Now You See Me...

by Rochelle Krich

  There was another silence. Mrs. Bailor turned her attention to the wedding band she was twisting.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your daughter,” I said. “You haven’t heard from her since yesterday?”

  “We keep trying her cell phone. She doesn’t answer.” Rabbi Bailor’s voice had become husky. “We’re living a nightmare. Every morning I wake up and look in Dassie’s room, expecting to see her.”

  “Was Hadassah upset lately? Did she quarrel with either of you or her siblings?”

  He cleared his throat. “We have the typical father–daughter disagreements. Sometimes Dassie’s moody. Sometimes she doesn’t want to talk. That’s how teenagers are. Lately, she seemed less moody. And she’s never given us cause for concern. This is so out of character.”

  “Why would she do this?” the mother said, her voice breaking.

  Rabbi Bailor reached for his wife’s hand. She pulled it away. Above the beard a hint of color tinged his cheeks.

  As a writer I found the scene revealing. As the rabbi’s former student I felt unsettled, witnessing an intimate moment, and I shared his embarrassment.

  Rabbi Bailor passed me a yellow Post-it. “That’s the address and phone number for Sara Mellon, the friend Dassie told about the chat room. She’s willing to talk to you. I know you’ve just returned from San Diego, Molly, but if you could go there tonight?”

  “Of course.” I glanced at the Post-it. The girl lived on Reeves, only blocks from the Bailors.

  “Sara could have told us weeks ago.” The mother’s voice was brooding. Anger pinched her colorless lips. “If she had, Dassie would be home, not off who knows where with some piece of trash.”

  “Dassie might have run off anyway, Nechama. And teenagers don’t tattle on their friends.” The rabbi’s weariness suggested they’d discussed this before.

  “Even if the friend is in danger?” Her eyes flashed. “Dassie said she’s safe, but how do we know that’s true, Chaim? Who knows what this man is planning?”

  The tension in the room was incongruous with the Shabbat candlesticks and the serenity they promised. We lapsed into another silence which Rabbi Bailor interrupted with a long sigh.

  “Dassie knows chat rooms are off limits,” he said. “She understood why. This is so out of . . .”

  “Character,” I finished for him.

  “Yes.” He looked at me sharply. “He tricked her. He brainwashed her.” The rabbi’s hand formed a fist. “You have to find her, Molly. You have to convince Dassie that we don’t care what happened. We just want her home, now.”

  “You didn’t notice anything unusual about Hadassah that morning?” I asked. “Or during the days before?”

  “That’s what we keep asking ourselves. I’m not home much. That’s not an excuse, but . . .” He looked at his wife.

  “We have a busy household.” Nechama was prickly with defensive-ness, which she tried to soften with a tight smile. “The younger children need constant attention. Our two oldest are dating, and—well, you know what they say. ‘Kleine kinder . . .’ ”

  I nodded. Kleine kinder, kleine freiden; groisseh kinder, groisseh laiden. Small children, small joys; bigger children, bigger sorrows.

  “I try to give Dassie her space,” Nechama said. “But if something was bothering her, we would have known.”

  From my own experiences as a teenager, I wasn’t sure that was so. “And Sunday morning?”

  “Chaim was in shul. I saw Dassie when she was leaving for Sara’s. She got the boys ready for school and prepared their snacks. My weekly Mother’s Day gift, she calls it.” Nechama smiled again, more genuinely.

  “Did she have luggage with her?”

  “Her backpack and an overnight bag. My husband picked them up Monday night from Sara’s. Dassie said she was spending the night and needed her uniform for school the next day.” Nechama’s face clouded.

  I could hear the hurt in her voice. “Speaking of school, your brother mentioned that Hadassah is eighteen. Was she kept behind?”

  “Her birthday was in September. We thought it would be better if she was one of the older girls in her class, not one of the youngest. Also, with two grades between Dassie and Aliza, her older sister, there was less competition.”

  Having two older, accomplished sisters, I understood about competition. “Was Hadassah having difficulty with her classes or with the other students?”

  “Dassie gets along with everybody,” Rabbi Bailor said. “She’s doing well in all her classes. Not straight A’s, as she hoped, but it’s a heavy double schedule. We don’t expect A’s. Just do your best. That’s what we tell all our children. I don’t know if she believes us.”

  “She is tense about school,” the mother said. “Term papers, midterms, SATs. All those applications.”

  “Applications for seminary, you mean?”

  Most Orthodox girls spend the year after high school in one of many Jerusalem all-girl schools. I had done it. So had my three sisters.

  “And for college,” the rabbi said. “She plans to go after her year in Israel.”

  “She might change her mind about college,” Nechama said. “She might meet someone.”

  I sensed that she hoped her daughter would change her mind. It’s not uncommon for Orthodox girls to marry soon after their year of seminary, but it’s not typical of young women from Torat Tzion, which prides itself on the high number of graduates who get into the Ivy Leagues. I was surprised the Bailors had allowed their daughter to attend a school with a liberal philosophy and coed classes.

  “Hadassah wants to be a defense attorney,” Rabbi Bailor said when I asked him about it. “She needs an academic program that will give her the best chance of getting into a top college and law school. And since I’m at Torat Tzion, that made the most sense.”

  “Even though the students are more modern?”

  “We weren’t worried.”

  “You weren’t worried,” his wife said.

  The rabbi flushed. “Dassie knows who she is, what her values are. Some of the girls dress and behave inappropriately. Dassie’s sleeves are so long you can’t see her wrists. If anything, tznius has become more important to her.”

  The laws of modesty. Skirts well below the knee, sleeves covering the elbow, necklines that expose a minimum of skin, general decorum. Those are some of the rules I continue to bend, though because of Zack, I’ve compromised.

  “But it must be difficult for Hadassah,” I pressed. “Most of the students socialize, go on dates. . . .”

  “Dating was out of the question,” he said, impatient. “Dassie never pressured us about it. So all of this . . .” The rabbi’s shoulders sagged. “You must think I’m a fool,” he said quietly. “Obviously, Dassie felt pressured. Maybe we made a mistake.” He glanced at his wife. “Maybe I made a mistake.”

  Nechama turned her head away. It was another private, painful moment that made me wish I were somewhere else.

  “She wrote a beautiful essay,” the rabbi said. “She had help, but the ideas were hers, and the style.”

  “Who helped her?”

  “Mrs. Wexner. Many of our students hire her for help with the application process—the competition to get into a top college is intense. And Mrs. Wexner didn’t charge us, because I’m studying with her son.”

  “Using hours you could put to better use,” his wife said. “You barely have time to breathe, Chaim.”

  “The young man wants to deepen his understanding of Judaism, Nechama. How is that a waste of time?”

  “It’s not.” She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tense.”

  He made a move to take her hand. Instead, he curled his fingers into a ball that he pressed against his mouth.

  “Do you have Mrs. Wexner’s phone number?” I asked. “Hadassah may have told her something she wouldn’t tell her parents.”

  “I used to think she told us everything.” The rabbi looked at his wife. She was lost in thought. “It’s a good
idea, Molly. Dassie likes Mrs. Wexner. I have her number at school. I’ll get it for you tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be discreet,” he added, glancing again at his wife.

  I asked whether Hadassah had kept a journal. Nechama told me she hadn’t found one.

  “If she did have one, she took it with her,” she said.

  Disappointing, but not surprising. “I’d like to see the essay she wrote.”

  “It won’t tell you anything,” Rabbi Bailor said. “She talks about her desire to protect society and the rights of the individual. Nothing in it explains why she ran away.”

  “True, but it may give me a sense of your daughter’s personality, her interests.”

  He adjusted his yarmulke. “And how is that relevant?”

  “I don’t know that it is.” I was back in Rabbi Bailor’s class, forced to defend my position. In high school I’d enjoyed being challenged. Now I bristled. “As I told your brother-in-law, I’ve never tried to find a missing person. You should really hire a detective.”

  “I thought you understood our situation, Molly.” The rabbi sounded pained.

  “That’s why I’m here. But I need your cooperation, not your resistance.” I couldn’t believe I was talking with such chutzpah to the teacher I had revered.

  He drew back, bewildered. “I’m not resisting.”

  “Chaim.” Nechama sighed his name.

  He faced his wife. “Since when is asking questions ‘resisting’?” To me, he said, “Of course, you can read the essay, Molly. I just didn’t see the point. What else?”

  He was right. I’d been seeking a justification to vent my resentment from the moment I’d arrived. “I’ll need to talk to Hadassah’s siblings. Who’s the dark-haired young man who was leaving when I arrived?”

  “Gavriel. He’s twenty-three, our oldest.” Nechama named with pride a top-ranked New York yeshiva where her son was studying. “He came home Tuesday to give us moral support. He hasn’t talked to Dassie in weeks. Longer, really. And our three younger boys don’t know about Dassie.”

  “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “I can’t think of anything.” She turned to her husband. “Chaim?”

  “No, nothing,” her husband said. “That’s it?”

  I had detected a beat of hesitation and wondered what, if anything, the rabbi was withholding. And why. “I’d like to see Hadassah’s room.”

  “Fine. Whatever you want.”

  He sounded defeated. The former student in me was uncomfortable. Another part—a part I’m not proud of—enjoyed the moment, and I was flustered by my petty victory.

  Nechama pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ll get the essay.”

  She left the room through a doorway that led to the hall and shut the door behind her. I was alone with the rabbi. For over a decade I had fantasized about confronting him, but this wasn’t the time.

  “Tomorrow is Shabbos,” he said. “I keep wondering where Dassie is, what she’s doing. What kind of Shabbos will she have?”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  “It’s been many years since you’ve been here, Molly.”

  “Fourteen.” I broke off a cluster of flame grapes from the platter on the table and slipped it onto a plate.

  “To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d come. I know you’re still angry with me.”

  I plucked a grape and silently recited the blessing before biting into it.

  “It wasn’t my decision, Molly.”

  “You allowed the school to suspend me for something I didn’t do. You let Rabbi Ingel harangue me in front of all my friends and teachers.”

  For a moment I was back in the large, crowded cafeteria. Ingel, tall and rotund with blond hair cut so short it was almost invisible, loomed over me, his blue eyes sparking with fury that contorted the otherwise ordinary features of his clean-shaven face. His words, thundering with a ferocity that bounced off the walls in that awful silence, torched my cheeks and pierced my heart. I couldn’t breathe. I willed the floor to open up and swallow me.

  “Rabbi Ingel was agitated, Molly. He—”

  “He called me a liar and a cheater, and you didn’t say anything.” My cheeks flamed. My voice quivered with fourteen-year-old hurt. “He said my children would be liars and cheaters.”

  Rabbi Bailor sighed. “Rabbi Ingel told me the next day that he wished he could take back what he’d said. He was agitated. He said you got hold of a copy of his final and circulated it before the exam.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why would Rabbi Ingel accuse you of something you didn’t do, Molly?” he asked gently.

  “Because he never liked me? Because I asked questions he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer? Because he didn’t want to give me an A? Because he couldn’t imagine that one of the ‘good girls’ who sucked up to him could have done what he accused me of doing?” I took a breath. “The answer is, all of the above.”

  “Rabbi Ingel told us he had proof.”

  “And you believed him. That’s what hurts. You knew I’d never do something like that. But you didn’t defend me.”

  “The truth is, Molly—”

  Nechama entered the dining room. I wondered how long she’d been on the other side of the door, what she’d heard.

  She handed me a manila folder. “Here’s the essay, and Hadassah’s yearbook photo.” She glanced at her husband, then at me. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine,” I said.

  Chapter 7

  Aliza had talked to her sister around seven on Saturday night.

  “I was getting ready for a date, and she was on the computer,” Aliza told me. “Dassie’s always on the computer. And I’m always going on dates.” There was a hint of sadness behind the wry smile.

  She was nineteen, petite and more striking than Hadassah, with her father’s dark eyes and a long sleek waterfall of dark brown hair that she kept pushing behind her ears. With her midcalf skirt billowing around her, she sat cross-legged on the baby blue matelassé spread on one of the two twin beds, surrounded by skirts and sweaters, stuffed animals, and an assortment of throw pillows that picked up the blue and mauve in the floral wallpaper. More clothes lay on Hadassah’s bed. Aliza had shoved a pile aside so that I could sit.

  “I’m going to the Valley for Shabbos,” she said after apologizing for the mess of clothes. “A high school reunion. My parents said I have to go. I’m supposed to smile and pretend everything’s fine, when Dassie could be. . . .” Her lips trembled. “I can’t believe she ran away with a guy she met in a chat room. Why would she do something so stupid?”

  “Hadassah never confided in you about being interested in anyone? Visiting chat rooms?”

  “No. She probably figured I’d tell my parents. And to be honest, we aren’t that close.” Aliza shrugged. “She told her friend, though.”

  She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but I heard a touch of envy. Though my three sisters and I experienced the typical rivalries and spats, and we occasionally get on one another’s nerves, we’ve always been close.

  “Even though you’re roommates?” I said.

  “Last year I was in seminary. This year we don’t see each other much. I get home from teaching after six, and I’m taking computer classes at night.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “And dating.” There was the ironic smile again.

  “But you’re the one Dassie phoned. How did she reach you, by the way?”

  “On my cell. I guess she figured it was easier talking to me than to my mom or dad.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she was safe, and we shouldn’t worry. She sounded nervous and hung up before I could ask her anything. I called her back, but she didn’t answer.”

  “What about the second call?”

  “Yesterday morning, you mean. She asked how our parents were doing. I said, ‘How do you think they’re doing?’ ” Aliza scowled. “She said to tell them she was sorry, that she hoped they
’d forgive her. I begged her to come home. She said she couldn’t. They probably had . . . relations, and she’s ashamed to face my parents.” The girl’s face had turned pink.

  I had a squirrelly feeling in my stomach. “Did you get the sense that she was being kept against her will? That she was afraid of this man?”

  “I don’t know. She sounded scared, like she was about to cry. I thought it was because she realized what she’d done. But she said she was safe. She wouldn’t say that if she wasn’t, right?”

  Aliza’s voice was imploring. Her eyes were anxious. I wanted to reassure her, but my unease was growing. I’m not sure why.

  “Tell me about the morning Hadassah left, Aliza.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I heard her do negel vasser.” The ritual morning rinsing of the hands. “And I heard her on the computer.”

  “Something for school?” I prompted when Aliza fell silent. “It may not be important, Aliza. Or it could be very important.”

  She traced a circle on the spread. “Dassie was on the Internet, instant-messaging someone. I heard a sound every time someone wrote back.”

  “What kind of sound?”

  “Drums? Something like that.” She hesitated. “I heard it before. A few weeks ago Dassie left and forgot to go off-line. Someone was IM’ing her, over and over. The sound was making me crazy, so I IM’ed the person and said Dassie wasn’t home.”

  “Did you read the messages?”

  “Just the last few lines. They were all the same. ‘Where are you, sweetie?’ That’s how Dassie sometimes talks with her friends, so I thought it was a girlfriend.”

  With drums as a background noise? “Do you remember this person’s screen name?”

  “Something with ‘For Jew’ in it. But it was spelled J-U. Dassie found out. She yelled at me, said I was violating her privacy. It was probably this guy, right?” Aliza’s eyes looked troubled.

  That was my bet. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Do your parents know about this?”

  “No.” Aliza traced another circle on the spread. “I thought they’d be upset I didn’t tell them right away. But it’s not like I knew who it was.” She looked up at me. “Can you tell them?”