by J. J. Gesher
“Jacob writes gospel?”
“Yes.”
Hava twisted her wedding ring. “The song he wrote—did it have Jesus in it?”
“No Jesus.”
Hava lowered her voice. “Is he a Christian now?”
“I don’t think he’s anything.”
Hava shook her head. “This whole conversation is beyond my imagination.”
Rosie continued. “The song he wrote is about how the world is a narrow bridge.”
“Jacob didn’t write those words.”
“I know. A rabbi told me.”
Hava swallowed hard and touched her throat.
“You’ve been through hell,” Rosie reached across the photo album to touch Hava’s hand.
“Why did you come all the way here? You could have called,” Hava asked.
“I’m a mother, too,” Rosie said softly. “Your son needs you, and I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
Hava registered the truth aloud, “My son needs me.”
“Come to Brent with me.”
Hava didn’t hesitate. “I need to pack.”
CHAPTER 40
After Hava put her small travel bag in Langston’s bedroom, she was ready to see her son. She wanted to put her arms around him—even if he was a grown man. She remembered Jacob when he was a child. He’d been so in love with life and eager to discover the world.
“Eema, I heard a song in my head, here’s how it sounds.”
“Eema, how come when we go to the bakery, I get hungry even when I’m not?”
Jacob had always challenged the family’s adherence to Orthodoxy—rules for every aspect of daily life, customs that isolated Jews, all that praying. His father told him repeatedly that the Jewish people did not survive persecution only to be wiped out by a lack of discipline. All Hava could do was love her son and give him what he wanted. Later, she learned her permissiveness made her the “enabler,” the one who kept making excuses for his behavior and protecting him from his father’s wrath.
Jacob stayed in rehab in Israel for a full year. By the end, he sounded strong on the telephone, though Hava still worried. When he returned looking like his old self—full beard, the clothing of Orthodoxy—she offered a prayer of gratitude. She never brought up his willful absence when Aaron died. They talked about Aaron only in vague terms and rose-colored memories.
The fact was that Jacob had chosen to remain in the Orthodox community. He’d trained as both a teacher and a cantor. He’d brought Julia into their way of life, and then the children came, creating so much joy. She was sorry that Aaron hadn’t lived to see their son so completely reformed.
From what Hava could gather from Rosie, her son had post-traumatic stress syndrome, like a soldier coming back from war. In those long months in Brent, Jacob had never talked about his losses, moving through time like a sleepwalker. The road back to normalcy would require him to confront those unspeakable moments, to tell the stories of his family and to grieve openly. Hava wished the job of grounding him had fallen to someone else. Forcing him to relive the day his family perished would be like tossing a rock into still water. Not only would the stone descend, but it would also create ever-expanding outward ripples on the water’s surface, compounding the effect. Ramifications lay ahead. She was sure of that.
Hava checked her reflection in the mirror. She hoped Jacob could remember her before sorrow etched her face. She forced a smile and armed herself with the photo album from home. Rosie led her across the street and into the chapel.
Jacob was painting the window trim on the western side of the chapel. After the stained glass had been replaced, the molding looked beaten and old. He stood on a ladder and painstakingly attended to the details of repair. He was humming as he patched, sanded, cleaned, and painted—the picture of a contented man at work.
The women stood for a moment, acclimating to the muted light, the silence interrupted only by the faint humming. Hava took in the church: the pews, the stained glass, the mural of Jesus, and the wooden cross over the pulpit.
Rosie gestured. “There…that’s Jacob.”
Hava watched him. He was dressed in coveralls and sneakers, his head, uncovered, his face, clean-shaven. But the familiar profile gave her resolve.
“I’ll get him for you,” Rosie offered.
Hava squeezed her hand. “No, this is my job.”
“I’m across the street if you need me,” Rosie said, closing the chapel door behind her.
Hava walked purposefully down the aisle to the man on the ladder.
Jacob continued to work, humming to himself. She waited, willing Jacob to feel her presence.
“Ya’akov?” Hava said, calling him his Hebrew name, the name they had used at home when he was a boy.
Jacob reflexively turned toward his name. It took a moment for him to place her. He searched and re-searched her face. His mother was in Brent, standing before him. How could this be?
Jacob stepped down off the ladder and stood in front of her.
She tried in vain to stop the tears. “You shaved your beard…you’ve changed.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his voice unsteady. “I’m so sorry, Eema.”
In his apology, Hava understood that he was not as void of memory as Rosie supposed. His distance had been a choice.
Jacob struggled to find words. Hava put her arms around her son. He let her hold him. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” she asked.
He beckoned her to follow. They walked in silence down the basement stairs to the stark caretaker’s room. He pulled a stool out for his mother, motioning for her to sit. He sat on the bed.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding all these months,” Hava said. Although she was pretending to make lighthearted conversation, her voice betrayed her.
Jacob looked down. “At home, everywhere I looked there was Julia…or Yossi…or the girls. I couldn’t breathe.”
“So you ran away,” Hava stated flatly.
Jacob nodded, using his sleeve to wipe the tears from his face.
“You ran away to goyim?” Hava asked, using the Yiddish word for non-Jews.
“I didn’t know where I was going. I turned off all thoughts of home. I thought if I wasn’t there, then they weren’t there, and it never happened,” he stammered. “I didn’t allow myself to think about them.”
“Thinking about them will help you get to the other side.” Hava tapped the photo album.
She moved next to him on the bed, opening the album.
Jacob turned his face away. “Please don’t do this to me.”
“You need to remember them when you were happy. It’s good to remember.”
Reluctantly, Jacob opened the book. Hava watched him absorb the photos of Julia and the children frozen in time: laughing at a birthday party, playing in the snow, hiking in the mountains. Tentatively, he touched the crinkles around Julia’s eyes when she laughed, Yossi’s oversized ears, Miriam’s odd-toothed smile, Sarah’s mop of curls. He gasped for air as the enormity of his grief hit him with full force.
“I loved them so much,” he whispered, his voice muffled by sorrow.
Hava nodded. “And they loved you.”
Jacob’s mouth opened in anguish, as if he had suffered an excruciating and incomprehensible injury, but no sound emerged. He rocked back and forth. Then he took a deep breath, covered his face, and keened, an eerie, high-pitched wail, part strangled scream of torment, part futile plea for relief. Hava was frantic to take away her child’s pain. She held him tightly. She couldn’t protect him, nor could she could make this agony go away. All she could do was rock with him and weep.
Hava had been so keyed up with the anticipation of seeing Jacob, but here he was, altered and confused. The past two days had been draining—traveling to this strange place, to a part of the country she’d never even imagined. She thought she had grieved for her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, but the wound was still gaping. She felt so weary she could hardly hold her head up.
Hava had her son, and for that, she silently thanked God.
Hava’s sleep was restless and disturbed. When she heard Rosie leave for work, she gave up and went downstairs. When Langston walked in, Hava was sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and backed up, nearly running into Mo.
“There’s a white lady sitting in the kitchen!” he whispered to Mo.
“I told you that Jacob’s mother was here.”
After quick introductions, Mo left to walk Langston to school. As Hava rinsed the breakfast dishes, she saw Jacob sitting on the church steps. She crossed the street.
“Let’s walk,” she said.
His strides were long, and Hava struggled to keep up. She waited for Jacob to speak, but he was clearly in no mood. The most he offered was to point out some of the landmarks of his life in Brent: the market where he bought his supplies, the café where he ate an occasional meal, Langston’s school. After twenty minutes, they circled back, and he told her gruffly that he had work to do.
Hava knew the excuse of work was only that—an excuse. Although she envisioned herself a hero bringing Jacob back to reality, she had, by necessity, inflicted pain. Even so, after months of worrying about him, she found comfort in his presence. She was willing to accept his anger.
Jacob had enjoyed Brent, the simplicity of his days cleaning and fixing, playing ball with Langston, being near Rosie. He suspended his grief by becoming a vacant man without family, past, or home. Now he was required to mourn, to feel.
His brain struggled to remember. His body led the way. There were memories that brought him to his knees: the way Julia pursed her lips when she braided Miriam’s hair, the way Yossi tried to slap the top of the door jamb every time he walked from one room to another, Sarah’s annoying four-year-old way of asking why. The barrage of memories enveloped him, and he needed to sit on the ground. The weight of his body, the recognition of all that was gone, was too heavy a burden.
Jacob could see that his mother was hurt that he had rejected his faith. Returning to Brooklyn and his old way of life would be intolerable.
Over the next few days, Hava tried to connect with Mo, Rosie, and Langston. The conversation stumbled. Sometimes they’d all talk at once, but more often there would be ragged patches of uncomfortable silence.
Mealtimes were odd to say the least. Hava explained that to keep kosher she could eat only vegetables and fruit, so the table was a strange assortment of baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, carrots, and melon. Hava ate with plastic utensils and paper plates. Jacob no longer cared about keeping kosher, and he ate whatever was offered him. Hava flinched when he reached for the pork at dinner.
After dinner one night, Jacob couldn’t wait to get out of Rosie’s house. He’d been in a foul mood all day. He was raw, as if someone had sandpapered his very soul. As soon as the meal was over, he hurried across the street to his basement room. Agitated, he yanked off his shirt, wadded it up, and threw it on his bed. He rubbed his arms and paced. His hands repeatedly went to his head, his chest, his neck, and then back to rubbing his arms again. He felt manipulated, used, and enraged. The cyclical motions lessened his anger.
After Jacob left that night, Rosie worried that she’d overstepped boundaries. Since Hava’s arrival, Jacob had been distant. He would have been better off without her snooping around. She should have told him that she’d found out about his past and let him contact his mother when he was ready. Foolishly, she’d brought Mrs. Fisher here, and now Jacob was disintegrating. Rosie had moved to Brent to make her life less complicated, and here she was, entangled in someone else’s turmoil.
Impulsively, Rosie left everyone in her house cleaning dishes and followed Jacob back to the church. She could never fully understand the depths of his grief, but she could read the signs of devastating rage, the struggle to accept a reality that could never be acceptable. His anger was also a product of shame. By bringing his mother to Brent, she had humiliated him. Rosie understood humiliation.
During the last gasps of her marriage, right before she kicked Robert out, she had felt blind rage. Robert stayed out late, absented himself on the weekends, and made excuses filled with holes. He picked fights, like a little boy waiting to be caught and punished, so he could justify his outrageous behavior. When Robert finally confessed that he’d fallen in love with someone else, Rosie flashed white-hot. With all her strength, she heaved a wine bottle against the wall, smashing it inches from his head. She watched him cower as the red liquid dripped down the paint and seeped into the carpet, staining it irrevocably like their marriage.
As quickly as she’d become angry, she became pathetic. That was the only word for it. She wailed about being hurt and victimized, begging him to stay. The final humiliation came when she took his hand and placed it between her legs, trying to entice him. It was her fault that he cheated. She wasn’t pretty enough, seductive enough. The look of revulsion on his face landed like a sucker punch.
Rosie stood outside the door to Jacob’s room. She could hear him pacing back and forth and mumbling. The sounds were guttural and enraged, his voice rising and falling as if he were arguing with someone. She knocked on the door and opened it at the same time.
Jacob couldn’t contain his wrath. “Aren’t you supposed to wait for someone to acknowledge your presence before you come barging in?”
“Sorry…I—”
“—thought I was a child, so you treated me like one,” Jacob said.
He had never snapped at her this way. She stood there trying to gather her thoughts. He grabbed his crumpled shirt off the bed and put it on, not bothering to button it. Rosie didn’t know if his action stemmed from a lingering sense of propriety or the need to cover his vulnerability.
“What do you want?” he demanded. There was hardness in his voice she had never heard before.
“Nothing, I was…nothing,” Rosie stammered. In truth, she had wanted to apologize for destroying his peace. She’d thought her actions would help him find clarity, but she had shamed him instead. She needed to make everything right between them.
“Did you come to gloat?” he snarled.
“What?”
“Did you come to see if your little social work project was doing okay?”
Rosie could feel her own indignant anger rising. “You’re not a social work project.”
“Right, then why did you do it? Why did you bring my mother here? Why did you sleep with me?” Jacob demanded through clenched teeth.
He took a step toward her, his arms ramrod straight at his side, his fists clenched. Rosie moved back instinctively.
She spoke quietly. “I didn’t do this to hurt you. I wanted to help.”
“Well you didn’t. You didn’t help at all!” he yelled, bellowing the last two words. “AT ALL!”
There it was. The truth. Loss was a wave of hurt, and no matter how much his mind willed otherwise, the tide inevitably rose. He stood there, beaten and defiant at the same time. Rosie was compelled to go to him. She expected him to move away, but he held his ground.
She put her hands on his chest to comfort him, to comfort her. Instinct said to kiss him. She moved her mouth to his, stopping before touch. He didn’t respond, but he allowed her to put her face a thread’s width from his.
Jacob whispered, “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”
Rosie’s lips formed the shape of barely spoken words: “Forgive me.”
They stayed suspended, nearly touching.
Then Jacob kissed her, fiercely and passionately. There was a need that surprised her. This time their lovemaking was insistent. Jacob’s mouth moved down her body, clothing falling away. Every place his mouth touched became alive. She welcomed him, neck, breasts, her softly rounded belly, the inside of her thighs.
Rosie’s tears caught her off guard. For the first time in her life she was truly making love—taking and giving at the same time.
Mo and Hava sat on rocking chairs on the ba
ck porch. It was a glorious late spring evening. They sipped iced tea and listened to the buzz of the cicadas.
“You know, Mo, in my tradition, I shouldn’t be sitting here with you,” Hava remarked.
“Why not?”
“A man and a woman. Alone. People would talk.”
Mo laughed, a good deep belly laugh. “I don’t think you have anythin’ to be afraid of…two old goats like us.”
Hava laughed with him. “It feels good to laugh.”
“Nothin’ wrong with it.”
“Sometimes you think you’ll never laugh again…but then out of the blue, something strikes you as funny, and off you go,” Hava said.
Mo thought for a moment. “When Elsie passed, I didn’t want to eat again. I thought it wasn’t fair that I could still taste a warm apple pie, and she couldn’t. That woman loved apple pie.” He smiled. “I could use some of that apple pie right about now.”
“We’re programmed to go on—find joy, move forward,” Hava responded thoughtfully.
Mo nodded.
“I make a mean apple strudel,” she said.
“I’m sure you do.”
After a moment, he changed the topic. “You know, Rosie and Jacob—”
Hava cut him off. “I know. I have eyes and I have ears.”
They sat in silence, rocking.
CHAPTER 41
The following morning, Langston and Jacob were shooting hoops in the church parking lot. Langston had taken Jacob’s instruction seriously and continued to improve. He was an intense child, goal oriented and competitive. Mastering basketball skills had become a priority, and practicing had become an obsession.
“Remember what I said. Put the ball where you’re going, not where you are,” Jacob instructed.
Langston broke away and passed Jacob, going all the way to the basket. He missed the layup, but his movements were fluid.
“Nice try.”
Langston was disappointed. “I missed.”
“But you took the shot.”
Jacob was huffing and puffing from the effort of guarding Langston. “I’m getting too old for this.”