Arching into Up Dog, Kaufman notices, two mats forward one to the left, the flexible back of a figure Grandma Lena would call ‘howerrgless.’ Sri Gurudev sings,“Adha Mukha Savasana, Downward Facing Dog.” Howerglass’ hips roll up and back; Kaufman moves slow, stretching and watching. Howerrgless notices Kaufman noticing; neither shies away.

Sri sighs, “Saaaaa-va-sa-naaah … Lie back, close eyes,  open hips, open shoulders, palms up … ” Corpse pose. Kaufman settles, breathes in Vira, warrior energy, the invisible momentum of all that effort, swirling in the hot air of the suddenly still room.  After six months of steady practice he can carry Vira out of class and into the jungle of New York real estate. Kaufman is a lawyer for MOBE, the legal collective on East 2nd Street, where he reimagines, some say stretches the law, so poor people — artists, single mothers, working families — can cooperatively own their own apartments, even whole buildings.  But those rising hips, those curious unflinching eyes distract Kaufman’s warrior intention.

After OM, he rolls his mat tight and even on the ends. then lifts his eyes and sees Howerrgless watching him, hugging her mat, a knight’s move away.

This is a test. If Kaufman doesn’t walk over, hasn’t the nerve, if he makes her come to him, Ellen — her name was then Ellen — won’t bother. Because Ellen is sick of men whose feminism consists of letting her make all the moves, take all the risks.

The queen draws the knight two mats forward, one to the left.

“Hey,” he matches mat hugs,  “I’m Kaufman.”

“Kaufman? Who uses last names?”

“Lawyers still do, and it’s better than Oscar, or worse, Ozzie.”

“Well, Oscar Kaufman, I’m heading to Orchard Street to hear this rabbi, Reb Moish; he uses his first name like you use your last. Join me?”

Kaufman hugs his mat, thinking fast, his smile struggling not to freeze.  Join her? Yes! But rabbis? Don’t get him started. Rabbi Binder, with his big head and great hair was God on his throne, until Ozzie, a year from Bar Mitzvah, brought a petition for Ethel Rosenberg, who his own mother went to Seward Park High School with, not to get executed, to show rachmones on a mother. And Rabbi Binder spat on the petition and hissed, “For shame!”  That’s when Kaufman converted to secular.

But Kaufman doesn’t say that.  He stands there. They stand there, hugging their mats as they might each other. Kaufman shrugs like his Uncle Bernie, who learned it in the Catskills, “A rabbi? With you I would go see a rabbi.”

Ellen gives him a smile that endangers his courtroom honed poise, and says, “I’ll meet you outside the health food store, I need some Nori.”

“What’s that?”

She walks away. That test he failed.

* * *

Kaufman, in bell bottoms and a faded workshirt, spots Ellen backing through the store door carrying two woven shopping bags she bought in the market in Oaxaca.  Kaufman reaches to take one or both, but she pulls them back, “I always carry these,” and the truth is she will be carrying similar bags when, at age eighty-eight, she drops dead demonstrating for an immediate cease fire. The bags hold her life: books, notebooks, articles, a dopp kit containing Xanax, tampons, and homeopathic medications for headache and oily skin, talismanic objects, some photos in an envelope, clothing changes, and the food she just bought stuffed on top.

Ellen turns and looks up at this tall, taut figure, and wonders if there’s such a thing as a spiritually inclined lawyer. She heads West on Thirteenth Street, away from the Lower East Side, calling over her shoulder, “I’m starving and we have time, and I got nori rolls and seaweed salad, and green tea, and some chocolate. Let’s have a picnic in Abingdon Square.” And she keeps walking.

He is hungry, and, despite thinking for the first time, but far from the last that this Ellen is a bit bossy, he follows her gladly.

Abingdon Square is empty, but for a uniformed au pair on a bench, rocking her colicky charge, smoking, muttering Norwegian curses, trying to decide to sleep with her employer so she doesn’t lose her job.  She rises abruptly, throws her butt in the dry center fountain, and like a ghost from Henry James, perambulates downtown.  Street lights streak and car lights flicker through thick chestnut and plane trees.  Ellen chooses a dappled spot, and like a bag lady magician, hands Kaufman paper towels to wipe the bench while she lays out a small table cloth, paper plates and cups, chopsticks, and food.

The nori roll, which, if not for her he wouldn’t touch, is ricey and crunchy, and he likes pickled onions. Ellen drips on her new Indian cotton pants from Second Avenue; “My mother always says,” she says, shrugging, “‘You spill on them, they’re really yours.’” They agree that Sri Gurudev invites a powerful flow, but Kaufman adds, “Don’t you think he’s a little grabby?” Ellen studies him; she’s been reading Anna Freud; the look in his eye smacks of Projection.  For the first time she wonders if, with this one, she might go somewhere beyond organizing.

Then they tell their Yoga origin stories, how at first, she was often the only woman, how that’s changing; how he’s studying A. J. Muste and Gandhi, and was attracted to Yoga as a non-competitive sport; how to a Long Island Jewish boy, raised to compete for the very air around him, non-competitive anything is a revelation.

Suddenly he’s a little embarrassed. “Sorry,” he shrugs,  “I’m a lawyer; I speechify too much.”

Vietnam comes up, they can’t help it. He got beat up by pro-war construction workers at the Hard Hat Riot on Wall Street, which broke his Old Left heart. She invites him to War Resisters League actions and seminars. He is in a Pentagon Papers study group.

Ellen cleans the bench. No trash baskets anywhere in sight, Kaufman stuffs the detritus into his backpack with sweaty Yoga clothes. Near the corner of Bleecker and Christopher, she says,  “You make me feel like talking.” Kaufman is fine with that.

He hears anthropology  … dissertation … performance theory, and as they turn down Bowery, Baal T’shuvah.

“What’s that?” he asks.

Ellen slows down; all her life she will walk in inverse ratio to the intensity of her thought. “Baal T’shuvah are Jews that Judaism spat in their face for being women or gay or radical, or not needing God.” He looks at her, starts to say something, but she doesn’t stop, “So they are in galut, in exile from Judaism. And many don’t miss it; modern culture is enough for them. But some miss the spirituality they felt as children, and the community they maybe experienced in summer camp. They want that back, but without the baggage, you know?”

“I got the baggage, he says, “but not the wanting.”

Ellen stops for emphasis. “Baal T’shuvah is a person who returns.”  She stands erect, looking up at him, “Today they are returning to a Judaism that never existed.” She walks ahead, surprisingly fast for one so short.

“And you?” he asks, catching up.

“Me?” She stops again. “I am a participant observer of my own tribe.”

Kaufman notices he isn’t smirking, which surprises him. Ellen makes a decision and bends over a bag. A practiced rummager, she snakes an arm through folders, books, notebooks, bagged wet Yoga clothes, dopp kit, to a corner. “Yes!” Her arm slides out like a card trick, so everything stays in place. Ta da! a joint.

After they share a couple tokes, Ellen licks her fingers, kills the flame, and snakes the joint back to its corner. She grabs her bags, and walks so fast that Kaufman, a foot taller, is pleased he can keep up through the needles of Sheridan Square, the guitars and garbage of Washington Square, down Mercer into SoHo, all darkened factories but for the few lighted squats of pioneer artists.

Down, down and across to a tiny decaying synagogue on Orchard Street.  The front steps are gated. From the streetlamp Kaufman makes out over the portico Hebrew letters that spell Beit Gan Eden.  The Garden of Eden rotting on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. Now he does smirk.

“They still pray here,” says Ellen, stepping sideways down steep concrete steps between iron Bilco doors, squeezing past Orthodox men hurrying out from evening minyan, their hat brims tipped down so they don’t see the women. But Ellen greets each as he passes:  Shalom Aleichem.” They don’t respond, except for one who, as he passes Kaufman, reaches back, pinches Ellen’s butt, and leers,“Aleichem Shalom.” Ellen spins, reaching past Kaufman, but he’s gone.

When they reach the basement floor, Ellen stops, furious at the jerk, at a Jewish man who could pray and then do that to a Jewish woman, any woman and on the stairs of the synagogue, And furious at herself for feeling shamed. Kaufman feels people piling on the stairs behind them. Gently, he moves her out of the way. He faces her, tries to just look at her, breathe with her, like a mirror, his hands still on her shoulders. She almost flinches, it’s awkward, she embarrassed.  But she lets him help her calm her breathing.

Reb Moish, recognizes Ellen, beams, hurries across the room, fringes flying, holding his embroidered pill box kippah of many colors, the felt belt bouncing around his ample belly. Kaufman sees a hippie cossack hasid, arms thrown wide, like Tevye, except his beard is more Jerry Garcia. Kaufman is struck dumb.

The rabbi hugs Ellen. Kaufman has never seen a rabbi hug a woman in public before; Binder, his rabbi in Mamaroneck, barely shook hands.  It’s a modest hug, only shoulders and hair touching, but full of yearning, like an ethical uncle. Kaufman wonders if this is Jewish or is this some new Hellenism, selling out the tradition for the sake of winning souls. Kaufman smirks at his own conservatism. Kaufman notices he’s jealous of this yearning.

Ellen spins and takes his arm, “This is Kaufman.”

Enormous libidinous eyes light on Kaufman, drawing him toward something deeper, bigger, that God thing.  Kaufman offers a handshake; he isn’t ready to hug a rabbi. The rabbi accepts the offer with his left hand, and pulls gently, as he lays his warm, soft, wet right hand over Kaufman’s heart. Kaufman’s impulse is to bristle, he’s experienced this move from Yogis, and it is no less welcome from a rabbi, but because this Ellen is beside him, he leans in a bit, folds his long hand over the small wet one, and lets himself be held by those eyes.

* * *

While Ellen chats. Kaufman looks at broken pews, tattered books leaning like drunks on staggering shelves in windowless cabinets, relics of a culture that should be gone. He’s embarrassed, almost repelled. He heads to a table where there’s tea and a plate of rugelach from Russ & Daughters, disappearing fast into two seven or eight year old boys. More women here than men, the opposite of Yoga. A couple are stretching for the sit to come, but most look out of shape. This new Judaism hasn’t changed Jewish eating habits. Two moms bed babies on mats in a dark corner under a high narrow window. The rest shmooze in small groups. It’s hamish, he thinks, friendlier than Yoga, but still a  familiar scene; spiritual seekers looking for the next thing after primal scream. Kaufman sips his tea, and notices he’s not uncomfortable here.

Reb Moish sits singing softly, lotus-legged on a low wicker chair, as pairs and small groups shmoozily gather on pillows and meditation cushions.  Ellen introduces friends from NYU, one with square glasses, the other blue hair. She offers the lawyer the zafu beside her, just to the left of the rabbi. This is too close. Kaufman likes distance, likes to observe, choose his moments. So Kaufman finds two seats on the other side, where he’ll have time to think, and he signals Ellen over. But she stays with her friends and her bags by the rabbi. They both shrug. Ellen is relieved; one less distraction when participant observing.

But these little shocks, like electrical currents  keep bisecting the circle from him or her to her or him. It’s confusing. She pulls her journal from a bag and writes ‘currents.’

The hasid cossack sings softly, as if to himself, “Yai bai bai, lai lai lai,” those silly syllables, but the melody is minor and catchy, and yearning, that word again. People finish stretching, soothing babies, schmoozing, join the song and enter the circle. Ellen sings and sways, eyes closed. Kaufman can only watch.

The wordless circular melody, becomes a trance chant. Ellen makes a note in her mind to make a note in her notebook, but for now she gives herself to singing. Kaufman wonders if Jewish is what he was raised, can this too be Jewish?

The rabbi leads the singing higher, his eyes so bright Kaufman wonders what he’s on. The eyes beam toward Ellen. Their eyes lock, and linger. Kaufman sits back and smirks at himself; he’s been jealous of two spiritual teachers in two hours. After too long, the rabbi pans to bluehair, then square glasses, and rhythmically round the circle, seeing the reflection of God in each pair of eyes, each soul. Some look becalmed, some dazzled as if they have been handed enlightenment. When the eyes enter Kaufman, he can’t help feeling seen with warmth and no judgment, but he returns The Look with lawyerly neutrality.

“My darlings,” the rabbi sounds like a Brooklyn Jewish mother. Kaufman’s current turns skeptical, and Ellen feels it.

The rabbi  says something in Yiddish; Kaufman  catches kender and gedank. Moish smiles like a kindergarten teacher, “For those who don’t yet know Yiddish, that means, ‘Listen, my darlings, what I’m going now to tell you .” Against his will, Kaufman, falls a little for the Borscht belt ‘Yinglish’ shtick.

“Centuries, millenia before Star Trek, darlings, our sages of the Talmud and Kabbalah revealed worlds beyond ours, universes even; worlds inside of worlds inside of worlds, worlds between, beside, around and especially, within us, like nothing Isaac Asimov even could ever imagine.”

Kaufman wonders what Ellen is writing; remembers a boyhood interest in Kabbalah, in Jewish mysticism. Binder said he was too young, it was forbidden.

“And one of those worlds, the highest, the most beautiful and pure, is called Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden, where,” he sings, “all is perfect peace, Shalom, Shalom, Shalom.” He goes still, eyes closed, inward smile.  “In Gan Eden, Justice flows like a mighty stream … … Everywhere, there is only kindness, rachmanes. Emmes, my darlings, this is true.” His eyes open, his face is ecstatic, he sits back, fingers over the arm rests, like a prince.  “And in the world of Gan Eden, everywhere is,” he breaks into new melody, “Shaalom, Sha-ha-lo-o-om, Sha-ha-ha-ha-ha-lom.”

Kaufman, watching Ellen, her bags planted around her like flower pots, making notes without missing a note, finds himself singing along, but in his head hearing different words: ‘If only, if o-o-only, if o-o-o-o-only.’  He watches.

Moish sits back, rests his hands like a Buddha on his stomach, “Inside us, right now in history, this yearning to return to Gan Eden is strong in the air, very strong.  All those souls who went to Woodstock, the drugs to take them across so they can see what might be. And we who are older, sigh and think, ‘if only.’” Kaufman is startled to hear his thoughts echoed.

Moish’s arms gather the circle to him. “Our yearning draws Gan Eden closer, emmes! Our yearning inspires us to repair this broken world, bring it closer to Gan Eden.”

He leans in, as if to convey a secret, and everyone and Kaufman lean in too. “Gedank, kinder, listen children, our yearning and our acts of kindness keep Gan Eden close enough so that thirty-six perfect souls from that perfect world can cross over to our troubled world, walk among us, help us, heal us. Always thirty-six, which in hebrew thirty-six is lamed vav, which is double eighteen, the number that means Life. so these thirty-six wise and just ones, who look just like people, are called the lamed vavniks.”

In spite of himself, Kaufman is intrigued

“Without us knowing, they join us, enter us, and Emmes, suddenly you find in yourself the strength to lead the struggle for justice,” he’s looking at Ellen. Then he turns to strung-out-and-tattoos over there: “Return lost souls to themselves. Or maybe, God willing, help the halt across the gaps.” The melody carries even Kaufman.

“But,” Moishe stops them with his hand, “But they are hidden, the lamed vavniks, hidden! We don’t know who they are. They don’t know who they are. So, my darlings, my diamonds,” anyone here, anyone anywhere, could be a lamed vavnik. The Bowery bum a couple blocks from here, crouched against the wall; along with a quarter in the cardboard coffee cup, you should give him the benefit of the doubt. He might be one of the thirty-six.”

Moish’s eyes, now filled with tears, move slowly around the circle.  Kaufman, less against his will, meets Moishe’s eyes, longer than comfortable, and softer. “Look around you, my darlings.”  Kaufman looks at Ellen, who lifts her eyes from her notes, and the current is very strong.

* * *

Walking to her apartment the conversation grows more personal. His struggle between the loving conventionality of his Long Island upbringing and the adventure of now. Ellen startles herself by beginning her life story where she usually ends: “I’m a widow, married right out of college, overseas fellowships together, and then one year later, New Year’s Eve in Zacatecas, Mexico, just before midnight on what would become 1968, Doug, that was his name, at a party, Doug right beside me, talking to someone while I’m talking to someone, fell over dead.  Brain aneurysm. Boom. Gone.” She has stopped. She puts down her bags, and as she stands, sighs, “Huh!”

Feeling survivor guilt mixed with hope, Kaufman blurts a formula he learned as a kid in Temple, “May his memory be for a blessing.”

“Oh it is,” she’s looking at a memory “It is ….”  oh it is.” She takes his arm, “And for now that’s enough about Doug.”

Expelled from Eden, Ellen left Mexico and grad school. A friend drew her into the embrace of Womyn, she spells it for him, a collective in Vermont, but everyone was from New York or Boston, shedding patriarchy, rediscovering matriarchy, female culture, women’s music, art, history, politics, goddesses. Equal rights becoming Women’s Liberation. And the women of Womyn for a while filled the hole in her soul; “Their care for me became love for them, for women, for a cause.”

By this story of withdrawal Kaufman is a little what we now would call ‘triggered.’ He lost a strong love when a woman went off to be with women. This is fraught terrain.

“So you’re out of Eden once again?” he asks.

“Not the same,” she says, “They are with me, the Womyn, like a family. They’re my tribe.” She sighs, “Everywhere I turn to learn the teachers are men. So I rejoined the patriarchy. But with sisters. And soon enough, women will be teaching women. I will be teaching women.”

For a long time, Kaufman is uncharacteristically silent. So Ellen walks ahead and calls over her shoulder,

“And I missed men.”

* * *

He’s too tall, too bony, no place to cuddle, and she doesn’t know how to be a woman with a man, her first in four years. ‘Awkward,’ she thinks and holds a laugh. Not like getting back on a bike.

They lie, sweaty and touchy, side by side in corpse pose, the street light glow adding a noirish tint. He’s feeling whatever is the opposite of orgasmic.

Ellen says it, “Well, that was angular,” and lets herself laugh out loud.

Kaufman stiffens. He must have felt to her like a crustaceous spider looming and poking. He does not yet know, but he will learn, to ask her, how do you be your first man since your love died beside you?

He feels a warm thigh against his hard hip bone. Already he is cautiously in love with something here, the rhythms of her mind and body, the flow between them. But not in bed.  He takes a deep Tantric breath. He’ll stay til she says to leave.

She turns to him. She’s decided something. He surprises himself by turning to her, trying not to look like a defendant awaiting her verdict.

She laughs again, takes his hand, says, “Tonight, you were a Lamed Vavnik,

Is she putting him on? He enjoyed he rabbi’s fables, but really? Wise and just angels from another world secretly fixing ours?  But Kaufman does remember him quoting Pirke Avot, the  ancient sages, ‘Give the benefit of the doubt.’ Like a hamish presumption of innocence. He rests his hand on her thigh. “I’m flattered,” he says.

She bounces up, wraps her legs in lotus, and sits elbows on knees, chin on her thumbs..  The lace mantilla over her bedlight makes her rosy. Her breasts glow. Her nakedness amazes him.

“There was a moment,” she says, taking his hand and resting it again on her thigh, “Your chin was piercing my neck. And it was uncomfortable and nice at the same time.  Luscious pain. I was holding my breath. And his thought came into my head — I did not think this thought, this thought thought me. She pauses, “You know what I mean?”

He doesn’t think so, but he nods so she’ll go on.

“I thought, ‘We’re Lamed vavniks … Him and me …’” She squeezes his hand, He looks like he’s trying to remember, which he is, “You know, the thirty-six wise and just people who keep the world going?”

He nods, he is remembering.

“You and me. We keep the world going.”  She tears with fervor, , and sings it almost with the high note on ‘have,’ “We have to.”

Embarrassed, she looks away and focuses on curating the lace mantilla over the light.

Look at her there, glowing. This is a perfect moment. Kaufman actually thinks that. He heard some downtown artist talk about perfect moments, and now here it is. He can think that but he has no clue how to say it or celebrate it. Or better, just let it be. He falls back on what he knows.

“So,” the naked lawyer begins his cross examination gently, “Are we one or two lamed vavniks?”

She knits her brow. She’s serious about this. “Oh, one, definitely. Like Reb Moish said, two lives, two times eighteen, chai, the number for life, two souls creating one perfect 36, a lamed vavnik!” But only for an instant!”

Kaufman is fascinated by how into this she is. And how hard he’s working to keep up. So to both encourage and slow it down a little, he puts his fingers to his Jewfro, then throws  his hands up in awe, “Wow!!!” which is the newest zeitgeist expression for such moments, having blown away ‘blows my mind.’

She smiles; nothing will stop her now, “There are lamed vavnik tales by the bale full” She takes his hands, holds them on her open thigh, “Kender, gedank! Listen my child. The Cossacks are coming!” Both their eyes widen, “With his arms to heaven, the Rabbi prays those murderers should fall into a hole in the ground like Korach in the Torah. But the horses hooves are louder. The people all gathered in the synagogue pray that crossing the river these descendents of Pharaoh should drown in a flood. But the hoofbeats grow louder, they hear savage war cries. Everyone prays inside themselves, too terrified to speak.” She waits, “Then softly,  from outside the shul, floating in the air, they hear prayers, in a voice they know coming from the broken shack by the stinking river where lives the town shlemiel, the town scapegoat, the invisible, despised, erased one, the one you least expect. And everyone scorns and mocks. And then they hear the hoofbeats and war cries fading away, the town is so small the Cossacks didn’t notice, they rode right by.” Her lips tighten into an ironic grin: “And the war ends and Nixon gets impeached.”

Kaufman says, “Why do you know all this?”

She gives him that testing look like on the Yoga floor hugging their mats: “I’m writing my dissertation about Jewish women’s stories.  You know, she makes finger quotes,  bubbe meises.’

He says “Old wives tales?” She nods, Yeah, women-talk in the kitchen while the men at the table discuss serious stuff, Talmud and Torah.“  Family stories, children, love gone good or bad, illness, recipes and remedies from Grandma, songs?  You know, Torah is called Etz Chayim, the tree of life?” He nods. “My teacher says women’s culture is the broccoli stalk of life.”

Kaufman  thinks, ‘This is somebody,’  but hasn’t the sense to say it. Instead again, the lawyer: “Is a woman ever a lamed vavnik?”

She nods, “My grandma was mean and bitter, no one liked her, but she secretly paid for my college, made my parents say I had a scholarship from some obscure Jewish pharmacist or philanthropist.” She unfolds her legs, grabs the blanket and wraps it and her arms around her knees.

“And she made my mother tell me after she died, so I never got to thank her.“

Kaufman rises onto his elbow, rests his head on a bony long-fingered hand, “I had faith when I was a kid. Beautiful faith.”

She thinks, ‘Remember him like this.’

She says, “And?”

“And? And the Holocaust. I found out about it when my parents did, like a year after the war. My mother said God is dead and tore her garment. And the bomb and Birmingham, and Bobby Seale and Fred Hampton and Judge Hoffman, and napalm, and Nixon and court Jew Kissinger, and all the stupidity and cupidity and sick-minded pain inflicted on decent hard working people. How could I worship a God who would let this happen?” He stops. “Forgive me, I’m a lawyer.“

Ellen thinks for a long moment: “But a good god?”

“Would I worship?”

In the face of her naked attentiveness, Kaufman leans forward a little, offers a hand, “Let’s be Lamed Vavniks again?” She pulls him in.

And now the conversation explores new terrain, reaches deeper, opens wider, quickens, quickens, quickens, they talk in tongues, one and one as one, each knowing for the first time, ‘God is in this bed, and I, I did not know it.’

Let go let go let go.

The lawyer, wide-eyed, falls back, half hums, ‘You know you got it if it makes you feel good.’ All his life, ‘You got it meant’ you got the fellowship or the award, got hired or appointed or promoted or laid. Or the war ended, justice reigns. ‘You got it’ meant you won!

But simply feel good and you got it? That, until now, he has been learning by rote. Later he wishes he’d said that, but all he had was, “I think I just met my Tantra.”

The participant observer slowly lowers her cheek onto this man’s bony chest, her arm across his hollow belly to his bony hip, wondering if she can find comfort in his angles, his mind all labels, explanations, challenges. Mansplaining isn’t a word yet, but already Ellen is allergic. Exposed to controlling rationalism, she breaks out in sullen silence. She’s done with books with gonads attached. And not just men and not just lovers; anyone who can’t for even a moment just be here now. Even after that orgasm? Come on! She rolls away.

But, maybe she’s being unfair. Readjusting to men is bumpy.  Reading Casteñeda; she is watching out of the corners of her eyes for hints. To her continual surprise, even disapproval, her journey has turned inward and spiritual. Yoga, and now this return to Judaism, this tshuva. And the infuriating irony that, for now, she can get to this wisdom through men.

And now this other tshuva, this return not to men, but to a man, to a penis. Ellen realizes she has not thought of Doug until now. She closes her eyes and he’s smiling. And Kaufman touches her and she doesn’t jump. She reaches back and holds his butt in her hand; he does have a nice butt, and yes that matters.

She wants to say ‘Your body is smoother than you think, Yoga does that.’ But not yet. She wants to tell him, ‘Spinoza’s God won’t work for you. I feel that.’ But not yet. There is a not yet-ness to this … And. And … we came together here in this place, this bed.  Me and this angular man.

She says,  “I think I will call you Oscar.”

* * *

The world of the bed is invaded by demons from the worlds of building codes and performance theory.  Each thinks Kaufman should leave now. Each thinks at the same instant  ‘I don’t have time for this.’  Each thinks, ‘On the mat. On Thursday. See what happens?’

But they don’t say that. They wait, like Hasids yearning for Moshiach, they wait.

Ellen says, “We were one good lamed vavnik.”

“Was,” says, Kaufman. “You and I was one good lamed vavnik.”

“And then it passed and we was just us again?”

“Just us, Just us, shall you pursue. It’s written across court house porticos.”

Now she looks at him: “In the next moment, is someone else a lamed vavnik? Someone in Sri Lanka or Syracuse sees and says or does the right exact thing to set their little world back in balance? And their little world is the whole world? And then they go back to being their too human selves? The soul of it, the lamed vavnik-ness, where does it go?”

They roll together, her roundnesses nestling into his crevices. Then Ellen falls asleep. But Oscar Kaufman  knows from experience that soon an inhaled hair or protruding trochanter will force him to whisper, ‘Sorry,’ and roll away into solitary sleep.

Kaufman waits and while he waits oneness wins, he falls, and they sleep, her hands like paws on his chest, thighs entwined, belly to belly. And hair; she pillows on his wiry Jewfro; her curl breathes in and out of his mouth, extending his smile.

Like Tantric deities sleeping in Gan Eden.

* * *

The streetlamp goes out; Kaufman wakes up, and hears through his hair:

“So, anyone you meet could be a lamed vavnik?”

Then Kaufman lies back, and from Jewish kindergarten he remembers the exact words Reb Moish said in Yiddish, Zet zhe, kinderlach, gedenk-zhe, teirah, vos ir lert’ doh, “Listen, children, remember, my darlings, what I’m going to tell you.” His teacher, before story time she always sang those strange words, he didn’t know what they meant. He can’t recall her name, but like a little miracle he remembers this. He’s a little startled.

But this time, when Ellen laughs, he doesn’t flinch, and he tells this story:

“My grandfather, of blessed memory, as your wonder rabbi would say, died when I was ten. Every summer, my mother, my sister, me, the aunts and cousins, for a month we stayed at Grandma Lena and Grandpa Maurice’s camp on Alamoosic ‘pawnd’ in Maine; they say ‘pawnd.’ And my father and Uncle Bernie, at the end of the summer, came for a week. It’s still there, the camp, but I haven’t gone.”

“You didn’t call them Bubbie and Zaydie?” she asks.

“No, they insisted, Grandma and Grandpa, like ‘Amerricans.’” He closes his eyes. “The last summer of my grandfather, I was nine, he was dying from smoking, even swimming he chain smoked. So, one hot day in August, Grandpa is painting on the porch. Every day he painted the pond, the same picture almost, but with different light or different focal points.  Amateurish paintings but he didn’t care, he just liked doing it. And giving them to people.

“He was always in pain, but this day it was too much; he shlumped down like asleep. So I said to Grandma, “It’s so hot today. Let’s take Grandpa down to the dock and he can put his feet in the water and cool off.”

‘Why’s he telling her this,’ Ellen wonders, but she’s listening with every pore.

“But Grandma said, “Oh, to tink of dat, you are zo zweet,” that’s how she talked, “‘But your grempa, he’s szo szick, and dat trail down is szo szteep. I dun tink he can make it.’ And she hugs me, I can smell her sweet perfume, ‘But tenk you,’ tenk you, you vundervul boy.’”

Kaufman  goes very quiet: “But Grandpa wasn’t asleep! All curled over and barely breathing, he heard. And his shaky old fingers reach out like he’s pecking, and he gasps, “No, let’s go!”

“So Grandma Lena and I, we practically carry this short, heavy, dying man, my Grandpa Maurice, born Moshe, down the steep rocky path to ‘da duck,’ that what she called the dock, so now everyone calls it the duck, and I take off his shoes and socks and put his feet in the water. And we sat there for a while.

Kaufman puts his arms behind his head on the pillow: “And forever after Grandma Lena told the story of how I was so thoughtful to my dying grandpa. Like I was the lamed vavnik.”

It’s chilly, he pulls up the blanket; they adjust for comfort, the nestling places almost familiar.

“But, you know, looking back, putting Grandpa’s feet in the water didn’t help him, and climbing back up that steep rocky path practically killed him. But he did it. He did it so his nine year old grandson could do something kind for his dying grandpa.”

“He knew what a memory that would make. He knew.

Ellen’s eyes are filled with tears..

“My grandfather,” says Kaufman, “he was a lamed vavnik.”

* * *

Then Ellen wraps Kaufman  in her arms, and two souls lay there, naked and, for a moment, unafraid in this world, and all worlds.

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