Jacob's Folly

by Rebecca Miller

  “Masha?” She turned. It was Hugh Crosby. The black eye was healed. “What are you doing here?” he drawled.

  “I was just moseying around Manhattan,” she said.

  “In this weather?”

  Masha shrugged.

  “I can’t believe it’s April.” He sat on the stool beside her, setting his amber-colored drink down on the bar.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I live over on Tenth Avenue,” he said.

  “I thought you lived in Queens.”

  “No, I just go out there for Bridget’s class.”

  “Wow.”

  He shrugged. “I started with her in Manhattan eight years ago. I suppose there’s a kind of security in coming home to Bridget. Oh, hey, guess what?” he said, turning to her.

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna be a doctor.”

  “No way. You got it?”

  “I sure did. Dr. Darling. That is the actual name.”

  “So they decided to go Southern,” she said.

  “No, I played it East Coast,” he said.

  “Congratulations.” She raised her glass to him.

  He took a sip of his drink. “So,” he said. “What’s new?”

  “I might be getting married soon,” she said. There was a breath of silence.

  “I didn’t know you had a fella.”

  “We don’t date like you, we date to get married.”

  “Have you been dating?”

  “I’ve gone on six dates with one man. I need to decide soon.”

  “How can you know so fast?”

  “My sisters say you just know. But I … I really don’t.”

  “Masha,” he said, and then nothing.

  “What?” she said. He squinted, took a breath, then shook his head and went quiet.

  “What were you going to say?” she asked.

  “I have met a lot of people, but I’ve never met any other woman with your particular combination of … attributes.”

  She looked up at him out of the corner of her glimmering onyx eyes. “No?”

  “No,” he said. She finished her Coke. He offered to buy her a glass of wine. “If you’re gonna play Carol Cutrere, you need to know what a little wine feels like.”

  Hugh seemed untethered, loose on the world. Being with him in this bar, Masha felt time and the facts of her life disappear. Everything was melting into sheer, freewheeling possibility. “I can’t have wine that isn’t kosher,” she said. He ordered her a whiskey and ginger ale. She took a sip of the drink. It burned her throat. They talked more, and they laughed. Glancing out the window, she lurched forward, checking Hugh’s watch, then turned to look outside again. It was dark. Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “What?”

  “It’s Shabbos.”

  “You need to be somewhere?”

  “Home. I’m—I can’t go on the train anymore. The sun set early,” she said, as if the sun had tricked her.

  “Not even if it’s an emergency?”

  She shook her head. “Only to save a life.”

  “How long does Shabbos last?”

  “Tomorrow sunset,” she said, her head in her hands.

  “No transportation. Well, you are going to have to stay in Manhattan,” he said.

  “My mother will die.” She slipped off the stool and stood at the door of the bar, looking helplessly into the street through the glass, her thoughts muddled by the alcohol.

  He walked up to her. “You better call your family,” he said.

  “I can’t use the phone after sunset.”

  “I’ll call.”

  “They won’t answer.”

  “If they’re worried about you they will.”

  “But … they don’t know about the class or anything. If you call, they’ll freak out.”

  “How about if I dial your phone and you talk into it? Surely these are extenuating circumstances?”

  “Okay,” she said. They walked back to the bar and sat down. She leaned in to the phone while he held it up to her ear.

  Pearl answered, hushed, after the first ring. “Where are you?”

  “Mommy, I’m sorry,” said Masha. “I’m in town. In Manhattan.”

  “What? Why? How did you get there? I’ve been on the phone to Eli, I— Did someone—” Pearl thought she’d been kidnapped.

  “I took the train. I don’t know. I just needed to think. I just … I got on the train and walked around and now it’s too late, I can’t get back.”

  “Okay, honey—let me ask your father what you should do. Maybe he knows someone there. Hang on.” Pearl was trying for her calmest voice, the one she reserved for total inner hysteria.

  Masha took a sip of her drink and whispered, “They might know someone I could stay with.”

  “You could stay with us,” said Hugh.

  Masha heard her mother’s voice whispering on the other end. “How can we not know one person …”

  “Mommy? Mommy, don’t worry, there’s—a lady here, a friend of—of—a lady I met here that will let me, um, stay with her. She’s holding my phone, I was so worried about Shabbos and she dialed for me. I’m sorry, Mommy. But I’ll be okay and I’ll see you tomorrow night. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I just made a mistake, that’s all. ’Night.”

  “Will you pay for my Coke?” she asked as he hung up, nodding to her purse on the bar. “There’s a twenty in the wallet. I can’t touch money on Shabbos.”

  He pushed the purse back to her and paid the bill.

  She stared at her bag. “Would you mind carrying it?” she asked.

  Hugh couldn’t help laughing. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

  Hugh lived in a big old building on Tenth Avenue. The elevator was broken, so they walked up five flights of stairs, Masha’s purse slung over Hugh’s shoulder. The stairwell smelled of Indian food. Masha was quiet on the way up. She felt a kind of compression on the top of her head as she trudged up the marble steps, her hand on the broad metal banister—as though she were being shrunk. Hugh opened the heavy door and let her in, flipping on the light.

  The door opened onto a large room furnished with a Weimaraner-silver plush couch and several green reclining plastic lawn chairs. A triptych of large windows dominated the space; walls and wooden floor were painted brownish red. A galley kitchen was nestled into a nook in the wall on the right. Dishes had been washed and neatly stacked on a rack. Masha sat down on the only real chair she could see, an office chair on wheels. Hugh found a bottle with a finger of whiskey in it and poured it out for himself.

  “We have another bottle, if you would like a cocktail,” he said.

  Masha was eyeing the shut front door. He opened it a crack.

  “That better?” he asked. She nodded. “Are you worried?” he asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Because you’re staying here, or because you feel bad you forgot to go home?”

  “Because I forgot,” she said softly.

  “Well, it’s done now, you might as well relax. You hungry?”

  “A little.”

  “There’s a Chinese restaurant on this block. They serve kosher food. You eat kosher, right?”

  No real kosher restaurant would serve after sunset on Shabbos. Masha shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Or how about I make pasta?”

  They ate at a small card table. He found the other bottle of whiskey in a cabinet in the kitchen, poured out some in a glass of ginger ale, and drank it with his meal. She just had ginger ale.

  Hugh’s skin was stretched very taut over his face, Masha noticed. When he chewed, a web of muscles stood out under the skin of his jaw.

  “Hey, how about we rehearse our scene?” Hugh drawled, letting his fork clatter onto the table. Masha pushed herself back in the wheeled chair, reversing a couple of feet, and turned, scuttling crabwise, starting to negotiate the room.

  “I don’t feel like it.” she said. “It’s nice here.”
/>   “It’ll be better with real furniture,” said Hugh. “I’m going to change my life shortly, and that’ll make all the difference.”

  “What’s wrong with your life?” asked Masha.

  Hugh walked over to the window, opened it wide, and lit a cigarette. Placing himself on the sill gingerly, as if worried he might fall off, he rested his forehead on the glass and looked down onto the street.

  “I’m at what I’m hoping is the tail end of a long fiesta, but it just keeps going on. I have been warned of ruinous consequences to do with my liver and career. Doctors, agents, and relations are of one mind in this regard. I guess it’s easy to see that people are wasting themselves when you look at them from the outside. Take you, for instance,” he said, turning to her.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “You want my opinion?” His voice sounded different, she noticed. Coated.

  “You have an opinion?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I don’t know if I want it, though,” she said, coasting by him on the office chair.

  “I think you could be really fine, Masha, truly exceptional at your work. If you don’t try you’ll never know what could have happened, the work you might have done. But … you can’t do it halfway like this. I mean, it’s Friday night. You think all the theaters are closed? You think Broadway is shuttin’ down ’cause it’s Shabbos? And Hollywood? The TV studios? They work Friday night, they shoot Saturdays. You’re gonna have to make a choice. You’re one thing or the other, but you can’t be both. You either stick with it, or … I don’t know, you get married, and find another line of work.” His voice shook, and he turned back to his view out the window.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his forehead pressed to the glass. “It’s none of my business.”

  Masha had stopped her game, and sat in the chair, staring at the floor. She knew what he said was true. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to dwell on the contradiction. She pushed the floor away sideways with her feet, pivoting back and forth for a while. Then she looked up at him with solemn hopefulness.

  “Can we watch TV?” she asked.

  “You came all the way to Manhattan and you want to watch TV.”

  “I already broke the rules so bad … you’d have to turn it on.”

  “How about a movie?” he asked.

  I had never seen anyone observe that way. She was so alive. She watched the film as if witnessing a close relative in a bare-knuckle fight. Every moment counted. Her whole body tensed up with the thrill of scary moments, her feet tucked under her. She squinted at love scenes through her fingers. And when there was a laugh, she spun around to share it with Hugh, so vital, filled with the miracle of the joke. I was painfully jealous of him. If I could have sat beside her, oh! What wouldn’t I have accomplished? After a while, Hugh stopped watching the film and just watched Masha. At the end, her face wet with tears, hiccuping from the weeping, she let him shut off the box. Clearly, he was enthralled by her now. Who wouldn’t be?

  Hugh made up his bed fresh for her; he slept on the couch. His room was barren, but for a few books by the bed. Masha lay awake for a long time after she had said her evening prayers. Watching that movie had scooped her out, filled her with want. She yearned to be one of those people who became other people. She had to find a story to live in.

  The next morning, a young woman’s voice woke Masha up. She rose, still in her dress, and peeked through the door. It was Shelley, her dandelion-fluff hair lit up by the morning sunlight streaming through the dusty window. A husky, tall young man stood over her. They were laughing. Masha walked in.

  “There she is!” said Shelley. “We heard about your mishap. I hope you’re not in trouble.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Masha, pleased.

  “I live here,” said Shelley.

  “You do?”

  “I thought you knew,” said Hugh, who was huddled under a pile of coats on the couch. “I figured you two had talked about it.”

  “This is Paul,” said Shelley.

  “Hi,” said Masha, her hands clamped behind her back. Paul looked at her somberly.

  “Isn’t she beguiling?” asked Shelley.

  “Yes, she is.” Paul smiled. Shelley’s boyfriend had a pugnacious face, eyebrows puckered over a pair of intense little eyes.

  “I’m so glad you got stuck in Manhattan,” said Shelley. “Are you hungry?”

  Masha wasn’t allowed to go back home until that night at sunset, so Hugh went out and came back with bags of bagels, kosher cream cheese—and smoked salmon, which surprised Masha. Maybe he was rich? Shelley made eggs. She was wearing a light cotton dress and Mary Janes. The two men lay on the couch and talked, waiting to be fed. There was something improvised about the setup. They seemed like orphaned children, the three of them, and Shelley was playing the mother. Masha set plates onto the flimsy card table and Shelley served them all. Masha sank her teeth into the thick cream cheese, tearing at the doughy bagel with her teeth, eyes closing. She felt so satisfied here. Later, Shelley showed her the room she shared with Paul. Unlike Hugh’s room, it was carefully furnished, with a wicker bedstead, a desk, a couple of chairs.

  “I’m desperate to move out,” Shelley whispered as Masha investigated the many photos up on the wall above the bed.

  “Why?”

  “It’s over between me and Paul, we’re like a sixty-year-old couple. Now I’m stuck; I can’t afford to leave,” said Shelley.

  Masha craved a shower, but it was forbidden to use water heated on the Sabbath. She washed herself with cold water. For toilet paper, she used Kleenex she found in a drawer; she still felt bad about the time she tore the napkin at the Shabbos table. When she left the bathroom, she whispered the benediction asher yatzar, thanking Hashem for her working orifices, walked into the living room, and saw that angular Hugh was grabbing the coats he’d used for bedding off the couch. The other two were gone.

  “Where did Shelley go?” she asked.

  “She and Paul had to go out for an hour or so. They have an appointment with a professional,” he said. “One of those rituals you perform when your relationship is dying, apparently.” Masha didn’t know what he meant. She picked up his copy of the play, which was on the floor, and leafed through it.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “To you, all the rules are weird and hard, right? You think being a real Jew is hard.”

  “Seems like it.”

  “But I know the rules like I know how to breathe, so it’s easy. What’s hard is living without the rules. That’s hard.”

  “I’m sorry if I said something I shouldn’t have,” he said. “I do that a lot.”

  “Let’s play the scene,” she said, tossing the play on the couch.

  He plucked the lawn chairs out of the way so they would have room to work. I flew onto a standing lamp and watched them. From the moment she began the scene, Masha’s body changed. Barefoot, she circled her prey with a confident animal grace. Her hand came close to Hugh’s arm, but it never landed. She was not allowed to touch him, and she would not. Yet the charge coming out of her was stunning. I tried to find her thoughts, but there were none of her own. She was the person she was pretending to be. She had become Carol Cutrere, lost Southern belle (albeit with a Long Island accent). Her face seemed molded to the skull in a different way; she looked older, ground down by a ten-year party, yet gloriously defiant in her chosen wildness. Poor Hugh Crosby was getting lost in her performance. Skilled as he was, he was no match for this creature.

  Afterward, she flopped, spent, onto the office chair, and began to swivel it side to side again as she slowly came back to herself. Watching her, a knot of fear formed in my fly’s belly. There was something inhuman in her stare. It was an expression that I recognized, but I couldn’t remember why.

  Afterward, still in the grips of the scene, Masha splashed water on her face in the bathroom. As her head swung up, she caught her r
eflection and froze there. Framed in powder-pink tiles, her pale face, with its inky frame of hair, seemed to be floating. Her dark, kohl-smudged eyes looked vast, glassy, tinged with violet. Her mouth was slightly open, and the insolent gap between her two front teeth was just visible. She looked predatory. For the first time, Masha took her own breath away. I inhabited her as she stared at herself, felt the vanity solidifying in her like cooling fat.

  When night fell, Hugh walked Masha through Penn Station. She allowed herself to hold on to the edge of his down jacket, following him in her long dress as he fought through the roiling crowd to buy two tickets at a kiosk. In the train, he sat beside her, his legs crossed at the ankles. Dread was gathering in her now as she stared out the flashing window, her red wool coat sliding down her shoulders. They would be angry, maybe. Disappointed. Yes. This was so far from what was expected. It would frighten them, she knew. Oh, why? Yet she couldn’t muster regret.

  On the Far Rockaway platform, Hugh lit a cigarette. There was a thick, complicit silence between them. He walked her to the end of her street. She stopped then, faced him. She was frightened now.