I pull out my notebook.
“Is it okay if I take notes?” I ask.
Suri nods.
“What do you mean, he would not tolerate it?”
Suri shrugs. “He would take her children away. And her home. Which is pretty much all she had.”
Suri pauses and looks out the window. “I can’t believe she’s dead. Maybe she was right to be afraid. Do you think her husband could have killed her?”
“I really don’t know,” I say.
“She didn’t love him, but I don’t think he ever beat her or raped her…”
“Raped her?”
“Forced her to have sex, I mean. In a frum home, a wife is expected to be available for sex at any moment-unless she’s on her period. It’s really jarring because, when you’re a girl, they tell you that you have to cover yourself from head to toe so you don’t tempt or distract boys. You don’t speak to males you are not related to, and you certainly don’t touch them. Then you get married and it’s like, virgin to farm animal overnight. And if you don’t actually like your husband, let alone love him…” Suri shudders.
“Did Rivka ever love her husband?”
“I don’t know,” says Suri. “Maybe once. But she was definitely thinking about leaving him. She used to go online and look at apartments. She showed me pictures of one in Queens. Or maybe Long Island. She said it had three bedrooms.”
“She and Baruch were always looking at places to live,” says Dev, coming back into the room, carrying an envelope. “She showed me an apartment in Miami once.”
“Miami!” says Suri.
“She was just pretending,” says Dev.
“Pretending?” I ask.
“She was never going to leave,” says Dev. “She was stringing Baruch along.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” says Suri. “Just because she’s not the same as you doesn’t mean she’s not serious.”
“She was too serious, that’s what I’m saying. She could be a bitch.”
“Dev!” Suri looks at me. “She doesn’t mean that. Dev, why are you saying that?”
“She pretended to be nice to me,” says Dev. “But she said shit about me behind my back to Baruch.”
“She was worried about you!” Suri looks at me again. “Please don’t write this down. Dev disappeared for, like, two weeks.”
“I didn’t disappear. I just didn’t tell Rivka and Baruch where I was. Anyway, here.” She hands me the envelope full of photographs. “Those are pictures of Rivka.”
I stretch open the envelope and there she is. Alive. Laughing as she sits at a picnic table in the woods. Her eyes are squeezed closed and her head is thrown back. A baby is in her lap and it’s done something she thinks is hysterical. Her smile is enormous. She has a long neck and rosy cheeks. Her hair is pulled up beneath a wrap like the one Miriam was wearing Friday night. In another, she is unsmiling in a frilly wedding dress; a lace collar brushes her chin. In another, she is a student; a teenager. Buttoned up and posed; a shy, crooked smile. She is wearing a black headband with a tiny black satin bow holding back her dark brown hair. It isn’t until I see her here that I realize I had been picturing her with red hair. Like me and Aviva.
“She’s pretty,” I say. I want to burn this face into my brain and use it to replace the chalky, bruised Rivka lying naked in the funeral home basement. They are nothing-and everything-alike. Full eyebrows growing together, never plucked. Delicate hands. The Trib loves photos of victims. Especially attractive victims. If I can get Dev to give me these photos, I can get a story in the paper.
“Where’d you get these?” asks Suri, now standing over me.
“Heshy’s drawer.”
“You went in his drawer? It’s not locked?”
“If it was locked, I couldn’t get in it,” says Dev.
Suri is not happy. “We have drawers, lockers sort of, in the mudroom downstairs,” she tells me. “Just to put stuff you need, like a toothbrush, or money, or whatever. Do you go in mine?”
“You lock yours,” says Dev. “Anyway, do you think that’s normal? Having your sister-in-law’s photos tucked in a little stash so you can look at them whenever you want?”
“How long have you been going in there?” ask Suri.
Dev shrugs. “Does it matter?”
Suri sits down next to me to look at the photos. “Maybe Heshy killed her,” she says softly.
My hands feel clammy and hot. Heshy is downstairs. Is anyone else in the house?
“Does anyone else know about these?” I ask Dev.
She shrugs and goes into Suri’s bag for her pipe and pot. As she’s lighting another hit, my phone rings. It’s Tony. I silence it.
“How long did you know Rivka?” I ask Dev.
“As long as she’s been coming here, I guess. A year? Less? I don’t know.”
“Did you know she’d lost a child?” I ask. Both girls nod. “Do you know what happened?”
“She said it was asthma or something,” says Suri. “She said Shoshanna-that was the little girl’s name-had weak lungs. I thought it was kind of weird. Rivka’s husband is rich. I know there’s medicine for asthma. My little brother has it. Anyway, we only talked about it once. She kept saying it was preventable.”
“Do you know what she meant by that?”
“Not really. I mean, I figured she meant that, like, she felt guilty. Maybe she’d missed some medication or something. But she said it really angry. That was weird, too, actually.”
“Why was it weird?”
“It felt like she wasn’t saying everything. It was like she blamed something, or someone.”
“Did either of you ever meet her husband?”
Suri shakes her head.
“I did,” says Dev. “About two weeks ago. He came here. He was fucking pissed.”
“She didn’t think he knew she’d been coming here,” says Suri.
“We were in the kitchen. Fucking Moses let them in.”
“Them?” I ask.
“Him and Heshy and Heshy’s wife.”
Heshy’s wife. “Miriam?” I ask.
Dev shrugs. “She was Rivka’s age, but she was uglier.” That could be Miriam, I think.
“Heshy was with them?” asks Suri.
“Yeah. He’s such a fucking putz. He was, like, pretending he’d never been here. The husband came in and grabbed Rivka. He shook her really hard. She dropped a plate and it broke on the floor but nobody even noticed. He was shouting and his face was so close, he was totally spitting on her. And she didn’t say a word.”
“What did he say?” I ask.
“He said what you’d expect. He said she had betrayed her community and her family and Hashem and everything. He said he’d divorce her and shun her and she’d never see her children again. I thought she’d, like, yell back. Tell him off, or at least try to explain, but she didn’t. She just sort of zoned out. It was like someone turned her off. Baruch came running from upstairs and I thought they’d, like, announce their love, but she basically ignored him. I don’t think he knew what to do. And then Heshy’s wife fainted.”
Suri looks skeptical.
“I’m serious. She took one look at Baruch and keeled over. It was super dramatic. Aron and Heshy carried her out to the car. Rivka refused to go with them, but afterward she was, like, catatonic. Baruch was pacing and muttering about the laws and what countries would give them asylum with their kids.”