"Lacey, Lacey," he cooed, holding her tight against him. "It's all right. It's all right."
Finally she got hold of herself and eased her deathgrip on him. She wiped her eyes.
"Sorry about that. It's just..."
"I know," he said, taking her hands in his.
Lacey looked up at her uncle. Did he? Did he realize what she'd been through to get here? She'd thought she was tough, but the trip from Manhattan had taken her longer than she could have imagined, and put to shame every nightmare she'd ever had.
"How are your mom and dad?" he asked.
She saw the forlorn hope in his eyes—her mother was his older sister—but had to shake her head.
"I don't know. I tried to contact them when the shit hit the—I mean, when everything went to hell, but the lines were down and everything was chaos. I got to wondering if they'd even bothered trying to get in touch with me."
"I'm sure they did," Uncle Joe said. "Of course they did."
"How can you be so sure? They've refused to speak to me for years."
"But they love you."
"Funny way of showing it."
"They're not rejecting you, Lacey, just your lifestyle."
"One's pretty much wrapped up in the other, don't you think. At least you kept talking to me."
She'd been moved as a kid from Brooklyn to New Jersey when her father landed a job with a big pharmaceutical company in Florham Park, but New York had remained in her blood. When it came time for college her first and last choice had been NYU, for reasons beyond what it offered academically. Its location in Greenwich Village had been equally important.
Because somewhere along her years in high school Lacey Flannery had realized she wasn't like the other girls. She needed an accepting atmosphere, a place where anything goes, to stretch her boundaries and find out about herself, learn who she really was.
In her second year at NYU she moved into an off-campus apartment with a senior named Janey Birnbaum. At the time her folks thought they were just roommates. Three years ago, right after her graduation with a BA in English, she came out.
And that was when her folks stopped speaking to her. She'd tried to visit them, tried to explain, but they hadn't wanted to see or speak to her.
The one person in the family she'd found she could talk to was, of all people, her uncle the Catholic priest. Uncle Joe hadn't approved but he didn't turn her away. He'd tried to act as go-between but her folks stood firm: either get counseling and get cured—like she was mentally ill or something!—or stay away.
She had a feeling her father was behind the hard line, but she couldn't be sure. Now she might never know.
The rabbi said, "So may I ask, what is it, this lifestyle, that your parents reject but a priest doesn't?"
"I'm a dyke."
The rabbi blinked. Probably the first time anyone had ever put it to him that bluntly. She also noticed her uncle's grimace. Obviously he didn't like the word. Lacey hadn't liked it either at first, but Janey and her more radical friends encouraged her to use to it because they were taking it back.
That was all fine back then, but now . . . take it back from whom?
"Doesn't that mean a lesbian?" the rabbi said.
"Through and through."
"Oh. I see."
"Not just a garden-variety lesbian," Uncle Joe said. His wry smile looked forced. "A radical lesbian feminist, and an outspoken one at that."
"You forgot to mention atheist."
His smile faded a little. "I try to forget that part."
It had taken Lacey awhile to come out, but when she did she decided not to be out partway. She wasn't ashamed of who she was or how she felt and was ready to get in the face of anyone who tried to give her grief about it.
She'd started writing articles and reviews for the underground press—the radical, the gay, even the entertainment freebies—with the hope of eventually moving above ground. Her role model was Norah Vincent, who'd been writing a regular column for the Village Voice—back when there'd been a Village Voice. Lacey didn't always agree with her views but she envied her pulpit. She'd vowed that someday she'd have a column like that.
But that dream was gone now, along with so many others ...
"Anyway," she said, "I hadn't been able to contact Mom and Dad, so I decided to check up on them."
She'd been all alone then. Janey had gone out one day, scrounging for food, and never come back. After spending a week looking for her, Lacey had to face the unthinkable: Janey was either dead or had been turned into an undead. Crushed, grieving, and with New York becoming more dangerous every day, she'd decided to go home. She fought her way through the Holland Tunnel—the living collaborators hadn't closed it off yet—and made it to her folks' place in Union, New Jersey.
"When I got to their house, I found the front door smashed in and blood on the living-room rug." She felt herself puddling up, her throat tightening like a noose. "I don't think they made it."
She hoped they were alive or dead, anything but in between. They'd rejected her, they'd caused her untold pain—though she'd probably given as good as she got on that score—but they were still her parents and the thought of her mother and father prowling the night, sucking blood . . .
She'd nurtured the hope that with time they'd have come to accept her as she was—she'd never expected approval, but maybe just enough acceptance to invite her back for dinner some night. It didn't look like that was ever going to happen now.
Uncle Joe wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I..." His voice choked off and the two of them stood still and silent.
"This was your brother, Joe?" the rabbi said.
"My big sister. Cathy."
"I'm so sorry."
"Yeah," Uncle Joe said. "So am I." He cleared his throat. "But we can hope for the best, can't we? And in the meantime, lunch is getting cold. Are you hungry, Lacey?"
She was famished.
ZEV . . .
"Tastes like Dinty Moore," Joe said around a mouthful of the stew.
"It is," Lacey said. "I ate a lot of this before I turned vegan. I recognize the little potatoes."
Zev found the stew palatable but much too salty. He wasn't about to complain, though.
They were feasting in the sacristy, the small room off the sanctuary where the priests had kept their vestments—a clerical Green Room, so to speak. Joe and Lacey sat side by side. Carl and Zev sat apart.
"What's vegan?" he asked.
"Someone who eats only veggies," Lacey said.
"But—"
"I know. Being a vegan was a luxury. Now I eat whatever I can find."
Carl laughed. "Fadda, the ladies of the parish must be real excited about you coming back to break into their canned goods like this."
Zev said, "I don't believe I've ever had anything like this before."
"I'd be surprised if you had," said Joe. "I doubt very much that something that calls itself Dinty Moore is kosher."
Zev smiled but inside he was suddenly filled with a great sadness. Kosher . . . how meaningless now seemed all the observances that he had allowed to rule and circumscribe his life. Such a fierce proponent of strict dietary laws he'd been in the days before the Lakewood holocaust. But those days were gone, just as the Lakewood community was gone.
And Zev was a changed man. If he hadn't changed, if he were still observing, he couldn't sit here and sup with these two men and this young woman.
He'd have to be elsewhere, eating special classes of ritually prepared foods off separate sets of dishes. But really, hadn't division been the main thrust of holding to the dietary laws in modern times? They served a purpose beyond mere observance of tradition. They placed another wall between observant Jews and outsiders, keeping them separate even from fellow Jews who didn't observe.