“It must be difficult adjusting to the weather,” says Saul.
“It is,” I say. “I guess eventually I’ll get used to it.”
“Do you think you’ll stay here, long term?”
“That’s the plan,” I say. “There’s nothing in Florida. I mean, even where there’s something there’s nothing. Not compared to New York.”
The menu is written on the wall in chalk. We both order tea and decide to split a smoked fish platter with bagel chips.
“I’ve never been to a kosher restaurant before,” I say.
“This one is new.”
“How have you been?” I haven’t seen Saul since right after I got out of the hospital. Since he told me my mother wanted to get in touch.
“Not bad,” he says. “What about you?”
I shrug. “Just work, mostly. I’m feeling a little better, I guess. My ear still rings.”
“It’ll go away eventually,” he says.
“That’s what I hear,” I say. And then: “Oh, ha. I didn’t mean…”
Saul smiles.
“I haven’t called Aviva,” I say. “But maybe you already know that.”
“She sent me a text message about a month ago, asking if I’d passed along her message,” he says.
“What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her? I tried to call her back, but she didn’t pick up, so I just sent a text saying that I’d given you the message and that you said you’d call.”
The counter man sets out our tea.
“I haven’t seen your name in the newspaper lately,” Saul says.
“Yeah. I’m mostly doing rewrite. It pays a little more.”
“So no more reporting?”
“I’ll go back. I’m just… I don’t know, taking a break.”
“Well,” he says, “if you’re interested, I have a possible lead for you.”
“A lead?”
“I’ve been doing a little freelance private investigative work.”
“Really?”
“It sounds more exciting than it is,” he says. “Mostly parents trying to track down kids who have gone off the derech.” He pronounces this last word I’ve never heard of as “der-eck.”
“The what?”
“Off the derech means off the path. Jews who’ve left the fold. Your mother, for example. And the people you met at the Coney Island house. They’re all OTD, as they say. Anyway, I got a call from a man in Roseville. It’s a little town about an hour north of the city. In Rockland County. A lot of Haredi live up there.”
“Haredi?”
“‘Haredi’ is another way of referring to the ultra-Orthodox.”
“Okay,” I say. “Is ‘Haredi’ the same as ‘Hasidic’?”
“No,” he says. “Hasidism is a specific branch within the larger Haredi community.” He smiles at me. “Perhaps you should do some reading on this.”
I look down at my tea. He’s right.
He continues. “The man called me because his wife died somewhat mysteriously a few weeks ago. He said that her family didn’t want any fuss-apparently they’re worried it may have been a suicide-but he thinks it was something else.”
“Something else?”
Saul raises his eyebrows. “He didn’t say specifically. He said she was upset in the days before she died, but he’s convinced she wouldn’t have killed herself. They have a young child. And he is very unhappy with the police in the town.”
“He wants you to investigate?”
“No,” says Saul. “He said he doesn’t think anything will get done unless someone from outside puts pressure on the police and the community. He called hoping I might pass the information along to you.”
“Really?”
“Your work on the Rivka Mendelssohn case did not go unnoticed, Rebekah.”
I’m not sure what to say. I guess I didn’t think it went unnoticed, but it definitely didn’t occur to me that exposing a murderer and a cover-up inside the cloistered world of Borough Park might recommend me to members of the larger Haredi community.
“What’s his wife’s name?”
“Pessie,” he says. “Pessie Goldin.”
My shift at the Trib is always hectic for the first few hours when we’re scrambling to get copy in for the morning deadline. But things slow down after about six, and I Google Pessie Goldin. A newspaper obituary is the third and only relevant link. It says that Pessie Goldin, twenty-two, was buried in Roseville on March 5 and that she is survived by her husband, Levi, twenty-eight, and their infant son, Chaim. There is no mention of cause of death. Pessie’s son, like me, will grow up without his biological mother. But unlike me, there’s no chance his mother will suddenly appear when he’s twenty-three years old. When I think this I realize how insane it is that I haven’t called her back. It hits me hard: I want to meet Aviva.
Her phone number is in a note application on my phone. No name, just the ten digits. It is time to call. The newsroom is mostly empty. I dial, and it goes automatically to a generic voice mail announcement. I don’t leave a message, and the shock of my immediate fail is so palpable that I laugh out loud. The absurdity-the agony!-of anticlimax. Fine, I think: if I can’t solve Aviva’s riddle, I’ll try to solve Pessie’s.
I call the number Saul gave me for Levi Goldin. He answers after the third ring.
“Hello?” He sounds out of breath.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Rebekah Roberts. Saul Katz gave me your number.” Levi doesn’t say anything but I can hear a baby whining in the background. “Thanks for… taking my call. Saul told me a little about your wife’s death-I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you,” says Levi.
“Saul said you were interested in talking?”
“Now is not a good time,” he says. He shushes the child, whispering something in a language I don’t understand. Yiddish, I assume. “Can we meet tomorrow morning in Manhattan?”
“Sure,” I say.
“There is a diner on the West Side,” he says. “Frank’s. On Forty-ninth. Ten o’clock?”
“We’ll be there,” I say.
CHAPTER THREE
In Brooklyn, my future was always set: I would marry before I was twenty and have babies until I could not have more. That is what my mother did. That is what my aunts did, and that is what my cousins and friends from school wanted to do. We would support our husbands in their endeavors. Their endeavors would either be studying Torah, which was spiritually preferable but financially unstable, or working elsewhere within the community-teaching at yeshiva, property management, shopkeeping, imports. My father ran a taxi company. He and several of his cousins in Israel were the owners. The cousins put in all the money and my father put in all the labor. He worked very hard and made the business a success. There were nine of us, counting my sister Rivka (which I always do), and we were always fed and clothed. If my mother needed something-a stroller, or a washing machine-someone from the community would provide.
There were times that I thought I could live that life, but for the most part, from as far back as I can remember, I wanted to live another kind of life. I didn’t know what kind, exactly, and of course I didn’t talk about it. After Rivka died, I stopped loving Hashem. There was no good reason to kill her like that, to have nature attack her with such force. To sting her to death? Outrageous! I decided as I watched them lower my sister’s body into a hole in the ground that I would never do anything again for Hashem. I would never praise him, and I would certainly never live my life in his honor. I did not tell anyone how I felt for a long time. And when I finally did, I was ready to go.