20
As soon as the car doors were shut, I turned on Ruth. “Explain what happened, please.”
“What happened with what?” She reached for the window handle and began rolling it down.
“Mrs. Kline. Dr. Harper said she checked herself out of the hospital without even being seen by the doctor. How did you do that?”
“Louise? Oh, she’s just a little lonely. That’s all. We’re having lunch on Monday. I told her I’d try to round up two more for a bridge game soon too.”
I blinked rapidly. “Lunch. You’re having lunch with the woman who wouldn’t even let a Jewish doctor examine her unless a Christian nurse was present?”
“Her parents were from Germany,” Ruth said. “She can’t help the way she was raised. But she agreed to go to Hofberg’s for lunch.” Ruth smiled deviously at me. “I promised they won’t poison her pastrami if she’s with me.”
I shut my mouth, which had dropped open. “You’re taking a German woman to a Jewish deli for lunch? The woman who wouldn’t even eat a bagel because she could be confused for a Jew?”
“Her parents were German. She was born here. And people can learn, Barbara. You really shouldn’t be so judgmental.”
Yes. I was the judgmental one, not Mrs. Kline.
“And people called Anne Sullivan the miracle worker. You could give Anne Bancroft a run for her money.” I shook my head and started the car, looking behind me as I backed out of the parking space.
“Dr. Harper said he wants you to come back next week. Apparently if you can tame Mrs. Kline, the nurses are ready to throw you a parade.”
I glanced at Ruth as I put the car in drive and saw her smiling in self-satisfaction.
“You really should think about the reasons people act like they do,” Ruth said.
“I’m no doctor, but it was obvious that Louise just needed a little attention.
Granted, I suppose I understand her a little better than most. It wasn’t like I had ever seen someone who wasn’t Jewish or European when I came to this country. And losing her daughter, well, I ...”
But I wasn’t listening anymore as the wheels in my head began to turn.
Why was Ruth here? Why was she acting the way she did?
A lightbulb turned on. She understands Mrs. Kline because they both lost children and are lonely.
That’s why she’s here. Not because I need help, but because she needs to feel needed.
I had asked Harry once why his mother never remarried.
“I told her she should once,” he had said.
“But she insisted that she wasn’t lonely—that I was enough. ”
Harry was gone now. Of course she was lonely. I thought back to Janet telling me that I should marry her off. I hadn’t taken that idea seriously, but maybe ... maybe that was actually just what the doctor ordered.
At a light, I snuck another look at her. At a couple months shy of sixty, she was far from too old to find love again. After all, she was still an attractive woman. Even my own mother was envious of her figure. No, her cooking wouldn’t lure anyone in, but ...
Another lightbulb went on. I actually knew not just one, but two widowed men of her generation. Janet’s father and Mr. Moskowitz, who lived three doors down from me.
Not that I wanted to foist Ruth on Janet, no matter how much she liked Eddie.
And Mr. Moskowitz terrified Susie and Bobby with his yelling that they weren’t to play on his lawn—something that, for the record, they had never done.
But if Ruth could turn Mrs. Kline into a friend, Mr. Moskowitz would be no match for her .
.. charm ... or whatever one would call it.
Besides, wasn’t setting people up a mitzvah?
I could help two lonely people and get my independence back at the same time without having to feel guilty about putting Harry’s mother out. I smiled as a plan began to form.
We got home, and I asked Ruth if she wanted to walk with me to pick up the children from school. “We’ll bring Pepper with us,” I said, scooping the puppy out of her box as she wriggled and struggled to lick as much of me as she could after her first time home alone.
“How lovely,” Ruth said. “Let me just change and get a hat.”
“Great!” I said brightly. I just had to hope Mr. Moskowitz was outside. But as someone who fussed over his lawn, refusing to let any of the local boys cut his grass for him, the odds were good.
“Isn’t the school that way?” Ruth asked, pointing down the street.
“Ye-es,” I said, thinking quickly. “But it’s such a nice day and poor Pepper was in her box so long, I figured we’d loop the block first so she can get her energy out. Weren’t you the one who said a tired puppy is a well-behaved puppy?”
Ruth smiled and held her head a little higher at being quoted. “Quite right.”
By the time we were two houses down, I had spotted Mr. Moskowitz pushing his manual mower in crisp lines across his already immaculate front lawn, stopping periodically to mop his brow with the red paisley handkerchief he kept in his pocket.
Observing him from a house away, I could see he was definitely older than Ruth by a good ten years.
Or maybe he just looked it from making mean faces at children.
Either way, I would have picked Mrs. Kline over him in a fight, so Ruth would make short work of this.
“Hello, Mr. Moskowitz,” I called as we neared him. “How are you today?”
He turned, pulling the handkerchief out to wipe his forehead. Then he pointed toward the sidewalk. “Don’t you let that mutt do his business on my lawn,” he said gruffly. “I’ve found droppings recently.”
“Wasn’t us,” I said mildly. And as far as I knew, it wasn’t.
Besides, that had become a game in the neighborhood according to some of the other mothers—leaving a present on Old Man Moskowitz’s lawn whenever he wasn’t looking.
I had no doubt that Bobby would bring Pepper to join in as soon as he got over his fear of the man.
He continued to give Pepper the stink eye. “Mr. Moskowitz, this is my mother-in-law, Ruth Feldman.”
His eyes traveled up from Pepper, spending a little too long at Ruth’s legs and bosom before meeting her face.
“Pleased,” Ruth said, sounding anything but, “to make your acquaintance. But we should be going to pick up the children.”
“You’re heading the wrong way for that,” Mr. Moskowitz said, then scowled. “I knew it. It was your dog on my lawn.”
“I’ll have you know,” Ruth said, the hand that wasn’t holding Pepper’s leash on her hip, “that not only is this dog completely trained, but she has also never even walked down this side of the street. So you and that attitude can gey kaken ofn yahm .” She switched to Yiddish to tell him to go and do what he had accused the dog of doing on his lawn in the ocean.
The two stared at each other, not off to the start I had hoped. And then Pepper put her front two paws on his lawn and lowered her hindquarters, leaving a puddle all over the sidewalk in front of Mr. Moskowitz’s house.
A sound I had never heard before gurgled out of Mr. Moskowitz’s chest, and it took me several seconds to realize that wheezing sound was him laughing. Soon Ruth joined him, and then I did too.
“Mrs. Feldman, was it?” Mr. Moskowitz asked.
“Ruth,” she said, switching the leash to her left hand and holding her right out.
He took it in his. “Morty,” he said. My eyes widened.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that he had a first name.
I knew he was a widower with grown children who seldom visited, but I had never truly thought of him as a person who had a whole life outside of his lawn before, let alone a jaunty-sounding first name.
“Morty,” Ruth repeated. “And this here is Pepper.”
“More like pisher , ” Mr. Moskowitz said, and Ruth laughed.
Meanwhile, I was looking from one to the other like they were a tennis match.
Old Man Moskowitz Had Made Ruth Laugh ! Let’s see, I thought.
It was late March. If I was lucky, and this worked out, three months was a reasonable timeline for a second marriage among people who didn’t have nearly as much time to waste, right?
They’d do a small ceremony, either at the courthouse or in the rabbi’s study.
And then she would live three houses away from me.
Oh no. What had I just done?
“Well, we should be going,” I said, taking Pepper’s leash from Ruth’s hand. Mr. Moskowitz was still holding her other one. And Ruth was letting him. This was a disaster. What was I thinking?
I wasn’t. That’s the answer. I wasn’t thinking. But three doors down was still better than inside my house.
I thought this was all about doing a mitzvah for two poor, lonely people, Harry’s amused voice said in my head. I shot a glare skyward. He and I would have a little talk about that one later.