Read Online Redemption by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

to it that I ate properly, dragging me out for long walks in any and every kind of weather. At the same time, she and Sarah Morton were becoming close friends.
    She said that she wanted to go to a synagogue; and when I told her that I had not set foot in a synagogue since age thirteen, she answered, “That’s your problem, Ike. Mine is to know all I can about you. If you will take me to a synagogue, I will take you to Sunday Mass.”
    We went one Friday evening, walking down to the Free Synagogue on Sixty-eighth Street. I had made the mistake of telling her that observant Jews do not ride on the Sabbath, and she decided that for once in my life, I would be an observant Jew. The Mass followed two days later. My feet still ached, but fortunately the church was much closer to 115th Street. Yet nothing was done with stress; I had only to look at her and then ask myself: Why not?
    For the first two weeks we slept together, she had frightening nightmares. She would awaken sobbing and crawl into my arms, but in time they became fewer and less frequent. She spoke a great deal about her life, about attending a strict convent school for so many years and laughing good-naturedly about some of the archaic Victorian “guidelines of ladylike deportment” the nuns taught her. But instead of a cold holding back, convent or no, she entered into sex with a passion that was almost too much for me. Once, on a Sunday afternoon, when we stretched out on my bed after a walk, I protested that it was sinful to do this in daylight.
    â€œOh, Ike,” she said, laughing, “you have the strangest catalog of sins that are not sinful. Your Puritan ancestors—”
    â€œI have no Puritan ancestors. I’m Jewish.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter. You know, the Indians who helped them survive loved to have sex on a nearby hillside in the afternoon sun. The Puritans decided it was an affront to God, and slaughtered them.”
    â€œDid you learn that in the convent?”
    â€œNo. Read it somewhere. And you’ve never done anything sinful.”
    She kissed me, and that finished my argument. She changed, she flowered; and I was an old man falling hopelessly in love. But there was one thing she never spoke of—her life with her onetime husband. Aside from telling about her teeth being broken, she said almost nothing about her life with him. And then, one evening, the telephone rang and a voice announced that it was William Sedgwick Hopper, and that he would like to speak to Mrs. Hopper. I held my hand over the phone and called to Liz, “It’s your ex-husband. He wants to talk. You don’t have to. I’ll tell him to buzz off and forget it.”
    Liz stood facing me, her lips tight, a look in her eyes I had never seen before. A long moment passed before she spoke. “No, Ike. I’ll talk to him. I’ll take it in the kitchen.” And with that, she walked into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. When I heard her say hello, I put the phone back in its cradle. But closed door or not, her voice came through, a raging voice that I would have believed Elizabeth incapable of. “You bastard!” she shouted. “You rotten, unspeakable bastard! How dare you call me here—or anywhere else! Don’t you ever call me again! Ever! Ever, do you understand?” Then there was a long moment of silence, and then again, Liz’s raging voice, “Do you know what my response is to that? Fuck off, you miserable creep!” Perhaps a minute passed before Liz flung open the kitchen door and strode into the dining room, her arms flung wide.
    â€œLook at me, Ike! Just look at me!”
    â€œWhat did he want?”
    â€œHe wanted the gold bracelet. Can you imagine! He called to tell me that he intended to take action to get the bracelet, and that he had spoken to his attorney. Do you know what I said?”
    â€œI heard you through the door. I’m proud of