Don't Forget to Write: A Novel
Sara Goodman Confino
CHAPTER ONE
“Stop it,” my father hissed at me as I jiggled my leg.
I did try not to roll my eyes, but Rabbi Schwartz’s sermons were as boring as the news about the presidential campaign. Although that Kennedy fellow was pretty dreamy. I didn’t mind hearing about him.
But this sermon about duty and honor?
My father was lucky my leg was all I was shaking.
Still, I thought as I looked around the sanctuary, Daniel, the rabbi’s son, provided a distraction at least. I hadn’t looked twice at him when we were in school. (Not that we went to the same school. Daddy would lose his mind if I was in a coed program, even for college.) But now that the mouthful of braces was gone, and his hair wasn’t in that ridiculous Caesar cut that looked like his mother did it over the kitchen sink—well, now he was worth looking at.
Normally, I would stay far away from anyone related to the old man droning away about some goat in the wilderness. But he had winked at me last Saturday as my father spoke to his after the service. And I did like a challenge.
We didn’t have the place of honor in the front row that his family did, of course, but we were close: just two rows back and a few seats over. I studied his profile and began counting. If he turned around before I got to twenty, he was fair game. If not, I would take it as a sign to be good.
On seventeen, his head started to move, and by eighteen, his blue eyes were locked on mine.
I grinned slowly and he smiled back. I inclined my head toward the door, then turned away and whispered into my father’s ear that I needed to use the ladies’ room.
I could feel Daniel’s eyes on me as I walked out, demure as could be, in my sheath dress with a Peter Pan collar. I was far too old for such fashion, but for shul, it was better not to argue. I was on thin ice with my parents as it was. I hadn’t been home a week before the dean called my father, claiming I needed to focus more on my schoolwork and less on boys when I returned in the fall.
Which was entirely ridiculous because the whole reason my father sent me to college was to meet a good husband.
The reason I agreed to go was because he wouldn’t be there, and I could do as I pleased.
I leaned against the lobby wall just outside the sanctuary doors, counting again. Daniel wouldn’t keep me waiting if he knew what was good for him.
This time I only got to eleven.
He shut the door softly, looking for me, and I tapped his shoulder.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
“How long before your parents realize you’re missing?” I asked, flashing a flirtatious smile.
Daniel shrugged. “My father won’t notice. He never looks up during his sermons.” I let out a giggle and he shushed me.
“He must be fun at the dinner table,” I whispered. “You spend more time here than I do. Where can we go and actually talk?”
“Aren’t we better off out here? Where it’s public?”
I shook my head and watched the battle between good and bad play out across his face. It didn’t take long. “No one will be in my father’s office,” he said slowly.
I slipped a hand through his arm. “Lead the way.”
Rabbi Schwartz’s office was messy, and I wondered if I was the first woman to ever set foot in this holiest of holies. Beth Shalom was part of the conservative synagogue movement—which was still relatively new and a little shocking to the more traditional members of the community in that it modernized some of the customary religious practices. The genders sat together, and services weren’t nearly as long as at the neighboring orthodox synagogues. Still too long for my liking, but when I was home from college, those Saturday mornings were nonnegotiable no matter what I had been up doing Friday night.
Papers and books covered nearly every available surface, including the chairs opposite the gigantic cherrywood desk. Even the books weren’t immune to the mess, I noted, as there were papers crammed between the pages. Not how I pictured that extremely stern man working. But I didn’t want to think about him. Daniel had taken my hand from his arm and was tracing the outline of it with a finger, sending a tingle of electricity up and down my spine.
The only clear surface was a small table in front of a stained glass panel that looked just like the one at the back of the ark, where the Torahs were kept. I sat on the table, crossing my legs in a way that meant he got an eyeful of garter. “Have you got a girlfriend?” I asked.
“No.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving up and down as he did. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
A slow smile spread across my lips. “Would I be alone in here with you if I did?”
He had moved closer. “You tell me.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “Good gracious, Daniel! I’m practically an angel. Can’t you just see me floating around in heaven with wings and a harp?”
He was closer still. “Jews don’t believe in heaven.”
“Good,” I said. “I probably wasn’t getting in anyway.”
“Doesn’t seem like much fun,” he agreed. I tilted my head up to catch his lips, and he kissed me gently. “Is this okay?”
I nodded and reached up, grabbing his tie and pulling him back in to kiss me again, which he did less gently, pushing my back up against the stained glass as his hands roved my sides and up into my hair and then—
Something cracked loudly and suddenly we were falling backward.
The next thing I knew, both of us had tumbled through the open ark, shards of colorful glass all around us, and the whole congregation staring in horror at the remains of what had been the rear of the vessel that contained the holy Torah scrolls. Apparently the stained glass in the rabbi’s office was the backside of the one that was visible when the sacred texts were removed. I glanced at Daniel, whose face was smeared crimson with my lipstick, then back out into the sanctuary. Everyone was on their feet, as was customary while the Torahs were paraded through the congregation for people to touch with their books or prayer shawls.
“It could be worse,” I whispered to Daniel. If the Torahs had been in the ark and we had knocked them to the ground, everyone present would have to fast for a month.
“Marilyn Susan Kleinman.” My father’s voice boomed as my mother sank into her seat, her friend Mrs. Singer fanning her with a prayerbook.
“It’s worse,” he whispered back as his father came storming up the aisle, the poor cantor following behind him as fast as he could while carrying the Torah, which jiggled precariously in his grip.