Iris provided a cushion against the blow of that day. They took out her new toy, a gift from Teddy: magnetized letters that clung to the white refrigerator. Each letter fit inside a white holder; the machine would sing them one by one: “A! A says A! Every letter makes a sound and A makes A!”
“Or sometimes aaa, like ‘cat,’” Abigail would explain. She did this for all the vowels, not to mention C, G, K, and Y. The tune was always the same, and by the time they’d gone through all twenty-six letters three times she thought she would lose her mind.
They switched to stacking colored plastic cups of varying sizes—Iris’s old standby, which could be stacked upside down, used as building blocks, knocked over, and used to play mini-basketball with rolled-up pieces of paper. At the end of the day, the same plastic cups floated in the bath and became water toys. Iris carefully filled them with water, sometimes drank from them, and used them as boats. This favorite of all toys had cost perhaps ninety-nine cents at the local drugstore. Abigail realized that the whole toy business was a hoax. What babies really liked to play with was wrapping paper, empty boxes, tags on clothing, and paper towels.
But after bathtime came bedtime, and then Abigail felt the weight of being alone hit her full force.
She was grateful when the phone rang at eight thirty and it was Teddy’s voice on the other line, deep, masculine, with its own thrilling oddity and reverberations. A Jewish voice, a little nasal. Accenting words oddly, on unexpected syllables. Often his voice seemed on the verge of laughter, or of making a joke at his own expense. Often it was.
“So,” he said. “How’d it go?”
She sank into a kitchen chair. “Awful,” she said. “I feel like a hopeless old maid. You were absolutely right.”
“That’s why I get the big bucks,” he said. “But I would rather have been wrong. And you are not an old maid.” He changed the subject then, telling her about renovations scheduled for the synagogue that summer, asking her advice on architectural details. He had already arranged for her to be hired as a design consultant on the project. “I ask enough questions, at least you should be compensated for your time,” he said. A new rug was being laid—what color should it be? he wondered. Someone had offered to make tapestry covers. Others had promised to donate paintings. They were putting in new pew cushions, should they match the carpet, or contrast? Abigail agreed to look at samples.
“I hate shopping,” he said. “I can barely pick out my own shirts.” Invariably he wore the same white button-downs, but Abigail didn’t mention this.
“Look,” he said in the middle of discussing the color of curtain swags. “What is it you like best in the world?”
“Iris,” she answered promptly. And, she was thinking, then you.
“I mean activities,” he said. “We’re going to find something to cheer you up. Something to look forward to. Skiing, tennis, shopping, what?”
“Oh Lord,” she said. “None of those. Music, I guess. Classical music or ballet.”
“Thank G-d,” he said. “Because I am extremely unathletic, and I hate shopping.”
She was not surprised. He looked like the kind of big, lumbering guy who would have been handed the basketball—and dropped it.
“So how about we do this,” he suggested. “I have a three-day conference in the Berkshires in July. How about you come with me and we go to Tanglewood and—there’s some kind of a dance thing, too, nearby.”
“Jacob’s Pillow,” she said.
“See!” he said. “Jacob’s Pillow, amazing. One of my favorite Tenakah stories.” This date sounded more serious than going to look at Judaic art at a synagogue in Hicksville. It was even more serious than his showing up at her father’s retirement party.
Iris came along wherever they went, like a tiny chaperone: to the fish hatchery in Cold Spring Harbor, to Lollipop Farm, where on a chilly afternoon Iris stretched out her hand to patient sheep and baby goats. After that Teddy took them to Hamburger Chew-Chew, a kosher restaurant where vegetarian burgers were delivered on the back of toy trains that ran along a toy train track.
“Can you get off from work?” he asked now. “Do you think your parents would look after Iris?”
“Yes,” she said. “Though I’ll have to get back to you.” Her heart was pounding in her throat. She had not been expecting anything like this quite so soon. Maybe it was too soon?
“I’ll book your room for you,” he said. “Do you have any special preferences? I’m such a big lunk I always need a king-size bed.” The pounding got worse; she could hardly speak around it.
“You don’t need to book a special room for me,” she said.
“Of course I do,” he interrupted. “You’re my guest. I’m inviting you. In fact, I insist.”
Had she been in her twenties, when she was reckless, almost sleepwalking through her life, she would simply have said, “We can sleep together. What’s the big deal?” But she was in her thirties now. Now she looked and looked again before she leaped. The last thing she wanted to do was to offend this man—this rabbi, she reminded herself.
“No preferences,” she said meekly.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll ask them for the room with the best view.”
She could have said something to that, too, but didn’t.
Sol had been so young when he had first started working, packing groceries after school at age twelve—and then he just kept on working through all the years of steady schooling, into college, and then law school—he hadn’t had this much free time since he was about six or seven years old and summer vacation opened out like an infinite vista.
Now he could pick and choose among many invitations. He agreed to a lecture tour to Asia in October; Sarah would be bat-mitzvahed by then. They would travel for three weeks, to the Philippines, to Malaysia, Singapore, and then to Thailand, home of Iris’s birth. Sarah was eager to see it again and to bring back gifts and souvenirs to her little granddaughter.
He had begun tentative negotiations with one arbitration association he liked over in Glen Head. Consulting. He would have flexibility, they assured him, and the work need not begin till after his trip. He might or might not take them up on the offer. His last case had left a scar. He still occasionally dreamed about it, the usual courtroom dreams—he had come to the courtroom unprepared, had lost all his notes, and Flannery was nowhere to be found. Instead Sarah was his clerk and she chastised him for leaving his office messy. Or he came into his chambers only to discover a funeral for Nicole Greene already under way, with that new young rabbi, Teddy Lewin, leading the service and staring at him with burning eyes.
Thanks to Joe Iccarino’s help, Sol started an herb garden. Nothing too fancy to begin with. He and Sarah spent two evenings a week sitting with Iris, and the other evenings were busy preparing for the lectures in October. Perhaps this was why, when he received the first letter from Brooklyn Federal Detention Center, from Naveen Abou, he did not respond with his usual speed. It was largely a note of sympathy. She had read about the case in the newspapers, she said, and her heart went out to him and to both the families. She would keep them all in her prayers. Her handwriting was fluid and ornate, in blue ink on coarse prison paper. He could hear her voice, even her lisp, behind the written words. She added in a postscript that she hoped he might find time to visit her soon, as she had news of her own to share.
Sol kept meaning to go, but then Arthur had his stroke, and somehow between lecture notes and his granddaughter and everything else—he had taken to playing chess with Arthur once a week, for instance, and was amazed to find his brother a formidable opponent—week after week slipped by.
Then came a second note from Naveen that read simply, “Come as soon as you can, please,” and he was off to Brooklyn Federal the next day. It was the start of the Memorial Day weekend, and the traffic, as he feared, was horrendous. “Can’t you go next week?” Sarah asked, but he waved the note at her, and she nodded.
“Bring a book,” she advised.
“I always bring Naveen a book.” This time it was Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea.
“I meant a book for you,” she said. “Trust me, you’ll need it.”
She was absolutely right, of course. It took him nearly an hour just to get on the expressway, and then he was more or less parked for the next two hours, inching forward—just often enough so that he could not, in fact, read the biography of Truman he’d brought along. Lucky he had a strong bladder, he thought. A horse and buggy could have made the trip in less time. He spent another hour negotiating the small highways and tortuous back streets that led to Brooklyn Federal. But he was lucky. Summer had come early, most cars had their windows rolled up tight and their air conditioning on, but a few poor souls sat panting like dogs with all their windows rolled down for a hint of a breeze, and others, unluckier still, had overheated and sat by the side of the road with smoke rising from the hoods of their stalled cars.
Sol felt only half-human by the time he got to the parking lot of Brooklyn Federal. The waiting room was cooled only by a standing fan. Technology fell back thirty years when you came to a prison. The computers were old and few and slow, Naveen had told him. The TV set in the women’s wing of the prison was ancient and given to fits of static. There were only five or six working stations—no HBO, of course, no cable, no anything on-demand.
But it was only a few minutes before Naveen appeared, dressed in long sleeves as usual, over long pants. Sol was surprised that he had not been led to her cell. He had the rare privilege of being able to visit his inmates where they lived. Had this been revoked now that he was retired? Did word travel that fast? He felt a flash of annoyance, which disappeared as soon as she took her seat on the other side of the glass divide. Naveen said, “They won’t allow me any guests, Tholomon.”
“Why not? What’s wrong?”
“In a moment. How are you? You look well. I think retirement is good for you.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I want to know what’s happening here with you. How long has this been going on?”
“A month.” Yet she looked radiantly happy, as young as the first time she was brought before him in court, more than a decade earlier. “You thee, Tholomon,” she said, “I’ve fallen in love. I am waiting for permission to marry.”
“Marry!” Sol exclaimed. He had come to think of Naveen as a sort of Muslim nun.
“Yeth,” she said. “He’s one of the inmates here. We met in a thtudy group. He is younger than I am. But only by a few years. He hath an old soul, I think.”
“What is the man’s name?” Sol asked.
“Mohammad,” she said. “It is quite complicated,” she said. “It hath to go through a special board of appealth. We had to fill out many formth. Next week we also have our interviews. Individually. Firtht Mohammad, then me. But we are both very sincere. I have hope.”
“I see,” Sol said. “And who is on this committee?”
Her face brightened. “That is why I wrote to you, Tholomon,” she said. “The man in charge is one of your colleagues at court.”
He winced, waiting for her to pronounce the inevitable name of DeNunzio. The man had his fingers in so many pies. This is what comes of burning bridges, Sol thought glumly. You simply never know. “Be nice to everyone,” his professor at law school had told them. First year. “Everyone, all the time.” Why hadn’t he listened?
He looked at her gravely, already shaking his head. But she seemed not to notice.
“Hith name is Tom Lieu,” she said. “Do you know him?”
Sol smiled, a rare open smile, one that made his homely face almost handsome. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Let me see. I would have a good deal of hope, if I were you.”
She clapped her hands, leaned forward, bumped her head against the Plexiglas, and rubbed her head, laughing. Then, as if answering his unspoken question, she said simply, “It will make all the differenth in the world, Tholomon. I will no longer feel alone. I’m a new person already. I never expected this.”
“Well, I don’t know what kind of ceremony the prison will permit,” he said. “But if I can, I will dance at your wedding.”
JUNE 2012
June Is the Start of Summer
The children stood in a clump with Daisy toward the front, one of the smallest in her class. They sounded like gerbils, if gerbils could sing, Nicole thought. “June, June, hooray it’s June! June is the start of summer,” they all sang, more or less together. A few of them made hand motions to go with the song—Daisy did it enthusiastically. She was wearing a white cotton dress, much like the one Nicole had on, gauzy and lightweight, for it was a hot day, and the elementary school multipurpose room was not air-conditioned.
One yellow-haired boy kept wandering to the side of the stage, not even bothering to move his mouth along with the others. Occasionally he took aim with an imaginary bow and arrow and shot into the audience. Then he’d wander back to the others. Jay was laughing so hard Nicole had to nudge him to be quiet. The boy’s grandmother sat right behind them. But she leaned forward to Jay and said, “He’s quite a pip.” She said it proudly.
After the school concert there was sugary punch and cookies, which the children served, glad to play at hosts. Then it was time for the children to return to their classrooms. Daisy wanted to go home right then and there, but it wasn’t even noon yet, and Nicole ached to lie down.
“Just a couple hours more, Noodle Pie,” Nicole said, using an old nickname. “Then I’ll come back and get you.”
Daisy’s eyes filled. She had always been this way. Nicole dreaded coming to the school for any of her performances, the way her daughter carried on when it was time to go. “But all the other kids are going home!” she wailed.
This was not true. All of the other kids were lining up behind their teacher to begin the march back into the classroom. One lone girl was heading out the door with her mother, their two hands connected, swinging.
“Melissa’s going home with her mother,” Daisy insisted. “Why can’t I?”
“Because you can’t,” Jay said. “Isn’t Melissa the smart one?”
“She’s very smart,” Daisy admitted. “She’s already reading at the middle-school level.”
“Well, see, you need to stay here to get smart. That’s what an education is for.”
“We’re not going to do anything but watch a dumb movie,” Daisy said. “Mrs. Brown said.”
“She said you were going to watch a dumb movie?” Jay raised his eyebrows. “Remarkably honest woman, Mrs. Brown.—I’ve got to be pushing off,” he said. “My next practice starts at one o’clock.”
“Okay,” Daisy said. “But Mom doesn’t do anything. She just lies there. Why can’t she at least take me home?”
“You watch that mouth, young lady,” Jay said, no longer kidding around. His eyes had a steely look.
“Never mind,” Daisy said. “All right, all right. I’ll watch the stupid movie!” She clenched her fists.
“I’ll be back for you in just a couple of hours,” Nicole said. “Then we can watch our own movie. Your pick.”
“With kissing in it?” Daisy asked.
“Lots of kissing,” Nicole promised.
“Not too much,” Jay said.
Daisy rolled her eyes, but she leaned forward to hug her father good-bye. Mrs. Brown was already signaling from across the cafeteria/auditorium. She was a pretty woman, fashionably dressed, with brown hair, sharp features, and a warm smile. She was a relaxed teacher, gentle with everyone, which meant she got a lot of the “bad” kids—meaning the kids with ITPs, the autistic kids, the troubled kids, one boy who was deaf, one girl who was blind. “Quite a crowd,” Jay commented, the first time he dropped Daisy off at school. “They just need the halt and the lame.”
“Jeremy walks with a limp,” Daisy said. “What’s a halt?”
“Never mind,” Nicole had said. “Mrs. Brown is a brilliant teacher. I wish I’d had half her patience.”
Daisy r
eached out and threw both arms around her mother’s waist now. She was surprisingly strong and wiry. She hung on for dear life. “I’m not going to let you go,” she said. She burrowed her head into Nicole’s thin chest.
But then the principal, Tom Corgel, blew his whistle. “Okay, parents!” he announced. “Time for your kids to get back to work!” He glanced at Nicole apologetically. Everyone in the school had read about her in the papers. But rules were rules. Daisy reluctantly let go.
“Don’t be late, okay?” the little girl said. “I want you standing right outside the door when I get out. Right where I can see you.”
“Bossy mossy,” Jay said.
“I’ll be there,” Nicole said. “Count on it.”
Nikki felt limp as a rag by the time Jay dropped her off at the house. “You sure you don’t want me to call Claudia’s mom, see if Daisy can go home with her today?” Jay asked.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Besides, I promised.”
“Want me to take the rest of the day off?”
“No,” she said. “Quit making me feel sicker than I am.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up one hand in a don’t-beat-me-up gesture. “You’re sure you’re okay with picking Daisy up from school? We can make other arrangements till school lets out.”
“It’s what I live for,” Nicole said. This used to be said as a joke line, as in, doing the dishes, the laundry. But, she realized with a jolt, it was now actually true. This is what she was living for. The ordinary things other people take for granted, being able to do something, anything, for the people she loved. Making a bed. Picking up a few groceries. Opening a can of soup. Every time she rolled a pair of Jay’s socks from the laundry, she told herself, This is one thing Jay Greene doesn’t have to do.
They were at the house now, and she leaned forward for her good-bye kiss. He surprised her by kissing her long and passionately.
“Wow,” she said.
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