Invisible City (13 page)

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 between 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…”

“A woman?”

“Just, a woman at the funeral.” Another thing I have to be careful of, revealing sources. “I didn’t actually get her name.”

Miriam’s face, if it’s possible, becomes sadder. Her chin sinks closer to her neck and she closes her eyes, almost wincing. “There is so much talking,” she whispers. “That is how the women are. Their children, they are not enough. Their husbands, they are not enough. They are always talking.”

“What kind of talking?”

Miriam shakes her head. “Horrible things. Lies. That is what killed her. The
lies.
”

I bring my voice down very low. “What were they saying?”

Miriam puts her finger to her lips. I wait, but she doesn’t continue.

“Have you spoken to the police?” I ask her.

“No. I have nothing to say. I do not gossip.”

“You never know what might help,” I say. “Sometimes little stuff, like the last time you saw her. Or, where she liked to go, that sort of thing.” I’m kind of talking out of my ass here. I’ve never been privy to a murder investigation that wasn’t on
Law & Order.
I want to ask again if she’s safe, but I stop myself because I wouldn’t know what I’d say if she said no.

“The service was very crowded,” I say.

“I’m glad,” she says.

“Were you there?”

“No,” she says. “It was … too much.”

That’s the same thing Mrs. Shoenstein said about why Chaya didn’t go. Too much.

“Is there anything else about her you could tell me?” I ask, figuring I should at least try to get a quote I can give the desk. “Was she … had she been acting differently at all?”

Miriam’s eyes wander toward the back gate.

I repeat my question and Miriam pulls her eyes slowly back to me. But she says nothing.

“Because, you said you hadn’t seen her since Tuesday? I just wonder if…”

“I am not certain about the dates.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay. Well, is there anything you could tell me? What did she like to do? Did she…” I’m flailing around for examples of activities, but everything that comes to mind—movies, sports, adventure travel—seems culturally inappropriate. “Did she like to read? Or … cook?”

Nothing. It’s almost as if she doesn’t hear me.

I lower my voice. “I heard … I was told she’d lost a baby recently.”

Miriam shakes her head. I can’t tell if she’s indicating that, no, she did not lose a baby, or yes, and it was very sad.

“Thank you,” she says finally. She begins walking toward the back gate. “Rivka would have liked you.” She opens the gate. Apparently it is time for me to go. “She liked to talk.” And with that, Miriam turns and walks back into the house. I stay in the yard for a moment. Once again, I forgot to ask her last name. Maybe Saul can help with that.

*   *   *

I get to the Starbucks before Saul and pull out
The Oprah Magazine
while I wait. When I open it, a piece of paper slips out. It is a handwritten note.

Chaya,

I know you are frightened. I was frightened after becoming engaged. I think most of us are frightened. But I cannot answer your questions about whether your marriage will be a happy one. I married because it hadn’t seemed possible to do otherwise. I know now that I always had a choice. Had I chosen not to accept Aron’s proposal, my life would have become more difficult in many ways. I do not know where I would have lived, but now I know that I would have lived.

What does this life mean to you, Chaya? Why do you pull on your stockings in July? What do you feel when you pray? I wish I had asked myself these questions when I was 18. Hashem can see the truth inside your heart. And I now believe that to defy that truth is to defy Hashem. Your choices may cause pain before they bring joy, but no joy can come from lies. Especially lies you tell yourself.

Yours always,

Rivka

I read the note again. The handwriting is a mix of print and cursive. Flourishes on the
y
’s and
f
’s, but otherwise utilitarian. The paper is thin and pink, the kind of paper I wrote notes to my friends on when I was eleven years old. Not notes like this, though. This note is more honest than any note I’ve ever written. And judging by its soft, easy crease, Chaya read it often. My dad used to tell me stories about my mom as if she were a character in a fairy tale. Like most suburban girls growing up in the 1990s, I learned about sex young. I was nine when our Girl Scout troop went to Planned Parenthood to learn about ovaries and sperm. I learned the rest sporadically from Madonna songs and Maury Povich and maybe someone’s mom’s copy of
Our Bodies, Ourselves.
I had several years for the act itself to morph from mildly horrifying to potentially cool, and several years after that to actually get involved in doing it. Not my mother. My mother, my father said, learned about sex only in whispers. And then one day her best friend, a girl named Naomi, became engaged to a man in his twenties. Naomi was seventeen, and my mother was sixteen; neither had ever traveled farther than the Catskills. Her interaction with men was limited to family. And suddenly, Naomi was to be married. Which meant sex. My mother, my father said, stayed with her the night before her wedding. Naomi was sick with dread. She knew not to expect love, but when she’d met her fiance, she told my mother, he made her stomach turn. Your mother, said my father, vowed she would not find herself in Naomi’s position. She was not ready to run away then, my father said, but she was planning. She knew that the best way to postpone an engagement was to make herself undesirable to a potential groom’s family. That was the word he used, “undesirable.” When he came to this part of the story, I always pictured my mother burping in public, or parading around in dirty clothes. That’s what undesirable meant to me: ugly, unladylike. But that’s not what my mother did. What my mother did was start reading—and asking questions. Word got around, and it bought her some time.

I fold the note back into the magazine. I’m somewhat surprised I haven’t heard from the city desk, which is good because I’m not sure what I should tell them. There is no way I’m turning the letter over. They’d print it.

Saul arrives, and when he sits down I hand him the magazine.

“There’s a note inside. It’s from Rivka.” As he opens it, carefully, I explain. “I met an old woman at the funeral who said her daughter Chaya had been friends with Rivka. So I went and talked to her. She was very pregnant. Her mother knew about the gardener, but Chaya thought maybe Rivka died in a car accident. It seemed weird that the mom knew so much, and Chaya knew so little.”