FEBRUARY 23, 1962
THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
5
Geraniums/ Love's Old Sweet
Song Again
�Y iilT II1M IKK
It was typical of him that he did not catch the girl's name. When he arrived his mother was just getting ready to light the Shabbos candles. "Who is the girl you want me to see this Week, Ma?" he asked.
"Leah," she told him, and covered her gray hair with a white silk handkerchief, lifted her hands in circles, three times, held them before her eyes, fingers spread, and said the blessing. Leo suspected she always waited for the sound of his key in the lock before welcoming the Sabbath. He came home only on Friday nights, left late Saturday night for the city, again, for his work in the research laboratories where he held an important position.
He had showered, changed his clothes, and come into the kitchen just as his father returned from *shul, having prayed there, welcoming the Sabbath. Leo heard himself speaking with the old boyish enthusiasm, in a voice which he kept strictly for his parents, but which years of trying to please them had made automatically childish, a recording he played over and over again, even this evening, when he was thirty-two years old, his forehead lined, his hairline receding, his shell-rimmed glasses bifocals.
"Did your mother tell you about the girl she wants you to meet this week, Leo?" his father said.
"What's her telephone number, Pa?"
"Oh, Leo! Every week your mother writes down a telephone number for you to call � and what do you do? You lose it, maybe? Or you throw it away?"
"Abe," his mother said, "make Kiddush. Leo's hungry." ;
Slowly the ritual of the Sabbath calmed him, with eternal peace: the singing of the Kiddush; the washing of the hands with a half-- full cup of water, first one hand and then the other; and the prayerful blessing as the hands were wiped dry; the blessing before cutting the Shabbos chalah.
Instinctively, before they would talk about the girl they wanted him to call this week, he knew that they were getting more and more worried about his never getting married at all. He felt the intensity of their fear, their desire to see him settled with a good Jewish wife, with a Jewish home of his own, and children he would send to Hebrew school. They worried about him, away from home all week, working with chemicals they didn't understand, eating in restaurants, not getting enough sleep.
It was not a selfish concern they had for him; they didn't want pleasure for themselves � except maybe peace of mind. They didn't care about anything � except what was good for him. No; it was deeper, more menacing, in its way more destructive; a concern which did not allow him the privilege of choosing his own wife. Leo found himself saying:
"Come, Pa. You tell me. Who is the girl for this week?"
His father chuckled, sharing a secret kind of humour with Leo that shut out his mother.
"Marriage," his mother said, pointing a finger at him, "is no laughing matter. Marriages are made in Heaven."
"So! True!'.' His father pounded the table. "What man would get married if Heaven didn't give him a push?"
"Abel" his mother said, pointing her finger at him now. They were all eating fish, gefilte fish. "Look out, Abe, sometimes there is a bone!"
"I have to tell him about the girl you have for him this week," his father said, "don't I?"
"Never mind. Ill tell him."
"You don't trust me, Helen?" his father said,
"I don't trust you?"
"No! So 111 tell Leo!" He pounded the table again. The sound was muted. Two thicknesses of table padding lay between the damask cloth and the polished table top. His mother always served hot dishes. Everything had to be burning hot or it was no good.
"Abel" Ms nether shouted. "The
neighbours! Must they hear every word you say?" -
"That's it: the neighbours!" his father shouted. "You should only see them, Leo!"
"Abe, did you finish your fish? Are you ready now for soup?" His mother suddenly spoke very softly.
"What's wrong with the new neighbours?" Leo said,
"Abe," his mother pleaded, "Abe!" She served the soup. She poured the golden chicken soup over the heap of fine noodles. The silver ladle in her hand trembled, the beautiful silver ladle that had been her mother's wedding present.
"They bought that house next door, didn't they?" Leo said. "Are they friendly people?"
"Leo, listen to me," his father spoke as if he were alone with Leo in the white tiled kitchen; father and son. "Leo, you should see the man � he's my age, maybe a year older. He wears a long black coat and black pants and black shoes and white socks, and a hat with fur tails � so big." He spread both hands around his head in a circle a yard wide.
"Only on Shabbos," his mother said to Leo.
"And his wife � you should see his wife!"
"She's very good looking," Leo's mother said.
"She wears a shaytil! (a wig)."
"So your mother wore a shaytil, Abe!"
"My mother � how many years ago was that? This is 1961, Helen!" His laughter was contagious. He laughed with all his heart. Leo caught himself smiling without knowing why.
"So?" his mother said, "it's not so funny like you make it, Abe. It could be sad, very sad, Abe."
"It's good soup," his father said, suddenly solemn. He sighed, blew steadily on the soup in his spoon, and then sipped it, slowly. "Very good, Helen." ^
"What were you laughing about, Pa?" Leo said.
His father gave him a long, sad look. "For a man thirty-two years old, you are not so smart, tonight, Leo."
"Why only tonight?" Leo said, continuing to play the game, although he knew that this was his father's way of belittling him, of making him feel inadequate. It was his father's way of getting even with him, too, for having refused to go into the pants business, keep up the tradition, pants: father to son.
"You know, Leo," his mother said, her tone light, her manner so casual as she changed the subject that Leo did not.suspect, never suspected, in all the years afterward, that she was pretending to be happy because she had given up hope of seeing him married. "I did that, what you told me � about making more geraniums grow � breaking off stems, putting them in sand, very, very little water � I got a whole new lot of geraniums. You should see how nice they grow. I put a lot of them outside, on the windows, in the sun."
"More and more geraniums," his father said, "every place you turn in the house, inside and outside the windows � geraniums!"
Leo said, "Don't evade the issue, Ma. Who is the girl you want me to call up this week? Where's the paper with her phone number on it?" He was sipping the hot soup. It warmed him, made him feel safe.
His father had finished the soup. "I want to tell Leo more about our new neighbours, Helen. You don't mind?"
"Why do I have to mind?" She was standing now, spoon in hand, the big platter of roast chicken to her left, the bow] of hot kugel-squares to her right, the kugel fragrant with cinnamon and lemon, and browned apples, sliced on top, "but maybe you should eat your roast chicken first, Abe4? You dont want to spoil your appetite, do you?"
His father nodded to Leo and winked. "You see how she forces me to eatf No wonder I look like what I look like."
"Yoor never looked better in your life, Pa!"
, His father laughed. Leo joined
in, warmed by the rich soup, stimulated by the good roast chicken, the fragrant kugel. He was beginning to feel warm, drowsy, weightless. "I think I'll open a window," he said, ''getting close in here, isn't it?"
"In the living room," his mother said. "If we open the window in the kitchert I feel a draught."
There was the Shabbos light burning, the big lamp in the living room. It burned all through the Shabbos, all Friday night and all day Saturday, until sundown. Leo opened the centre window, pushed the sash up, reached out to feel the cold air on his wrists, tipped the edge of a geranium leaf. The clay pot toppled, and fell, with a crash. He could see it in the driveway, on the site of the house next door. He said nothing about it in the kitchen. He said nothing about it even when the bell rang and he
had an intuition someone was complaining about the pieces of sharp clay and stones in their driveway.
�T11 Bee who it is," he said, jumping up to answer the door, glad to get away from the heaping dish of applesauce his mother just put before him; that was only part of the desert. There would be almond nut bread and tea, and maybe' candled orange peel, too. He wouldn't have dared to refuse the desert. They would have thought him sick, or unhappy, or worse, finding fault with them.
But then, as soon as he had his hand on the doorknob, he knew he must not go back into the kitchen, should not, if he could shape his own fate. To eat all that food waiting for him would demolish him completely, turn him into a child again, a child who would do, anything for his parents' approval.
He opened the door. "You came
just in time." No, he hadn't said it The girl out on the stairs wouldn't have Understood, yet, and there was a chance that she might understand, some day.
Suddenly, perhaps in response to some prayer his mother had spoken over the candles, besides the usual blessing, perhaps at the recalled sight of the heaping plate of applesauce and almond nut bread on the table, the part of his heart that he always left behind in the research room came into those four square feet of clear, cool, night air, sweet with June madness, and was united with that smaller part of his mind which thad been rebelling against his mother. Now he was able to see and think and make his own choice.
The girl was tall and slim and dark-haired. She held the root ball of a geranium in both her
hands. Her eyes were enormous and shy. "I beg your pardon . . ." she said. "I didn't mean to intrude. But one of Mrs. Cohen's plants ..."
"I know,"
"The clay pot broke. I'm sorry. All those pieces, out in our driveway."
"We'll go and pick them up, together," he said.
But then, as soon as he had walked down the path with her � as soon as he was alone with her , in the dark coolness of the quiet street, he could not resist touching her arm, lightly, with the tips of his fingers, and remembered, too late, that he had forgotten to leave the root ball in the foyer.
"Ill take it," he said, opening his palm.
Carefully, and without a word, as if she had been expecting him
(Continued on Page Eleven)
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