Dov shakes his head. “You know that, and I know that, but Pessie’s family probably thinks Prozac is the same thing as, like, OxyContin. They probably heard ‘antidepressants’ and assumed she wanted to kill herself. She still has sisters and brothers who need to get married and a suicide in the family would make shidduch much more difficult.”
“What’s that?” asks Iris.
“Shidduch is the matchmaking process,” says Frannie. “And every little thing matters.”
Dov nods. “And who wants to tell people their sister committed suicide? Blaming it on the goyish medication they don’t know anything about is easier. But none of it makes any sense.”
“What do you think happened?” I ask.
“I really don’t know,” he says.
“But you don’t think it was suicide.”
Dov wipes his hand across his face. “I don’t. She just… wasn’t the type. Some of us don’t fit in from the start, but Pessie did. She was a happy kid. Kind of a goof, you know? Her mother was a great cook and she sold food for holidays and stuff. There were always people in and out of her house. And I think she was one of eleven or twelve…”
“Twelve kids?” gawks Iris. “Holy shit.” I kick her under the table.
Dov nods. “In a house like that, there just aren’t enough adults to keep an eye on everybody. It can be easy to get into trouble. Her older brother went OTD back in, like, the nineties. I think he got into drugs.”
“A lot of people do,” says Frannie.
I’ve heard this before. Iris and I take the fact that we can dabble in drinking and drugs and casual sex, or take the occasional “sick day” from work, without really having to worry that one indulgence will lead to too many. We’ve had years to learn self-control and moderation in a world full of temptation and moral relativity. Not Dov and Pessie. Like the boy at the chulent asked: If there are no rules, how do you know where to stop?
“It caused her parents a lot of heartache and I know that upset Pessie. She used to say that she thought it was very selfish of her brother to leave like he did. But it was easy for her to say that. She was pious. She really believed that all the rules and rituals were important.”
Dov pauses. “I haven’t seen her in a few years, though. Since before she got married. If you can find him, you should talk to Sam Kagan. He probably knew her better than anyone.”
Iris and I look at each other. Kagan. That’s Aviva’s last name.
“Sam Kagan?” I ask.
“They were engaged at one point. We all grew up together in Borough Park and our families moved to Roseville around the same time. His family and Pessie’s lived a couple streets away from each other. There was a lot of turmoil in his family; his mom died in childbirth and his father never remarried. One of the sisters was OTD, too. Boys and girls aren’t supposed to hang out, especially if they’re not related, but no one noticed they’d become best friends. By the time they were sixteen, the families were discussing marriage. They got engaged, but there were big problems: he had been abused.” Dov shakes his head. “Monsters like that are very good at finding the boys who are different.”
“It’s really hard to be gay and frum,” says Frannie. She has been slumped low in her seat picking at a Greek salad while Dov has been talking. “The number one thing we are supposed to do is to make a big family. When you are gay you are shamed because you are gay. But also you are shamed because you betray Hashem by not marrying and making more Jews.”
Dov nods. “Sam loved her, I think. But not the way she loved him. She would have married him even knowing he was gay. She probably thought she could fix him. It was a while before she agreed to consider another match. And Sam’s been in a lot of trouble since he left. We haven’t spoken in years. His family sent him to New Hope, too. I found him on Facebook when the lawsuit was first getting started and asked if he wanted to talk about joining. He was, like, fuck lawsuits, I’ve got a gun.”
Dov purses his lips for effect, then sighs.
“I’m glad you’re looking into this, Rebekah,” he says. “I think what you did writing about Rivka Mendelssohn was very brave. And very important. A lot of people don’t agree. I’m sure you’ve read the blogs. People can be such assholes online when they know they’re anonymous. Believe me, I know. I’ve been getting death threats for, like, years. But maybe it takes someone outside the community to really investigate the bad things that are happening. I don’t know how Pessie died, but I don’t think she killed herself. And if all she was taking was Prozac, it doesn’t make sense she OD’d. But if that’s what her family is saying I doubt anyone in the community is going to do anything about it. They just want everyone to go back to normal and pretend no one has problems that can’t be solved by prayer.
“But prayer doesn’t make you straight,” he continues. “That’s why I’m in this lawsuit. And prayer doesn’t do police work. Her sister says she had a reaction to her pills, but how could anybody know? There was no autopsy.”
Dov wipes his mouth with his napkin and sets it on top of his plate.
“Do you know if Sam has a sister named Aviva?” I ask, feeling my face flush.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think that was the one who went OTD. She was a lot older than us, though. I never met her.”
“Do you know where she lives now?” asks Iris.
Dov shakes his head. “No idea.”
It’s after three when we leave the diner. Dov and I exchange phone numbers and he promises to call or text if he hears anything about Pessie or Sam.
In the livery cab home, Iris asks about the blogs Dov mentioned.
“Have you read any of them?”
“No,” I say. And I don’t want to, I think. Dov said he’d received death threats. And he said it with a kind of conciliatory tone-like I might have, too.
“Are you gonna look Sam up on Facebook?”
“I guess,” I say. My lips feel swollen, buzzing with the anxiety shooting up from my stomach. “If he’s OTD and she is, too, maybe they’re close.”
“Maybe he knows where she is.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe she bailed on him, too.”
We get out in front of our building on Third Avenue. The F train rumbles above us. Across the street, a sanitation truck idles. One of the men who collect steel in grocery carts and push it to the scrapyard on Smith Street rolls by, his cart empty.
As soon as we get upstairs, I open my laptop and Google myself. The first page of results is all stories from the Trib, but halfway through the second page there is a post on a Web site called FarFrum.com with the headline “Who Is Rebekah Roberts?” The author-whose name is simply “Administrator”-links to my articles about Rivka Mendelssohn and writes:
You’ve by now read all about the murder of Rivka Mendelssohn. We at FarFrum applaud the reporter who apparently risked her own life to get justice for Rivka-but WHO IS REBEKAH ROBERTS? A quick Google search reveals she is from Orlando and is a graduate of the University of Florida’s school of journalism. Is she a Jew? And what do you think of her reporting on the charedi? We suspect there are some unhappy heebs out there…
There are thirty-three comments. The first is from username “davenDan”:
this woman has blood on her hands. the goyim will use this to hurt us. she should be stopped before she brings death to us all.
Username “Ruthie718” posted beneath davenDan:
she is not jewish. no jew would do this.
Below that is “Heblow”:
Slut. I heard she fucked a cop to get her story.
Further down, username “Bodymore666” posted:
just like you chassidish puppet-bitches to hate on someone speaking the truth instead of actual MURDERERS! no wonder everyone wants to kill you all.