Invisible City

by Julia Dahl

  Aha.

  “And that changed everything that hadn’t already changed inside her. I think. She told me she didn’t mean for it to happen—and I knew that. I watched it! They were just drawn to each other. From the moment they met.”

  “You saw them?”

  She sighs again. “They met at one of my gatherings. Both were new. I never saw them alone together, but I could tell. When she told me, I knew who she was talking about.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last spring. It was just warm.”

  “And when was the last time you saw her?”

  Sara pauses. “It was … more than two weeks ago. We had coffee. Here, actually. She met me at lunchtime.”

  “Did she seem …?” I don’t even know what to ask. I wonder if Rivka sat in this very Starbucks chair. I wonder what she ordered.

  “Like she was worried she’d be murdered? No. She seemed relatively happy. She told me that her son had been chosen to sing in shul. Apparently he has a beautiful voice.”

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  Sara shakes her head. “Not until I read it in your newspaper. It is true, then?”

  I nod. “So she didn’t tell you?”

  Sara shakes her head.

  “Is it possible the baby was … out of wedlock?”

  “Anything is possible, of course,” says Sara. “But Rivka would know that sexual intimacy out of her marriage would mean … Well, it would mean the end of her marriage. Her husband would ask for a divorce immediately. The rebbe would grant it quickly and she would be out of her home. I doubt very much that her brothers would take her in. She would be considered a very bad influence, especially if they have children, which I’m certain they do. I don’t know if Rivka would be willing to risk all that could come from an affair. She was a cautious woman. She cherished her children, and she would lose custody in a divorce.”

  “Automatically?”

  Sara nods. “In Brooklyn and other Hasidic enclaves, family court judges are influenced by the wishes of the community. In a custody case, a rebbe and other powerful members of the community will testify that the children will be confused if they are exposed to a parent who is less religious. And even if they are granted some kind of visitation, very often the children are poisoned against the parent who left. Their family—even the family of the absent parent—will talk about that person as if she is dangerous. Children, especially young children like Rivka’s, become frightened. They do not want to upset their primary caregivers and so many begin refusing to see the less religious parent. I know many, many people who have lost all contact with their children after a divorce.”

  I stare at Sara. I knew my mom came from an insular world; a world of rules with no easy path out. I knew how her world had fucked her up, and through her, me. But what I hadn’t known—what I hadn’t even suspected—was how the tentacles of that world reached into the secular systems that are supposed to be our great equalizers. Blind justice, my ass.

  “Do you think her husband knew?” I ask.

  “About Baruch?”

  “Baruch?”

  Sara purses her lips. “I did not mean to tell you his name. Do not put his name in the newspaper.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  She is silent a moment, and I can tell she’s considering whether she should go on. I wait, and then ask another question.

  “But the baby could have been her husband’s, right?”

  “Yes,” she says “And Aron would have no reason to suspect it was not his…. Unless.”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless he did have a reason.” Sara is considering something. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you find out about the pregnancy?”

  “A source in the police department saw the body.” I’m not sure why I’m not telling her the whole truth.

  “There was an autopsy?”

  “Not officially,” I say. Sara looks puzzled: there either is or isn’t an autopsy, obviously. “No. The person in the department had gotten the information from someone at the funeral home.”

  “Ah,” says Sara. “That makes sense.”

  “How did you hear she had died?” I ask.

  “I got a call that evening from … someone else in the group.” She’s talking about Baruch. “He said she was dead. He wasn’t making much sense. I called around and found out that a woman’s body had been taken from the scrap yard her husband owns. I prayed it wasn’t true. That it was just a coincidence. But …” She shakes her head.

  “Were you surprised?”

  “Of course! It was so … violent. So shocking.”

  “Is murder unusual in the Hasidic community?”

  “I’ve never known anyone who was murdered.”

  “What was your first thought?”

  “You mean about who might have killed her?”

  I nod.

  Sara is quiet for several seconds. She turns her teacup in her hands. “This is off the record.” I nod. She lowers her voice. “When I heard she was found in the yard, I did think of Aron. For no real reason other than, well, when a married woman dies, isn’t it often her husband who killed her?”

  “Did you ever get the sense that Rivka was the victim of domestic violence?”

  Sara shakes her head. “She rarely spoke about her husband. Except to say that she never loved him.”

  “Do you think he knew that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I look at my notebook. I should have written down my questions before I got here. Sara doesn’t seem impatient, though. I flip back a couple pages and see my note about the fight Yakov said his mother and father had about Coney Island.

  “Have you ever heard about a house in Coney Island, where people sometimes go who are questioning?” I ask.

  “Oh course,” says Sara. “Menachem Goldberg’s house. I don’t know that he lives there anymore, but it’s been open for, decades, I think. Since the eighties, anyway.”

  “Have you been there?”

  Sara nods.

  “Do you think you might be willing to give me the address? I think Rivka spent time there, and I’d love to maybe learn a little more about her from the people there. I won’t use names if they don’t want.”

  “I suppose that’s fine.” She scrolls through her phone and finds the address, then sends it to me in a text.

  “Do you still consider yourself part of the community?” I ask.

  Sara smiles. “I don’t think I’ll ever escape it. And so much of my work is with people in the community. It is who I am. I choose to live apart, but I am never really … apart.”

  I haven’t been writing down much, but I scribble I don’t think I’ll ever escape it into my notebook. That, I think, is a good quote.

  “Now,” says Sara, “let’s talk about what you’re going to write.”

  I take the bus back to Park Slope and manage to get a couple pieces of usable information from the clerk at the bodega where I got tea near porn mom’s apartment. Apparently, porn dad came in for energy drinks and gum after jogging.

  “He always buy gum,” said the clerk.

  The desk, as I predicted, loves this.

  “Gum!” says Mike, taking my notes. “For the kids.”

  “I guess,” I say. Who cares.

  It’s only three, so Mike tells me to stick around until someone can relieve me.

  “Make sure you get anyone coming in or out,” he says. “Neighbors.”

  “Sure,” I say, but as soon as I hang up, I slip into a sushi restaurant where I can sip green tea and call Cathy.

  I tell her that I’ve got a source, a woman with a name, who says Rivka Mendelssohn had been grieving the loss of a daughter, might have been having an affair, and was considering a divorce before she died.

  “And the police haven’t questioned the husband?” she asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “We need that,” she says. “Call Larry. I’ll pitch this at the meeting, bu
t I’m not sure they’ll want it.”

  I call Larry.

  “I can’t confirm for sure,” he says, “but I don’t think they’ve brought him in.”

  “They made a big deal about bringing the gardener in, right? If they’d brought the husband in, you think you’d know.”

  “Not necessarily,” he says. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  When I hang up, I take out my notebook and start scribbling a draft.

  The Hasidic woman found dead in a Brooklyn scrap yard Friday was no stranger to tragedy. [cliché?]

  Less than a year before she was murdered, Rivka Mendelssohn, 30, lost a child, according to Sara Wyman, a social worker who runs an informal group for “questioning” ultra-Orthodox. Wyman says Mendelssohn told her that her daughter died of an asthma attack last spring when she was less than a year old. [get second source—Miriam?]

  “Rivka was devastated,” said Wyman, who grew up in Borough Park and has since left the ultra-Orthodox community. “I believe it led her to question her faith.”

  Wyman said that as a teen, Mendelssohn lost her father to suicide, and several members of her extended family struggled with mental illness. [check? death records?]

  “The Orthodox do not typically seek medical help for psychological problems,” explained Wyman.

  Wyman said Mendelssohn had been coming to her weekly meetings for nearly a year and told her that she was considering a divorce, but was worried about losing access to her four young children.

  Wyman said the last time she saw Mendelssohn was two weeks ago.

  “Rivka said her son had been chosen to sing in shul,” she said. “She was very proud.”

  Wyman said she had “no idea” how Mendelssohn could have met such a gruesome end.

  “I just hope the police find who did this—she didn’t deserve to die so young.”

  Police have questioned and released the family gardener, but refused to comment on the case, citing an ongoing investigation.

  I make the last bit up, figuring I’ll fill in whatever Larry finds, or doesn’t find.

  I read over what I’ve written and decide it’s not bad, but it’s definitely what my professors would call a “one-source story,” which isn’t ideal. I need Miriam in here. I need somebody at 1PP. I need Baruch.

  Back at the porn mom scene, Bill is sharing a cigarette with a tall woman wearing Pan-Cake makeup and an Entertainment Tonight badge around her neck.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he asks.

  “Did I miss anything?”

  ET shakes her head. “Neighbors are like Nazis,” she says, blowing smoke out her nostrils. “Biddy’s on patrol, too.” I look past her into the lobby and see that, indeed, biddy is manning the door in her housecoat and snow boots. Maya is across the street, so I cross and ask her if she’s gotten anything.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Total bust. I followed one woman around the corner and she started running, literally. Where’d you go?”

  I shrug. “Coffee.”

  “Smart. If they have me back here tomorrow, I’ll do the same.”

  I call Mike and tell him the biddy has the place locked down.

  “The Ledger has nothing either. Nobody does,” I say.

  “All right,” he says. “You can take off.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I first heard about the house at Coney Island from my dad. It figured briefly in “the story of Mom.” They hatched the plan to run back to Orlando together in Coney Island. It was their hideaway. Where they could meet in private. As a child, I imagined “Coney Island” as a tiny island, like the ones that cartoon characters get marooned on. With a single palm tree in the center. Later, when I saw a picture of the boardwalk and the roller coaster, I pictured them walking hand in hand together down the shoreline. By high school, when I understood a little about sex, and experienced its connection to what I’d always been told was love, I realized that Coney Island was where my parents went to have sex. I might even have been conceived there.

  But Coney Island was just one line in the story. A story that was communicated to me in pieces as I was deemed ready. Mom isn’t dead, but she’s not here, at three. She’s not here because she had to go take care of her family in New York, at five. We didn’t go with her because Mommy and Daddy were divorced, like so-and-so’s parents, at seven. Mommy and Daddy were divorced because Mommy grew up a certain way, at nine. Actually, Mommy and Daddy weren’t exactly divorced, because they never got married, at eleven. From there it started getting muddy. They weren’t ever really lies, and I can see now that it was not a story that easily lent itself to a child’s comprehension, but it always felt to me like another big secret was coming—another piece of the picture dangling above my life like a piano. Ready to drop and force me to climb over it. For years I hated my father as much as I hated my mother. And in some ways I still do, but now I also have sympathy for him. And respect for how he handled the situation. Twenty years old with a baby girl and a thoroughly appalled family can’t have been easy, and he made it work for us. He might not be as in touch with his actual emotions or, to some extent, reality, as I wish he was, but he’s a good guy. To the core. And even at twenty-two years old I know that’s rare. One parent who would protect you at all costs is more than a lot of people get. But he doesn’t want to understand who I really am inside. He thinks I’ve turned away from God. Those were his actual words. I called him to say how bad I’d been feeling sophomore year in college. I told him how I was scared all the time but I didn’t exactly know what of. Well, he said with a kind of sadness, You’ve turned away from God. His words infuriated me. I’ve never seen or heard or felt this “God,” but my life is basically a mess made by people twisting themselves into knots, trying to please him. My parents were both looking for God in a bookstore when they met. Oh wow, they must have thought. Someone I can obsess over God with who I also want to fuck! And why did my mother leave? God. All the good I’ve ever seen in this world, all the beauty and joy, comes from people, or from the earth. An evening sky, music. Did God make it all? Maybe. But we don’t look at a Picasso and worship his father, I said to my dad. And he responded, sounding both smug and sad, But see, we have to worship something. Fuck you, I said. And fuck God. And that was the last time we talked about it.

  I get off the F train at the last stop. The track is elevated here, and I can see the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. I can see the icy cold Atlantic slapping the empty beach. I shuffle down what feels like fifteen flights of stairs to the street, the wind coming from everywhere at once, tiny specks of ocean water and grains of sand like needles on my exposed face. People are all around me ending their day, beginning their day, heads down, encased in wool and nylon and fur and fleece. It’s a terrible time to try to get people to talk, the winter. As bad as in the pouring rain.

  Snow left over from the big storm a couple weeks ago is still taking up parking spaces, slate-colored and frozen into walls by the passing plow. The dedicated pedestrian walkway and bike lane is impassable, though it’s hard to imagine too many leisure riders rolling to the beach today. The address Sara gave me is six blocks from the station. Nathan’s hot dogs and the souvenir shops on Mermaid Avenue are closed up tight. The faded color murals remembering strong men and sword swallowers of yore look hopelessly one-dimensional. A right and a left and I’m in front of 331 Sand Street. It’s a narrow two-story house with dingy vinyl siding on a block of the same. I open the knee-high white-painted metal gate, and when I reach the base of the concrete steps the front door opens and two young women come out. They’re both within five years of my age, give or take. The older one has close-cropped brown hair and wears shoulder-grazing feather earrings. The younger one is blond, with her long hair in a ponytail. Both are in coats, but they don’t appear to be leaving. Judging by the sofa on the porch and the pint glass of butts beside it, I’d say they’re out for a smoke.

  “Hi,” says the blonde.

  “Hi,” I say, pausing at the bottom of t
he steps. The brunette pulls out a pack of Merit cigarettes and lights one. She passes a cigarette to the blonde and then holds her pack out to me.

  “Thanks,” I say, stepping onto the landing. “My name’s Rebekah.”

  The brunette hands me a lighter and sucks on her cigarette.

  “I’m Suri, that’s Dev,” says the blonde. “Are you from Williamsburg?”

  “No,” I say. “I live in Gowanus.”

  “You’re frum?”

  Frum. It’s a Yiddish word and I don’t know what it means.

  I shake my head and shrug at the same time.

  “You’re Jewish?” asks the brunette. Her face is unnervingly angular. Cheekbones and chin and a tiny mouth no wider than her nose. Her eyes are jade green, rimmed in thick black liner and clumpy mascara. Half a dozen tiny silver hoops climb up her ear.

  I nod. “I’m actually a reporter,” I say slowly, lighting my cigarette.

  The two girls look at me, and then each other.

  “Really?” says Suri. Unlike Dev, Suri is dressed in the female Orthodox uniform: long skirt, tights, and flat shoes. Her sweater covers her collarbone, and her face is colored only by the cold. They are, apparently, in different stages of rebellion.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I write for the Trib.”

  “Wow!” says Suri.

  “What do you write about?” asks Dev.

  “All different stuff,” I say. “But I’m actually doing a story about a woman who was murdered. I think she might have come here.”

  “She’s writing about Rivka,” says Suri softly.

  “Rivka Mendelssohn,” I say. “Did you know her?”

  Both girls nod solemnly.

  “Did you write the article that said she was pregnant?” asks Dev.

  “I did, yeah. Did you know?”

  Dev shakes her head.

  “I don’t think anyone did,” says Suri. “The article said the gardener killed her. Is that true?”

  “The police aren’t sure, actually,” I say. “I was hoping maybe I could learn a little more about her.”