Shrine Rifkin

By Jack Goodstein

Had the head of Ehrlichman, the famous Mandelbaum biographer and critic, not found its way between her legs, albeit by chaste accident, during an interview for her community college weekly, the name of Esther Rifkin would have been as likely to achieve notoriety as that of any other plump coed majoring in Communication Studies.  

But even as she felt his nose brought up abruptly at the barrier of her variety of nether garments, Esther had known her life had taken new direction.  What that direction might be, she wasn't at first certain, but that it would be new and exciting and redundant with opportunity, of this she was absolutely sure.  Reflexively she had  tightened her thighs around Ehrlichman's elderly head, some carelessly shaven stubble scratching through her panty hose, and considered possibilities. She could have cried rape, but even if someone had heard her, she wasn't quite sure that the present situation technically qualified.  She might have charged harassment, but other than persecuting human weakness overwhelmed, she felt sure, by her nubile charm, she failed to see any benefit to herself forthcoming.  She could have closed her eyes and reveled in the moment, but other than his own rather limited fame, an elderly Ehrlichman offered little in the way of enticement and even then, in the flush of her youth, she had seen the moment pale before the possibility of eternity.

It was then that she had heard the mumbling from between her legs: "Ma–mmll-mma-llb."

"What?" she had cooed, patting the lump bulging up under her skirt, determined to take the lay of the land before coming to any definitive course of action.

"Mmmmnnnlllbbbmmm!"  The head made attempt to free itself. 

"Oh, Mr. Ehrlichman, what are you doing?" she stalled and clamped her thighs still tighter, unwilling as yet to free her captive.

A younger man might well have pulled himself free,  Ehrlichman  merely deflated like a punctured balloon.  "Mmmllbb–."  Fearful that the old man might be suffocating, Esther loosed her grip and let him flutter to the floor.  

It was then that the explanation came that was to change her forever, the explanation that would be the metamorphosis of the plump coed majoring in Communication Studies into the icon, the reliquary, the shrine she was to be for the rest of her days. For it was neither passion nor lust that had driven Ehrlichman–the mister seemed no longer appropriate given the puddle of a man at her feet–under her skirt, it was awe and amazement.  He had seen, he professed, a miracle.

"A miracle, I tell you."

For there, beneath her skirt between her legs, had peeked out first the head and then the complete body, or at least a miniaturized replica thereof, of the great Mandelbaum himself.

"I saw him, I tell you."

Tempted at first to scoff, Esther soon saw the new possibility, one not previously entertained, indeed, one not even imagined but a moment ago.  

Like a wall in Czechoslovakia on which an image of the Virgin had mystically appeared, Esther Rifkin would become a holy–

Whereupon she fainted.

"I felt," she said as Ehrlichman revived her with sprinkled water and gentle pats, "I felt a force taking over my. . .I can't explain it.  It was like a--"

"Explain?  Who can explain such things?" Ehrlichman echoed.  "Who are we to–"

"Explain the miracles of life," Esther, for the first time,  finished his sentence, a practice she continued for the few years left to her new found acolyte. 

"We must–"

"–share this with the world."

The story of Ehrlichman's vision of Mandelbaum was broken by one of the twenty four hour news channels and  led the seven o'clock news that night accompanied by tastefully drawn replicas of the Rifkin thighs, the originals reserved for unveiling on a more portentous occasion in a more consequential venue.  And though there were those that scorned and caviled, the believers, the true Mandelbaum minions were legion.  Parched with an unslakeable thirst for their departed saint, and only too eager to take guidance from Ehrlichman, his erstwhile prophet, they made pilgrimage to Rifkin, perhaps out of love, perhaps on the chance of yet another sighting.

Alas, the vision--the minuscule Mandelbaum--once departed never reappeared.  Try as she might, Esther, with or without Ehrlichman, was unnable to coax the spirit to the paradise between her thighs  from the paradise to which it had no doubt ascended. 

Undeterred the pilgrims kept coming.  Esther, with Ehrlichman as a doyen, began appearing regularly at theatres showing Mandelbaum's old movies, parading across the stage in a one piece bathing suit while a recording of "Amazing Grace" played over a loud speaker.  They rented a store front not far from the New York walk up in which Mandelbaum had spent the early part of his theatrical career and held private showings for afficionados preferring a more personal experience.  Ehrlichman would tell his story.

"She had come–

"–to interview him.  And suddenly there he was on his knees before me."

They left out the specific location of his head.

" I had seen a–"

"–vision.  He had seen right here–" and she would lift her skirt demurely above her knee–"the vision of Mandelbaum. 

When Ehrlichman, sole witness to the miraculous manifestation, went on to join his friend on that great stage in the sky, the scoffers and cavilers caviled and scoffed more openly.

"Senility," carped a young Turk who had never even met Ehrlichman, who had never even seen Esther, and whose acquaintance with Mandelbaum himself was limited to the movie screen.  

"Hallucinogenic drugs," opined a film director Mandelbaum had declined to work with is his later years, it was suspected at Ehrlichman's behest.

"Alcohol," suggested a Film Studies scholar from a college in Idaho whose three requests for interviews with Rifkin had been turned down summarily.

Churls and malcontents, Esther ignored them.  When asked for a comment, she would sneer: ". . . beneath contempt." 

And the pilgrims kept coming; not quite in the same numbers as before, but in numbers sufficient enough for Esther to maintain her claim to the Mandelbaum mantle.  Sufficient enough was not enough for the woman Esther had become.  Esther Rifkin was not a woman to be trifled with.  A back seat on the omnibus of life, not Esther Rifkin. This must be seen, Esther cautioned herself, not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity, not as a problem but as a challenge.

Once again she considered possibilities: a book in which she explained in detail the history of the phenomenon; an inquest by paranormal investigators; an attempt to communicate with the spirit at a public seance.  She thought of some sort of monument to the great man, a portrait or a temple, but was she not herself a shrine to his memory?  If only he had left on her some sign, some mark of his presence.  She searched both thighs for a mole, a birthmark, a rash in the shape of the minute spirit.  Where there had been nothing before, there was nothing now.  

Ehrlichman, she thought, where are you when I need you?

"Ehrlichman, you need?"  There was a voice.  It wasn't Ehrlichman's voice.  It wasn't a voice Esther had ever heard before.  It wasn't a voice she was even hearing now.  The words were simply there inside her head.

"Ehrlichman, is not for you the answer.  Who you need is–"

"Mandelbaum!" she cut him off.  "Mandelbaum, it's you.  I know, who else is it speaks without words.  Who else is it–."

And she stopped.  And she listened.  And when she started again, she heard.  She heard that the voice coming out of her was not the voice of Esther Rifkin, the voice speaking through her lips was that of  the mutely eloquent Mandelbaum himself.  She spoke and she made not a sound.

She had become Mandelbaum.

About the Author
Jack Goodstein is a Professor Emeritus at California University of Pennsylvania where he taught literature and writing for over thirty years.  His fiction has been published in print periodicals and on-line (Eclectica, The Maine Review, The Jewish Digest, and others). Non-fiction has appeared in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, College English, 3AM and Theatre Journal.  Also a playwright, he has had productions at the Gallery Players of Park Slope in Brooklyn, The Pulse Ensemble Theatre in Manhattan, and Colaboraction in Chicago.  He reviews books regularly for The Compulsive Reader.

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