An hour later, the library e-mails Pessie’s backgrounder, with possible addresses for her kin in Roseville, Brooklyn, and Lakewood, New Jersey. Levi said that Pessie’s mother was named Fraidy, and there is a listing for Shmuli and Fraidy Rosen. I call the number and a woman answers.
“Hi,” I say, “my name is Rebekah Roberts. I’m a reporter for the New York Tribune.”
Silence.
“I’m trying to reach Pessie Goldin’s family.”
“What do you want?”
“I, um, I’m very sorry to hear about Pessie. I met her husband, Levi, earlier today and I am working on a story about her death…”
“I have nothing to say,” says the woman, and hangs up the phone.
Perhaps someday I will get used to being hung up on, or having a door slammed in my face, or being run off a front lawn, or shouted out of a business. But I’m not there yet. Shame creeps like fog up my cheeks and squeezes my heart. If my daughter died in a bathtub, would I want to talk to a stranger about it? Probably not. But what if that stranger wanted to help? And is that what I’m doing, helping? It’s hard to feel like it sometimes. Sometimes I just feel like a predator.
Just before the 5:00 P.M. deadline I e-mail a draft of Pessie’s story to Larry Dunn, the Trib’s lead police reporter and, since the Rivka Mendelssohn story, a kind of mentor for me at the paper. After I press send, I call him at the Shack.
“Rebekah!” he says when he picks up. “How are you?”
“Good, thanks,” I say. “How are you?”
“Oh, the same. Working on the NYU jumper.” The night before last, a sophomore fell, jumped, or was pushed off the ledge of her fourteenth-floor dorm balcony and landed on the sidewalk along Sixth Avenue. The cops found a lot of weed in her room, and a little coke, so the paper is calling it “The Dorm Drug Den Death,” though it is unclear whether she was a heavy user, a dealer, or if the stuff had been planted.
“Do you have a minute? I just e-mailed you a story.”
“Hold on. Let me check.”
“It came from a source in the ultra… Haredi world.”
“Oh God,” says Larry, “you’re not done with those people?”
It’s not a terrible question. “Not yet,” I say. “There’s a man in Roseville, up north of here. His wife is originally from Brooklyn and she died sort of mysteriously. He found her in the bathtub with the baby screaming in the other room.”
“When was this?”
“She was buried March fifth.”
“That’s almost a month ago.”
“I know,” I say.
“What do the police say?”
“The chief was a douche. He was like, did you know she was taking antidepressants?”
“One of those,” he says.
“Yeah…”
“Gimme a second,” he says. “I’m reading.”
I wait.
“Do you think this is another pressure-from-the-community thing?” he asks.
“I don’t know. The husband said her parents are worried she killed herself and are, like, ignoring it. But he definitely wants an investigation.”
“Bathtubs are tough,” says Larry.
“What do you mean?”
“Even with an autopsy it’s hard to prove how someone died if they’re found in water.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t look into it, I’m just thinking out loud.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have a photo?”
“Yes,” I say. “A wedding portrait.”
“Good, gotta have a photo. Have you talked to the parents?”
“I think the mom hung up on me.”
“Ah. Okay, well I guess this works for me. I’ll send it to Mike for tomorrow.” Mike is the city desk editor. He hired me and used to tell me where to run when I was on the streets. Now that we’re in the office together, we rarely talk. I think he’s better with people over the phone than in person.
“Cool,” I say. “If I get anything from the parents, I should e-mail him?”
“Yup,” he says. “You ready to make more enemies in the black hat world?”
Ready as I’ll ever be.
CHAPTER FIVE
I left your grandparents’ house late one night while everyone was sleeping. I kissed your face and held you, your tiny body zipped up in pajamas with sheep on them, a bit sweaty, and deep in sleep. Your eyelids fluttered and you blew a little bubble of spit as I said good-bye. I felt my heart contract, as if someone were squeezing the blood out, when I set you back into your crib. I wore a backpack and soft shoes and I walked out the sliding glass door in the kitchen. I took a bus from Orlando to Jacksonville and north to Ocean City, Maryland. My cousin Gitty was there-or at least I hoped she was. Gitty left Brooklyn a few years before I did. When I was fifteen, I asked her mother, my tante Leah, if she ever wrote to Gitty, and she said no. I asked why not, and she said that she had four other daughters who were good Jewish girls and would make good Jewish wives, and she had no time to waste on a girl like Gitty. That was how she said it, “A girl like Gitty.” I didn’t need to ask what that meant.
“She sends letters to her sisters, trying to poison their minds,” she said. “I throw them away.”
When I asked where the letters came from, she shooed me out of the room. Tante Leah and Feter Izzy lived on the second floor of a house halfway up the block from ours. The mail came late in the day on our street. Sometimes I saw the lady from the post office pushing her bag as I walked home from school. I had a key to their apartment, so one day I let myself into the first floor where the mailboxes were. I went back every day, and after about a week, I found a letter from Gitty. I took it home and that night I wrote to her telling her what I’d done. I told her I missed her and that I hoped I could visit her. I sent the letter to the return address in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Gitty wrote me back and told me that she was very happy and that she was living with some nice people in a house near the ocean and working selling sunglasses and t-shirts in a little store along the boardwalk. She said she went to the movies sometimes and was saving her money for driving lessons. We wrote to each other every week for almost three years. And then, right after I met your father, she stopped writing. I sent four letters that went unanswered. A fifth came back marked return to sender. I asked Tante Leah if she’d heard from Gitty, and she said no. About two weeks before I left for Florida, Gitty sent me a letter from Ocean City. I’m still alive, she wrote. New job, new city. Come visit! I sent a letter telling her my plans. I wrote again after you were born. I asked her to send me her phone number. I said I really needed to talk. But I never heard back.
I had saved almost five hundred dollars from money your grandparents gave me for cleaning. The bus ticket cost one hundred. It was the middle of the night when I arrived at the bus station in Ocean City. I had barely slept. Every time I shut my eyes I saw you. Your swirl of fine red hair. Your upturned nose. The tiny, sharp fingernails I had to file down every day. I saw your chubby legs, kicking, always kicking. I saw your smile as I changed your diaper. And your blue eyes, wide open, astounded by everything you saw. You were so beautiful. I looked for Gitty’s name in the phone book attached to a booth outside the station, but she wasn’t listed. I had the address from the year-old letter and I asked the man behind the thick glass if he knew how I could get there. He said it wasn’t far and that I could walk. I waited at the station until dawn and then I started walking. I could smell the ocean but I couldn’t see it. Seagulls circled overhead like vultures, squawking. The streets were quiet. Little houses with little squares of grass in the front. I could feel I’d caught a cold on the bus. I sneezed and sneezed and I didn’t have any Kleenex so I wiped my nose on my sleeve. The address on Gitty’s last letter was a house separated into apartments. There were metal lawn chairs and green Astroturf on the front porch. It was barely eight o’clock, but I felt feverish and desperately wanted someplace to curl up, so I rang the bottom bell. No one answered. I rang the other two. Nothing. I tried the doorknob and it was open. Hello? I said. It smelled like cigarette smoke and urine inside. I stepped into a room covered in thin carpet, with old food and beer cans strewn about. A girl was asleep on one of two sofas. There was a dog in the corner, which frightened me. It wasn’t big, but I had never spent the night in a home with a dog. No Chassidish family has a pet. They are not kosher. But I felt so weak I would have slept in a room with a tiger. I sat down on the sofa opposite the girl, pulled my feet up beneath me, wrapped my arms around my backpack, and fell asleep.