by Joshua Braff
Brandi and I stare at each other in silence and I watch her eyes fill with tears. The tip of her tongue is touching her top lip as she places her fingertips under the hairline and lifts the wig up and off her head. I can see her ears and her brown hair, short and cut very close to her scalp. “Happy now?” she says, throwing the wig in my face. When I bend to lift it she steps on it with her pointy heel. “Get out of here. Go. You don’t want to be one of us? Then go.”
“Come on, Sarah.”
“Leave her the hell alone,” she says. “There’s nothing she needs from you. Go, David. Get out of here.” She points to the back porch stairs. “We don’t want you anymore.”
Sarah is standing behind Leo, so I walk back into the apartment, through the hallway and toward the street. I have no memory of making the decision but I know what I have to do. I will go to my mother’s home and tell her husband, Avram, what she used to be. A stripper. That’s right. A better stripper than a mother. A better liar than a parent. I’m going to get a bullhorn and posters and tell everyone in the neighborhood what a phony fucking hypocrite Mickey Arbus really is. I’ll hang flyers on all the telephone poles and call the grand rabbi himself. That’s right, Rabbi, she’s a baal teshuva who used to shake her tits in a dump called the Imperial Theatre.
“David,” Sarah says.
She’s in the doorway, a backpack over her shoulder.
“Are you going over there?”
I nod.
“I wasn’t invited to the wedding,” she says. “I don’t think your mother likes me anymore.” She comes down the steps and stands next to me in the middle of the road. “I’ll go with you, David. But I’m not ringing the bell this time. And you have to be nice to me.”
I offer her my hand. She looks at it before taking it and holding on tight.
Debra
THROUGH MY LENS I SEE the dark grooves of the tree trunk and the slow, tired movement of the summer leaves. We are across the street from their apartment building, along a fence, and the front door opens. I steel myself, ready to see my mother, but it’s not her. A Hasidic woman with two small kids emerges. I see her through my camera—her eyes, her chin, the sheitel on her head.
“You ready?” Sarah asks.
“No.”
“I’ll be right here.”
The intercom panel reads Alef, Bet, and Gimmel. My finger stops before the Bet button as a little girl screams behind me. A horror movie screech. “Stop it Jonah! Stop, stop.” When I turn I see a ten-year-old boy with a fedora on his head, spraying his sister with a water pistol. “I’m telling Eema, I’m telling Eema,” she says, and tears off into the building next door. Sarah’s motioning me to push the button. Jonah spins the yellow gun around his finger like Roy Rogers until it flies off and lands on the sidewalk.
“Do you live here?” I ask him.
He points to the gun on the ground and says something in Yiddish.
“Do you speak English?”
The intercom hisses without my touching it. “Is it Chaim?” says a woman’s tinny voice.
“Hello?” I say, bowing toward it.
“Chaim?”
“No. No, I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“Miriam.”
“Are you from the flower shop?”
“No.”
“Catering then.”
“No. I’m David Arbus. I’m looking for my . . . mother.”
In the silence, I try to rehear the woman’s voice in my head. It could have been her. I push the button again and there is no response. “Is that you?” I say, my mouth nearly touching the box. “Is that you, Mom?”
Silence.
I step back onto the sidewalk and gaze up at the window. It’s impossible to see in her window from here. From the street it’s worse, the tree blocks the building to the roof. Maybe I should climb the tree, go through the window? I move up to press the button again, holding it this time. “Hello? Is Miriam there? Please answer me if it’s you. Hello, hello?”
I feel water being squirted on the back of my leg. There’s the boy with his gun, standing next to an older, bearded man. “Who are you looking for?” says the man.
I recognize the tiny, slump-shouldered rabbi, the holy man, the one who came to the house so long ago for my mother’s sheitel ceremony. He has two helpers with him, each holding one of his elbows.
“I’m looking for Miriam,” I say.
“Miriam,” he says. “I am here for Miriam. She is in apartment Bet. Push it. Push the button.”
I do, I push it. “Helloooo? It’s me again. I’m with other people now,” I say into the box.
Silence.
One of the rabbi’s helpers tries it. “Shalom aleichem? Miriam?” he says. Still no response.
I look back at Sarah and she’s pointing at something above and mouthing words I can’t hear. I think she’s pointing at the tree. I see a branch about five feet from the trunk and so many more, another three feet above it.
“Maybe I can get up there,” I say.
“Why would you do that?” says the holy man. “Wait, we’ll push it again. She’s expecting us.”
It takes all my strength to hook my foot on the lowest branch.
“Don’t,” the rabbi says. “We’ll push the button.”
I slither my body high enough to get my stomach onto the tree.
“No, no, no,” I hear Sarah yell, as my arms slip and I smash my chin on the bark. I jump down with a scrape and look back at Sarah, who’s shaking her head.
“Excuse me,” I say to the rabbi. “Would you please tell Miriam I was here. I’m her son. Tell her daughter, Dena, that her father is gone, he passed away last week. He was her real father, the father who raised her. And he loved her. His name was Martin Arbus.”
“No, no.” He is waving his finger now. “What is your name?”
I look back at Sarah, who is still trying to tell me something. “My name is David.”
“David. You must tell her this,” he insists. “You. No one else.”
I nod, look into his watery eyes. “I am not a Hasid.”
He looks up at the sky, as if to God, and then back to me. “So what?”
When I break into a smile, he does too, and the trillions of wrinkles around his face all splay and deepen.
“Push the button again,” he says. “Tell her Rabbi Liebersohn is here to see Dena.”
“Dena?”
“Yes. And tell her I don’t like to wait.”
I step up there again, glancing back at him before pushing it. “Mom?”
Silence.
“Yes?” It’s a weak voice, my mother’s voice.
“It’s your son, David.”
“Tomorrow,” she says, and I can hear the wobble in her tone. “Today is not a good day.”
The rabbi motions for me to push it again.
“Mom?”
“Tomorrow,” she says. “Come back tomorrow.”
“David!” Sarah yells. She’s pointing again, and now I see she’s pointing to the window above.
I step back to the sidewalk. My sister. My sister is there. So beautiful, so happy. She laughs at the sight of me, wipes her eyes. “Stay right there!” she says, and disappears from my sight.
Now from the spot where Debra had been, I see my mother, tentative, glancing down at me, tentative but eager.
“Rabbi Liebersohn is here,” I say, waving to her. “Come on down. He doesn’t like to wait.”
DAVID ARBUS
PHOTOGRAPHS
1975–1984
The Portland Museum of Art
Portland, Maine
June 5th–August 30th
Acknowledgments
I WANT TO THANK my children, Henry and Ella. Thanks for loving me the way you do, and for making me feel so fortunate when I see you each day. Thank you to Mom and Dad and David and Elaine. I am very grateful to all of you. Amy Gash, you’re the only editor I’ll ever need. Your trust in me made all the difference. Thank you, Amy
. Thanks to Sonia Pabley, Elisabeth Scharlatt, Kathleen Caldwell, Debi Echlin, Rabbi Barry Friedman, Stephen and Carol Schulte, Carolyn Hessel, Lynn Carey, Ed Delaney, Jason Headley, Chuck Adams, Laura Girvin, Alexandra Machinist, Adam Braff, Shoshi Braff, Zach Braff, Michelle Braff, Jagger Braff, Lara Brodzinsky, Jessica Kirson, and Jennifer and Peter Gelman.
I love you, Wife.
Also by Joshua Braff
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2010 by Joshua Braff.
All rights reserved.
Photograph credits: chapter 4, PhotofestNY; chapter 10, PhotofestNY; chapter 14, Superstock Inc.—Getty Images; chapter 15, Jerry Berndt—Getty Images; chapter 18, Andreas Schlegel—Getty Images; chapter 19, Julian Wasser—Getty Images; all other photographs courtesy of the author.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.
E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-010-7
