The Tenth Song

by Ragen, Naomi

  His lips twisted into a bitter smile. He shrugged.

  “Well, please try!”

  He nodded. “Can I go now?”

  Marvin looked at the others inquiringly, but their faces were blank. “Yes, I guess so. But if you do reconsider about the plea bargain, I’ll need your answer before we go to court tomorrow.”

  Adam stood up, offering his hand to his lawyer and to the others, who shook it solemnly, like people saying good-bye to someone about to begin a life-threatening journey.

  At home, he sat down in the silent dark kitchen drinking a straight scotch, his throat already burning with vague regret as it poured into his stomach. He was steeling himself for the desperate conversation with his wife and daughter when suddenly the phone rang.

  “Dad?”

  “Kayla?” How strange that was, as if she had read his thoughts. “I was just about to call you. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this . . .”

  “DAD!” she interrupted him fiercely. “Mom is in the hospital. It’s an emergency. Her appendix has burst . . . We were in the middle of the desert . . . Daniel called an army helicopter . . . She just went into surgery . . . Dad. I’m scared!” She sobbed.

  He slid to the floor, the phone in his hand. This was the last straw.

  “Dad, are you still there?”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “I will call you when she comes out of surgery. Dad? DAD!”

  He cleared his throat. “Is she getting the best care? Kayla, make sure . . .” he said hoarsely, barely able to speak.

  “Dad, it’s an emergency, so we can’t exactly shop around. But we’re in an excellent, modern hospital. Daniel says he’s heard of the surgeon, and he’s very good. He just happened to be on duty.”

  “Don’t leave her alone for a moment. I don’t want her to be alone.”

  “I won’t, Dad. Daniel and I are both here. We aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Tell her . . .” His throat knotted. “Tell her I love her,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  “Dad? This connection is terrible. I can hardly hear you . . . What’s happening with you? With the case?”

  “Tell your mother not to worry. It’s going to be fine. Fine. You’ll tell her that, won’t you? Don’t worry about me. This is nothing . . . It doesn’t matter.”

  “Dad, my battery is about to die, tell me what’s going on!”

  “We need to find Van. Nothing else will save me. But this is not your problem. Call me as soon as she’s out of surgery?”

  “All right, Dad. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone, turning to Daniel. “It’s my dad. He says we have to find Van. Now.”

  He had never expected a wonderful life. No one had a life with only good things. But to go from such a good life to one that stripped him of everything felt like a Divine blow. It couldn’t be a coincidence, all these things happening at the same time. He was being punished, he thought. But for what? For always wanting more? Was that a crime? For working hard and being clever and successful? Was that suddenly evil? He pounded the wall with his fist, then leaned his forehead against it, wracked by sobs. No. It was for sending her away. For making her do what I asked her to do. For not keeping her safe.

  He walked through the silent house, taking inventory of his life. The lovely armoire, now full of dust. The beautiful dining-room chandelier that had not been lit for months. The silver-framed photos on the grand piano, outlining a life rich in family, friends, and good times all over the world. And now, as he was nearing the last stretch of his lifetime journey, when all his good deeds, all his blessings should have been there to cushion him against the ravages and losses of old age, there was nothing left but bare, cold planks.

  He remembered something Abigail once told him years ago. Sometimes, she said, you go to great trouble preparing a meal you are not destined to eat. She was referring to an actual dinner party she had planned her first year in college to celebrate the end of midterm exams. She’d detailed the way she’d carefully washed the mushrooms and sliced them; the way she’d sautéed the onions and garlic and tomatoes to a thick, delicious paste; and how, in the middle, she’d reached into the fridge to steal one of the éclairs she’d purchased from a famous New York bakery for dessert. One hour later, she’d moved permanently into the bathroom, vile odiferous fluids pouring out of all ends, experiencing the kind of stomach pains you’d expect during labor. An emergency room doctor diagnosed her with gastroenteritis. When she recovered, she found herself in the kitchen disposing of the lavish, never-consumed feast.

  Sometimes, one was never destined to reap the rewards of one’s efforts. If you did, you should consider it a blessing, not a natural outcome, he realized.

  The word “be’shert” went through his head, a word religious Jews turn to for comfort when faced with accepting such dismal outcomes. It was no one’s fault. It wasn’t a punishment. It just wasn’t meant to be in the vast, celestial plan, and thus must be accepted without undue rancor or hair-tearing disappointment. It was a word equally, if not more so, weighted to explain the happy chance accidents that befall us all, leading to wondrous matches with excellent life partners, lucrative business deals, and happy encounters with long-lost relatives, friends, and coworkers. Things we don’t deserve.

  He sank into his down sofa, its marshmallow softness mocking the unforgiving, hard reality of his almost destroyed life. He was, he realized, helpless. Like the winds and tides that swirl and beat against each other, creating storms, typhoons, and hurricanes, a man’s fate was outside his hands. There was just so much you could do, and the rest was up to what some called fate, and others, more courageously, were willing to call God.

  Why was it so hard for human beings to pray? Because no human being wishes to admit helplessness, he thought. Perhaps because to be human is so terrifyingly fragile to begin with, he thought, so we surround ourselves with illusions of power: money, friends, and shrewd knowledge about how the world works. And clothed in this brittle armor we march out into the world daring to face its uncertainties. It was only when the perfect storm enveloped you, threatening all you had, that you were reduced to shedding all hubris and facing the true nature of being human.

  Pressed down into the depths of despair, he felt himself drawn to the old remedy that had been the elixir of so many facing destruction, whether through inimical human opponents, or faceless acts of nature, conditions of want, or disease. When all human efforts had been expended—all expertise, all plans, all bribes—and only one thing was left.

  He walked to his bookcase and took out a book of Psalms.

  He will deliver you from the snare that is laid, from the deadly pestilence.

  He will cover you with His pinions, and you will take refuge beneath His wings

  . . . For He will instruct His angels on your behalf, to keep you in all your ways.

  They will carry you upon their hands, lest you hurt your foot upon a stone . . .

  He read and read, his soul raw with unhealed wounds, weak with helplessness.

  The words poured into him like a salve. Alone, but not alone, he thought, wanting so much to believe in his faith, wanting to feel worthy of being listened to. He did not want God to be that far-off clockmaker who did not interfere with human beings, leaving them to their fate. He needed God to be near him, with him, controlling the universe.

  Oh, God, oh God. Take everything I have if I deserve it; just don’t take her from me. Please, God, please.

  He needed miracles. He prayed for miracles.

  Exhausted, he slept.

  The ringing phone woke him.

  “Dad?”

  He held his breath. “Tell me, Kayla.”

  “She’s out of surgery. They say she had a very close call. But they think she is going to be fine.”

  He put the book of Psalms to his lips, kissing it. Thank you, God, he mouthed silently. Thank you.

  He had gotten one miracle. He could not depend on another.

  He sat down at his computer
and composed an e-mail to Marvin.

  Marvin. I am ready to settle. Just make sure my family will be taken care of.

  Best,

  Adam

  33

  “Mom?”

  The voice came from a distance.

  Fear clutched Abigail’s heart. Am I still alive? she wondered. She did not want to die. She did not want peace, she admitted to herself. She wanted the uncertainty and pain of living. She wanted to live until her throat was dry with singing and she could not utter a single new note.

  “Mom, are you all right?”

  Kayla stood beside her bed, holding her hand. Her eyes were bright with tears. “What happened to me?”

  “You were very, very lucky.”

  Luck, she thought, had nothing to do with it. “Thank you, God.” She closed her eyes and slept.

  The room was dark when she awoke again. Kayla was sitting at her bedside along with Daniel. “Water,” she said weakly.

  “Here.”

  She felt her head lifted gently by a strong male hand. Her eyes focused.

  “Adam?”

  “How are you, my love?”

  Was she dreaming? She pushed herself frantically off the pillows. “You can’t be here! They’ll arrest you . . .”

  He pushed her shoulders back gently.

  “Abby, it’s over.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve dropped the charges. The CIA picked up Van in an airport in Nairobi on his way to Libya. I guess life in Saudi Arabia didn’t appeal to him.” He chuckled. “He was carrying a bunch of documents that prove I was set up. Hurling and Van were longtime accomplices, longtime Hamas and Al-Qaeda supporters. They wanted a Jewish accountant to do their dirty work. Dorset was blackmailed into helping them: Hurling’s friends paid his Vegas gambling debts. It was Dorset who suggested they pick me. The feds have asked me to testify against them!”

  “Thank God! I can’t believe it. That is so wonderful! But how did it happen?”

  “The feds told my lawyer off the record that the CIA got a tip from a foreign intelligence agency. Isn’t that wonderful? He couldn’t tell me anything more. If Van had made it to Libya, that would have been the end of me. Is Seth around? I’d like to tell him.”

  Kayla took her father’s hand. “He’s on his way back to Harvard, Dad.”

  “So then, is it over between the two of you?” Adam winced.

  Kayla nodded. “It’s over.”

  Abigail examined her feelings. She tried to remember her sense of joy as she walked down the street planning her daughter’s engagement party to the perfect son-in-law. But it was so distant a memory, something that had happened to someone else, someone she had known long ago.

  “And where is Daniel?” Abigail asked.

  “He just went out for a minute to talk to the doctors.”

  “I want to thank him for saving my life. But most of all, I want to thank him for saving my husband and our family.”

  Adam stared at her.

  “For saving me?”

  “It wasn’t Seth, Dad, who found out about Hurling. It was Daniel. But he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone. And it’s probably Daniel who is responsible for the CIA being tipped off just now as well . . .”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No. I’m serious. He’s never said exactly how he got the information, just that he was in a special unit in the army and that he has what he calls ‘contacts.’ I asked Seth to pass the information on to you because I knew you wouldn’t take anything coming from me seriously.”

  Daniel walked in.

  “Dad, this is Daniel.”

  Adam looked in confusion at the wild-haired young man.

  Daniel looked from one to the other, equally confused.

  Adam walked over to him, hugging him wordlessly. “Thank you!” he said, his voice husky and full of emotion. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  She saw the tears well up in Daniel’s eyes. She squeezed his hand: “Just say ‘bevakasha.’ ”

  He took Adam’s hand in his: “Bevakasha. You are most welcome!”

  “And what now, Adam?” Abigail asked.

  “I’ve bought plane tickets that are good for the next two weeks. Whenever you are feeling up to traveling.”

  Abigail nodded, feeling her eyes closing. She would talk to him soon, explain things when she had the strength, explain that like those animals that shed their skins, she had shed hers. The old life was over, an empty shell that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, crawl back into.

  What would happen to her? she wondered. What would her Tenth Song sound like? Rav Natan was right. She couldn’t imagine it. She would only know that answer once she was in the middle of singing. All she knew was that it would be the best song she had ever sung.

  She closed her eyes, giving in to sleep.

  Epilogue

  When she was released from the hospital, Abigail and Adam took a hotel room in the center of Jerusalem, in an unimposing but friendly little place. It had a small balcony that overlooked a street full of waiters scurrying to serve leisurely tourists and laid-back natives sitting in open-air cafes. Religious women in hats wheeling baby carriages, soldiers, Abyssinian priests in long, dark robes filled the avenues. She watched, fascinated by the variety, the energy. It reminded her in a strange way of her birthplace, New York City. Tiny as it was, Jerusalem was still a bundle of energy, optimism, and diversity.

  In the afternoons, she and Adam would take long, slow walks that brought them to stone archways and rows of very old stone dwellings, which looked both mysterious and strangely familiar. She couldn’t explain that: the familiarity; the sense that she had always been destined to live in this place, of all the places on earth; the feeling of comfort and relief at having been lost and now having been found, or rather, finding herself. A feeling she had never once experienced in her own birthplace.

  These low stone houses, built at the turn of the century by wealthy, kindhearted Jews for their poor immigrant brethren, somehow whispered her name, inviting her to partake of whatever magic they held in the matrix of history, community, and tradition. In the dark shadows of a bare streetlamp, she touched the stones, and they touched her.

  When it finally came, the inevitable conversation with Adam had been harder than she’d imagined. He was not a man who lost his temper or cried easily. And yet, there had been shouting and tears. Later, in the many conversations that followed, he seemed to have spent his anger and his grief, and was simply bewildered.

  “We have lost a great deal of money, it’s true,” he told her. “But we have some left. Especially if we sell the house. It’s too big for us now anyway,” he said. “And I know now you never really liked it; I forced it on you.”

  She didn’t protest.

  “I called home last night to get my phone messages. The rabbi called. Apparently he’s read the newspaper stories exonerating me. He even apologized.”

  “You aren’t going back to that synagogue, are you?” she asked, appalled at the thought.

  “Why not? So many of our friends left messages congratulating me. My clients called, wanting me back.”

  “Of course they did,” she murmured. “But how can you just forget what you’ve seen, Adam, the faces without the masks?”

  “I don’t know. If the situation were reversed, I don’t know if I’d have acted any differently.”

  That was so Adam. She had no doubt he would have acted completely differently. He would never have betrayed anyone the way he himself had been betrayed. As for herself, what did it matter how she would have behaved in a theoretical situation that had never occurred? What did it matter if she would have been no better? The facts remained the facts. Even if she could find it in her heart to forgive the people who had behaved so unfeelingly, still, she didn’t want them in her life anymore, just as they had not wanted her in theirs when the situation was reversed, and she’d needed them the most.

  “I want to put it all behind me, Abigail. I want my
life back, exactly as it was.”

  “Adam, that’s the difference between us. I want nothing back. I only want to go forward.”

  “Abby, be reasonable! At least come back for a little while. Help me to sell the house. Come with me to visit our children and grandchildren . . .”

  It sounded perfectly reasonable. But the thing was, she just couldn’t. She didn’t even know why. It was like something written in stone that had been chiseled and completed, impossible to change. “I’m sorry, Adam. I can’t.”

  “Ever?” he asked her, flabbergasted.

  “Ever,” she answered honestly. “I want you to come here. I want the children and grandchildren to come here, at least for a visit.”

  “Maybe, in a few years . . .”

  “Now.”

  There was nothing left to say. At the end of the two weeks, when she was feeling better, he took a plane back to Boston.

  “Will you take care of yourself, Abby?”

  “I will. I’m happy, Adam. I will wait here for you. For as long as it takes.”

  They held each other close; then he was gone.

  A week later, she found an apartment. It was tiny, especially by American standards. A small kitchen with ancient appliances and wooden windows that barely closed. A claw-footed tub, and a handheld shower wand the Israelis called a “tush.” That always made her giggle. It came furnished with a beat-up table and some unmatched chairs. To complete the décor, she bought a used convertible couch she found for sale on a local English-language Web site, and a new, comfortable bed she found in a mattress store in Talpiot.

  Her life took on a kind of rhythm. In the mornings, she would cross the street to the Machane Yehuda shuk, where she bought pita bread with zaatar still warm from the oven, fresh figs, and Israeli goat cheeses. For lunch, she would do the same, except buying fresh Nile perch, or St. Peter’s fish, ripe tomatoes, and strawberries.

  She read a great deal, books she found in one of the many English-language used-book stores that dotted the city. She was always surprised at what people brought in: almost new hardcover novels, signed first editions, paperbacks so yellow with age that the pages crumpled even as you turned them. A few times a week she taught English to adults. The money was enough for most of her expenses. Not that she was worried about money. She had transferred enough to her Israeli account to last a long time, money she had earned as a teacher all those years, which Adam had insisted go into a separate account in her name. On Sunday afternoons she took art lessons with a young woman, a recent Bezalel art-school graduate. And on Tuesdays, she took music lessons, learning how to play the clarinet. She had no television. Instead, in the evenings, she went to local concerts and lectures and art galleries, or simply visited with newly made friends. Ariella sometimes called with news about Metzuke Madragot, and sometimes she traveled into Jerusalem to visit. They would sit over coffee and delicious cakes in Beit Ticho, talking about the strange turns that lives take.