“Cool,” I say again. “So when are you due?”
“July eighteen. It’s a boy. Thank God. Hank’s obsessed with the bloodline. Well, really it’s his dad, Connie, who’s obsessed. But Hank, too. Him and his dad are really close. Especially now that Ryan’s a faggot…” She pauses. “Wait, how do you know him again?”
“I’m actually looking for a friend of his. Sam Kagan?”
Mellie’s expression changes. She raises an eyebrow. “You’re friends with Sam?”
“Well, no. I’ve never met him. I’m looking for him because…” I don’t want to tell the whole story, so I use shorthand: “I’m adopted. And I think Sam might know my birth mom.”
“You’re adopted?”
“Yeah,” I say, hoping I don’t have to extend this lie too much longer.
“Me, too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“My birth mom was a junkie. She got locked up when I was a baby and my dad wasn’t in the picture. I was in foster care for a couple months then my mom’s cousin ended up adopting me.” She looks up expectantly. It’s my turn.
“My mom gave me up. She had me really young.”
“So you’ve never met.”
I shake my head.
“Oh wow,” says Mellie. She lowers her voice. “Sam’s a Jew, did you know that?”
“Oh?” I say.
“Yeah. One of those crazy black hat kikes. Like, with the coats and the…” She makes a spiral beside her head.
“Huh,” I say, trying to sound like I don’t quite know what she’s talking about.
“Do you think you might be Jewish?”
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s not a lie. Okay, it’s a lie. I am denying my Judaism in the home of a Nazi.
“I hope not, for your sake,” she says. “They’re really dangerous. I mean, they’re breeding an army down there in Rockland County. You know they all have like ten kids. At least! And they’re all on welfare. I mean, they’re seriously worse than niggers and spics on that. But nobody knows about it. That’s what so crazy. They’re taking over the school boards and the city councils and they’re all fucked up sexually. They have arranged marriages, like the Muslims. And men and women can’t even touch. And they let people molest their kids. Seriously.”
“Huh,” I say again.
“Fucking Sam,” she says, shaking her head. Eva spits out her pacifier and starts whining. “You hungry?” she asks the child, already reaching for the refrigerator door. “If you see him, tell Sam to stay the fuck away from here. Connie’ll shoot him if he sees him. I might, too.” She pours whole milk from a plastic gallon jug into a bottle, twists the cap on, shakes it, and hands it to Eva. “He’s caused a lot of drama. First of all, he’s a total liar. Him and Ryan both. I can’t even get into it it’s so bad. People are always trying to infiltrate the Brotherhood, so Connie thinks he’s a narc. I don’t know if he’s like, FBI, or some Jew mafia, but the point is that now, even though we’re supposed to be saving for a place of our own that isn’t right on top of his whole family, Hank’s basically spending all our money on guns.”
“Guns?”
“Connie says it’s an investment. All this shit with Ryan and Sam has got him paranoid. I mean, race war is coming. If you look at history. And Connie says the first battle is gonna be with the Jews. He’s like, the Jews are organized, you know? Niggers can’t stop shooting each other. He’s got a connection down in the Carolinas and him and Hank have been bringing the guns up so when Obama really cracks down we can sell ’em to everybody who didn’t see it coming. We’ve already sold some, since fucking Cuomo’s fascist new law. People are starting to see what’s happening, finally.” She sighs and sits down at her jewelry table. “So, I get it. I do. But honestly, I kind of wish Hank would just get a job.”
I’ve interviewed a lot of wacky people in the past six months at the Trib. In October I was on a day-long stakeout in Tribeca for a banker who’d been arrested for rape when some guy latched on to me and swore up and down he’d been “investigating” the bankers moving into the area and found a secret apartment they kept to take girls and torture them. He tried to convince me he had paperwork proving that Goldman Sachs was paying for everything and that if I came up to his apartment he’d give me an exclusive. Needless to say I did not go up to this man’s apartment. I expect conspiracy theories from people-but race war?
Mellie continues. “Hank practically blew himself up a couple weeks ago trying to make some stupid pipe bomb. I love him but sometimes he’s a fucking idiot. That other trailer is, like, basically unlivable now.” She shakes her head. “I mean, I’d like my kids to grow up with a father, you know?”
Junior starts barking outside, announcing a car. It is, I decide, time to go.
“I should probably take off,” I say, setting my coffee down.
Outside, a man shouts, “Shut up, Junior!” The dog shuts up. A car door slams. Another creaks open.
“Oh wait, what about the earrings?”
I have the front door open. “My holes are actually a little infected right now,” I say, stepping outside. “I wouldn’t want to, like, contaminate them.”
In the dirt circle linking Mellie’s trailer, the old house, and the site of her boyfriend’s apparent attempt at becoming the Unabomber, a man who looks about fifty is lifting a wheelchair out of the bed of a pickup truck.
“Hank ain’t home yet?” the man asks Mellie.
“Nope.”
The man is wearing a long-sleeved Orange County Choppers t-shirt and jeans tucked into what look like surplus military boots. He is very lean, with a close-trimmed gray beard, and most of his skin not covered by clothing is inked. From here, I see a spiderweb with a swastika at the center on one side of his neck and a large shamrock on the other. Each knuckle is adorned with some kind of symbol or letter or God-knows-what, and the back of both his hands have skulls on them. In Roseville, the women seemed to assume I was Jewish, but apparently I blend in here, too. I look at Saul’s car and suddenly realize there is a very real possibility that something-a Yiddish language flyer or a parking pass for a shul-might be visible. I should get out of here.
The man rolls the wheelchair to the passenger-side door, then lifts an old lady who is missing both legs into it.
“Who’s your friend?” asks the old lady, her voice rattling like a lawnmower.
“Rebekah,” says Mellie.
“Love your hair, Rebekah.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For several weeks after he left Roseville, Sammy barely went outside the yellow house. He did little but sleep and talk to Pessie on the phone. I told him I thought it was unhealthy to be so attached. I said it was unfair to her. But he said I was wrong and that they understood each other. She came to the house every week with food and they cooked dinner together. I told her I thought it was very nice of her to be his friend after what he had done.
“Sammy didn’t like to hurt me,” she said, looking down at her feet, which were still too long for her little body. She’d never grown into them, and at eighteen years old she barely looked fourteen. “Hashem has plans for him. He is going to help the other boys. But he cannot stay in the community. And I understand. Perhaps he is a little like you?”