“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It is not your fault. I am the one that came to you.”
“Right,” I say. “Do you have a minute to talk? I’ve learned a few things that I thought you might want to know, especially before I put them in the newspaper.”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay, well, first of all it seems like Pessie was still pretty close with her ex, Sam Kagan.” I wait for a response, but Levi is silent. “I don’t know how often they saw each other, but I talked to a girl who used to live with Sam up in Greene County and she said she’d seen Pessie several times, including right after Sam came home from prison.”
“He was in prison?”
“Yes,” I say. “For drugs, I think. It sounds like he was pretty troubled. I spoke with a man who grew up in Roseville, and he told me that Sam had been a victim of… abuse.”
“Abuse?”
“Sexual abuse.”
“I see.”
“Did Pessie ever mention anything about that?”
“No,” he says. “But several months ago there was a story in the news about a Chassidish man in Brooklyn who was sentenced to life in prison for sexual abuse. Pessie followed the case very closely. Most of the people in the community thought the sentence was too harsh. Some people said the boy who testified was lying. We had some of her family over for Shabbos dinner just after the trial ended and there was a big argument. Pessie’s mother said that the boy was a drug addict and mentally ill and that she was donating money to the fund to defend the man in an appeal. Pessie screamed at her. I had never seen her so upset. She threw her parents out of the apartment and said that if they gave the man their money she never wanted to see them again. She said she would keep Chaim from them. I told her she was overreacting. I told her she should apologize to her mother.” He exhales. “No one mentioned a word about this Sam. Nothing!”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, because nothing else seems appropriate.
“Was she having an affair with him?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Apparently he’s gay.”
A pause. Levi lowers his voice. “Pessie once asked me if I knew anyone who was gay. I told her yes. My oldest brother. She asked if I ever saw him, and I said no, although that wasn’t because I didn’t want to-he joined the IDF when he was eighteen and after his service he moved to Indonesia. But we wrote letters, and I still get an e-mail from him now and then. She asked if I thought it was his fault that he was gay. I said I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure how she felt about it and I didn’t want her to think I was too… tolerant. Pessie’s family is more conservative than mine and you have to be careful. I thought maybe she was testing me. I don’t know why I did not just ask her.”
“Did she ever mention anything about work? I spoke with one of the women at the clothing store who said a man came in and they had a big argument. I think it’s possible it was Sam.”
“When was this?”
“The woman said it was about a week before she died.”
Levi sighs. “My work has been very demanding over the past several months. The company I work for is opening a location in Chicago and I have been traveling back and forth to supervise. The whole situation was very stressful and when I was home we mostly talked about Chaim, and made arrangements for when I was away again. I did not think the traveling would last for long. I thought it was a period we had to get through. And Pessie never complained. She seemed to be doing much better. She took care of everything at home. When something was broken she knew who to call to get it fixed. She never talked about her work and I did not ask. When I came home she seemed pleased to see me, but…” He hesitates a moment, then exhales heavily. “I thought she was happy with our life, but there was so much we did not know about each other. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted her to tell me what she thought. I assumed that would come with time. I never imagined our time was nearly up.”
I tell Levi that I will keep him informed as I continue reporting and he thanks me for taking an interest in his wife’s death. I type up what Levi said and start drafting a new article with the headline, “Dead Roseville Mother’s Secret Life.” I figure it’s worth at least sending to Larry since I don’t have anything from the State Police yet. I am a paragraph in when Saul calls.
“Can you pick me up the train station in Poughkeepsie this afternoon?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Did you get my message?”
“Yes,” he says. “I am sorry I did not call you last night. I wanted to wait until I had confirmation. You are right. Aviva has been living in New Paltz for almost ten years. I spoke with her roommate Isaac yesterday. Something is wrong, Rebekah. Her roommate says he hasn’t seen her in almost a week. He is very worried. And I think he is the only person she has to worry about her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Saul’s train from Grand Central is scheduled to arrive at 3:15 P.M. I arrive at the old brick station a little early and sit waiting on one of the long wooden benches, seat backs at ninety degrees, forcing a kind of posture that feels as historic as the space. Almost no building in Orlando is more than fifty years old, and here below the soaring arched ceiling, red brick walls, molded columns, and iron gas lamps, I feel suspended in time. People have been waiting for trains in this room, according to the plaque on the wall, since 1888. I imagine waiting for Aviva here. Waiting a hundred years. Lights going off and on, sun up and down, people in and out, and me, sitting upright, elbowing away despair.
“Could you stop that?” says the man next to me. I look at him and he looks at my right leg, which is popping up and down like it’s plugged in. “You’re shaking the whole bench.”
I stand up. “Sorry.”
Saul’s train arrives on time.
“I had a friend run a criminal background check on Sam,” says Saul as we get into the car. “He was arrested for drugs about four years ago and got three months in jail.”
“One of the girls I talked to said he got transferred to state prison.”
Saul nods. “According to my source in the DOC, he stabbed another inmate. Repeatedly. The man survived, but his intestines were significantly damaged. He has to wear an ostomy bag for the rest of his life. Sam’s sentence might have been more like ten years, but apparently several witnesses testified that the man sexually assaulted Sam and he was defending himself from further attack. Wardens won’t always take something like that into account.”
“It doesn’t exactly seem right to call him lucky,” I say, quietly.
“No,” says Saul. “It doesn’t.”
We cross over the Hudson River, wide and white-capped in the wind.
“It’s pretty,” I say, aloud but to myself.
“Yes,” says Saul.
We ride in silence for a while, and within just a few minutes arrive in New Paltz. A sign announces the SUNY campus. College kids in hooded sweatshirts, backs bent beneath overstuffed backpacks, cigarettes and enormous mugs in their hands, trudge down a main street with hippie clothing and incense shops, a couple bed-and-breakfasts, a taco joint, a Starbucks, and a record store. It’s no use trying to pretend I’m not in agony. What if she is there? Around the corner.
“I wonder if Aviva went to college,” I say.
“It’s possible,” says Saul.
As an adolescent, I sometimes imagined that Aviva had taken off to fulfill some wild, lusty dream of life. I assumed she’d never tell anyone about me because she’d all but forgotten. But I thought that before I had any idea about her life at all. Now, I know she didn’t run off to Mexico or Bali; she went back home to Brooklyn, then to Israel, then back to Brooklyn again, and then to a sleepy town upstate. Not exactly Eat Pray Love.