Free Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn

was caressing him with wild strokes of her hand. Sylvia discovered a cock on him. The First Dep didn’t have a little boy’s finger poking out of his groin. Off the wall, Isaac figured to himself, but her comradeship, her willingness to take on Dermott, touched him, and he was much more tender to Marshall’s wife.

12
    S YLVIA Berkowitz had become the nightwalker of the Shelbourne Hotel. She traveled abroad, in and out of her husband’s room, whenever she pleased. The porters had gotten used to her. She was an American lady. The professor’s wife. They would nod to her, taking in the bare knees under her raincoat. Did you look at the pins on her? Lovely piece, that . But they weren’t disrespectful of Sylvia. “Good night, madam,” they would say, each time she passed them in the halls. They knew she was going to her husband from Mr. Moses Herzog’s bed. A ladykiller he is. The man in 411. Mr. Herzog of New York .
    Sylvia was born a Mandel, one of the Mandels of Yonkers, Miami, and Hurricane Beach, men’s clothiers for thirty-seven years. The Mandels could have found a dentist for Sylvia, a Jewish heart and lung man, a widowed accountant, or the scion of another clothing chain. They had the clout to buy any husband that appealed to them. They wanted something more exotic than a lung specialist. They had to have a scholar in the family, a secular rabbi, a man of words. They grabbed onto Marshall Berkowitz. They didn’t worry about his field of interest. James Joyce? A blind Irishman who wrote filthy books. They could forgive such aberrations in a scholar. Even two earlier wives.
    The family would assume Marshall’s debts and alimony payments if only Sylvia agreed to marry him. They expected trouble from her. Sylvia had an independent streak. Her full, brazen calves spelled lasciviousness to the Mandels. She’d pick an Arab tuba player to spite them, and they’d have to support a cove of tiny Ishmaels. They were wrong. Sylvia didn’t have to be coaxed. Marshall wooed her with maps of Dublin, quotes from a cosmology that he stored in his head. Dublin was a fogtown that sprang out of James Joyce. This man-god could create rivers and streets. The Liffey and Fumbally Lane. Sylvia believed in him.
    They were married under a canopy in the chapel of a Yonkers catering hall. A cantor sang the wedding prayers. Marshall wore the kittel , a white marriage shroud. Sylvia drank wine under her veil. She had to walk around the groom seven times to show that he was the center of her universe. The rabbi read the articles of their devotion. Sylvia took off the veil. Marshall broke a wine glass under his foot. They kissed. The family pelted them with bits of wheat and straw. They were ushered into a private room. Sylvia had her period. They weren’t allowed to make love.
    That was her history with Marsh. Menstrual blood and Leopold Bloom. She’d had four years of it. Excursions to Dublin that were holy pilgrimages. Marsh had little energy outside his books. He could raise up a passion for Molly Bloom. But he copulated like a baby boy. Bubbles appeared in his mouth. He would snort after a minute, suck in his belly, and go to sleep.
    She couldn’t sing to the Mandels. Hadn’t she walked around Marsh seven times? They wouldn’t listen to the complaints of a wife. God, was she supposed to say, Marshall, Marshall, why won’t you chew my tits? She had to take scraps of love wherever she could find them. From Marshall’s colleagues. A lonely sculptor at a Beethoven festival. The man from the stationery store. And Isaac.
    She was committed to none of them, sculptor, stationery man, or cop. But she did have a feeling for this Moses. Something had eaten the fat out of him. Moses had more character than her other men. There were pieces of chivalry in Isaac Sidel. He didn’t peek at women’s garters, like Leopold Bloom. Or parade in Night-town, near the Liffey,