Mike pulled me off the story at noon on the day of the shooting, right after the Associated Press reported Sam’s name. I passed contact information for Aviva and Isaac’s New Paltz neighbors to the Albany stringer and the Trib got exclusives from them. Matty gave the photo desk a picture he took of the swastika the Halls spraypainted on the yellow house and it got more than five million hits.
Despite my promise in the car on the way to the scene, I did not deliver an interview with Sam. Through Aviva, I warned him and the rest of the Kagans not to say a word to the press, and they took my advice. It wasn’t a tough sell; they were leveled by the shooting and their connection to it. Ashamed and guilt-sick, none seemed able to find solace in the fact that, were it not for Sam, many more people would have died. The media camped out in front of Eli and Penina’s apartment for ten days, but no one came outside. Not once. Neighbors brought food and were accosted, but declined to comment. On the afternoon of the Boston Marathon bombing the reporters finally packed up and left. But the damage was done. Old Avram was dead of a stroke within a month. Diny’s boys were expelled from yeshiva for fighting. A year after the shooting, Aviva was Sam’s only relative still in the U.S; the rest of the Kagans made aliyah and try to rebuild in Israel.
Within a few days, rumors about Sam and Ryan and the “real” reason why Roseville-not Kiryas Joel or Williamsburg or Lakewood-was the target of Connie’s wrath began to surface. Friends of friends told ravenous cable news producers that Sam was “in a relationship” with Connie’s son-but neither gave an interview, and without confirmation and more details, the story eventually fizzled. Mike asked me about it constantly, but I shut him down. The family won’t talk, I kept saying. I didn’t tell him that I also warned Kaitlyn that the best way to help her friends was to stay away from reporters. She must have given my advice to other people who were close with Sam and Ryan because their small circle closed ranks.
People who knew Connie Hall, however, practically lined up to tell their stories. None of them had any idea Connie had a gay son, but just about everyone in the county (in a couple counties, actually) had apparently heard Connie Hall threaten to kill people. That’s what he did, people told the reporters. He got drunk and spouted off about the niggers and liberals and fags he wanted to off. No one seemed surprised he’d finally made good on his threats-especially once they heard about the cancer-but the specific target, and the fact that he murdered children, came as a shock. Or so they said.
In the rest of New York, the focus became seeking forgiveness from the Jews of Roseville. Goyim throughout the state were ashamed of Connie, and even those who had been critical of the Haredi influx in the area took great pains to distance themselves from his ideas. There was a rush to show support and sympathy for the traumatized community. As the town sat shiva, religious organizations throughout the state mobilized to prepare and deliver kosher food, run errands, make phone calls, and provide rides on the Sabbath. Donations poured in: more than a quarter of a million dollars in less than a week to help bury the dead, provide counseling, and create a trust fund for the victims and their families. A month after the shooting, an interfaith group met at Nechemaya’s home to discuss extending and strengthening the relationships forged in sorrow.
At just after 2:00 P.M. on the day of the shooting, police let the boys out of the yeshiva. They came out holding hands, dozens of them in one long line led by a member of the State Police. They were tiny and tall. Boys as young as four and as old as fourteen, scores of them, all dressed alike, all silent, struck mute by what they’d endured. The parents had by then been moved away from the yeshiva, down the hill and toward the parking lot of a nearby shul. At the edge of the school grounds, the Statie handed the boys off to a group of men from the community, and they all started running-as desperate to get back to their families as their families were to get to them.
I watched the reunions, trying not to gawk at the primitive, almost grotesque displays of emotion erupting all around me. I remember thinking, My job is to approach these people. Did you see the shooter? Do you know anyone who died? How will your community recover? But I couldn’t do it. Instead, I just stood and watched, and through the crush of bodies and the confusion, I spotted Henna, her arms wrapped around a little boy clutching a raccoon pillow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A few hours after the shooting, I text my dad to tell him I’m okay and we agree to talk later that night. When he calls, I start with Aviva. The where and when and how. I tell him what I know, which isn’t much: that she lives in a house with another ex-Jew in a town about two hours north of the city; that she cleans houses for a living; that she has been estranged from her family since leaving us, and that her baby brother shot Connie Hall this morning.
“Does she have… other family?” he asks.
He means a husband, children, and I realize I don’t know for certain. I think back to what Saul said about Isaac when Aviva was missing: I think he’s the only one she has to worry about her.
“She seems pretty alone, Dad.”
“Do you think you’ll continue to see her?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Though I guess I don’t know how much. Do you want me to… tell her anything. From you?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Rebekah,” he says. “But thank you for asking.”
“I love you, Dad,” I say.
“I love you, too.”
Despite being officially off the story, I stay upstate for a week after the shooting. Almost a thousand dollars on my credit card, but at least it’s tax deductible. I keep my notebook out at all times, scribbling notes about what I see and hear, engaging in conversation with anyone I can. With no pressure to call new information in to the city desk every couple hours, I actually get to absorb what people are saying-not just listen for good quotes. The rest of the news corps don’t have this luxury. Roseville is a city in shock. The few Haredi who brave the media siege to do their own shopping or try to get back to work ignore the reporters entirely, and everyone is complaining that their editors and producers in Atlanta and L.A. and London don’t get it.
At an ice cream parlor on Roseville’s main street-which becomes a gathering spot for journalists because of its free Wi-Fi and electrical outlets-I meet a woman from a nonprofit called the Center on Culture, Crime and the Media. She tells me that she travels around the world-from Moscow to Mexico City to Roseville-providing resources and leading workshops on how to cover culturally sensitive crimes. I tell her my story and she encourages me to apply for an upcoming fellowship.
“Your connection to the story and this community could make for a really compelling piece,” she says, and gives me her card.
It is at this same ice cream shop that Aviva and I finally have an hour to spend alone together-after all the victims are in the ground, after she’s been questioned and released, after she uses the last of her savings to hire a contractor to make the yellow house livable again, and after she offers her assistance to Eli and Penina, who are too broken and needy not to accept her help. I arrive first and focus my anxiety on sitting up straight so that I appear confident and nonchalant when she walks in. I want to show her what a successful, healthy woman I am. It’s mid-afternoon and the sun shines in through the shop window, making it hard to see who is outside. Aviva is right on time, and as soon as I see her I realize that what I want isn’t really for her to be impressed with me. What I want is for her to acknowledge me-impressive or disappointing. I want her to be forced to contend not just with the memory of me, and what she did to me, but the real live almost grown-up me. She avoided contending with me for more than twenty years, and now I’ve got her. Does she love me? Maybe. What does love look like on a person’s face?