by Bari Wood
He hadn’t called back by seven. Leah was asleep, Levy was in the den watching the news; Rachel finished the dishes, went back to the sun porch and, feeling sneaky for some reason, she called his house. He answered himself. Her heart beat faster.
“Inspector Hawkins . . . Roger . . . this is Rachel Levy. Adam’s wife . . .”
“I know who you are.” His voice was cold. “What do you want?”
No hello, how’s the baby. He didn’t ask if she’d had a boy or girl.
“I just thought . . . I had a daughter, and we didn’t hear from you for so long . . . I wondered . . .”
“Don’t wonder,” he said, “ask Jacob. On second thought, don’t ask him because he won’t tell you.” He hung up and left her holding a dead phone, staring out at the snow still falling.
She didn’t know what to do. Ask Jacob, he’d said. She went into the den, but he was asleep, sitting upright with The MacNeil-Lehrer Report going on PBS. She left the TV on to mask the quiet and went back to the porch. Something scampered in the attic. Mice, Golda said. All houses have mice.
She thought of writing to him but he didn’t have to answer and she could wait months and not hear from him. She walked back and forth across the porch. The program changed and she heard ballet music. Finally she called Queens information again and got the number for the only Moses Ableson listed. He was the right Ableson, but didn’t want to talk.
“Call me tomorrow at the precinct,” he said, “or come in. I’m there between—”
“It’s personal,” she told him.
“I don’t know what could be personal, Mrs. Levy.” He sounded wary and a little drunk. In the background Rachel heard a woman call that something was getting cold.
“You and Roger Hawkins were Adam’s friends, weren’t you?”
“The best,” Ableson said softly, “the very best.”
“I just called him and he wouldn’t talk to me, he sounded like he hated me.”
“Did he?” Ableson said softly. “Did he indeed? And you want to know why, is that it?” His voice made her skin crawl. She didn’t say anything and after a moment Ableson sighed and said, “I’ll tell you what I think, Mrs. Levy. I think Hawkins wanted to be Jacob’s son and Adam’s brother. Part of a family he could respect. And maybe he thought Jacob could make that happen somehow, and he would be transformed from a lonely black man of no special ties to a Polish Jew who belonged to the village. And maybe when you left him behind and took it all with you, maybe he realized that he’d never known or understood you people and maybe he thought he’d gone too far to come back and now wasn’t one thing or the other. Which maybe, he thought, made him nothing.” Ableson was quiet for a moment, then he said, “But that’s a lot of cheap-shit psychology, isn’t it, Mrs. Levy?” Now he sounded angry.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said.
“It is, because there’s a better reason.” Ableson took a breath. “He thinks your father-in-law and his mishpochah killed the kids on President Street.”
“That’s crazy . . .” Rachel cried.
“Why?”
“They couldn’t.”
“Someone saw your car there. Parked in front of the clubhouse. A dark green Dodge van, right?”
Rachel didn’t answer.
“You still got that car?” Still no answer. “Sell it, give it away. It’s tumah, that car. Corrupt.”
He was sounding a little crazy. His wife said something about soup and he told her to shut up.
Rachel said, “Don’t get upset, Lieutenant.”
“Upset!” he shouted. “Do you know what they did to those kids . . . do you know what we found in that basement? Revenge is one thing, lady. I’ll go with it, maybe. But this wasn’t just that. This was hate like I never saw or imagined. They beat them to death, all five of them. They tore one to pieces and, oh God, that’s the one that haunts me still. Can you imagine? I mean, how long did that kid live with parts of him missing? Did he pull his torso along the floor with the one arm he had left? Did he see his own leg lying next to him? What was it like for the kid, Mrs. Levy?” Rachel sobbed, but he didn’t stop. “And that wasn’t enough. They hated them so much that they threw dirt on the bodies. Clay. Why clay? Where’d they get clay? And why didn’t they just shoot them or stab them—anything.”
“Shut up,” Rachel screamed and slammed down the phone.
Levy came running out to the porch. “Rachel, what happened?”
She wanted to tell him what she’d just heard, to scream it at him, the way Ableson had at her, but even asking about it would give it some credence and she couldn’t do that. Instead she yelled, “What happened with Roger Hawkins?”
The question stopped him.
“He never called,” she kept yelling. Leah woke up and started to squall. “He never came to see us. Because of you. Why?”
She raced through the kitchen to the garage. He followed, and Leah cried louder in the background. Rachel slid open the van door and looked inside. It was clean and dry, but she knew it would be. They’d had the inside shampooed a long time ago.
“What did you do with my van?” she yelled. He looked helpless. It was cold in the garage; he was in his shirt and trying not to shiver. She started hating herself but she couldn’t lower her voice. “What happened with Roger?”
“A misunderstanding. A terrible misunderstanding.”
“Tell me.”
“Please, let’s go inside.”
She felt like a harpy and wanted him to get angry at her, to yell back, but he said quietly, “It’s too cold to talk here.”
She followed him back to the kitchen, feeling like she’d lost momentum.
“What did you hear on the phone?” he asked.
“Just tell me what happened.”
“It’s not so easy to know what happened. Maybe if you tell me . . .”
She was silent. He said softly, “Is our trust so fragile, Rachel?” She was still quiet, and he said, “Maybe it should be. Why should we trust each other after only a year? . . . Maybe your suspicion makes more sense.” He wasn’t looking at her. “Okay,” he said, “what I know is that Roger met Isaac at the funeral of those boys.” Now he looked at her. “I don’t know why Isaac was there, maybe to gloat, maybe he felt some sorrow. He met Roger there and he told Roger that I was going away that day, and he should leave us alone.” He was looking into her eyes. “Isaac shouldn’t have said it. But he did.” He looked out the kitchen window and his voice got so soft she had to lean forward to hear. “Roger must’ve believed him and maybe he blamed himself for not being able to try the men who killed Adam, and thought we blamed him, too.”
He kept looking out the window. “I think that’s what happened,” he said. There were tears in his eyes, and she thought he probably didn’t want her to notice them.
What he said made sense. Besides, she thought, eight old men together couldn’t beat five young men to death. Hawkins was wrong and Ableson was crazy.
Levy watched his granddaughter sleep. When she was awake, she looked like Adam; when she laughed, she looked like Rachel; but asleep, right now, she looked like his dead wife, Leah, and he closed his eyes and let himself imagine that it was her after all. She was wearing the linen nightgown he had had made for her in Sosnowiec and she was half lying, half sitting on their bed, waiting for him to strip and wash in the icy water. It was so cold he was trembling and, still a little wet, he got into bed next to her, naked, and she held him, using her body to warm his. When he stopped trembling, they made love, and late at night, after she was asleep, he awoke and had to get up and put on his socks and nightshirt.
He heard a whistle and woke in a panic. Then he saw the ducks appliquéd on the curtains and remembered that he was in Laurel, not Dabrowa, and that the whistle was a freight running from New York to Greenpoint and not the relocation transport from Krakow to Belze
c.
Chapter 2
Every time it rained after that, she thought about clay, then the dead boys, then of Shabbes school for some reason, and the big colored picture book she had then. She couldn’t see the connection and she tried to find the book but it wasn’t on the shelves downstairs and she didn’t want to look for it in the attic, which was cold and still full of mice for all she knew.
She kept going back to the beach but by the middle of November the stretch of pebbles and water was empty, gray, freezing, and she gave up and took to spending the afternoons after work in Golda’s kitchen, which was bigger than Rachel’s living room. It had a fireplace, a work island, and a microwave oven that everyone was scared of using. The oven hung black-faced and neglected in the wall, and Rachel felt absurdly sorry for it.
Golda poured vodka for herself and coffee for Rachel. She lit the fire, put her hands on either side of Rachel’s face, and turned it toward the firelight.
“Still not sleeping?” she said.
“Not too well,” Rachel said.
“You know what you need?”
“What?” Rachel asked.
Golda kissed her friend’s cheek. “You need a man,” she said, “and I’m going to find you one.”
Rachel thought of Hawkins. She could almost see him against the flames, looking embarrassed and gentle at the same time, covering himself by folding his hands. She felt an unexpected rush of tenderness, and then, before she could stop herself, she thought of Ableson, the dead boys, the clay.
Golda gave a New Year’s Eve party and Rachel dressed for it under Golda’s direction. Golda took her to Port Jefferson to Maurice’s, and there Rachel bought a long maroon velvet skirt, and silk blouse to match, and Maurice himself stood in the door of the dressing room with his hand flat against his cheek, looking at Rachel. “Oy oy oy . . .” Maurice said, “she’s som’pin . . . vay iz mir, that face . . . but who does she look like?”
“Like herself,” Golda said.
He shook his head, “No one looks like themselves. . . .”
He left while the seamstress pinned up the skirt and Golda beamed at her, then he was back, pointing at Rachel: “I got it!” he said, “Gilbert Roland!”
The night of the party, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She was too thin. Her chest was almost flat in the silk; but the maroon reflected some color in her face, and with her hair combed to the side the gray was partly hidden. When she went into the living room to show Levy how she looked, he stood up. “Some bura,**” he said softly. They looked at each other for a moment; she was Adam’s wife, dressed up to go out without him.
“Don’t come home too early,” he said.
When she got there, Golda led her to a slender man standing in front of the bowed window.
“Allan—here she is!” Golda crowed. The man turned, saw her, looked surprised and pleased at the same time. Golda took their hands and held them together, and Rachel looked at the heavy gold chain that stretched from one of his vest pockets to the other. It had a key on it, but she couldn’t tell for what honor, or fraternity, or if it was simply a piece of jewelry. Then she looked at him. He was tall enough, she thought. He had fine blond hair and a long face with thin features and wide blue eyes. He was handsome and she wondered what he was doing on New Year’s Eve waiting for a blind date.
The old Slavic bluntness came out before she could stop it.
“Why don’t you have a date?” she asked.
He laughed impulsively, and everyone turned around to see what was going on. Golda blushed purple. “He just moved in, Rachel. The Burns’s house?” It was huge. Allan-whoever had money. He was still holding her hand.
“Allan Siegal,” he said, and she nodded. “I don’t have a date because I just got divorced. What’s your reason?”
“Didn’t Golda tell you?” She turned to Golda, but she was edging away into a group of other guests.
“She said you’re a widow.”
“Yes.”
“Recent?”
“I think so.”
He nodded; his eyes were kind. “And no one else does.”
“Something like that.”
“How long?” he asked.
“A year or so.”
She didn’t look at him, he didn’t let go of her hand.
“What happened?” he asked, and she thought of Adam stabbed, bleeding, falling. Weeping naked eyeballs, gashed face full of pancake and rouge. And dead bodies thrown around like trash, broken, pulled to pieces, covered with clay. She didn’t even have the best stories. She should send him back to her house to hear Jacob’s stories about Belzec, or Luria’s. Or out into Golda’s kitchen to listen to Abe Dworkin’s. What happened? was the wrong question to ask in Laurel. She laughed and he looked startled.
“Excuse me,” she said and headed for the kitchen. Abe Dworkin was there with Marge O’Shea, a black woman who’d answered Golda’s ad in the Irish Echo ten years ago and had worked for her ever since. Marge was putting triangles of lox on toast points already smeared with cream cheese; Dworkin was preening.
“How do I look?” he asked Rachel, smoothing back his thick white hair on either side of his cap.
“Spiffy,” she said. “Got a date?”
“Yeah.” He deflated. “At Isaac’s house, watching TV and playing clabiash with the old cockers.”
Rachel said, “Stay in the kitchen with me. We’ll get drunk together.” He smiled. Rachel had started to help Marge with the lox when she saw the kitchen door open, and she knew it was Allan Siegal. She ran out to the back porch where Golda kept her second refrigerator and her deep freeze and stayed in the shadows while Siegal pretended to look for ice. He said something to Marge, took a canapé, and left. Rachel wanted to stay on the porch but it was cold and all she had on was the skirt and blouse. She went back inside.
“Nu, you staying with me, you ain’t staying with me?” Dworkin complained.
“I ain’t staying with you.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said, buttoning his coat.
She went out into the hall, keeping close to the stairs, but Siegal was watching for her, and when she reached the foyer, he left the people he was talking to, and started toward her. She went up the stairs. She didn’t know why she was running away from him, but she couldn’t stop. The den door was closed, but she heard the TV and she thought she could go in there and watch the New Year in with the kids, surrounded by the guests’ mink coats. But when she opened the door, she saw Gerry Samson and Selma Rubin on the couch; Selma’s head was back, her legs were spread, and Gerry’s hand was under her skirt. Selma was panting and the movement of Gerry’s hand made something in Rachel’s insides turn over. She backed out and closed the door softly.
The next door was the bathroom, and she went in there and washed all the makeup off her face and wet her hair. When she came out, Allan Siegal was at the foot of the stairs. Gerry was probably on top of Selma now, his pants down, his bare backside green in the glow of the TV screen.
She went down the stairs and faced Allan.
“I was sick. I’m sorry, but I think I should go home.”
He reached up and touched her hair. “You better wear a scarf,” he said.
“I will.”
“Golda told me what happened to your husband, Rachel. I’m sorry.”
She almost said, it’s all right, but she stopped herself in time.
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me take you home,” he said.
“I . . . I’d rather not,” she said. In this light, his hair was silvery gold.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing!” she answered sharply. “Nothing at all,” and she fled.
New Year’s Day she walked in the yard, through the snow. Siegal was right, she was scared. But not of him, she thought. The
worst that could happen between them was that they’d make love. Nothing scary there. Even if it was more, even if she fell in love with him or he with her, what was so terrible? She brushed the snow off her tulip tree and watched the tree branches rise, released of the weight. What scared her had nothing to do with Allan Siegal or sex. With what then? The clay. She looked up and saw Jacob at the sliding glass door.
Jacob . . . clay. Suddenly she remembered a color picture of a village street. Not in this country or time, because the street was cobbled and the houses had leaded glass windows, and the second stories hung over the street. There was a man on the street . . . a rabbi, like Jacob, dressed all in black and wearing a high rabbi’s hat. Next to him fell a shadow of something. The shadow darkened the cobbles and came up the wall. Melting snow dripped on her bare head, but she stood still, concentrating, trying to remember. . . .
“Rachel . . .”
She tried to ignore the voice, but Jacob called her again and slid open the door.
“Telephone, Rachel. An Allan Siegal to talk to you.”
She gave up and went inside.
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow?” Siegal asked when she got to the phone.
“Where?”
He laughed, “Will the place decide whether or not you go?”
“I have trouble getting into the city,” she said, then thought bitterly, My car is corrupt.
“Not the city. Centerreach. You can meet me at my office.”
The firm of Siegal and Kammerer took up the top floor of a three-story office building in downtown Centerreach. His office, the senior office, was lovely. Two of the walls were solid glass, the carpet was thick beige wool, and the ashtrays were Steuben glass. He had his own bathroom, which he showed off proudly, with a sauna. She sat on a huge beige leather sofa while he made calls. She tried not to be annoyed by the opulence of the place, but she remembered Adam’s little bare office in Minnesota with plain, steel files and books piled everywhere. She managed to drop one of the Steuben ashtrays, but it hit the rug and didn’t even chip. He introduced her to his secretary, a gray-haired black lady, and to his partner, Bill Kammerer, who looked her up and down and whistled silent approval to Allan, which made Rachel want to throw one of the antique vase lamps through one of the window walls.
