Grave Endings

by Rochelle Krich

  My mother asked about the mechitza. I would have been fine without the partition that would separate the men and women during the dancing throughout the dinner. So would the Abramses, who are less strict than their son, the rabbi. But we’d been overruled by Zack and my parents.

  “The mehitza will be a grand surprise,” Raul said, pronouncing the word without the guttural ch. “Gorgeous, fabulous, everybody will be talking about it for weeks.”

  And he would stay within the budget, he assured my mother.

  “Even if I have to do this at my cost. But don’t tell Dani.” He cast a worried look over his shoulder and put his finger to his sensuous lips.

  “Because you are family, you know,” he said a moment later as he gave each of us a kiss and a long-stemmed yellow rose and ushered us out of the shop.

  eleven

  I TOOK MY ROSE AND MY EUPHORIA TO THE HAIR SALON on Melrose near Sierra Bonita, where my mother and I were joined by my three sisters and my sister-in-law, Gitty, who had come to provide moral support along with coffee and mouthwatering cheese Danishes from the nearby Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. We nibbled and giggled at silly jokes that caught the attention of a woman and the hairdresser cutting her hair, both of whom looked at us with curiosity—and envy, I think. Natalie, the anorexic Israeli salon owner who has been doing my hair for years, kept chiding me to face the mirror as she played with my curly blond hair and the lace-and-pearl headpiece until they came together in a soft updo I loved and so did everyone else, including Edie, who is tougher than a Russian judge at the Olympics.

  I stole a glance at my mother, knew she was thinking what I was, that I’d been given a second chance and wasn’t life wonderful. Bli ayin hara, I added silently to ward off the evil eye, certain that my mother was doing the same even though her prayers four years ago and the red thread she’d knotted around my wrist before I’d joined Ron under the chuppa had been no match for his adultery.

  Natalie removed the headpiece and slipped a voluminous, almost-to-the-waist blond wig on top of my hair, which she’d gathered and fastened at the back with a clip.

  “The cap fits good, yes?” Natalie said, her Israeli accent still strong after twelve years in L.A. “It’s going to feel even lighter after I cut the hair.”

  “The color’s a perfect match,” Edie said. “Maybe I’ll borrow it in an emergency.”

  My sisters and I all have different shades of brown hair, which Edie and I have transformed with highlights into streaked blond. She wears hers in a short, blunt cut that suits her height (five feet) and personality.

  “Touch it,” Natalie invited. “Maksim, no?” she said, using the Hebrew for enchanting. She caressed the silky strands as though they were spun of gold, which they might as well have been, considering the two thousand dollars I’d spent on the wig, with its custom-fitted cap into which the color-blended hairs had been hand-sewn. “A hundred percent European.”

  “More like Nashville.” I stared at my reflection and swallowed hard. “I look like Dolly Parton.”

  “Only from the neck up, unfortunately,” Mindy said, and we all broke into laughter.

  The other hairdresser had left, along with her client, and the salon was quiet. Natalie had gone to the rear to shampoo my wig. My mother was fanning her flushed face with the magazine she’d been reading. Mindy had taken off her hat and slipped on the wig she’d had Natalie style for the wedding. Edie and Gitty were at the front of the shop, trying on hats. I swiveled in my seat and watched Liora, who had moved to a table piled with wigs and was trying on several close to her own rich brown. Liora is eagerly committed to covering her hair when she marries, and I’ve overheard her discussing the costs and merits of the newest sheitels (wigs) and the sheitel machers (stylists) who create the illusion that foreign hair is growing right out of the wearer’s head.

  Aggie had planned to cover her hair. I had, too, in high school, though my conviction hadn’t been strong even then. We’d argued about it, me whispering on the phone so that I wouldn’t wake Liora, with whom I shared a room until Edie and Mindy married; or lying on the pop-up trundle next to Aggie’s daybed long after her parents were fast asleep and we’d finished our homework and watched TV and talked about which guys in school were cute and what it would be like to kiss them, about whom we would marry, how many children we would have, what we would name them. A woman’s hair is alluring, Aggie would insist. Once she’s entered into a holy bond with her husband, only he and close family are supposed to see her hair. It’s about remembering that God is above you, that you’re married. It’s about privacy and modesty, don’t you see that, Molly?

  Later, when I abandoned Orthodoxy, Aggie didn’t argue or try to sway me, certainly not about covering my hair, and not about keeping the Sabbath or keeping kosher or following other laws that were no longer part of my life.

  I returned to Orthodoxy a few months before she was killed. It was a tenuous, gradual return that pleased my family but made them tiptoe around me, since they didn’t know what had sent me running, and in truth, neither did I. Aggie’s death rocked my faith and my resolve. She was deeply pious, pure of heart, and pure in action. If she had been killed, what chance was there for me? But instead of bolting again, I married Ron, which I suppose was a different kind of bolting, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.

  And now I was marrying a rabbi. I was happy to align myself with the many Orthodox Jewish women—like my grandmother, who is a role model of piety, and my sister Edie and Zack’s mother and some of my friends— who deal with the custom more in the breach than in the observance. I was doing this for Zack, who had asked but hadn’t insisted that I cover my hair, and not wear pants in public, and lengthen my skirts and sleeves, which were shorter than strict Orthodoxy allowed and had no doubt raised the brows of several of his congregants, all of whom would be looking at me even more critically from now on.

  How I dressed, what I did, what I said, and didn’t say. I had a flash of panic and wondered what had made me think I could be a rabbi’s wife.

  Natalie placed the stick-straight wet hair back on my head, securing the wig with a thin elastic strap that she clipped to the tabs on either side. The strap dug under my chin.

  “Now you look like Cher,” Mindy said.

  “How long do you want it?” Natalie asked.

  “Like my hair. A little below shoulder length.” I would be under a congregational microscope, I thought. Every day, for the rest of my life.

  “I’ll leave it a little longer,” Natalie said, misreading my frown. “I can always cut it, but it won’t grow back.” She raised a length of hair and performed the first snip. “You want me to cut it in a few layers, or leave it one length?”

  “Layers,” Edie said. “And wisps, not bangs.”

  “One length,” I told Natalie, mainly to counter Edie, who is usually right.

  “That’s for twenty-year-olds,” Edie said. “It doesn’t look natural on anyone older. Too flat.”

  “Gitty’s are one length,” Mindy said.

  My twenty-three-year-old sister-in-law has custom wigs that match her gorgeous red hair, which she’d covered with a black snood tonight.

  “I don’t mean Gitty.” Edie sounded flustered, which is unusual for her. “Your sheitels always look great,” she told her.

  I caught my sister-in-law’s eye in the mirror and winked at her. She smiled.

  “It’s Molly’s decision,” my mother said. “Natalie can always cut layers later.”

  Half an hour later the linoleum around the pedestal of my chair was carpeted in blond hair (about three hundred dollars’ worth, I figured). Natalie finished blow-drying and flat-ironing the wig into a sleek waterfall, the kind you see in L’Oréal commercials and that I’d always envied.

  “Nehedar, nachon?” Natalie said. “Shake your head. Don’t be afraid. See how the hair moves like it’s your own?”

  I shook my head vigorously and told her the wig was gorgeous. It was—nicer than my hair, thicker. “N
o more bad hair days. And it won’t frizz, right?”

  “You don’t like it.” Natalie frowned. “I can fix it.”

  “It’s a great cut. Perfect.”

  The wig was beautiful, but my hair and I were a team. We’d weathered close to thirty years and the occasional falling out over its mercurial temperament, and neglect or abuse on my part.

  “You’re not used to seeing yourself in a wig, honey,” my mother said. “You look great.”

  It wasn’t about how I looked. The Molly in the mirror was an imposter, taking on a commitment for which I wasn’t ready and everything it represented. I could work up to the wig, I decided, start with the hats or berets I’d bought, though I couldn’t picture myself conducting an interview in a hat. Or I could wear nothing at all. . . .

  “Maybe if you put in a body wave,” Gitty suggested. “It’ll look more like your hair.”

  “Layers,” Edie said.

  But was it such a big deal, really, to commit to something that would make Zack happy and to which my objections were not theological but personal?

  My cell phone rang. I was grateful for the distraction, and though I didn’t recognize the number on the display, I pressed a button and said hello.

  It was Trina Creeley. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she told me, a whispery quality making her sound nervous. “If you’re still interested, I can meet you tomorrow at noon at Musso & Frank Grill. It’s just a block from where I work.”

  I wondered what had changed her mind. “I know where it is.” I’d eaten there once or twice in my nonkosher days.

  “You have to enter through the back. So will you be there? I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

  Her anxiety was contagious. “Musso & Frank’s at noon,” I agreed in a low voice, but not low enough so that Edie didn’t hear.

  “Who are you meeting at Musso & Frank?” she asked when I flipped my phone shut.

  I dropped the phone back into my purse. “A woman I’m interviewing.”

  “Musso & Frank isn’t kosher,” Liora commented, as I’d known she would.

  “I’m not planning to eat there. I’m just meeting her.”

  “A week before your wedding?” Edie said. “What’s so important that it can’t wait?”

  “Two weeks.” I turned to Natalie. “What about a headband? Can I wear one with this wig?”

  She tsked. “You’d need to buy a band fall. I can get you one for five hundred. Human hair, good quality.”

  Edie narrowed her eyes. “This is about Aggie, isn’t it? Don’t do this to yourself, Molly.”

  My oldest sister is generous and kindhearted—she’ll cheerfully do your car pool or marketing for as long as you need help—but she’s a pragmatist. She understands why Connors’s news upset me, but not why it has plunged me back into mourning, and she’s been phoning me daily to make sure I stay on the wedding track.

  My mother and sisters were looking at me. Natalie excused herself and walked to the rear of the salon.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said. “I’m talking to the sister of the man who killed my best friend.”

  “Why?” Edie asked.

  “To find out if he killed her.”

  “If?” Mindy frowned.

  Mindy is an attorney, and I often bounce my theories off her. I explained what I’d learned. “For a while I thought maybe he didn’t do it, but with Trina’s locket . . .”

  “Does Zack know you’re pursuing this?” Edie asked. “Are you seeing him tonight? Or are you off investigating?”

  “Edie,” my mother warned. Her face was flushed again, either from another hot flash or from annoyance.

  “Zack is studying with a bar mitzvah boy tonight. He knows what I’m doing, and he understands.”

  “He’s probably just saying that,” Edie said.

  “I didn’t choose the timing, you know. And I have all the wedding details under control.”

  “And your emotions?” She placed her hand on mine. “Don’t take this wrong, sweetie, but does it matter who killed Aggie? Knowing what happened won’t bring her back.”

  I gripped the arms of the chair. “It matters to me.”

  “Okay. I won’t say another word.”

  She didn’t, not even after we all left the salon and walked to our cars. She was hurt, I was determined. In the morning she’d phone to tell me she loved me and wanted me to be happy, which I know is true.

  “Speaking of Zack, Molly,” Liora said in an undertone, so I figured she didn’t want Edie to hear. “Aren’t the two of you meeting with Galit at noon tomorrow to see the ketubah?”

  I was glad that the darkness hid my blush. “Right. Thanks.” I didn’t know how I’d forgotten. I’d been eager to see the marriage contract the calligrapher was illuminating. “I’ll have to reschedule.”

  “Galit, or Musso & Frank?” Edie asked.

  “Cut it out, Edie,” my mother said with unaccustomed sharpness. “Molly knows what she’s doing.”

  You could laugh or cry, I thought, leaning toward the former. I turned around to say something to Edie and saw my mother’s eyes. I could tell she was worried, too.

  twelve

  Wednesday, February 18. 10:32 A.M. Corner of Washington Boulevard and Kensington Road. Officers stopped a man riding a bicycle that turned out to be stolen, and wearing a backpack with $1,500 in burglary tools. The rider admitted he’d been arrested on burglary charges three times and used rock cocaine. The owner of the bicycle was contacted. He arrived and identified the bicycle. While the officers were talking to him, the suspect slipped into the driver’s seat of the patrol car and drove off. The suspect has a tattoo of the word “Venice” on his stomach. (Culver City)

  ROLAND CREELEY LIVED ON GOLDWYN TERRACE NORTH of Washington Boulevard in Culver City, which is south of Beverly Hills and sandwiched between Ladera Heights and Palms. I’m only moderately familiar with the area— even less so with Ladera Heights or Palms. I do collect Crime Sheet data from the Culver City Police Department (it’s not part of LAPD), and Zack and I have been pricing furniture and sighing over art we can’t afford while browsing in some of the stores that took up residence years ago in the landmark Helms Bakery Building on Venice Boulevard when the official bread maker for the 1932 Olympics permanently shut its ovens.

  With a Post-it on which I’d noted Creeley’s address affixed to the center of my steering wheel, I drove south on La Cienega. Traffic was sluggish. It took me almost twenty minutes to drive to Washington Boulevard, another ten while I passed numerous car dealerships and Ince Boulevard, named for Thomas H. Ince, the pioneer filmmaker who moved his studio here from its beach location at the urging of Henry Culver, the area’s developer, who had watched Ince film a silent Western on La Ballona Creek.

  A few minutes later I parked in front of Roland Creeley’s residence, a small, yellow clapboard bungalow within viewing distance of Washington Boulevard and the Grecian columns on either side of the old main gate that marks the entrance to what remains of Ince’s former studio, now part of Sony Pictures. (Before that it was Goldwyn Studios, MGM, DeMille Studios, RKO, Selznick International, and Desilu. After Ince’s sudden death, the studio had changed hands and names more often than Elizabeth Taylor.) I wondered if living in such close proximity to the studio had influenced young Randy and given him the acting bug.

  “I can see where you’d think that,” Creeley said when I asked him. “I grew up here, saw them filming The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid, and Ben-Hur, and lots of other movies that say ‘filmed in Hollywood’ on the credits but were made right here,” he added with a touch of resentment. “Anyway, it didn’t give me any ideas. No, it was his mother. Sue Ann took him from one agent to another when he was in diapers, told him he was special, that he was going to be a star.”

  We were in a small, overfurnished, and overheated living room painted Wedgwood blue. Creeley and his wife, wearing black sweatshirts and gray slacks, sat hip to hip on a rose-colored velvet sofa opposite a
matching armchair that practically swallowed me.

  Alice Creeley was a solidly built woman with a thick neck and a broad face that looked even broader because she’d slicked back her graying hair against her skull. I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but she was an unpretty woman, especially in contrast to the woman she’d replaced, and to her husband, who was clearly the author of his son’s good looks. Roland senior had the same defined cheekbones and squared chin, and though the years had lined his face and silvered his still-thick hair, he was a man you’d look at twice.

  He had the same deep brown eyes, too. Today they were somber and dull. I had seen the same vacant look in the eyes of the Lashers when they were sitting shiva for Aggie.

  “Sue Ann was the actress,” Alice said, the nostrils on her wide, flat nose flaring. “She sure played Roland for a fool.”

  “I thought she was happy,” Creeley said with more sadness than anger. “I’m a carpenter by trade. I worked on the studio lots, building sets, doing odd jobs. There was always food on the table, and money for extras. Then one day I came home and she was gone. She left a roast in the oven and a note on the fridge saying she didn’t want to be a mother anymore, didn’t want to be a wife.”

  He said this with surprise, as though he had just come across the note, and it was in a foreign language or some code he was still puzzling out. There had probably been signs he’d overlooked, nuances, body language. I had overlooked signs, too, had felt that same shock when I’d learned Ron was cheating on me, had felt foolish afterwards.

  “She left her little one crying and told Randy he was in charge,” Alice said, indignation making her voice quaver like a violin. “He was nine years old. She cleaned out one whole bank account, too.”

  “To be fair, it was money she’d saved,” Creeley said. “And she told Randy to go next door if he needed help.”

  “Sue Ann’s parents didn’t know where she went?” I asked Creeley, hoping to head off a diatribe from Alice, who had opened her mouth to say something.