FOR A LOT OF REASONS YUSSEL DROVE UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS. His body strained at his clothes. His breath steamed up the windshield. “You couldn’t make my flesh crawl when I look at her? My stomach couldn’t turn upside down? Why did You make her so beautiful? Do me a favor. When I look at her, let me see pimples, warts, hairs on her nose. Not even real ones. I don’t ask so much from You. Why do You torment me with temptations? Why do You set this package in front of me and say, ‘Take, take’? I’m not a married man with a lovely wife and a precious daughter who might be dying? Why are You doing this to me? One terrible canker sore, a harelip, fangs. That’s all I ask. Unless You want me to be tempted? Unless You want me to take? What do You want? Do You know what You want from me? You can’t tell me? Give me a clue?” Yussel had to stop the car, blow his nose, dry his eyes.
She marched around the pool, under the roof of pines. Her eyes were candle-bright, the red hair illumined by the sun behind the pines. He felt what he always felt when he saw her. Something gathered itself inside him, gathered up from all points like little bits of iron filings, drew upward into his mouth like hunger. He shivered. “Make it short. My wife knows I’m here.”
“Cute.” She wore a rough brown wool sweater jacket with big deep pockets, held a hand in one pocket as she marched. Yussel wondered if she had a gun. That would be all right with him.
Just once if he could hold her face between his hands, kiss her, lay her down by the pool. Just once, if he could have her just once, he’d be done with her, with all of it. How long could it take? A couple of minutes? He could go on with his life and he’d really be finished with her. This was a good place, a great place. They’d never been so alone before. Is this what’s intended? Is this the other side of the Other Side, the reward, the final river to plunge into? Why is she put before me? Maybe it’s the end of the path? The last drop into evil? Hadn’t it begun here? He could end it here. Over by the flat rock, he could end it. On the rock he could spread her legs, cup her breasts, listen to his name, be done with her. “I have nothing to give you. My father quotes Carlyle. ‘In order to find your inner being you have to have a great love or a great tragedy.’ Well, I found my inner being. It’s garbage.”
“You told me that once, when you filled my car with garbage. You’re wrong.”
“We’re finished, Lillywhite. I can’t see you.”
“Abraham’s tent had four doors, right?”
Yussel panicked. Who had she been talking to? His father? Who else was in on this she should have Talmudic weapons? “So?”
“So a person could enter his father’s house no matter what direction he came from. Open another door for me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Someone told me.”
“I’m Abraham? I have no other doors. I have no tent. Between us there’s only one door … the door between a man and a woman. It’s closed, nailed shut.”
“You promised you wouldn’t slam the door on me. You’re slamming the door.” Lillywhite turned her face away from him for a moment. From her back he could see her take a deep breath. “All right. Okay. Before you slam the door, I want you to take me to my father’s grave.”
He didn’t know if the sorrow in his heart was for her or for himself. “You don’t know how to get on a plane? I’ll tell you. You get on the plane in Denver. You get off in New York. You take a cab. You go to the cemetery. They’re all in the same place. You go into the office, tell them your name. They give you the …”
“I can’t do that. Don’t you understand? I told you, I can’t do that. You have to come with me.”
“They give you a map. You take the map …”
“I saw you put your father’s body into the grave. Your father’s corpse. I saw that. I saw you predict the winning numbers at the Paradise. I saw you touch death. Why won’t you help me?”
He heard his father’s voice. “Yussele,” his voice was low. “Didn’t I tell you you couldn’t hide your heart forever? Didn’t I tell you someday someone would figure you out?”
“You want to ruin my life? You want to kill my baby?”
“I want you to take me to my father’s grave. I want to speak to my father. How will that kill your kid?” Lillywhite took a paper from the pocket of her sweater. “These are your water rights. If you take me to my father’s grave, I’ll give them to you. If you don’t, I’ll ruin you and your friend and all your people and all his people.” She thrust her lower lip forward, watched him.
Lillywhite was the first woman he’d ever been in love with. He couldn’t dismiss her. How many other women had he pushed away? Leave me alone. I’m comfortable. Leave me alone. Natalie he dismissed as nuts, Babe as bitter and barren, his mother as revengeful. Shoshanna, God forgive him, as dumb. All of them he’d found a reason to dismiss. This one stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and he couldn’t dismiss her. And all the rest of them were lined up behind her. For what he’d done to Shoshanna, that she should hide herself all these years to keep him happy, he could cut out his heart. And Natalie who was filled with sparks and devotion, he’d made her feet bleed. And the Flower Child? What was his excuse for her? That she was after him? Was she? Maybe she was after something else? Like a place to stay, an understanding heart? And this one? This one in front of him with his livelihood and Chaim’s livelihood and the welfare of all their families and their congregations’ families shaking in her hand? He could find plenty of reasons to dismiss this one. This one wasn’t Jewish. This one was a sexpot, a whore, the work of the Yetzer Hara. On the other hand, also maybe possibly Lillywhite and he were fragments of the same soul. Why else would they have snapped together like puzzle pieces? Why else would he be in agony without her? Someone, for good or evil, had put in front of him a woman he couldn’t dismiss. “I’ve been to see your mother, Yussele. She’s taking the baths in Switzerland. She was covered with mud. I thought she was dead. I think I got through. She smiled. I think she’s going to marry again. Someone rich. Where could she get the money to take mud baths in Switzerland?”
His father wore the Milk of Magnesia blue mandarin silk pajamas, with the black-fringed belt, the blue slippers with gold Chinese medallions on their fronts, carried a soft overnight bag of Pierre Deux fabric, which Yussel recognized because Shoshanna once bought such a bag for her mother and Yussel couldn’t believe how much it cost. His father’s left door was a jalousie blind, slatted, enameled, electric blue aluminum. The other was the same lead door. He looked drained.
“I’ll ask Babe. Listen, Totte. I’m in a situation.”
“I know. Gevalt.”
“I don’t think I have any choice.”
“He’s taken away your free choice. So now you know free choice is intended.”
“Shoshanna wants to leave, take Schmulke. Dina’s very sick.”
“I know.”
“My money’s gone. And this woman …”
“You’re suffering. He’s correcting the distance between you and Him. You’re feeling the correction. The purpose of suffering is to correct the distance between you and HaShem. You get exactly the right amount of suffering for the same amount of correction. No more, no less.”
“What if he takes my Dinela?”
“What if he takes any of us? Death is a miracle just like birth. He gives; He takes. He knows what He’s doing.”
“Totte,” Yussel groaned, “what am I supposed to do?”
“Trust.” His father pulled his hat down over his forehead. Yussel couldn’t see his eyes.
“Okay, Lillywhite, I’ll think about it.”
“There’s a train out of Denver on Sundays at six.”
“Why a train?”
“So we can be alone.”
Terror squeezed his heart. “I said I’ll think about it.”
“You can’t see my soul for my tits, can you?”
Yussel knew why she’d been given to him. She was here to break his heart. He let her drive down the road first, watched the dust behind her car. When the dust cleared his father was leaning against Bingo’s cab. His aluminum slats caught the sun.
“You got a new door?”
“Lightweight. What a relief. It gets worse for you. It gets better for me. You’re almost halfway there, Yussel.”
“Totte!” Yussel groaned. “What’s going to happen to me?”
He shrugged, brushed pine needles from his silken shoulders. “You’ll see. They don’t want me to tell you anything. I can tell you stories. That’s all. So come.”
His father put the Pierre Deux overnight case on the flat rock, sat next to it, pointed for Yussel to sit with him, put one thin arm around him gently, held his own beard in his right hand. “Once a Jew was sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor For twenty-five years he stood grinding something. The grinder and the wheel were on one side of a wall. He had no idea what he was grinding. He just turned that wheel, day and night. He imagined maybe he was grinding wheat to feed a family, two families, a whole village. Maybe he was grinding stones into sand for building. Twenty-five years, he had a lot of maybes. At the end of the twenty-five years, his jailers released him. He was a ruined man. There was no strength left in him. He walked around the wall. He thought, now he would find out what he was grinding for all these years. He wouldn’t mind if it had been grain, stones, as long as he was helping someone, accomplishing something. He got around the wall—there was nothing on the other side.”
His father turned the handle on his jalousie, the louvers opened and closed. “That’s all I can give you. You’ll get around to the Other Side, you’ll see.” His father pulled a handful of wax candles from the overnight, gave them to Yussel.
“What if He takes Dina?”
His father looked into Yussel’s eyes. Yussel could feel the burning. “I don’t know, Yussele. This is a very complicated computer He has. If He takes, He takes. Who are we to question? My platform isn’t high enough. It’s only high enough to know He has a reason for everything and everything’s intended.”
“So he ruins my family, makes my kid sick?”
“He gives you choices. Your choices determine your destiny. Only he knows the consequences. You told the young lady you’d think about it. I think you better think about it.”
“What He asks is I should climb into bed with a strange woman?”
“Listen, he asked Abraham to kill his son, didn’t He? Let’s put this in perspective. This is what I mean by sublime: not to save Chaim’s life would be a worse sin than a little yentzing, a little mixing it up with some wet muscles.”
“No wonder you never had a respectable congregation.”
“It surprises you I’m human?”
“Okay, Totte, say I sin. You know what worries me?”
“Your breath?”
“What if I like it?”
He ran his fingers up and down the jalousie like a keyboard. “Yeah, well, that’s the danger, Yussele. That you might stay over there. The slippery path gets narrower and narrower until there’s no way to turn around.”
“It feels like there’s no way to turn around now. It feels like He’s asking me to kill my daughter.”
His father shrugged. “I don’t know, Tottele, I’m attached. I do what He wants. You’re not attached. You have to make the choices.”
“I’m really on the Other Side?”
“You expected a change of scenery? An intermission? I think when you gambled you went over.”
“Totte,” Yussel groaned, “I had to get the money.”
“Maybe before.”
“When?” Yussel cried out.
“When you figure that out you won’t be there anymore.”