The Outsider Read Free

“Do you know what we’re getting into?”
    â€œNot exactly. But neither did I know what I was getting into in the service.”
    â€œThis isn’t the service, David. The war’s over. And why do they want me to teach Bible class?”
    â€œBecause if you don’t, I’ll have to do it.”
    Lucy’s mother, Sally, was in the kitchen, washing the dishes, and Lucy’s father, Herb, was drying the dishes, and the door to the dining room was far from soundproof.
    â€œAre you listening?” Herb whispered to Sally.
    â€œI’m not listening and don’t interfere.”
    â€œYou heard.”
    â€œDon’t interfere.”
    â€œShe’s your daughter, too. Not like we got seven kids. We got a daughter. One, period.”
    â€œSo we got a daughter. She’s married two weeks and already you want her divorced.”
    â€œThat’s nonsense. I don’t want her divorced.”
    â€œThank God. Just go out and find a boy like David.”
    â€œThat,” Herb whispered hoarsely, “is why my daughter has to live like a peasant in some godforsaken wilderness called Leighton Ridge.”
    â€œIt’s not a wilderness. It’s a beautiful place only sixty-two miles from New York.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause I looked it up!” Sally whispered fiercely.
    â€œSo this girl brings home her date, and the father asks him what he does for a living and he says he’s a rabbi, and the mother says, What kind of work is that for a nice Jewish boy?”
    â€œThat’s disgusting,” Sally said.
    â€œIt’s just a Jewish joke.”
    â€œIt’s stupid, and do you know, I think most Jewish jokes are stupid, and as far as you’re concerned, Herb Spendler, just don’t interfere. Leave them alone.”
    In the dining room, Lucy asked plaintively, “Would you have married me, David, if you knew I never read the Bible? Worse, until Rabbi Belsen married us, I had never set foot in a synagogue.”
    â€œThat wasn’t a synagogue. That was Rabbi Belsen’s study. And I knew Herb and Sally were atheists.”
    â€œIt didn’t upset you?”
    â€œNo. Should it?”
    â€œI don’t even know the difference between a synagogue and a rabbi’s study.”
    â€œYou’ll learn. Meanwhile, we need a car.”
    â€œYou really want me to teach Bible class?”
    â€œIt’s good stuff, battles, orgies, adultery, onanism, love stories —”
    â€œWhat’s onanism?”
    â€œFirst you read it, then we’ll talk about it.”
    â€œYou talk like the Bible’s a study in pornography.”
    â€œAnd other things. The point is that the Jewish chroniclers who put it down spared no person and no act. They put it down the way it was. Of course, in the translation it’s gussied up, and instead of saying he went to bed with her, they say he had knowledge of her, but you’ll soon learn your way around.”
    Lucy’s mother and father returned to the dining room at that point with cake and coffee, and Herb could not resist saying, “With fourteen families, Dave, suppose five of them resign? Bang. You’re out of business.”
    â€œYou’re right. I have to find some backup.”
    â€œBut first things first,” he told Lucy, and the next day they went looking for a car. They ended up at Honest Joe Fierello’s lot on West Fifty-second Street. Honest Joe had a cherubic face that inspired trust, and he had a two-door 1940 Chevy that could be had for two hundred dollars. “A hundred dollars a door,” he told them, showing that he had a sense of humor as well as a sense of piracy. “Nineteen forty,” he explained, “was the last year they made a good car, and compared to the garbage they’re turning out today, this little beauty is a work of art, just raring to go. They don’t make them like this anymore.”
    The