TAKING STOCK: a novel

By David Perlstein

In this gripping novel of loss and regret, Steve Goldman, about to turn 80, has just buried his wife Evelyn. Alone in his San Francisco home, he ponders his future, wonders if loneliness awaits him as a widower. For that matter, will he want to share his remaining years with another woman? If so, will he be worthy?

Steve undergoes the challenging process of taking stock of his life—the good he’s done and the bad. Digging deep into his memory, he examines his relationships with Evelyn, his daughters, women in his post-college/post-army years and his “blood-brother” childhood friends from New York. The scales tip back and forth, influenced by achievements and kindnesses, betrayals and pain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663261885

David Perlstein

DAVID PERLSTEIN has authored eight other novels and a volume of short stories. He also wrote God’s Others: Non-Israelites’ Encounters with God in the Hebrew Bible and Solo Success: 100 Tips for becoming a $100,000-a-Year Freelancer. David lives in San Francisco. davidperlstein.com

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Copyright © 2024 David Perlstein.

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Epigraph: www.jtsa.edu/torah/tip-the-scales.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6187-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6188-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907165

iUniverse rev. date:  04/04/2024

CONTENTS

Rocket Man

Runaways

God On Trial

Facing Down The White Bull

The White Room

Max

Borrowed Time

Independence Day

Humiliation

Payback

A Knight In Shining Armor

Chutzpah

What’s The Worst?

Big Truth

Would Sam Spade Have Stooped That Low?

Kaddish

Afterword: A Poem By Lyon M. Finkle

Acknowledgments

For Carolyn, who is alive and kicking,

and all those who’ve suffered the inevitable loss of death

and the soul-accounting that grips us before and after.

Every person needs to see himself all year as if he is equally balanced

between innocence and guilt. . . . If he does one mitzvah, behold

he has tipped himself and the entire world to the side of innocence

and brought about salvation for himself and for [everyone else].

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:4

ROCKET MAN

You bury your wife and three days later, groggy after a ragged night’s sleep, a thought you’d tried to tamp down jolts you. You’re alone. Really and permanently alone. Which leaves you trying to fend off all those other unwelcome thoughts clanging around inside your head like pinballs in one of the games you played when you were a kid.

My jaw slack, I stared at what had been Evelyn’s and my bed. What’s termed a California king. Calling up what little had stayed with me from those two years in the Army all those decades back, I pulled the comforter taut and smoothed out every single crease. My effort would have brought a smile to Sergeant—wait for it—King, my basic-training platoon’s drill instructor. Behind his back, we referred to him as Fangs. His pointed teeth looked like they could chew through a steel helmet. True to his appearance, he delighted in terrifying the recruits in his charge. Needless to say, we were already scared shitless at the thought of being sent to fight, bleed and die in rice paddies and jungles half a world away.

As far as the bed went, Evelyn, too, would have been proud.

My efforts, however, remained incomplete as I chewed over a puzzle. What to do with all those pillows? I’d never had a clue as to what purpose so many pillows served, but I’d learned early in our marriage that asking about such things, let alone offering the mildest of protests, was above my pay grade and might expose me to a level of fury that would leave me unnerved. Okay, I might be exaggerating but not all that much. Evelyn was as loving and loyal a wife as you could ask for.

Still, at times I couldn’t help wondering if I’d married a female Sergeant King for some perverse, never-to-be-known reason. What I concluded: There’s truth to the old saying Let sleeping dogs lie. Even the most beautiful and kindhearted. Women love pillows. But given the change in my situation, couldn’t I do whatever I wanted with them? Of course, I could. That thought left me with a hard-to-define anxiety.

Taking the easier road, I aligned the pillows in their assigned places.

My duty done, I asked myself, What now?

T.S. Eliot popped up from my undergrad days sixty years back: April is the cruelest month. English majors are supposed to know stuff like that. But that was all I remembered of The Waste Land. It was enough. April in San Francisco mocks spring, usually running cold, windy and gray. The past April, all of two months earlier, had proven true to form. Only worse. Evelyn had started her final decline.

I glanced down at the black ribbon still pinned to my shirt pocket. Traditional Jews burying their loved ones show their grief by tearing their clothes or ripping a seam. Wasteful. Besides, neither Evelyn nor I grew up Orthodox. We’d joined a Reform synagogue after Amy was born to give her, and then Sara, the semblance of a Jewish education we ourselves couldn’t provide.

Three days earlier, a standard-issue, fog-shrouded June Sunday, I’d met with Rabbi Klein before he conducted the funeral service in the cemetery chapel. Offering what passed as a reassuring smile, he pinned the ribbon on the lapel of my black weddings-and-funerals suit coat. Despite Amy’s and Sara’s puckered faces marked by narrowed eyelids and tightened lips, he also pinned one on each of their jackets and those of their spouses. Then he slit each ribbon with a scissors. Who were we to argue?

A good-looking guy in his early thirties, Rabbi Klein sported one of those five-o’clock-shadow beards that made him look more like the star of an action movie than a religious leader you hoped would ease your suffering on the day you laid your dearly departed to rest. To his credit and at my insistence—Evelyn also had wanted it that way—he kept the service short and to the point. The point included a eulogy that lasted three minutes and fifty-two seconds. I timed it. His words came across as heartfelt, although he didn’t know Evelyn or myself particularly well. I suppose displays of compassion come with his line of work.

During the service, I’d stayed silent. Words mean a lot to me—they’d paid my way through life—but I had no desire to share any.

The next evening, winding up the grimmest Monday I’d ever faced, Rabbi Klein came to the house. The girls, their mates and a group of assorted friends and acquaintances had joined us in the living room for a Shiva minyan. During the first seven days following burial, Shabbat excepted, evening prayers take place at a mourner’s home. I’d let it be known that dress was casual. Rabbi Klein wore a suit.

Tugging myself back into the moment, I glanced at the closet mirror by Evelyn’s side of the bed. She would have frowned. Maybe scowled. She wouldn’t have minded that I was wearing jeans. She wouldn’t have cared that I hadn’t gotten around to unpinning the ribbon on my shirt. The shirt’s condition? That would have riled her. I’d worn it since Monday morning and saw no reason I couldn’t get a third day out of it. Only now did I notice a small mustard stain on the pocket over my heart. Maybe I’d picked it up the night of the first Shiva minyan. Or the previous evening’s second and final. I’d let it be known that I preferred to spend the rest of the week alone. A slap at tradition? Probably. Actually. To thine own self be true and all that crap.

As to changing into a fresh shirt, what was the point?

Still, I couldn’t mock Evelyn’s memory. When I went downstairs, I’d drape a clean shirt over a chair in the living room. If someone rang the bell, I’d change before going to the door. Not that I particularly cared to make an impression. Who was kidding who? Or is it whom? Hardly the biggest issue facing me. It would take a long time for me to adapt to my new life ahead, turn myself into another version of me about which I had no clue.

What now? I repeated. I’d been repeating myself since well before Evelyn drew her last breath. Over the past few days, the frequency of my repetitive questions and utterances—more questions than utterances and all self-directed—had increased. I suppose that’s natural given the shock of losing your wife of forty-six years and having your world turned inside-out like an old sock. Bad simile but what the hell. What matters is that your former hopes for a miraculous recovery, admittedly ranging from feverish to tepid, wind up exposed as delusions by death’s scalding finality.

The morning moving on, I turned to another serious matter. Should I lay out the bedspread Evelyn loved so much? When Evelyn chose to die in her own bed, hospice helping to ease the way, I stuffed it into the linen closet for the duration.

We’d bought the spread at Macys on Union Square. Before Covid. How ironic that neither of us came down with the virus. We spent our pandemic-restricted time piddling around the house and going out for walks. Mainly me doing the walking.

The sales associate, a young Chinese woman—I guessed Chinese—with long black hair and a cheery smile pointed out that the bedspread we’d been eyeing, flowers in pastel pinks and greens against a white background, was more subtropical Florida than Mediterranean and particularly foggy San Francisco. She offered to show us suitable options. If none appealed, we might consider a duvet cover.

Evelyn rejected her advice with a firm shake of her head. Our comforter was just the right weight but, being dull gray, needed covering. Removing a duvet to wash it then stuffing the comforter back in had become even a more grueling chore. Four arthritic hands were not well-matched to buttons or even zippers.

I deferred to Evelyn. We each had our own turf. Mine was the finances. But I couldn’t help whispering to her that we’d done quite well without a bedspread since being compelled to toss the old one, a geometric pattern in deep blues, golds and greens, into cloth recycling. One sunny noontime before her remission from the breast cancer that had metastasized to her organs and bones, Evelyn had been unable to keep down the lunch I’d brought up to our bedroom. Half her insides rocketed onto the spread she’d kept at the foot of the bed to cheer her up. Three washings had faded, but failed to remove, the bloodstains. If gallons of tears—hers and mine—could have done the trick, the spread would have looked like new.

Still, I had to ask Evelyn, Why bother with a bedspread in the first place? Who would we be entertaining in our bedroom?

Over all those years, had I learned nothing?

Evelyn made two points. The tone of her voice left no doubt they permitted no response. Point one: She craved color. That I could see. Point two left me confused. Leaving our comforter exposed would be uncouth. I said, How long has it been since you heard anyone use that word? Uncouth. She remained adamant. Think of a woman prancing around her house in her underwear and so hardly prepared to receive an Amazon delivery driver or a neighbor bearing lemons from her backyard tree. I was baffled. Whenever Evelyn received friends or neighbors—okay, these days, who says received?—she brought them into the living room or kitchen, not the bedroom. Always dressed and fully made up. Evelyn, at least.

An old saw came to mind about not spitting into the wind or stepping on Superman’s cape.

Still, as we left Macys, I couldn’t help asking, A woman prancing around in her underwear?

Evelyn gave me The Look—piercing green eyes punctuated by a clenched jaw.

I offered a sheepish smile. No point in pushing things given all she’d been through and all that lay ahead. It’s fantasy, or pretension, to expect the living to always be on the same page, let alone the living and the dying.

We strolled across Geary Street to the garage below Union Square. I carried the bag with the new tropics-inspired bedspread. My free hand held hers.

Bottom line: Evelyn and I still loved each other, though a precise definition of love and what it involves long has escaped me. Passion? Selflessness? Possessiveness? All of the above? Before Amy came along, we once skirted divorce but never seriously approached it. Not all that seriously. Then again, we knew couples who couldn’t stand each other and remained married for years. Maybe what holds some marriages together is habit overlaid by convenience. An emotional duct tape and rubber bands kind of thing.

A week after our Macys expedition, I couldn’t resist asking Evelyn one last time, So who’s going to see our bedroom with its properly made bed?

She rolled her eyes. Amy and Sara would return home soon enough to bring good cheer or at least fake it. Evelyn would take them up to the bedroom to spare them what, following the inevitable, would be an upsetting chore. They’d comb through her jewelry. The girls would divide family heirlooms and other pieces of value, set aside lesser items for relatives and their mother’s friends. The leftovers would go to the shelter for homeless women where Evelyn volunteered while maintaining her practice as a couples and family therapist. Her clothes also would go to the shelter. The girls wouldn’t be caught dead in them. God, that sounds terrible. Anyway, to move things along, Amy and Sara also would put in claims on assorted tchotchkes filling nooks and crannies around the house.

I thought of the stories, which had to be apocryphal, about housewives in the shtetls of Tsarist Russia soon to sail to America and their later counterparts preparing to flee Nazi Germany, sweeping their floors before leaving their homes.

The morning creeping along like traffic on the Bay Bridge, I reflected on having exhumed—awkward word—the spread from the closet. The thought of laying it out every morning reminded me of the time I was walking to my office in the Financial District and saw two police officers standing nonchalantly, one sipping from a container of coffee, over a yellow tarp which, as best I could tell, covered a body.

I refocused. Adding the spread to the bed might serve the same purpose as the small stone or pebble a Jew places on a headstone or marker before leaving a cemetery. It reassures the departed, You’re remembered.

But did I need a bedspread of all things to remember the woman I’d shared over half my life with? Who’d given me my two daughters? Granted, neither of the girls had provided a grandchild, but that was no fault of Evelyn’s or mine. Besides, why would Amy and Sara want to return to our bedroom, my bedroom, to revisit one of the saddest episodes in their lives?

My thoughts went back to the day before and the day before that. Several women had come to the house with meals to last me through Shiva and beyond. A term I’d once heard came to mind—casserole ladies. A few were Evelyn’s professional colleagues, like Katie Fung, whose chicken chow mein was to die for. And isn’t that another awkward expression? Several friends also brought meals, excepting Evelyn’s closest, Lenore Kaplan.

We’d met Lenore and Herb at a temple social function we couldn’t avoid. We ended up doing lots of couples things, including the occasional weekend up the coast or at Tahoe and one trip to Maui. Pancreatic cancer took Herb before his time. Evelyn brought Lenore meals. The women stayed close while I kept a polite distance. I wanted to avoid any suggestion that Lenore’s and my relationship was or might become improper. That recollection raised an eyebrow. Had my ego run away with itself? Lenore had never intimated that I might, in any way, fill the void. But the male ego is a tough animal to cage. I know that from experience.

As far as my having pre-prepared meals went, the casserole ladies provided plenty, some of which I froze. If hunger again became a factor in my life, all I had to do was pop something into the microwave or the oven below the range. As to manipulating the controls on Evelyn’s treasured steam oven, I’d have found it easier piloting a fighter jet.

Obviously, I owed each of the casserole ladies a debt of gratitude, but would thanks be enough? Would they expect a piece of Evelyn’s jewelry as a memento? I scolded myself for being so unkind as to think them greedy. For that matter, having any ulterior motive. Throughout their displays of tearful sorrow, they’d been models of discretion.

Regarding distribution of the remaining jewelry and other possessions for which I had no use, there were other people to consider. Or dismiss. Evelyn’s younger brother Norman made it clear that he didn’t want anything for his wife. On the phone. He’d retired to Boca Raton years back and lived in a plush condo with a fifteenth-floor ocean view, maid service, a gourmet restaurant and a country club two blocks away. Fly out to San Francisco for his sister’s funeral? He couldn’t possibly. I got a hip. I got a knee. And what? Evelyn’s gonna know I’m not there?

I in no way missed the son of a bitch.

As to the casserole ladies, my mind wouldn’t let go. Grateful as I was, I hoped they’d keep their distance. I’d heard stories. At least one of the single, divorced or widowed among them might try to kindle a small spark between us. Possibly she’d bide her time, wait for the unveiling of Evelyn’s tombstone six to eleven months out. Then again, time running out on all of us, she might make her move sooner. Taking great care, she’d try to subtly coax that spark into a tiny flame and keep fanning it with hopes it would erupt into a blaze.

I laughed. Out loud. In a month, I’d turn eighty. What woman would find a man my age attractive?

The answer figuratively slapped me in the face. These women all were in my age range. I’d be a damn good, if temporary, catch. A woman alone and facing her final years might do anything not to be alone. Strike while the iron is hot to leapfrog the competition. Yet these casserole ladies struck me as too crafty to reveal an expectation of anything more than gratitude for doing a mitzvah. You can’t rush a man into a relationship while he’s sitting Shiva.

Or was I being naive?

As to Shiva at the house, I’d never intended to engage in tears and reminiscences for the full seven days. Monday and Tuesday evening had been enough. In truth, I’d had half a mind not to sit Shiva at all, but how would that have reflected on Evelyn? On me?

Striking a happy medium, I’d limited my Shiva period and thus unwanted human contact. People showed up or they didn’t. Fine with me. Not that I considered myself emotionally withdrawn. Not all that much. It’s just that I’d always valued having a healthy chunk of alone time each day. More than one chunk. Now, I faced what promised to be solitude 24/7.

In that regard, I’d acknowledged a grim reality: Visitors swarming into my home to offer comfort, no matter how well-intentioned, would never fill the hole in my heart. That repair I had to make myself. If I could. Would all that food from the casserole ladies help? In some small way, I supposed. What I found hard to swallow was the proposition that they, that anyone, could