“Hope you enjoyed your vacation, cause playtime’s over.” Mendoza’s voice sounded strained, higher-pitched, as if his vocal cords had been ratcheted tight.
He slapped the binder down. “Fifty years of information about car versus pedestrian accidents. Your magnum opus.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mendoza stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Did you consider where bicycles fit in this equation?”
Jacob hefted the binder and took it back to his cubicle.
—
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, he was home by six-thirty most days, and weekends were light. He made the regular Monday and Wednesday evening AA meetings at the Anglican church on Olympic Boulevard, finding his regular place at the back. It wasn’t the first time he’d sat in a house of worship, mouthing words he didn’t believe in. Without alcohol, he had little reason to stay out at night; he was early to bed, early to rise, diligent and uncomplaining, chaste and humble. Eventually Mendoza grew bored of harassing him.
When he stopped in at 7-Eleven for diet cola, Henry would clutch his chest. “Was it something I did?”
—
NOW THAT HE KNEW what to look for, he easily picked out the people who had been sent to watch him. No regular rotation he could discern; sometimes every couple of weeks, other times monthly, a vehicle would show itself within a two-block radius. Caterer, roofer, furnace repair, a piano tuner, weatherproofing installation. Some of the lone occupants were cordial, others glum. None of them displayed anxiety or prolonged the conversation.
They didn’t worry Jacob, either. It wasn’t him they were after.
Returning home from his meeting one night, he was oddly pleased to spot Subach, his chicken-finger fingers drumming the dash of a plumber’s van.
“Hey, Jake.”
“Hey, Mel. Moonlighting?”
“You know. Same old.” Subach grinned. “Traffic treating you okay?”
“Very fucking funny.”
“Ah, relax.”
“Tell Mallick thanks a lot.”
“The Commander, I guess you could say he was a wee bit. . . vexed.”
Jacob smiled tiredly.
“Don’t worry. Won’t last forever.”
“Nothing does,” Jacob said. “Take it easy, Mel. No hard feelings?”
“None from me.”
Jacob paused. “But?”
Subach laughed. “Hey now. Be realistic. The world’s full of hard feelings. Without that, we’d both be out of a job.”
—
FOR THEIR WEEKLY STUDY SESSIONS, Sam selected a tractate discussing criminal justice, including the chapter on capital punishment.
“I think you’re finally old enough,” he said.
Jacob ran up a streak of fourteen straight Sunday mornings without an absence, the two of them sitting on the patio, eating pastry and drinking tea, batting around arguments. The melody of Talmudic study returned to his lips; he reintroduced himself to the luminous personalities that adorned the pages, and he found them far more sympathetic at second encounter. They were men, very much in the grip of their own uncertainties, trying to figure out how to be. The ritual structure they’d established was a noble attempt to infuse life with dignity and meaning. They strove for autonomy, for self-worth, for holiness. And when they failed, they sought new strategies. Jacob had missed that lesson the first time around. He did not intend to miss it again.
—
THE SUNDAY BEFORE ROSH HASHANA, Jacob arrived five minutes early. As usual, Sam was waiting out on the patio, his magnifying spectacles pushed back on his forehead. Instead of twin volumes of the Talmud, the table held a single sheet of paper: Jacob’s transcript of the Prague letter.
Sam gestured to the free chair.
Jacob sat.
Sam cleared his throat, lowered the spectacles, flapped the page to straighten it. Paused. “Something to drink?”
“No. Thanks.”
Sam nodded. He began to read, translating from the Hebrew.
“‘My dear son Isaac. And God blessed Isaac so may He bless you.’ You’re correct in identifying this as a term of endearment for Isaac Katz. He and the Maharal were close, not to mention that they were student and teacher, a relationship compared to that of son and father.”
He looked up. “Shall I continue?”
Jacob nodded.
“‘As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so may God rejoice over you. For the sounds of joy and gladness yet ring in the streets of Judah. Therefore this time I, Judah, will praise Him.’”
Sam righted his glasses. “Isaac Katz was married to two different daughters of the Maharal. First Leah, who died childless, then her younger sister, Feigel. The date here, Sivan 5342, corresponds to that second marriage. Isaac Katz is a newly married man, and that’s why the Maharal feels the need to give him an out by citing the priest’s speech to the troops. He’s saying, ‘Something’s happening, and I need your help, but only if you can set aside your personal concerns.’ The next paragraph discusses what the problem is.”
He offered the letter to Jacob.
“‘But now let us remember that our eyes have seen all the great deeds He has done,’” Jacob read. “‘For the vessel of clay we have made was spoiled in our hands, and the potter has gone to make another, more fit in her eyes. Shall the potter be the equal of the clay? Shall what is made say to its maker, you did not make me? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, you know nothing?’” He put the letter down. “Sorry, Abba. I’m not getting anything.”
“The Maharal was concerned that his son-in-law wouldn’t understand, either. He put in a fail-safe. Here, in the last line. It’s not very subtle.”
For in truth we have desired grace; it is a disgrace to us from God.
“You couldn’t find the biblical verse this alludes to,” Sam said. “That’s because there isn’t one.”
Jacob reread the line in Hebrew.
“Take your time,” Sam said. “Play with it.”
The instruction Sam had used when amusing Jacob with gematria—the geometry of letters.
Jacob added up the numerical values of the letters, reversed them. Nothing.
He selected the first letter of each word and paired them together.
“Barach ha-Golem,” he read.
The golem has fled.
“There’s nothing more hubristic than the impulse to create life,” Sam said. “Children are the best example of that. The Talmud says three partners participate in the birth of every child: the mother, the father, and God. That equation raises people up to the level of the Divine. It’s also a statement of faith, declaring that God involves Himself with the individual. And yet, no matter how we attempt to assert our authority—even if we appeal to the Divine—children go their own way.” He paused. “Any sort of offspring seeks to find its own way. That is the fundamental joy of parenthood, and also its terror.”
Jacob said, “She came for me.”
Sam didn’t answer.
“Because of the blood in your veins.”
“You said it yourself, Jacob. She came for you, not me.”
Jacob looked at him.
“If you don’t mind,” Sam said, “I’ll wait here while you get the car.”
—
FOR A LEGALLY BLIND man giving driving directions, his father exhibited remarkable confidence.
“You’ll want to get over to your right.”
“I’m not going to keep saying this—”
“Then don’t.”
“—but I can’t help thinking it’d be simpler if you just told me where we’re going.”
“You’re going to miss it.”
Jacob checked over his shoulder, swerved to avoid the 110. “Do I get three guesses?”
“Slow down,” Sam said. “There’s a speed trap ahead.�
��
Jacob touched the brake pedal.
Beyond the overpass, a radar gun glinted.
“I probably could have talked us out of it,” Jacob said.
“No need to take chances,” Sam said.
There was only one place Jacob could think of that was due east, one place Sam visited often enough to navigate there by sound alone. At the interchange with the 101, he signaled right, then bore left for the 60 East into Boyle Heights, toward the Garden of Peace Cemetery. He signaled again for the exit at Downey Road.
“No,” Sam said. “710 South.”
He thought his father must be misremembering, or miscalculating; perhaps he went with Nigel at different times of day, when the drive took longer or shorter, and they followed a roundabout route. “Abba—”
“710 South.”
Off the freeway, a tawny hill heaved up into view, speckled white with monuments. “The cemetery’s right there. I can see it.”
“We’re not going to the cemetery,” Sam said.
Mystified, Jacob made the merge onto the 710 South.
Two miles later, Sam had him get on the 5 South.
“I have half a tank,” Jacob said. “Is that going to be enough?”
“Yes.”
They switched to the 605 South, exiting at Imperial Highway and heading west through the city of Downey. Jacob had little to no knowledge of the area, and it was all he could do not to reach for his phone when Sam instructed him to get on the 710 North.
“We just got off the 710 South.”
“I know.”
“We’re heading in a big circle.”
“Keep going.”
Jacob said, “Is someone following us?”
Sam said, “You tell me.”
Jacob glanced in the rearview.
A field of cars.
At Sam’s behest, they changed lanes several times, feinting toward exits.
“I don’t think there’s anyone,” Jacob said.
Sam nodded. “I’m relying on you for that.”
They passed the cemetery again, this time on the east; from that angle, Jacob could not see anything except the nodding mop-tops of palm trees. Continuing on to the freeway’s terminus, they turned onto West Valley Boulevard, in Alhambra. He obeyed blindly as Sam relayed a series of turns through residential streets.
“What do you think?” Sam asked.
Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Clear,” he said. He was amused and perplexed and irritated in equal measure. “I’m down to a quarter tank, by the way.”
“We can stop on the way back. Right on Garfield, then it’s your first left. Three blocks down, number 456 East, end of the block.”
It was a nondescript lower-middle-class street, ranch houses with concrete latticework and proud flowerbeds, pickup trucks in the driveways, powerboats on trailers.
Sam said, “There’s a parking lot, but it’s only five spaces and they’re usually full. I’d take the first spot you see.”
Jacob pulled over outside a reddish three-story stucco apartment complex with a Spanish tile roof. There was a small semicircular driveway and a tiled overhang, boxwood hedges and a wooden sign.
PACIFIC CONTINUING CARE
A DIVISION OF GRAFFIN HEALTH SERVICES, INC.
They sat in silence in the car.
Sam said, “I ask for your forgiveness.”
Jacob said nothing.
Sam bowed his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”
He got out of the car and started up the driveway. Sick with dread, Jacob followed.
—
HE KNEW. He knew the moment they stepped inside. The woman behind the desk smiled at his father. She was wearing Mickey Mouse scrubs. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Abelson,” and Sam nodded and Jacob knew.
The odor of cleaning agents was strong. He looked at his father, scrawling messily on a clipboard, signing himself in. Why was he doing this now? Why was he doing it at all? He’d never known his father to be selfish. Just the opposite. Sam gave and gave and gave. He gave all; forgave all. Jacob had to wonder if that same generosity extended, in a perverse way, to himself. Because he could not imagine a more selfish permission to grant oneself.
“Here.” Sam was offering the clipboard. He had signed his name as Abelson.
Jacob didn’t know what to write. Was he supposed to lie, too? He wrote his real name.
He knew. He followed regardless, trailing Sam down a cracked tile corridor, ecru paint in drippy layers. Through doors left ajar he saw grungy carpeting, flimsy bedspreads. Two beds per closet-sized room. The cheer of a child’s drawing amplifying the deadness of the rough vinyl wallpaper. A vase of failing sunflowers, the finger of water at the bottom luxuriantly scummed. The pain in his heart made room for more pain. This could not be the best they could do. They had to do better.
Glare budded at the end of the hall. DAYROOM.
Figures of men and women. Reading, snoozing, playing checkers. They wandered about in pajamas stained with marinara sauce and applesauce. They wore slippers at noon. They seemed ill-defined, as though the room was filled with steam. Obesity and tremulous hands and cloudy eyes testified to the long-term effects of medication.
Overwhelmingly their focal point was a television set, tuned to a talk show.
Two heavyset Latinas in pink scrubs (hearts, Hello Kitty) made up the staff. They were watching TV, too. They looked over when Jacob and Sam entered. One of them smiled at Sam.
“She’s in the garden.”
“Thank you.”
Jacob knew, and still he followed, passing numbly through the mute ranks of the mad, conscious of their stares. They—the vacant and the reasonless—even they were judging him. The one who never visits.
What the nurse had called a garden was a lagoon of pink cement stamped to resemble flagstone; a plastic trellis overcome by star jasmine; a clump of home-improvement-store planters. Iron fence pickets rose way up high, ten feet or more. He wondered if anyone had tried to escape.
There was one actual tree, a fig wickedly gnarled, dominating the corner, throwing long tentacles of shade, splattering the concrete with uneaten fruit.
She was there, on a corroding bench.
Her hair was dry and gone to gray. Someone had taken the time to comb it and pin it back. The pin was age-inappropriate, a cute little ladybug. Withered pouches of skin replaced the slender neck he remembered; the doughy body, too, insulted his memory. But her hands were the same, wired with sinew, and her eyes were the same electric green.
Her fingers moved ceaselessly, manipulating phantom clay.
“Hello, Bina,” Sam said. He sat down on the bench and put an arm around her, pulled her into him and kissed her on the temple.
One of her hands climbed the side of his face and rested. Her eyes closed.
Jacob turned and walked away.
Sam called, “She asked for you.”
Jacob kept going.
“She hasn’t spoken in ten years.”
Jacob reached the door and grabbed the knob.
“Don’t blame her,” Sam said. “Blame me.”
Jacob faced him. “I do blame you.”
Sam nodded.
Their three bodies triangulated long and narrow, forming an invisible blade laid across the garden. Jacob heard the natter of the dayroom TV. A thin hot breeze awakened jasmine and sweet, rotting fruit. His mother gazed up at the branches, moaning softly, lost. His father gazed at her, lost. Time passed. Jacob took a step toward them. He stopped. He felt drunk. He didn’t think he would make it. He left them there together.
EPILOGUE
Resting at the tip of a fig branch, she gazes down at the family, fractured into thousands of pieces, and she curls up in sadness, her legs folding in on themselve
s.
Her love—he stands still as a statue. She wishes she could go to him, and comfort him, and tell him that she meant what she said when she said forever.
A breeze passes over her, cooling her shell from the hot sun. The branch dances in space. Below, the woman raises her eyes to the heavens. They regard each other across a great distance. A mewling burbles up from deep in the woman’s throat, her dry lips moving without words.
She wants to remember.
As for her, she needs no reminder. It is like they met yesterday. In the grand scheme of things, they did. Forever is a long time.
She watches her love turn and leave, and she prepares to follow him. Now that she has found him again, she will crawl over the dead gray deserts to be near him. She will swim gray lakes, descend into the gray valley where he resides. They are places she knows well.
She raises her wings, bends her joints.
Leaps.
It’s the same as always: for one terrifying moment, gravity overpowers faith, and she plunges toward the earth. Then she remembers who she is, and she begins to rise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rabbi Yonatan Cohen, Paul Hamburg, Faye Kellerman, Gabriella Kellerman, Daniel Kestenbaum, Amy Glass, Yana Flaksman, Marc Michael Epstein, David Wichs, Menachem Kallus, Lieutenant Jan Chrpa, Lieutenant Lenka Kovalská, Slavka Kovarova.
The Golem of Hollywood Page 46
