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.