Free The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb

lunch. But instead she takes the subway alone to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau on West 16th Street. She sits in the reception area, waiting for her name to be called. Rosalie fidgets in her seat and her eyes dart toward the other women in the room. What do they know that she doesn’t? She is new at this, not much older than a child. Rosalie wants to ask someone for advice but what question would she ask first? Sol or Walter? Milk or meat? The lockstep of generations or the seduction of spices? She closes her eyes and imagines herself standing inside a circle of women who dance around her. Rosalie wears a traditional wedding dress; an opaque veil covers her face. The women gaze at her with admiration, except for her mother, who wears ablack gown and glares. You’re too young to be a mother , she says. She hands Rosalie a small round box and says, No babies until you find your heart. Rosalie opens the lid and holds a rubber diaphragm in her trembling hand.
    Sol stares at his reflection and winks. He has grown a mustache to appear older for the second round of interviews. Rosalie will be pleased, he thinks. He hasn’t seen her in two weeks. “So much to do, Sol,” she had said to him over the phone. “My mother, your mother, all the lists! Just be glad you are not involved in this wedding insanity.” All for the best, thinks Sol. In a few months they will drive off in their Dodge and leave everything behind: the Radish, Morris, Walter. He would stay in touch with his teacher and with Morris, but Walter would not travel with him beyond these walls. Yes, his one-time chavrusa offered him a diversion. They had some moments on the page, some memorable flights through the Talmud. But Walter knows so little; he is a pawn in Paul’s academic scheme. And that regrettable moment! Best to erase the memory before it festers and Sol becomes like the Talmudic figure Reish Lakish who saw Rabbi Yochanan bathing in a river and thought he was a beautiful woman. What did the Talmud leave out? Did the two men kiss and part, or did one always long for the other? What misperception was fastened to the text, recorded into history? Sol’s indiscretion, at least, would not be recorded anywhere; it was a moment of youthful abandon, an episode he would discard with the library books he would return on his last day of rabbinical school.
    The dogwood tree in the Seminary courtyard blossoms in March. Ivory petals float on the lawn, but interview season has begun and the students barely notice. While they prepare for their first pulpits and are quizzed on their knowledge of Jewish law—how to build a mikvah and how to kasher a metal pot—the fiancée and the refugee explore each other’s bodies in the upper geniza and in the lower geniza: the upper where they speak in words and the lower where they find each other in silence and surprise.
    One afternoon in the lower geniza, Walter pulls a bag of black seeds from his pocket. “Close your eyes, Rosalie. Sniff. Now, give the smell a name. Make one up.”
    “Teacup.”
    “Black cardamom.”
    “Winded spice.”
    “Fenugreek. Good for digestion.”
    “Apple dust. Coriander. Good for awakening the spirit.”
    “Thighbone. Lotus seed.”
    “Serenity check. Borage flower.”
    “Camel skin. Turmeric root.”
    “Latke festival. Mustard seed.”
    There is no end to the variety of spices he puts before Rosalie’s nose; the associations she conjures fly from her mouth like birds. Sometimes Walter grinds a mix of seeds against her skin, sniffs, and licks it off until her body smells like a spice garden, just like in the Song of Songs.
    Walter and Rosalie have fallen asleep in the broom closet and she wakes up with tears in her eyes.
    “How will Sol know me as you do?”
    “You will educate him,” says Walter. “In time he will learn how to please you.”
    “But this can’t be translated.”
    “You will teach him as I was once taught before you came along. Every man learns from the