The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  Adam closed his eyes and steadied himself, leaning his cheek against the window frame. There was no longer a question of extricating himself carefully, of choosing the right time in the coming days to tell Rachel that his heart had left their marriage. Everything was different now. He might not know the whole of it—he could not know the whole of it—but somehow, Lawrence had sensed the danger. Adam knew Lawrence but Lawrence, in his turn, knew Adam. What could Lawrence think of him now? He had loved Adam devotedly, enfolding him in the warmth of his family, and Adam had repaid him by forfeiting everything. For the first time Adam understood, with a sudden, bright pain, that he was not entitled to a son’s unconditional love from Lawrence. His love was conditional, and it was conditional upon Adam’s loving his daughter. Adam felt an irrational flush of rage, as if it had been Lawrence who had somehow deceived him. But it was momentary, and he was then gripped by a deep, sickening shame. He felt dizzy with it. He could not bear to face Lawrence again. He would have to tell Rachel tonight. He would have to go immediately. He had only to make it through the next few hours.

  31

  “Bye! Shana Tova!” Rachel called from the window, waving with both hands at the last guests to leave. Uncle Raymond and Aunt Judith waved back up, and Aunt Judith raised the blue plastic freezer bag of bagels that Rachel had pressed on them at the door. Uncle Raymond was making room on the backseat for a Tupperware of chopped liver and for his wife’s boat-size hat.

  Lawrence and Jaffa had driven Ziva home earlier, taking Ellie with them. Adam had not been able to bring himself to look at Lawrence again, though Lawrence had kissed him on both cheeks and had wished him, with gentle gravity, a shana tova. Adam had simply bent his head and nodded. He had not cried, as he’d feared he might.

  And a moment after that, he had had his chance. He had watched Ellie take her jacket from Lawrence who had collected the family’s coats from the bedroom, had watched her slip it over her shoulders like a cape, and hold it tightly around her by crossing her arms. After an evening of willing her to turn to him, she had turned to him, at last, in the doorway. But when she’d looked back at him he’d felt frightened. In her eyes he’d seen such sadness—and something else, something fleeting that might have been longing, or pity.

  He could hear Aunt Judith calling from the street. “Bye, Rachel! Bye, Adam! Shana tova! Thank you!”

  Rachel left her post at the window and sank gratefully onto the sofa, wrapping her arms around a cushion and closing her eyes.

  Adam swallowed. “Rach, are you falling asleep? Can I talk to you?”

  “Oh Ads, I’m so tired, do we have to talk right now?”

  He looked at her. She did seem tired; her earlier glow had gone and since her parents left she’d seemed uncharacteristically weary. She had emerged from the bathroom in tracksuit bottoms half an hour ago, even before Uncle Raymond and Aunt Judith had begun to take their leave.

  “Yes,” he said. He had stood up and paced the room but now he sat back down on the coffee table in front of her. An image of Lawrence’s face swam before him and he fought to replace it with Ellie. It was easy to fill his mind with her.

  Rachel struggled to sit up from between the soft cushions and wriggled a little, rearranging herself on the sofa. She had been curled in the center but now she sat opposite him, her knees between his, a serious expression on her face. He could smell the clean citrus of her hair.

  “Okay. In which case I need to talk to you about something first.”

  “Rachel, I—”

  “Ads, I didn’t fast today. I ate. At lunchtime.”

  He started. Her confession was so ludicrously minor, such a grotesque contrast to the one on his own lips. He felt the bubbling of a violent, hysterical laughter. Maybe there was more, he thought wildly. Maybe she didn’t fast because she’s feeling too guilty about leaving me tonight for her tennis instructor, or she’s going to tell me that she’s a lesbian, or that she’s always thought we met too young and she still loves me but thinks that we should both be free to see the world. Maybe she’ll hurt me so that I don’t have to hurt her. Maybe she’s letting me off the hook.

  Rachel leaned toward him and took his hands between both of her own and gently, with a mother’s tenderness, she placed them on her stomach. Rachel looked at him, her dark eyes joy-filled, the same trembling diamonds on her lashes that had moved him at their wedding. She flung her arms around him and he held her, numbly, shielded from her gaze in the embrace.

  Something was dawning on him, swirling and tickling at the edge of his vision, something too big, as yet, for him to see in its entirety. He strained to understand. It felt like trying to see a whale from the tiny porthole of a submarine; six inches at a time. But it might not be a whale. It might be a shark. Or a cruise liner. Or a mine. Or anything at all. He caught glimpses through the miasma, but the whole evaded him. He stayed like this for several moments, his chin still on her shoulder, her arms still tight around his chest. He did not yet trust himself to speak.

  Rachel pulled away, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “Big news,” she said, smiling. Then she settled back on the sofa, tucking her legs beneath herself neatly and watching his face.

  “Big news,” he affirmed. Somehow he was smiling back, though his face felt frozen. Rachel picked up the cushion again and began to toy with the fringing and her movement shocked him out of his paralysis. He heard himself ask her, “Who knows?”

  Rachel flushed, twirling the little plaits of blue silk round and round her fingers. “Oh Ads, I know I should have told you first. But I wanted to give it another week to make sure sure sure—you know these things can be—It’s just so early. And”—she looked down at her nails—“I guess there’s just something so natural about talking to women, this instinctive thing.”

  “So who”—he tried to repeat the question but it suddenly felt as if everything were moving very, very slowly, the vast bulk of something drifting in slow motion past the tiny window of his cell—“who did you tell?”

  “Well, Ima guessed straightaway—she noticed when we were checking Granny out of the hospital two weeks ago; she could just tell, it was so strange. And so I had to tell her and I know she told Daddy, although she promised she wouldn’t, and Tanya and I have told each other everything since we were at school, you know we always have, and so I couldn’t not. And I was so worried about Granny, I really thought she’d die, Ads, and it would have been so awful if she’d never known, God forbid, so when I went round on erev Rosh Hashanah I told Granny and I know it was the right thing because it made her so happy, it made her want to get well again. And then that night she was in the bath and Ellie and I were—We had such a lovely talk. And I told her then.”

  And there it was. His submarine had blown into a thousand pieces and he could see the whale—no more tiny glimpses through a window, because instead he was drowning. Ellie was leaving because Rachel had told her. And Rachel, staring at him unwaveringly though her fingers still combed idly through the fringing of the cushion, Rachel’s proud, straight posture and the light of triumph in her eyes told him all the rest. It was not only Lawrence who had guessed. Tonight, in that crowded room of friendship and family and history there had been no secrets—Tanya and Jasper and the Wilsons and Linda and Leslie and Elaine and Roger Press, and Ziva and Jaffa—they all knew, because that was how it worked. And they had all moved together like fronds of coral, to expel the predator. They were shielding Rachel. And no doubt, they thought, they were shielding Adam from himself.

  32

  They had all worked tirelessly to make it happen. It seemed extraordinary that so many people felt themselves to be a part of it, touching to see the true quotidian magnificence of the community. But there it was, and they had all moved together with the effortless choreography of lives long interwoven. It takes a village to raise a child, and the village of Temple Fortune had begun its work immediately and with diligence. Although the new owners had so far kept on all the employees, Lawrence an
d the others had been forced to sell GGP for a song; given the family’s altered circumstances it was agreed that, if it could be managed with sensitivity, the Gilberts ought to pay for nothing.

  Linda Pearl had made a few discreet phone calls. Those who sent flowers all sent white arrangements so that they would coordinate—tall orchids or velvety roses in sprays of white baby’s breath. Where possible Linda had gone further, steering those who asked toward gladiolus and lisianthus, and hinting that, if they waited and sent them a few days late, the arrangements would be perfectly timed for the party. Roger Press had a cousin who owned a catering supplies website and Elaine rang Jaffa with the news that this cousin had an overstock that he was desperate to shift. All he needed was someone to collect it all, and they would actually be doing him a mitzvah. Roger would do it as he was popping round in any case; she believed that there were some blue and white helium balloons and canisters, a box of napkins printed with blue nappy pins, and six white ceramic cake stands, each of which had already been painted with a little blue mazel tov! No one wanted them, he’d assured her. These days everyone seemed to be having girls.

  Sarah London knew someone who made rich sugar cookies, hand-iced, individually wrapped in iridescent cellophane and tied with satin ribbons. These came in assorted shapes—creamy rocking horses with curling, pale blue manes; chocolate teddy bears with coal black eyes and marshmallow pink paws; pale lemon yellow booties laced with lilac; and smiling storks in royal blue peaked caps, their happy bundles snuggled in white buttercream. Each of these biscuits had a designated space on which could be iced the baby’s name, and the date. After some consideration Linda Pearl, who had been in the kitchen with Jaffa when Sarah London had delivered her gift, went through the box and tactfully removed the storks. It was not known whether a reference to this myth of baby delivery would be considered profane by the mohel. Best to err on the side of caution. The rest were arranged in white wicker baskets, and it was hoped that the guests would take them home.

  Jaffa had catered herself, of course, and would brook no contradiction. Tanya Cohen had tentatively suggested that she and the Wilson girls might like to be allowed to take care of the breakfast, to which Jaffa had drawn herself up to her full five foot two and declared that such assistance would happen over her dead body. She had been folding bourekas, whipping rings of chive into cream cheese, and slicing smoked salmon into ribbons since sunrise.

  Outside, it showed the promise of a perfect August day. The sky was clear. In the front garden, Elaine’s balloons had been tied to spokes of the trellis to form a festive arch around the front door, white and robin’s egg bobbing in alternation against the starry pinwheels of pale lilac clematis that covered the house, and over everything lay a fine, gold mesh of hazy sunlight. The climbers had bloomed late; the baby had come early, and both marked a new and precious season. Tanya Cohen, idly stroking her stomach as she and Jasper circled the Gilberts’ house in search of a parking space, had remarked that it had been, hadn’t it, a perfect summer. Their own baby was due in December, by which time the Suburb might be muted and pillowed with snow.

  Early that morning Adam had walked to Carmelli’s to buy the challah for the seudat mitzvah. After the circumcision everyone would stay for breakfast though Adam, his stomach knotted with anxiety, could not imagine his appetite ever returning. But it was a tradition to connect the joy of a new life in this world with the joy of breaking bread with family and friends. Jaffa had catered for fifty, and on this occasion it was not unreasonable to assume that fifty might actually come. Michelle had offered to stop at the bakery on her way but Adam had been insistent as it had felt, urgently, like something he had to do. He had not even really known why until he’d gotten there.

  The gingerbread men had been on the top shelf of the display, stacked between a baking sheet of white chocolate Florentines bright with green and amber candied cherries, and on the other side a row of white paper cases filled with sweating marzipan fruit—bananas dusted with cocoa, clove-stemmed apples and rosy strawberries textured with granulated sugar. On the back wall, slotted shelves were piled with black rye, bagels freckled with sesame and poppy seeds, and yolk-washed, mahogany-dark challot. When he’d ordered the loaves he had found himself pointing into the glass case. “That one, on the far left.” It was the only one with red buttons set in little pools of white icing; the others, each with three buttons, were multicolored. This one wore only red, as he had always chosen, for Arsenal. And without knowing precisely why, he had snatched the paper bag with sudden jealousy, had dropped a twenty-pound note on the counter and had left, abruptly, without waiting for his change. Walking back to the Gilberts’ house with the warm challot under his arm he had pressed the small bag to his face, inhaling the scent, suddenly familiar, of spicy ginger and cinnamon.

  And it was then that he had started to cry. He had cried for his father, on whose lap the baby should rightfully be cradled throughout this upcoming ceremony—a grandfather’s ultimate role of honor. That Lawrence would take on this and all other duties could never, Adam had finally admitted in these last months, make right that loss. He had cried for his new son, who at eight days old would endure his first trial on the path toward manhood, who was fragile and perfect, and whom he could not protect from all future suffering and from mourning his, Adam’s, own death one day. Walking through Golders Green, past the kosher cafés serving café barad and microwaved bourekas, past the Iranian grocer and Polish deli and discount factory outlets of the high street he had cried for Rachel, whom he had never believed could understand his loss and so had never been honored with his confidences. And for the first time, as though uncovering a chasm long obstructed, he had cried for himself. He had been trying since his own childhood to be a man, had tried to teach himself and had failed, sometimes spectacularly, to live up to an example he could only ever strain to imagine. For months now he had been trying to understand the seismic shifts of impending fatherhood within himself—that he would be to a tiny creature that which his father had been to him. As the weeks had passed and he had dreamed, night after night of Jacob, it had come to be the only single thing that mattered in the world. They were having a child, and the depth of that miracle obliterated everything that had ever come before.

  He missed his father; missed him in ways that he’d never even had time enough with him to know. And since then he had lost his way and no one—not Michelle, not Lawrence, not Rachel, not even Ellie whom he’d once believed could alleviate his loss by sharing it—no one could make it better. The only things that he could fix now were those that he himself had damaged along the way. His father should be here today and was not; Adam had been angry for almost his whole life, he realized, always doing the right thing and meanwhile raging and resentful that no one saw the magnitude of that sadness. And he had punished Rachel, because she didn’t and couldn’t understand. But then, he had never even let her try.

  His pace quickened as he turned onto the Finchley Road. As he crossed the street beneath the railway bridge he tucked the gingerbread man into his inside pocket, its head and arms protruding as if to see out from its vantage point. He pulled his jacket closed, smoothing it down over the slight obstruction. In half an hour the house would start to fill; the community would come to celebrate with them and to learn the name that they had chosen for their little boy, as he entered into this covenant of Abraham.

  It had been there, knotted and silent, for more than twenty years. But something within Adam had shifted in that moment eight days ago when he first held his son. No one could make it better. It could not be made better. But it could be made … bearable. If not acceptable then accepted. In moving on, he had then understood, in letting go, he was taking nothing away from Jacob. Until he no longer believed it, he hadn’t known he’d feared that healing meant forgetting. Instead, with the certainty of fatherhood, he now knew that by finally healing, he was honoring the man who would have raised him with generosity, if only he had lived long enough to do so.
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br />   When Adam got back to the Gilberts’, Michelle and Jaffa were side by side in the kitchen in companionable silence, Jaffa creating mess, his mother, in purple rubber gloves, neatly eradicating it. Jasper and Tanya had arrived and were sitting at the kitchen table, both folding paper napkins around plastic cutlery. Adam raised a hand to them in greeting but continued past the door into the garden. “Did you know,” Jasper was demanding of Michelle, “that there are opiates in breast milk?” Jasper these days was full of baby knowledge, mostly unhelpful but all enthusiastic. It seemed probable—certain, almost—that the impending Cohen daughter had been conceived of and then conceived as a result of the impending Newman son. Emulation, competition, or perhaps simply coincidence. Lucy Wilson was no doubt also trying.

  Rachel had retreated to the bottom of the garden. The sun was behind the house and cast a long shadow over the lawn. At the end, two chairs were still in bright sunshine; she had turned one of these and sat with her back to the round iron table, with her back to the house. At her feet the baby slept in a carry-cot, tightly swaddled in brushed blue cotton. A muslin cloth draped over the handles shaded him. Rachel’s eyes were also closed, her face tipped up to the sun.

  “Pumpkin,” he said. “Rachel.”

  She opened her eyes. “Hi, Ads. Are people arriving?”

  “Rachel,” he said again. She looked up at him.

  Rachel had not wanted this party. She had not wanted anyone to gather at her parents’ house to honor the circumcision of their son; she had wanted it done privately, in hospital and by a doctor. She had sat for days on the Internet, laptop balanced precariously on ever-dropping bump, reading about statistics, about pain relief, about techniques. Adam and Lawrence had been subcontracted to conduct similar searches and they had all eventually reached the same conclusion—that the mohels’ experience surpassed the doctors’ many hundreds of times, and it would be less traumatic, less clinical, to conduct the circumcision at home. Prince Charles, Google informed them, had been circumcised by a mohel. The baby could be on a lap instead of an operating table and would be soothed by tender, loving hands. Still, Rachel hadn’t wanted to make it a party. It had been Jaffa’s suggestion, Jaffa’s wish; Jaffa’s impetus.