by Sigal Samuel
When I finally unbolted the door and reentered the café, she was gone.
The room was peaceful. Behind the counter, the floor was clear; Hannah had swept up my mess. She had gone back to stacking cups, placing them in the precarious pyramid that I would never even dream of attempting but that she pulled off beautifully, effortlessly. The cups sat atop one another high up on their shelf, their angles straight and stable. I smiled at the sight. And then, just like that, I saw it. Not the cups, but the sheaves of light pouring off them, funneling and streaming into the sky. A perfect foundation, a model of balance—and in my fingers, vibrating with that familiar golden hum, the key to Yesod.
As Jenny and I rode the bus to Mile End for Lev’s birthday, she stared stonily out the window, her hands folded over a cake box, while I pondered the key.
After the way it had appeared to me freely, it seemed even more absurd that I’d ever tried to wrest it from Tyler. The idea that these keys could be wrested at all was a mistake I’d picked up from my dad—I saw that now. You couldn’t force the universe’s hand. It didn’t work that way. But if you waited in utter emptiness, the signs would come to you . . .
The bus pulled in to the stop beside Katz’s house. When we got out, I stared at the tin can tree on his lawn. A bitter laugh escaped me. Jenny threw me a weird look, but I couldn’t help it: it had put me in mind of the mystical garden where, according to the old folktale, four entered and only one escaped unscathed. How arrogant my dad had been! To think he could succeed where men so much greater than him had failed, and by skipping most of the steps!
The door opened and a smiling Katz appeared. As he waved, I felt a sudden urge to run up the path toward him. This time I could offer him something far better than a bunch of sour lemons, good only for keeping his simple faith intact; I could give him a sweet revelation that might actually propel him forward. You didn’t get back to the original Tree by tinkering with real trees; you emptied yourself and waited! I raised my hand to return his wave and took a step toward him—but Jenny grabbed my elbow, pointing toward my house.
“Come on,” she said. “Lev is waiting. You know, your brother?”
As I let myself be turned away, Katz’s smile faded.
Now we were walking up to the house; now Jenny was ringing the bell. The door swung open and she greeted Lev with a bubbly “Happy birthday!” He tried to take the cake box from her, but she swatted his hand away, laughing. While she hugged him, I thought how well the two of them had always gotten along. The fact that he was hugging her at all was proof of this: his orthodoxy barred him from touching any woman outside his immediate family, but he’d always made an exception for Jenny, who’d grown up alongside him. Who was like a sister to him. Who was—as I knew he knew, even before I’d gotten up the guts to tell him—dating his sister.
I followed them into the kitchen—where, unexpectedly, Alex sprang up to greet us.
“Hey, Samara, good to—” he said, and then he saw I hadn’t come alone. “Oh, hi, Jenny.”
We sat down to eat. Lev passed around the wine and the bread but didn’t recite any blessings. I stole a curious glance at him—had he just forgotten?—but he wasn’t making eye contact. I moved food around my plate while Jenny did her best to keep the mood light. She skillfully avoided, in her chatty way, any topic Lev and I might potentially find depressing, such as the ozone layer and melting ice caps and urban sprawl and the fact that we were both now orphans. The morbid irony of celebrating somebody’s birth just a couple of months after the person who gave him life has died—she skated around that, too.
When it came time for dessert, she left the kitchen and returned with a Black Forest cake in hand and a huge grin on her face. Lev laughed. She’d put two lit candles on top, the ones shaped like numbers that you see at little kids’ birthday parties. She placed it on the table in front of him, a pair of glowing twos reflected in his eyes.
“Make a wish!” Jenny said.
Lev closed his eyes and blew. Then Jenny plucked the candles from the droopy frosting and handed a knife to Lev, who cut four slices. She gave one of these to me.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
Jenny studied my dinner plate. “Sam,” she said quietly, “you’ve barely eaten anything.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said again.
“Okay, but. You still have to eat. Your body needs food.”
I shrugged. “People are more than just bodies.”
“Well yeah, sure, okay, but I mean—”
“Hasn’t there ever been a moment in your life when you felt really separate, really far away from your own body?”
“That’s really not the point, though, is it, because you—”
“I have,” Alex said suddenly, and we all swiveled to look at him. A smile spread across his face. “It was on my ninth birthday. My mom got me a telescope as a gift, and that night was a clear night, so she helped me set it up on the balcony. She was too tired and cold to stand there searching for stars, but I pressed my eye to the lens and moved the telescope in these really tiny, patient increments across the sky—and then, all of a sudden, I was right smack-dab in the middle of the Pleiades! They’re just seven stars, but they filled my whole field of vision and—I think I forgot to breathe! My feet, it was like they weren’t even touching the balcony anymore. I was just up in the sky, surrounded by stars on all sides, totally unaware of the physical—”
“Exactly!” I cried. “It’s exactly like that. You get to this place, it’s beyond the body and you just—it’s just the best feeling—you don’t even want to come down because it’s so clear up there and everything down on Earth looks so totally unimportant, so pathetic, really, and—”
I faltered. Alex and Jenny and Lev, all of them were staring at me strangely. All of them afraid. Then I realized that I was standing up, though I didn’t remember having left my chair, and my voice was piercing, though I didn’t remember having raised it. “Anyway,” I said. “I’m just not very hungry tonight. But you guys have cake—I’ll get these dishes into the dishwasher.”
I took the plates and scurried off to the sink.
“Let me help you with that.” Alex appeared at my elbow, lifting a dish from my soapy hands and loading it into the dishwasher. He whispered, “Are you okay?”
I looked from him to the dishwasher and back again—and thought I’d never felt better in my life. I’d been so sure there was nobody I could talk to, nobody at all who could possibly understand. I’d been wrong. I’d forgotten about Alex.
Back home, around midnight, I got an e-mail from Lev.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Something I forgot to tell you tonight
At yeshiva we started learning about the Resurrection of the Dead that’s supposed to happen when the Messiah comes, which my teacher says could be any day now. Which made me think, hey, maybe I shouldn’t give all Dad’s clothes away! Because what will he wear when he gets resurrected? But then we got to the part in the Talmud where it says the dead will be resurrected wearing their clothes. So I asked, what do you mean, the clothes they died in? The rabbi said yes. A picture popped into my head then of Dad wearing his jogging clothes, that sweaty T-shirt and gray gym shorts for all eternity, and I burst out laughing. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. My classmates all take this so literally, you have no idea. As if Dad is just going to magically reappear out of the blue one day, like a zombie? It’s weird. Although, on the other hand, I guess maybe it’s not any weirder than him just disappearing out of the blue one day. Right?
P.S. Normally I’d talk to Mr. Glassman about this kind of thing but Mrs. Glassman just had another stroke and now the nurse says she’s in something called a “persistent vegetative state,” which is another thing I forgot to tell you tonight.
P.P.S. Something you forgot to tell me tonight is “happy birthday.”
I hit Reply. Then I hit Discard Draft. On the clock radio, one minute, then
two, then three ticked by. I reached under the bed and retrieved the letter I’d supposedly sent to Lev weeks ago at Jenny’s urging. Really, all I’d managed to do since then was fold the Tree of Life sketch into a paper crane. Dear—, it said. I grabbed a pen and completed the salutation.
Dear Alex,
Remember that day we sat in front of the dishwasher and you taught me to listen for the patterns in the chaos, like SETI scientists do? Remember how I had you feel my pulse and you couldn’t believe it because I’d gotten my heartbeat to mimic the pattern in the dishwasher noise, all its whirs and clicks, its 0s and 1s? I never told you how I did it—never had the words to thank you—but now—
I know you weren’t at my bat mitzvah but if you had been you would’ve heard it in my voice. How I let my heart fall into sync with the rhythms of the Hebrew words, and then with the rhythms of the hearts of all the people in the audience, and then once I did that—once I was in—all the noise fell away and I was able to speak to all of them (well, all except one) so that they’d really hear me. It was terrifying, tying my heartbeat to theirs, feeling all of that emotion pour through me. But I did it anyway, and do you want to know how?
There’s a trick, a very simple trick that I learned that day in front of the dishwasher but later made myself forget. Here it is: Stop. Just stop. Stop thinking that you’re going to crack the code. Stop trying. You’re not going to crack anything. The code is going to crack you.
That’s something you taught me, even if you didn’t realize it. Which is why I owe you my thanks. Because you made it possible for me to do this. To climb the Tree of Life.
I’m two vessels up now. I see signs and symbols everywhere. Leaves swirling in the streets, vapors moving over a bowl of soup, cloud formations solidifying and dispersing—everything is full, overfull, ready to explode with meaning at the slightest pinprick. I’ve combed through my father’s book, read the sections on the upcoming vessels. Hod-Netzach. Tiferet. Gevurah-Chesed. I’ve got them all memorized. I’m ready, now all I have to do is wait.
Suddenly, it begins.
I am behind the counter at Two Moons. The door opens and there she is. Val. Valérie. She sits down at the one free table, glances nervously at me. I’m about to retreat to the bathroom, but then I remember how well I’m doing on my own now and I think: I don’t need you; I don’t need to run from you. I pick up a mug and a fresh pot of coffee and march straight toward her.
“Coffee?” I ask, my voice pleasant and light.
She looks up at me, startled. “Oh, yes, sure—thank you.”
I set the mug down in front of her and begin to pour. I can feel the heat of her gaze on my face. Then, in a low whisper, she asks me, “How are you doing?”
I flash my brightest smile. “Fine, thank you, how are you?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, her eyes search mine for a clue. I watch the question flicker across her face: Does she know who I am? Does she recognize me?
“Can I get you anything else?” I ask.
“No. Thank you.” She studies me for a long moment, then leans in confidentially. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m—I was—I was there at your dad’s—”
“Sorry,” I cut her off. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”
It’s as if I’ve slapped her in the face. She shrinks back into her chair. I hold her in the center of my sight line, daring her to challenge me. After a second she wilts, drops her gaze. I smile broadly and walk away.
From behind the counter, I watch as Val gulps down her coffee and tries to keep her cool. Her hands are fidgeting around the mug, her lipsticked mouth trembling. The depth of her emotion surprises me, suggests that she had more than a fling with my dad, suggests that she loved him. A minute later, she drops some cash onto the table and rushes out the door.
I strut back toward her table and slide the coins into my palm. Then I reach for her coffee cup and on the rim I see them. Val’s lipstick imprints. They leap out at me, Hod-Netzach, Splendor-Eternity, the complementary vessels that correspond to the two lips. Hod: transitory splendor—Netzach: enduring eternity—Hod-Netzach: the exact combination embodied by Val. Val who loved a man whose life was transitory, but whose impact on her was clearly so enduring, was clearly something she still all too keenly felt—
The key falls into my hand.
Dazed, I turn around. Brendan’s left a scrap of paper on the table by the window. I glide over and pick it up. The magic square is huge, a grid of 15 by 15 at least, his biggest one yet—but how can he be manipulating such large numbers in his head? I add up the first row: 37. And the second row: 37. I try the third row and come up with 35. He must have made a mistake there. But then I try the fourth row and it’s 81, and all of a sudden it clicks into place; the numbers shift and I see them the way he sees them, in color. I feel the beautiful calm blue of 6, the warm pulsating orange of 4, the vibrant zing of 3, and now I see what he’s been doing—it’s an image—blackbird swooping across cloudy sky—a pixelated reality composed entirely of numbers. The colors start to howl in my ears, filling my skull with their wild glow. From cornea to cochlea I’m bursting with it, my insides awash with light. And as quickly as it started, it subsides. The light drains from my ears. The cranial ache fades and I am left with nothing but beauty. Beauty—Tiferet—the crossroads at the very center of the Tree, where conflicting forces of the divine flow collide, energies smashing into each other and synthesizing as one—one greater harmony, one more delicious key in my hand.
I can hear angry voices now. Lily’s mother is here and she is counting down from three. Three. She stuffs the sketchpad into her daughter’s bag. Two. Lily’s fist clamps around her paintbrush. One. The mother slams the watercolor kit shut, takes Lily’s wrist, yanks her from her seat. With her free hand, Lily just manages to grab the paint kit, her pudgy fingertips struggling to maintain their grip. She gets dragged out and the door bangs shut. In the echo I hear something calling me. Something that has fallen. I push open the door and step into the street.
And there it is. On the rain-bleached sidewalk, shining in late-afternoon light. A plastic watercolor kit, cracked open upon impact, dropped by two hands—two—two hands that correspond to Gevurah-Chesed, Severity-Kindness, the principle of disciplinary restraint and of the boundless love that’s supposed to counterbalance it. Two pats of paint—Gevurah’s red and Chesed’s white—have popped out of their lining and landed on the ground. Crushed to pieces by a hurried heel, the colors dissolve into a puddle and form separate streams. The streams crisscross but the colors do not fade. Distinct rivers, red and white, race each other through the street, around the block, up that dark alley and down this one—and I chase after them because what else can I do? I follow them homeward and as I race I make a deal with myself. If red gets there first, I will be cruel to her. If white wins, I will be kind. I run until I am out of breath, my heart clenching and unclenching, the keys jangling in my brain, and then I am home. And white has won. I will be kind, I will kiss her on the mouth and speak, I will tell her everything.
But when I open the door, the apartment is quiet and empty, like a graveyard. The seven thousand tubes of paint are gone. The canvases leaning against the walls are gone. The clothes are gone, the suitcase is gone, and she is gone for good. Birds twist in the air above my head. The world dilates, then contracts to the size of a point. I stare down at the chessboard of a floor, all the squares are white, every move seems equally impossible and unnecessary. Checkmate.
She didn’t take everything. I realized this after an hour or two or three in the dark. For example, the easel. It stood in front of the window, submerged in shadows. She had left a single canvas there, its face turned toward the sky, as if she’d hoped birds or pilots might see it and take notice.
When I first learned to read and write, I would make signs and put them up in my bedroom window, facing out. The first one said HELLO. The second one said ANYONE THERE? The third one said IF YOU CAN READ THIS MY NAME IS SAMARA
MY ADDRESS IS 5479 HUTCHISON MY PHONE NUMBER IS 514-482-9986 PLEASE CALL.
This last sign stayed up in the window for years. And for years nobody noticed it, because nobody in that neighborhood ever looked up. The hipsters all had their heads bent over cell phones. The Hasids shunted to and from synagogue with their gaze glued to the ground, the better to avoid temptation-inducing sights: a woman’s little finger, a dress hung up to dry.
There was only one exception: Alex.
It had been ten years now. Ten years since that day when, pointing his telescope out at people’s houses, he had first seen the sign in my window. Ten years since he figured out that he could call the house and, without saying a word, relay his messages with perfect clarity and zero chance of being overheard. Ten years since we’d started communicating in binary code, entire conversations conveyed through the receiver in a pattern of rests and taps, zeros and ones . . .
In the hush of twilight I was painting Jenny’s body. Covering every inch of her skin with paint. She lay on the bed, quiet and yielding. Naked. My brush skipped lightly across the contours of her face. Lips, lashes, nostrils, ears. Her blond hair took a long time, but I coated each strand with care. A canister of house paint sat beside me on the sheet. TAUPE, said the label, and my brush dipped again and again. Collarbone, neck, navel. Thirty-three vertebrae, they made the brush skip up and down, and then the small of the back. Hips, thighs, the place between the thighs. The soles of the feet. As I was painting the last of her fingernails, covering up the final traces of sparkly blue polish, I suddenly remembered that if you coat a person’s body entirely with house paint, they will die. Panicking, I looked to her eyes for signs of life, but they were already painted over. I screamed, scratched at her face, dug for the human color beneath the gray. But all my nails brought up were sooty lashes, flakes of skin turned ash.
