After Cass LEFT, CARLA PREPARED TO RUN OVER TO THE geriatric center, where she wanted to discuss the videographer’s options with Mr. O’Hare.
O’Hare’s knowledge of the mechanics of the bat mitzvah had become veritably encyclopedic in the past few weeks. He now had definite opinions on such things as the timing between the dancing of the hora and the serving of the matzo ball soup, not to mention the niceties of whether Mark’s father, Charles Goodman, should perform the Motzi alone, or whether a male relative from the Kaplan side should perhaps be brought in as well, to balance things out. “Families can get testy that way,” said O’Hare. “What about that Uncle Sid you mentioned? Is he mobile? Does he have his faculties? Maybe he might do the wine prayer in a pinch.”
Carla agreed that there was wisdom in this advice. Perhaps, she said, O’Hare might want to consider a career in bar mitzvah planning; he seemed to have a flair for it.
Before she left for the geriatric center, however, Carla went to check on her mother. Jessie had not been puttering around the kitchen or straightening up the den, which was her usual occupation at this hour, and Carla wondered if perhaps she was feeling under the weather and had gone upstairs to lie down. She found
Jessie in her bedroom, not napping but watching a videotape on the small TV on her night table. This was strange, since Carla didn’t recall having rented anything in the past week.
“What are you watching, Mom?” she asked curiously. The tape was clearly not one of the musicals or ’40s melodramas that her mother tended to favor.
“It’s a tape of The Merchant of Venice,” said Jessie in a rather supercilious tone, “with that famous English actor, what’s his name?—I think he’s dead now.”
“Laurence Olivier?” Carla glanced at the screen, where Olivier was indeed recognizable in a frock coat talking to two other men in frock coats in what was unmistakably Shakespearean language.
“It was made for English television,” Jessie explained. “They have higher-class taste over there.”
“I see,” said Carla, unused to being lectured by her mother on British taste.
“This one is set in a different period,” continued Jessie. “You see the costumes aren’t what you’d expect.” She gestured to the frock coats. “But it’s the play all the same. And I have to admit that this what’s-his-name does a lot with the Jewish moneylender part. I don’t like the daughter, though—but then I’m prejudiced.”
Carla, ignoring this critical evaluation, asked, “Where, might I ask, did you get this copy of The Merchant of Venice?”
“Oh”—Jessie faltered a moment—“from the new video store up the way.” (In point of fact, Hal had gotten the tape for her from the new video store, and she planned to return it to him at their lunch tomorrow.)
“Are you telling me you drove all the way down Route 73 to that new store, Videos Unlimited?” Carla knew that Jessie was a fearful driver, not inclined to venture anywhere that she hadn’t been before.
“And why not?” said Jessie, growing huffy. “I’m not helpless, you know.”
“Okay, okay,” said Carla, assuming that her mother’s imagined
fling with Shakespeare had emboldened her as a driver. “My mistake. I just thought you didn’t like to drive out that far, that’s all.”
“Shh!” said Jessie suddenly. “This is the part I wanted to hear.”
It was Shylock embarking on the famous speech that explained why he was seeking revenge against the Christian who owed him money. Carla and Jessie sat without speaking as Olivier took flight, the lines rendering him at once noble and pitiful.
“‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’” intoned Olivier, his voice rising to an epic lament. “‘Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?—fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.’”
“Powerful,” murmured Carla.
“Yes,” sighed Jessie, turning off the TV and standing up, “he did himself credit there. The rest—feh!—but that speech was something. But enough with the Shakespeare already,” she pronounced, to Carla’s relief. “It’s time I started dinner.”