The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

“I think Joel’s point is that you can believe in God but recognize that He does have limitations,” David said, getting right back to what was, for him, the point. “It’s not inconsistent to say that He hates suffering but can’t eliminate it, at least not without taking away from us the gift of our own choices. And even if tragedy isn’t God’s will, overcoming it may be.”

  Naomi smiled and shook her head. “Is that the same as saying that He takes credit for the good things that happen, but the bad things are our own fault.”

  “Not at all! It’s saying that good can come from bad. From the Holocaust we got immeasurable suffering and sorrow. But we also got Israel. We got an opportunity for renewal.”

  “Great!” Naomi said maliciously. “Let’s go dig up the mass graves and spread the news.”

  “I don’t want renewal,” Rachel said softly. “I want what I’ve lost. I don’t want to hear about how my sadness will contribute to some future happiness.”

  “Rachel,” her sister said.

  “No, really. I hate it when doctors tell me how what they’re learning from my child might save somebody else’s child. I feel badly for the next mother. I do. But I still want my own child. How can I embrace a God who’s determined this will happen to him? And it’s all very well to say genetics determined it,” she said, shaking her head, “but if there is a God, didn’t He make genetics?”

  “You’re missing the point, Rachel.” Joel spoke softly. “If you can think of God as a little bit like a doctor, this is all I’m saying. You know, we don’t always understand what He is doing on our behalf. Our challenge is to believe that He knows what’s best for us, and hang on to that belief, even when we don’t see the whole picture.”

  Rachel was suddenly bitter. “So I’m being tested? That’s great. He’s obsessed with testing us, this God. And we never pass. It’s rigged.”

  “Abraham passed,” Joel said soothingly. “He had the hardest test of all, and he passed. That’s why we can even sit here and have this discussion, thousands of years later.” Polly put up her arms to Naomi. Naomi pulled her out of the high chair and settled the little girl on her lap. “One supreme act of faith, long ago. And surely the entire meaning of our history is that we were chosen because Abraham passed his test.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Naomi said, her cheek to Polly’s cool cheek. But nobody seemed to hear her.

  “But this is just my point,” said Rachel. “Here you have a God who, even though He’s not going to let Abraham actually kill his child, is still more than willing to put them through unspeakable trauma. I mean, how’s poor Isaac supposed to live a normal life after he’s watched his father tie him up and raise a knife to slaughter him?”

  “Let’s get him on Oprah and ask him.” David laughed.

  “No, David. I mean it.” Rachel shook her head. The tight curls bounced for an echoing minute. “What kind of God would put His most faithful servants through that just to prove what was already obvious. Just to reassure Himself?”

  Joel sipped his wine. “Have you considered that God always knew Abraham would pass, and that the purpose of the test was for Abraham himself to see the extent of his own devotion?”

  “That’s an even more convincing argument for not having put him through it,” Rachel said.

  “And what about poor Sarah?” Naomi broke in. “Don’t you think it was pretty presumptuous of Abraham to take Isaac off without even warning Sarah? Giving her a chance to prepare herself for the loss of her son? Or say goodbye?”

  “Yes,” Judith said. “I certainly do.”

  “But Judith”—Joel looked at her—“I think what you fail to see is that the story of Abraham is really a story of consolation. I think God means us to take comfort from this.”

  “Comfort.” Judith shook her head.

  “Yes. Comfort. This is the story that enables us to confront the worst things. The loss of a child, for example. When Jews were attacked in pogroms during the Middle Ages, they took their children’s lives themselves to prevent their suffering at the hands of the attackers, and they invoked Abraham as they did so. They felt that if they could submit to God’s will with Abraham’s faith, then their tragedy was redeemed.”

  Judith looked at him, and neither spoke. Then, abruptly, she stood. She took her plate and his and went into the kitchen.

  “Well, you know,” Naomi said, with forced cheer, “maybe there’s a certain twisted logic to that, but the fact remains that I don’t particularly want to be involved with a God who would ask it of me. Frankly, I think we’re in trouble when we have a God who’s asking us to kill, for whatever reason.”

  Joel smiled at her. “Naomi, the notion of a father willing to sacrifice a son for the good of mankind is at the center of more than one religion, you know.”

  “Then what a terrible thing to base a religion on,” Naomi said passionately. “Honestly, sometimes I’m embarrassed by the whole thing.” She looked quickly at David. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Again that benevolent smile. “But it’s all right. Talmud says that when the debate is in the service of heaven, both sides are sustained.”

  “But I don’t even accept that,” Naomi said. “I mean, how can this even be worthy of debate? The murder of a child can never be justified. Some positions are just indefensible.”

  Judith, returning to gather more plates, looked at her and shook her head. “But how can you say that, Naomi? Aren’t you the one who said conditions always matter? You said that under oath, as I recall.”

  Rachel, too, turned to Naomi. “That’s right. Aren’t you defending a woman who’s accused of murdering her child?”

  “Yes,” Naomi said. “But Heather is innocent. She’s innocent of killing her own child, because that child was born dead. And she’s utterly innocent of killing the baby in the river, because she has no connection to that baby at all.”

  “So then,” Judith said, “you wouldn’t defend the person who actually did kill that child in the river?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Naomi shifted Polly on her lap.

  “No matter what the circumstances were?”

  “What circumstances could there have been?” Naomi said caustically. “This was a newborn baby. I mean, Catholics might believe babies are born with some kind of sin already attached to them, but even they don’t murder their infants for it.”

  Judith came back to the table and sat down.

  “What?” Naomi looked at her.

  Judith quickly shook her head. “I was just thinking. We don’t know about that baby. And what we don’t know might change our minds.”

  “No. However you look at it, it was wrong to stab that child. It can’t be made all right.”

  “It was morphine,” Judith said vaguely.

  “No difference. And no difference between that and Abraham stabbing his kid with a knife. It’s still murder, or attempted murder.”

  “But, Naomi”—Joe! leaned forward—“Abraham did do the right thing. We know that, because we were chosen by God as a result of his choice.”

  Naomi thought for a moment. Even before she spoke, she knew she was wrong to do this, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Chosen for what?” She looked squarely at Joel, even as his look darkened in return. “See, I’ve always wondered about this. Maybe Abraham didn’t pass at all. Maybe he failed. Maybe God wanted to see that Abraham’s humanity was greater than his faith. And God was enraged, because here He’d made man in His own image, so it was a comment on God, too. And was this barbarism really going to come out on top of the love between father and son? Maybe Abraham was supposed to get down on his knees and say, ‘God, I love you, but I can’t do this. I’d rather kill myself if you’ll only spare my child.’ But when that didn’t happen, when Abraham just went ahead without even hesitating and bound up his son and raised his knife, maybe God said, ‘Fine. If that’s Abraham’s choice, then I’m going to single out his descendants for an eternity of torments.’ And so He did
.”

  She looked at them in turn. No one seemed inclined to interrupt her, and she could not seem to interrupt herself.

  “And so He started to punish us. He enslaved us for a couple of centuries in Egypt. He gave us the Babylonian exile, and the Diaspora. He gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition, and the rap for Blood Libel, and pogroms. And then, just in case there was any doubt left in our minds, He gave us the Holocaust. You see, He wanted to make sure we understood Him. He wanted us to look at each other when they turned on the gas and think, I guess we made a mistake. I guess we aren’t God’s chosen people, after all. But we’re so stubborn. We insist on not seeing the obvious. We’re like little puppies who keep cuddling up to the guy that’s kicking us away. We just don’t get it, even when we look around now and the tormentors are still out there, drinking rum on the verandah in Paraguay, totally guilt-free. God doesn’t care to punish them for what they did to His so-called chosen people, because this is what He chose us for. And all because Abraham was so willing to kill.”

  In the silence, she could hear nothing now. Only, far down the hill, the river’s rumble. It began to be disturbing, this silence. “Well?” Naomi finally said.

  “That,” said David quietly, “is about the most cynical thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Joel stood. His face, Naomi suddenly saw, was rigid white. Very deliberately he folded his napkin, placed it on the table, and left the room. She heard the kitchen door slam shut. She looked at Judith, but her eyes were fixed on some obscure point of the tablecloth. Belatedly, Naomi understood that she had done something unforgivable.

  “Judith,” Naomi said.

  Judith shot to her feet. “No. I’ll get the dessert.” She walked into the kitchen.

  This left Naomi and Rachel and David still at the table with the children. Only Polly seemed unaffected. She sat on Naomi’s lap, calmly sipping her juice, as Hannah quietly excused herself and the adults remained in creaky silence. The truth was, Naomi couldn’t seem to find the moment her talk had veered to this place, passing through whatever door had evidently closed behind her. Hadn’t it all been, as David had said, debate for the sake of heaven? Wasn’t it fair to try to prove or disprove God’s existence by rational means? Isn’t that what they had been doing? But on the other hand, there could be no debate if heaven was not theoretical to begin with. Someone had cheated, by actually believing. And yet it wasn’t David who had glared at her with such fury and left the table. Naomi, unable to sit still any longer, lifted Polly to her hip and went into the kitchen. Judith was ladling fruit salad into little bowls. She didn’t look up.

  “Judith, I’m sorry,” she said.

  She looked tired. She gave Naomi a smile that was also tired.

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “I feel terrible. I had no idea I would offend Joel so much.”

  Judith shook her head. “No, you couldn’t have known. Here, will you cut some of this onto the plates?” She passed Naomi the cake.

  “I thought we were only talking,” she went on, putting Polly down on the kitchen floor. “I didn’t realize he believed so strongly. I mean, I knew he was thinking about these things, but I didn’t know he’d actually reached the point where he believed.”

  Judith sighed. She looked at Naomi and then, quite unexpectedly, leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “But he doesn’t. He wants to. He wants to very badly. But he doesn’t yet. What David said before? About getting yourself to believe by an act of will? That’s what Joel’s trying to do. He’s in a war with himself, and neither side can get the upper hand. And I can’t do anything to help, even though I want to. Because I’m with you. There’s no God at all. Or if there is, He’s a complete shit and I don’t want Him in my house.”

  Naomi watched her, smoothly contained, deftly scooping the oranges and pomegranate seeds. “Joel will never speak to me again,” she said fearfully. “He won’t, will he?”

  “Oh, he will.” Judith smiled. “He has a great capacity for forgiveness.”

  She breathed in relief. “So I’ll be forgiven?”

  “Oh no, Naomi.” Judith suddenly laughed. She picked up two bowls of fruit and walked to the French doors. “Not you. Himself He’ll forgive himself and you’ll be friends again. You wait and see.”

  Chapter 42

  Daniel in the Lions’ Den

  THEY WENT ON, BUT IN STRAINED, SOMETIMES forced joviality. Joel did not reappear, though at some point he returned to the house and went up the back stairs. The sound of this was covered by David’s suggestion that now was a good time to find the afikomen and Hannah’s subsequent scurry around the living room. The linen-wrapped matzo, protruding between two Laura Nyro albums, was exchanged for David’s crisp five-dollar bill. As soon as she could, Naomi claimed tatigue on Polly’s part and took her home.

  It was fully night now, and the rain had never quite materialized, which only meant that there was a superfluous fullness to the dark. In her headlights along Goddard Falls Road, an orange chipmunk with a racing stripe suddenly skittered across her path, its tail held straight up like a bumper car attached to nothing, then disappeared into the black field. Polly, who truly was tired now, dropped to sleep in the back seat, and Naomi envied her her oblivion. Oblivion, for herself, would not be easily achieved tonight. She pulled off the road at the top of her drive and got out; then, murmuring, she scooped the little girl against her shoulder, hitched up the diaper bag, and pulled out her flashlight. Then she shut the car door with her hip and started down.

  Her circle of light bounced past trees, the deciduous ones bare even of buds, the pines boasting a powder puff of apple green at the fingertip of each dark, needled finger. The soggy mud sucked as she went down, sending the odd stone clattering before her, and she felt the motion of Polly’s jaw, its mime of sucking, against her own cheek. She kept her eyes on the drive only a few feet before her and concentrated on where she was putting her feet. This was how she managed not to see the car, until she was nearly on top of it.

  “Hey,” a voice said, at nearly the same instant. The collation of unfamiliar car and familiar voice was paralyzing. Naomi stopped in her tracks. She threw up the beam of light in his face—her first instinct, she would later observe, to be as cruel as possible.

  “Hey, get it out of my eyes, will you?”

  But she wouldn’t. She liked him like this: caught in the headlights, at her mercy. Daniel in the lions’ den. This made her the lion, she supposed.

  “What are you doing here?” said Naomi.

  “You changed the locks. I couldn’t get inside.”

  “I changed the locks?” She was incredulous. “Like, over a year ago. Why shouldn’t I change the locks?”

  “No reason,” said Daniel mildly. “But you asked what I was doing here. I am here, on the porch, as you see, because you changed the locks. Otherwise I would have waited for you inside.” He peered at her. “How come you walked down?”

  “I don’t trust the drive, Daniel. I never did in mud season, as you know.” She stepped past him and got out her key. “I suppose you’re coming in.”

  “Yes, I suppose. I’ve come a long way.”

  Naomi opened the door. She turned on the light and stepped in, wiping her muddy boots on the mat in the vain hope that he’d do the same.

  “Is that mine?” said Daniel. She looked at him and he nodded toward Polly, who slept on.

  For such a consequential question he looked remarkably unperturbed. Daniel’s long face was pale but rather dull; his hands were casually stuck in the slack pockets of his blue parka.

  “That,” said Naomi stiffly, “was already six months old when you left town. It’s Heather Pratt’s daughter Polly. I’ve been taking care of her.”

  He nodded, off the hook and otherwise indifferent. “Fine, fine.”

  But this, too, enraged her. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to put her to bed.” She walked past him into Polly’s room and, under a dim light, deftly changed her diaper and zipped her int
o her pajamas, all without waking her. Then she lifted Polly into her crib and covered her up with her great-grandmother’s quilt.

  Coming out of the room, she saw him there, his hands on his skinny hips, still in his parka. The sight of him in what was once this most familiar of places brought home to her quickly how much the house had been changed in his absence—the great room divided into a warren, the white porcelain gleam of the toilet through an open door. There were Polly’s things now, too—abandoned stuffed animals and cairns of building blocks here and there. Also, down the brand-new stairs, the annex with its computer and television. He frowned at this.

  “I see you put in a bathroom,” Daniel observed, pursing his mouth. The black hair of his mustache, she suddenly noticed, was faintly gray.

  “Yes. And an annex for my work. Business,” she said gratuitously, “is going well.”

  “Business was always important to you, Naomi,” her ex-husband commented. She half expected him to break into a wail, à la Jacob Marley: Mankind was my business! Instead, he went to the couch and sat, shrugging off his parka. “I’m glad to be inside.”

  Naomi stood looking at him. He wore a dirty flannel shirt beneath a dirty sweater—once discernibly blue, now dingy brown—and jeans. His unwiped boots were planted heavily on the light floorboards, shedding bits of mud around them. Had she passed him on a busy street she might have thought that he bore a slight resemblance to Daniel, something vague in the carriage, perhaps, but then it was a common enough look: gangly and hirsute, white-skinned, with a fading hairline and large knuckles. She had lived with him for thirteen years, and now she had no desire even to touch him.

  “Want a beer?” Naomi said, more for something to say.

  “No. I’ll have tea, though. Do you have Lemon Zinger?”

  Right where you left it, she thought. She went to put the kettle on.

  “I’ve been here for a couple of hours,” he called from the next room. “I knew you’d be back. I saw your purse through the window.”

  The thought of him looking through her window gave her a chill. “I was at a Passover Seder.”