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Authors: Rebecca Goldstein
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of seeing straight through to the soul of her.
Lucinda Mandelbaum, of the famous Mandelbaum Equilibrium, just kept playing the game with her heart and soul, making everybody here feel that by her very presence they had all been admitted into the insider game, when all the while she was aware that that insider game was transpiring elsewhere, away from Frankfurter and away from Lucinda Mandelbaum, and maybe she would never get herself back into it the way she had been, the way she had been born to be.
That transformed face of hers that she was holding out to him told him everything. It was astounding that she would trust him with the sight of it. What had he done to earn the trust of Lucinda Mandelbaum?
He saw the fragility within the fanger, the willed boldness and gumption of this brave and wonderful girl.
He saw the dappledness of her.
Glory be to God for dappled things, he silently quoted his second-favorite poet.
IV
The Argument from the Irrepressible Past
Despite the metaphysical exertions of his night, suspended over sublimity on Weeks Bridge, Cass remembers that he has a meeting with Shimmy Baumzer at eleven in the morning. So, before settling down again beneath the luxury of Lucinda’s comforter, he sets his alarm for 9 a.m., and then, just to be safe, he sets the second alarm clock, on Lucinda’s side. It’s already after six, the bedroom on the top floor of the duplex brightening, and he wonders whether he’ll be able to fall asleep at all, hugging the last tattered bits of epiphany and Lucinda’s fragrant pillow … and is awakened into terrifying confusion, the awful ringing setting his frantic heart to pounding, while he is desperately trying to make it stop, scuttling back and forth across the mattress, fumbling with the two alarm clocks—which one the hell
is
it?—until he finally realizes it isn’t an alarm clock at all.
It’s the telephone.
“Hello?”
“It’s me!”
“Lucinda?”
“Lu
cin
da? Who the hell is Lu
cin
da? It’s me! Roz!”
“Roz Margolis?”
“Is there another?”
“Roz. My God. Roz. My God.”
“For a famous atheist, you sure call out to the deity often enough there, sweetie.”
Roz is laughing, girlish peals that contrast with her husky voice. It brings her home to him as nothing else could. Say what you will about Roz Margolis, she certainly knows how to laugh.
“Roz,” he repeats. There’s still some small chance he’s dreaming.
Roslyn Margolis had been Cass’s girlfriend years ago, when he had first come to Frankfurter to study with Jonas Elijah Klapper. She had spent ten months at Harvard, and that’s how long she and Cass had been together. Still, those ten months had been something. They had been so packed with drama that they had left the impression of being ten years, ten decades, ten eternities.
They had never lost touch. Over the years, he had been wakened often enough in the middle of the night to answer the phone and hear Roz on the other end, always calling from some remote time zone, miscalculating the hour that it was for Cass, apologizing profusely in between her laughter and questions and unbelievable news. News from Roz always came filed under “Unbelievable.”
“Cass, I can’t believe how famous you’ve suddenly gotten yourself. It’s incredible! I’ve heard you on NPR at least a hundred times. And I read that feature in
Time
magazine. The atheist with a soul! Since when are you an atheist? I remember when you were contemplating the Kabbalistic meaning of potato kugel!”
“Where are you calling from, Roz? Are you still studying the fearsome people of the Amazon rain forest?”
“No. I’m
here!”
“Where ‘here’?”
“Cambridge! I’m studying the fearsome people of
Cambridge!”
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s a good thing I’m not the sensitive type, Cass. You’re supposed to be shouting out,
‘Yippee! Glory be! Hallelujah!’
Or whatever you atheists with souls call out in your
Lucinda Mandelbaum, of the famous Mandelbaum Equilibrium, just kept playing the game with her heart and soul, making everybody here feel that by her very presence they had all been admitted into the insider game, when all the while she was aware that that insider game was transpiring elsewhere, away from Frankfurter and away from Lucinda Mandelbaum, and maybe she would never get herself back into it the way she had been, the way she had been born to be.
That transformed face of hers that she was holding out to him told him everything. It was astounding that she would trust him with the sight of it. What had he done to earn the trust of Lucinda Mandelbaum?
He saw the fragility within the fanger, the willed boldness and gumption of this brave and wonderful girl.
He saw the dappledness of her.
Glory be to God for dappled things, he silently quoted his second-favorite poet.
IV
The Argument from the Irrepressible Past
Despite the metaphysical exertions of his night, suspended over sublimity on Weeks Bridge, Cass remembers that he has a meeting with Shimmy Baumzer at eleven in the morning. So, before settling down again beneath the luxury of Lucinda’s comforter, he sets his alarm for 9 a.m., and then, just to be safe, he sets the second alarm clock, on Lucinda’s side. It’s already after six, the bedroom on the top floor of the duplex brightening, and he wonders whether he’ll be able to fall asleep at all, hugging the last tattered bits of epiphany and Lucinda’s fragrant pillow … and is awakened into terrifying confusion, the awful ringing setting his frantic heart to pounding, while he is desperately trying to make it stop, scuttling back and forth across the mattress, fumbling with the two alarm clocks—which one the hell
is
it?—until he finally realizes it isn’t an alarm clock at all.
It’s the telephone.
“Hello?”
“It’s me!”
“Lucinda?”
“Lu
cin
da? Who the hell is Lu
cin
da? It’s me! Roz!”
“Roz Margolis?”
“Is there another?”
“Roz. My God. Roz. My God.”
“For a famous atheist, you sure call out to the deity often enough there, sweetie.”
Roz is laughing, girlish peals that contrast with her husky voice. It brings her home to him as nothing else could. Say what you will about Roz Margolis, she certainly knows how to laugh.
“Roz,” he repeats. There’s still some small chance he’s dreaming.
Roslyn Margolis had been Cass’s girlfriend years ago, when he had first come to Frankfurter to study with Jonas Elijah Klapper. She had spent ten months at Harvard, and that’s how long she and Cass had been together. Still, those ten months had been something. They had been so packed with drama that they had left the impression of being ten years, ten decades, ten eternities.
They had never lost touch. Over the years, he had been wakened often enough in the middle of the night to answer the phone and hear Roz on the other end, always calling from some remote time zone, miscalculating the hour that it was for Cass, apologizing profusely in between her laughter and questions and unbelievable news. News from Roz always came filed under “Unbelievable.”
“Cass, I can’t believe how famous you’ve suddenly gotten yourself. It’s incredible! I’ve heard you on NPR at least a hundred times. And I read that feature in
Time
magazine. The atheist with a soul! Since when are you an atheist? I remember when you were contemplating the Kabbalistic meaning of potato kugel!”
“Where are you calling from, Roz? Are you still studying the fearsome people of the Amazon rain forest?”
“No. I’m
here!”
“Where ‘here’?”
“Cambridge! I’m studying the fearsome people of
Cambridge!”
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s a good thing I’m not the sensitive type, Cass. You’re supposed to be shouting out,
‘Yippee! Glory be! Hallelujah!’
Or whatever you atheists with souls call out in your
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