by Julia Dahl
Men and women jog after the car, and the crowd thins. I stand and look around for friendly faces to interview. Everyone seems to be looking down. There is a lot of hugging. I spot a woman across the street who is wearing pants and smoking a cigarette. I cross at the light and approach her.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you have a minute?”
The woman looks at me. I continue.
“I’m a reporter for the Trib,” I say. “We’re doing a story about Mrs. Mendelssohn.”
“Oh?” She looks mildly surprised.
“Yes, I’m just looking for a little information about her. What she was like, how she’ll be missed. That sort of thing. I’ve spoken a little to her family….”
“Really?” Now she’s even more surprised. “What did they have to say?”
“Well, they were very distraught, obviously….”
“Did they tell you she was planning a divorce?”
“No,” I say. That’s news. “Was she?”
“She was. Very definitely. She told me she had seen the rebbe, though I don’t know what other action she had taken.”
“That’s, um, rare, in this community, right?”
“Not as rare as you might think. But yes, it’s unusual.”
“My name is Rebekah,” I say, extending my hand to shake.
“I’m Sara Wyman.”
I jot that down.
“And how did you know Rivka?” I ask.
“That’s a long story,” she says. “And my ride is waiting.” She reaches into her enormous purse and pulls out an overstuffed wallet. “Here,” she says, handing me a business card. “Give me a call.”
The card says, SARA WYMAN, LICENSED CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER.
“Would you mind telling me something quick about her? Something to characterize her for the article? I’d really appreciate it.”
“You can say that she was a passionate, intelligent woman who cared deeply for her children and her friends.”
I can already hear my editor say, boring.
“Anything else? Was she involved in any … activities?”
“She ran a group for new mothers.”
“Boro Park Mommies?”
Sara nods. She seems to be considering telling me something else, but instead she just says, “Call me. We can talk in depth. But not now.”
With the crowd dispersing, I decide to go find Mrs. Shoenstein’s daughter, Chaya. The corner she pointed to has three row houses on it. I climb the short staircase to the first one, which has two buzzers, but neither are marked with names. I hear something above me and I look up. There is a woman in the second-floor window. She slides the glass up a few inches.
“Hello,” I say, trying not to shout.
“What is it?” She’s young. A teenager, maybe. And her voice is soft.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say, speaking toward the second floor. This is an awkward conversation to have at a distance. “I’m from …” I pause a moment and consider: which do I say first, that it’s about Rivka Mendelssohn, or that I’m from the newspaper? For lots of people, saying you’re from the Trib works—they love the idea of being in the paper. But that is clearly not the case in this community. I decide to lead with her mom.
“I’m looking for Chaya,” I say, hopeful.
“I am Chaya,” she says.
“Hi,” I say, probably too cheery. “I just, I just spoke with your mother….” I point toward the funeral home. “I wonder if I could come up.”
“My mother?”
“She said you were … a friend of Rivka Mendelssohn?”
“My husband is away,” she says.
“Right … I was hoping we might talk? My name is Rivka. I’m from the newspaper….”
The window opens wider and the girl comes closer to the sill. “Your name is Rivka?”
“Yes,” I say, the lie feeling less uncomfortable than it probably should. “I work for the newspaper. We’re writing an article about Mrs. Mendelssohn.”
Chaya closes the window and disappears. A moment later, she’s at the front door. She is very tiny and very pregnant, wearing a long black skirt and enormous sweater. Her head is wrapped in a cloth hat a little like Miriam’s. She looks at me, looks both ways up and down the street, and then gestures sharply for me to step inside.
I follow her up a steep set of carpeted steps and into a kitchen with appliances that look older than either of us. There is a faint smell of meat and mildew. Garbage is piled in the corner. Poor Chaya is not much of a housekeeper.
“My husband will be home soon,” she says.
“I won’t take up too much time,” I say. “I just, um … were you close with Rivka?”
The girl begins to sob. It’s a guttural, inelegant noise, not the quiet weeping of the women at the funeral. She’s so tiny and front-heavy, I worry she might fall over. I look around for a chair.
“Here,” I say, gesturing toward the kitchen card table and folding chairs. “Sit. Please. Can I get you anything?” The girl shakes her head and wipes her nose on her sleeve. She looks barely fifteen.
“Rivka helped me …,” she says between sniffs and sobs. “She … she was my babysitter. She and my sister, Esther … And then … when I got married … she said, she told me about … you know.” She puts her hand on her belly and looks at me through soggy, frightened eyes. “I was so scared that day … she …” The girl’s breathing starts to speed up; she’s sucking in air like she’s drowning.
I put my hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry,” I say again.
“What happened to her? No one will tell me.”
“The police don’t really know yet,” I say. I’m not going to tell her her friend was found naked and dumped in a pile of sharp, cold trash.
“I don’t understand,” she cries. “Was it a car accident? Rivka walked a lot. She wore those ear … tubes?” she says. “To listen to music. When she was walking outside. Did she get hit? I worried she’d walk in front of a bus.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.
Chaya looks puzzled and exhausted. She puts her hand over her nose and mouth and looks up, like she’s trying to see backward through her tears.
“I asked her boy, Yakov. I said, ‘Yakov, where is Mommy?’ He said, ‘Mommy is sick.’ I asked Miriam, Mr. Mendelssohn’s sister?” I nod. “And Miriam …” She pauses. “Miriam is an akarah.” I try not to look puzzled at the Yiddish word. If my name is Rivka, I shouldn’t have to ask her to translate. So I write the word down phonetically and circle it. I’ll ask Saul.
Chaya continues: “I said, ‘Miriam, where is Rivka? Is she ill?’ Miriam said ‘puh-puh.’” The girl makes a spitting sound with her thin lips. “She said,” lowering her voice, “‘Rivka is a zona.’” Shit, I think. Another word I don’t know. The girl begins to cry again. I look around the room for a box of Kleenex. There is a roll of paper towels on the counter near the sink. I get up and tear one off, hand it to her. She blows her nose and wipes her wet face.
“Rivka was … questioning.” She says it so quietly, I can barely hear her above the hum of the refrigerator. “But she would never, never break her vow.”
“Questioning?”
Something about my question stops her.
“How do you know Rivka?”
“Oh,” I say, stumbling. “I’m … I don’t … I didn’t know her. I’m from the newspaper. We’re writing an article.”
“I cannot be in the newspaper. My husband is very traditional.”
“I understand,” I say.
“I thought maybe you were …” She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her face has changed from sadness to sickness. The corners of her mouth pull back and for a moment I think she might vomit. Instead, she gets up and disappears down the hallway toward the back of the apartment. I hear a door open and close. The state of the kitchen is pretty bad. The linoleum is cracked in places, and several cabinets are crooked. There are no magnets or drawings or photographs stuck to the refrigerator door. I can�
��t imagine what it must be like to be trapped in such a dingy domestic life at such a young age. I wonder how old her husband is.
Chaya comes back, carrying something close to her chest. She sets it down—it’s a well-worn copy of O, The Oprah Magazine. On the front, Oprah smiles broadly, offering an Easter-colored cupcake to her spring reader.
“She gave me this,” says the girl. “Take it. You go now. You cannot be here.”
At the front door, the girl peeks out, looking left and right before allowing me to exit. I try again for a little more information. “Do you know Mr. Mendelssohn, Rivka’s husband?”
The girl shakes her head. “Go,” she says, and pushes me out the door.
I begin to say “Thank you,” but before I can finish the phrase, I am talking to the door.
Zona. I walk slowly toward the sidewalk and wonder what it means. A broken vow could be an affair. And an affair is a motive for murder. But I don’t know what to do with this information. If it’s even true. I wonder if Miriam—or Saul, or Sara—could confirm?
I call in Mrs. Shoenstein’s quotes.
“You didn’t get anything from the family?” asks Lars.
“No,” I say. “They were …”
“Go to the house. They’ll come home after they bury her. See if you can get something about the gardener. Then you’re off.”
It takes twenty minutes to walk to the Mendelssohn house. I linger outside, staring, looking for some clue, some evidence of the violence, the sorrow, the trauma, on its façade. But everything is sturdy and stoic. I wonder if she died in there. It’s possible. My chest tightens when I think about the way Aron Mendelssohn roared. He is a big man. A big man who owns a dumping ground.
My phone rings. It is Saul.
“Can you meet me?” he asks.
“Where?”
“There is a Starbucks on Flatbush.”
“I have to try to get some more quotes at the Mendelssohn house. Can you give me a couple hours?”
“Yes.”
I hang up and knock at the front door. No one answers, so I stand on the sidewalk and wait. The little boys are the first people I see. There are several running toward me about two blocks up. They are dressed formally, and several have one hand holding their black hats down, but they are shouting and playful, like little boys anywhere. Behind them are the girls, huddled together, wearing flat shoes on their long preadolescent feet, boxy in their shapeless coats. Most are hatless. I cross the street to avoid, and observe, them. Behind the girls are the mothers, hatted, pushing strollers. They fan out, going down different streets, into different houses. I turn and walk around the corner, toward the back entrance to the Mendelssohns. From there, I can see across the front yard without standing like a guard outside.
After about twenty minutes, I see Yakov, the boy from the bodega, come toward me, escorting two little girls. Yakov sees me, and slows. I smile a little, trying to reconnect; remember me? He opens the back gate for the little girls and tells them to go inside. They do. Yakov walks toward me and points to the iPhone in my hand.
“Is that an iPod?” he asks.
“Actually, it’s an iPhone.”
“It plays music.”
“It does.”
“Any music you want?”
“Any music you put on it.”
Yakov nods solemnly.
“Do you want to see it?”
“Yes, please.”
I hand him the phone. “Slide the bar,” I say. “You have to put in the pass code. It’s five-six-two-two.” Yakov looks up at me. “It’s okay,” I say. “I trust you.”
He cradles the phone in his left hand, carefully wipes his right hand on the side of his pants, then presses his little index finger on the touch pad: 5-6-2-2. The screen opens and he stares at it.
“The music is here?” he asks, pointing to the iPod icon.
“Yup,” I say. “You’ve used one of these before.”
“Mommy showed me,” he says.
“Oh really? Your mother had one?”
“It was a secret,” says Yakov. He presses the iPod icon and up pops a list of my music. He uses his finger to scroll slowly down, then back up again. Finally, he hands it back.
“You’re from the newspaper,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“My mommy is dead,” he says, lifting his eyes to me. “Did you know that?”
“I did know. I’m so sorry.”
Yakov shakes his head. “She wasn’t sick.”
“Sick?”
“Tatti says Mommy was sick. He said she was very, very sick. He said we might get sick, too. But she wasn’t sick.”
I don’t know how to respond. Sick could mean a million things.
“Tatti says he is going to send us to the mountains with Meema Miriam and Feter Heshy,” Yakov says, his eyes on the sidewalk. Tatti, does that mean father? I think.
“Oh? Do you like the mountains?”
He shakes his head. His nose and fingers are red again. I wish somebody would dress this kid better. Maybe when his mom was alive.
“You better go inside,” I say. “You look very cold. You don’t want to get sick.”
Yakov looks up at me. Oops.
“I mean … catch a cold.” Yakov stays where he is. I rip a page out of my notebook and write my name and phone number on it. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
The boy takes the paper. “Do you know what happened to my mommy?”
“I don’t,” I say. “But I’m going to try to find out.”
Yakov nods again. He looks at the piece of paper, like he’s trying to decide if he should fold it or not.
“Bubby Mendelssohn had cancer before she died. But I asked Tatti if Mommy had cancer, and he said no. And she didn’t smell bad like Bubby. And Meema Tova, she coughed all the time before she died. She had a … she was connected to a tank. To breathe.” He pauses. “If you find out what happened, will you tell me?”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.”
“Mommy used to tell me lots of things. But nobody tells me anything now.”
I see an opening. “What kind of things did she tell you?”
“Last summer she took me to Coney Island and we rode the roller coaster. She told me that she rode it every week, but that it was a secret.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
Yakov looks down. “I didn’t want to. But Tatti said it was my duty, as a man, to help Mommy get well. He said if I didn’t tell, she could get more sick. He already knew, though. He said, ‘Has Mommy been to Coney Island?’ What’s so bad about Coney Island!” Yakov starts to cry. I look around. On the other side of the street, two young mothers push strollers. They gawk at us. I gawk back.
I kneel down and look up at Yakov. “I don’t think there’s anything bad about Coney Island.”
“Me neither!” he wails.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll find out what happened to your mommy.”
“Stupid Coney Island! I hate Coney Island!”
“Hey,” I say, trying to calm him down. I stand up and push open the back gate. “Let’s go in here.” Yakov follows. I close the gate behind us. Yakov’s face is a snotty mess. I give him a tissue from my pocket. It’s probably been used, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Yakov!”
Miriam is suddenly standing three feet from us. “Oh,” I say, startled. “I’m sorry. Yakov seemed very upset….” I should not be there, obviously.
Miriam says something in Yiddish and Yakov runs inside. I brace for her to scream at me to leave, but she doesn’t. Instead she motions for me to come with her toward the door to the garage. She is shivering, but she doesn’t seem uncomfortable. The first time I saw her, Miriam had a wrap covering her head. Today, she is hatless, with a wig a little like Malka’s, except that Miriam’s is parted in the middle. The hairline is a little too low on her forehead, and the part is about half an inch from the center of her nose. The dichotomy betwee
n her plain, shapeless clothes and the smooth shine of her hair is a little jarring. The hair has bounce, but Miriam’s face is leaden, her small gray eyes rimmed in red with puffy purple bags beneath them.
She sees me looking and raises her hand to her head, a little bashful.
“The children are very upset,” she says.
“Of course,” I say. “How are you?”
Miriam looks surprised that I asked. “It is very hard. Rivka and I were born on the same day. Her mother worked as a secretary in my father’s business and when she got sick my father paid for the hospital bills. After she died, he helped with Rivka’s upbringing. She lived with us for several years before she and Aron married.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say again. Rivka Mendelssohn was motherless. “How old was Rivka when her mother died?”
“We were very young. Five years old, perhaps?”
“I lost my mother young, too,” I say. I can’t help it. I feel like I can tell her. I feel like somehow she’ll understand.
“Oh!” she says, putting her hand on my arm. She’s not dressed for the cold. “Losing a mother is …” She shakes her head, trying to come up with a word, and I think, exactly, it is …? Miriam—like Chaya—seems like a fragile woman. Was Rivka fragile, too? Was she easy prey? At the funeral home, Malka said Rivka was not easy to kill. Miriam, I think, might be easier. Could she be next?
“I wanted to thank you for speaking with me yesterday. I really appreciate your time,” I say.
Miriam smiles weakly.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened?” I ask, my voice low, like, you can tell me. “Do you feel safe?”
“Me?”
I nod.
“No, no,” she says. I’m not sure if she’s answering my first or second question. I have to be better about doubling up on questions.
“I wonder if you know if Rivka was … unhappy,” I ask. She looks puzzled. “Because I spoke with a woman who said …”
