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Max sat in synagogue, sandwiched between her parents, feeling like a frustrated teenager. She was bored and fidgety and kept flipping through the pages of the prayer book to see how much longer the service was. She’d hoped to have Howard there as a buffer, but his client from the previous day called last night and claimed her A/C wasn’t working properly, so Howard had left first thing that morning to fix it. The sanctuary was packed, and the air clogged with the scent of too many perfumes and too much aftershave. She wore a light silk blouse over white pants and rubbed her goose-pimply arms to try to keep warm. It had been a long time since she’d been in a synagogue and she’d forgotten they were always freezing because not only did the men all wear suits, they then draped heavy prayer shawls, tallitot, over them. She suspected tallitot originated from the days when they covered up threadbare clothes and kept the wearers warm in unheated shtiebels. She thought they looked like a relic from the past although she knew that women in Reform temples had reclaimed them in part of their drive for gender equality.
Max looked down at the prayer book and realized they hadn’t even started the shofar service. It could still be another two hours at this rate. She’d been thirteen years old when she discovered that Reform temples didn’t let their services go on and on for hours like their Conservative and Orthodox counterparts. She was comparing notes with her friend Shelli about the Rosh Hashana services they’d attended the day before.
“I can’t believe I had to sit through a six-hour service,” Max told her friend.
“Six hours?” Shelli had gasped. “Why on earth were you there for that long?”
“My dad was helping lead services. Mom and I don’t usually arrive until around 10:30 but Mom’s car was in the shop, so we all had to get there at 8:30. Omigod, it was deadly. The elderly gentleman reading from the Torah chanted so slowly I thought he might die before he got to the end of the portion. The shofar blower couldn’t get a sound out of his ram’s horn, but insisted on trying, until he went quite literally blue in the face and they had to call a medic.”
Shelli laughed. “Our two shofar blowers are both French horn players in the Philly Orchestra, so they’re pretty amazing.”
“And after all that, Rabbi Boren insisted on giving a half-hour sermon saying the same thing he nags the congregation about every year. Don’t be three-times-a-year Jews.” She waggled her finger back and forth. “The service didn’t end until 2:26 p.m.—I know because I sat and glowered at my watch for the last twenty-six minutes while my tummy rumbled.”
“Huh,” said Shelli when Max had finished her woeful saga. “Our Reform temple started at 10:00 a.m. and by noon we were in the social hall. They gave us all yummy honey cake and round challah and apples dipped in honey from somebody’s beehive.”
Max had gone straight home and begged her parents to let her go to temple with Shelli for Yom Kippur. They didn’t allow it, of course. They were pillars of the community in Philadelphia, and the entire family showing up regularly was important. When they relocated to southwest Florida, the first thing they did was get involved with the local community.
Max felt her resentment building. Even though the rabbi was called Glick instead of Boren, it all felt the same as it did twenty-five years ago—boring, repetitive, and uninspiring. Over the years, she’d heard non-Jewish friends and colleagues describe how spiritually uplifted they felt after their (one hour) services at whatever churches or spiritual centers they attended, but she’d never once felt moved on that level. The closest she got was a certain feeling of nostalgia for some of the melodies she heard, their soulful yearning touching some part of her that felt fragile and tender. Lynn had mentioned an alternative temple that was more progressive and very spiritual. Max had been shocked when Lynn told her she cried the first time she attended because it was so meaningful. Max didn’t want to give up on Judaism, she just didn’t want to practice it the way her parents did. Maybe for Yom Kippur she’d find a place like the one Lynn had gone to.
Max had already excused herself twice so that she could sneak a look at her cell phone, but there was nothing from Del. He probably thought he was being respectful by not contacting her on her holy day, but she needed something to distract her. The phone vibrated in her purse and she rummaged her hand into the folds, opening the phone cover like a book within her purse so she could see at a glance whether it was a text or call. She glanced down quickly and saw that it was spam. A thought came to her and she acted on it quickly before she changed her mind.
“I have to go,” she whispered to her mom.
Her mom glared. “Sshh! The rabbi’s about to start his sermon.”
“Something urgent at work. They need me.” She closed her prayer book to show she meant it.
“I’m sure it can wait a couple of hours,” her mother hissed.
“Sshh!” The people around them started hushing them.
“Sorry,” Max said, as she stood up and picked her way down the row of seats. It was worse than the movies. Nobody moved to help her as she stumbled over their feet, and she almost tripped at the end of the row where an elderly woman held firm to her walker as if Max might steal it if she let go.
Only after she got outside and tried to remember where she parked her car did she realize that her dad had driven all three of them to the temple. She needed the keys but there was no way she was going back to her parents to get them. The ushers wouldn’t even let her in if the sermon had started. Max took a deep breath, let the air fill her lungs and decided to act like an adult. Standing under the marble portico, she brought up the rideshare app on her phone and ordered a ride to come and whisk her back to her car.
Once in her own vehicle she realized how much she’d screwed up this holiday. First, she’d arrived too late for dinner the evening before, and now, not only would she have brought embarrassment on her parents by leaving early, she’d also be missing the sit-down lunch her mother had prepared. She knew it wasn’t fair on them. But she’d warned them that just because she was moving to Florida, didn’t mean she’d suddenly become the dutiful daughter they’d never quite had. She’d taken the job in Gulfport, not because it was only two hours from her parents, but despite that fact. In the future she owed it to herself and her parents to set her boundaries better. As she crossed from Lee county back into Manatee, she felt herself finally slough off thirteen-year-old Maxine and slip back into her thirty-eight-year-old self again. From now on, she’d respect her parents while at the same time, respecting her own wishes.
She was just wondering whether she’d go into work when her phone rang. Assuming it was Del, she answered quickly.
“Detective Golders?” The voice was breathy, and the tone anguished. Her heart sank. She knew who this was even before the woman said, “It’s Breezy. You have to come right now. Something’s come up.”