Bubbie’s smile lit her face as though she were on that train, a twenty-one-year-old woman about to reunite with the man from whom she’d been separated for what had seemed like a lifetime. A man who, despite her hope, she must have feared she would never see again.
No matter how many times I hear the story, my eyes tear. I leaned close to Zack and whispered in his ear. “Ask her what she did.”
“What did you do, Bubbie?” Zack asked.
“What did I do? I jumped off the train! I didn’t want one more minute should go by before we would be together. At first I couldn’t see him, because he was behind a bush, shaving. He wanted to look good when he saw me.” Bubbie smiled. “But people were yelling, ‘Genny is here, Yitzchok!’ So then he moved away from the bush and I saw him. He shaved only half his face, and he looked so funny. And then we were laughing and crying and hugging and kissing.”
“What happened to your friend?” Zack asked.
“Poor Edja.” Bubbie G’s smile was mischievous. “She was afraid to jump off, so she went all the way to the next town, and back, with the loaf of bread. Later, I teased Zeidie. If he was upset with me about something, I would tell him, ‘For you, Yitzchok, I jumped off a train.’ ”
“You could have hurt yourself,” Zack said.
“When you love someone, tayereh kindt, you don’t think about danger.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I would do it again.”
Chapter 22
Hadassah had felt him watching her while she lit the Shabbat candles, tea lights that he’d set on a paper plate covered in tinfoil. He’d promised to buy her silver candlesticks, maybe for next Shabbat. She knew the blessings by heart and didn’t need the white-leather–bound siddur he’d bought her, but she used it to show she appreciated his thoughtfulness. She had lit Shabbat candles alongside her mother for as long as she could remember, had mimed the hand waving and the blessing long before she could say the words or knew what they meant.
His presence had unnerved her. He had been brooding all day, his eyes on her wherever she went, she wasn’t sure why. She’d been relieved when he left the apartment in the early afternoon, and though his absence had created a fertile ground for all her doubts to take root and blossom, she had tensed when she’d heard the key turning the lock.
But when he returned his mood was brighter, and his arms were filled with packages. Gifts for her—a pair of earrings, a cashmere shawl, a lipstick like the one she’d left in her overnight bag at Sara’s, flowers that he put in a vase and set on the table.
He had bought food for Shabbat. Fish and chicken, salads, pasta, rice. “You shouldn’t have to cook,” he’d said. “You’re a bride.” She had teased him—“You just don’t want me to mess up the stove.” He hadn’t laughed, and she was only half joking. He was fussy about the apartment and its contents. He insisted on washing the few dishes and glassware they used (mostly, he brought home pizza or deli sandwiches or Chinese). “You shouldn’t have to lift a finger,” he’d say, but she suspected he was afraid she’d chip something. The other day he’d pretended not to be upset when she’d left a glass on the coffee table. “It’s no big deal,” he’d said, rubbing mayonnaise into the teak, the ring from the glass so faint she couldn’t see it. “It’s as good as new.” She had pretended not to see the look he gave her, almost like the one he’d given the valet. He’d had the car repaired the next day. “Good as new,” he’d said that time, too.
He had dressed in the navy suit he’d worn to Yamashiro. He’d looked so handsome Thursday night that the sight of him had taken her breath away. It wasn’t far to shul, he told her. There was a Chabad on Gayley, near UCLA, but the services didn’t always start on time. It might be an hour and a half before he was back.
“If you don’t want me to go,” he said.
She walked him to the door, the way her mother walked her father every Friday night. She said, “Good Shabbos,” and waited until he slid home the bolt with his key. “Just in case you fall asleep,” he’d told her earlier, “because how would I get in? The eruv is up,” he’d said when he saw her face. “Don’t worry, I checked.”
She hadn’t been worried about the eruv, a man-made boundary that allowed him to carry on Shabbat. She’d been worried about being locked in. What if there was a fire, or an earthquake?
“There’s a spare key in the kitchen,” he’d told her, “in the green mug on the second shelf.”
She decided to surprise him and put on the white sweater and skirt. Her wedding outfit. Sitting at the dining room table where the tea lights tried their best to illuminate the room, she opened the white-leather–bound siddur. It was a beautiful prayerbook, and she felt ungrateful longing for the one she’d left in the backpack at Sara’s, some of its pages smudged where her fingers had rubbed the words, one page stained with the tears she’d shed when she found out Batya had died.
Her father probably had her siddur. She pictured him rushing to Sara’s to pick up her backpack as soon as he heard, searching through it, hoping to find something that would explain why she had run off. “Come home,” her mother had said. She had cried. That wasn’t why Hadassah had run away, although maybe it was a teeny part of it. The “why,” so clear to her Sunday morning, was no longer clear at all. Her certainty had crumbled, had been compressed into a hard ball of regret and anxiety that was lodged in her chest and sometimes made it difficult for her to breathe.
She wasn’t sure who he was. He’d said all the right things, had known the words, the customs. “I’m no Rabbi Akiva, Dassie, but I learned enough . . .” But though he strapped on teffilin every morning, he did it awkwardly and barely kept the little boxes on his forehead and arm. She was almost sure he didn’t say all the prayers, that he mouthed the words. And she hardly knew anything about his family. “You’ll meet them,” he’d said. “They’ll love you.”
This morning he had kissed her. She had never kissed a man before, aside from her father, and her eyes had widened in shock. She was intensely attracted to him and had wondered what it would be like to kiss him, but in her imagination, his lips were gentle in their passion. His kiss had been teasing one second, almost bruising the next. She had clamped her lips together.
“Don’t,” she’d said, “please don’t.” She had pushed him away.
“It’s just a kiss, Dassie,” he’d said, amused, then angry. “There’s nothing wrong with a kiss. I’ll bet your father kissed girls before he became a rabbi, and did other things he didn’t tell you. Jacob kissed Rachel when he saw her. The Torah says so, in tomorrow’s reading. And that was before they were married. You and I are married, Dassie. In three more days we’ll be as one. Nothing can separate us after that, except death.”
She didn’t like thinking about death. She had thought about it sometimes before Batya died, and after. She had wondered whether her life made a difference when no one seemed to see her anyway, when the loneliness felt like a black pit that was swallowing her up, when she was overwhelmed with pretending to be happy, making plans she had no hope of carrying out, like going to college and law school. She had said that to see her parents’ reaction. Her mother hadn’t been happy, but her father said, “If that’s what you really want, Dassie.” He had sounded so proud, and before she knew it, it was The Plan, and she was in a different school, her father’s school, but she didn’t see him more than she had before, and she felt lonelier than ever without her friends, so lonely that sometimes she sat in the bathroom stall and cried.
But she didn’t want to die, not really. She had talked to Dr. McIntyre. “Think about how this makes you feel,” he’d told her. “Are you hoping someone will see?” He had urged her to tell her parents, but she was eighteen, she had a right to privacy. “Write it down,” he’d told her, “keep a log.”
She had felt safe sleeping in the sleigh bed while he took the sofa bed. Until he kissed her. Now she wasn’t sure she was safe, not just because of the kiss, he’d promised that wouldn’t happen again until she was ready, but be
cause of the way he was staring at her all the time. “I love looking at you,” he said, when she told him he was making her nervous. “I would die a million deaths for you, Dassie.” There was something sad in his glance, something that made her nervous.
The dark moods came more frequently. She had found him on the couch, his arms around his knees, rocking as if he were in a trance. She had read a story in English class about a boy who rocked on a toy horse so that he could discover the names of winning racehorses.
“I would die a million deaths for you, Dassie. Would you die for me?”
“The Rocking-Horse Winner.” That was the name of the story. The boy had lost his mind.
She considered leaving right now while he was at shul, walking home even though it was probably four miles, maybe five, and she didn’t know the way, and by now it was dark outside, the rose of sunset having long ago turned to gray, then black.
But he had locked the door.
“In case you’re asleep when I come back,” he’d said, “because then how will I get in?”
She was being ridiculous. She reminded herself of all the wonderful qualities she loved about him. His kindness, his laughter, his passion, his tenderness. The attentive way he listened to her, as if she were the only person in the world. And she had nothing to hide from him. She had bared her ugly secret, and he’d said, “Everything about you is beautiful, Dassie. I will kiss the hurts away.”
She walked to the kitchen and found the green mug. There was the key, just as he’d promised.
She returned to the dining room and her prayers. “L’cha Dodi.” Come, my beloved.
When she had finished her prayers, she set the table, handling the stoneware and goblets with care. Then she pulled a book from the wall unit and settled herself on the sofa. The room was chilly. She rose from the sofa and walked to the entry closet, where she had seen him store his bedding.
The closet was dark. From the reflected glow of the dimmed living room torchère, she could make out the light switch, but she couldn’t turn on the light, not on Shabbat. She could also make out his green blanket and two pillows. The pillows were on top. She held them with one hand while she yanked at the blanket.
She hadn’t seen the box underneath the blanket. It fell with a thump to the floor and landed on its side, spilling contents that clattered onto the hardwood floor.
She picked up a framed photo and felt a stab of anxiety when she saw that the protective glass was cracked. Slivers of glass were on the floor. She swept them with her hand and winced when she cut her palm on a shard. Stupid. She peered at her palm. It was bleeding. She touched it gingerly and felt a splinter on the fleshy part, below her thumb. She squeezed her palm to force the glass out, but the sliver was too small, embedded too deeply. The squeezing had increased the bleeding. She walked to the dining table and pressed a napkin to her palm until the bleeding stopped.
He would be a little upset about the photo, of course, but he’d understand. Or . . . she didn’t know the neighborhood, but when he left the apartment on Sunday, she could look for a store that would replace the glass. She would tell him then.
“Good as new,” she would say. They would laugh about it.
Her hand was throbbing. She found a broom and dustpan and swept up the glass fragments. Then she took the photo to the dining room table, removed a loose shard of glass, and looked at the photo. At first she was confused. Why did he . . . ?
She returned to the box. There were more framed photos, and letters, and other things that made no sense, until they did. She took everything to the table and stared at each item, one by one.
When she had finished, blood was pounding in her head.
She put everything back into the box, placed the lid on top, and shoved the box into the closet. She laid the blanket on top of the box, then the pillows.
She shut the closet door.
She was sure he would have an explanation for the things she had found, but she couldn’t believe him anymore. Though he had left her alone for hours, she had never looked through his belongings. Now she did. She found vials of pills, drafts of a note that chilled her to the bone.
In the kitchen she took the spare key from the green mug and inserted it into the keyhole.
It didn’t turn.
She removed the key, reinserted it, and tried to twist it in the lock.
She tried one more time, her fingers clammy now, shaking, her heart beating like a tom-tom.
Nothing.
He would have an explanation for the key, too. “It’s defective,” he would tell her. “I’ll get you another one.”
She started to cry, but crying wouldn’t help her.
She didn’t know where he’d put her cell phone. He had left his on a shelf in the wall unit. He had known she wouldn’t use it on Shabbat. But even on Shabbat she could use a phone in a life-or-death emergency. Her parents wouldn’t answer, but the answering machine would pick up after four rings.
The answering machine was in her father’s study at the front of the house. They might not even hear the ringing or the message, especially if they were singing or talking loud.
She could call someone else.
It was ten to six. Her father and the boys would be walking into the house right now, shaking off the cold. He would be taking off his black hat and placing it on the coffee table in the living room.
“Where are my girls?” he would say, the way he did when she was little, and she would race to him and jump into his arms, and he would spin her around and around and around.
She reached up, grasped the phone, and took it to the table. She had never used a phone on Shabbat, ever. Even holding it was a violation.
She thought again about the key that didn’t work, about the pills, and the note. She flipped the phone open and turned it on. It seemed like hours, not seconds, before the display appeared on the small screen.
She had punched in the phone number when she heard the click of the key turning in the lock.
Her free hand found the shard of glass and closed around it.
Chapter 23
Saturday, November 20, 2:59 a.m., 1500 block of North Hobart Boulevard. A suspect broke into the home of a 54-year-old woman while she was sleeping. The suspect attempted to cover the victim with a blanket, and she woke up, screaming. The suspect then fled the location.
I dreamed about Aggie. Until eight months ago, when her murder had still been unsolved, I would dream about her all the time. In my dream she is wearing a long navy skirt and navy sweater, and the locket I gave her that wasn’t on her body when the police found her. In my dream, as in life, she is beckoning to me to accompany her to a prayer vigil for a young woman stricken with cancer. Come with me, Molly. In my dream I follow her but never quite catch up. And that night, as I followed Aggie and turned the corner, hurrying after her, I saw Hadassah Bailor, wearing a satin white skirt and sweater, both splattered with blood.
I woke up with a start and a heavy feeling. Zack was snoring lightly in the full-sized bed next to mine. I didn’t want to disturb him. So I slipped out of the bed and went to the bathroom and discovered that I wasn’t pregnant after all. I didn’t cry, but tears stung my eyelids, and I felt a sadness wash over me. Another month gone, and what if something was truly wrong?
In the morning Zack reached for me, but I shook my head and he nodded.
“It’ll happen, Molly. I know it.”
The day was uneventful. Shul in the morning, where I was Mrs. Molly Abrams, the rabbi’s wife. I sat up front with my mother-in-law, Sandy, and although she may have sensed that I was quieter than usual, she didn’t pry. After the services I made a point of greeting everyone I didn’t know and people I did know, including my ex-mother-in-law, Valerie, who has taught me about grace in awkward situations but apparently didn’t pass on that particular gene to Ron. He snubbed me in the refreshment hall—no doubt because I’d refused to tell him why I wanted to talk to Cheryl Wexner—and then told me I must be crushed by my lousy Am
azon ranking for Sins of the Fathers.
Zack and I had lunch with his parents. They’re attorneys—Sandy handles bankruptcies; Larry does litigation—and although they were disappointed when Zack deferred and then declined his acceptance to Harvard Law, they are immensely proud of “their son, the rabbi.” And they have welcomed me into their family with warmth and affection and seem to have adjusted to not having Zack around 24/7.
“Larry and I are in intense therapy,” Sandy teased me when I asked her if it had been hard to see her only child marry.
Zack’s parents, like mine, are careful not to ask when we plan to have children, but most of their friends have become grandparents, and I’m sure they’re eager to join that club. Maybe that unspoken (and probably invented) pressure contributed to my doldrums, along with my dream about Aggie and Hadassah. I made a good show of participating in the conversation, which was mostly a rehash of Bush’s victory and Kerry’s defeat. And I enjoyed the food. Marinated London broil; a salad of asparagus, cherry tomato, and hearts of palm; angel hair pasta. I had two slices of the chocolate torte Sandy had baked.
But I was restless. I wanted to sulk, to feel sorry for myself. At home Zack and I studied the Torah portion together. He took a short nap. I read Hadassah’s college essay and learned nothing. I went through a foot-high stack of back issues of the New Yorker. Then I read the current People and wondered if life as we know it could continue without Paris Hilton’s face popping up everywhere. Zack left for shul. I played solitaire and watched the clock.
Hadassah was on my mind, and Connors’s phone call. A minute after Shabbat ended I phoned him at home. His answering machine picked up. I left a message.
My laptop was on the desk in our den. I turned on the computer, connected to the Internet, and read my e-mails. Nothing significant, a large amount of SPAM. I deleted the SPAM, responded to e-mails, and checked my Amazon numbers for Sins. 84,000. Not exciting, not lousy. In my purse I found the website address for J Spot.
Now You See Me... Page 13
