The Big Nap

by Ayelet Waldman

  I smiled sweetly. “I made breakfast.”

  He looked up at me, surprised. “What?”

  “Pancakes. I made pancakes.”

  “Wow. Okay. I’m up.” Peter scratched his little potbelly, pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms, and followed me into the kitchen. We stopped in the hall and watched Ruby and Isaac. They were holding hands, and Ruby was gently bouncing the baby in the Johnny-Jump-Up. Her red curls glinted in the morning sunlight that, unusually for L.A., a city where the fog and smog don’t ordinarily burn off before midmorning, streamed in through the window. Isaac had a huge grin on his face. As we watched, Ruby leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Jump, Izzy. Jump jump jump,” she said.

  “Hey, Peach,” Peter called.

  She ran across the floor and leapt into his arms. “Good morning, Daddy. Look at the bootiful day.”

  “It sure is beautiful, honey.”

  We had the most pleasant meal together that we’d had in months. Since Isaac’s birth, Peter and I had been behaving less like lovers and more like fellow laborers in a baby factory. And he was definitely a part-time employee. We’d gone from spending virtually all day together—Peter had always worked at night while I was asleep—to seeing each other about as much as your average married, professional couple, that is, not very much. I didn’t know if it was the lack of time, or my exhaustion, or just the added pressure of another baby, but something wasn’t right between us. We hadn’t gone out on a date or even had a good long talk in ages. And let’s not even discuss our nonexistent sex life.

  “Juliet,” Peter said, “you seem like yourself for the first time in months.”

  I smiled at him. “I feel like myself for the first time in months. No wonder authoritarian regimes use sleep deprivation as a form of torture. It’s amazingly effective.”

  He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

  I felt a twinge of irritation. It wasn’t my fault I’d been out of sorts. How would he feel if he had to spend his nights comforting a fussy baby? And hey, I wasn’t the one at the studio all day and half the night. However, I was determined not to let anything ruin the mood of my lovely day. I suppressed any and all negative feelings and smiled—a stiff little smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “Is your little Orthodox girl coming today?” he asked.

  “Yup. At ten. I can’t wait.”

  Peter dressed Ruby, made her lunch, and took her to school on his way to work. I waved goodbye from the front step and then took Isaac upstairs. By a quarter to ten we were both bathed, dressed, and waiting for Fraydle.

  At ten we were sitting on the front step.

  At a quarter past ten we were standing at the end of the walk.

  At ten-thirty we were halfway down the block.

  At ten forty-five, I put the baby in his stroller and stormed off to Mrs. Tannenbaum’s. When I got to the market, I saw that the door was locked and the CLOSED sign was up. I peered through the glass of the door, and spotted a young girl sitting in the back on a high stool, reading a book. I rapped a few times on the glass and she looked up. She shook her head and motioned toward the CLOSED sign. I rapped again, insistently. Finally, she got down off the stool and came to the door. Opening it a crack, she said, “She’s closed today.”

  The girl looked like a less attractive version of Fraydle. Her hair was the same dark color and was worn in the same simple braid down her back, but it was thinner and less glossy. Her eyes were dark blue but without any of Fraydle’s purplish vibrancy. Her mouth and nose were both just slightly larger than Fraydle’s. But still, I was confident I knew who she was.

  “Sarah?” I asked.

  She looked puzzled. “How do you know my name?”

  “My name is Juliet Applebaum. Your sister Fraydle works for me. She didn’t show up this morning and I came to look for her.” Sarah fidgeted uncomfortably with the button on her shirt. “Do you know where she is? Can you call her for me?” She didn’t answer. “I’m not mad, or anything. I just want to know if she’s okay, and if she plans on coming to work today. Or ever, I guess.”

  Still nothing.

  “Sarah,” I said, sharply.

  She looked up, startled. “You should talk to my father,” she said.

  “What? Did your father decide she couldn’t work for me? Is that what happened?”

  “Please, just talk to my father.”

  “Sarah, what’s going on here?”

  “Fraydle’s gone.”

  Now it was my turn to be startled. “Gone? What do you mean, gone? Where is she?”

  “She didn’t come home yesterday. Everybody is looking for her right now. I’m supposed to stay in the store in case she calls or comes here.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, I remembered the young man in the bomber jacket. Could she have gone off with him? Could she have run away with Yossi? Should I tell her parents about seeing them together?

  The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted my thoughts. Sarah snatched it up.

  “Hello? No, Abba. She hasn’t called. Okay, Abba. Abba, wait. That lady is here. The one that Fraydle baby-sat for yesterday. She came looking for her.”

  There was a pause.

  “Yes, right now, Abba.” She hung up the phone. “My father says come to our house right now.”

  I thought about it for a minute. Did I really want to get in the middle of this? What was I going to tell Fraydle’s father? Fraydle had told me that her parents were planning an arranged marriage for her, a practice I thought had gone out with corsets and horse-drawn carriages. Maybe Fraydle had decided to run away rather than be forced into a marriage she hadn’t chosen for herself. If that was the case, I certainly wasn’t going to help her parents track her down.

  Sarah had started out the back of the shop. Realizing that I wasn’t following, she turned around and said, “You must come. Now. Abba is waiting.”

  “Sarah, give me your telephone number. I can’t go to your house because . . . because I need to get the baby home. I’ll call your father within half an hour or so.” I wanted to talk to Peter before I did anything.

  Sarah ran back to me and grabbed my hand. “No!” she said, almost yelling. “Abba said you have to come now!”

  I extricated my hand from hers. “I’ll call him as soon as I get home, Sarah. I’ve got to go now.”

  She shook her head frantically. “No! Abba said I had to bring you now. You have to come. Please. Please.” She began to cry.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m coming. I’m coming. Stop crying, for goodness’ sake.” It was clearly fear of her father and not concern for her sister that was causing this hysteria. I didn’t have the heart to make her any more panicky than she was. Following the girl, I humped the stroller out the back door and down the few stairs leading to an alley.

  “It’s just down there.” She pointed to the end of the alley. We reached the corner and turned into the fenced yard of a small stucco house. There was a small lawn and a few flowerpots with red geraniums on the long flight of steps that led up to the porch. The garage took up the first floor of the house, and the front door opened into the second floor.

  I picked Isaac’s stroller up in my arms and followed Sarah up the steps and through the front door of the house. Once inside, I put the stroller down and looked around. The living room was packed with bearded men in black suits and broad-brimmed hats. They were standing in little clumps, whispering to one another. I knew that shorn of their facial hair and side curls and wearing jeans and T-shirts, they could easily have been some of the many cousins and uncles with whom I’d attended bar mitzvahs and weddings, but it was almost impossible to imagine these men not garbed in their traditional attire. They looked as if they’d been wearing those coats and white stockings for two or three hundred years. As we entered, all conversation ceased as they looked silently and intently at us.

  “Um, I’m Juliet Applebaum?” My voice cracked a bit. The men with their piercing eyes and
unsmiling mouths made me nervous.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Tannenbaum bustled out of what was most likely the kitchen and rushed over to me. She had obviously been crying; her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Come. Come,” she said, grasping my hands and trying to drag me into the living room. At that moment, Isaac began to cry. I disentangled myself from her grasp and lifted him out of his stroller. Resting the baby on my shoulder, I patted his back and crooned softly to him.

  “Come.” Mrs. Tannenbaum pushed me farther into the room. The men backed away from us, leaving a little path for me. I knew that they were forbidden to touch me, a strange woman, who might even be in the middle of the unclean part of her menstrual cycle. A large man in shirtsleeves with a thick, unruly black beard sat on the couch in the middle of the room. He looked to be in his early to mid-forties. He wore no hat, but an oversized black velvet yarmulke covered the entire top of his head. He rose as I approached.

  “This is my brother, Fraydle’s papa, Rav Finkelstein,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said. “Baruch, this is the woman I told you about. The nice Jewish lady who Fraydle was helping with her baby.” She stepped back.

  The rabbi looked at me silently. I felt intensely self-conscious in a pair of Peter’s jeans rolled up at the cuff and cinched as tightly as possible, that is to say, not particularly tightly, at the waist. Thank heavens I had on a long-sleeve shirt. Too bad it had a large picture of Madonna wearing a black leather bustier.

  “Hello, Rabbi. My name is Juliet Applebaum.” I instinctively extended my hand, but quickly withdrew it, remembering that he could not shake it.

  “You know my Fraydle, my daughter,” he stated.

  “Yes.”

  “She worked for you yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know this was without my permission. You know that she did this without telling me.”

  “No. No, I didn’t know that.” I turned to glare at Mrs. Tannenbaum, who backed away still farther, her eyes boring a hole into the faded green carpeting.

  “I most assuredly did not know that,” I said firmly.

  “But you did not ask her if she had her father’s permission to work for you. To work for a . . .” He left the sentence hanging in midair.

  I was beginning to get angry. “To work for a mother with a small child, Rabbi Finkelstein. A Jewish mother. With a Jewish child.”

  He gave my outfit an ostentatious and derisive look. “A Jewish mother,” he spat.

  Isaac began to cry.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “My baby is hungry. I need to go home and nurse him.” I spun on my heel and walked toward the front door. Just then, a woman rushed out of the kitchen.

  “No. No, please don’t go.” She took my arm. “Come, feed the baby in the kitchen. Come.” Ignoring the men in the front room, she began dragging me into the kitchen. I couldn’t shake her off without being violent, so I followed.

  The kitchen was small, plain, and practical. The walls and cabinets were painted white and the only decoration consisted of dozens of children’s paintings and drawings that covered every wall, every cabinet door, and the fridge. A large round table scarred by years of use was shoved into a corner. Sitting around the table and leaning against every counter were women. There were old women in stiff, discolored wigs, younger women wearing fashionable well-coiffed wigs or headscarves, and girls with long braids or hair cropped to chin-length. The room smelled warm and yeasty, like baking bread. The woman who had taken my arm was wearing a loose-fitting gray woolen dress. Her brown wig was slightly askew and her face was red and blotchy. Her large, violet, lavishly lashed eyes were bloodshot. Clearly she, too, had been crying.

  “Please excuse my husband, Mrs. Applebaum. He is not used to dealing with . . . with other people. Not from our community, I mean. He is upset. We are all upset. Come through here to the back bedroom. Nurse your baby there. We’ll talk in a minute, okay? Nurse your baby and then maybe you’ll tell us what Fraydle did yesterday. Maybe you’ll be able to help us figure out where she is, okay?” She led me into a back room and shouted over her shoulder, “Nettie! You come sit with Mrs. Applebaum.” Mrs. Tannenbaum, who had followed us into the kitchen, quickly walked into the room. Fraydle’s mother backed out the door and shut it quietly behind her.

  I looked around me. Mrs. Tannenbaum and I were standing in a small bedroom with a twin bed tucked into a corner. There was a desk chair against one wall. The room was dim; the only window was covered by a dark shade pulled tightly closed.

  Isaac was still crying, and I sat down on the bed and quickly undid my shirt. His tears had started my milk flowing and I had soaked right through the nursing pad and my bra. My shirt had a large wet spot right around Madonna’s grimacing profile. I pulled out a breast and drew Isaac close to me. He began sucking desperately. I sighed and looked up at Mrs. Tannenbaum, the woman who’d gotten me into this mess in the first place.

  “You told me that Fraydle’s father wouldn’t mind if she worked for me. That he’d love for her to work for me.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “But you didn’t even ask him,” I continued.

  “I was going to tell him, I’m telling you.” She sounded defensive. “I was going to talk to him today. I came over this morning to tell him. But by the time I got here, it was already a huge balagan. A mess. The girl was gone. My sister-in-law was hysterical. The men were here. My brother, he’s out of his mind with worry. I told him right away about Fraydle’s job.” She sat down next to me and gently stroked Isaac’s head. “Oy vay, what a catastrophe this is. A complete imglik.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back,” I said. “Teenage girls run away all the time. Mostly they come home right away.” I couldn’t help thinking of all the girls I’d seen during the years I’d practiced as a public defender. Young girls who ran away from home and ended up on the street dealing drugs, turning tricks, doing robberies with their no-good boyfriends. I didn’t mention them.

  “Our girls don’t run away, Mrs. Applebaum. They never run away, and certainly not when they are about to be married.”

  “Fraydle was getting married?”

  “Of course, didn’t she tell you? A wonderful shiddach, a match. A very important New York family, I’m telling you. The boy’s father leads the biggest yeshiva in Borough Park. A wonderful family. Very important.”

  “Fraydle didn’t tell me that.”

  “She’s a shy girl. Quiet. Maybe she didn’t feel like she knew you well enough. This is a very lucky match for our Fraydle. The boy is smart, destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. And not bad-looking, either. Oy, Fraydle. If Rav Hirsch hears of this, he’ll call off the wedding, for sure. He’ll never let his son marry an uncontrollable girl. Chas ’shalom he should hear about this. I’m telling you, it’ll kill my brother if Hirsch ends the match. Kill him.”

  I switched Isaac to the other breast. Mrs. Tannenbaum heaved a sigh and leaned back on her elbow. “Gevalt. Where is that girl?”

  “Did Fraydle want to get married?” I asked.

  “Of course she wanted to get married. What girl would turn down a match like that? A family like that? And the boy was even good-looking. Maybe a little skinny. Maybe a few pimples. They outgrow that. What twenty-four-year-old doesn’t have pimples?”

  “Had she spent much time with him?”

  “Rav Hirsch brought his son here a little while ago. They met, the son said yes to the match. They met again, maybe twice more. They had some time alone. I’m telling you, when I was a girl, we didn’t have such luxuries. We were lucky to see the boy’s face once before the wedding. Now, these children, they meet again and again. Oy, Fraydle. Hirsch hears about this, it will be the end.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Mrs. Tannenbaum, that maybe that’s exactly what Fraydle might want? Maybe she took off because she doesn’t want to get married.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. This boy is special. This family is one of the Borough Park machers, the elite. The father, like I said, is
an important rabbi. The mother is from money. Her brothers own half of Brooklyn. This match gives my brother ties to a powerful and important yeshiva and makes Fraydle a comfortable girl. We’re not so rich that she can turn her nose up at such an arrangement.” The woman once again patted Isaac on the head.

  He rolled off my breast with a contented belch. She reached out her arms and took him. I waited for his shriek of protest, but he seemed perfectly content to lie against her shoulder. She burped him gently.

  “Do you have children?” I asked.

  “No. Mr. Tannenbaum and I were not so blessed. My brother’s children are like my own.” She sounded a little wistful as she rubbed my baby’s back with the palm of her hand. He giggled with delight as she kissed him softly on the cheek.

  “You’re good with him. He’s not usually so affectionate with strangers.”

  “What strangers? He knows me. He’s been in my store. We’re friends. Right, Izzaleh? We’re old friends.”

  “Mrs. Tannenbaum, I don’t really know how I can help you here. I just met Fraydle. I really have no idea where she is.”

  “I know. Just talk to my sister-in-law. Let her ask you a few questions. Let her reassure herself that she’s followed every path.”

  “Okay. But I’m warning you, if your brother starts yelling at me again, I’m out that door like a bat out of hell.”

  She looked up and gave a snort. “I like that. Bat out of hell. I’m going to use that one. You, go talk to Sima. I’ll stay here with the baby.”

  I left them sitting on the bed, cooing at each other, and walked back into the kitchen. Once again, all conversation stopped when the women saw me. A young woman in a brown fake-Gucci headscarf patterned with backward logos hurriedly rose from her chair at the table and motioned for me to sit down. I did. A cup of tea and a plate of cookies materialized in front of me and Fraydle’s mother, Sima, sat down at my side.

  “The baby’s okay?” she asked.

  “He’s fine. He’s in love with Mrs. Tannenbaum.”

  She smiled thinly. “Nettie is good with the babies.”

  “Mrs. Finkelstein, I can’t give you much help. I don’t know your daughter very well. I met her only once before she came to work for me, and she only came to work once. I slept the whole time she was there. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to her.”