by Ragen, Naomi
“So, Josh, how’s business?”
“I’ve got some really good records I’m working on, Dad. I have this one artist—Janna O—who is going to be the next J.Lo. Her voice is—”
“Dad, what was it like?” Shoshana interrupted. She could only take so much of her brother’s infomercials. He had been on the verge of the next Madonna/Jay-Z/Beyoncé for years.
“What was it like?” Adam mused. “I don’t know. Like acting in an episode of Law & Order. Unconvincingly dramatic. Unreal.”
“They came to the office?”
Adam nodded.
“I don’t understand how they can do that to someone without any kind of warning! It’s like Stalinist Russia.”
“What does it matter, Josh? It’s in the past. My secretary, Ida, took it really hard, but she was great. She made all the calls. Your mother and my lawyer were there waiting for me at the courthouse.”
“Did they put you in handcuffs, Grandpa? Take your fingerprints? Make you stand against the wall and have your picture taken?” Alex burst out.
“Shut up, brat.” Ellen cuffed him.
“Ellen! Leave your brother alone! Alex, you are being rude! Apologize to Grandpa.”
Adam coughed, rubbing his wrists under the table. “It’s okay, Shoshana. There’s nothing wrong with the child being curious.” He paused, his fingers wrapping around his spoon, which he dipped into his bowl, filling it with hot, orange soup. Slowly, he brought it to his mouth, continuing to eat in silent rhythm until the bowl was empty.
No one spoke.
Finally, he put the spoon down, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and folded his hands in his lap. “It wasn’t fun, Alex, but it wasn’t the end of the world, either.”
Under the table, Abigail reached for her husband’s shaking hand, twining her fingers through his.
“Are you two still living in Century City?” Adam asked, turning his attention to Josh and Deidre.
“Yes, but we’ve been looking for a house,” Deidre said.
“A house?”
“It’s a good time to buy. Everyone says so. Before prices rise even more,” Josh said enthusiastically.
“But the mortgage payments will be high, no?” Adam asked.
“Not if you can scrape together a decent down payment!” Deidre informed them excitedly, as if she’d been patiently anticipating the question and now her time had finally come. “Actually, we were hoping . . .”
“Deidre!” Josh cut her short. “Not now, for Pete’s sake.”
“It’s all right, it’s all right.” Adam lifted his hand. “Don’t fight.”
Shoshana whistled low under her breath.
“Would anybody like dessert?” Abigail asked. “Chocolate cupcakes with candy sprinkles?”
“Me!” Alex shouted, running into the kitchen.
“I have to have some coffee,” Shoshana announced to no one in particular, getting up and joining her son.
“Do you need any help?” Deidre asked, without moving.
“I’ll get the water.” Ellen jumped up.
“Bring some cups, will you?” Josh called after her.
“Hi, is there any food left?”
They all turned around and looked at the door.
“Kayla! Mom, it’s Kayla,” Josh called out, getting up and reaching out to her. “What’s with the hair?”
“What’s with the mustache?”
“Kayla.” Abigail wiped her hands on her apron, walking behind Alex, who was carefully balancing a tray of cupcakes.
“Hi, Alex. Is that all for you, or can I have one?” Kayla asked him, her face completely serious. Before he could answer, she lifted one off the tray and took a large bite. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi.” Abigail took the offered cheek and kissed it lightly. “You don’t answer the phone?”
“No. I don’t. I actually threw it into the Charles River after the tenth journalist called me.”
“What, they are calling you? Who?” Abigail winced, astonished.
“Who not?” She shrugged.
“My poor Kayla,” Adam said, reaching out and taking her hand.
She laid her head against his shoulder, letting him hug her. He stroked the shiny straightened hair so unlike the hair she was born with. She looked almost like a stranger. He lifted her chin with his fingertips, searching her face.
“Your eyes.”
“I know, I know. I had no sleep last night—I have a report due. I forgot to put in drops, that’s why they’re so red. Hey, don’t worry about me. I’m going to be fine.”
“You did the right thing about the cell phone. Don’t talk to them. Don’t let them hound you.” He looked around the room. “That goes for all of you.”
“Is Seth coming?”
“Well, sister, I can’t answer that, not having a cell phone and all.”
“Call him now.”
“Leave her alone, Shoshana!” Adam said, a little more loudly than he intended.
Alex began to cry.
“I’m so . . . sorry . . . children . . .” Adam said, leaning heavily on the table to help himself up. “I . . . I . . . don’t . . . can’t . . .” He shook his head, weaving unsteadily out of the room and climbing up the stairs.
“He’ll be all right.” Abigail nodded firmly, facing her children. “Go lie down now,” she called up after him.
“Ellen, take your brother to the den! Put on a video.”
“Do I have to, Mom?”
“Yes, Ellen. You do. Now go,” Shoshana ordered her. “Mom, maybe you should check on Dad?”
“Yeah. This is so awful for him. How’s he been through all this?”
“You know your father, Joshua. He never says how he feels. He’s been stoic, determined.”
“What happened? What’s the truth, Mom?” he asked her.
“It’s . . . complicated.” She weaved her way unsteadily into the living room, dropping down on the sofa. Joshua followed her. Then she explained what had been explained to her, which she herself hardly understood.
“But the person who actually transferred the money to terrorists, that fund manager, has he also been arrested?”
She shook her head. “Nobody even seems to know where he is. They’re looking for him. He could be anywhere—in Europe or on a yacht in the Caribbean or in Saudi Arabia. Who knows?”
“But how could it have happened? If I know Dad, he must have checked the fund out six ways from Sunday before he invested his client’s money. He’s very, very careful.”
“He did, Kayla! He even flew to Europe and went over the books . . . He says it was all legitimate, as far as he could tell.”
“All Dad did was invest the money with a reputable firm, or so he thought . . . They can’t blame him if the firm transferred it illegally!”
“But they are blaming him, Shoshana! And we have to prove that he didn’t know.”
“Can you prove that, Mom?” Kayla said slowly. “Was there due diligence?”
“Oh, the big expert throwing around legalisms . . .” Shoshana sneered. “Why did you let Mom and Dad go to court alone? Why didn’t you go with them?”
“If someone had let me know . . .” Kayla answered bitterly.
“There was no time!” Abigail shouted. “His secretary called and told me to get a lawyer and get down to federal court in Worcester. We had to make sure we made bail before the judge put him in jail . . . !”
“Why don’t we all just sit down and chill?” Josh suggested.
“Why, so you and your wife can ask for more money?” Shoshana screamed at him. “Don’t you get it! Dad isn’t going to be able to work anymore! His clients are going to drop like flies! And by the time he finishes paying a team of lawyers four hundred dollars an hour each, he won’t have a penny left to his name! What part of this don’t you understand, Mr. Hip-hop?”
“Don’t talk to him like that!” Deidre said.
Shoshana ignored her, turning to Kayla. “Maybe you can ask your professors to help you research
Dad’s legal brief. They’d know if the lawyers are taking the best approach.”
“Right,” Kayla said, rolling her eyes.
“Why not?”
“You don’t understand anything, big sister!”
Abigail suddenly felt dizzy. “Children, children, please, don’t fight!”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Yeah, sorry, Mom.”
A slow burn started up beneath Abigail’s left breast. “I think . . . I’ll see how your father is doing. Excuse me a moment.” The staircase had never seemed as steep, she thought, her heart beating rapidly as she pulled herself laboriously up each step.
“Is there some reason Matthew isn’t here?” Josh demanded.
“He wanted to come but thought that the house would be under siege by journalists. He’s a fund manager. He can’t afford to be photographed in connection to this case.”
“And I can’t afford to have my professors connect me to this either,” Kayla said through clenched teeth. “I am interviewing now. I will be asking for written references . . .”
Josh looked at his sisters, shaking his head. “They need you. Mom and Dad need you.”
“I know that! I live here, Josh! I’m here every day practically, while you’re off in California living off their handouts . . .”
“I make money too! Besides, who are you to lecture me, Kayla?”
“He’s right. I don’t remember you fighting tooth and nail against their paying your tuition,” Shoshana pointed out.
“Like you paid your tuition for that diploma you dust off in between making dinner parties for Matthew’s clients! Not to mention the bundle Dad gave you for your down payment on the Greenwich minimansion,” Kayla shot back.
“Touché!” Josh laughed.
“He offered! And I, at least, have given him some joy instead of heartache,” Shoshana said, looking pointedly at her brother.
Deidre put a restraining hand on Josh’s arm. “I think we should go.”
Shoshana blushed. “I’m sorry, Deidre. I didn’t mean . . .”
“NO? Then explain it to me, Shoshana, exactly what did you mean? Because I thought I understood you perfectly,” Deidre answered furiously.
“This is not about us!” Shoshana shot up, facing her brother and sister-in-law. “It’s about them! About what Mom and Dad need. My God! He could go to jail.” Her hands shook as she reached behind her, groping for the chair. She slid back into it.
No one spoke.
“That . . . can’t . . . happen,” Kayla said, shaking her head. “It just can’t.”
Of everyone, she alone knew how untrue that statement was. It could happen. In fact, it happened all the time to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons; people who were guilty, innocent, or in between. Some people were just luckier than others, or had better lawyers, or dumber judges. If there was one thing she had learned at Harvard Law, it was this: Once you entered the halls of justice, you could get anything but.
At the top of the stairs, hidden from view, Abigail leaned against the wall, listening to the rise and fall of her children’s angry voices. As she listened, she looked at the family photos hanging on the landing: There they were gathered around each other at Josh’s Bar Mitzvah, their faces shining, Adam’s arm around Josh’s shoulder, six-year-old Kayla in Shoshana’s lap. Adam’s parents, and her own, seated in the center, elegant and not yet frail. The big smiles, the closeness of bodies arranged for a studio portrait. A unit. Unity. She stumbled, her shoulder brushing heavily against the wall, sending the framed photo crashing.
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, she thought, bending down to pick up the pieces.
8
“You are up? Already?” Abigail asked him sleepily.
“I want to get to the synagogue on time.”
She lifted herself up on her elbow, surprised. “Are you going to synagogue?”
Adam sat down on the side of the bed, reaching for her hand. “Yes, Abby, and so are you. You are going to put on your prettiest suit, and your smartest hat, and you are going to walk down the aisle and take your seat in the women’s section between Helen Silverstein and Joyce Mathias, just as you’ve done every Saturday for the past fifteen years. You are going to sing all the songs, and answer ‘amen’ as loudly as everyone else, do you hear me?” His hand closed gently over hers.
“They will all stare and talk behind our backs.”
He nodded. “And if we are not there, they will say worse things.”
She fell back into bed, staring at the ceiling. That was sickeningly accurate. “Please!”
He touched the top of her head gently. “Abby, I need you. I need you there, beside me.”
She lifted her head and threw off the covers. There was nothing else to say, was there? She stood unsteadily on the soft blue rug, her body out of proportion, the head weighing her down and pitching the rest of her forward. She opened her walk-in closet full of expensive clothes, flipping through the racks until she found a dark grey suit. Out of her hatboxes, she took a matching grey silk hat with a grey-and-white feather. It was really too elegant for mere synagogue attendance. But it certainly did send a very definite signal, a reminder that the Samuelses of Brookline, who lived in the beautiful corner house with the wide, manicured lawns, were still themselves.
He wore his best Brooks Brothers suit, a black pinstripe, with a gleaming white high-collared shirt and an apricot-silk tie. She laid her hands on his shoulders, brushing off nonexistent lint, wanting simply to feel their solid breadth.
“You ooze respectability and success,” she laughed, then added, more soberly: “My handsome husband.”
He kissed her hand, then cocked his head. “My lovely wife.”
They walked silently, arm in arm, down the tree-lined streets, their shoes scraping softly against the pretty piles of autumn leaves. It was a walk they had made countless times, but now they felt like tourists exploring a new country.
As they neared the synagogue, they began passing people they knew. “Good Shabbes,” they said, nodding. Some answered; some didn’t. In either case, they smiled.
“Good luck,” he whispered to her at the entrance, parting to make his way to the men’s section. She squeezed his hand, then let him go.
She climbed the stairs. For the first time she could remember, she felt it necessary to reach out for the banister, gripping it firmly as she put one foot in front of the other, pulling herself forward to a place she didn’t want to be.
When she opened the door to the women’s balcony, she was relieved to see that she had arrived early enough to find it almost empty. Most women—herself included—usually turned up about halfway through the service, just as the morning prayers concluded and the Torah portion of the week was being read. That way, they could use the reading time to catch up on the latest gossip before they needed to fall into respectful silence for the rabbi’s sermon.
Slowly, the pews around her began to fill.
The secretive, silent stares. She could feel them touch the back of her neck, then crawl down her spine with disgusting and electric swiftness, not unlike a roach scurrying down bare skin. Wherever she turned, she seemed to encounter them, like beams of high-intensity light aimed at the sky to warn away jets from skyscrapers.
Mrs. Garfinkel, who usually turned around to greet her, sat facing straight ahead. And Mrs. Finer, who sat behind her and never gave her the time of day, didn’t even bother to return her nod. Or was that what she usually did? Abigail suddenly couldn’t remember. Was it her imagination, she thought, or was the buzz in the women’s section an octave lower than usual? She felt raw and vulnerable, like an unbandaged burn victim anticipating pain from the very air around her.
Helen came in later than usual. She reached out and hugged Abigail, kissing her on both cheeks. “Be strong!” she whispered, leaning into her. Abigail breathed in the fragrance of her good perfume and her good fortune, a life without complications, a life in which it was so easy to be strong. Not
that she begrudged Helen her life. She deserved it as much as or more than anyone. She was, after all, such a good person. She baked for the poor, visited the sick, and held fundraisers for weary domestic-abuse victims.
And I, Abigail thought, no longer have that scent. I smell of scandal and failure. I’ve been added to the “dontinvitem” list, a person to be avoided at all costs.
Joyce came in at her usual time. She walked with the slow caution and heartrending straightness of back that is the pride and achievement of the very old, each step a defiant rejection of lurking pitfalls. She had broken her hip last year, and now used a cane. She was a great-grandmother, a small, elegant European survivor, who wore lovely gold bracelets and earrings, and always dressed like mother of the bride. She said nothing, reaching out for Abigail’s hand and holding it the entire time. God bless her, Abigail thought, wanting to cry.
“It’s shameful, shameful! What is the world coming to? Your wonderful husband. How can they say such things? We all know it’s a lie. Really, Abigail, don’t let them get to you, my dear. They are always looking to pull down the best people. Let me know, whatever you need, my dear. Anything. Anything at all,” Joyce whispered during the rabbi’s sermon, ignoring all shushing.
In response, Abigail reached over and kissed her cool, papery cheek.
How simple, how natural were the words. It was what one expected in such circumstances from the people who knew you, words that carved in fine relief just how badly most of the people she knew had behaved.
“How was it?” she asked Adam, as they walked home.
He looked straight ahead. “Fewer people seeking free accounting advice . . . And the rabbi wants to speak to us right after the Sabbath. Isn’t that kind of him!”
“You think?” Abigail turned to him, two spots of color in her cheeks that he hadn’t seen before. “Doesn’t it depend on what exactly he has to say?”
“What . . . what do you mean? He’s got to be supportive. He’s our rabbi, for goodness’ sake!”
“Right. We’ll see.”
“You never liked him, Abby.”
“I just never saw the connection between his wisdom and his deeds, that’s all.” She shrugged.