On the last Rosh Hashanah Spencer celebrated in the temple, he convinced Rabbi Zimmerman to let him bring in the New Year with a call from the shofar that would rattle the windows. He blew from the diaphragm, as Rabbi Zimmerman had advised, but all he produced was a garbled, flatulent tone. A quarter of the congregation died that year, and Spencer felt as if he were the most undesirable of God’s chosen people.
Spencer started the Mustang’s ignition, then leaned on the horn for a solid minute. Blindly plunging his hand into the mountain of cassettes on the dashboard, he shoved a pink Loggins and Messina tape into the eight-track player and double-checked the address taped to the sun visor: Winston Foshay, 291 East 109th Street, first floor.
Why the media paid so much attention to the crisis of the black family was a mystery to Spencer. His father, a successful mortician, was a constant presence in his life, and the parade of greedy wives had provided Spencer with an overabundance of mothering. Spencer grew up in Palmer Hills, a black upper-class enclave of Detroit. Well-rounded and comfortable as his childhood was, it prepared him for nothing but cocktail-party patter and entry into a prestigious university. When he wasn’t attending weekend classes in classical piano, jazz trombone, ice skating, Chinese calligraphy, or conversational Swahili, he was drag-racing through town in his sixteenth-birthday present, a mint-condition Mustang convertible.
The first family rift occurred over two decades ago, when Spencer spurned legacy status at the alma mater of his father and grandfathers before him, Morehouse College, and chose to attend Theodore College, a small, overpriced New England white liberal-arts school geared toward molding the minds of the wealthy A-minus student. During his freshman year Spencer became what his dad termed “a lapsed Negro” and fell in love with Belgian ales, easy-listening radio, and a ponytailed, athletic redhead named Hadar Nepove.
Hadar and Spencer met in front of the dorm during a late-night fire drill, two sleepy first-year students waiting for the all clear. Hadar’s frisky bosoms were poking out of her cotton nightgown like curious kitten heads. Spencer’s pants bulged like a wind sock in a hurricane. Hadar stuffed her breasts back into her frock and winked at a leering Spencer.
“When opportunity knockers …”
“What?”
“You know, that’s the first time anyone has ever winked at me. It’s very unsettling. I’d rather you grabbed my ass. Then I’ll know I’m not misinterpreting your signals.”
“You wanna get a beer?” Hadar asked, nodding toward the campus pub, the Rathskeller.
Spencer bowed. “After you, m’lady.”
They waited out the remainder of the fire drill dressed in their pajamas, drinking wheat beer and listening to German oompah-pah music. The conversation was brisk, since Spencer had prepared for such a moment by spending most of his free time at the local kiosk reading every magazine and was ready to fake a knowledgeable discussion on any topic from the situation in the Middle East to Victorian antique furniture.
Hadar was not as eager to please. Though Spencer’s Motor City swarthiness was of some primal appeal, she didn’t quite trust him. He seemed too comfortable. Here they were, Jew and black, in a loud faux-Bavarian beer hall, drinking from steins served by Rubenesque barmaids clad in dirndls, and Spencer was saying how relaxed and at home he felt: “It’s like I’m really Lutheran.” Spencer never questioned whether he fit in; if he was there, he belonged. A southern Jew surrounded by New England bluebloods, Hadar put up a brave front. She felt obliged to throw herself into the bastions of Gentile superiority — Theodore College, the Rathskeller, the crew and rugby teams — not sure whether she was being self-affirming or self-hating. Sometimes when Hadar phoned her family in Nashville, she’d say “regatta” and her grandmother would cry.
Spencer was agendaless, and his cultural neutrality made Hadar uncomfortable, yet envious of his unwillingness to be labeled. “Hadar, the only time I feel black is when I look at my hands,” Spencer said, spreading his fingers out in front of him.
“How do you feel when you aren’t looking at your hands?” Hadar asked.
“Normal.”
For three years Spencer loved Hadar from afar, happy to lend her his notes and cheer on her scull from the riverbank. Late one night, after a regatta victory party, a drunk Hadar asked Spencer to walk her home. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he flipped through her music collection. “Hadar, we’ve got identical taste in music. Every album you have, I have — well, not the album, but the eight-track.”
“No way! Nobody listens to my music — my friends won’t let me near a radio,” she said, packing the bowl of her bong with a soggy clump of black hash.
“Then your friends don’t have any taste. This is real music. Music that puts you in touch with your feelings. Man, you can’t hide from Barry Manilow, Dan Fogelberg, Art Garfunkel, Karla Bonoff, Jackson Browne. And this Leo Kottke album is — dare I say it? — nonpareil.”
“Hold this.” Hadar passed Spencer the bong and pulled a top-of-the-line Ovation acoustic guitar from under her bed. She placed the guitar on her lap and expertly plucked a few familiar chords. She began to sing, “All we are is dust in the wind.…” Spencer lifted his thumb from the bong’s air valve, carbing the thick column of smoke into his lungs. He exhaled just as Hadar was fading out of the last chorus as if a sound man were hidden away in the closet. When the d in “wind” melted away like a snowflake on her tongue, Spencer proposed.
Spencer and Hadar moved out of their respective dorms and scheduled the marriage for a year hence, the day after graduation. They took turns announcing the impending nuptials to their parents. Spencer went first. “Hello, Dad, I’ve got a new girlfriend, her name is—”
“That’s great news, son, but I’ve got something to tell you. You’ve got a new mother, Niecee Walters. Say hello to the boy, you fine, foxy thing, you.” Spencer squeezed Hadar’s hand, swearing lifelong allegiance, no matter the sacrifice.
The call to the Nepove household went somewhat smoother than the one to Spencer’s father. “Hello, Mom, Dad, Grandma — can you hear me? Everyone all there?” Hadar’s mother answered in an exaggerated southern accent: “We’s all assembled, darlin’, like kittens in a basket. What is it you is so giddy about? Vandy’s playing Georgia in two minutes — got a new running back this year, Clovis Buckminster. Boy big as the sultan’s house, so be quick about it.”
“Mom, I’d like to introduce my fiancé, Spencer Throckmorton.”
“Hello,” greeted Spencer from the extension phone, exuding confidence, “Mom, Dad, Nana.” From the other end came the sound of something tumbling to the ground.
Hadar gasped, “Mommy, what happened?”
“Uh, nothing, bubeleh. Everything’s fine.” Mr. Nepove responded, “That’s, er, good news,” then to the hired help, “Melba, prop Grandma’s head up with a book or something and get her some water.”
“What’s wrong with Nana?”
“Nothing — she had an attack. Hadar, this Throckmorton isn’t a member of the tribe, is he?”
“Nothing to fear, Mr. Nepove, I’m very sympathetic to the plight of Jewish people around the world. You’ve heard of Jews for Jesus, well, consider me a—” Spencer racked his brain for an appropriate alternative alliteration. “Consider me a Zairian for Zionism.”