Tell Me How This Ends Well

by David Samuel Levinson

  Edith parked in the Harrison Street lot as her contact, Magda Stern, had instructed her to do. She headed to Pearsons Hall, while all around her circulated stony-faced police officers, wearing riot gear and Bluetooth devices and carrying what looked like magic wands. Something was afoot; Edith heard in the distance the echo of loud, thunderous, indecipherable voices—a rally in progress. She recalled her undergraduate days in Cambridge, when she’d participated in womanly causes like Take Back the Night and humane causes during Israeli Apartheid Week and Palestinian Awareness Month, when she actually manned a booth and handed out pamphlets. Today, she looked back in shame on her younger self, who’d been such a vehement anti-Zionist, someone who’d never made the connection between the way she felt about Israel and the way she felt about herself. For years, she kept her involvement in these hateful, ignorant demonstrations a total secret, never divulging the part she’d played to anyone—that is, until Sheik came along. Sheik Abdullah Cohen, with his Israeli mother’s flirtatious mouth and his Lebanese father’s fuck-me eyes; Sheik Cohen, with his rack-and-pinion mind and spark-plug heart. Edith had neither fallen for him the first afternoon they’d met on the stoop nor the next time, when they seemingly ran into each other at a bar in Adams Morgan. A poet back then, Sheik had just come from a grueling workshop in which his classmates had eviscerated his work, while she had just come from a meeting of BDI (Boycott and Divestiture of Israel), though she didn’t tell him that. Instead, she told him she’d been out walking dogs in the neighborhood.

  “Speaking of, Tatiana said she never heard back from you,” he said.

  “Back from me?” Edith asked, remembering she’d never responded to his wife’s email, which she’d sent two months ago. “Oh, about the pugs.”

  “I was sure we’d found our dog walker,” he said.

  “It’s nothing personal,” she said, regretting it immediately because of course it was personal. “I’ve just been so overwhelmed with school and my other clients. Bad timing, I guess.”

  “We tried someone else,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard her, “but the pugs didn’t take to her. They liked you, though,” and he smiled that buttery, infectious smile of his that nearly broke her heart and resolve. “I’m definitely not one for the hard sell, but I know good people when I meet them. I need to feel comfortable handing my kids over to a total stranger, but seeing as you’re not a stranger, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust you with them.”

  “The benefit of the doubt?” she asked. That’s when he told her he’d seen her outside the brownstone on more than one occasion. “Probably so. Once I find a route I like, it just becomes habit,” although as she said this, her pulse quickened and the blood roared in her ears. She was sure she was going to faint and dug her nails into her sweaty palms. She’d never felt anything quite like this before, the need to stay hidden yet also the need to be found out, and these two needs went on warring inside of her for the rest of the time it took her to finish her drink, make up an excuse to leave, and say good-bye. She was hurrying away from the bar when she heard him call her name and then he was beside her, leather backpack slung over one shoulder, her phone in his hand.

  “You might need this,” he said, though all Edith heard was “You might need me.” After she thanked him, he held out his hand for her to shake and said, “See you, Edith,” then he climbed onto his bike and pedaled away.

  She watched him go and knew that he knew what she’d done. He knew who she was yet didn’t seem to care. She’d been following him all over D.C., an exciting, thrilling game of hide-and-seek. She never got too close to Sheik, especially when Tatiana was around, for Edith didn’t trust her to understand the fun they were having. As she had wandered through the explosive, Mardi Gras–like razzle-dazzle of Adams Morgan that Friday night, with people milling about on the sidewalks and the singles bars and hookah lounges packed full of eager young women dressed in scanty, skanky miniskirts and the predatory, equally young men who hungered after them, she’d understood then that Sheik loved her and that if it hadn’t been for Tatiana, she might have had a chance—Tatiana who’d bewitched him into believing she wasn’t the old, ugly hag she was, for Edith saw right through her, just as she’d seen right through her mom.

  As she climbed out of the van, Edith thought about this, thought about the aftermath, about meeting Elias, marrying him, and leaving D.C. to settle in Atlanta. Having never done well with the police, she recoiled at the sight of so many of them gathered in one place and hurried into the building. No one was there to greet her, the hall itself quiet and still, as if someone had pulled the fire alarm and everyone had evacuated the building never to return. She walked from one end to the other and back again, then got out her phone to text Magda only to find that she had a few missed calls from the woman, who’d also texted her. According to the first, the department was being forced to “postpone the conference due to unforeseen circumstances.” Her second text advised Edith not to come to the Pomona campus at all, because “things are escalating and it’s not safe. The president has advised all Jewish employees to vacate the premises until further notice. I have left for the day. I’m sorry about this, Edith. I was looking forward to meeting you.”

  Well, that’s just fucking great, Edith thought, not even bothering to reply, for her fingers were trembling too much to compose a text anyway. Even from where she was, she could still hear the grumbling of voices and beyond this another sound, which, when she stepped outside, turned out to be a helicopter. It was hovering over the campus and looked to be from one of the local area news stations. What the hell was happening? Edith wasn’t sure she was all that interested in finding out, especially since the university president himself had issued the warning. She rushed to the van and had almost made it when her phone gonged. She was still in motion and glanced down at the screen for one split second—TBS1946 had played another word—not looking where she was going until it was too late; she stepped off the curb, her left heel giving out from under her, and down she went, launching her phone into the air. She watched it land on the hood of a BMW, bounce off, then go skittering across the parking lot. When she stood up, she found that she’d split her dress right down the side, put a hole in her stocking, and broken two nails. She got up and walked in dazed circles, fighting back the excruciating pain in her hip, wanting to cry though finding herself unable to muster a single tear; she was as dry as California itself. At one time, she’d done nothing but cry, for her failed marriage, for her mom, but mostly for having lost Sheik, her one true love. She could already feel the giant bruise forming, a commemoration of this humiliating moment, just as she carried around another bruise, invisible yet just as agonizing, of her last encounter with Sheik at the police station.

  After hobbling across the parking lot, Edith retrieved her phone, which was unharmed, then laughed a doleful, unhappy laugh when she saw the word TBS1946 had played—MOTHER. All around her, the police were mobilizing, the helicopter hovering, and the voices bellowing, yet Edith no longer cared about any of it. She cared only about the word on her screen, the word, which, the longer she stared at it, came to have far more weight and importance than she’d ever given it. She’d been telling herself she’d come to L.A. for the sole purpose of delivering her talk and being celebrated by her peers, and that Passover with her family was merely an auspicious coincidence, yet she saw now, as she limped over to the van and struggled to climb in, that perhaps she’d gotten it all wrong. Perhaps the true test of her mettle was not to be found in her perceived success as a renowned professor of ethics, but somewhere else, in the smaller, quieter, thankless acts of goodness—she was thinking about her Jewish next-door neighbor Abigail, a seventy-four-year-old widow who ran a bed-and-breakfast out of her house. She was thinking of all the times Abigail had asked her to drive her to the grocery store, or take her to the Chabad house, or go on a walk with her around the neighborhood, and how Edith inevitably declined each of her requests, not because she didn’t lik
e Abigail, because she did, but because she saw Abigail as someone to fear, Abigail who had reached the end of life and had little to show for it, and because of this, Edith kept her distance, stopping to chat when she had the time, though never going in for a cup of tea. Edith did other things for her—she put back her garbage bins, collected her mail, picked up litter in her yard, and sent potential guests to her B&B. She kept on the periphery of Abigail’s life, actively participating in it without having to deal with the woman herself, without having to watch her struggle to walk to the mailbox, to hear about her arthritis, her angina, her constipation and failing bladder—all things Edith knew would happen to her eventually. But of course these were merely excuses. If she’d been honest with herself, she would have understood that she simply didn’t want to have to see Abigail die or miss her when she was gone.

  In the van, Edith gazed at her phone, giving herself a minute to shake off what had just happened. She shuffled the tiles, then sized up the board, all of the possible combinations and configurations of letters. As she did, she saw an odd, surprising pattern take shape. It couldn’t possibly have been, yet there it was, a sentence developing out of the random assortment of words TBS1946 had played—IAMB, SORRY, ABOUT, YOUR, MOTHER. Edith studied the arrangement again, just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, that the fall hadn’t addled her brain. She blinked her eyes, then looked down again, noting the same series of words, which formed the same incontrovertible sentence.

  TBS1946.

  She’d just assumed this handle—hers was EdiTHICIST, the same one she used on Twitter—was her opponent’s initials and date of birth, though now she realized that it stood for The Big Sleep and the year in which the movie had premiered, 1946. Elias’s favorite film. Elias, whom she hadn’t heard from or spoken to in ages. He’d left the film studies department at Emory a couple of years ago to take a position at USC, where, as far as she knew, he was still teaching. It had once seemed odd to her that she’d come all the way to L.A. and not see him, but having visited Mo several times and not called, she hadn’t seen the point this time, either: They hadn’t remained friends during or after the divorce. Still, only Elias could have been this clever, or this manipulative, she thought, to get in touch with her like this. The Scrabble app had its own built-in messenger service, which she enabled, tentatively tapping out “Elias, is that you?,” then hitting send.

  She waited a few minutes for a response, and when none came, she started up the van and put it in reverse. The pressure of her foot on the pedal produced a searing sting in her hip that radiated down her leg, making her wince and cry out in such pain that she inadvertently took her hands off the steering wheel. The van, already in motion, launched backward, running up and over the curb and crashing against a small fountain, the abrupt stop tossing Edith forward into the suddenly inflated airbag. The impact upset the glove compartment and the plastic door popped open, vomiting up all kinds of receipts and maps, a compass, a pen, a half-eaten chocolate doughnut, and among all of it a small electronic device Edith had never seen before.

  By the time she opened the door and stepped out, she was set upon by three police officers, who swarmed around her, Bluetooth devices lit up and wands at the ready.

  “Suspect is a white female, mid-fifties,” one of them said. Edith glared at him, though she said nothing. “Negative, suspect does not appear armed or dangerous.” He turned to Edith, who was swaying in place, dizzy and dazed, her hip in agony. She plunked herself right down in the grass and lay on her back, her dress coming apart, the breeze cool against her bare skin. She kicked off her heels and stared up into the trees, the call of the birds and the voices washing over her. “Ma’am, I’m going to need to see your license. Ma’am, can you hear me? Are you hurt?”

  “Yes, all over,” she said, referring more to her pride than to her literal person, though her person had taken quite a beating, too. Five minutes later, a medic was at her side to check her vitals, which turned out to be normal. “Did I damage the van?” she asked, still on her back, the grass tickling her neck and making her giggle. “I should call Edith,” and she reached for her phone.

  “Ma’am, your name’s Edith,” the officer said, kneeling down to hand her back her license, which must have fallen out of her purse and onto the floor of the van. “You aren’t diabetic, are you?”

  “Diabetic? Me? No, why?” she asked.

  “We found this little gizmo. It checks blood glucose levels,” he said, showing her the device.

  Just as she was examining it—“Nope, not mine”—a massive chunk of the circular fountain, which had been supporting the weight of the three-ton van, broke off and fell to the ground, the water spilling down the sides in thick torrents and splashing her. The van lurched and rolled back, the bumper and undercarriage scraping against the masonry and releasing a terrific screech. “Oh, oh no. Somebody do something,” she said, watching it all happen with pure horror on her stricken face. “We have to save the water!” She wasn’t sure why she was being so hysterical about it. She turned away from the sight of the ruined fountain and the van’s damaged back end and looked down at her phone, which was still clutched in her hand and which had gonged again—a reply from TBS1946.

  “Yes, it’s Elias. I wanted to surprise you and come to your talk, but it looks like it’s been canceled. I’m still on campus. I can meet you at the west end of the quad directly behind Bridges Auditorium. Find me?”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to no one in particular, the police not seeming to care where, or even if, she went.

  Bedraggled and bemoaning the state of her appearance and of her life, Edith limped away, breathing through the pain in her hip. She followed the echoing thunderclap of voices toward Marston Quad; she’d already determined this to be the place Elias and the rest of the campus were gathered, though for what purpose she had no idea. What exactly could have been so important that they’d canceled her talk, so threatening that the president had issued such a dire warning? This isn’t Nazi Germany in 1938, she thought, approaching the quad from the north. This is California, USA, in 2022.

  Nearing the quad, Edith saw an even greater assemblage of police, the bulk of whom were also in riot gear. She tried to make out what was happening at the far end of the quad but got the distinct impression she’d be safer right where she was, stationed against a giant oak and scanning the passing faces for Elias. She didn’t want him to see her like this, not for their first meeting in so many years, but she also figured it didn’t much matter, for Elias had never bothered to notice her appearance one way or another. Now that she had discovered with whom she’d been playing electronic Scrabble, she’d felt both resentful and ashamed. Part of her had been hoping her opponent might be a handsome, single man in the Atlanta metro area. Not that she was in the market for a handsome, single man, but considering she was through with Ephraim, recognizing that she would never find the courage to answer his texts or return his calls, the thought of having a potential date upon returning home appealed to her. Granted, if she’d been following her own handle logic, then TBS1946 would have been far too old for her. Her intuition had failed her again, as it had failed her when it came to Ephraim and all those who’d come before him, including Elias, though of course it had all begun with Sheik.

  She still wondered how she could have read him so incorrectly, how she’d gotten it all so spectacularly wrong, and how she’d allowed herself to become that person who’d gone to such obsessive lengths to keep him, especially when he’d never belonged to her. Oh, the absolute horror of it, she thought, spotting Elias, the slouchy back of him, which she would have recognized anywhere. She nearly called out his name but stopped herself, because she heard a voice coming from the opposite end of the quad. The speaker was speaking into a mic and though what he was saying was muffled, the voice itself gave her the shivers. Edith stepped out from behind the tree and headed toward it, as if it were a siren song luring her to her rocky, watery death. She paused to touch Elias’s sho
ulder before winding her way through the crowd, many members of which were chanting anti-Semitic slurs and hoisting signs in the air. She came to a cordoned-off area, which stretched from one end of the quad to the other, a line of police officers guarding its perimeter from the surging, aggressive demonstrators. She felt someone pressing against her and when she turned to see who it was—Elias, naturally—she also saw a staggering sea of swastikas held aloft by what appeared to be every make and model of American, from white, black, and Hispanic to young, old, male, and female. Some of the men wore turbans, some of the women hijabs.

  “What is this?” Edith asked Elias, dispensing with salutations and small talk. They could catch up later, if they made it out of Pomona alive.

  “It started out as a memorial service for the son of the family who was murdered yesterday on the 405. But it’s devolved into this,” he said. “He was a senior, graduating in May. Maximilian Vogel. Head of the Jewish Federation of Students, wanted to be a doctor and a volunteer at one of the new medical centers the Israelis were building for the Palestinians in Gaza before the invasion.” He turned to look behind him at the angry, hateful mob.

  “And him? The one who’s speaking? Who’s he?” she asked.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious who he is,” he said without rancor, for which she was grateful. “That’s Zion Abdullah Cohen. He’s a freshman here at Pomona.” Edith waited for him to add, “As if you didn’t already know that,” but he didn’t. She was thankful to him for not accusing her of knowing it, although she did know, had known for quite some time, ever since she’d agreed to give her talk. She’d gone to Pomona’s homepage and there he was, all six feet two inches of him standing beside his dad, the prominent writer with the receding hairline and the graying dreadlocks, Sheik Abdullah Cohen. “Maximilian was his best friend,” he said.