And though the house lots were modest-five thousand square feet for the most part-they afforded privacy while offering the added advantage of a closer relationship between neighbors. Shared barbecue meals were common in Colonial Village during summer, and several times a season there were block parties on Saturday nights.
The older inhabitants of the town tended to be supercilious toward Colonial Village. They came from a background of ugly but solid and spacious Victorian houses, and referred to Colonial Village as “cracker boxes” and joked about their indoor swimming pools in sneering reference to flooded cellars after a rainstorm. This was unfair. Not all Colonial Village cellars were subject to flooding-only those at the lower end of the development.
Nor was it true that only Jews lived in the village. Almost as many non-Jews lived there. Bradford Lane, where Isaac and Patricia Hirsh lived, for example, may have been solidly Jewish at their end of the street, but the other end had a Venuti, an O’Hearne, and Stan Padefsky who was Polish.
Right now, on the eve of Yom Kippur, there was a bustle of activity in many Colonial Village households as families got ready for temple. The Hirsh home, however, was relatively quiet. Patricia Hirsh, a tall, statuesque woman in her thirties, with red hair and freckles and bright blue eyes, had already had her supper and cleared away the dishes. She frequently ate alone since there was no telling when her husband would get home from the lab. Normally she did not mind, but tonight she had promised to baby-sit across the street for Liz Marcus so she could go to the Kol Nidre service. Her husband’s tardiness was annoying, especially since Pat had told him to be sure to get home early. His place was laid in the tiny dining area, set off from the rest of the living room by a two-tier painted bookcase. (Renaissance had a wrought-iron railing, and Moderne a low wall of glass brick.) She glanced at the clock and was considering calling the lab to see if he’d started out when she heard his key in the lock.
In contrast to his attractive young wife, Isaac Hirsh was short, fat, and fifty. He had a fringe of grizzled iron-gray hair around a bald head, and a short bristly moustache under his bulbous, red-veined nose. She bent forward to kiss him perfunctorily, then said, “I told you I was going to baby-sit for Liz Marcus. I promised to be over early.”
“You have plenty of time, baby. They don’t start services until after seven, maybe not till quarter past, just before sundown.”
“How would you know?” she said. “You haven’t gone in years.”
“Some things you don’t forget, baby.”
“Well, if you can’t forget it, why don’t you go?”
He shrugged his shoulders and sat down at the table.
“I mean it’s like Christmas, isn’t it? I don’t go to church and we never did much back home, but I always feel I’ve got to celebrate Christmas. When Ma and Pa were alive, I always made a point of trying to get back to South Bend.” She began serving his dinner. “It’s like that, isn’t it?”
He considered. “Yes, for some it’s like that. But for most, it’s like anything religious-a kind of superstition. And I just don’t happen to be superstitious.”
She sat down opposite him and watched him eat. He spoke between mouthfuls. “There are some Jews who let on to be awfully proud of being Jews, although they had nothing to do with it and it certainly wasn’t of their own choosing… And there are some that are sorry they were born Jews. It’s the same feeling really, just turned inside out.” He waved his spoon at her. “Nothing so much resembles a hollow as a swelling. So they do what they can to change it-poor buggers.”
She took the plate away and brought him another.
“If they go out of town, they change their names,” he went on. “If they remain in their hometown, it’s not so easy but they work at it. I’m a Jew, and I’m not proud of it and I’m not sorry for it. I don’t try to hide it, but I don’t glory in it either. It’s what I am because it’s what I was born. It’s just a pigeonhole, a category, and you can make categories any way you like-shift them up or down, one side or the other.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, you come from South Bend. Are you proud of it? Do you regret it? You’re a female-”
“There have been times when I’ve been sorry for that, I can tell you.”
He nodded. “All right, maybe I’ve been sorry a couple of times. It’s only human.” He grew reflective. “At that, I guess I’ve been lucky. In science it doesn’t matter so much. If I had gone into business or one of the professions like medicine where a lot of doors are closed to you if you’re Jewish, maybe I would have regretted it more and then I might have tried to do something about it-hide it, or gone the other way. But in my field, in math research, it’s no particular liability. In fact, some people even think we’ve got a special knack; it gives us an edge, like an Italian looking for a job with an opera company.”
“My, aren’t we getting philosophical.”
“Maybe. Fact is I’m bushed. That can make a man philosophical-just being tired.”
“Has Sykes been bearing down on you?” she asked, at once sympathetic. “He called you, by the way.”
“Sykes? When did he call?”
“About ten or fifteen minutes before you got home. He wanted you to call him back.”
“All right.”
“Aren’t you going to call him?”
“No, I’ll run up later and see him at the lab. That’s probably what he wanted.”
“But you’re tired,” she protested, “and it’s your holiday too.”
“Oh, Sykes knows I don’t go to the synagogue. The old man has been chewing him out so naturally he’s on my tail.”
“Is something wrong, Ike?” she asked anxiously.
He shrugged his shoulders. “The usual headaches. You get an idea and it looks good. So you work on it and work on it, and then it turns out sour.”
“That happens all the time in research, doesn’t it?”
“Sure, and for the boys in pure research at the universities, it doesn’t make any difference. But with us, where we’re working for industry, and you’ve got to charge the customer, it can become a little sticky. This job was for Goraltronics, and they’re not easy people to work for at any time. Right now, for some reason, they seem jumpier than ever, and it rubs off on everyone else down the line. Well, let the big boys worry, I’m just one of the peasants. I do my work and draw my pay.”
“Then you’ll be working late?”
“Maybe a couple of hours. Why?”
“Peter Dodge called earlier to say he might drop by.”
“To see me or to see you?”
She colored. “Oh, Ike-”
He laughed at her embarrassment. “I’m just kidding, baby. C’mere.”
She came over and he put his arm around her and nuzzled her thigh while massaging her buttock with his hand.