Rochester got up and stretched, then began to nose around Buddha’s office. I watched as he nosed at a photo of a man and two young boys, and I remembered the photo postcard that had been found folded up in Joel’s shoe.
“Did Joel mention the names Aaron or Kalman while he was here?”
“Not that I remember. Family members?”
As I explained about the picture of the two boys, Rochester slumped back beside me.
“He told me he’d been hanging around the ruins of this old temple. There were still a couple of walls up and he was sheltering there, said he could still feel the religious vibrations. Maybe he found the picture there.”
“You know where it is?”
“No idea.” He sighed. “Sunday morning he got into a scrap with another guy. He was one of these neo-Nazi types, shaved head and a swastika tattooed on his wrist, and when Joel saw that he went kind of ape-shit.”
“Did they fight?”
“They both got a couple of punches in before I could pull them apart. Joel grabbed his stuff and got out, and the skinhead, who gave his name as John White, left that night. Neither of them came back since.”
“When you say ‘gave his name as’ – you don’t think that was his real name?”
“I doubt it. A lot of our residents don’t have ID so we accept what they say.”
I wrote down Rick’s name and phone number and handed it to Buddha. “If this White guy comes back, can you call the detective who’s investigating Joel’s death?”
He looked at the piece of paper, which seemed tiny in his giant hand. “If he comes back.”
Had this guy run into Joel again? What if their argument had erupted once more? But what would a skinhead with a swastika tattoo be doing at Shomrei Torah? Could Joel have interrupted him preparing to deface the building, and gotten killed while defending his brother’s temple? Maybe Joel had been angry at his brother, and somehow recruited this skinhead to help?
They both seemed pretty far-fetched, but I had to consider them as possibilities.
“A real shame about Joel,” Buddha said. “But I can’t say I’m surprised. We see a fair number of mentally ill folks here, and there’s rarely a happy ending for them.”
I thanked Buddha for his help and left him my card in case he thought of anything else. As I walked back to the car, I called Rick and told him about John White.
“That’s a good lead,” he said. “I’ll call the other shelters in the area and see if he’s shown up anywhere else. And I’ll call this McCarthy guy and see if he can give me a better description, particularly of the tattoo. Guy like that, he probably has a record somewhere.”
I hung up and looked down at Rochester. “Thanks for reminding me about the photograph, boy,” I said, and I scratched behind his ears. “You want to see if we can find this place where Joel was squatting?”
He looked up at me with his doggy grin, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and I figured that was a yes.
It began to drizzle as I walked Rochester over to a stand of trees for a quick pee. When we got back to the car, he settled on the front seat beside me and I wondered if Joel had been squatting at the old home of Shomrei Torah, where I’d had my bar mitzvah.
When my grandparents first arrived in Trenton in the early part of the twentieth century, they lived in a neighborhood near the Delaware called Jewtown, a warren of narrow streets where Yiddish was the lingua franca. In the 1960s, urban renewal had swept much of the area away, replacing it with a complex of government buildings and a highway linking the city and the suburbs.
Though I’d been to the old shul a thousand times in my childhood, it took some navigating to find it again, and Rochester sat beside me on the front seat, eagerly peering out the window. The building didn’t look much like what I remembered, and I felt my heart pierced. Most of the simple structure of white stone had been demolished, in preparation for the construction of a convenience store. The entire front wall was gone, and with it the double doors beneath a semi-circular stained glass window of a six-pointed Star of David.
Gone too were the two tall stained glass windows that had flanked the door and the triangular pediment above those. All that remained was the wall along the right side, a few feet of the rear wall, and a bit of roof above them. I could see how Joel Goldberg might have found shelter there.
The rain had stopped spitting, so Rochester and I got out of the car. The warehouse building across the street was shuttered, the lots on either side empty. There was no one around to tell us we couldn’t snoop, so we did.
We walked up to the covered space, and I saw signs that someone had been living there—a couple of fast food wrappers, a used condom, and an empty beer bottle. I looked around as much as I could but I couldn’t find anything that connected to Joel Goldberg, or that indicated if he’d found the photograph there.
Rochester kept straining to go to the Belgian block wall along the rear of the property. Those rectangular blocks, in shades of gray and purple, had been brought to the new world as ballast in ships, and then used for building. I knew about them because my father had collected them, using them to build the lakefront wall behind our house.
When I was a kid, there was an old wall, like the one behind the shul, on an empty lot on the way to my grandmother’s house in Trenton. My father would often stop if he saw one of the blocks had come loose and he’d retrieve it and take it home with us. I never thought anything of it at the time, but of course it was theft. Maybe I came by my criminal tendencies honestly.
I let Rochester lead me over to the wall, where he sniffed at one of the blocks and then sat on his haunches in front of it. He raised his right paw to the block, and it wobbled. “Something behind there?” I asked him. I grabbed the block and was surprised at how easily it came loose. Shades of my father, I thought.
Behind the block a spot had been hollowed out in the dirt. A small metal box, of the kind I used to keep three by five cards in, rested inside. I looked around. A couple of cars passed on the street, but there was no one nearby. I reached in and pulled the box out.
With Rochester trying to nose his way in, I opened the box. I opened the box without considering I’d be leaving fingerprints. There was a single piece of yellowed paper inside, folded many times. It was written in Hebrew, but even after all the years studying the language in preparation for my bar mitzvah, my Hebrew was limited to prayers and the occasional phrase remembered from dusty afternoons where our teachers used picture books about Israeli children to school us in conjugating verbs.
I stared at the heading on the page because I felt like I ought to recognize it. Hebrew reads from right to left, and the left-most character was the yod, which looked like an apostrophe and represented the letter Y. The next letter was the dalet, or D. That word I knew – it was “yad,” which meant “hand,” and also was the name of the pointer used when reading from the Torah.
The next letter, a straight line with a sort of curlicue at the top, was the vav, the letter V. Then the shin, the “sh” sound, and the mem, the M. Vishim? Vashem? Va-shem. Of course. Yad Vashem was the Holocaust memorial site in Israel.
That tied in to what both Buddha and Rabbi Goldberg had said—that Joel was interested in something relating to the Holocaust. Had whatever he’d found pushed him into a manic phase? Or was it just that he’d stopped taking his meds?
Had there been more in the box? The photo of the two boys, for instance? And if Joel had taken that, why would he have left this document behind? Because he couldn’t read it? Or perhaps there had been an English translation with it, that he had taken, and then lost?
I replaced the Belgian block, grabbed the box and Rochester’s leash, and hot-footed it back to my car. I’d gone to prison once and wasn’t eager to get picked up for petty theft.
12 – Se Habla Yiddish
As soon as I got home, I opened my laptop and turned to Google Translate. Using a virtual Hebrew keyboard, I typed in a few words from the paper I’d found behind
the Belgian block, but I got no results that made any sense.
I sat back and looked over at Rochester. “It’s like hieroglyphics,” I said to him. “I need something to help me figure out what stands for what. You didn’t find a Rosetta Stone near that worry stone, did you?”
He hopped up on my lap, his big tail wagging over the coffee table in front of me, and he knocked the Bible I’d left there to the floor. Some atavistic impulse told me to dust it off and kiss it, and as I did I remembered the practice of either pressing your prayer book, or the fringe of your tallis, against the Torah as the rabbi paraded it around the sanctuary at the end of the weekly Torah service.
“The rabbi has to speak Hebrew,” I said to Rochester. “I’ll call him tomorrow and have him translate.” I rubbed my hand over the soft top of his head. “Good boy. Good clue.”
A short time later, Lili returned like a successful hunter with news about the ring Rick had chosen. “It’s exactly what I was looking for,” she said. “An oval-cut, one-carat emerald in a white gold setting with a diamond baguette on each side.”
I couldn’t help but hear the “what I was looking for.” Was this some kind of big hint as to what kind of engagement ring she wanted? That she wanted to get engaged?
Before I could obsess too much, she continued, “I think it’s what Tamsen will like. Not something I’d wear—too traditional.”
“Mary’s was very contemporary,” I said, relieved that she’d deflected my unasked question, and giving me the chance to indulge my curiosity. “Did you have engagement rings from either of your marriages?”
“Not from Adriano, just a narrow gold band when we got married. Philip insisted on a big ring, like I was a trophy he could show off. A circle of diamonds and sapphires. I sold it as soon as the divorce was final and used the money for air fare to Tanzania to try my hand at photojournalism. I swore I’d never wear a ring like that again.”
I waited a couple of beats, but when she didn’t say anything more, I knew I had to plunge in. “Does that mean you never want an engagement ring, or that you never want to get married again?” I asked. “I know we’ve talked about this before, but I want to make sure we’re still on the same page.”
She cocked her head and looked at me, and then burst out laughing. “Did you think I was hinting that I want a ring from you?”
I nodded, though I didn’t understand why she was laughing.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, and she leaned forward and kissed me. “You know I’m not the shy type. If I change my mind about getting married, you’ll be the first to know.” Then she pulled back. “You haven’t changed, have you?”
I shook my head. “I love you and I want to be with you. I don’t need a bunch of legal paperwork for that.”
“And we both know how awful it is to go through divorce. So we’re good?”
“We’re better than good,” I said, smiling. “Great. Awesome. Outrageously wonderful.”
Maybe it was my visit to the old shul that morning, but I thought that if Lili and I ever did get married, I’d want a Jewish ceremony, preferably in a synagogue. Lili’s family, and the remains of my own, a few distant cousins, there to witness our commitment.
It all came back to family, didn’t it? The legacy my parents and grandparents had left me in Trenton and Stewart’s Crossing, Lili’s issues with her mother, the rabbi’s loss of his brother. At least there was one of those I could do something about.
Lili’s phone trilled, and she groaned. “That’s Fedi,” she said. “Dios mio, I can’t believe he’s calling me again. We just hung up an hour ago.”
She picked up her phone and answered in Spanish. After a moment or two of spirited conversation, in which I only understood a few words, she hung up.
“My mother fell,” she said. “It looks like she fractured her pelvis.”
“Oh my,” I said. “The poor woman.”
“I can’t keep doing this remotely. I told Fedi I’ll fly down there tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll get someone to cover my classes. Can you drive me to the airport?”
“Of course. You don’t want me to go with you?”
“Trust me, this isn’t the way you want to meet my mother.”
I ran out to DeLorenzo’s for hoagies while Lili worked the phone, setting up her flight, her rental car, and her substitutes. I felt bad that I couldn’t go with her, but I understood that this was something she had to do herself. We ate our sandwiches at the kitchen table, brainstorming things she had to do before she could leave, and questions she needed to ask once she was in Florida.
The situation made me wonder who would take care of Lili and me when we were old? Lili was a couple of years older than I was, but typically women lived longer than men. Both my parents had died young, too, which I guessed made me statistically likely to pass before Lili did. So assuming we were still together, she’d take care of me. But what about her? Would she be able to rely on her brother, her niece and nephew?
“Do you have one of those living wills?” I asked, as we walked upstairs so that she could pack.
“I’m not my mother, Steve. I have a long way to go before I end up like her.”
“You never know. Look at all the people we know who died young. I’m just saying, I think we should have those. I had a will made up once Rochester came to live with me, because I wanted to make sure he was taken care of. I should change that now.”
I looked at her. “You’d keep him if anything happened to me, wouldn’t you?”
“So he can drag me around to crime scenes?” She smiled. “Of course I will, mi amor. And you’re right, we should both have up-to-date wills. We’ll take care of that when I come home.”
I kissed her, and because he knew we’d been talking about him, Rochester nosed between us, looking for love.
I sat on the bedroom floor with him, rubbing his belly and telling him he was a good boy, as Lili packed. He and I went out for our late evening walk, and by the time we returned Lili was already in bed.
I stripped down and slid beside her. “I’ll miss you,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Just remember. Illegitimi non carborundum.”
She laughed. “No, I won’t let the bastards grind me down. Though if my mother or my brother knew you were calling them bastards they’d have words for you.”
“Why I said it in Latin,” I said. We curled into each other and Lili gave me something to remember her by – as if I needed the reminder. But I wasn’t complaining.
The next morning we hurried through a dozen last minute things before we could leave for the airport. “You’ll take those papers I was grading into my office so the students can pick them up?” Lili asked.
“Yes, love. You’ve already asked me that twice. And I’ll call the dentist Monday and reschedule your checkup. I have the ticket for the dry cleaner’s so I’ll pick up your dress.”
“I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit frantic.”
“Don’t worry. Focus on helping your mother.”
“But what can I really do for her in a couple of days? We’ll argue and she’ll play the martyr and nothing will change.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re going to talk to her doctors and you and Fedi will figure out exactly what’s wrong with her and what you can do to make her comfortable and speed up her healing. I’m sure she’ll feel better having you there.”
I carried her bag out to the car and put it in the trunk, then opened the back door for Rochester. Lili slid into the front seat, then said, “Coño! Did I bring the keys to my mother’s apartment?”
She patted her pockets. “Yes. They’re here. Let’s get on the road before I have a nervous breakdown.”
Rochester nosed forward from the back seat, sniffing her shoulder, and she turned to pet him as we sped down the highway. “Thank God everything is digital now,” she said. “My boarding pass and the email confirming my rental car are both on my phone. I’m pretty sure I remember how to get to her apartment but I can put the address into the GPS.”
We talked about how much easier our lives were now that we didn’t have to fret about carrying so much paperwork with us, and Lili seemed to relax.
When I pulled up in the drop-off lane at the airport, I kissed her goodbye and told her to call me whenever she needed to vent. And then, as I drove back up the highway, I felt a weird sense of freedom—I was single again, if only briefly, and my time was my own – and Rochester’s, of course. Everyone, even those happily coupled, liked a little private time, didn’t they?
Not that I wouldn’t miss Lili – I had grown accustomed to sharing my life with her, to discussing our days over dinner, to walking the dog with her sometimes, to fitting together in a hundred small ways. But it was going to be fun to be on my own for a few days, doing just what I wanted when I wanted, eating fast food without worrying about calories, having a second beer after dinner if I chose.
What did I want to do? I could go back home and get started on the to-do list Lili had left me—but instead I called Rabbi Goldberg. I wanted to show him the paper written in Hebrew that I’d found at the old shul and see what he could make of it.
He said that he’d be in his office for the next few hours, so Rochester and I stopped at the house to pick up the paper and then drove to Shomrei Torah, where we found the rabbi and Sadie in his office. While the dogs played together, I showed the rabbi the sheet and explained where I’d found it. I still didn’t understand where it had come from, and how Joel, who wasn’t a Trenton native, had stumbled on it.
He looked at it for a couple of minutes, his brow knotted in concentration. “This isn’t Hebrew,” he said after a while. “Though it’s in the Hebrew alphabet, it’s Yiddish. My parents were first generation Americans and they were determined to be assimilated. Joel and I almost never heard Yiddish at home, so I’m sure he couldn’t make anything out of it, either.”
“My dad’s parents spoke to him in Yiddish and he answered in Yiddish, so he was pretty fluent. My mom could understand, but she’d always answered her parents in English. They only spoke Yiddish when they didn’t want me to understand, so all I know of the language is a few colorful curses. Do you know anyone who could translate this?”
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