He picks up on the second ring.
“Hi, hon!” he says. “You working?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m up in a town called Roseville. A lot of Jews from the city moved up here, so there’s a big Haredi community. This man named Levi reached out to me and Saul because his wife was found dead in their home. Everybody thinks it was suicide but he thinks it was murder.”
“Goodness,” he says. “That’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So, I didn’t tell you this but Saul actually got a call from… Mom. Aviva. Apparently she’s upstate. She wanted to meet me, I guess. I didn’t call her back for a while, though. And now she’s not answering her phone.”
I spit the story out quickly and am glad I can’t see my father’s face when he learns, for the first time in two decades, that the woman who gave him a baby and then gave up is suddenly present in his life again. I know what I’ve just said has affected him because for the first time I can recall, my father is at a loss for words. Typically, his automatic response to sadness or distress is to immediately offer some verse or story or perspective; that’s his role as the youth minister: to comfort and guide. He’s good at it, especially when it’s not his biological kids he’s guiding and comforting. When my mom left, his church embraced him-and me-without reservation, and that, in some way, shaped his life after Aviva. God’s grace, he called it. I’d be lost without it.
“Dad?” I say.
He clears his throat. “I’m here,” he says. “I just wanted to shut the door. I’m in my office at the church.”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course,” he says. “Thank you for asking.”
“Are you mad?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want you to think I’m, like, betraying you by getting in touch with her.”
“Don’t be silly, Rebekah. I hoped one day she would reach out to you.”
“Do you think you’d want to see her?”
Another long pause. “I don’t know,” he says finally, slowly. “She gave me you, and I am thankful to her for that. But I love you so much more than I ever loved her. I never wanted to say anything negative about her to you. That was very important to me. I can’t say what I might have done in her shoes, but she brought great pain into my life, Rebekah. I’m happy with what I have now, but I’m a different man than I was before she left us. It was so sudden. And what she did took something from me. My innocence, I guess you could say. I hadn’t understood that people really did things like that to each other.” He pauses. “In some ways, I know, the experience made me a better counselor to those in pain, and brought me closer to the Lord.”
Whenever my dad says things like “brought me closer to the Lord,” I cringe. It’s such a corny, awkward thing to say. I always imagined he was trying to convince me of something, trying to push me to believe what he believes by exaggerating a relationship with the God he is so devoted to. But just because such a thing would never come out of my mouth doesn’t mean he isn’t telling me the truth. And if I actually want to understand him-which is something he deserves after all these years-I have to assume that when he says things like that he is being sincere.
“I don’t look forward to having that pain in my life again,” he continues. “But I’m a big boy, honey. I can handle it.”
And I know he can.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Be safe, Rebekah. Promise me.”
“I promise. I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
When I hang up the call I am trembling. Did Aviva just help bridge a gap between me and my dad?
I pull out of the gas station and follow Roseville’s two-lane main street east past several more strip malls, each with about half the signs in Hebrew and half in English. The road has no sidewalk, and little shoulder, but scores of men and women in black walk alongside it nonetheless, hands holding hats and head coverings against the wind, arms weighed down with shopping bags and briefcases. After about a quarter mile the buildings become residential. I turn off the main road and wind through a neighborhood of two- and three-story apartment buildings, most shabby and utilitarian with beige vinyl siding and long orange rust stains bleeding from metal handrails down bare concrete front steps. Plastic children’s toys and strollers are scattered on tiny lawns and recently poured sidewalks; minivans abound, the better to carry all the kids in, I guess. The neighborhood reminds me of the low-rent sprawl that popped up outside Orlando before the real estate crash. Every week some new development broke ground. Their names were all stupidly sunny, referencing either the warm weather or their proximity to Disney World. Most of them filled up fast and are now half empty, with absent or incarcerated landlords, falling into disrepair from neglect. Here in Roseville, on the other hand, the buildings appear worn down by use.
After a few blocks, I pass an enormous yellow brick and stone building that looks like a cross between a castle and a banquet hall. My guess is that it’s a synagogue. Three rows of silver Hebrew letters make a rainbow shape above the entrance. Men, all hatted and in black coats, move along the walkways of the building like ants, scurrying here, stopping to talk or smoke there, then off again. Most have what look like leather binders under their arms.
Pessie’s apartment is on the first floor at the far end of a row of apartments two blocks from the synagogue. The street dead-ends into a wooded area and through the still-bare trees I can see another, similar street of beige buildings. Aside from the toys-the same plastic cars and slides and blocks and bicycles that litter lawns across the country (across the world?)-there is little personalization. No seasonal flags or window boxes of flowers; no decals in the windows, no bumper stickers on the cars. I park at the end of the street. A woman pushes a stroller in the direction of the synagogue, and another, just one door down from Pessie’s apartment, is unloading groceries from her minivan. Two little girls are with her, squealing and chattering at each other, happy to be outside. The mother yells at one, who stops her sprint up the walkway and turns to catch as her mother tosses a set of keys into her hands. Her little sister claps, delighted, and the girl resumes her race to the door, which she unlocks and props open with a plastic bin of toys. I get out of Saul’s car with my notebook tucked in my jacket pocket and walk toward the woman as she is sliding the side door of the minivan shut.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hello,” says the woman, not smiling but not unfriendly. The older daughter runs to her mother’s legs and hangs on, looking up at me.
“Bring your sister, Shaindy,” says Mom.
“Who’s that?” asks Shaindy.
“Bring your sister!”
Shaindy twirls off, a clumsy ballerina in black tights and a puffy black coat. She hollers for her sister, who appears in the doorway. Shaindy wraps her arms around the little girl, and picks her up. The little girl does not like this. She squirms backward, nearly toppling them both, but her big sister rights them and waddles toward us.
“Let her go! If you break your glasses again Tatty will be furious.”
Shaindy lets go.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say.
“We have a birthday party today,” she says. “They are showing off.”
“We are not!” shouts Shaindy, stamping her feet. Both girls are wearing headbands, each adorned with little black bows. The mother’s wig is a beautiful shade of auburn, cut with side-swept bangs. Fastened around her head is a piece of shimmery black and blue fabric that looks like a cross between a headband and a handkerchief. She has small features and well-drawn eye makeup.
“I’m wondering if you knew Pessie Goldin,” I ask.
“Pessie died,” says Shaindy.