Kate Christensen - The Great Man

“I don’t want the truth to come out, Lila,” Maxine said. “I take my promise very seriously. Here I am at the butt end of my life, and having that known will make little difference to me now.”

Abigail sensed, or hoped she sensed, an effort in Lila and Teddy to turn their attention back to the topic at hand.

“Yes,” said Lila, “I respect that.”

“Well, I frankly don’t care one way or another,” said Teddy. “I’m here for another reason.” From her bag she pulled a small package carefully wrapped in white cloth.

Maxine stared at the package, then at Teddy. “The tefillin,” she said.

“You probably didn’t know it,” said Teddy, “but I’ve had them all these years.”

“I thought they got lost in the shuffle when Oscar died,” said Maxine. She stood up and went over to the kitchen counter and leaned on it with her head down. From the back, she looked to Abigail like a fireplug-shaped city bus driver or plumber.

“He left them at my house,” Teddy said. “My old house, twelve years ago, when his studio was flooded from upstairs. He said for safekeeping, but he never bothered to take them. When I moved, I took them along. But ever since he died, I’ve intended to give them back to you.”

“All this time, you had my tefillin?” Maxine said, turning from the counter and returning to her chair. She didn’t touch the package, but she looked at it again, there on the table in front of her.

“Yes,” said Teddy. “Oscar was so clear about not wanting you to have them. I was torn, but finally I decided that this was the right thing to do.”

“What are tefillin?” Lila asked, but everyone ignored her.

“He didn’t want me to have them because I’m a woman,” said Maxine. “They belonged first to our grandfather Avram Feldman, and then to our father, who brought them to America. Our father left them to me, but Oscar never handed them over.”

“He thought they should be passed down from father to son,” said Teddy. “He was sure his father had made a mistake, leaving them to you. Oscar would have given them to Ethan if he had thought that Ethan could understand what they were.” They all looked at Ethan, who appeared unperturbed by this news. “I brought them today to give them to you,” Teddy went on. “I would have done it sooner—”

“Then why didn’t you?” said Maxine. “It’s a little late now.”

“Well, why the hell is this my responsibility?” Teddy snapped. “It’s a long trip across the river, and Lila was generous enough to drive me, but I didn’t owe you a goddamned thing. I brought them today out of nothing but goodwill. These biographers have stirred up a lot of old silt, and I wanted to make things right. I should never have bothered.”

“What are tefillin?” asked Lila again. “I know they have to do with the Judaic tradition, but I’ve never been clear on what they are exactly.”

“‘And you shall bind them as a sign on your arm, and they shall be as frontlets on your head between your eyes,’” Abigail said.

“They’re the things Jewish men use to cut off the circulation in their arms so they don’t think about sex all the time,” Teddy said. She looked nettled by Maxine’s accusations, both implied and actual.

“Tefillin are holy,” said Abigail. “Jews wear them on their weaker hands and on their heads to remember their liberation from Egypt, to think of God, to stop lustful and sinful thoughts, to control and redirect those thoughts to spiritual matters. The making of tefillin is a complicated and mysterious process; the writing on them has to be perfect or the tefillin are invalidated, even if just one letter is too rounded or pointy. You can’t go to the bathroom or pass gas if you’re wearing tefillin. You have to be absolutely clean. These old family tefillin are sacred. If only Ethan could wear them.”

Everyone looked at Ethan. He studied the air in front of his face, calm and mute as a Nepalese mountaintop guru.

“Why couldn’t Ethan have them?” asked Lila.

“Because they’re mine,” said Maxine. “God fucking damn it.”

“That,” said Abigail. “And also he can never wear them because he can’t perfectly control his bodily functions and he can’t think of God, as far as we know.”

“There’s also my grandson, Buster,” said Teddy. “I mean Peter. He’s three. He happens to be another male descendant of Avram Feldman.”

“They’re mine for now,” said Maxine. “When I die, you can squabble over them.”

Teddy and Abigail looked at each other.

“You can meet Peter, if you want,” said Teddy. “He has a little sister, too.”

“Anyway,” said Abigail simultaneously, “it’s good you brought them and good Maxine has them now.” As she spoke, she heard what Teddy was saying, but pretended she hadn’t.

“I can’t accept this,” said Maxine. “Do you know my father left me nothing but those tefillin? And he left Oscar his prayer shawl. But Oscar took both. And my father left all his money to my cousin Fischel. Those bastards, it’s unbelievable.”

“And here you are, keeping Oscar’s secret for him,” said Teddy. “Makes you think twice, doesn’t it?”

Not looking at anyone, Maxine leaned back in her chair and shoved a hand into her breast pocket and brought out her pack of cigarettes. She shook one out, fired it up with a match, then shot a severe look at Teddy.

“How much do you know about Judaism?” she asked coolly, exhaling a diffuse cloud of smoke, inadvertently or not, in Teddy’s direction.

Teddy waved her hand to clear the smoke from her face. “Not much,” she said.

“Well,” said Maxine. “The signature I use on my paintings is the Hebrew for apikoros, a Greek word meaning ‘nonpracticing believer.’ We’re considered the worst of all the Jews. I don’t know about all those other apikoroses out there, but for my part, I don’t do the baruchas and obey the laws because they’re a big pain in the ass and I don’t have time for it. I do think Judaism is a good thing for the most part, except when it tips over into fundamentalism. And I am very disturbed that Oscar kept those tefillin from me.”

“Disturbed enough to tell the truth?” asked Abigail.

“Stop right now with the talk about Helena ,” said Maxine. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.” She tipped some nonexistent ash from her cigarette into the beige glass ashtray that sat in front of her, which was bristling with butts. “I don’t need to punish him for this. There are things about Oscar the three of you don’t know that I do and which I will take with me to wherever my ashes end up. I’ll just say: I knew my brother was a schmuck before the trouble over the tefillin and I’m choosing to keep my promise to him anyway.”

“What things?” asked Teddy, smoothing the front of her white blouse with one hand, slowly, as if she were caressing or comforting herself.

“Ask his old best friend, Moe Treitler, for one thing; maybe he’ll tell you, but I won’t,” said Maxine. “Katerina,” she called. “Come here.”

“One minute,” came Katerina’s voice from the other end of the loft.

Suddenly restless, wondering what exactly she was doing here, Abigail stood and made her way over to one of the old factory windows and looked out through the enormous, grimy panes of glass, inlaid with what looked like chicken wire. The sky outside was white with heat. She heard Katerina come into the kitchen area and say, “Maxine, that was Michael Rubinstein on the phone, asking when he can come and see what you’re doing.”

“Take these,” said Maxine, handing Katerina the unopened package of tefillin, “and put them in my safe. Tell Michael to come anytime. I have nothing to hide.”