The Set Table

"I wonder if any of Simon’s previous wives will attend the funeral," Thelma Greenblatt speculated. She and her husband, Morris, were just finishing breakfast.

“Don’t know and don’t particularly care.” He and his older brother, the ben habachoor, Jewish first-born son, had been estranged for years. And regarding how many matrimonial train wrecks there had been over the past fifty-some-odd years, Morris eventually lost count. In a quandary over what to do, whether or not to show up at the synagogue, he nibbled distractedly at a slice of raisin toast then reached for the coffee mug. 

“Thanks for the beautiful flowers.” Thelma shifted her gaze to a vase perched in the center of the table. The arrangement contained a collection of orangy spray roses, red miniature carnations, yellow daisy spray, chrysanthemums and purple statice. 

His features dissolved into a nostalgic, bittersweet smile. “Well, it is Mother’s Day.” Morris ran a thumb and index finger down his walrus moustache and pushed the wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his fleshy nose. “Back when I was a kid me and Simon went to the mall to buy Mother’s Day presents.”

Thelma teased another maple sausage onto her husband's plate alongside what remained of a western omelette.“That’s nice.”

 “I was in middle school, my brother a freshman at Brandenburg High. We were supposed to go in the late afternoon to buy gifts, but Simon kept procrastinating, making one sorry excuse after another, until the last possible minute. Then we rushed off and arrived just before closing.” 

Thelma freshened his coffee. “Well at least he got you there in time.” 

“I chose a set of decorative pot holders and matching dish towels, which was all I could realistically afford, but my brother grabbed an insanely expensive set of carving knives in a figured, black walnut case. Later that night before going to bed I asked him where he got the cash to buy such an extravagant present, and Simon laughed like a hyena.” “He knew the store would be empty so late in the evening, the distracted staff closing the store and paying minimal attention to the remaining handful of shoppers. My brother switched price tags with a chintzy set of cutlery that was being sold on clearance at half price.”

“Oh, dear!” Thelma sputtered. “So he pilfered the knives for next to nothing,”

“I started crying.” “‘You stole the goddamn merchandise!’,” I yelled.

“‘Stole, shmole… who gives a shit,’” he snickered, dismissing the crime with a goofy grin. Simon claimed that the guy who owned the store was probably a millionaire ten times over, driving around his second home, a mansion on the Riviera, in a Maserati and wouldn’t miss a few crummy bucks.” Finishing the meal, Morris rose to his feet. “I gotta go finish that bookcase I’m making for our new granddaughter,” he said and shuffled off in the direction of the basement stairs.

The dusty, sawdust strewn basement was Morris’ man cave. Though the tools seemed scattered in haphazard, random fashion, each had its designated home. The band saw was always situated diagonal to the furnace with the Dewalt planer to one side, the Ryobi table saw situated near the jointer. Morris retrieved a half-inch chisel from the workbench, squirted a bead of light machine oil on a reddish, medium-grit stone and slathered the chisel’s cutting surface in the oil. He angled the tool so that the bevelled surface rested flat on the stone then methodically shifted the tool in a figure-eight pattern.

The cellar door cracked open and Morris could hear his wife plodding down the stairs, balancing a steaming cup in her free hand. “You never finished your coffee,” she explained, “and I thought you might appreciate what’s left.”

“Much appreciated.” He sipped gingerly at the steamy brew and laid the cup alongside the stationary belt sander.

“You told me something ugly and disagreeable about your brother.” Thelma sat on a lower step of the wooden stairwell. “Now tell me something pleasant.”

“Pleasant,” Morris repeated and ran his stubby fingers through what little was left of the salt-and-pepper hair covering his forehead. After a  moment he began chuckling, as though at a private joke. “How about a whopper of a fishing tale?”

“Anything,” Thelma Greenblatt cautioned, “as long as it shows your brother in a positive light.”

“Fishing! Simon’s greatest passion during his adolescent years was fresh-water fishing. He bought an outlandishly tall rod and spinning reel that resembled the setup professional surfcasters used for hurling bated hooks and metal lures upwards of 200 feet into the murky ocean. He caught pickerel, bass, hornpout and perch. Once home he scaled and eviscerated the fish before turning them over to my mother.” Morris placed a board he had recently cut with a mortice and tenon joint on the work table and ran a bead of glue over the stubby tenon. “Braggart that he was, Simon told everyone who would listen to his signature fish story about the colossal ‘one that got away’.

Morris put the workpiece aside, edged closer to his wife and melodramatically lowered his voice. “It’s against the law to fish in the town reservoir, but Simon found this secret cove that the game wardens knew nothin’ about. He claims he was bottom fishing with lead weights and a number four, Eagle Claw hook, when he snagged this fifty-pound log that’s submerged in the mud on the lake’s bottom. Simon, who was using heavy-weight, Hercules, salt water line, starts draggin’ and draggin that godawful tree trunk back to shore so he could free up his hook and get back to fishin’ proper. Twenty feet from shore a three-foot long pickerel breaks water, leaps chest-high in the air and throws the hook. Because it was a secret cove that no one else knew anything about, not a single fisherman saw what happened.”

“But can you believe him or was it just a pile of hogwash?” his wife pressed.

Morris shook his head up and down and cracked a bittersweet smile. “Yes and no.”  “I don’t doubt the truthfulness of my brother’s story, but the largest pickerel ever recorded was caught in Homerville, Georgia on February 17, 1961 by an angler named Baxley McQuaig. Baxley’s fish registered only twenty-nine inches. Twenty-nine inches and not a smidgeon more! Still Simon’s fish story was a pleasure and everyone that heard it delighted in the telling.”

* * * * * *

Returning to the work in progress, Morris brushed additional glue on the opposite side of the board then fitted it snugly in the mating crossbars. Once the glue firmed up, he would screw in a plywood backing that was cut perfectly square. The shelving would slide into a set of matching grooves and all that remained was the decorative trim. “What did Simon do for a living?” Thelma shifted her rump on the stair tread.

Morris scowled. “I thought you didn’t want any ugliness.” When there was no response he continued, “My brother had a painting business shortly after high school. I worked there for a handful of years, until I figured out what was going on.” Morris wiped some errant glue from the surface of the boards he had just set aside. “Simon would estimate the cost of painting a structure at twenty gallons, when it only required ten to fifteen. The unused paint was squirreled away in his basement until needed for another job. Every unsuspecting chump got the same treatment.” 

“So he was bilking everyone.”

“One day I confronted him with the fact that a gallon of paint only covered three-hundred and fifty to four hundred square feet of surface at best.” “He says, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  You’re a know-it-all smartass, who conveniently  forgot to factor in wall texture, underlying color and the number of coats required.’”

“Was there any truth to that?”

“No,not really. He was just playing by his own set of rules… ripping everyone off.”

Thelma sighed. She grabbed the empty coffee mug and retreated upstairs.

A half hour later, Morris shut off the lights and went back upstairs. His wife was darning a sock in the living room. “Have a seat.” She gestured with a thimbled finger at a spot on the sofa next to her. “Now tell me something decent, uplifting, inspiring and edifying about your recently deceased, farshtunkener brother.”

Morris watched as his spouse continued mending the sock with a self-absorbed expression. She would phlegmatically sit there until the sun went down until he fulfilled her reasonable request. “In high school,” Morris said, “Simon was a star athlete on the varsity baseball team. He emerged as a shortstop, running down sizzling-fast grounders that no one else among the infielders could manage. He always crouched low to the ground and positioned his body directly in front of the skittering baseball. His instincts were of a higher order as he angled a wrist to snag a grounder steaming seemingly out of his extended reach.” 

Morris waved a finger theatrically in the air. “Midway through the junior year, on a lark, the coach brought my brother in to pitch and Simon threw a shutout… a no-hitter!” “‘No more shortstop,’ the coach announced in a gravelly voice. “‘I’m switching you into the pitching rotation.’”

Morris once overheard two of his brother’s teammates jibber-jabbering at the water cooler. “Hey, ain’t that Simon Greenblatt’s dopey, snot-nosed kid brother?” The dopey, snot-nosed Greenblatt younger brother was proud as hell to be associated with a future Brandenburg High School baseball legend and potential Hall of Famer. “On weekends and even some days after school let out I was enlisted to help. “Hey, goofball!” Simon yelled at his younger brother. “Grab the catcher’s mitt and take some heat.”  

When he called Morris goofball or dimwit or shit-for-brains, there was never any malicious intent. That only bubbled to the surface much later. Morris squatted down in the backyard and held the catcher's mit waist high as his brother warmed up,  bringing the pitches gradually up to speed. The curves came slower, careening off at a downward slope to the far right. Knuckleballs were much harder to focus on, because the wildly unpredictable trajectories seemed to have a mind of their own in terms of  velocity and where the pitches might ultimately end up. Simon’s knucklers were thrown with minimum spin, causing an erratic, unpredictable motion that both befuddled and terrified Morris on the receiving end.

Fast balls were a mortal menace, not so much because of the intense speed but because of the delivery. As the balls hurtled full-throttle at ninety miles an hour, the small white orbs began to dance in a set of random and acutely  irregular patterns. Misread the ball and you’d end up in the emergency ward of the local hospital. Pop!!! The ball hit the glove with a viciously stinging sensation that hardly faded away before the next pitch made impact. But Morris idolized his older brother with such ferocious intensity that he would rather suffer loss of limb before cutting practice sessions short.

Rumor had it that several major league teams were scouting the Brandenburg High School baseball wizard. They would assign him to a minor league franchise with the intent of moving him up to the majors once he proved his mettle. Not that it made a stitch of difference. Three weeks before the end of the season Simon Greenblatt threw out his pitching arm, tore a ligament in the elbow, and his baseball career was prematurely put to sleep. The boy was despondent. Locked himself in his room and cried all day.

* * * * *

  “Every devout God-fearing Jew understands  the Shulchan Aruch.” Morris drifted off on an esoteric tangent. “The six-hundred and thirteen laws of Mount Sinai.” 

“Yes, of course,” his wife replied, “The Set Table.”

“According to the Shulchan Aruch, a man can be condemned to death for adultery, because the act breaks the fabric of society.” 

“That does sound a bit extreme,” his wife protested, then chuckled rather grimly. “If that were the case, then your brother, Simon, would have been put to death on multiple occasions." 

Morris rose and went to stand by the window. In the street a light drizzle had begun to fall, creating a thrumming pitter-patter against the window sill. “If a Jew follows all of the precepts in the manual, he can live an honorable and spiritually fulfilled life.” “Two hundred and forty-eight of the laws say ‘Do this!’ and another three hundred and sixty-five say ‘Never under any circumstance should you do that!’” Morris paused just long enough to wipe away some filmy moisture pooling in his eyes. "According to Maimonides, if one became a slave to the Laws of Mount Sinai, the spiritual bondage would ultimately set him free.”

“Your brother - may he rest in peace - should have never switched the price tags to get that ritzy Mother’s Day gift,” Thelma noted. “But on the other hand stealing the world’s record for largest pickerel ever caught in the continental United States wasn’t such a terrible indiscretion.”

“Go tell that to Baxley McQuaig of Homerville, Georgia.”

“At best, a gallon of paint covers four hundred square feet.” Thelma picked up the thread of what her husband was alluding to, “and Simon should have known better.” 

Only now did Morris sit back down alongside his wife. “We call ourselves ‘The People of the Book’... ‘The Chosen Ones’”. “Without some form of tradition, all is lost.” 

“We’ll attend Simon’s funeral?” Thelma spoke softly, anticipating her husband’s mindset.

“Yes we’ll go and I’ll recite Kaddish, The Prayer for the Dead.”

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra

chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon

uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala

uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: “amen.”