Stanley Elkin: The Rabbi of Lud

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.”

“Thanks,” I said, “that won’t be necessary.”

“You’re not offended? I didn’t offend you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Hey, just because old Cupid stings my toches with his arrows I think all blood is boiling. I shouldn’t be that way. I’m too romantic.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

“Yeah?”

“Certainly.”

“Miriam and I are delighted you came. Rabbi and Shelley,” he said gravely, “and only hope that this weekend will be as memorable for you as I know it’s going to be for us.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

“Thank you,” Jack Perloff said. “Coming from a rabbi, I’m going to regard that as a blessing.”

“That’s how I intended it.”

“Thank you, Rabbi.”

“Jerry, Jack.”

“Jerry,” he corrected. “Hey, I almost forgot,” he said, and opened a door next to the desk. “It’s our hospitality suite,” he said. “It’s for the wedding party, but I want everyone to feel free. Mi casa, su casa,” he said, and just then we heard his intended in the hall.

“Knock, knock,” Miriam said in the open door.

“Hi there, sweetheart.”

“Just a minute,” she said, and moved a foot or so back out into the corridor. “On the count of three,” Miriam called down the hallway. “One!” Jack stepped up to a door at the side of the television set, and turned the little whoosis in its round, recessed fitting. “Two!” she proclaimed. “Three!” she sang out. Jack opened the connecting door and, on their side of the wall, the Picklers did the same. Rose Pickler stood at the threshold between our two rooms. “Hi, stranger,” Rose, grinning, greeted Jack, “how you doin’?”

“Come here, Miriam,” Jack Perloff said, “will you just look at this, will you?”

Shelley and Jack and Miriam and I crowded around the connecting doors. Through some repeated suite, double, double, suite arrangement peculiar to the hotel, we could see down the entire length of rooms. I looked past Rose and Will Pickler in their room, and Al and Naomi Shore in theirs, beyond the Iglauers where Elaine held her rose, and beyond Ted and Sylvia Simon to where, at the distant end of the queer railroad-flat configuration, Fanny was handing Joan Cohen a piece of complimentary fruit.

And that’s how I saw her.

And later, after dinner, in Perloff s hospitality suite, where we had gathered to shmooz and tell jokes, to play cards and listen — and some of us dance — to the music on the FM, and watch the lights of downtown Philadelphia, and pick from the bowls of nuts, and nosh from the platters of food Perloff had had sent up (not so much without appetite or edge as somehow ahead of it), and drink from the bar he had stocked, lying about, secure, lulled by the movements of the ladies, by the sweet, soft music of their commentary like a kind of vocalizing, brought back to some ancient, lovely treehouse condition, that’s how I saw her, too. Then, later, after Perloff had left with Miriam, and some of the others, tired out, had mumbled vague good-nights and gone back to their rooms (actually too tired to leave the hospitality suite, too tired or too reluctant, and choosing the shortcut, returning through the inner corridor, through our rooms, through the Picklers’ and Shores’ and Iglauers’ and Simons’), and then a few more did, and then the rest, until, deep in the dark Shabbes, neither of us speaking and the volume turned low, only Joan Cohen and I were left to watch the X-rated movie when it came on at three.