The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  The old lady with the lake may be sitting on a fortune made by killing smokers, but she clearly believed that being a foreigner was a bigger crime, and so pretended she didn’t see Raphael’s Son every time she drove by him in her Jaguar. The woman who owned Little Versailles may have stolen her husband from his first wife and consequently lost him to someone younger and more white than herself, but she ordered her chauffeur to avoid driving the Bentley past Raphael’s Son’s house because she couldn’t abide “the sight of those Persians.” Even the crazy Hungarian couple with the invented surname bristled in distaste whenever they saw him on the street. Never mind they were servants in a fourteen-thousand-square-foot house where a teenage Russian boy lived alone; even their fictional pedigree linking them to some Eastern European king or the other was more noble than Raphael’s Son’s actual heritage.

  You might almost feel sorry for him if you didn’t know just how base and ruthless he had proven himself to be over the years, or how preposterous his claim of paternity by Raphael Soleyman had seemed until now. To give the claim any level of credence, you would have had to start by believing that a dead man could have engaged in the kind of task that is, for mortal people anyway, required for conception; that he had committed this act with a woman so old, she would have needed divine interference to become pregnant; that this old woman had carried the child not for nine months but for a total of thirteen.

  Or you could have gone the humdrum way of regular folk and arrived at the conclusion that Raphael’s Wife had bought or stolen or just found a kid somewhere, brought him home, and claimed he was Raphael’s just so she could get her hands on one of the biggest fortunes in 1960s and ’70s Iran.

  * * *

  “He could have asked for a DNA test,” Angela mumbled. “All these years . . .”

  “I don’t think he believed it himself,” Leon suggested.

  Better to let the claim stand untested, Raphael’s Son must have calculated, than have its falsehood set in stone.

  __________________

  At eleven o’clock, the rabbi and Jonah came back from their Egg McMuffin breakfast. As if invited to stay the day, the rabbi cleared the coffee table and took out a deck of cards from his pocket.

  “He counts like the devil,” he said of Jonah. “Wanna play blackjack with us?”

  It was a good thing this rabbi was so handsome, Angela thought, or his presumptuousness would have been intolerable.

  “I never learned anything more complicated than Go Fish,” she said sincerely, and this made Jonah laugh for the first time since she had seen him.

  She didn’t ask them to leave because she wasn’t sure she wanted that. And she didn’t ask the rabbi what he wanted from her because she thought she knew the answer.

  Clearly, the rabbi hoped that the child-support payments, diverted by Eddy Arax and diminished too, would continue even after Raphael’s Son’s death. That’s why he had brought Jonah for her to meet—so she could serve as a liaison with Neda, convince her to do the right thing by giving up the $1,000 each month. They were always asking for money, these religious types, no matter how poor or wealthy the charity.

  “I don’t have any influence with the father’s widow,” she said when Jonah went into the bathroom to wash his hands before dealing the cards. She meant Neda.

  “I can ask the woman who runs my mother’s foundation,” she offered. “But I’ll tell you right now you’ll have better luck asking her yourself because the stupid bitch hates me.”

  She got up to find a piece of paper on which to write Stephanie Dalal’s contact information. The rabbi raised a hand.

  “No need for that,” he said, and smiled at Jonah who had appeared back in the room. “We haven’t come to ask for money.”

  Angela glared at him for making that last remark in front of the boy. It meant she couldn’t challenge or dispute the claim without hurting Jonah. “I just wanted you two to meet.”

  She announced she was going to take a nap and went into her bedroom, closed the door, and lay on the bed fully dressed. After a minute she got up again and locked the door because she realized the rabbi was just por-roo—one who isn’t ashamed to keep asking for more—enough to walk in even as she slept.

  * * *

  She was turning the lock and telling herself this was crazy—she had to shut herself inside her own house just to get five minutes’ worth of privacy, and even then she had the feeling that Jonah and the rabbi were everywhere, on this side of the door as much as the other.

  My father is waiting for me on this side of midnight.

  Where had she heard those words?

  It’s what Izikiel had written the day he predicted his own death. Later, he had come back for Raphael.

  “I got to bury Aaron because they weren’t waiting for him on the other side,” Elizabeth had explained to Angela years later. Jay Gatsby had preempted Aaron’s ancestors, killed him too soon, and, because there was no one to claim him, sent his body to rot in the rainstorm of Elizabeth’s grief.

  That’s when it hit Angela: What if whoever had killed Raphael’s Son knew that his body would disappear as soon as he died? What if he had driven up to the gate, seen a familiar face—someone with whom he felt safe enough to roll down his window even if they came out of the dark in the middle of the night? He didn’t put the car in park, just set his foot on the brake and turned his face to the person in the driveway.

  He saw the knife and panicked, pressed on the gas pedal to get away, only the car was still in drive so it crashed into the gate and stopped. Then Raphael’s Son sat there, bleeding out until his father reached for him.

  “Ohhh myyy God,” Angela sighed as she slunk to the floor.

  Only two people—Eddy Arax and Neda—knew that Jonah had the incandescence disease.

  __________________

  People said Neda had married Raphael’s Son because she was too stupid and servile to say no to him. Angela didn’t believe that. She thought Neda didn’t think she had a right to anyone better than Raphael’s Son. That’s why she married him and why she stayed with him—that, and the well-being of her daughters, the knowledge that if she divorced him, Raphael’s Son would punish her by rendering her and the children poor and without recourse.

  She must have realized, as the years passed, that her inaction, her inability to believe she was worth more than what Raphael’s Son made of her, would seep into her daughters’ souls, that this was the reason Nicole was so solitary and Kayla so very lost. She tried to make them have a better sense of themselves. All those therapists and music teachers, summer camps in Maine and private school education, the birthday parties that were more lavish than any bat mitzvah and the bat mitzvahs that cost as much as a large wedding—and still, she must have known it wasn’t enough.

  She should have left and taken her daughters with her. But she didn’t have the strength.

  Then one day Eddy Arax called with news of Jonah.

  “I can’t see you,” he told Neda, “and you mustn’t tell him it was I who told you this.”

  So Raphael’s Son had been unfaithful to her. That couldn’t have come as news to Neda.

  And he had fathered a child, whom he renounced.

  That meant he and Neda could continue as before, live separately under one roof for another hundred years or until one of them died. As long as Raphael’s Son kept the boy secret, Neda could hold on to the last, acrid crumbs of her aabehroo.

  But there was more, Eddy had said. The boy had a luminous heart—proof positive that Raphael’s Son was legitimate. For years, Eddy had kept this from his employer. It was his revenge—to deny Raphael’s Son that which he and his mother had wanted most. And the $1,000 a month didn’t hurt either. Only now, this black rabbi had gotten ahold of Raphael’s Son, and insisted that he see Jonah, just once. The rabbi had been shown the door by Raphael’s Son, threatened to be sued for taking money he knew was not intended for him or his charity, but the rabbi had promised to come back.

  One
of these days, Eddy warned Neda, your husband will discover just how useful this child could be, and once that happens there will be no stopping him—he’ll claim the kid and bring him home and show him off everywhere he can.

  “And then, Mrs. Soleyman, what are you going to do? You won’t have the courage or the means to leave him, but you won’t be able to hide the kid either. People will know you remained in the marriage even after he showed off the child he had with another woman, and I’ll tell you, though I mean no offense, she must have been one hell of a looker, judging by how the boy has turned out.”

  Twenty years ago, a woman staying in a marriage despite any and all mistreatment was not just understandable, it was expected; she was believed to be better off dead than divorced. But that all had changed in the past two decades. Now there was a limit to how much a wife would endure publicly before she was considered a complete sap for not leaving.

  Beyond the years of abuse, the betrayals, the cruelties, Neda realized she was about to face one last indignity.

  A long-exploited, desperately dependent employee. A wronged and unhappy wife. It was like those buildings that withstand one massive quake after another, then collapse in a three-second aftershock.

  That was one thing Tehran and Los Angeles had in common: they were both cities built on major fault lines.

  __________________

  In the evening, the rabbi claimed some other engagement—to which, needless to say, it wouldn’t be appropriate to take Jonah—and asked if he might “impose on the family to look after the young man” for a few hours.

  “What am I supposed to do with him?” Angela asked in sincere bewilderment. She knew that the rabbi wasn’t going anywhere but home, that he had no other engagement and no purpose but to give Jonah more time with her. “I don’t even have the kind of food he eats.”

  * * *

  This—how unconnected and unwanted he was, more so than even Raphael’s Son in his own day because he, at least, had Raphael’s Wife to love him—confounded Angela.

  All her life, Angela had heard of and met people who had not one other person in the world they knew cared for them. At work, she had come across hundreds of stories of children who died of abuse or neglect because no one stepped in to help, of old men and women who suffocated from heat or froze on the sidewalk because no one looked in on them.

  Still, she was struck by the utter unconnectedness, the absolute aloneness of this child. You could say Rappin’ Rabbi cared about Jonah, that he cared more than he was paid to, and that was true. He had been a part of Jonah’s life longer than anyone else, served far beyond the call of duty, but even he knew that the affection he could give the boy was not enough. He—the rabbi with no congregation—understood the difference between having one person to see to your needs, and having a family, a community, to recognize you as their own.

  Angela understood it too. No matter how often the Pearl Cannon had targeted the home team or how many gripes Angela had registered about the complexities of maintaining a “tribal mentality” in twenty-first-century Los Angeles, there was always this: where she came from, the people had each other. That was worth something. Maybe it was worth all the difficulties it caused. Maybe that’s why Angela had stuck with the tribe instead of severing all ties.

  * * *

  They were still sitting at the table, though Jonah had long since given up on the organic, sprouted grain wheat bread and organic, unsalted almond butter sandwich Angela had made for him. She kept the stuff in her fridge because it was a healthy LA alternative to white toast and sweetened, packed-with-hydrogenated-oil peanut butter that normal people lived on everywhere else in America, but she couldn’t be caught dead eating any of it herself. The almond butter tasted like sludge and the sprouted grain bread couldn’t be forced down a normal throat no matter how much coffee she tried to chase it with. She also kept unsweetened almond and coconut milk instead of the regular stuff because in LA, dairy products were known carcinogens, right after cigarettes and sugar. So she bought the “make-believe milk” once a month at Trader Joe’s, tossed it out, unopened, after a month, and went to her espresso hangout where she insisted on regular milk in her latte and chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea.

  “Do you like In-N-Out?” she asked Jonah.

  He shook his head. He was back to hugging the blue pillow, and he seemed even smaller, thinner, than he had the day before.

  It occurred to her that he must be terrified of being there, alone with a strange woman, his only friend—the rabbi—having taken off with promises of “checking in” later that night. But it was one thing to feel sorry for a lonely, abandoned child, something entirely different to suddenly be the one designated to save him.

  Because that’s what she had become, she realized all too well, the minute she agreed to see Jonah. That’s why Leon had asked her to “see him for yourself.” With Elizabeth gone, Angela was the only surviving member of the Soleyman family—or so she had believed, until Jonah came along. Now, it was the two of them.

  She could either release Jonah back into the ocean to be swallowed by whales, or she could bring him home.

  LOS ANGELES

  Monday, June 23, 2014

  __________________

  The Pearl Cannon

  a blog by Angela S.

  Monday, June 23, 2014

  Today’s Topic: Unintended Consequences

  Raphael’s Son died alone in his car, having done more damage in one lifetime than any person has a right to, and if there’s one good thing that resulted from his unfortunate existence, it’s that he saved the Soleyman family from imminent extinction.

  That’s unintended consequence #1.

  Before Jonah, there was just me—surly, pugnacious, well past child-bearing age—and besides, who would dare have children with that one?—Angela. I do know what you all say about me. I can’t argue with the first three adjectives, but I will say, apropos the question, however rhetorical, about my becoming a parent, that it’s been some time since men were de rigueur in the matter of making mothers out of women. But I digress.

  Before Jonah, there was only me—one of the few Iranian Jews in this town, I’m certain, who can’t boast of having five hundred cousins and just as many aunts and uncles. Believe it or not, this dearth of relatives, my disconnectedness, hadn’t bothered me for years, not since after high school when I went away to university and lived among other young people who didn’t have five hundred cousins either. It was only once I met Jonah that I realized how truly alone I was, how similar to my mother in that regard.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t seen this before—I who am so very quick to point out the obvious in other people, to blame them, even, for not having enough self-reflection. I always thought I was nothing like Elizabeth. Not nearly as smart or capable or giving—yes, my mother was giving, and I don’t just mean philanthropically. This is something else I realized once I met Jonah.

  It’s not true, what I used to say about Elizabeth—she was no Ice Queen. She was strong and driven, yes, the Hillary Clinton of Iranian Jewish women, and she never did learn how to convey her affection through words or a simple embrace. “If you’ll have me, I would like to be your wife” isn’t exactly a love poem, but that’s how she proposed to my father, and she didn’t even wait to get him alone—she asked him in front of a bunch of people she didn’t know. A more eloquent young woman might have waited for the evening to end, the guests to go home; she might have stalked the man in a dark hallway, thrown herself, tousled hair and diaphanous gown and ruby lips and all, into his arms and cried tears as big as ostrich eggs. She might have told him about all the sleepless nights, the breathless waiting, the hoping against hope—and if you won’t have me I’ll lose my will to live, catch a fever, and take to bed and die of sorrow.

  Hillary wouldn’t do this, and nor would my mother. It doesn’t mean they’re unfeeling or coldhearted. I realize this now, but I couldn’t see it—that the inability to convey the
depth of one’s affection is not the same as an absence of caring—until I met Jonah. Before that, I never knew what an awesome—as in, extremely daunting—and terrifying task it is to be the sole guardian of a child, the only person in this world responsible for his life and well-being.

  Elizabeth was alone in a way few other women of her generation or background could claim. Most of the others had someone—a spouse, a parent, a distant cousin or two—who might throw them a life vest if things got really bad. After my father died, my mother was entirely on her own. Just like Raphael’s Wife.

  It’s true that Elizabeth had Manzel and John Vain and Auntie Zeeba to stand by her at different times in her life; you could even say, if you wanted to go out on a limb, that she had Hal, the Mechanical Brain. But her impulse toward self-sufficiency, the habit she had developed from early childhood of being alone and able to care for herself, always got the better of us. The same glass barrier that kept her one step removed in her youth followed her—and, by extension, me—throughout her life.

  That wouldn’t have been such a sin in Iran or many other parts of the world. In most places, people are too busy trying to survive to add “express your love effectively” to their daily to-do list. It’s enough to perform, every day, the great miracle of protecting one another against hunger and war and the elements. That’s how Elizabeth expressed her love for me—with bread instead of poetry. Only I wasn’t able to see this—how difficult it is for one generation to reinvent the wheel, learn from the previous ones’ mistakes, speak in rhymes, so to speak, when all it has known is good old-fashioned prose.