by Ragen, Naomi
“I hadn’t heard about it!”
“We are trying to keep it quiet, Adam.”
“Rabbi, are you saying you want us to distance ourselves from the synagogue?”
He looked hurt. “Abigail, how can you even think such a thing? Of course not! All I wanted was to ask you if there is any way—of course you must consult with your lawyers—to make this go away? A plea bargain, perhaps? Sometimes, even the most innocent person has no choice in certain situations but to make compromises.”
They were both speechless.
“Let me understand this, Rabbi. Are you telling me to admit I did something wrong when I didn’t? To sacrifice myself for the greater good? To . . .”
“To jump into the oven with the frogs?” Abigail interrupted, furious.
He looked from him to her, hesitating. “What I’m asking of you is to be completely honest with yourself, Adam. We are all human. We all make mistakes. We can’t move forward until we recognize and atone for them.”
Abigail shot up. Adam reached out for her, putting a restraining hand over her arm. She shook it off. “I can’t believe that I sat in your synagogue for fifteen years! I can’t believe that I listened to all that stuff you said about righteousness, and faith, and courage, and helping one another. All that stuff about community, and tradition, and truth . . .”
“Believe me, I am here because I care about you and your family. Think of what this is going to do to your children, your grandchildren. They will be dragged through the mud. All of us will. Sometimes one has to forget one’s personal pride and think of the wider picture.”
“The moment Adam admits he is willing to negotiate with the FBI, it’s as much as admitting that he deliberately transferred money to terrorists who killed American soldiers. His life will be over, and so will mine. What do you think that will do for our children?”
“You’re being overemotional, Abigail. Be reasonable . . .”
Adam stood up. “Rabbi, what about integrity? What about honesty?”
“I think that’s exactly what I’m asking of you, Adam. Both of those things.”
Adam’s jaw flinched, then tightened. “Well, in that case, I think we have nothing left to talk about, Rabbi. I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Rabbi Prinzak’s distinguished face crumpled into the face of an ordinary middle-aged man who was five parts frightened, two parts offended, and three parts annoyed. “Adam . . .”
“No! This conversation is over. Thank you for sharing your rabbinical wisdom. But, begging humbly to differ, I don’t think God—that is, the Jewish God I believe in—wants human sacrifices to appease the forces of evil, fanaticism, and prejudice. I think He’d want me to have some courage, to fight to clear my name if I am innocent, which I am. Totally. Thanks for asking. Abby, would you get our rabbi his coat and his umbrella. He’s leaving.”
“And Rabbi,” Abigail began.
The rabbi looked at her warily.
“When you first started talking about Jews sticking together, I had this image in my head of those emperor penguins, the ones that stand together huddled for warmth, withstanding any blizzard. But I see now you weren’t talking about that kind of community. You were talking about the Donner party, those pioneers in wagon trains on their way west, who got caught in the mountains during the winter; or those Argentinean soccer players whose plane crashed into the Andes, communities that survived by eating one another when the chips were down . . .”
“Never judge a man when he is suffering,” the rabbi said piously, rising and hurrying to the door. Abigail handed him his things. “I hope we can talk again soon. I hope you’ll reconsider. For your own sake, as well as for the community’s.”
“What community?” Abigail asked. “You mean all those people who are willing to feed me and eat my food Friday nights? People who collapse like a house of cards at the first puff of trouble? You don’t have to throw us out of your synagogue, Rabbi. We’re gone.”
When the rabbi left, they called Kayla on her new unlisted number. She was cheerful, noncommittal.
“Please don’t worry about me. That’s the last thing you need. I’m fine. Yes, I’m in touch with Seth. And I have every intention of making those interviews. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.”
“Seth came to see us. He said you two aren’t speaking.”
“He had no business doing that! Look, Mom, don’t you have enough problems without adopting mine?”
It was the Kayla she knew, Abigail thought, freezing at her daughter’s cold, superior tone, the tone that made her feel like she didn’t know anything and had no right to an opinion.
“And Kayla, what about the engagement party?”
“I guess everyone’s decided to put it off, right? I don’t care anymore. Do what you want.”
“Well, I am happy to make it, but you and Seth have to decide,” Abigail answered, hating herself for the apologetic tone she always used when Kayla got on her high horse. I am afraid of her, she thought.
“Oh, all right. Just tell the caterer we are putting it off for the time being.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
Abigail forced herself not to hang up, to listen for the suffering she knew must be hiding behind this rancor. “Do you have the airline tickets to New York for your interviews?”
“It’s all arranged, Mom,” she answered, exasperated. “Just don’t nag me about it. Okay? I’m a big girl.”
She and Seth would work it out, Abigail told herself, putting down the phone. Besides, Kayla didn’t seem noticeably upset, although there was something in her tone which, under other circumstances, Abigail would have wanted to explore. But now she was happy to tell herself it was her imagination, and she shouldn’t go looking for trouble. She had enough of it coming to look for her.
9
Please note that Kayla and Seth’s engagement party has been postponed. Please keep a lookout for updated information.
Abigail read it over a number of times on her computer, wondering if she could do better. But anything she thought of changing, i.e., “It is with great sadness that we announce . . .” or “Due to an unexpected family illness . . . ,” just made things worse. She hit the send button, feeling as if she’d sent out a death notice.
Nobody would believe how fast a life can unravel, Abigail thought. Like a Nordic sweater of intricate and complicated design, one good tug was all you needed to turn it back into a ball of yarn.
The incessant ringing and ringing of the phone of the first few days was replaced by an eerie silence. Except for their children, reporters, lawyers, lawyers’ secretaries, and people wanting bills paid, everyone seemed to have forgotten about them. She reflected bitterly on the hundreds of expensive charity events she and Adam had attended, the endless wedding and Bar Mitzvah ceremonies they had endured, the time-consuming shopping, cooking, and cleaning they’d undertaken to host guests over the years. What had come of all those social investments? The account stood empty, just when she needed to cash out. Except for a handful, like her best friend, Debra, and Joyce and Helen, and some of Adam’s clients, all their friends, admirers, and acquaintances seemed to have vanished, to be glimpsed from afar across the abyss of a street, or a parking lot, pretending not to see.
She burned with anger and resentment, which was transformed into self-pity, and finally self-loathing, thinking of how Emily Kahn, her neighbor, had passed her by without saying hello. Was it deliberate? Or had she just not seen her? Of how Brenda Cohen had called her, wanting a lift to the Emanuel wedding, and how she had had to admit that they hadn’t been invited. Imagine! The Emanuels, who were such old friends!
“Maybe it’s going to be a small wedding. People are cutting back. You don’t have to take everything so personally,” Adam told her, perhaps sincerely or perhaps blindly. She couldn’t decide which would be worse. He was kinder than she. He didn’t see bad in anyone unless it was truly beyond a reasonab
le doubt. And even then . . .
How many clients has he lost? she wondered. Enough so that he would have to let his staff go, all those bright, promising young accountants he had selected and wooed with such care? Aside from the expense of the severance pay, it would break his heart. He had made them so many promises to win them over. And now, they would be unemployed, in this job market. And then there was the lease for the office space and equipment, which couldn’t be broken without penalty. He never spoke about it, getting dressed and leaving for the office the way he always did.
How much money did they have in savings? She didn’t know anything. Adam had always handled it all. “I just go to the cash machine, and pop, like magic, the money comes out!” she’d once told a dinner crowd of admiring friends. The women had all nodded. That was the way it was in their circles. Powerful, successful men who took care of them and their money. Why would you want to balance a checkbook, make a budget, and stick to it, if you didn’t have to?
There had been moments through the years when this state of affairs had tweaked her conscience. It didn’t seem adult, somehow, to be so far removed from the fiscal knowledge and responsibility on which your life rested. She had never paid bills, never balanced the budget. Not that she hadn’t tried. Once, in a particularly ambitious mood early in their marriage, she had purchased a home-accounting notebook, and diligently gone through and recorded all their monthly expenses as Adam looked on, amused. “You’re not buying anything we don’t need” had always been his indulgent answer to her attempts at cutting back and cutting down. But not long after that, Adam had made some spectacular connections in the real-estate world, and their income had soared into the stratosphere, making her feel foolish.
The wake-up call had come with Adam’s health scare. She had been terrified, realizing she didn’t even know how to access their money-market funds; where the stocks or bonds were hiding; and what kind of life insurance they had. She had tried to get him to explain things to her. But he was going through radiation, and the whole subject seemed to hurt him. “So, you’re that sure you’ll be needing to handle all this alone soon?” he’d answered her bitterly.
And that had been the end of the subject.
Until now.
She needed to talk to Adam about money. But no matter how desperately she needed the information, she felt she couldn’t ask him, that it would smack of disloyalty or—worse—distrust.
Well, at least I still have a job, she told herself. But their lifestyle could not be maintained on a teacher’s salary. She lay in the dark, pondering: Were they going to have to let Esmeralda go? The gardeners? The maintenance man? And then, what would happen to their house? Even if she quit her job and worked at it full-time, she couldn’t possibly keep it maintained in the condition it was in. She just wouldn’t know how, especially the gardens, with all those leaves . . . ! That alone was a full-time job. It would be exhausting to even try. But then, she thought, could I be any more exhausted than I already am?
In bed, she lay awake imagining stacks of white envelopes holding bills that lay unopened on Adam’s desk. She couldn’t sleep. This fact dawned on her slowly.
At first she thought that she just wasn’t tired. Or that she had something she really wanted to find out about on the Internet. And so at one in the morning she would browse aimlessly, going from entertainment news gossip to the latest on Fritzl and his daughter, or Madoff. Then she checked out iTunes, and Web sites about Jews and Israel and terrorism. She avoided looking at her watch. And when she finally got into bed, she could not get up the next morning. She dragged through the day, feeling like she was walking underwater, each footfall heavy and clumsy. It reminded her of her days as a young mother, when the clock had made no distinction between night and day, and the crying infant had disordered the universe. It was all the same, a twenty-four-hour period of wakefulness, with no time off.
She knew, vaguely, that she couldn’t keep it up, that she was betraying Adam, who needed her to be strong. She wanted so much to prove to everyone that she was. She wanted so much to be one of those people about whom others say with admiration: “Through it all, she was magnificent.” “She never wavered.” “I don’t know where she got her strength.” It was heartbreaking to admit to herself that—as much as she wanted to, as much as Adam deserved it, and as much as her children expected it—she couldn’t be that person. It was a surprise, a disappointing failure for which she hadn’t been prepared.
She was falling apart. If anything, it was Adam who was holding her up.
Finally, she confided in her doctor, who listened sympathetically and prescribed sedatives. “Now you aren’t going to take these every night, are you?” He smiled, that kindly I?know-I?can-count-on-you smile, the smile that told her she was a sensible woman who could be relied upon not to take too many pills too often, because they were addictive.
Abigail, a woman who didn’t like drugs, and hated to swallow pills of any kind, even vitamins, took a sedative and slept for over eight hours. It was such a deep, restorative sleep. She loved the way those little white pills made her feel—as if nothing was important. Soon, she couldn’t sleep without them. But when she went back to renew her prescription, her doctor balked: “Abigail, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I’ve known you a long time. But perhaps we should be dealing with this in another way.” He suggested antidepressants.
She called Debra, the only person to whom she always admitted the truth.
“I took them once, a long time ago, when Ben and I were having our problems. It helped. But I didn’t like the way they made me feel,” Debra recalled.
“What way was that?”
“Like there was this glass window between myself and the world. I was part of everything, functioning, but I didn’t feel anything. Nothing made me sad or upset. But nothing made me happy either. I couldn’t stand that! I finally stopped.”
“What happened?”
“I felt miserable, but so what? Isn’t it better to feel miserable when you’re miserable than not to feel anything at all? Yes, I was angry and upset and everything else. But at least I felt alive. You remember that movie Tootsie? Remember what Teri Garr says to Dustin Hoffman when he tells her the truth, that he’s in love with another woman? She says: ‘I’m going to feel this way until I don’t feel this way anymore, and you’re going to have to know that you’re the one that made me feel this way, you schmuck!’ ”
She laughed. “But I can’t sleep.”
“I know. Try some Chi Qong. It’s very relaxing. Or recite some psalms. You wouldn’t believe how comforting they can be. Believe me, everyone who has ever lived has gone through this crap. It’s part of the human condition, as our Lit professors liked to say.”
She bought a book on Chi Qong. She tried standing perfectly still, her feet gripping the ground, her hands weightless at her sides, feeling her mind empty of all thoughts. She concentrated on her breathing, feeling the cool air as it entered her nostrils, making her little nose hairs quiver like sea anemones, feeling it fill her lungs and make her stomach rise and fall. She beat back her thoughts, until there was nothing left but her breath. She timed how long she could keep it up: five minutes, ten at the most, before she found herself back at square one—pain, pain, and more pain.
And then, one morning, as she was walking down the street, she crossed on a red light. Cars screeched to a halt, barely missing her. Instead of being shaken and grateful, she realized that some part of her was disappointed. How comforting it would be if it were just all over. Dying wasn’t so frightening, she thought. She’d had a great life. Great kids, grandchildren. Maybe it was enough?
“I’m not coping very well,” she told Adam. She was standing outside the door of his home office, watching his back hunch over the keyboard of the computer.
“Look, I’m sorry. Can we talk later?” He was brusque, abrupt.
She felt offended, brushed away. And then she felt guilty for her resentment. How could she think about burdening him eve
n more with her own problems?
She went to the kitchen and made him some coffee as a peace offering, climbing back up the stairs with it. He was on the phone.
“This is Adam Samuels. Is George Cook there? I’ll hold. . . . George, it’s Adam Samuels. Yes . . . thank you very much. I appreciate your loyalty more than I can say. But I think it would be in your best interests to find another accountant. I am innocent of these charges. I have done nothing wrong. But your company could be adversely affected by my legal battles, and it is just not in your best interests to be involved in this. . . . Thank you very much for saying that. I appreciate your honesty also, George. Yes, thank you very much. Let me know when you want to pick up the files.”
She stared at him, speechless. “What are you doing?!”
“Abby, I have no choice. This is the honest thing to do. These people could find themselves investigated just for their association with me. It’s my responsibility to . . .”
“What about your responsibility to yourself, to me, to this family? How can you do this? Blow off all the clients who didn’t go running?”
“It’s the honest thing to do,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’m sorry. I have no choice.”
Her hands trembled. The hot coffee sloshed over, burning her fingertips. She said, “OH!” and opened her hand, letting the cup smash on the floor.
He sat down heavily, staring at the dark brown circle widening across the blue-and-cream carpeting of his office. “I’ve got work to do, Abby,” he said tonelessly, swiveling his chair around to face his computer.
She wanted to scream: “Explain to me why my life is falling apart! What happened? What did you do? What do they think you did?”
But she could already see in her mind exactly what would happen: He would turn around, his jaws clenched in fury. He would say: “I’ve already told you everything I know, Abigail.”