Day of Atonement (33 page)

Frieda Levine raised
her fist, about to knock, then abruptly retracted it to her bosom.

She had it all worked out in her head. Akiva was not the sentimental type, so histrionics were out of the question. She would act civilized, conducting herself with respect, and most of all, she would
listen
if he talked. No matter how painful his words might be, if he talked, she would listen.

If he preferred that she do the speaking, she would explain the purpose of her visit: to convey her family’s deepest thanks and to ask for personal forgiveness.

At no time would she lose control of her emotions.

If he wanted more—
if
she were lucky enough for that to happen—then of course she’d welcome him into the family as she had welcomed him into her heart.

It was dangerous for her to hope too much. Resolution was far away, best to take it one step at a time.

She knocked, the door moving forward a few inches as soon as her hand contacted the wood. She waited for the door to swing open, and when it didn’t, she peeked inside.

“Come in, Mrs. Levine,” Decker said. “Close the door and come sit down.”

He adjusted the bed upward, studying the woman who’d given him half his gene pool. She wore a gray tweed jacket, a red blouse, and a black wool pleated skirt. Her legs were
encased in black stockings; on her feet were sensible flat shoes. Draped around her neck was a wool red and black knit scarf. Her wig was blunt cut, the artificial tresses salt-and-pepper-colored, her eyes hidden behind tortoiseshell glasses. A black bag was slung over her shoulder. The only makeup Decker could detect was a spot of rouge on each cheek.

She cut a handsome demeanor—very professorial.

Frieda sat, draping her scarf and bag over the back of the chair. “It was very nice of you to see me.”

“I want to thank you for giving me blood,” Decker said.

“It…” Her throat was clogged. No, this would never do. She cleared her throat. “Let me see. Where do I begin? My family…”

She stopped, aware that she was hoarse. She cleared her throat again.

“Would you like a glass of water?” Decker asked.

“No, thank you, Akiva,” Frieda said. “I’m fine.”

Decker waited for her to continue. She fumbled for her bag and pulled out a white envelope.

“This is from Ezra,” she said, “and Breina of course. At some time later…when you’re up to it, they would like to talk to you in person. Thank you personally…” She pulled out two more envelopes. “This one’s from…let me see…” She turned the envelope over. “This is from Shimmy and this one’s from Yonasan. Not only do we talk a lot, we write a lot.”

She smiled weakly.

Decker said thank you and took the proffered envelopes. They were thick, at least four or five sheets. He put the letters on his nightstand.

Frieda said, “The girls…Miriam and Faygie…they say thank you.” She felt her eyes well up, turned her head, and cleared her throat for the fourth time. “The girls wanted to bake you a cake.”

Decker smiled.

Frieda laughed nervously. “I told them it was silly to bring
you a cake before Yom Kippur. Afterward was better. So if you don’t mind, I can send Rina with the cake tomorrow night.”

“That’s fine,” Decker said.

“Or I can bring the cake if you want.”

There was an awkward moment of silence.

Decker said, “How’s Noam?”

Frieda bit her thumbnail, her lip beginning to tremble. What had happened to that chubby little baby who had bounced in his crib, a silly toothless grin on his face? Her beautiful grandson with those sweet, big eyes. Dear God, where had he gone? Nine days ago, an obstreperous teenager had disappeared. What had returned was a broken soul steeped in agony. A little boy drowning in a whirlpool of pain. Whatever he had done, he should not suffer so bitterly—not at such a young age.

The hardest part was Noam’s constant refusal of comfort. He had hardened his ears to any words of solace, crying out that he deserved his terrible fate.

Everyone feeling so helpless, waiting for him to make a breakthrough. Only time would tell.

“He’s doing very bad, Akiva,” Frieda said. “Ezra’s not one to admit there’s a problem, but he was so shocked by Noam that he immediately asked Yonasan to find him a psychiatrist. Even Ezra could see the boy’s deeply disturbed.”

“Rina said he was troubled,” Decker said. “I’m glad he’s seeing someone.”

Frieda shook her head. “Noam refuses to go. He also refuses to live at home, saying he doesn’t deserve a family. At the present time, he lives in the basement Beis Midrash of the shul. It was a compromise. Ezra and Breina agreed to it because they didn’t know what else to do. Noam wouldn’t even come into the house. So the rabbis said he could live in the basement, if he acted as the
gaba
—the helper. At least in the Beis Midrash, we all feel he will be safe.”

She sighed deeply.

“So he does a little work in the morning. A little sweep
ing, rearranges the prayer books. Breina visits him. Brings him food. But he won’t talk to her. When he isn’t working, he acts as if he’s in mourning. He wears torn garments, sits on the floor in front of the Holy Ark and does
tshuvah
. He eats nothing, he drinks a little water made bitter by baking soda. He cries out, tells no one to feel sorry for him, he brought it on himself. He will not talk to his family or to the rabbis. It’s heartbreaking.”

“Maybe Noam feels that God is the only One capable of forgiving him,” Decker said.

“His sins were that terrible?” Frieda asked.

Decker hesitated a moment. “I don’t really know, Mrs. Levine.”

But he had ideas. Maybe Noam had just been a witness, but it was equally likely that he’d been more. The first assault victim recalled the masked boy sticking a gun into his belly, pulling the trigger but no bullets coming out. The murder victim
had
two bullet-hole exit wounds in his back. They were not noticeable at first because of the evisceration, but they showed up at the autopsy. It was conceivable that Hersh shot the second victim, then carved him up. Decker wanted to believe that’s what had happened. Past history. What was the difference anyway?

Except that Noam knew the truth. And now he was crying out that he deserved his fate, that he should suffer for his terrible crimes. In a way it might have been better had Noam been charged with something. Retribution was cleansing. But Noam had walked, nothing concrete to tie him to the crimes.

Nothing except a ski cap, now buried under tons of refuse in some L.A. city dump.

Still, Decker felt justified about his decision. He knew in his soul that Noam’s repentance was sincere. No doubt in his mind, he’d never do anything like this again. If
God
forgave those who did true
tshuvah
, who was he to do less?

Frieda shook her head sadly. “Ezra always wanted Noam to be more religious…but not like this. Not because of a
heavy heart, Akiva. It’s so painful to us all, but there’s nothing we can do. Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. Hashem gave us the Day of Atonement to repent for all our sins, the minor ones as well as the major ones. Perhaps he’ll learn to forgive himself.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t think so,” Frieda said.

“I wish him well, Mrs. Levine,” Decker said. “I wish you and your entire family well. But some things…”

“You never get over them,” Frieda said.

Decker didn’t answer.

Frieda said, “I came here to ask your forgiveness. First for my family for putting you in terrible jeopardy. Then for me personally.” Her eyes became briny pools. “I’ve come to ask you to forgive me personally.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Decker said. “I took on the case willingly, I knew the risks. That’s how I earn my living. That’s why I carry a gun. I’m sorry I got shot, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault except Hersh Schaltz’s and he’s dead.

“As for you…I’ve thought about this for a long time, Mrs. Levine. Sitting in this room, I’ve had nothing but time to think about it. I think I’ve been overly preoccupied with the thought of
who
my biological parents really were. For years, I thought about them in the abstract, especially during my teens when I was angry at my parents. At that time, I felt that I didn’t really belong in my family. Course when you’re a teenager you don’t feel you belong to anyone.”

Frieda nodded.

“But I don’t feel that way anymore,” Decker said. “You know, lots of things go through your head when you’re being shot. My first thought was: Dear God, I’m going to die. Second thought: What’s going to happen to Rina? Third thought: Dear Lord, my mother’s going to be heartbroken. My mother down in Florida—”

“I understand.”

“Do you? In the past, I’d always been worried that
if
I met you, and
if
everything went ideally, how would I cope with
dual loyalty?” Decker hesitated a moment. “There isn’t any dual-loyalty problem, Mrs. Levine. You’re a very nice woman, but I only have
one
mother.”

“I want it to be that way,” Frieda said. Her voice was heavy with sadness, her eyes were moist. “But your having a mother doesn’t mean we can’t have some kind of relationship.”

“We do have a relationship,” Decker said. “Not a close one, but a relationship. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep things just the way they are. I’m not that same soul-searching adolescent anymore, Mrs. Levine, but I’m not heartless. I have an untold amount of affection, even awe, for that fifteen-year-old girl who gave me up for adoption. That poor little girl who must have been so scared, who must have had to cope with furious parents, a painful labor and delivery, and a secret she could never admit to anyone because she lived in a very strict, religious community—”

“Please, no more!” Frieda covered her face and broke into pitiful sobs. She hadn’t meant to react this way, but his words…oh, how could he have known what she’d been feeling all these years? She cried and cried until she thought there was nothing left inside her. But the tears wouldn’t stop.

Eventually, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She reached up and grabbed him, needing to touch him, her baby—
her
precious little baby wrenched from her breast by a stern, unforgiving father and a passive, bewildered mother. Oh, how she held her baby’s hand, squeezing it until she noticed he was grimacing in pain.

“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry.” She released his hand immediately. “Did I hurt you?”

Decker said no.

“I’m so sorry—”

“I’m fine.” He patted her hand. “Really, I’m fine. Are you all right?”

Frieda pulled out a tissue from her handbag and dried her cheeks. “Akiva, do you know why I married the man I did?”

Decker shook his head.

Frieda said, “There is a custom in our religion called a
pid’yon haben
—redemption of the firstborn. Are you familiar with it?”

Decker said he was. It was based upon the final plague inflicted on the Egyptians by God, the killing of the firstborn males. A plague of revenge wrought by God because the Egyptian Pharaoh had ordered every firstborn Jewish male to be drowned in the river Nile.

Firstborn Jewish males were considered to belong to God. A family redeemed its son in a ceremony called
pid’yon haben
. Not an elaborate rite. When the baby was thirty days old, the family gave a
kohen
a token gift and the
kohen
—acting as an agent of God—gave the son back to the family.

“So you know,” Frieda said, “that Jewish families do this ceremony except for those families belonging to the tribe of Levi, which includes the
kohanim
, the priests.
Levi’im
are not required to redeem their sons, because the
Levi’im
were never slaves in Egypt.”

Decker nodded.

Frieda said, “I never married your…biological father civilly, but we were considered married according to Jewish law. So when we parted, I was given a religious divorce. Divorced women cannot marry a
kohen
, a priest. But they can marry men from the tribe of Levi. My father
insisted
I marry a Levi so if my firstborn with my new husband happened to be a boy, I would not be required to do a
pid’yon haben
and defile the ceremony. Alter Levine was
not
my heartthrob, Akiva. But Alter was a gentle man who loved me very much. And Alter was a Levi. So I married him.”

She shrugged.

No one spoke for a moment.

Finally, Decker said, “How did you explain away the divorce?”

“Oh, that wasn’t hard,” Frieda said. “I simply told him that I had been engaged before, had made
tenoiyim
—a mar
riage contract—with another boy before him. Then we broke off the engagement. According to Jewish law, if a couple makes
tenoiyim
and breaks up, they must be religiously divorced whether they marry or not. To this day, Alter still thinks he married an untouched woman. And I am too cowardly to correct his impression.”

Decker said, “That’s not cowardice at all, Mrs. Levine. That’s
shalom bayis
—keeping peace in the house. What would be the point? I’m sure you’ve been a wonderful wife, you’ve raised a wonderful family together. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is,” Frieda said, “that it is still
deception
. And in the back of my mind, I always knew there was a piece of me missing because of my deception. If I had admitted the truth to him—to everyone—I would have been a much more complete person a long time ago.”

Decker said, “Mrs. Levine, that being the case, why didn’t you ever try to contact me? I was on the list from the American Adoptees Association. You could have reached me anytime you wanted. Why didn’t you?”

“I was so afraid, Akiva,” Frieda said. “Afraid of what people would think. So superficial a reason, but this was the case. And I was very afraid of your rejection.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Do you forgive me, Akiva?” Frieda said. ‘Do you forgive my cowardice?”

“There’s nothing to forgive—”