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“Jerk,” she said, shoving at his shoulder lightly, but there was no sting to the word. “One of us should go downstairs and get some cheese or something.”
“Scavenger,” he said, reaching for her to pull her to him for a lazy kiss. “We could have ordered something, and it would be arriving about now.”
“Or it could have gotten here ten minutes ago, and you would have had to stop,” she pointed out, tussling his hair. He’d taken her seriously when she said she liked him scruffy. He had a few days of beard growth now and she definitely liked it. So far, he was shaving each week for Shabbat, but she wondered if he would keep doing that.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, his face suddenly serious.
“About food? I’m not into pineapple on pizza,” Shoshana said, sitting up on one elbow, her tone prim. “I’m sorry, that’s just how I was raised.”
“You are so full of shit,” he said, and then they were kissing again. Shoshana loved all the ways they ended up kissing. After a moment he spoke against her lips. “I’m serious.”
“Okay,” Shoshana said, pulling back. She swept her hair off her neck, “What’s so serious?”
“I was going through some of the older temple scrapbooks,” he said, and something in his tone made her look at him hard. “I mean, to learn about the congregation, you know.”
“Did you find anything interesting?” she said, forcing her tone to be airy as though this meant nothing to her. She flopped onto her back and slung an arm over her eyes. She wasn’t going to panic just because he was doing his job. She wasn’t.
“Why don’t you ever talk about your parents?” he said, and his tone was so purposely neutral she wanted to slap him.
Shoshana squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to breathe slowly. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know how quickly she could spiral because of this, she reminded herself.
After a moment one of his hands touched her bare stomach. Shoshana flinched, refusing to lift her arm because she didn’t want to see the hurt in his face at such a physical reaction to his touch. She couldn’t help it, though, and she wouldn’t apologize for it.
“My mom died when I was two. It was an accident. The roads were icy. My dad loved her a lot. He, uhm, I think he was like me, you know? I mean, he didn’t believe in God,” she said, her eyes still pressed into the crook of her arm. She couldn’t look at him when she talked about this. He would be patient and understanding and kind, and before she knew him, she thought pity would be the worst thing. But now she realized his gentle acceptance cut someplace deeper.
David made a soft sound that could have been encouragement. She didn’t speak for a long moment. After a while, his hand touched her cheek, fingers curling around the slope of her neck. His thumb moving in reassuring circles on the hard ridge of her jaw, he murmured, “It’s okay, we don’t have to--”
“No, you may as well know, it’s not like it’s a big drama,” she said, lifting her arm. Forcing herself to turn her head and look at him.
Her fingers touched his cheek and he caught her hand, his lips touching her knuckles. She closed her eyes, trying to find a calm place to speak from.
“My mother was the spiritual one. I don’t mean she went to shul regularly. I mean she was spiritual, you know? She believed in the soul and stuff. At least that’s what he said, I don’t remember her at all.”
He made a sound to the affirmative and she nodded on the pillow, finding the confidence to continue.
“Dad… I don’t know why, I mean I was really young then. I think it started as a way to honor her. Like, he wanted to learn Torah. So, he did. Because he loved her, you know? And then, he was coming to shul every week, both services. And the holidays. Even the extra services there’s hardly ever a minyan for. He started joining committees. I think before that Goldman’s had always supported the synagogue, you know, like, if they were fundraising, we’d contribute that kind of thing. But Dad really--he said it was a mitzvah.” She coughed, shaking her head against the pillows because she still couldn’t quite understand this point.
“How was it a mitzvah?” David asked. She looked at his face, thinking he could probably guess the logic, but he was asking so she answered. She was usually comfortable being nude, she had no problem with her body, or anyone else’s for that matter. But this second, she felt completely naked.
“For Mom. We were doing mitzvot for Mom,” she said, wiping her fingers under her eyes but they were dry. “Every time we went to shul, every time I had to go to Hebrew school when I didn’t want to, when we would clean out the house for Passover, or fast, or when he couldn’t go to my school play, or I couldn’t try out for a sport because I had shul commitments or because he had a board meeting--it was all okay because it was a mitzvah. We were honoring her.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It sucked. I used to get so angry, because I knew he thought it was all bullshit. He would put on a tallit, and he would strap on tefillin and it didn’tmeananything, but he had to do it because somehow it was supposed to be for her.” She sighed, turning on her side so that she could look at him. She shoved her arm under the pillow and stared at him for a long, long moment. David said nothing. After the seconds stretched between them, she said, “When I hit puberty, I started to question a lot of things. I acted out. I… wasn’t very kind.”
“It sounds like you were hurting.”
“Oh, I had a lot of hurt in me,” she said, laughing, but there was no humor in the sound. She blinked slowly, “The worst part was that he didn’t know how to do anything if it didn’t relate to that place. It was like he forgot how secular life worked. It got so--well, it doesn’t matter. Beth Elohim meant a lot to him. And he did good there, I know that. People loved him a lot.”
“You loved him a lot,” David said, his chin resting on his fists. He was looking at the top of her headboard, she realized. Doing her the favor of not looking at her while she relived this. Her heart twisted with something and she told herself it was just hunger pangs.
“He had a stroke at work. That’s why he had to retire. I know it’s not true, but it feels like the synagogue sucked him dry. It’s complicated. Because like I said, everybody there will tell you he was a great man. And he was great--for them he was great. For me he was...” she trailed off, searching for the right word, finally she let out a breath as though to sayfuck it. “For me he was something else. Anyway, that’s why I don’t talk about them. It’s why I’m not a member. It’s why I’m not in any of the pictures. I didn’t want to be. That’s basically everything.”
“That’s a lot,” he said, turning on his side to look at her. There was a mewling chirrup from the vicinity of the door, and he glanced over his shoulder at Deev. Shoshana didn’t acknowledge the cat. David’s fingers traced lines through her scalp. His arm was warm on her chest and she curled her fingers around it, turning her head into his touch so that she could press her lips to the pulse at his wrist.
“So, tell me what you’re thinking,” she said, knowing she sounded miserable. Resigned. She fully expected him to tell her how her father was right.
“I’m trying to decide what would be best here. Should I answer you as a rabbi?” David said, shifting closer to her, his lips pressing briefly against her temple, then her cheek. “Or as a father?”
