Invisible City (8 page)

“That’s a quote? The kids are sad.”

“The children. She said the children are very sad.”

“Is photo there?”

“Yeah, but I got chased out before I could even ask for a photo. And I don’t recommend anybody going back there. At least not tonight.”

“Is anyone else there?” She means other press.

“Just
The Brooklyn Beacon.
”

“Not the
Ledger
?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Go home. Great work. Don’t forget to put in for overtime.”

“Does Larry at the Shack have anything? A cause of death?” The Shack is how newspaper people refer to the tiny office reporters have at police headquarters.

“Not yet. But it’s definitely a homicide.”

“Duh.”

Cathy laughs. “Great job, Rebekah.”

I hang up and roll the window down to talk to Frank.

“You got in,” he says.

“I didn’t get much. Just her age—she’s thirty.” The offer of information surprises Frank. “Thirty, married, four kids. Born in Borough Park. That’s it.” I can give him information because nobody reads his paper.

Frank repeats the information and I nod, indicating he’s remembered it correctly.

“Who’s this from?” he asks.

“The sister-in-law. Miriam.”

“Last name?”

“I forgot to ask.”

Frank snickers. Forgetting to ask for the last name is a first-week mistake.

“That’s all,” I say.

“Okay. Thanks.”

I roll up the window. George calls in and is told to go to a location in Queens. A city councilman’s wife was picked up for DUI. They want a shot of the car. I’m about to call myself a livery cab to go home when I see Saul coming out the back gate. He looks around, then waves at me. I get out of the car.

“Here is my phone number,” says Saul, handing me a business card that identifies him as a detective in the NYPD. “Please call me if you have any questions. For your story. Or … anything you need.”

He’s not staring at me with the same intensity now, which is nice. I write my phone number on a piece of notebook paper, tear it off, and give it to him.

“Thanks,” I say. “If you hear anything about the investigation, give me a call. I don’t even think they have a cause of death yet. I guess they’re waiting on the autopsy.”

Saul nods, but says nothing.

“Okay,” I say. “Bye.”

“Good-bye, Rebekah,” he says. He’s staring again. I turn and get back in George’s car to call for a livery cab.

“Everything okay with that guy?” asks George.

“Yeah,” I say. “He knew my parents.”

George nods. Unlike Johnny, George doesn’t need to fill a shift with talking. I appreciate that.

On the way home to Gowanus, sunk in the worn leather backseat of a beat-up Town Car, I check my phone and see that I have a text from Tony.

still on for 11?

It’s almost ten now. I even have time to shower.

see u there … hope you’re ready for a saga

As we merge onto the Prospect Expressway, I close my eyes and see Aron Mendelssohn. What if he killed his wife and now he’s mad enough to kill his sister for talking to me? I don’t remember ever reading about a murder in the ultra-Orthodox community, but I haven’t been in New York that long. I wonder if Saul knows more than he told me.

Saul.

I pull out my phone and dial my dad.

“Hi, hon!” he says.

“Hi, Dad.”

“How’s life in the big city?”

“Cold.”

“It’s a little chilly here, too. Maria brought in a bunch of grapefruit from the tree this morning and a couple had gone bad from frost overnight.” Maria is originally from Guatemala, but she’s been in the U.S. since she was a teenager. She and my dad met at a conference of religious academics in Denver when I was about three. Maria was working as an assistant to one of the conference coordinators. They got married when I was five and had my brother, Deacon, a year later. “How’s work?”

“Guess who I met today?”

“Who?”

“Saul Katz.”

“Oh!” He sounds happy, which I suppose I should have expected. I’ve never understood my father’s relationship to my mother and her memory. He doesn’t talk about her much, but when the subject comes up, he speaks with tenderness and sympathy, like she died of cancer instead of abandoned him with a six-month-old doppelgänger. I challenged him for years, screaming and crying that she was a horrible bitch, a selfish, weak, heartless little girl who ruined both our lives. He listened, and he stroked my hair and held me when I’d worn myself out. But he never said anything more combative than, she shouldn’t have left.

“Did you know he was a cop?”

“I did. He kept in touch over the years.”

“That’s what he said.”

“You sound upset.”

I sigh heavily. My dad is king of the understatement.

“He kind of ambushed me. Why didn’t you tell me you had, like, told someone who knew Mom that I was moving to New York?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “He e-mailed me a few months ago. I think he saw your byline in the newspaper. Wanted to know if it was the same person.”

“Great, so he’s stalking me.”

“I doubt that,” says my dad. “He’s a very nice man. How did you say you met him?”

“He showed up at a crime scene.”

“A crime scene?”

“Well, actually, at a victim’s house. They found a dead woman in a scrap pile this morning, and it turns out she’s Hasidic. I went to her house to get a quote from the family and Saul was there.”

“How awful. Are you okay?” My dad is very concerned about my work for the
Trib.
He doesn’t approve of tabloid journalism. I wouldn’t say I “approve” either, exactly, but, as I’ve explained to him,
The New York Times
wasn’t hiring and I wanted to learn how to be a reporter.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t know how you can do that kind of work. It must be so hard.”

“What kind of work, Dad?”

“Not the
Trib
—I just mean, a body in a, what did you say? A scrap pile? Lord.” My dad says “Lord” a lot. “The family must be devastated.”

I decide not to get into the reactions of the family members I’ve met so far.

“So, how did Saul know Mom, exactly? He’s older than you guys.”

“Saul was part of a group of ultra-Orthodox who were questioning the rigid lifestyle. They used to meet in a house out near Coney Island to talk freely and read newspapers and watch movies—things they couldn’t do at home.”

“They couldn’t read
newspapers
?”

“No. Most Orthodox try very hard to keep themselves from interacting, even passively, with the rest of the world.”

“Right, because we’re so evil.”

“Depends on your perspective.” I roll my eyes. My dad is the ultimate religious apologist.

“Okay, anyway…”

“They were all experimenting with new ways of living. From what I remember, Saul had married, at about nineteen, a woman he did not love. His family was not wealthy, and the matchmaker didn’t consider him a good match, so he ended up engaged to a troubled young woman from a slightly wealthier family.”

“Troubled?”

“Depressed? I’m not sure. What I know is that the marriage was a disaster. They were married more than ten years and had only one child, which was considered shameful. When he filed for divorce, she moved back in with her parents. Her father went to court and told a judge that Saul should be barred from seeing his son because he had become less religious and the child would be confused.”

“And the judge agreed?”

“Apparently.”

Everything I learn about Hasidic life is So. Fucking. Sad. But this is what she left me for. My stomach sizzles. I shift in my seat; I’m going to need a bathroom soon.

“Divorce was rare in the community, and he’d brought shame on his family and hers.”

“Where does Mom come in?”

“Saul had worked at his father-in-law’s clothing store. Of course, he was fired as soon as he filed for divorce. He had nowhere to go, and I think he actually slept outside or in the subway for a while until another man, I forget his name, invited him to help him fix up the run-down Coney Island house he’d been living in in exchange for a place to stay. Saul and the man—maybe his name was Menachem?—turned the place into a refuge for questioning Orthodox. That’s where he met your mother.”

“Mom stayed there?”

“She did. At first, she just went when she could sneak away from home, while her brothers were at yeshiva. But once we met, yes, she stayed there some nights. Until she came to Florida.”

“And now he’s a cop.”

“Yes. He enrolled in the academy, if I remember correctly, the summer your mother and I met. He was older than most recruits, but physically fit and didn’t have a criminal record. And back then, I don’t think you needed any college to get hired.”

“He didn’t go to college?”

“Most ultra-Orthodox don’t.”

“Well, he’s a detective now.”

“Good for him.”

“I think he was pretty surprised to see me.” The burning in my stomach is getting worse. I cross my legs.

“I’m sure. You look just like your mother.”

Sigh.

“Tell him I said hello, will you?”

“If I see him again.” It’s an obnoxious thing to say. I’d
like
to see him again. My dad would like me to see him again. Saul would probably like to see me again. I’m not sure why I antagonize my dad sometimes. I think I just hate the way he forgives her.

“How’s Iris?” asks Dad.

“She’s good. A lot of people are getting laid off in magazines but she seems to think she’s safe.”

“A lot of people are getting laid off everywhere. Did I tell you your brother lost his job at Taco Bell?”

“He
lost
a job at Taco Bell?” My brother is a sophomore in high school. He is very good-looking, very smart, and very lazy.

“If you can believe it, they actually closed the location.”

The driver pulls up to my block under the F train.

“Tell him to get into newspapers. It’s a thriving business.”

“Ha.”

“I’m home now, Dad. So I better go.”

“Okay. Thanks for calling. I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you, too.”

I take the stairs two at a time to get to the toilet. Fortunately, I haven’t eaten much, so the acidic shit that comes out is minimal. I have pills I’m supposed to take when the anxiety flares up, but they don’t mix well with alcohol, so I dig around for the little bit of weed left in Iris’s jewelry box. I pack our glass pipe and take a pull. Pot does pretty much nothing to help my symptoms, but it alters my thinking a little so I can sometimes pry my focus away from whatever it’s stuck on. I stand beneath the hot water in the shower for what seems a very long time and concentrate on breathing. My stomach is aflutter and my throat is tight. My heart is beating hard and fast in my chest, quickened by the pot and the image of Rivka Mendelssohn’s blue-skinned body and Aron Mendelssohn’s roar, mixed with the pleasant buzz that comes from the knowledge that I’m about to see Tony. I inhale the steam and the lavender scent of Iris’s fancy foaming body wash. The calm promised on the bottle is something I long for, something I can’t ever seem to catch.

Tony is at the bar before me, drinking a beer and chatting with the bartender.

“Hey,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder.

He gets up and hugs me. I rest my head on his chest for a moment, close my eyes. “What are you drinking?” he asks.

“Beer,” I say, turning to the bartender. “Something local. No IPA.”

“You heard the lady, Rico.” Rico, sporting a newsboy cap and a long, stringy ponytail, obliges. The beers come and we drink. Tony seems to know someone at every bar or restaurant in the city.

“I met the dead lady’s family,” I say.

“Tell me.”

I tell him. I tell him about Rivka’s blue skin, about the little boy at the gas station, about the big house, about Miriam, Aron, and Saul. I tell him that I forgot to ask Miriam’s last name, and that I was worried about her after Aron chased me out.

“So, Saul knew your dad? But you’re from Florida, right?”

“He knew my mom, actually. She was from Brooklyn. She and my dad met here while my dad was doing an internship.”

“And now they live in Florida.”

I don’t tell everybody I meet about my mom—it’s a sad tale, and the awkward pity is unpleasant—but it’s kind of front and center right now. And I feel safe.

“My dad does. My mom’s … gone. She left right after I was born.”

“Really?” He looks genuinely surprised, and then sad, like he just heard really bad news. Almost like he feels for me. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … fuck.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve had a lot of time to get used to it.”

“Do you talk to her?”

I shake my head. “She could be dead or alive. I have no idea.”

“And this guy, Saul, he knows her?”

“Knew her.” But he could know her, I think. He could know where she is right now. My heartbeat speeds up and I breathe in sharply.

“You okay?” asks Tony, putting his hand on my knee. “Wanna change the subject?”

Wouldn’t it be nice, I think, if it were that easy? Change the subject, change the way I feel. Change my life. I nod, but I can’t pull the pinched grimace off my face. I look away and drink. One-two-three big swallows of beer. Swallow the tightness. Liquefy it.

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s been a long day.”

Tony motions for another round.

“Tell me if you wanna bail,” he says. “I know it’s late.”

“No,” I say. I let this feeling of fear slow me down for years. I let it keep me inside. No more, not here. Not in New York City.

“Wanna come over?” I ask Tony.

“I do,” he says slowly. “You sure, though? We don’t have to…”

“I’m sure,” I say, sliding off the bar stool. I can’t imagine sleeping alone tonight.

SATURDAY

CHAPTER FIVE

Tony and I get about five minutes into watching season five of
The Wire
in my bedroom when we start kissing, which turns quickly to me pulling off my shirt, him unhooking my bra, and his very thick dick inside me. I sigh and lean back when it goes in. It feels like a relief. He’s got his arms tight around me and he comes with a loud cough.