An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  He exhaled gratefully, smiling back. “Remember the days of our courtship when I tried so many times to bring you flowers and candy?”

  “‘Goyish romantic presents,’ you used to call them.” She chuckled. “I always found some way to pretend they weren’t actually meant for me.”

  “You’d leave the flowers for us for Shabbos and let the kinderlach eat the chocolates.”

  “Not all of them,” she protested with a wry smile. “Well, I admit I only allowed myself one or two.”

  “Should we open it now, while it’s quiet?” he suggested hopefully.

  She hesitated. “Don’t you want to kiss the children good night first?”

  The children. Of course. Always the children.

  “Just this once, can’t we just…? I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

  She shrugged unhappily. “Okay, if that’s what you want, but there is something else that just can’t wait,” she pushed on, even though it was perfectly clear to her that now was not the time. She couldn’t help it. She simply needed to know, without delay, what Yaakov intended to do about Yoel Grub. It was something that just couldn’t be put off, however wise.

  This burning urgency was more for her own sake than her stepdaughter’s, she admitted to herself. What she needed, without delay, was an iron-clad reassurance that he wasn’t “one of them,” those Boro Park sheep who did whatever their community machers told them; that he was going to think for himself, especially where his own daughter was concerned. Most of all, she needed uncontestable proof that she and he really were part of a free, sincere, devout religious fellowship of individuals trying to live a good and pure life and not mindless members of some cult. Only his immediate and unwavering indignation over Yoel Grub would silence the voices of fear and negativity in her mind, dispelling once and for all her budding doubts over her decision to become part of this community.

  “What’s so important it can’t wait a minute?” he asked with sullen impatience, feeling ill-used.

  She sat down beside him, also frustrated. How she had longed for this—undivided attention, intimacy! He’d even, unbidden, canceled his evening shiur with Meir! This was the time she’d been preparing for, finally convinced she could trust him enough to be completely honest with him, even if it upset him. And now, instead, she was about to sacrifice this precious moment, to ruin it without any benefit to herself at all. But it couldn’t be helped.

  “It’s Shaindele.”

  She already sensed him inching away, his face and body stiffening.

  “Must we? Now?”

  “It’s not what you think!”

  “But isn’t she being taken care of? Aren’t we paying a fortune for professional help? Not like when her mother was sick when we didn’t … Aren’t we doing whatever we can? Why do we need to talk about it? It’s upsetting.”

  “What I’m going to tell you now is a thousand times more upsetting. I’m very sorry to have to do it now. I know you were hoping … looking forward to…”

  He leaned back, making a curt, dismissive gesture with his hand, then clasping them together tensely in his lap as if to say, What does it matter what I was hoping for, what I want?

  The gesture wasn’t lost on her. It took Leah aback. She had no idea he was so angry, that he was feeling the lack of intimacy between them as much or even more than she herself. But it didn’t change what she needed to do now, good timing or no.

  “It’s Yoel Grub.”

  “The psychologist? Nu? What?”

  “He has been behaving inappropriately with her.”

  “Vus is dus? ‘Inappropriately’?”

  “His behavior is not tzniusdik. He’s ignoring yichud. He’s touching her. He’s talking to her about forbidden things. I think he’s a big fake. A pervert in rav’s clothing. We need to find her someone else. And while we’re at it, to inform all the people who recommended him that it’s dangerous to send young girls to him for counseling.”

  Yaakov stood up. He took a step toward Shaindele’s room, but then he reeled, falling heavily backward onto the couch, almost knocking into Leah. She reached for him, concerned.

  “Are you all right, Yaakov? I know it’s a shock—”

  “A shock?” he repeated dully, his eyes wild. “A shock!” He was breathing heavily.

  She was frightened he was having some kind of medical issue. “Please tell me you’re all right!” she pleaded.

  “Tell you I’m all right? You tell me such a thing, that a pious man—recommended by Rav Alter, after he discussed it with the Bobelger Rebbe himself, who sends all the troubled girls in his community to Grub—is making sinful advances to my seventeen-year-old daughter? And that you heard this from a girl who has been sneaking behind her parents’ backs for months to meet and do who knows what with some yeshiva bum she met in a pizza parlor? And on the basis of that, you want to ruin a man’s reputation? Take away his livelihood?”

  A searing disappointment, like a hot knife, ripped through Leah’s stomach. “Yaakov, I understand this is a shock. But I spoke to Shaindele. I asked her many questions and insisted on hearing all the details, and I’m telling you she is not making this up. He has been grooming her.”

  “I don’t know what that means! Grooming, inappropriate. I’m not as smart as you, Leah. I never went to college. I’m just an ignorant, haredi yeshiva boy who has lived in this neighborhood—which is apparently Sodom and Gomorrah—his whole life,” he spit out in fury.

  She was at a loss. She had never seen him like this. She didn’t know who this person was sitting next to her, filled with ignorant, unreasonable resentment and anger. She shifted her body, moving away from him.

  The gesture incensed him even further. “This is not the first time that girl has come between us. Remember? Right after we got engaged, how she ran away to my brother’s? I wanted to let her stay there.”

  “You wanted to let her get married! She was sixteen!”

  “I never!” he began indignantly, then thought back on it. “It’s true I was angry. I said some things, but of course I wouldn’t have.”

  “No? Are you sure?”

  He was cut to the heart by this, and by her closed and furious face and molten eyes that couldn’t even bear to look at him.

  He jumped up. “Where is she now? I’ll get the truth out of her!”

  “She’s at Fruma Esther’s. I wanted to have a chance to talk to you about this without her. She’s terrified you won’t believe her and that you’ll force her to go back.”

  “Of course she has to go back! If she doesn’t go back, Halpern will throw her out of school. She won’t graduate. You heard him!”

  “That’s another thing. What is the principal of a girls’ school doing directing teenage girls to that pervert?”

  “Vus is dus, ‘pervert’?”

  Did he really not know English? Had he not been born and raised in America? “It’s a soteh.”

  “This … that is loshon hara! Rechilus! You’ve completely taken her side without looking into it! Just because a silly girl makes accusations to cover her own sins!”

  “She’s your daughter! And please keep your voice down; you’ll wake the children. Or don’t you care about them, either?”

  He was wounded, staring at her in disbelief.

  “Aren’t you even going to ask me what she said? Aren’t you even curious?” she whispered with a sudden dispassionate calm he found more frightening than her anger.

  “Oh, that’s allowed? You let? I can question?” he retorted sarcastically, digging into his position, pushed by shame, regret, and disappointment to an extreme stance that was not natural to him.

  “Allowed? When is a person not allowed to hear the truth? Maybe because I’m an ignorant baalas teshuva, practically a shiksa, who didn’t learn in kollel for twenty years, but I never heard of that halacha.”

  His eyes smarted. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this now,” he backtracked, feeling overwhelmed with sudden regret.

  �
��When, then, Yaakov? She has another appointment with Grub tomorrow.”

  “What, she goes every day?”

  “No, but Grub insisted because she ran out of there in tears. If she doesn’t go back, I’m sure he’ll cover himself by calling Halpern with his version first.”

  “I need to talk to her myself. To hear it firsthand.”

  “Please don’t put her through another inquisition! You’re her father, but you are also a man. Don’t embarrass her by making her repeat it to you.”

  “She can pull the wool over your eyes, but not mine! I’ll get the truth out of her!”

  “Instead of interrogating her, why don’t you go speak to Yoel Grub?”

  “And ask him what? If he…” He couldn’t even think of how to phrase it! “If he behaved in a way unbecoming a rav with my teenage daughter?”

  “He locked the doors! He touched her, pulled the bobby pins from her hair! Told her to sit in his lap, that she needed someone ‘more experienced’ than Duvie Halpern! He threatened her that if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted, he’d get her expelled!”

  He listened with only half an ear, horrified and disbelieving. It wasn’t possible! A man even older than himself, married with nine children. A grandfather of four. A man well known and respected in the community, recommended by Rav Alter himself! He simply refused to consider any of it could possibly be true. And if it wasn’t true, then it was another monstrous lie cooked up by his wayward daughter for reasons only she understood.

  He suddenly felt weary. “What is it you want from me, Leah?”

  “I want you to fight for your daughter! To believe her. I want you to prove to me that this whole holy world I’ve given up so much to be part of is real and not some make-believe stage set, like Disneyland.”

  “I can’t understand you! Don’t you remember all the lies she made up about you, trying to break us up? Why would you do this for her?”

  She was astounded. “Because…,” she began, trying to clarify her thoughts. “Because you are a righteous man, Yaakov, and this is—or is supposed to be—a righteous, God-fearing community that protects its children! Because this is an evil situation that must be stopped once and for all. That’s why, Yaakov.”

  They were at an impasse.

  “All right. I’ll look into it,” he said dully.

  “Thank you,” she answered formally, rising stiffly to her feet and going into the kitchen. She brought back a plate of food for him, placing it on a mat on the dining room table. “Your dinner,” she said.

  “Aren’t you going to join me, Leah?”

  “I’m going to the mikvah. I don’t want to get there too late.”

  Silently, she put on her coat and, covering her hair with a warm hat which she would need on the way back when she emerged into the cold streets with hair still wet from her ablutions, headed for the door.

  He sat alone in the living room, listening to the sounds invading the silence: impatient car horns, an ambulance screeching in terror, the motor of the refrigerator coming to life, the ticking of a clock.

  So this is what it has come to after all his efforts in forming connections, marrying, having children. This loneliness, this silence, he thought bitterly with a growing self-pity. He moved from the couch to the dining room table, looking down at the plate of carefully prepared food. It was still warm and looked appetizing, and yet he felt no hunger, no desire to nourish himself. Out of habit, he picked up a fork and pushed the food around, reluctantly bringing some to his mouth, barely tasting the fragrant vegetables and the chicken. He soon put the fork down. It was no use. He leaned back, pushing himself away from the table.

  What was my crime? he thought, getting up and pacing. And then, unexpectedly, another thought: What was her crime?

  He remembered the other women he had met on those pitiful, not-so-long-ago shidduch dates, women carefully selected by aging matchmakers who had long ago forgotten the meaning of love. None of the women had shown any interest at all in his children, viewing them as a burdensome and inconvenient part of a bargain to which they had no choice but to agree to attain what they wanted for themselves and their own children. The worst were those who had made it perfectly clear that under their regime, his children would be whipped into shape by rules that would downgrade their needs to those of the furniture’s.

  And then there’d been Leah, who had no rules. Leah, who’d simply loved them.

  She had become their mother, he realized, startled. Their mother, not their babysitter or stepmother, and she would fight for them like a lioness. For her, they would always come first. This was a blessing, he thought, his sense of its rightness and goodness dissolving his anger. I should thank God for that, not resent it. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with her.

  He went to his children’s bedroom, quietly opening the door. Mordechai Shalom was fast asleep, his breathing even and deep. Tears still stained his beautiful round cheeks, Yaakov saw, stabbed with remorse.

  “Tateh?” a little voice called out to him in the darkness.

  He sat down beside his little girl, tenderly gathering her in his arms. Because she was so smart and so funny, it was so easy to forget how really young she still was. Her bones were like a little kitten’s, her body still rimmed with baby fat. A little girl, a sweet, small girl. How he loved her! He kissed her cheek and laid her down again. “You said your shma?”

  “Yes, Tateh. I didn’t forget. I was crying, but I think HaShem understood anyway.”

  He smoothed her hair off her delicate forehead.

  “Tateh?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you and Mommy eat all the chocolates?”

  “We didn’t eat not even one,” he admitted, and was rewarded with a sleepy smile.

  “You could have one. One each,” she added generously, yawning and turning over.

  “That’s very kind of you, Icy,” he whispered, tucking her in. “Now go to sleep.”

  He closed the door carefully behind him, then leaned against it, breathing deeply.

  Next, he opened the door to Shaindele’s bedroom. He put on the light, looking around the room. There was her desk, piled high with her schoolbooks; the Code of Jewish Law, the second volume of the Five Books of Moses, with commentaries, the prophet Isaiah, a book of English grammar, and a workbook for algebra. Her notebooks lay open, sharpened pencils in holders stood up straight and ready. A Shabbos dress that had been carefully ironed was hanging on the closet door. A cork bulletin board held a printout of her weekly class schedule and some photos of herself and her friends and cousins at various weddings. And there was a framed wedding photo of himself and Leah smiling into the camera. After everything, all the turmoil, she kept a picture of Leah in her room!

  Then his eye was caught by something else, something he didn’t remember seeing before. There, over her bed, hung a huge, framed photo of herself dressed as a bride with a crown of flowers on her head. She couldn’t have been more than Chasya’s age, he realized. She was sitting on Zissele’s lap, her mother’s arms draped around her small shoulders. It had been taken in kindergarten one Friday morning when she had been chosen as Ima Shabbos, a great honor for the little girls, who got to dress up and light candles and make the blessing. Both she and Zissele were smiling into the camera, but already he could see the traces of grimness and despair darkening his young wife’s eyes as they looked into the future. Someone had carefully and painstakingly braided and pasted small bunches of dried flowers lovingly onto the picture frame. It must have taken hours.

  He stared at the photo. She, too, was his little girl. Then suddenly the idea burst in his brain like a bomb. What … what if.… what if … it were … true? What if this man, this Grub, was not to be trusted? After all, I don’t know him personally. I’m not a Hasid, part of Grub’s community. And neither was Rav Alter, who had never actually said he’d spoken personally to the Bobelger Rebbe and who didn’t know this Grub either. Rav Alter had simply passed on the assurances of others, p
eople in a completely different community who followed very different rules and had a lifestyle unique to themselves alone.

  He began to think about the terrible scene Leah had painted that he had been too upset to even consider. Pulled the hairpins from her hair? Locked the doors? Touched her? Words could be misinterpreted. But actions? These concrete, physical manifestations of the man’s will, his power? Even if only one of these things had occurred between Yoel Grub and his daughter, the man should be stoned! There was no room for discussion here. He had either done these things or he hadn’t. Why would Shaindele make this up? She had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

  He walked to his bedroom, quietly opening the door. It was dark and silent. The beds, he saw, had already been pushed together, a sign that she, too, had been joyously anticipating the end of their difficult two weeks of separation. Hopefulness began to beat once more inside him.

  Undressing quickly in the dark, he climbed in, waiting for her to come home.

  He’d almost dozed off by the time he heard the bedroom door open. He watched her move through the shadows, hanging up her street clothes, then disappearing into the bathroom. She emerged in her nightgown, then silently climbed into bed, turning her back to him.

  Tentatively, he touched her shoulder.

  She turned over. Her face was wet with tears.

  “My love, don’t,” he whispered, taking her into his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she answered, snuggling against him. “Yaakov, I’m so frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “That all this isn’t real. That Boro Park isn’t real. It’s like the theater, where people present some reality to an audience, trying to make people believe it’s true, when the storefronts are made of cardboard and the clothes are all costumes they put on and take off, along with the expressions on their faces.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You grew up here, Yaakov, but this is all new to me. I wanted … want … so much to believe that people here are different. That they practice what they preach. Otherwise, what am I doing here?”