Blues in the Night

by Rochelle Krich

  I saw what he meant. Standing near Zack were five or six hatless (ergo, unmarried) young women I hadn’t noticed, all waiting their turns at the well.

  Even Rachel would have hoisted her buckets on her shoulders and gone home.

  eighteen

  Near the end of lunch I asked my brother Noah about Lenore. Next month he’ll be a third-year law student at UCLA, he’s top of his class and driven, and I thought he’d be pleased that I was asking him instead of Mindy, whose success is an inspiration and an albatross. I would have preferred questioning him out of the presence of my other siblings—we Blumes are an outspoken group—but Noah was walking to his girlfriend’s after lunch, and from there to afternoon and evening services at the shul, and wouldn’t be back until after Shabbat. Carpe Noah, I decided.

  “Say a woman has a fight with her ex-husband and walks out on him,” I began after I got his attention. “The husband gets in his car and follows her, she runs into the street, and she’s struck by a hit-and-run driver.”

  “Chas v’shalom,” Liora said. God forbid.

  “Was she killed as a result?” Noah asked.

  “No.”

  “What kind of car?” asked Joey.

  I smiled patiently. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What did they fight about?” asked Liora.

  The questions illustrate the difference between my youngest sister and brother, who share physical characteristics and nothing else. They are average height—he’s five-nine, two inches shorter than Noah; she’s five-four—and have wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. Joey, twenty-two, has a B.A. in computer science and a passion for cars that began when he got his first Hot Wheels at the age of two. Liora, nineteen, finished a year at a Jerusalem girls’ seminary and is majoring in biology at Santa Monica City College. Since her return in May, she’s gone on countless blind dates, hoping to meet her bashert. I suspect she’s hoping I’ll meet mine, too, so that neither of us will feel awkward at her wedding.

  “That doesn’t matter either,” I told her. “Here’s my question, Noah. Is the ex-husband criminally liable for her getting hit?”

  “So it could matter,” Liora said.

  “Let your brother answer,” my father said without looking up from the slice of rye he was slathering with mustard. He’s owned a construction company for over thirty years and has learned to tune out noise.

  “We just learned this last semester.” Noah ran a hand through his light brown hair, the same color as mine before I added highlights. “Was it a busy street?”

  “Laurel Canyon, a little before two in the morning.”

  “Not much traffic then,” Noah said, “but the street curves a lot. Did he force her into the street?”

  He was enjoying this, and I was glad I’d asked him. “I don’t think so. But I do think she was running to avoid him.”

  “Does she have a history of erratic behavior?”

  “She tried to kill herself. More than once,” I added.

  “That’s good.” He nodded.

  “That a woman tried to kill herself is good?” Bubbie G had been half dozing at the table, her chin on her chest.

  Noah flushed. “Of course not, Bubbie. What I mean is, it goes toward building a case against the ex-husband.” He faced me again. “If he knows she has a history of suicide attempts, and it’s a busy street, a prosecutor could go for second-degree murder.”

  “No kidding.” I nodded, impressed. “On what grounds?”

  “Conscious disregard of human life. But you’d have to prove that he followed her, and that she ran into the street to avoid him. Did he report the accident to the police?”

  I shook my head. “He claims he didn’t see it.”

  Bubbie harrumphed.

  “I’m with you, Bubbie.” I cut a slice of seven-layer cake and slipped it onto my plate.

  “Well, if you can prove he was there,” Noah said, “the fact that he didn’t report what happened will go against him. And if you can’t get a D.A. to indict, the family would have a much easier time with a civil case. There’s a lower burden of proof.”

  Either way, Saunders would be in deep water, his political career as dead as Lenore. I wondered how far he would go to avoid being tried for manslaughter. I also wondered if Betty Rowan knew about Lenore’s late-night argument with her former son-in-law.

  “Why did this woman try to kill herself?” my mother asked.

  “It’s so sad,” I said. “Tragic, really. She was suffering from postpartum psychosis and killed their son.” I summarized what Saunders had told me.

  There were no interruptions from Liora or Joey, no questions. They looked somber like everyone else at the table, especially Bubbie G.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t the best conversation for the Shabbos table.”

  “Are you going to write about this?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know.” I’d promised Saunders I’d wait, but if Lenore had been murdered . . .

  “Why do you write about such morbid stuff?” Liora shuddered.

  I pulled off a layer of the cake, cold from the refrigerator, the way I like it.

  “In the camps, there was a woman with a baby,” Bubbie said.

  We all turned to look at her, surprised. Bubbie rarely talks about her experiences in the war.

  “Not in my barracks,” Bubbie continued. “But my friend Salka was there, and she told me about this woman who was so lucky, she carried so small the Nazis didn’t know she was pregnant. She had the baby—Salka and a few others helped her. A boy. She didn’t have enough to eat, so she didn’t have enough milk, and the baby cried and cried and cried, and some of the women, they were afraid the guards would hear the baby and they would all be punished. Killed, even. They called the baby ‘it,’ Salka told me. Because of it, we are going to die, they said. What are you going to do about it?”

  Bubbie stirred a spoon in her glass of tea. “The mother was afraid to go to sleep. One time she woke up, and a woman had her hands on the baby, but the mother pushed her away. Every day she would hold the baby at her breast, always at her breast, just so he wouldn’t cry. But then he was crying all the time, because there was no milk, maybe a few drops. And she knew one day she would wake up and the baby would no longer be there.” Bubbie paused.

  “So what did she do?” Liora prompted when Bubbie made no move to continue.

  Bubbie sighed. “What could she do? She pressed him to her breast and sang to him, pressed him closer and closer, held him tight and kissed him until the crying stopped for good.”

  Liora’s face blanched. “She killed her own child?”

  “She loved him to death,” Bubbie said softly. “This is what Salka told me.” She turned to me. “But this is very different, Molly, from the woman you are telling us about.”

  “Very different,” I agreed, chilled to the bone. “What happened to her? Did she survive?”

  “Depends what you mean. The war, yes. But for years she heard the baby crying. Morning and night. The doctors gave her pills, but they didn’t help. Now, I don’t know.” Bubbie shrugged. “And your woman?”

  I hesitated. Why talk of murder when, after all, it wasn’t a fact? “She killed herself.”

  Bubbie nodded. “Sometimes, this is the only way to stop hearing the crying.”

  After the stars came out, we listened to my father’s rich baritone as he recited the havdalah blessings that separate Shabbat from the rest of the week. I held the braided candle high (“as tall as you want your bashert to be,” Zeidie Irving had always teased), my thoughts stealing to Zack and quickly bouncing away, what was the point?

  I packed my things and helped my mother wash the Shabbat dishes and pots that Joey hadn’t been able to fit into the dishwasher. He had gone out with friends, and Noah with his sweetheart. Liora had disappeared into her bedroom and emerged forty-five minutes later wearing an ankle-length gray silk skirt and a pale pink silk sweater set. Her below-the-shoulder hair brushed into a sa
ble luster, cheeks pinked, eyes bright with nervous excitement, she was waiting impatiently for her blind date, recommended by a friend’s sister, the last in a series of young men committed to full-time yeshiva study for one to three years or more before pursuing careers in business, law, accounting, computers, or teaching. My family had already vetted his, and his family, ours, and both sets of parents had agreed to supplement the salary Liora would earn for those first years of marriage.

  [Bubbie G’s joke about a father grilling a suitor:

  “You’ll have expenses,” the father says. “An apartment, clothing, food, a car.”

  “Hashem (God) will provide,” the suitor replies.

  “Tuition for children is high,” the father points out.

  “Hashem will provide.”

  “You’ll want a house one day, other things.”

  “Hashem will provide.”

  After the suitor leaves, the wife asks, “Nu?”

  “A very fine young man,” the father says. “And very respectful. He called me God three times.”]

  Almost all of Liora’s friends and classmates are dating young men with similar aspirations and backgrounds, and while I have reservations about these whirlwind courtships between couples barely out of their teens (twelve dates and you were engaged; three months later, wed), the majority of these unions are happy, and I, who had dated Ron for a year and married him at twenty-five, am in no position to judge.

  I do worry, though, that Liora is unprepared for the burden of being the sole breadwinner, especially if she becomes pregnant, which is probable since she won’t use birth control, and I hope reality won’t trample on her romantic idealism. My parents, who have been ambushed into this world of arranged marriages, still seem somewhat shell-shocked, but trust that Liora will be happy.

  Bubbie G is more pragmatic: “Di libeh iz zis, mit broyt iz ze besser.” Love is sweet, but it’s better with bread.

  I wonder sometimes what course my life would have taken if I had been content years ago to wear ankle-length skirts and sweater sets and had embraced a spouse and life like the ones Liora and her friends were pursuing. But I am not my sister, and though I would have preferred to save my family and myself the pain of my divorce, I don’t really have regrets about the road not taken.

  The bell chimed. While my father went to the door, I peered through the slats of the wood blinds on the breakfast room window at the black-hatted young man rocking on his heels on our front porch. A handsome face, expressive eyes, hands stuffed into the jacket of his black suit.

  Was this the one?

  My manuscript had finally arrived with a letter from my editor, who reiterated how much she liked the book. It’s a heady feeling, receiving praise from a person whose opinion you value on the work you’ve labored so long to produce, never quite sure whether it’s wonderful or awful or mediocre. I basked in the moment, then read her general comments and fanned the manuscript pages, looking for her notations. I’d been eagerly awaiting the edited pages for almost six weeks, and ordinarily would have immediately sat down to begin addressing her suggestions, but I was too distracted.

  I listened to my phone messages while sorting through the other mail. Nothing from Connors, which was disappointing but not surprising. He probably didn’t want to hear my “I told you so.” Two messages from my sister Edie, who had heard after Shabbat from her friend Harriet that I’d been in shul, and what did that mean?

  And a message from Betty Rowan, saying she’d like to discuss something that might interest me.

  nineteen

  Sunday, July 20. 9:02 A.M. 3400 block of Fay Avenue. A woman left her house with the kitchen window open. While she was gone, burglars stole five jewelry box drawers, 80 pieces of costume jewelry, a $50 wristwatch, a glass jar containing about $50 in coins, a Disneyland tip tray, a $90 rope chain, a $50 bracelet, three anklets, a pair of 14-karat gold earrings, a Wheel of Fortune electronic game, a $10 jewelry box, a $300 jewelry box, a $120 portable CD player and one CD. (Culver City)

  Lenore’s apartment was a Martha Stewart nightmare.

  The living room/dining room carpet, barely visible, was littered with books, magazines, videocassettes, and CDs, and clumps of white polyester stuffing that trailed from the gaping wounds of taupe chenille sofa cushions. Open kitchen cabinets had surrendered their possessions, many of which lay shattered on the Formica counter or on the linoleum, immobilized in a gooey puddle pouring out of a felled bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap.

  Back in the living room, I surveyed the books on the floor. Paperback romances, thrillers, two hardcovers that I’d recently seen on the New York Times bestseller list. There was a large, black glossy book on acting techniques and several texts on postpartum depression. Overcoming Postpartum Depression and Anxiety, Evaluation and Treatment of Postpartum Emotional Disorders, Rock-a-bye Baby: When Baby Blues Won’t Go Away (by Lenore’s shrink, Lawrence Korwin), Sleepless Days: One Woman’s Journey Through Postpartum Depression, Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression (Marie Osmond’s book). The titles alone were enough to depress me.

  Buried under the books were Lenore and Robbie’s wedding album, along with the wedding photo and other candid shots of the stunning couple that Mrs. O’Day had spotted, their cracked glass frames giving the lie to their smiling faces.

  All the drawers in Lenore’s dresser had been turned upside down. The stripped mattress was on the floor, along with colorful heaps of skirts, dresses, sweaters, shoes, purses, belts, and half a dozen silk pajamas in jewel tones. An emptied jewelry box lay on top of the box spring, the white fingerprint powder stark against the mahogany.

  In a lavender hatbox in front of the closet I found assorted memorabilia. High school souvenirs, including programs for several drama productions in which Lenore had played the lead; ticket stubs to movies; a Twentynine Palms Public Library card; a dried orchid corsage pinned to a tiny card that said To the most beautiful girl in Twentynine Palms and was signed Love, Jeff. A Santa Barbara hospital nursery card listing the date and time of birth for Baby Boy Saunders, along with his weight, height, and the name of the attending physician.

  There were numerous photos of an adolescent Lenore with a smiling brown-haired girl, presumably a close friend; more wedding photos; several poses of Robbie and Lenore, big with child; of the new mother with her infant son, his tiny face peering out from a yellow receiving blanket. There were several poses, too, of the family, one with Lenore holding the baby, others in which she was gazing at the beaming father cuddling his son. I studied Lenore. It seemed to me there was something strained about her smile, something uncomfortable in the way she was holding the baby. Or maybe I was reading something that wasn’t there.

  There were other, older photos, their glossy coats smudged with fingerprints, their edges worn, of an infant girl with a cap of dark hair, presumably Lenore. In some of the photos she was with a much younger and happier Betty Rowan and a handsome man, probably the exhusband. In others, she was alone with her father. In most of the poses he looked extremely serious and somewhat aloof, as though he’d already decided to leave his wife and daughter.

  I went into the bathroom. The toilet tank lid had been removed, vials had spilled their pills, and in what I assumed was just spite, whoever had done this had plastered toothpaste and ointments and smeared lipsticks and foundation over the marbleized counter and mirror. The contents of a Lucite trash can had been strewn on the white-tile floor. I poked at a mound of tissues with the toe of my sandal and unearthed a familiar flat plastic wand with an absorbent tip. I tore off a swatch of toilet paper and picked it up.

  “Find anything?”

  I jumped and turned toward the doorway. “Jeez, you scared me.” Connors was slouched against the post, arms folded. I wondered how long he’d been standing there. “She was pregnant, wasn’t she?”

  He straightened up. “The manager told me you were here Friday, and here you are again. The department should put you on the payroll.”

 
; “The department can’t afford me. So was she?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  Lenore’s second chance. It all made sense now. “How long have you known?”

  “They did a beta qual in the ER when they brought her in.”

  I nodded. This was what Connors had been holding back. “But you weren’t going to tell me.”

  He smiled. “Inasmuch as it’s none of your damn business, no.”

  I dropped the wand onto the tissues. “This changes everything, doesn’t it? Why would Lenore kill herself if she was pregnant?”

  “Saunders said he was going to tell you all. Did he?”

  I hate it when people answer a question with a question. “Yes, Friday afternoon. It’s a terrible story.”

  “And it explains why Lenore killed herself. She panicked when she found out she was pregnant. She was terrified she’d kill the baby, just like she did last time.”

  I thought about the books in the other room. “She was in therapy, Andy. She was on medication, taking control of her problem.”

  “You’re talking logic. Who says Lenore was thinking logically? And she told you she wanted off the meds, remember?”

  He had a point. “Why did you ask the O’Days not to let anyone in her apartment?” I countered. “Because she was pregnant, right? It made you wonder.”

  “Routine procedure. Until the M.E. determines cause of death, we have to treat it as a possible homicide.”

  “You’re lying.”

  He smacked his hand against his chest. “I’m hurt, Molly. Really hurt.”

  I waved my hand around the room. “Is this routine, too? Someone killed her, Andy. You know it.”

  “We don’t know it. It’s certainly a possibility.”

  “You honestly believe this is just a coincidence?”

  “It could be a coincidence. But I doubt it.”

  “So . . . “

  “Just because someone trashed her apartment after she died doesn’t mean she was killed. Suppose Lenore had something in her apartment that could compromise someone. Maybe he or she panicked when Lenore died and decided to retrieve it.”