The Jew's Wife & Other Stories by Thomas J. Hubschman

space between
the galaxies?”
       “Theoretically. But you’d
have to look through sunlight—not the easiest thing to do.”
       “ Do you
think there are creatures like us out there, wondering if anyone
exists besides themselves?”
       “ No reason to
suppose there aren’t.”
       “ Statistically,”
Father Walther put in.
       “ That’s right.
Anything wrong with statistics?”
       “ I only meant
nothing is proven until some of those little green men show up in
Paramus.”
       “ Still Richie
the Skeptic.”
        Father Walther
was aware he was playing to Rosalie the way he sometimes played to
school children, coyly soliciting their attention so he could
illustrate the meaning of a Gospel parable or catechism response.
“Isn’t skepticism a requisite of good science?”
       Charlie shuffled his feet
irritably.
       “The laws of probability tell us
thousands, maybe millions of stars in our galaxy have planets
capable of supporting life as we know it. That’s a scientific
fact.”
       “ No,
it’s a probability. I thought that’s what science is all about:
distinguishing fact from hypothesis.”
        They
were reenacting an old scene, though of course Rosalie could not
realize it. They used to spend entire nights arguing such matters.
He waited now for the familiar retort. When Charlie replied
angrily, “God damn it, Richie. Why can’t you just stick to your
religious hocus-pocus?” he felt as pained as if his own blood had
reprimanded him.
       “ I
didn’t mean to make him angry,” he apologized to Sylvia after her
husband had stormed off. “We used to argue all the time about these
things.”
       “ It’s
alright,” she said, her skirt full of jetsam she had been
collecting while the others were contemplating the galaxy. Her full
thighs were plainly exposed beneath her cache of shells and
driftwood, but she was no more self-conscious than if she were
wearing pants. “He’s been under a lot of pressure. Every now and
then it shows. He’ll be himself again by the time we get
back.”
        Just as
she predicted, when they returned to the house Charlie was
tinkering with a telescope and humming contentedly.
       “ I want
you to have a peak through this, Richie. Built it myself.
Four-and-a-half-inch reflector. Electric drive. Makes the rings of
Saturn look as close as the neighbor’s wash.”
        Father
Walther wasn’t sure if Charlie’s easy chatter was genuine. As he
watched him adjust the gleaming silver instrument, he recalled
other moments Charlie had flown off the handle—usually when he was
having trouble with one of his girls. There had been a steady
procession of them, although young Richard got to meet very few,
partly because he rarely attended a school dance but also because
most were recruited from Charlie’s neighborhood in Paterson or
Morristown. Charlie had little use for the giggly maids who
attended Catholic high schools near Saint Francis.
        In those
days Richard never took Charlie’s bouts of temper seriously,
precisely because they were romantically induced. Romance was a
phenomenon that the priest-to-be had experienced not at all and
which at the age of sixteen he already viewed as an old man might
look back on the emotional tempests of his youth. He had tried to
be sympathetic, but the question of whether a particular girl was
or was not in love with Charlie just didn’t measure up to the more
serious matters of nuclear war and mass starvation, not to mention
the perennial machinations of the devil. But tonight he felt more
inclined to make allowances for the personal element in human
experience. Few of us could keep his or her mind on the eternal
questions all the time. Perhaps few of us should even
try.
       “ Let’s take it
up on the deck.”

 
       
       
        CHAPTER SIX
       
        Waking
up in a real bedroom was a treat. Even the sheets smelled good,
neither the sterile odorlessness