It was a windy morning, but the wind was not cold. It swept up the hem of Candace’s skirt, showing her pretty legs, and she jumped around trying to contain herself, grappling with the cane. Willa came up and took his arm and together they entered the synagogue behind his wife. Walking with his daughter arm in arm, he imagined her future wedding day, and his eyes went misty. He couldn’t imagine loving anything more than this child, who had miraculously come into their lives and brought them such joy. He held her tighter, wishing that he could protect her somehow from the banquet of tainted delicacies that awaited her rapacious appetite. Of course, he knew he could not.
They entered the sanctuary and were ushered into a pew in the back and another congregant handed them each a prayer book. Rabbi Jonathan, the assistant rabbi, was standing at the pulpit. Rabbi Jonathan was young to be balding, and had a strong, reliable face. Other members of the congregation had told Joe that he was gay. He didn’t look gay to Joe, but people said he lived with his partner and that they had moved to the state of Massachusetts so that they could eventually get married. Jonathan had something of an old soul about him. With his squat, sturdy frame the young rabbi might have been a warrior in ancient times—Joe could easily picture him in one of those short white togas and sandals, wielding a shield that looked like a sledding saucer. He wondered if he’d played football in high school, and if he had, what it was like to play football if you were gay and Jewish. There had been few Jewish boys on the football team at his school, but that was a long time ago, things had changed; now you found Jews all over the place, on every conceivable team. There were even Jewish figure skaters, Jewish boxers. There were Jews who rode horses and raced cars. He wondered distantly if there were any gay race car drivers or gay boxers and he assumed that there were. Carlos, their horse trainer, was gay, of course. Joe had no quarrel with homosexuality, but he’d made a decision a long time ago not to produce gay movies. Often his films included scenes between two women or even three or four women, but that wasn’t really gay sex—and generally it was a device of titillation for men, not for women. Men liked watching a woman take it up the ass—anal was a requisite element of a good gonzo film. But the industry was changing. There were more and more amateurs getting into it, thinking they could produce decent compilations with a video camera—and they could get girls as long as they paid. They’d get the addicts, girls so addicted to crystal meth they’d do just about anything to get some— and they’d rent a big house somewhere and feed the girls drugs all weekend. It wasn’t the way Joe did business. They generally used contract girls. Most of their girls were reliable and were more into coke than meth. In the old days, it was mostly Italians making porn. But now there were squeamish Jewish lawyers who’d sidestepped into the business to get rich quick, and they did. They had. These days there was so much competition you had to be on the edge to stand out. The Internet had opened up the business to ordinary people who’d shoot home movies in their living rooms and try to pass them off as professional product, which pissed off the real professionals who followed the rules. The raunchier the better—that’s where the money was. It’s what the customers expected. His brother, Harold, who was fondly known in the business as the Shakespeare of Porn, had to rack his brain to come up with more and more violent scenarios. Harold lived in California, in Chatsworth, with his third or fourth wife, he’d lost count. Their father had died when they were in grade school. Born less than two years apart, they’d always been close. And they’d had to take care of their mother, always finding some kind of work after school. In high school, they’d both gotten interested in film, and then Harold, who was older, took a job working for Jimmy Salerno, who taught him everything about the business. Salerno was old-school porn and became a kind of father-figure, and when Joe graduated from high school, he started working there too. “It’s like any other business,” the old man had told them. “No different than selling shoes. You’ll see.”
Eventually, they scraped up enough money to buy the old man out, and the rest was history. It took them a few years to get going, but once they did, rivers of money poured in. Rivers, lakes, an ocean. It was almost too much to believe. They opened stores all over the country that sold adult product, videos and sex toys—that’s where they’d made their money—and they’d built a reputation and people trusted them. In high school, Joe had dreamed of being a film director, but once he’d stepped into the swampy waters of porn, there was no getting out.
People in the Berkshires didn’t know what he did for a living. The truth was he and Candace shared it like some forbidden addiction. It sustained their lifestyle, but like every kind of dependency known to man, it had certain requirements and secrecy was one of them. Not even Willa knew. Like everyone else, the rabbi thought he made commercials and had no idea that a huge portion of the funding for the new temple had come from him, which when you boiled it down stunk of pussy. People liked to degrade the porn industry. From time to time, he’d stumble upon a conversation about it at a cocktail party, knowing all along that the naysayer likely had a stash of vibrators at the ready, or crept down to wank off in front of the computer when all the kiddies were sleeping. But Golding had made his peace with it—he used to care, but not anymore—well, not really. It was why he and Candace had moved up here in the first place—where nobody knew them—where they could buy their freedom and a life for their daughter. People liked to believe that porn was a deranged pastime expressly reserved for perverts, but Golding’s wealth had proved otherwise. Like a cure for the common cold, he and Harold provided ordinary people with a remedy for lackluster romance—bad sex. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? In his opinion, unique was the marriage with long-lasting eroticism. People needed to shake things up once in a while, and plenty of people did just that. In fact, to his and his brother’s amazement, their hottest-selling title last year was a movie about a transvestite and the highest percentage of viewers turned out to be straight men.
He suddenly thought of Claire Squire—the feminist—and scoffed out loud. Feminists. Uptight bitches. They used to show up outside his studio in Chatsworth with their picket signs—as if shutting down the multibillion-dollar industry was even a remote possibility—and even if they did shut it down, there’d still be a plethora of women with the decency to offer their bodies for the good of mankind. And most of them weren’t complaining. The women who performed in porn films were a spectacularly complicated breed of female; they didn’t mind getting their butt spanked for eighty grand a year, plus benefits.
He looked over at his wife, and then at Willa, who waved to a group of friends sitting across the aisle. Rabbi Jonathan signaled for the congregation to rise and they all stood together while he opened the ark. The gold doors opened, revealing the luminous chamber where the Torahs were kept. The rabbi held the Torah in his arms like a small child and said a prayer in Hebrew and they all stood there watching him, three or four hundred of them, waiting for him to open the sacred scroll.
19
Candace tolerated going to temple for Joe and Willa’s sake, but she may as well have been watching the Home Shopping Network. She was not moved; she did not feel exalted. In truth, she had little faith in religion. Her foster parents had raised her as a Catholic and she had tried very hard to love Jesus, but she did not think that He had loved her back.
She’d grown up in East Orange, New Jersey, in a two-family house on Willow Avenue. Her foster father worked at the Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery in Newark. With only one car, they’d have to pick him up every night after work, driving down South Orange Avenue in the old station wagon. They would sometimes have to wait, parked at the curb, and while her foster mother fixed her makeup in the rearview mirror Candy would look out the window. Sometimes the door was open and you could see the men inside, lining up to punch out. They’d smile or crack jokes or light cigarettes. It was good to work, she surmised, it was something men did. She would put her head out the window and look up at the gigantic brown bottle on top of the building,
with a shiny blue ribbon on its gold label. Driving home, there were things she noticed: black men on the corners on broken chairs, just sitting and smoking or sometimes playing cards or maybe drinking out of brown bags. Her foster father would shake his head at them, complaining how awful pleased they looked to be sitting around doing nothing and wasn’t it a fine thing, but Candy didn’t think they looked pleased at all, and over supper he’d complain some more about it until the plates nearly quavered with hate.
They made her go to church. She had the one dress, even though it had grown too tight, and Mary Janes that gave her blisters. Her foster mother would yank a comb through her hair, complaining about the knots, and then tug it back in a pony tail with an elastic band. She’d cover the elastic with a red ribbon that she kept between the pages of the Bible, where it stayed clean and flat. The church was the prettiest building in the neighborhood. It had a bell tower and Candy liked the sound of the ringing bells as they walked down the sidewalk. Pigeons lined up on the ledge like old ladies in gray kerchiefs, gossiping. Inside, the ceiling went all the way up to heaven, and it was painted exactly like the sky, with clouds and angels. The paint was chipping off and sometimes she’d see pieces of it in people’s hair or on their shoulders, like little pieces of heaven, and when the sun poured through the colored glass their faces turned yellow. Sitting between her foster brothers in her too-short dress, her pale thighs sticking to the pew, she always felt like a charity case—the way people looked at her, their eyes hollow with pity. The boys would shove her back and forth, from one shoulder to the other— baby, baby, stick your head in gravy—stifling laughter, and she was the one who got in trouble. They were cruel, hateful boys. At night, they held their dirty hands over her mouth. They threatened her if she told. Once, they blindfolded her and marched her into the woods behind the junkyard. They dug a hole while she waited, trembling, in her nightgown, and then they took off the blindfold and showed it to her. “We’ll put you in here if you tell,” they said. From down in that grave, she could remember looking up at the trees and wondering if Jesus could see her. The trees stretched their long black branches out, making a canopy—a chuppah she thought now, like the one she’d been married under. Only, where was Jesus then? He had seen her down in that shallow grave, and He had seen the boys with their guilty hands, but He had done nothing to help her.
By the age of twelve Candace had had enough of Jesus.
Years later, when Joe had asked her to marry him, she agreed to convert. It was the least she could do for him; he had saved her life. In her mind, she thought if she devoted herself to Judaism, God might finally take an interest in her. Although Joe was a reformed Jew, Candace was so determined to feel Jewish that she elected to have a mikvah. She had wanted so desperately to be clean, to clean away her past, and she prayed (like a good Catholic) that the bath would purify her so that she could begin a new life, nascent as an infant.
But you couldn’t really start over. That was a huge, modern lie invented by talk-show hosts. Sure you could change things that improved your life, but all the bad stuff lingered. It lingered in your body, compromising your organs. It lingered in her still.
For Joe, she had done her best to become a good Jewish wife. She wanted to make him happy and if it meant lighting the candles every Shabbat, and inviting his brother, Harold, for Passover every year, so be it. Joe’s brother, Harold, who’d bring his latest wife—Sigourney was his fourth—no children, thank God—and stay for too many days afterward, complaining about what the matzo was doing to his stomach. Harold, who pinched her ass whenever he got the chance, or cornered her in the kitchen, her hands trapped in oven mitts, gazing longingly down the flushed V of her cleavage. When she’d first met the two brothers, they were gangly, handsome boys from Queens who’d backed their way into the “film business” through a family friend. She could remember meeting their mother for the first time in their tiny apartment. The mother, whose name had been Ella, was the kindest woman Candace had ever met. On their first evening together, Ella took Candy into her bedroom and gave her a gold locket—Candy still had it. Ella had cooked stuffed cabbage and served cream of mushroom soup from a can. It was one of the most memorable meals she’d ever had.
The rabbi motioned for them to sit down and she was glad, her Manolo Blahnik’s were killing her. As the women in the pew in front of her sat down, smoothing their dresses and skirts to keep them from wrinkling, they glanced back at her and nodded solemnly; Candace nodded back with equal solemnity. People knew who she was. They knew they had money and plenty of it and sometimes that was enough. None of them would guess that Joe and Harold were among the top-grossing porn producers in the country. Who knew? her husband had said once when the money started gushing in. Neither Harold nor Joe had ever guessed they’d be so rich.
The small choir began to sing. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer . . .
People wanted to be redeemed, she thought. Everyone did. We’re only human.
Willa nudged her and offered her a LifeSaver. This was the part she liked best about being in temple, sitting next to her daughter for an hour or two without her running off like usual to be someplace else. Just sitting there together. It was lovely. Candace admired her daughter. She was bold, stylish; she had a way about her. Candace liked to think that, as her mother, she’d had something to do with it.
Willa gathered her tallit around her shoulders, pushing her hair over to one side so that it undulated like fire down her arm. Over the years, her hair had darkened and it was full and thick. Candace glanced at Willa’s face as she sang a prayer in Hebrew. Her voice was sweet and fine—it made Candace proud. Unlike Candace, her daughter didn’t question her faith. It was simply a trait, like her hair or her long tapered fingers. It belonged to her. Gratefully, Willa didn’t seem overly concerned about her biological roots, but Candy sensed it wouldn’t last. As her daughter grew older, she would want to know more. It was only natural. They had told Willa that her birth parents had been young and unprepared to raise a child, and they’d answered her questions when she had them, but Candace knew it might not be enough. On the day Willa came into their lives, her biological father had handed Candy an envelope. This was after the mother had died, after the coroner had taken the body away. To this day she could not remember the man’s name—she’d blocked it out—but he’d sat out in the car for over an hour. At the time, Candace had worried that he’d changed his mind. Eventually, he came to the door holding an envelope. “I wrote this for her,” he’d said. “Give it to her when she turns sixteen. She’ll probably need it by then.” He’d looked at her, a young’s man’s face that was already old. “Will you do that?” She’d promised that she would.
But she hadn’t. Willa had turned sixteen last November; she would be seventeen in less than two months.
Although she’d wanted to, she’d never opened the envelope. Instead, she and Joe had put it in the safe and tried to forget about it. And for a long time they did. Willa was such a good, sweet baby, an easy baby, and those first few weeks Candace rarely put her down— Joe had to coax the infant out of her arms. In her happiness, Candace decided that perhaps there was a God after all. He had finally come around for her, and this child, this miracle, was His apology for all those years she had suffered.
Early in their marriage, when they’d tried to conceive, Candace had somehow known it wouldn’t happen. As a result, their intimate life was overshadowed by a burgeoning sense of failure. They went to doctors, a fertility specialist, even an acupuncturist, but none of it worked. In her mind, she believed it was her own fault. God was punishing her for her past. The films she had made for Joe, although they were few, and the awful things that her foster brothers had done to her, when she was still a child. In the great court of heaven, God had deliberated the evidence, then pounded his gavel and cried: Your womb is a gutter! A gutter full of dirty things! Your womb is not suitable for an infant!
&n
bsp; Then a friend of Joe’s, an adoption lawyer, heard about a baby out in California. The lawyer’s brother was a doctor in an AIDS clinic— miraculously, the baby showed no signs of having the disease. They deliberated and Joe convinced her. Arrangements were made; the birth parents requested to drive the infant there themselves—it was highly unusual—generally there was a third party—but, considering the mother’s ill health, they agreed to it. Since the baby was already three months old, Joe and Candace promised to keep her name. Candace could remember borrowing the Willa Cather book from the library and reading it through the night without stopping. After she’d finished it, she’d decided that she liked the idea of the child being named for a woman with a powerful voice and even now it pleased her whenever she spoke the name aloud. It had happened so fast, so suddenly. One day they were childless, the next day they were not. They’d rushed out to buy a crib, a car seat. Tiny little clothes. Musical toys. She had wandered the aisles of the baby store with the light-headed fascination of an astronaut on the moon.
It had rained that day. When their car pulled up, she’d run out with an umbrella, her feet getting soaked. She didn’t care—she would walk a thousand miles in the pouring rain just to have that child in her arms. Her love for Willa had already bloomed. It had stretched out inside her like some kind of beautiful flower. But still, in those first moments after they’d arrived, in the time it took to get to their car, she felt completely alone, more alone than she’d ever felt, and consumed with doubt. She didn’t know if she could be a mother, if she could be this child’s mother. She was terrified. Joe had come up behind her and she could hear him saying something to her, muttering instructions, and there was the shock of the white sky and the awful rain and the strange car in their driveway and the shadows up front, where the woman sat, unmoving. And then the door opened and the man got out, stretching like it had been a long drive, and he gave Candy a little wave, unconcerned about the raindrops splattering on his forehead and running down his face, and then wordlessly, stoically, he took the infant out of the car and brought her up under his chin the way you’d hold a kitten, as if he was breathing her in for the very last time. And then he handed her to Candace and she felt this warmth—a feeling so strong it was like the breath of God pushing through her, and she knew, right then, that it was meant to be.