by J. J. Gesher
Still in his jacket, Jacob lowered his body to the cot. Within moments, he was asleep.
Langston pushed the broccoli around his plate. Mo’s plate had nothing but gravy.
“Any more pork chops?” Mo asked.
Rosie got up to clear the table. “You’ve had enough. Last one is for Langston’s lunch tomorrow. Besides, the doctor said only five ounces of meat. Portion control, remember?”
Mo murmured under his breath. “Forgot I was livin’ with the food police.”
“Did you hear, Ma?” Langston asked. “Sam talked today!”
Rosie looked to Mo for explanation. “I managed to coax a few sentences out of him,” Mo admitted.
“What did he say?” Rosie asked.
“He said that the hot water don’t work outta the basement spigot.”
“I told you, the whole not-talking-thing was an act,” Rosie scolded.
“It’s not that simple.” He took a slice of bread and wiped up the gravy.
“Did he tell you who he is, where he’s from?”
Mo shook his head. He got up, stretched his back, and groaned. “Just because a man don’t spill his life story don’t mean he’s tryin’ to put one over on you. I’ll tell you this much—he’s a city boy. Even with all his handiness, he didn’t know how to change a flat tire.”
“I don’t trust him,” Rosie said.
“Be that as it may, don’t you go pesterin’ him with a whole bunch of your questions. Nosy Rosie has no place here.”
“I am not being Nosy Rosie,” she said defensively. “I have a right to know who’s living across the street.”
“You don’t know what he’s been through. Sometimes people are like broken saltines—cracked in pieces. You handle ’em too rough and you get nothin’ but dust.”
Langston interrupted. “Is there any dessert?”
Mo was happy to change the subject. “Now, that’s a good question.”
Later that evening, Langston was on Rosie’s computer downstairs in the kitchen, playing a game that reinforced multiplication tables. He was animated, talking back to the screen, “Nine times nine is…”
Mo wandered into the kitchen. “Eighty-one.”
“You sure?”
“Yup. There’s a trick to the nine tables. The right answer always adds up to nine. Nine times nine is eighty-one. Eight plus one is…”
“Nine!” Langston typed in the answer, and the computer rewarded him with a series of blips and bleeps.
Mo pulled the milk out of the refrigerator. “Good. Now I want you to look up something on the computer for me. Look up ‘memory loss’ on that Google thing of yours.”
“There—” Langston pointed to the screen. He started reading the webpage, but Mo pushed him out of the way.
“Go get ready for bed,” Mo grumbled as he focused on the screen. “Let me read that.”
CHAPTER 18
In the days after the Walmart trip, Jacob spoke more, although he did not initiate conversations or go beyond basic civilities. When Mo asked again about his past, he offered a feeble “I don’t remember.” He did remember, but he feared that if he spoke, the truth of his past would paralyze him.
With the return of his voice, Jacob thought to contact his mother. But every time he stepped into the pastor’s office to place the call, he stopped himself. His mother would never understand how he was living—shaved face, eating tref, ignoring all the laws. His mother accepted whatever the rabbi said, that the destruction of his family was part of God’s plan. Jacob couldn’t accept that way of thinking. He never picked up the phone.
Hava hated the thought of returning to the police station, but it was necessary. Each week she checked in diligently with the detective, David Rosenberg, who was in charge of Jacob’s case. Hava assumed they’d assigned a Jew because of the circumstances, but this Jew knew nothing about Hava and how she lived. The first time she sat across from him to answer a litany of nonsensical questions, he was eating a ham sandwich, wiping his mouth and smoothing his mustache between bites.
Detective Rosenberg was doing paperwork at his desk. He raised his eyes to the horizon automatically as he took a bite of his sandwich. He always marveled at the primitive reaction of looking up when eating. The police psychologist had told him that it was a remnant of man’s prehistoric self, because that’s exactly the moment when self-absorption renders the victim vulnerable to becoming a predator’s blue plate special. Even when he was totally conscious of the process, even when he was reading, his gaze automatically swept an imaginary horizon. Instinct was a powerful force.
This time when his eyes lifted, they discovered Hava Fisher staring at him. Hava was one of the many family members who’d lost someone in the bus bombing a few months back. Her son had watched his whole family die. Now he was missing. He walked out and never came back. Rosenberg couldn’t blame him, and he couldn’t hold extended eye contact with Mrs. Fisher. Even for a seasoned New York detective who’d seen everything, the Fisher tragedy overwhelmed him.
Hava put a Ziploc bag of homemade cookies on his desk. “For you…” There was a momentary silence. “Any word?” She anxiously tucked her hair into her scarf.
Rosenberg admired her tenacity. Every week like clockwork, the same routine. He shook his head and muttered, “Thank you for the cookies,” followed by the hope-dashing, “nothing’s changed.”
He asked the standard queries for a missing person, the same ones he always asked: “Did Jacob have any outstanding debts or legal problems? Was it possible that he was involved with another woman? Was there an insurance policy on Julia and the children?”
She answered all of his questions politely, but she wanted to smash his face with the old manual pencil sharpener he repeatedly used.
“NO,” she yelled inside her head. “Jacob was none of these things, you fool! He was a man who loved his wife and children, and they are dead now. He went mad when he watched them disappear. Find him before it’s too late…find him.” But Hava didn’t say any of that aloud.
Each time she visited, she sat with her hands folded on her lap and answered the questions politely. Each time Hava struggled not to weep when she told Detective Rosenberg how much she missed her son. Each time he assured her that they were doing everything possible, but a missing adult who left of his own free will, no matter the circumstances, was not a high priority.
Finally, she asked Detective Rosenberg questions of her own. The desire to know battled against the futility of asking. “Is there any new information about who did this?”
The detective tried to be patient. “We believe this is a political issue. The FBI is in charge. We’ll let you know when we have any fresh information.”
As she left his office, Hava reached for her cellphone. She called Barbara’s home, but Steve picked up. “No news,” she told him.
She reported the useless details of her visit with Rosenberg. Since Hava had admitted the truth of Jacob’s disappearance, she could talk to Julia’s parents with greater ease. Steve was annoyed with the police who offered no clues and was deeply depressed and lonely for Julia and his grandchildren, but he was no longer angry with Jacob for surviving. They were all trying to survive.
Jacob sat in a storefront diner. The place was dilapidated, but the food was good and cheap. Since Pastor Johnson had given him a small stipend as compensation for his work, he’d been coming here once or twice a week to eat a meal. He made no attempt to cover his solitary status with a newspaper or a novel. He sat quietly and concentrated on his plate, nodding for coffee refills.
A television was suspended over the high counter that divided the grill from the dining area. One of the waitresses turned up the volume, and instantly the diner came alive. The Atlanta Braves were playing the New York Mets. A few patrons huddled close to watch, commenting on the tight score, and Atlanta’s chances in the playoffs. Although the Mets had never been Jacob’s team, seeing their uniforms was like a kick in the stomach. He was immediately back in Brooklyn on
an oppressive summer day.
New York in August was brutal. It was ninety-five degrees at five p.m., the sidewalks steaming from an afternoon downpour that brought no relief. He couldn’t wait to get home, shower, and watch the Yankee playoffs. But when he walked in the door to his Brooklyn row house, the noise assaulted him. The television was blaring a cartoon, Yossi and Miriam were bickering with their cousins, toys were scattered everywhere, and his sister Naomi, pregnant with her third child, was yakking on the phone like chaos was the norm.
“Mommy went to the market,” Sarah informed him when he bent down to kiss her head. She was riveted by the exaggerated animal characters on the screen.
Naomi covered the receiver for a moment and patted her swollen belly. “My AC went out. Julia said we could spend the night.” Jacob nodded, and she returned to her phone conversation.
After a quick shower, Jacob made his way to the living room and, without a word of warning, changed the channel to the Yankee game. The children—all five of them—objected loudly.
“Daddy! You can’t do that,” Yossi whined. “We were watching something.”
“Go out and play,” Jacob said.
Miriam stood up glaring, hands on her hips. “It’s too hot. And we were in the middle of the episode.”
“The Yankees are playing,” Jacob said firmly. His children knew better than to argue with that tone. He scooted the children off the couch and sat down.
His sister’s three-year-old began to cry.
“Go to Mommy,” Jacob said. He could hear the crankiness in his own voice.
Naomi hung up the phone. “What’s going on here?”
Jacob pretended not to hear. He was already listening to the play-by-play. Naomi, balancing the insulted toddler on her hip, her belly popping under her maternity blouse, stood in front of the screen. “Really, Jacob, you could let the kids finish…”
“Bottom of the seventh. No way.”
“What do you want them to do?” Naomi asked, clearly annoyed by her brother’s intransigence.
“Shhh…the game.”
The girls stomped out of the room. Yossi sat on the floor at Jacob’s feet, ready to join the secret boys’ club.
Now he wondered why he’d been so gruff with them. He wanted a do-over. He’d sit with Sarah on his lap while she named the characters in her silly cartoon.
Why did he care so much about sports? On the day he walked Julia and the children to the bus, he’d been rushing home to watch the Knicks play. His wife didn’t know that he was marking his tenth year of sobriety. She didn’t understand the importance of sports to him—both watching and playing had been a crucial part of his recovery. In all that time, he had never told his wife about his years of drug abuse and rehabilitation. Those experiences remained a secret, a period of his life that he would never discuss.
Jacob was so lost in his punishing reverie that he didn’t notice the waitress standing in front of him, pad and pencil in hand. She’d grown accustomed to seeing this quiet man point to another diner’s meal or to a random item on the menu. She was shocked when he ordered in a clear voice, “I’ll have the fried chicken, please.”
The waitress couldn’t see the battle that was taking place in Jacob’s mind. With the return of his voice came a growing urgency to assert who he was: Jacob Fisher, son, brother, husband, and father. An Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who had witnessed unspeakable pain and loss. A Jew who wasn’t sure he believed in anything anymore. Here he was—in the farthest place from Brooklyn that he could imagine—and no one knew. He could claim his identity if he wanted, or he could continue the pretense. The aching in his gut told him to ignore the pain, to remain a drifter from nowhere. Being Sam was easier.
He devoured the fried chicken.
Jacob knocked on Pastor Johnson’s half-opened door. The pastor sat at his desk, talking on the telephone. He acknowledged Jacob’s presence with a nod. He grunted, sighed, and added an occasional “I understand” into the receiver. Without moving the phone from his ear, the pastor searched the pile of papers on his desk until he found the list of repairs he’d been accumulating. He handed over the list.
As Jacob scanned the paper, he thought of the many times his mother had requested that he use his natural mechanical inclination to fix some noncompliant pipe or wire. Each chore was a mystery to be solved. Where was the wire frayed? Why was the pipe leaking?
When he came back from rehab with new skills, he often recruited his mother as his journeyman. He’d be on a ladder, and she’d be below, handing him tools and giving instructions as if she knew what was going on. The handyman sessions always ended in a running joke. Jacob would recommend that if she knew a better way to fix the problem, perhaps she should be the one on the ladder.
He pointed to the last item on the pastor’s list. “Which bathroom?”
Pastor Johnson held his hand over the receiver and whispered, “social hall.”
By the time it registered with the pastor that he had spoken, Jacob was already down the hall, gathering Mo’s old toolbox, ready to work.
Jacob assessed the garden of First Baptist. Mo had gone to Walmart for some mulch. Jacob was weeding the flowerbed to prepare the soil for some hardy winter bulbs. He found satisfaction in pulling the weeds from their roots in the moist, cool soil. He remembered last fall, when he and Miriam had planted tulips against the hedge in the front yard. Miriam was his middle child, and Julia had been insisting that he pay more attention to her. She was the child who shared his love of gardening. Pink tulips were her favorite. She remembered where each bulb was planted and waited impatiently for the green shoots on the first days of spring.
The sound of plastic dragging across cement brought him to the present. He looked toward the noise and saw Rosie struggling to maneuver an overloaded trashcan to the curb. One of the can’s wheels was stuck in a crack in the pavement. Frustrated, she tried to dislodge it by kicking the wheel, but the can fell over, spilling its messy contents onto the street.
“Goddammit,” she blurted out.
Jacob turned toward her.
“Pretend you didn’t hear that,” she said. He watched her bend down to deal with the mess of putting the smelly bags back into the can.
She looked up. “You’re going to stand there and watch?”
Jacob crossed the street. He bent down and helped her scoop the garbage back into the can. He picked up an empty Cheerios box. “I like Cheerios too,” he offered.
Rosie looked at him for a moment.
“They lower your cholesterol,” he added politely, pointing to the claim on the box.
“Do cholesterol problems run in your family?” Rosie asked, attempting to draw him into conversation.
Jacob shrugged. Better not to think about where he came from. Yes, Jacob had returned to the world of the speaking, but he did not want to talk. Better to say little, to keep his thoughts to himself. He righted the trashcan and put it next to the others on the curb, wiped his hands on his workpants, and crossed back to the church.
Rosie was encouraged by his awkward attempt at conversation. So there was awareness behind that blank surface. He had a life somewhere, where he ate Cheerios and people talked about cholesterol. Rosie couldn’t figure this guy out. One minute, he was helpful, the next, rude. One minute making small talk, the next, incapable of basic courtesy.
Over the years, she’d had many secretive students in her class, and she’d learned to be patient, to provide the student space until he was ready to talk. It was a slow process, but it satisfied both her curiosity and her need to help. She would apply the same technique to Sam.
CHAPTER 19
The fall semester had flown by. Rosie had adapted to the new curriculum and the school culture, but she was worn out, more than ready for the Christmas break. The students were in the gym for a holiday assembly; she was using the time to grade final exams.
Rosie didn’t know what made her walk to the end of the hallway. The janitor’s room was open, but that wasn�
�t unusual. Maybe he was getting supplies for a repair or cleaning job around the school. What was unusual was that the door was open only slightly, and the light was off. The janitor was careful to keep the closet locked—it held too many supplies and tools that tempted adolescent mischief. As she approached, she heard strangled breathing from inside the closet.
Her thoughts raced. Oh Lord, I’ve heard about kids having sex on school grounds. What the hell do I do now—fling the door open and embarrass all of us?
Another thought tumbled on top of that. What if it’s not two students, but a student and a teacher? Wasn’t that kind of sickness all over the internet? That’s all she needed. Her first year at the school and now she’s a witness in some underage sex scandal. Wait—maybe it was the janitor. What if he’d had a heart attack and she was hearing his last gasping breaths? The thoughts pricked her as she walked toward the closet.
She stood outside the barely open door to make sure she was hearing correctly. There it was again—someone was in the closet. She knocked gently. The noise stopped.
“I am opening the door now,” she said as a statement of fact. Then she gently swung it open. The light from the hallway spilled in, illuminating a paint-stained sink and shelves of cleaning solutions. Against the walls were two ladders, mops, an industrial vacuum, and a floor-polishing machine. Right in between the vacuum and the polishing machine stood a young man with his back to the door. He stood perfectly still, as if he were pretending to be one of the appliances.
“Are you all right?” Rosie asked softly. The boy said nothing, slowly shaking his head no.
“Why don’t you come out here and we can talk?”
He stayed, facing the wall.
“You know it’s against the rules for you to be in the janitor’s closet.”
He kept his back to her. “I needed bleach.”