Invisible City (29 page)

He pauses.

“Rivka asked me to ask Miriam and Heshy to leave.”

“Did you?”

He shakes his head. “I did not believe that Miriam could have purposely harmed my child.”

“And now?”

“And now I believe that she did. But it is much too late. I am so very, very sorry.” His face, the one that had frightened me that night outside his office door, is slack with defeat. “I believed it was the right thing to do to keep our family together. I believed Miriam needed us. She had been sent away her whole life. I believed that she deserved our care.”

He pauses. I wait. “Just before Rivka’s death, Miriam became unmanageable. It began with Rivka.” He purses his lips and looks at the table. “My wife was not in love with me. I believe she tried to love me, for some years. But after Shoshanna’s death, she became restless.” He pauses again. “We made a visit to a house in Coney Island. It was implied she may have become involved with a man outside our marriage. I also learned that Heshy had begun … following her to gatherings. Miriam learned this as well, and when Rivka came home the evening after we confronted her, Miriam became hysterical. She called Rivka names in front of the children. She screamed at me, demanding I divorce her instantly. She began throwing things. She smashed a heavy drinking glass on the edge of the countertop and sliced her arm. There was blood everywhere. But it was as if she did not see it. Something had changed behind her eyes. When she calmed down, she spoke in what almost seemed a different voice. She had become someone else, someone I did not recognize. Someone I know now I should have feared.

“Rivka told me that she was not going to spend another night in the house with Miriam. She said I could take care of her if I wanted, but that she was finished. My wife took the children and spent the last night of her life in a hotel.”

“How did you find her?”

“She did not pick Yakov up at yeshiva. The rebbe called me more than two hours after she was due to be there. She had taken our minivan, and when I got home I saw that it was parked on the street. The house was very quiet. I walked through the hall and there was Miriam. She led me to the garage.”

“I asked Miriam on Friday when she’d seen her last,” I say. “She said Rivka had been gone several days.”

Aron shakes his head. “She was confused. Rivka was still warm when I found her. Miriam had taken her clothes. She said she wanted to wash them. Heshy and I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the car. I could not leave Miriam alone. I instructed Heshy to … dispose of her.”

“Why Heshy?”

“It was a terrible mistake. I was not thinking clearly. I thought of my son, and my daughters. I thought that if her body was gone, I could tell them—I could tell everyone—that she was just … gone.”

SUNDAY

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Saul is already at the Starbucks when we arrive. He has a bouquet of mixed flowers wrapped in clear plastic on the table, and when he sees us he stands up and holds them out to me. It’s an awkward gesture, and I appreciate it. He is not in the shapeless suit today. Instead he’s wearing a sweater and dark-washed blue jeans. My father opens his arms to hug him, and Saul reaches out a hand; they collide, and laugh.

“Brian,” says Saul. “You don’t look a day older.”

“I’ve been blessed,” says my dad. I can tell he’s not sure how to act. Neither of them are. Saul’s feeling terrible because he almost got me killed, and Dad’s feeling terrible because Saul almost got me killed. But they’re looking at each other intently. It’s almost touching. Each one seeing my mother in the other.

Maria sits down and my father starts asking Saul questions about people they knew in common from that summer he was in New York—friends of my mother’s, people from the Coney Island house. But neither ever says her name. I often wonder how Maria interacts with the ghost of Aviva Kagan.

“I feel as though I have explaining to do,” says Saul, after the short list of names has been run through.

“You almost got me fired,” I say. “I looked like a fool.”

“I’m very sorry for that,” he says. “Of course, I’m much more sorry for not seeing … For subjecting you to…”

I put my hand up to stop him. In the hospital, I spent time thinking about how I’d ended up in that garage. There were a lot of reasons. I’d been stupid, at turns, missing signals, mistaking my judgments for the truth about people and their motives. From the moment I encountered Rivka Mendelssohn’s body and connected her to Aviva’s Orthodox world, I was ready to pounce. It was easy. When I said I was a Jew, they spoke to me. But I misinterpreted what they were asking when they asked, over and over, You’re Jewish? It wasn’t, do you know this phrase in Hebrew or have you been bat mitzvahed. They were asking me:
Do you understand?
The fear of being a Jew. The baggage. The long legacy of hate and murder and discrimination. The rootlessness. The desperate need for self-preservation. And, of course, I don’t really know. I only know the baggage of being me. But part of it, I think now, is being a Jew.

“You didn’t think it was Miriam, did you?” I say.

Saul shakes his head.

“But you knew her history?”

“I knew she’d struggled. I knew she’d gone away. But your mother went away, yes? Many girls ‘go away’ for various reasons of … misconduct.” He looks at my dad. “I’m sorry, not misconduct…”

My dad shakes his head ruefully and puts his hand on Maria’s leg beneath the table. “Let’s face it,” he says, “it could have been considered misconduct.”

Saul turns back to me. “But the police are only putting most of that together now,” he says. “Miriam was taking very powerful medication. The autopsy showed all kinds of things. Antipsychotics, antidepressants, antianxiety. None of it should have been mixed. Who knows who was prescribing it to her.”

I look at the table. It seems somehow inappropriate to say that I watched her take an almost lethal mouthful of lorazepam. She was just trying to feel better, she said. Less anxious.

“You spoke with Aron Mendelssohn, then?” he asks.

I nod. “Thank you.”

“You know he’s not talking to the police.”

“I do.”

There is a pause.

“What about Miriam’s husband?” I ask. “What’s he saying?”

“He’s not saying anything, either,” says Saul.

“Is he in custody?”

“No. He is in Israel. Aron Mendelssohn got him on a plane.”

“Jesus.”

“Rebekah,” says my father. He hates it when I use Jesus as a swearword.

“Will they … extradite him?”

Saul raises his eyebrows. “I doubt it. They may try, but my sense is that they will not try very hard. And maybe it’s enough already.”

“Enough already?”

“The killer is … gone. The truth is out.”

“Is it?”

Saul shrugs. “How much truth do you want?”

All of it, of course. But I don’t say that.

We finish our coffee and Saul tells us he must leave for an interview.

“I have a lead on a job at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island,” he says. “They need a security manager.”

He and my father hug. My father promises to call when he comes back to visit me. We walk out together. Dad is making dinner for me and Iris, so he and Maria go off to do the shopping. Saul is going to drive me home to rest.

“He seems happy,” says Saul, after my father walks away.

“I think he is,” I say.

We’re standing in the glass-enclosed vestibule between the Starbucks and the sidewalk. Saul hugs himself against the cold. He’s shivering.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I didn’t want to tell you with your father there,” he says. “I had a call from your mother.”

“Really?” The corners of my mouth rise involuntarily into a nervous smile.

Saul nods.

“She called you? Or you called her?” I’m almost giggling. Am I happy?

He looks at me. I’ve caught him in a lie.

“So you know where she is,” I say. “You’ve known this whole time.”

“She’s upstate,” he says, looking out across the street. “She read your articles. She wants to meet you.”

And there it is. For twenty-two years I’ve been performing for her. Imagining she was watching, imagining her impressed when I showed moxie, repelled when I was weak. But it wasn’t ever her watching. It was me, watching myself, wondering if I could ever win her love. She read what I wrote. She knew it was me.

“She wants to meet me?”

“Yes,” says Saul. “She says she has a story for you.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you first and foremost to my husband, Joel, for pushing me to write, sacrificing holidays and vacations together so I could finish the first draft, and never wavering in your certainty that I could—and should—complete this book. Your ideas and imagination made
Invisible City
stronger, and your love has made my life a dream come true.

Thank you to my own personal literary dream-team: my crackerjack agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan; and Minotaur’s editor extraordinaire, Kelley Ragland. Your enthusiasm, intelligence, and support have made all this possible.

Thank you to Justen Ahren, Claudia Miller, and everyone at the Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency. You have created a truly magical place for writers. I would not have finished this book without you.

Thank you to Liora and Larry Fogelman, who invited me to use their home as a writing retreat at a critical time in the life of the book.

Thank you to
48 Hours
executive producer Susan Zirinsky for supporting my work on this book. You have been my cheerleader, mentor, and friend.

Several people within the Orthodox and “off the derech” community in New York and New Jersey provided generous—and invaluable—service. Thank you to Ben Hirsch and Daniel Soskowitz for guidance early on and encouragement throughout. Thank you to Rebecca Schischa, Chana Schwartz, and Mimi Minsky for your close reads and honest notes. Thank you to Judy Braun, Pearl Reich, Shauli Gro’s, and Chaim Levin for inviting me into your lives, trusting me with your stories, answering my dumb questions, and being such fun drinking partners. There are others I will not name, but you know who you are. Thank you.

Thank you to my incredible family: the “Chicago Dahls” and Nancy and Walter Urbach.

Thank you to my parents, Bill and Barbara Dahl, and my sister, Susan Sharer. Our two-religion household seemed odd to many, but we know it was exactly right.

This book is dedicated to my grandparents: Reba and Robert Blum, Jr., and Jeannette and Ernest Dahl. Your lives inspire me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
ULIA
D
AHL
is a journalist specializing in crime and criminal justice. She has worked as a reporter for
CBS News.com
and the
New York Post,
and her feature articles have appeared in
Mental Floss, Salon,
the
Columbia Journalism Review,
and many others. She was born in Fresno, California, to a Lutheran father and Jewish mother and now lives in Brooklyn.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

INVISIBLE CITY.
Copyright © 2014 by Julia Dahl. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-250-04339-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-4191-8 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466841918

First Edition: May 2014