Paradise Park

  When you’re young you get to be, in your own mind, at least, the star and ingénue. But then there is that moment when all of a sudden you’re too old for the part. And you know, because of the way people treat you. The way they look, or rather, don’t look at you. You aren’t in the center anymore; you’re off to the side. You aren’t the dancer. You’re the teacher. Because you have to be a character actor now! And you just aren’t prepared for that. It’s just a shock. You never needed any character before. I was relieved to be done, it’s true, but just so humbled by the experience, not only from dancing with seven sacks of potatoes, but from connecting so intensely with the sack of potatoes inside of me, with just my out-of-shapeness and my age, not being twenty anymore, not being spun by young men, not being anymore even in the same vicinity as those people who could leap in the air.

  Afterwards I ripped off my costume—literally—since it hurt squeezing my head out through that neck hole. I changed into my shorts and T-shirt and put on my rubber thongs. I couldn’t even see straight. All I wanted was to go home.

  On the way to the bus stop I ran into this couple in costume, dressed like Hasids from Jerusalem. The guy had on a black hat and a beard and a white shirt and black trousers and black dress shoes, and, to top it off, one of those long frock coats with the black silk-fringed sash around the waist. The girl had on a long-sleeved dress and white stockings and pumps. The works. “Cool,” I said, because having been to Jerusalem I could appreciate their authenticity.

  “Shalom aleichem,” the guy said.

  “Aleichem shalom,” I said back, which was the reply I’d learned from Torah Or.

  The two of them lit up. “You see?” the guy said to the girl, as if to say, I told you she would understand.

  Then I saw, all of a sudden, they weren’t just a couple of kids dressed up, they were the real thing, a Hasidic couple in Honolulu.

  “My name is Dovidl,” the guy told me. “This is my wife, Ruchel.”

  I looked out at them from the middle of my deep blue funk. His wife? How old was this character? Seventeen? “Are you visiting from Israel?”

  “No, no,” Ruchel said, “We live here. We’ve been here six months.”

  “We came from Crown Heights. We’re Bialystokers,” Dovidl explained.

  “You’re from what, Bialystok?”

  “We are not personally from Bialystok. That was the seat of our rebbes. Now we are here to start a CHAI house in Honolulu.”

  “A CHAI house?”

  He nodded at me. “So we could bring Yiddeishkeit to Honolulu.”

  His brown beard was curly, like a spaniel’s ear. And she had bobbed hair, which must have been a wig, and sunglasses pushed back on top of her head. They stood there together all covered up in black and navy blue, in these throngs of T-shirts and shorts and midriffs and bare legs. And they were telling me all about how they were sent out from their rebbe (whose seat was now in Brooklyn) to set up house here in the islands, as emissaries of religious Judaism, and they’d just arrived, and they were renting a home in Manoa Valley near the university. “I’ve been here before,” Dovidl said. “When I was single I came to help with the shul for Yom Kippur services. That was how I got the idea.”

  “The idea to live here?” I said.

  He gestured at the trees and the mynah birds squawking and picking at the crumbs on the ground. The blue sky was shining down on us, and a fresh breeze was blowing. It was just the same kind of day that had so amazed me when I first came to Hawaii. “This is like Gan Eden!” Dovidl said. “The Garden of Eden!”

  “You’ll come by us for Shabbes?” Ruchel asked.

  So I guess then a new seed was planted in me, but I didn’t know it. I hardly believed in seeds anymore. If I did see one I thought the worst of it. Whereas before when I was so naive I assumed just about any stray idea could possibly turn into a gorgeous flowering shrub, now I’d think—Well, you never know. It could just as well be a haole koa—a weed that starts out as small as a dandelion and then grows and grows, and its stem hardens and the thing puts down taproots deep into the soil, tunneling into swimming pools or any underground pipes it can find, and sprouts ugly branches and turns into a tree which you then have to pay serious money to get removed.

  But a few weeks later, when I was at The Good Earth grocery shopping, I ran into my old friend Fred from Rabbi Siegel’s class, and Fred told me that he had actually been going to the CHAI class, to their services and all, and they served these unbelievable lunches afterwards. Like five-course meals of unbelievable food. And they did have classes there every week, which Dovidl taught, since he was a rabbi, but they were completely free and open to the public and were on Jewish thought— not just the rules of Judaism but on the mysticism of the religion, and at the classes there was more food. He said, “You should go, Sharon.”

  “Nah.”

  “I thought mysticism was your cup of tea.”

  “Nah, I’ve sworn off all that stuff.”

  “How come?”

  “Just some really bad rides, Fred.”

  “You can really learn a lot about the divine presence in the world.”

  “Yeah, well,” I muttered, “I’m just feeling like I’m a little too old for all that shit.”

  Fred looked confused. “I’m surprised at you, Sharon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you seem so bitter. I never had you pegged that way.”

  “I’m not bitter!” I protested. “I’m not bitter at all. I’m just settled within myself.”

  “Oh.” Fred was really a very sweet guy. “Well, that’s a good way to be.” And he headed off to the bulk grains.

  “Fred. By the way. How old are they?”

  “You mean the rabbi and the rebbetzin?”

  “Yeah, I wondered, but I didn’t want to ask.”

  “They’re twenty,” he said. “Can you believe it? And they’ve already been married a year.” “Geez.”

  “I know!” Fred said. “When I was twenty I barely knew what planet I was on!”

  Something stirred in me when he said that. Nostalgia mixed up with regret. Not that I regretted where I’d been when I was all young and twenty, but that I couldn’t be twenty anymore. And maybe I was bitter now that I was older. I’d just turned thirty-four. Maybe I was getting kind of set in my tracks—so afraid of sticking my neck out to try anything I was turning into some kind of hermit woman. Some kind of cat lady, without even any cat. So I felt Fred’s question. I mean, had I become that conservative? Had I changed so much that I clung to even the most tepid boring equilibrium? All that day and the next my imagination kept piping up, all curious and spurious. “Whatsa matter, scared? What’s wrong with you?”

  “No, I am not scared. It’s not about being scared!”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I’m at a place right now—”

  “You’re no place right now!”

  “Shut up!”

  “No, you!”

  “You!”

  “YOU!”

  So then I would be quiet and my imagination would be quiet for a moment, too, until a little later in the day I’d hear, “How come you never go anywhere anymore? How come you never want to do anything anymore? How come mysticism isn’t your cup of tea? I want some tea.”

  “You just want to poke your head inside every door you can….”

  “Yeah! I wanna go see! I wanna get some free stuff! Free food! Free food!” And this would go on and on, that little voice inside of me, that little imp, even at this late date not completely cured from that idea I could get rich (spiritually speaking) quick. Almost just to shut myself up, I went to the CHAI house for the first time.

  DOVIDL and Ruchel lived in a rented tract house with a lot of white walls and a bare parquet floor. There were just a few sticks of furniture, a couch and armchair, and against the wall, a few tall bookcases full of Hebrew books. When I came Saturday morning, they had the living room set up with around twenty folding chairs and a tall screen d
own the middle to separate the men from the women. They had prayer books with Hebrew and with English, but they were different from the ones I was used to from Torah Or. They were big and fat and full of prayers I’d never seen before. Dovidl started up chanting the preliminary songs, but it took a long time for the service to get rolling, because although we had ten people if you counted me and Ruchel, they were waiting for a ninth and tenth man. So that was a little bit offensive, but I kept quiet, since I’d come purely to observe. Eventually Fred showed up, and then, lo and behold, Betsy Sugarman appeared along with her husband, Dr. Sugarman. With Fred and the doctor, Dovidl had his ten males, so he started steaming ahead. Since, of course, he knew Hebrew, and the service was all in Hebrew, Dovidl did the whole thing, the singing, the chanting, the reading from the Torah. Everyone followed along, while Dovidl announced the page numbers as he went—but he directed his voice toward the men’s side of the room. I sat on the other side with Ruchel and Mrs. Sugarman, who had a look of resignation on her face, a look of He-Made-Me-Come-Here, My Husband. She had a round lace doily pinned onto her hair.

  The service was around three hours long, and for me it would have been even longer if during the silent parts I’d stood and sounded out every single Hebrew word to myself as I used to at Torah Or; but I didn’t bother. I just sat and daydreamed. My eyes wandered around the room, and I kept staring at the two pictures Dovidl and Ruchel had up on the wall. One was a big photo of an old rabbi with a white beard, and a smile on his face, and underneath it, pasted right up on the wall, was a shiny copper penny. The other picture was an even bigger photographic portrait, maybe three feet tall, and it was in a fancy gilt frame, and was an almost life-size wedding picture of Dovidl and Ruchel, he in his black frock coat and with his silky beard, and she in a white high-collared wedding gown all covered with lace, and her brown eyes glassy like a doll’s.

  When Dovidl finally wrapped everything up, we all folded the chairs and the screen as well, and Fred and some of the other guys brought in two long tables from the other room, and we all helped out setting them with white tablecloths and real china, cloth napkins, wineglasses, and silverware. Dovidl raised his silver wine goblet and sang the blessing over the wine, and we all had some. We washed our hands in the kitchen with a two-handled silver cup, pouring the water over one hand at a time, and we filed back to the table, and Dovidl said the blessing over two loaves of challah, and we all had pieces. And then we had chicken soup with real pieces of chicken floating in it, and pieces of carrot and celery and matzo balls. And Ruchel, who all of a sudden I noticed looked quite pregnant, brought out two platters, one with roasted chicken with stuffing, and yams on the side, and the other with brisket of beef, sliced on a bed of onions and stewed tomatoes. It was rib-sticking Mainland food in Manoa in the summer, but you couldn’t stop yourself from taking more. It was like Thanksgiving. Just about when you thought you were completely stuffed, along came these desserts, which were bundt cakes with

  vanilla and chocolate swirled, and a lemon glaze. I didn’t mean to be a pig, but now here was this table spread before me, and the food was so good, I couldn’t help it. My mouth and stomach opened wide. My hunger was huge! I downed a couple of pieces of cake, before I even realized that Dovidl was telling a story. He was standing up at the head of the table and talking, and as he talked, he was swinging one end of the black silk sash he wore around his black frock coat, so the black silk fringe was swishing around. And he was telling this story in that slight Yiddishy accent he had.

  “Once upon a time there was a town that had no watchmaker. Watches and clocks of all kinds the people had. Yet their watchmaker had long ago passed away. There was no watchmaker, and also there was no one in the town to fix the watches when they broke. The people of the town had to wait for the traveling watch repairman to come to them to take care of matters like these. Well, usually the repairman came every year. Every year he came to see the watches. But all of a sudden one year he didn’t come. So all right, he’s busy—next year he’ll be here. But the next year he didn’t come either. The next, and the next. What should the people do? They had no one to help them with their watches or their clocks. Some showed this time, some showed that. Matters were growing more and more confusing! The proper time was already a thing of the past! At last, after ten long years, the watch repairman arrived. ‘What took you so long?’ the people asked. ‘What was keeping you?’

  “He said, ‘Nu, all right, show me your watches.’

  “The people lined up, one hundred in line, to bring him all the watches and the clocks and every timepiece they had. The repairman put his jeweler’s glass up to his eye. He got to work. What do you think happened? Some of the watches he fixed right away. A little of this and a little of that. A few turns here, a few screws there. Done. Those watches belonged to people in the town who wound them up every day, and polished them every night. When they had a little problem, the owners fixed it as best they could. So, at the end of ten years, a little alignment, a little tune-up, was all they needed! But some of the other watches in that town. They were another story. The repairman opened them up. He looked at them. “Oy vey! They were going to need major surgery.” Those watches belonged to people in the town who did not wind them every day, and did not polish them every night. When those watches had a little problem, the owners said, forget about it. This is too hard for me to fix. Let it sit in a drawer, let it wait for the repairman to come. And the watches sat in a drawer and they grew rustier day by day, and they grew slower, and then finally they stopped!

  “Now imagine that the people in the town are you and me, and their watches are their Yiddishe neshamas, their Jewish souls. And imagine that the repairman is the Moshiach, the Messiah we are waiting for and expecting to arrive any minute! The question for us is—should we be those people who give up and say let my neshama sit in a drawer, let my soul wait until the Moshiach arrives? Or should we be those people who keep after it and polish and wind every day? That is the question we should be asking….”

  Ruchel was passing around more cake, and tea with lemon, and booklets with songs printed in Hebrew and English. But you know what I was doing? I was crying. It wasn’t just that the food moved me, although it did. Or the songs—which I didn’t know. It was the story suddenly hitting me all at once. Because it reminded me of my watch, the silver one I used to have, that I’d inherited from Grandpa Irving, and that had been like my lucky charm, and that I’d brought with me all the way out to the forest on Molokai, and Tonic, and on Gaia and everything, and it had been my only thing from back home on the Mainland, and the only thing from my family, and I’d actually not kept up winding it, but I had been careful of it all the way up to the monastery, and then I’d just given it away. So what did that say about me and my soul? After all those years I didn’t even have a broken run-down watch to show for myself. I’d thought I had to give it up. It was like a sacrifice. I donated it to the monastery to prove I didn’t care about material things. And now I didn’t have my watch at all. I had nothing.

  People at the table noticed that I was crying, but then pretended not to, except for Betsy Sugarman, who was sitting next to me. She said, “Would you like a tissue, dear?” and gave me a whole wad of peach-colored tissues from her purse. So that attracted attention, and then Ruchel came over, and she asked if she could do anything.

  I snuffled up my tears. I said, “It’s just been a hard week.”

  “Would you like the last piece of cake?” Ruchel asked me.

  “God, no.” I clutched my stomach, and pretended to laugh.

  “I’ll eat it,” Fred volunteered. So he did, and then he took me home in his rusted-out pickup truck. That was a relief, because Fred was the kind of guy who was perfectly happy not to have a big long conversation.

  I got home and everything was quiet, and I lay down on top of my bed, and my sadness welled up inside of me about my neshama, and my silver watch. Except just like it always happens, now that I was all alone and I felt lik
e I could cry as much as I wanted, I couldn’t do it anymore. All my sadness was still there, all my pitifulness, like an underground lake, but the tears wouldn’t come.

  So then Tom knocked on my door.

  “I’m sleeping,” I called out.

  “Sharon, do you have the toothpaste?”

  I opened the door. “Tom, I have my fucking own toothpaste. It is not the house toothpaste. If you want toothpaste go to Longs and buy it!”

  He was hurt. He looked down at me from his mellow heights. “I was just wondering.”

  “Not everybody has jobs where they get to take naps as part of their day,” I snapped, it being a well known perk of Tom’s profession (early childhood education) that he had naptime every day after lunch.

  “Hey, sorry I woke you up,” he said, ambling off.

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I thought, back inside my room. I don’t know how much more I can stand. I don’t know if I can even take cooperative living anymore. I felt like my whole outer skin was peeled back. I just felt like I could hardly bear to deal with people. What did that say about me? Seven and a half years in the house, and my cooperative powers were all used up.

  That weekend I almost skipped Will’s opening night in South Pacific, I was feeling so down. I actually had to remind myself that Will was one of my best friends, and supporting him was my duty, and if I was in South Pacific (which I would never be—not being a Rogers and Hammerstein fan to say the least—but if I was) he would be down in front to support me. So I got up and washed my hair and put on a dress, which was a patchwork dress I owned back then, and I went along with Tom to the Kennedy Theater at the university. I sat there with Tom and the curtain went up, and everybody clapped, since it was such a great beach scene with the waves and the sky and tons of sand everywhere, and there went the sailors, running on the beach, and there went Will running by in his white shorts, and Tom and I started beaming. It really was a fine production. By intermission that feeling of relaxation came over you where you weren’t worrying about the performers at all. So I went out into the lobby, and I milled with all the other people, and I’d calmed so far down I nearly had a heart attack when I ran into my ex, Wayne.