Bloom.”

“Please, Mr. Savoy.”

“Bloom, Sing,” he commanded in his best stage voice.

“. . . Well, I do know Tea for Two.”

Savoy lowered his eyes. “Tea again. All right, go ahead and sing it then.”

By the time Bloom got to ‘Just me for you and you for me alone’ Savoy abruptly cut him off. His eyes lit up and he grabbed Bloom by the shoulders. He bellowed with great relief, “Bloom, I am right, you are a lunatic!”

“What, you didn’t like it? I am a little nervous with all the noise and George Raft is right there. Was it so bad?”

“Well, Bloom, let’s just say you’re not ready for the Morosco quite yet . . . and maybe not ready for premonitions, either.”

“I wish with all my heart that was true. The premonition, I mean.”

“Bloom, let me tell you something. In spite of myself, I like you. I just hope your premonitions are like your singing, tremendously off-key. But I must confess I’ve had my own uneasy feeling about the future, my future. Honestly, I couldn’t see one for myself.  But now I’m relieved and all because of that lousy singing voice of yours.” He raised his glass and toasted Bloom with the last of the gin.

They were quite an unlikely pair, the flamboyant entertainer and the intense school teacher. Bloom continued to come to the theater, and Savoy was not particularly upset when Bloom was waiting for him at the stage door. They ate together on more than one occasion -- Bloom enthralled by the great female impersonator and Savoy smugly satisfied with pointing out the principal’s shortcomings.

Bloom was in Heaven, so close to show business. Burt Savoy even talked about the possibility of Bloom playing straight man to his former partner. “I want you to meet Jay Brennan,” he said, “then we’ll see.”

“When?” Bloom inquired.

“On a Monday, I suppose. The theaters are dark Mondays. That is if you can make it? And I’m not promising anything. You’ll just meet him and see how it goes.”

Although he had received two inquiries from the education board regarding his work, he brushed these aside. “In the late afternoons on Mondays, I can get away. Where will we meet? Will it be soon?”

“Slow down, Louis. Maybe in a few weeks. At Luna Park. Brennan’s a juggler on the promenade, temporarily of course, but he’s a gifted comic. He needs a stooge for his new act, Bloom, and you won’t have to do much.

“This means a great deal to me, Burt.”

“Don’t get soft on me now. If things go okey-doke, I’ll even treat you to one of those kosher hot dogs from Nathan’s Famous. And it won’t cost a nickel, either. Cantor, me and Durante lent Handwerker the money to open that place. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“You’re a good man to help Jews like that.”

“Sure, what do you think? We all worked at Feltman’s restaurant together before the war. . . And, besides, I’m helping you aren’t I?”

*****

At first, Bloom was on top of the world, his heart filled with a joy he hadn’t experienced in years. Yet the principal found it difficult to sleep, and his daydream now invaded his non-waking hours. Nightmares with that water, and Savoy ending up badly.  Bloom, a man of profound focus, found himself nervous and adrift.

On a morning a few days after the American New Year, Bloom realized what he must do. He would go to the Gates of Heaven synagogue and seek the advice of the Rabbi. He thought to himself, ‘the Rabbi is a wise man and will be able to help rid me of this fear, or at least explain what it all means.’

An imposing Romanesque Revival style building, the Gates of Heaven synagogue on Rivington Street conjured up thoughts of a medieval castle. Bloom stared up at the great stone archway, hesitated, and reluctantly entered. Inside, the synagogue was magnificent and elaborate. The sanctuary was extremely wide with a huge gallery extending deeply into the great hall. Magnificent stained glass windows and an intricate chandelier reminded a man to whisper in such a place. So Bloom, who viewed himself as inconsequential, quietly tiptoed into the study where Rabbi Yaakov Singer had agreed to see him.

There, behind a mahogany desk, the Rabbi looked up at Bloom and smiled. The gentle manner belied his Rasputin-like appearance. When he stood up, he was nearly a foot taller than the principal, and Yaakov Singer’s piercing brown eyes had the facility to call up biblical wrath when needed.

“Louis, I’m glad you’ve come. We so seldom see you these days.”

“I know, I know, Rabbi. I’ve been preoccupied.”

“Preoccupied how? Are you ill, Louis?”

“No. That is I’m not sure. I want to change my life, what I do for arbeit, for my work.” Bloom looked away. “And, I . . . that is . . . I also have a foreboding, a vivid daydream, that stays with me. This, I am hopeful, is your domain, Rabbi.” With that, Bloom proceeded to tell Yaakov Singer, in great detail, all about Burt Savoy, show business, and his great unease.

The Rabbi listened intently. When Bloom had finished he looked toward the Rabbi who remained silent.  Finally he asked, “Do you have for me advice, Rabbi?”

“About these hallucinations, I have no advice -- but a caution.” His sharp brown eyes were now wide and his speech urgent. “This is fire that you deal with here, Louis, of which nothing good can come.”

It’s water, not fire, Bloom thought. “Rabbi, please.”

“Remember what I’ve said, Louis.” The Rabbi stroked his beard for a moment, then shook his head and softened, the gentle smile returned. “All right, all right. This I will tell you: These show people are not men like you and I. There is something in their minds that is quite different. They live for fame and attention. They have no understanding of the true life. They are incapable of contemplating His plan.”

“All show people?”

“Yes”

“Even the Jewish ones?”

 “Especially, the Jewish ones.” He was expressionless for a moment, then laughed softly, placed his hand on Bloom’s shoulder and walked him toward the study door. “In the Talmud, if a man finds his father’s lost property and his teacher’s lost property, that of his teacher takes precedence. Although his father brought him into this world, his teacher -- who taught him wisdom -- brings him into the life of the World to Come. Fairstast?”

“I think I understand, Rabbi.” He did not, really. It’s water not fire, Bloom thought to himself again.

“Good. Then return to teaching, Louis. Resume your duties full-time. You will be at peace, believe me.”

*****

Coney Island was especially warm for an early March day. It had taken Bloom just over half an hour on the recently built elevated BMT subway line to reach Surf Avenue, and the entrance to Luna Park. The entrance was directly on Surf Avenue and Bloom craned his neck in search of Burt Savoy. People of all sorts bustled past him, and beyond the entrance the crowd mingled with one another on the promenade. Bloom waited for twenty minutes and still no Savoy. The principal thought he must have missed him in the sea of faces around him. But Bloom was determined to wait. Burt Savoy was too good a man not to keep his word.

“Hello, Dearie,” a voice called out from behind.

Bloom turned around to see a woman in a flowered print dress, smiling at him. At first he didn’t recognize her, yet the face was familiar. In an instant, stunned, Bloom, made a great whistling sound as he swallowed a gulp of air.

“Yes, it’s me. What do you think?” 

Bloom couldn’t speak.  “It’s okay, Dearie, I’m out for a promenade,” Burt Savoy said, pressing his hand on Louis Bloom’s arm.  The principal jumped back, ashen.

“Oh, come, come, Bloom, don’t be absurd. It’s a game we play, Brennan and me. Who can make the other laugh. He’ll show up and see me, and he’ll act as though nothing is out of the ordinary, as though nothing is different.  He won’t show a hint of emotion. He won’t give me the satisfaction, but eventually he’ll crack up . . . or I will. So don’t get all tussled, Bloom.”

Bloom was all tussled, and didn’t quite believe Savoy’s story, a man he thought he could trust.  All right, Savoy was a very tactile individual, but his touching and grabbing made Bloom extremely skittish.

“Well, where is he then?” the principal demanded.

“Who knows, I guess I’m not psychic after all. Louis, relax, consider me on stage”

“That’s fine for you, but I’m all new to this. And did it occur to you that’s the ocean there, the water?”

“I’m not going in for a dunk, Louis.”

“He never goes for a dunk. A bit too much lipstick, don’t you think? . . . Well, hello boys,” a neatly dressed man in a straw hat said.

“Ah, Jay, here you are. See Bloom, you have to admit this fellow has great timing. And you don’t know the half of it, Dearie”

“. . . Hello, Mr. Brennan,” Bloom said sheepishly.

Brennan gave Louis Bloom the once over, then looked over at Savoy.  He let out a rollicking laugh. “You win Burt, you always win.” He was still grinning. He came close to Bloom, looked straight at him. “You want this green pickle to be my setup man?”  Brennan placed an arm around both men and shook his head.

The clouds had rolled in so quickly no one really noticed. The sky became black. Bloom, for his part, was both embarrassed and angry, as angry as a mild-mannered principal was entitled to become. He grabbed Brennan’s hand from his shoulder and pushed it aside.

The last thing Bloom saw before the lightning strike was the look of surprise on Jay Brennan’s face. Lightning was quite unusual in March. Later, they said the principal lay on the ground for only a few minutes, but it seemed like hours to Bloom. He had felt the hair on his body stand upright, and a gust of something knock him to the ground. Not wind, mind you, but a force of energy that made him nauseous. His eyes bulged, and they said he scanned the emergency room in two discrete directions when he was treated at Coney Island hospital.

The principal was released late in the afternoon, pronounced in reasonably good health and told to rest for a few days. When he inquired about Burt Savoy and Jay Brennan, he was told matter-of-factly by the attending that they had been electrocuted instantly.

Bloom took to his bed for more than a few days. What had he done? Rabbi Singer was right. About entertainers. About fire. He had strayed from the path assigned to him. He had involved himself in depravity and had relinquished his responsibilities. Louis Bloom considered he had brought upon himself a catastrophe, and worse, a Holy wrath.

With this revelation, Bloom became a wholly religious man, an observant Jew. He spent time in synagogue and listened intently when Rabbi Singer spoke. The principal also contacted the education board. He told them he had been ill, was recently discharged from Coney Island hospital, and would resume his full-time duties at P.S. 20 in the following weeks.

It was close to the end of the term when Bloom returned. He confidently walked the halls of P.S. 20 as he had done for so many years before. He smiled at students and staff. He was resigned. And when he gazed upon those students who would soon graduate, it was not a look of pride, but of disdain. Who among them would sing at the gates of Heaven?





Henry F. Mazel has written for The New York Times, published a novel, Murderously Incorrect, as well as having written numerous stories and articles. His play, Life and Other Games of Chance was produced on Theatre Row in New York City. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America and The Mystery Writers of America.
His latest short story, Breakfast With Nattie, will appear in the Fall issue of Green Silk Journal

                                                The Seated Couple  
                                          By Rachel Luria                

Since this is their last Passover, Elliot performs the entire Seder, even though it is just he and Eva at the table. They sit beside each other and when they get to the plagues, he dips his fingers ten times and leaves the first stains on the tablecloth his mother gave them. With each plague he thinks of his mother. With each drop of wine, Elliot thinks of his father. The red specks on white remind him of his father’s eyes the night Elliot came home with a bloody nose.

Elliot had been an athlete. He played baseball and football and ran track. On a day that shone with the red and orange of fall, Elliot led his high school football team to an unchallenged victory against their most hated rival. Afterwards, Coach Smith held a party that lasted late into the night. When only Coach, Elliot and the offensive line remained, talk turned to the nature of Elliot’s last name. They said he was too strong to be a Jew. He didn’t look like a Jew. They threatened to make him prove it.            
Elliot threw the first punch but not the last. Only his best friend Benny’s return from a beer run broke the mood and saved Elliot. When he told his father what had happened, he asked what he should have done differently. What should he have done when told he didn’t look Jewish? His father replied, say thank you.    

They haven’t even finished the plagues and Eva knows already that Elliot will leave. As she watches the wine drop from her fingers Eva thinks of her parents. She thinks of the day her father died. She’d come home to find her mother sitting on the formal sofa, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her mother’s clothes were torn and the mirrors were not just covered but shattered. Little circles of red dropped from her mother’s fingers and blossomed on the knees of her pants.            

When Eva entered the room, her mother stood and took Eva in her arms. This is awful, she’d said. This is awful but the first night is always the worst. When Eva pulled away she noticed the way the stains on her mother’s knees had dried and looked brown in the sunlight. Only when Eva turned to leave did she notice that she too had a stain on her clothing. A crimson swirl from her mother’s finger stained Eva’s sleeve in the shape of a strawberry. Eva lifted her arm and brought the sleeve to her mouth.

They have finished with the plagues and the Seder is nearly over. Eva knows that when it’s done Elliot will leave. She knows that he will leave, but for now she keeps her hand on the small of his back and feels the rise and fall of his breathing. Elliot will leave Eva, but for now he feels her hand on his back and the sensation will linger on his skin for quite a while.


Rachel received her MFA in Creative Writing in 2006 from the University of South Carolina. She is currently an Instructor in University of South Carolina’s MFA program and PR and Marketing Coordinator for the university's Arts Institute. Her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Denver Syntax, and Down in the Dirt Magazine. Rachel's writing has received several awards, including having been chosen as a winner of the 2006 South Carolina Fiction Project and named a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction contest.

                          Four Questions, Three Languages  
                                      By Martin Lindauer


“Mah nishtanah...?”
“Fa voos is die nacht von Pesach...?” 
“Why is this night different...?  

My parents and I took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan’s lower East Side, a rare trip prompted by the Passover Seder at my grandparents cold-water flat on Delancey Street, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. 

As the youngest, I would say The Four Kashas, or Questions, in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, a trilingual performance that honored my family’s European heritage, demonstrated my competency in Cheder, Hebrew school, and showed-off my successful Americanization.  Zayda, bubba, and my parents understood Yiddish and read Hebrew, but hadn’t yet, as new immigrants, learned English. 

To enhance my linguistic prowess, I would not consult the Haggadah, the guide to the Seder, a feat of memory comparable to reciting by heart the introductory Brachot prayers before the Torah reading, a deed that, luckily, would take place two years from now at my Bar Mitrzvah.  I rehearsed my lines, accompanied by their sing-song lilt, while feeding sticks of wood into the bulky cast-iron kitchen stove that did double-duty by cooking the meal and heating the apartment. Fortunately, my recitation of the Four Questions was at the beginning of the Sedar, before the sweet wine, droning prayers, and heavy food made me too sleepy to remember my lines.  My parents watched me nervously, fearing I might mumble a word, miss a line, or switch the order of a paragraph.   “...but on this night we recline,” I finished with a smile as a flourish.  A perfect performance.  

Out of the corner of my eye I saw mom flash a look of approval and dad a nod of pride.  Zayda, though, was busy looking over the next segment of the step-by-step procedure, reviewing instructions, in Yiddish, in a yellowed Haggadah, and then reading aloud, in Hebrew, the prologue to the parable of the Four Sons:  rebellious, simple, ignorant, and wise. I followed in the English section of my Haggadah, my head buried in the translation, but stole a look at zayda as he read the section on the son who knew the meaning of the Four Questions.  Perhaps he would glance my way.



Martin Lindauer has published short fiction, essays, and memoirs in Ha!, The Jewish Magazine, New Vilna Review, Oracle, Poetica, The Short Humour Site, Slab, and several anthologies.  He has also published widely on psychology and the arts, including The Psychological Study of Literature (1975, Nelson-Hall), Aging, Creativity, and Art (2003, Springer), and Psyche and the Literary Muses (forthcoming 2009, John Benjamins).

In My Place
by Yael Unterman


Lights.

Klezmer music.

Roundtables laden with silver and white cloth, small candles, people'slaughing mouths smeared in lipstick and grease from fish on littlecocktail sticks. Carefully written place cards waiting impatiently in aside hall. I search for mine for several minutes before I find it underthe wrong letter. I take my orange juice and sit down at my table, withmenopausal women in little black dresses, rolls of fat dripping outfrom under their arms and garishly dyed auburn hair, who squawk theiropinions, while their beer-bellied alpha males laugh loudly and answerever-jangling cell phones.

I search around listlessly for anally against the gluttony and din. And then I find him. My old friend,my erstwhile soulmate, who had been the sole creative spark in awilderness of dulled eyes, a lone spiritual ember in a frozen wastelandof materialism.  This man, my college friend, a visionary in a fetidpuddle of grades and meaningless pieces of paper they claimed provedwisdom but were actually just letters: B and A; M and A; P, H and D.

Therehe sits.  Alone at a table, conspicuous, looking almost, but not quite,like a drunk who has wandered in by mistake, or the modern equivalentof the shtetl idiot or the court fool. But I recognize him immediatelythrough the scraggly ginger beard, the swinging thick sidecurls that,together with his domed white skullcap, make him look like a happypoodle dressed in an appalling cutesy outfit. His long, white coat isbroken up by the string wrapped around the middle; beneath are whitetrousers. His clumpy black shoes do not match the rest of his outfitand are scuffed beyond hope of rectification and repentance.

Hecatches my eye and smiles beatifically, as surprise is not the domainof the ones of faith.  As I approach him, a small boy with blond curls,sidelocks and a large skullcap runs up and tugs at his coat.  As thechild clambers up onto his father's lap, I say, a little shyly, "HiShmool."

 "Shalom, shalom!" he says. "Long time!"

"Long time," I agree, and venture, "So how's it going? Everything OK?"

Awide smile is reflected in eyes that seem to glance off this world atninety degrees. "Thank the beautiful Lord, every day, every day. Andyou?"

"Fine," I lie. "And Rachel and the kids?" Once again, Ifeel the air empty beside me, the ghostly clamminess of unborn loves. Iam a unit of one instead of three or five, awkward as the last rottentooth in a crone's mouth.

"We're very, very well," he says, hiscaressing hand moving in circular motions on his son's little crown."Aren't you, Lapidot? My Lapidot Elimelech?"

I cough on mydrink. That's some hefty name for a little boy. There is a shortsilence, as Shmool plays unconcernedly with his son's golden tresses.

I was never good at ignoring the naked emperor, and now I blurt out, "You've changed."

"Thankthe Lord. We all change every day," he says emphatically, stillsmiling, and his too small teeth remind me in a flash of our manyintimate conversations about life and its discontents. "Otherwise we'dbe dead," he added. He seems the same old facetiouspseudo-philosopher.  The same Shmool with whom I could always beabsolutely honest. Or is he? Has he surrendered our complex ponderingsfor a seductive simplicity?

I say, trying to keep my voicelight, "Yeah, but you've changed big time." I laugh awkwardly, andsuddenly experience the urge to flee. This is Shmool, the man Ionce considered my parallel universe; myself as a man, how I might haveturned out faced with other challenges, making other choices. But whatto make of this most recent choice, to join the fanatics, the craziesat the fringe of the religious spectrum? I feel threatened and hostile.Is he comfortable speaking to me, womankind, a vessel of boiling filth?I look at his eyes, to see if they are lowered.  To see if they slideaway from me. They look back in brown simplicity.

The bandstrikes up a merry tune. I realize that what I feel most is envy of hisoutlandish, anti-Western dress.  His uniform as a Servant of God. Andthe fact that he no longer cares; is no longer enslaved. Had he been awoman friend, donning drab, long-sleeved outfits, transformed into ahushed Victorian anachronism, I would have felt more alienated,contemptuous perhaps. But he, this man, seems to have allowed himselfto release a part of us that I keep caged, and it is now purring withinthose incredible curly peyos, wild bowl-shaped kipa, flying tzitzit and long coat. I envision him shouting and clapping to G-d like a meshuga, dancing in the streets, and my soul fills with a distant rushing, like a seashell remembering its beloved shore.

Shmool'sface suddenly seems dazzling, blinding, and I do not feel there is roomhere for both of us. I mutter "good to see you" to his warm smile, andI hurry back to my seat next to a thin young woman with peroxided hairand a cigarette, where I inhale her stale vulgarity with theresignation of an addict who declines rehabilitation.



YaelUnterman is an educator, lecturer, author and life coach living inJerusalem. She has published articles, book reviews, stories and poems,has performed her own original plays around the world, and has authoredan analytic biography entitled,  "Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and BibleScholar," due for publication in December 2008.