An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “Why?”

  Leah shrugged. It seemed odd to her, too.

  They opened the heavy, old elevator door and entered. Thick, musty carpets lined the inside, giving off the acrid smell of a long-abandoned factory. They walked out into a dark and deserted hallway that stank of dust and despair. Most of the doors were boarded up, they saw, the entrance obviously being from the other side. Shaindele walked ahead quickly.

  “Here.”

  A small hand-lettered sign with the number fifteen—the number they’d been given when they’d made the appointment—was the only indication they’d arrived at their destination. While Leah hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, now she wondered. Why was there no normal professional office sign indicating Dr. Yoel Grub or Rabbi Dr. Yoel Grub? It just looked so disreputable, like some secretive criminal enterprise selling stolen goods or hash. A chill went through her.

  “I’ll come in with you and wait.”

  “No! I mean, thank you, Leah, but I don’t want. I’m not a baby.”

  “I know. Of course. But maybe just this first time?”

  Although Yaakov had thoroughly checked out Yoel Grub’s references, Leah still wanted to look him over.

  But Shaindele was adamant. “I can take care of myself.” Then she softened. “But thank you, Leah. For everything.”

  “You know the way home?”

  “Of course!”

  Reluctantly, she hugged the girl’s stiff body, coiled in resistance. Like dropping off a small, helpless child at a day care center for the first time, Leah looked on helplessly, her heart sinking with an inexplicable heaviness and guilt as she waved goodbye.

  Shaindele waved back, watching as Leah opened the elevator door and disappeared. When she was gone, Shaindele stood there uncertainly for a few moments. Then she rang the bell.

  “Come in,” a deep voice said. Something about its timbre frightened her. It sounded demanding, even on something this neutral, she thought, her hand hesitating as it clutched the doorknob. She inhaled then shrugged, gathering her courage. After all, what choice did she really have?

  There was no waiting room, she saw as she opened the door, surprised. Just a strange orange couch so wide it could have been a bed. At the far end of the room was another door. That must be where the main elevator left you, she realized. So why had they been told to come in the back way? Inside, up against the wall, was a desk without a single piece of paper on it. And instead of the massive bookcases she’d imagined, there was only one small shelf with different-colored business binders. There wasn’t a single psychology book or a single diploma or certificate. Instead, there were a few pictures of nature: a waterfall, a clump of trees in the forest, and, strangely, a picture of the beach with a few women in immodest bathing suits, the kind no Boro Park matron would ever wear.

  She felt her face grow hot.

  He stood up and walked toward her. “Already a red face? Why?”

  He was short and overweight with a graying beard and salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in the uniform of the Hasidim: black suit, white shirt, pants wide at the cuffs over white socks and laced-up black shoes. On his head was a large black velvet skullcap.

  Somehow, she found this reassuring: his outfit, his age, his girth, his grayness, his stubby fingers. He was indistinguishable from the kind of men she passed by on Boro Park streets every two minutes. Only the beach scene grated. It was absolutely incongruous with who he was presenting himself to be. She looked at it again in case she’d missed something.

  “Ah, the beach,” he smiled, not unpleasantly. “Yes, surprising. But what is the matter with having a scene to look upon in the privacy of our homes and offices that reminds us how beautiful the world is, and how many things there are to give us pleasure? Even if our faith prevents us…,” he added quickly as her eyebrows rose.

  She didn’t disagree. Yet it jarred. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be “reforming” her? Wasn’t that his expertise? She’d expected long sermons and admonishments. How was that going to work under the gaze of women in bikinis? She tried to tell herself she should feel relieved, that he couldn’t be all that stringent if this was hanging over his desk. But for some reason, she wasn’t, feeling instead only a strange sense of vague alarm.

  “Come, make yourself at home. We’ll begin.”

  She looked around. There weren’t any chairs except for the one he was sitting in. Just the couch. She hesitated, taking it in.

  “What, you’re not comfortable? You want a hard chair like mine?” he joked. “Come, I’ll switch with you.” He laughed, getting up.

  She suddenly felt foolish. Smiling shyly, she sat down carefully on the edge of the couch. But there was no back support that way, she realized. She’d have to lean all the way back, almost lying down, and put her feet up.

  “I see, you’re thinking, it’s not respectful to lie down. But in this office, between the two of us, there are no rules. Except this—you have to be absolutely honest about your feelings. Farshteyst?”

  She nodded. “Well, to be honest, I’m not comfortable lying down here. I’d rather sit up, in a normal chair, but not your chair.”

  He looked down at his desk, gripping a pencil between his thumb forefinger and tapping it impatiently on his desk. “And why is that—Shaindele, is it? Do I have your name right?”

  “Well, actually. It’s Shaindel. Why what?”

  “Why aren’t you comfortable lying down, relaxing, putting up your feet in my office?”

  She knew why. It felt too intimate, too vulnerable. But she didn’t know how to say this without insulting him. “I just like to sit,” she said.

  He raised his hands. “All right, all right. Wait, I’ll bring you a chair.”

  He flung open the door at the far end. She glimpsed people sitting in chairs and doors leading to other offices. She exhaled, reassured by the knowledge that other people were nearby, just outside the door. But when he returned with the chair, he locked the door firmly behind him, then bolted it.

  A chill went up her spine. She looked around. Now both doors were closed, and there were no windows. That meant that he was now in violation of the religious prohibition of yichud, she thought, alarmed. And instead of putting the chair on the other side of his desk, which is what she’d expected, he dragged his own chair around, placing the two chairs next to each other so close they were almost touching. Her heart did a somersault.

  “I think the couch, after all,” she said, sitting down quickly and moving to the far end of it, near the wall. She sat there, her short legs out before her in a childlike pose she found undignified, close to ridiculous. She pulled her skirt down as far as it would go, suddenly glad it was mid-calf.

  All the while, she was conscious of him watching her every move, a small, unnerving smile on his thin lips.

  “So tell me, Shaindel, why are you here?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Avadeh. But I want you should tell me why you think you’re here.”

  “Because I disappointed my parents. I didn’t tell them the truth.”

  “You lied?”

  “Not really, I just didn’t tell them what was going on with me.”

  “And what was ‘going on with you,’ maideleh?”

  She hesitated. This was really hard, and honestly, she didn’t feel comfortable talking about her sex life with a Hasid who had a couch in his office and pictures of women in bathing suits on his wall, not to mention a man who was ignoring the laws of yichud. But again, what choice did she have?

  “I met a boy, and we started going out.”

  “A shidduch?”

  “No,” she answered, knowing perfectly well Halpern had told him all about it. If it had been a shidduch, she wouldn’t be here. “We met on our own.”

  “And how did that happen? Explain it to me.”

  She told him about the pizza parlor, about the boy behind the counter, the notes, the clandestine, thrilling meetings in the evenings. She even told him about Gree
nwich Village and the jazz club. To her surprise, he didn’t seemed shocked or even disapproving. She found herself relaxing.

  “So you started to think about sex, no? What did you do with this boy you met in the pizza parlor?”

  “Nothing.”

  He looked skeptical. “I’m not here to judge you, Shaindel. But if you don’t tell me the truth, I have better things to do, and I’m sure you do, too. You’re a senior this year in Bais Yaakov?”

  She nodded sullenly.

  “That’s a lot of work, being a senior. You are working hard?”

  She nodded, slightly relieved that the conversation had taken this turn.

  “Do you like school?”

  “Very much. My mameh—”

  “The one who died?”

  She nodded. He really did know everything. “My mameh was a teacher. I also want. I want to go to seminary when I graduate.”

  “So, my dear Shaindele—you don’t mind, do you? If I call you that?”

  She did, actually. Although perhaps kindly meant, it felt diminishing, swatting away any semblance of emerging adulthood, reducing her to a silly child who was to be pampered with diminutives of her anyway silly name. Shaindel—beautiful. Shaindele—pretty little thing. In the end, it was a galling liberty, a pretense of closeness to which he, a stranger, was not entitled.

  “If you want, k’vod harav,” she said formally, her lips stretched tight.

  “All right, all right, Shaindel it is.” He laughed. “But on one condition: stop with the ‘k’vod harav’ stuff, will you? I’m not here as your rav—there are plenty of those in this town—but your advisor, and I hope”—he caught her eye and held it for a moment—“a friend.”

  She felt herself grow warm, a blush creeping up her neck.

  “In fact, maybe you’d like to sit here, on my knees. All my patients are like my family, like my daughters. Maybe you’d feel more comfortable, more able to open up to me?”

  Instinctively, she pressed her back against the wall as far as it would go, shaking her head vigorously.

  He raised his hands and laughed as if she were being exasperatingly, childishly ridiculous and unreasonable, foiling his sincere, professional efforts to help her. “I’m offering, but if you don’t want…” He shrugged. “So tell me, Shaindel, what does a girl who wants to be a teacher like her late, saintly mameh, a serious girl who wants to go to seminary, do at night with a boy she met at a pizza parlor?”

  Her face broke out in a fierce red bloom. She took a deep breath. “What do girls and boys do?” she answered defiantly.

  To her surprise, instead of being offended, he laughed and pulled his chair closer. He reached out his hand, briefly touching her skirt just above her knee. (Was that even possible? she thought with alarm. Or was it simply an accident? An unintentional, awkward miscalculation? Or perhaps she had just imagined it altogether?)

  “I want to know every detail—what you did with him and why. I want to know if you enjoyed it or if you are sorry. I want to know what you were imagining doing with him but didn’t. I want to know everything.”

  She shot up. “I’m not comfortable with this, k’vod harav.”

  He reached out and touched her hip. Now, there could be no mistake! He was calm, unmoved. “Sit down!”

  She obeyed.

  “Well, you’d better get comfortable with it, little Shaindele, and fast. Because otherwise, I’m going to be forced to tell your principal—who is a very close friend of mine—and your parents, who are paying so much money—that you are refusing to cooperate, and I can’t do anything to help you. And what do you think is going to happen to you then, little Shaindele? Huh?”

  She looked him over, feeling the tingle of shock and fear. Yes, her world had always been full of bearded men laying down rules and laws, telling her what she could and couldn’t do. But nothing in her life and experience had prepared her for a man calling himself a rabbi to behave in such a way. There was something strange in his face, too, she realized, something that hadn’t been there before, or that at least she hadn’t noticed, that she had never experienced with a man of his age. An old man. No, not old, not exactly. An older man, she corrected herself mentally, a man the age of her father.

  She looked away. Was this normal, for a psychologist to touch, to threaten like this? To get such a look in his face like this, a look she had sometimes seen in Duvie’s in the moonlight, when he reached out to touch her? Or was she just imagining it? Perhaps he was only trying to do his job? Perhaps this was what all psychologists did when patients “didn’t cooperate”?

  She tried to calm herself down, to reason it out. Of course, counseling would be a waste of time if she didn’t tell him the truth. But why did he need every detail? And how could she tell him what she had done with Duvie, lying there on his couch, with him watching her every move? With him touching her?

  “So I see you haven’t decided. So decide, Shaindele. And if you are not prepared to tell the truth, to answer everything I ask you, then don’t bother coming back. Is that clear?”

  He had already pulled his chair behind his desk again. He wasn’t looking at her, but fiddling again impatiently with the pencils on his desk. “That’s it. Time’s up.”

  Slowly, she stood, backing away and turning the lock in the door that led to the waiting room.

  “Not that door! Go out the way you came in.” He seemed upset.

  She stared at him, backing away, trying not to get near him. Only when she had closed the door behind her did she allow herself to breathe.

  * * *

  She was in no hurry to get home. The familiar streets seemed like a foreign country, the storefronts hazy and indistinct as if covered in smoke. The faster her heart beat, the more the streets seemed to whizz past her cartoonishly, her feet hardly touching the ground as she tried to put as much distance between herself and Yoel Grub as possible.

  No one was home when she got there. Leah had no doubt gone to pick up the children. She was almost grateful not to be met with her stepmother’s kind, searching eyes that would tempt her to allow all that she had experienced to pour out like pus from a wound. Better to wash it off with some tears and bind it up with silence and hope it would heal.

  But again and again, the questions streamed through her, aching like the pain of a serious bruise. What just happened? Who is this Yoel Grub? And, most of all, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?

  Obviously, she could never go back there. No, Yoel Grub was a fraud and a pervert. But who would believe her? Her parents, who were spending so much money to help her? After all, hadn’t her father supposedly thoroughly checked him out? Her principal, who was his good friend and also Duvie’s father? She had a brief moment of thinking about the expression “Apples don’t fall far from the trees.”

  If she said anything, whose side would everyone take? The wayward girl’s caught sneaking out with a boy she met in Moishy’s Pizza, doing who knows what? Or the pious man entrusted with caring for such girls by Boro Park’s distinguished Bobelger Rebbe for the last twenty-five years?

  She closed her eyes and lay down on her bed. She was just a stupid teenager who had done so many foolish things in her life. Maybe she was just wrong? After all, what did she know? Maybe Yoel Grub had done nothing wrong. Maybe he was the tzaddik everyone claimed, and these were simply his methods, his professional methods, that he learned in a professional school that trained people to be psychologists and helpers? After all, hundreds of girls had gone to him over the years, and no one had ever complained, so what did she know? Maybe he really could help her. And she needed help, wanted it so badly. Wasn’t it she who had asked to see a psychiatrist in the first place? She needed to get over the loss of her mother, to go forward in her life. She needed to understand why she didn’t want to get married or have children. She needed to understand why she had let Duvie do those things to her.

  Why had she?

  Throbbing with fear and confusion, she turned her face to the wall. Wh
at am I going to do now?

  Leah found her that way, fast asleep.

  “Shh,” she told Chasya, putting a finger to her lips and closing the door gently. “Your sister is sleeping.”

  “Why? It’s not so late. It’s not night. We didn’t even eat our dinner or have a bath!” The child was indignant at this strange behavior.

  “Yes, I know. But your sister is having a hard time. And sometimes, when we are older and having a hard time, HaShem helps us by letting us sleep and have good dreams. Then, when we wake up, we aren’t so sad anymore.”

  “HaShem is so good!” exclaimed Chasya with such a sigh of saintly, heartfelt sincerity, Leah couldn’t stop laughing and kissing her.

  “Good!” Mordechai Shalom echoed, jumping up and down, a huge smile plumping out his already enormous cheeks, his long blond curls covering his big, blue eyes.

  Such a gorgeousness, Leah thought, scooping him up, his chubby little body tender and sweet in her arms. How she loved them both, she thought, her attention drawn from the teenager to the little ones whose needs she felt so much more adequate to address. And for the moment, she tried not to worry.

  “So how did it go?” Yaakov asked as soon as he walked through the door.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t talk to her?”

  “She was sleeping.”

  “Sleeping? And where is she now?”

  “Still in her room.” Only now Leah realized how many hours had passed, and still Shaindele hadn’t emerged.

  Yaakov knocked on the door. “It’s Tateh. Can I come in?”

  “Come in, Tateh.”

  She was sitting up, her feet dangling off the bed to the floor, her pretty young face wrinkled from the indentations of the pillow. Her thick, dark hair had unraveled in messy wisps that covered her eyes. She pushed them back, gathering her hair in her hand and expertly rebraiding it. Her face was pale, pinched.

  “What happened to you?”

  “What happened?” she repeated stupidly, her mind still fogged from sleep.