It was freezing that day in 1985 as Dan Rifkin and I walked up 57th Street in Brooklyn. We were supposed to turn right on either Avenue N or M, we couldn't tell which, because one of us—him—had folded the map so many times, it was impossible to read the streets in the crease lines. It was the winter break before our high school graduation. Neither of us had ever been out of Chicago, and we had Greyhounded to New York on a lark. It was all free time, but on this day we had a mission: Dan's mother had requested we visit Merle Katzman, the daughter of a family friend.
We walked up 57th debating whether there were more imported cars in Brooklyn or Chicago. I had said Brooklyn, and to prove my point—I'm sure to Dan's annoyance—I called out "Volkswagen," "Honda," "Nissan," each time more evidence accrued. Given the circumstances, one might have thought that at least some of our discourse would touch upon the woman we had been charged to visit: age, vocation, marital status, her own attitude about this parent-forced visit. But that would have required a different set of 18-year-olds.
We turned on N, because that came first, and when that proved wrong, we backtracked and turned onto M. The building in question was an almost comically narrow, two-story frame structure. The roof—squeezed to a tight point by the lack of lateral space—supported two antennas, one heavily leaning. Once we were buzzed in, we ascended a staircase through a paneled hallway with the mustiness of a carnival spook house. Merle Katzman awaited us in the doorway. She appeared about three years older than us, thin-boned, with taut cheeks and wide-awake eyes. She wore a loose, full-length garment. A shift? A pullover? What my aunts would have called a schmatta? I wasn't really up on the nomenclature of female attire.
Merle led us into the apartment, which opened directly into a combined dining and kitchen area. Dan and I were invited to sit while Merle moved about, slippers slapping the linoleum as she assembled cups, sugar, Lipton's Tea, and a prepackaged toast called zwieback.
"So how long have you been in New York?" she asked, smiling as she joined us. Her voice was a little on the high side, casual, but also lively, like someone who had never been bored and had little patience with reticence.
"Two days in New York, but only 20 minutes in Brooklyn," I replied.
"And you both go to the same school?"
"Hawthorne, North Side," said Dan.
"So, our mothers have talked—I'm sure you're aware of that—and my advance intelligence tells me that you're both about to graduate. Right?"
"Yes," I said.
"What temple do you go to?"
"Mah Tovu. Both of us," Dan replied, a tad too hastily. I knew he was not really a member, and his jumpy response had to do with his fear I would start crowing I was an atheist.
For the next few minutes, I let Dan handle the exchanges, my attention slipping, as they covered her mother's health, Dan's parents' health, bus travel, racial changes on the North Side, both sides carefully sidestepping any construction that might sound bigoted.
My attention returned when I heard Merle say the word yeshiva.
"No, I'm not considering yeshiva," Dan replied. "Right now, I'm just focused on starting Illinois in the Fall."
"And what about you?" she said, turning to me.
"Same thing. I'll be starting Illinois in Journalism next Fall."
"I'm sure they have yeshivas in Champaign."
That sounded a little pushy, but I knew better than to push back. And I didn't—at least not initially—a point I would later make clear to Dan. Instead, I took a bite of my zwieback—it tasted like melba toast—hoping the delay would create time for Dan to chime in and direct the conversation elsewhere. But he didn't.
"Do I sense some hesitancy on the topic?" asked Merle.
Crunch crunch, chew chew. Dan? Dan? "No," I finally replied. "I just don't want to sound rude."
"Why would it sound rude?"
"To be honest, I'm really not interested in yeshiva."
"That's okay. See, I didn't bite. But if you'll indulge me, I'm just curious why so many young men, like yourself, immediately take it off the table. You don't have to worry about offending me. I teach Sunday School, and I hear it all. I just like to collect opinions."
And that claim, too, would get tossed back to Dan. See, she was the one who opened the flood gates. I cannot pin down the moment of transition, but at some point, I heard myself asking her why an all-powerful God would have failed to stop the Nazi death camps. Or the cancers taking the lives of young children every day. And what if Einstein had spent his early years at yeshiva, instead of the institutions that prepared him to unravel secrets of the universe?
I received a kick from Dan on that one, and again when I added a few more. Merle responded to it all with an unrattled smile, indeed the smile of a Sunday School teacher patiently hearing out a willful brat. I was in mid-sentence when she abruptly raised a forefinger, as if to indicate the arrival of a thought. "You know what? I have a book that would answer almost everything you've been asking." She left the room to retrieve it, and because the debate had made her seem more attractive to me, I watched to see if the whatchamacallit she was wearing would change shape with her leg movements in any interesting way. She returned with a book sporting a blue and white dust jacket, titled Hail Joy O Youth! She pushed it into my hands, and with minor flipping, I could see it was an extended dialog between two people identified as Youth and Sage. Near the midpoint, I paused over a random sentence. "Young man, even Moses could be challenged by the Sages, but never when he spoke directly for the L-rd." I then passed it over to Dan, who also took in an excerpt—or pretended to—and after an interlude of deescalated small talk, declared, "Wow, this has been great, but I think we should be heading back."
"Did you really have to do that?" Dan asked as we walked back to the subway.
"I didn't push back, at least not initially. You heard her. 'Oh, I just like collecting opinions.' She was the one who opened the floodgates, relentlessly pushing her yeshiva. What was I supposed to say?"
Dan responded by playing both parts in a pretend conversation with his mother: "How did your visit go?" "Oh, it was great. We got into a heated argument about religion."
"Well, tell her I was the asshole."
"I don't think she would find that surprising."
Six months later I was packing for college.
There was a suitcase and there was a box. Items making the trip to Champaign were put in the suitcase. Those remaining behind were tossed in the box. Watching me was Trapper, our two year old Spaniel. "Ya know somethin's up, doncha boy? Ya know somethin's up."
At some point, the living room door flew open and my younger brother, Ethan, stomped through the foyer. "Holy shit, aren't we rid of you yet?" he said, smiling. "Anyway, here's a going away present." He dropped a thick, rectangular object to the floor. It was wrapped in brown paper, and upon further inspection, it was not from him, but was a package he had retrieved from the mail. Ten first-class stamps were lined up across the top, barely leaving room for the sender to squeeze in the Brooklyn return address. I tore off the wrapping—Trapper sniffing the scraps—and discovered a copy of Hail Joy O Youth!
There was also a letter:
Dear Mr. Ruben, (Or may I still call you Ira even though you're a grad?)
I enjoyed meeting you during your visit to New York last winter, and also our spirited debate.
Enclosed is the book we discussed. It does mean a lot to me, and I don't have much money, so please return it when you have finished. No rush, but I'm curious to know what you think.
Best wishes,
Merle Katzman
Great. Just what I needed. My normal inclination would have been to read one sentence and send it back, but with my train for Champaign leaving at 8:00 A.M. the next morning, there just wasn't time. I tossed it into my suitcase and vowed to deal with it later.
Champaign Illinois—Fall. My first season of higher learning essentially became the season of Adrienne. I met her in a required English Composition class, and caught her attention with a cute remark I made in response to the instructor's admonition about using possessives to avoid prepositions. "So, 'loaf of bread,' not 'bread's loaf,'" I said. The class laughed, but more importantly, Adrienne caught my eye with a flat-lipped smile.
She had dark, shoulder-length hair, a Mediterranean complexion, and a pinpoint birthmark on the swell of one cheek.
After two dates, we were making love, and this included a moment that has never left me—a glint in her eye the instant before I came. Pupil to pupil. Brainstem to soul. For one tick of the clock, it felt like she knew me utterly, as we took peeks at each other's core.
In time, I learned this was just one of nature's hard-wired illusions of love-making, and once a more grounded dynamic set in, I realized she was not as into it as I was.
One of the problems was she did not regard me as smart enough for her. She was a world literature major, a brilliant one, and though she would deny this was her yardstick, it did not help that I knew nothing of the schism between Byron and Keats, or that I often failed to get jokes, like the one she made about a movie we had just seen, saying, "So, was it just me, or did someone mix up the screenplay with the first chapter of Tom Jones?"
At one point she suggested I "might consider reading more," and even made me a list. Among the works included were James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, and Jack London's Martin Eden. Most men—normal men—would have considered this an affront, but I actually took it as a sign of hope. Her way of saying, "I can work with this."
One drizzly night on a study date, I made her a dinner of wild rice and stir-fry lamb. Afterwards, we sat on different sides of the living room, noses in separate books, very much like a tableau in one of my daydreams. At one point, I glanced her way, just to take in her sultry profile, when I realized to my horror that the book she was reading was Hail Joy O Youth!
"So, are you religious?" she asked, in a tone utterly void of judgment, but also dripping with it. I knew from television legal dramas that the best exoneration was always the truth, so I ran through a short version of Brooklyn, Dan, Merle Katzman, and Rabbi Solomon Zoller's book arriving the day before I left for Champaign. "Actually, I never read it. I brought it along to mail back, but just haven't gotten around to it." There was scant reassurance in her nod, but I was confident I had righted the ship.
A week later. I was halfway through Portrait of the Artist, and she smiled approvingly when I told her, "The man has a gift." But, on some level, even the most inveterate deniers know when they are kidding themselves. The most obvious tell—had I chosen to acknowledge it—was the imbalance in the way we absorbed each other's discourse. When Adrienne spoke of things literary, I listened with keen attention, even if it was only for fear of later saying something stupid. When I voiced my own miscellany, I often sensed a growing disengagement, as if her mind were tiptoeing elsewhere. Perhaps the most blatant example was a night when I treated her to dinner at Wolfgang's. Fork waving, I repeated a story I had read in Science News about a software firm in Palatine, Illinois, working on artificial intelligence. "They are trying to program a computer to converse in real time. They admit it wouldn't pass a sophisticated Turing test, but in one trial, seven out of the ten subjects thought they were speaking to a real person."
Naturally I was befuddled when she responded, "Well, there definitely has to be a two-state solution."
"PalaTINE, not PaleSTINE." I shot back.
She only stared at me blankly.
A week after Wolfgang's, I learned there was another gentleman in the picture, undoubtedly someone smarter than me, or more handsome, or both. And from her perspective, could I really blame her? Yes, we were at Illinois to learn, but wasn't it also understood we would be continually holding auditions for the perfect co-star in our sagas?
For two weeks I presented to the world in zombie mode, eyes downturned, shoulders slouched, sentences mumbled. Eventually, I recovered enough to commence some auditions of my own. Thus began a succession of monogamies, usually beginning with buoyant hope, cheap pizza, and passable sex. The average half-life was one to three months, and in retrospect, I can see that the seeds of failure were embedded in each of these from the start.
Margaret: too bossy.
Olive: more interested in women.
Mia: clinically depressed.
Flo: would only talk about Frida Kahlo.
Joyce: not smart enough for me.
I returned to my parents' house four years after I left. No one was home when I arrived except for Trapper, who was jumping out of his skin. My mother had left me a sandwich and also a rubber-banded pile of mail, mostly advertisements and notices of expiring subscriptions. Somewhere in the middle was a letter with a Brooklyn postmark.
Dear Ira Ruben,
I hope all is well. I have been trying to contact you for a long time, and finally received a letter from your friend Daniel, who gave me your address. I would really like to hear from you, so please write right away.
Have you read the book yet? Please write, I'm very anxious to hear from you.
Merle Katzman.
"Fuck," I whispered, in combined guilt and annoyance.
I wanted to believe I had simply forgotten, but was that entirely honest? Yes, I had known it was in my bookcase. And, yes, I repeatedly told myself I would deal with it, just not on any given day.
But, in a way, I did forget. For long stretches of time, between my studies and Adrienne, and the monogamies, the book was no more in my thoughts than the iron core at the center of the moon.
Okay, new vow: I would deal with it expeditiously, full-focus, once and for all—and if not immediately, first priority once I unpacked.
The unpacking occurred a week later in the studio I had rented on the North Side near the Sheridan L. Halfway through my four years at Champaign, I had changed my major from journalism to computer science, and with help from the Student Placement Office, managed to land a programming job with a company called Mid-City Communications.™
I loved the work. I loved the logic, the way you could solve most any problem with properly sequenced iterations of if-then-else. What I didn't love was my employer's raison d'etre, to cover the world with junk mail.
It was at Mid-City where I met Marti. It was at an all-staff meeting where one of the partners was waxing eloquent on their revised mission statement. When I heard her whisper "bullshit," she caught my smile, and a mutual nod framed the moment.
Two weeks later we were dating. Our bond was not just our disdain for the institution that paid our rents; it was humor, movies, openness, sci-fi, baseball. She was an avid Cubs fan but refused to watch the White Sox because of her hatred for the designated-hitter rule. In a few months, our social circle expanded to include enough mutual friends to allow us to gossip about them, and this deepened our bond even further. We could talk about anything, but two subjects we never broached were marriage and kids.
Nonetheless, just sitting in a room with her—not even engaging—could forge a feeling of hearth and home beyond anything I had ever experienced.
"Hey, Numb Nuts," she called out, one night as I sat reading the paper. It was her particular brand of humor to turn pejoratives into proper nouns, then saturate them in a marinade of affection. It took hold of me like an aphrodisiac. In fact, I was just getting hard when I realized she was holding my copy of Hail Joy O Youth!, which, dammit, I still hadn't managed to deal with.
"So, are you secretly religious?"
I repeated the tale of Merle Katzman, and Solomon Zoller's book arriving at the worst possible moment. I even showed her the letters.
"This is sweet," she said, eyes still regarding a page.
"Sweet? I was eighteen. She was trying to convert me. What was so sweet about that?"
"It was so well intended. She was trying to save you. How long have you had the book?"
"Four years."
"And you never responded?"
"No."
"Numb Nuts!"
"It's not like I intended this. I kept meaning to return it, but it just never happened. You know how things go when you're in school. I was a C student fighting for Bs. I had other priorities."
"Have you ever read it?"
"No."
"You will write me from Hell, won't you?"
"Look, I still intend to return it."
"You have to. It was an act of trust. And the book clearly meant something to her."
"Okay, okay, I'll take care of it."
"You better."
"Or what?"
"Sex strike."
"You wouldn't last a week."
She began to march back and forth in front of me, chanting: The people, united, will never be defeated. The people, united...
Of course, by then, it was not simply a matter of mailing back the book. How did I even know she still lived at the address on her envelope? The Internet was still years in the future, so I had to work with the available tools, and by the end of the week, I reported the steps I had taken to Marti over Buffalo wings at the Montrose Bistro.
"So, I called my friend, Dan, in hopes of getting a phone number, but his mother's friend has left the area, and they've pretty much lost touch. Next, I tried Directory Assistance. They had two Merle Katzmans in Brooklyn, different address, and after embarrassing myself twice, it was clear neither of them was our girl. Next, I'm just going to mail a letter to the last address I have, with a stamped, self-addressed envelope inside, and see what, if anything, comes back."
"Good. Stamp the inner envelope, too."
It was not like her to miss that I had just said the inner envelope would be stamped. For that matter, even the laconic "Good" was out of character. It was listless, perfunctory, the kind of thing you said when pushing for closure. Where was the exuberance of our previous talk? The people united... But throughout dinner, her mind seemed elsewhere, giving me flashbacks to those moments with Adrienne, when I sensed I was being taken no more seriously than a parakeet.
Finally, I had to ask, "Is anything wrong?"
She took a breath. "There's actually something I haven't told you."
"What?" I asked, shoulders tensing. She then proceeded to say two words that changed everything.
"I'm pregnant."
We got married in the Spring at City Hall.
Our first son was named Michael, the second Paul.
Michael was the scholar, Paul the athlete.
Michael won an honorable mention in a science fair by making it rain in a coffee pot.
Paul hit a double in his first little league at bat.
Michael was selected to read his speech on the chemistry of a burning candle on Public Radio.
Paul made the sixth-grade bully cry by punching him in the stomach.
Michael applied to Northwestern, satisfying the essay requirement with an imaginary panel discussion between all of Shakespeare's ghosts.
Paul saved the life of a fallen hiker in the Desolation Wilderness by administering CPR.
After Michael left for Northwestern, scholar that he was, I found his room in exactly the chaos I had expected. The waste can was stuffed with fast food wrappers, overflowing to the floor. Magazines were piled everywhere. No, not piled, as that would suggest an attempt at order. They were strewn, as if flung centrifugally from the ceiling fan, which I noticed was missing a blade. There was a flashlight. A golf club. Playing cards. DVDs out of their jackets. A scattering of takeout containers, their whiteness almost suggesting an intentional counterpoint to the black dresser tops they rested upon, a claim one might expect from a uniformed docent, if the room popped up in a museum. Then, sandwiched between a wicker laundry basket and the closet door, I saw it: my copy of Hail Joy O Youth! with a bookmark somewhere in the middle.
"I thought you were going to deal with that years ago," said Marti, once I presented my find.
"Well, let's just say things got a little hectic once the boys arrived."
"If he goes religious, I'll kill you."
From this point forward, Marti took over the "Find Merle" project. She opened an account with a Jewish ancestry site, known for its searching tools, and within 40 minutes, obtained a phone number. Merle's new last name was Abelson, and the phone number was in Tel Aviv.
We made the call from our bedroom at 2:00 AM when Paul would be asleep and it would be 10:00 AM in Tel Aviv. Marti sat propped up against the headboard, while I took the chair by the wall. With the phone on speaker, I punched in the international code, followed by the oddly formatted string of numbers. For six rings, nothing. Then click. Then a subdued, scratchy voice, saying the word, "Shalom."
"Shalom," I repeated. "Are you Merle Abelson?"
"Who is this calling?" The Merle I remembered was likely no more than three years older than me, but this voice had the granular, phlegmy quality of someone quite elderly. But getting stuck on that now did not seem the best way to begin.
"I'm Ira Ruben. I met you in 1985. You sent me a book, which rudely, I never returned."
"I'm Merle, but I don't know an Ira Ruben."
"It was in Brooklyn, with my friend Dan Rifkin. I believe his mother knew your mother.
"Dan Rifkin? Effie's son?"
"Yes. You sent me a copy of Hail Joy O Youth!"
"Hail Joy? Oh, God. That's you?"
"Yes. And I know the book is way overdue."
"You never sent it back. It broke my heart."
"I apologize. It was unforgivable. But I'd like to send it back to you now."
"No. Don't do tha-t." A weak cough broke up her final word, as if something glottal had constricted.
"Why not?"
"I don't need it. I have another copy. Did you read it?"
"In parts."
"Tell me one thing you learned."
The question zapped me right back to our 1985 debate. I spun my wheels for an answer—something, anything—but since I hadn't read the book, I had no chance. Then—and this almost made me a believer—the single sentence I had read in her apartment that day lit a flare from deep in my memory. It was there, but not necessarily retrievable... something about Moses... Sages... challenge...
"Even Moses could be challenged by the Sages, unless he was speaking for God."
"Good. Tell me another thing."
Okay, no more taking the bait. "Look, Merle, I don't think I'm going to pass a test like this. My failure to return the book, or even contact you, was inexcusable, and I'd like to make up for it in whatever way I can. Are you sure you don't want me to return it?"
"No. I told you—cough—I have another copy."
"Then how about I pay you whatever the original cost was in today's dollars, or should I say euros?"
"We use shekels in Israel, Mr. Ruben."
"Sorry, shekels."
"How did you get my number?"
"My wife found it on a Jewish ancestry site."
"Your wife?"
"Yes."
"So, if you've had this—cough —book, which I'm now gathering you haven't read in 25 years, why are you calling now?"
"I felt guilty."
"More guilty—cough—than you felt ten years ago, fifteen years ago—cough—nineteen? I'm still not understanding why today."
"This isn't some kind of scam, if that's what you're thinking. I did something wrong, over a long period of time, and I'd like to make it better the best way I can."
"I believe you're who you say you are. If I sound mean, it's not coming from the person I am today. I'm trying to speak honestly for the person you believe you're—cough—apologizing to, whose heart you broke, who you are probably picturing in your mind right now."
"Look, this isn't an excuse, but I'm just going to say it. A lot happened in those 25 years. I went through college, started a profession, got married, raised kids. For long stretches of time, the book was the last thing on my mind. But, I'll be honest, every now and then, I'd see it on my shelf and think, return it, jerk. Then, more time would pass, and I'd forget again."
"Did you ever get the second letter I sent?"
"I did."
"But you didn't answer it."
"That was wrong, too. I don't know what else I can do to make it right."
"You don't have to do anything, Mr. Rubin." A silence elapsed. Then she added. "You must be wondering why my voice is different from what you remember."
"Yes, I've been aware of it."
"It's because I have throat cancer, and it's difficult to talk. I have to get off the phone."
"I'm sorry. I'll let you go then. I just hope you will accept my apology."
"I'll do that, if you do just one thing in return."
"What's that?"
"Just don't think of your calling me as a mitzvah."
Click. Silence.
I glanced over at Marti, who returned my gaze and said, "Ouch!"
If my purpose in making the call was to lessen my guilt, it accomplished the opposite. Even through Merle Abelson was not much older than I was, my internal photoshop completed a much more elderly image: lined face, limp hair, desperate eyes, over the banner: YOU BROKE MY HEART!
The next night I sat in the living room watching the Cubs game with the sound off, while Marti tapped on her phone.
"Hey, Numb Nuts. Did it ever occur to you to look up Solomon Zoller on Wikipedia?"
"No. Why?"
"I think you'd agree that he has a fairly unusual take on the Holocaust."
"He's a denier?"
"Worse."
"How could it be worse?"
"He thought it was a good thing."
"Huh?"
"He believed European Jews needed to be curtailed from assimilating into Western culture and ignoring their Torah studies. Hitler was a kindness sent from heaven, to rectify their misdeeds."
"You're making this up, right?"
"No, and that's not all. When the Ohio National Guard shot four student anti-war demonstrators at Kent State, he sent a letter to the Commander congratulating him for knowing how to handle trouble makers."
"Let me see that."
"Wait. There's more. When Harvey Milk, an openly gay City Council member in San Francisco, was shot, he referred to the assassin as a "decent gentile."
"Woah!"
The next day I commenced some research of my own. Needless to say, he was not a favorite among mainstream rabbis. A rabbi on one site wrote, "If he had not fled Germany in 1938, assimilated or not, Hitler would have been happy to accommodate his trip to the camps." Another said, "He has sucked all the joy out of Judaism and replaced it with paranoid hate." But these were not the only views out there. On another site, someone described him as "one of the most influential rabbis of the 20th century." Another praised him for "straightening out the G-d-could-have-stopped-the-Holocaust canard once and for all." It was that kind of site.
The following evening. I learned something else about the book: it had collection value. On eBay, prices ranged from 700 to 2,400 dollars.
"Our copy is in excellent condition," I told Marti. "Maybe I should look into it."
"Don't you dare!"
"Why not?"
"Do you really want it recycled into the hands of someone who fetishizes that shit?"
"You're right. Maybe I'll just donate it."
"Same problem."
"So, how do I get rid of it?"
"Burn it."
"I'm not a book burner. That's what the Nazis did."
"Then dig a hole in the yard and bury it."
I didn't want to do that, either. The requisite actions would have too much resonance with planting a seed. Locked in indecision, I simply placed it back on the shelf, where it remained for a number of years—in fact, to this day. The retrieval was not happenstance. Today, my first grandchild was born. A girl. In the blink of an eye, she'll be learning to read, and because my track record for preventing the book's accidental discovery by others would seem to be wanting, I plan to turn it over to Michael, the proud father, assuming he will be a better steward. My first impulse was to finally burn it, but Michael persuaded me otherwise. "There may come a time when she is able to appreciate there is value in knowing there are people in the world who think that way," he told me. "It would be thanks to you, Dad. But we won't put that burden on her until she's ready."
