The Big Nap

by Ayelet Waldman

  “I’m so sorry, honey.” I picked her up and hugged her. “I’m so sorry, sweet girl.”

  I kissed her a few times. She glared at me, and then her lower lip began to tremble.

  “Oh honey, don’t cry. Mama is so sorry.”

  With that, the tears began.

  “She wasn’t crying at all on the way home,” Jake’s mom said. “The two of them were singing the whole way.”

  “I believe that,” I said, over the top of Ruby’s hysterical head. “Thanks again, it was really nice of you.”

  “No problem. I live just a little farther along towards the Beverly Center. You’re right on our way home. My name is Barbara, by the way.”

  “Of course, Barbara. Was it that obvious? I’m terrible with names.”

  “Me too. Brenda told me yours, otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t have remembered it either.” She was probably just being polite.

  “The kids sure seem to have hit it off,” she said.

  “That’s terrific.” It was a relief to know that Ruby could make friends. I’ve never been the best at organizing play dates. I can’t plan my own social engagements, let alone Ruby’s.

  “Juliet, I was wondering, my older son goes to Milken Community School. In a couple of weeks the seventh grade is doing a production of The Boys From Syracuse. Would you and Ruby like to come see it with us? I think the kids will really love it.”

  Yeah, right after I have my fingernails pulled out, one by one. “Sure, that sounds great. Just let me know the details.”

  Ruby and I waved goodbye and headed up the stairs. I set her up with some markers and paper and we spent the next hour or so drawing portraits of our family. In mine, Daddy was far off in the distance, in a land called Work. In Ruby’s, he was the largest figure on the page. I think we were expressing the same emotion, each in our own particular way.

  That evening, long after I’d started listening for his car in the driveway, Peter called to let me know he was going to be late. Again.

  “I was really hoping to go out tonight,” I said, not a little irritated.

  “I’m sorry, doll. Did you have plans with Stacy? I didn’t realize. Do you want me to see if I can juggle things around here?” Now that was as insincere an offer as I’d ever heard.

  “No. No, it’s okay,” I said. “I have to go check out this Israeli restaurant. Today’s Wednesday and if I don’t go today, I’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  “Come again?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all the details when you get home, but in a nutshell, Fraydle has disappeared and I’m hoping to bump into her boyfriend at this restaurant on Melrose. It’s supposedly a big Israeli hangout on Wednesdays and Mondays.”

  “Disappeared? How disappeared?”

  “I think she’s probably run away with this guy. I’ll tell you all about it when you get home. Maybe I’ll just take the kids to the restaurant for dinner.”

  There was a moment of silence on the line. Then he said, “Juliet, you’re not getting involved in anything are you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Peter. I’m just trying to find my goddamn babysitter. The poor kid is probably on the run from a horrible arranged marriage. Like I said, I’ll tell you all about it when you get home.”

  “You wouldn’t take the kids any place dangerous, would you?”

  “Of course not. But hey, if you’re really worried, why don’t you come watch them while I go out?” I knew that was a nasty thing to say as soon as I said it, but I was pretty fed up with playing the part of the brave little television widow.

  “I’m not worried. And I can’t leave. Things are insane right now, but you know it will mellow out as soon as the pilot is in the can.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe they’ll buy twenty-two episodes and we’ll never see you again.”

  There was more silence on the other end of the line. Suddenly, I regretted my snappishness. Here the guy was, trying to support us, with no help from me, and I was giving him grief.

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I know you can’t help it. I’m just tired. I’m always tired. Go back to work, honey. We’re fine. I love you.”

  “You do? Because, lately, it doesn’t really seem like it.”

  Did he really feel that way, or was he just trying to make me feel guilty?

  “Oh, give me a break, Peter. I told you, I’m just tired. Of course I love you. You try waking up every fifteen minutes for four months and see how pleasant you sound.”

  Two could play at the guilt game.

  “I know. I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, too. This is just a really lousy time for both of us.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Listen, I’ve got to run. They’re calling me. I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Me too, too.”

  Trying not to feel too miserable about the conversation, I went into the bedroom to change my clothes for dinner. My Madonna T-shirt hadn’t served me very well with Fraydle’s father and I needed a change of luck. I grabbed a long black skirt with an elastic waist and pulled that on over a pair of black leggings. I topped that with a freshly laundered, white button-down shirt of Peter’s. I picked up the baby and was on my way out to the living room to get his sister when I glanced in the mirror above my dresser. Ugh. My hair. Somehow, during the course of the day, I’d managed to mash down the front while, at the same time, doing something to the back that made it look decidedly like a third-grader’s diorama of the Rocky Mountains. Peaks and valleys. I grabbed an old black beret out of my closet and put that on my head in what I hoped approximated a jaunty angle.

  Nomi’s was unprepossessing, to put it generously. The sole decorations were a number of ancient posters of Israel taped crookedly to the walls. There was one of Jerusalem from the air, with the Dome of the Rock prominently featured. Another showed a laughing female soldier, securely buckled into what looked like a parachute. The third appeared to be a view of a nondescript Los Angeles neighborhood, but the caption informed me, in bold neon, that it was “Cosmopolitan Tel Aviv.” There were about twenty scruffy-looking Formica tables crammed closely together facing the far right corner, where a small stage was set up with music stands and an amplifier.

  I stood hesitantly in the doorway, wondering if I should seat myself at one of the few remaining empty tables. I looked toward the back, where a waitress was bustling out of the kitchen with a tray of food. She smiled and called out something incomprehensible, pointing in the direction of one of the tables. Within seconds a handsome young busboy showed up holding a booster seat and a wooden high chair. He set the booster on one of the chairs and lifted a charmed Ruby into the seat. He then flipped the high chair over, took Isaac’s car seat from me, and settled it snugly between the bars of the overturned high chair.

  “Cool!” I said. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Babies babies, everywhere babies!” he said with an accent, pointing around the room. There were, indeed, quite a number of infants and small children in the place.

  “You need menu?” he asked.

  “Sure, that would be great.”

  He hustled off, returning after a moment with a menu and a glass of water for me, and some crayons for Ruby.

  “Mama?” Ruby piped up.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “I love this restaurant. This is the goodest restaurant I’ve ever seen.”

  “Even better than Giovanni’s?” Peter and I have been regulars at our neighborhood Italian restaurant since before Ruby was born. Giovanni and his brother Frederico taught Ruby to say ciao before she even learned how to say “hello.”

  She paused for a moment. “No. Giovanni’s is the goodest. This is the gooder.”

  “I’m glad you like it. Let’s see what you think of the food. How about I order you a felafel sandwich and some french fries?”

  “Fel fel like Daddy gets me at Eata-Pita?”

  “The very same.”

  “Yummy.”

  The waitress,
a petite brunette with a nice smile and two of the deepest dimples I’d ever seen, bustled over to our table. Quickly realizing that Hebrew wasn’t going to go very far with us, she asked for our order in almost unaccented English. I ordered Ruby’s felafel and a platter of various Middle Eastern salads for myself.

  “Excuse me, miss,” I said to the waitress as she finished writing down our order. “I’m looking for a guy named Yossi, darkish hair, about twenty or twenty-two years old?”

  She looked at me curiously. “What do you need him for?”

  “I’m actually trying to track down a friend of his, a young Hasidic girl named Fraydle. She works for me.”

  The waitress paused for a moment, as if she were about to tell me something. Then she said, “There aren’t many Hasidim who come here. Nomi’s is kosher, but not kosher enough, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t, but I decided it wasn’t important.

  “There’s music tonight, isn’t there?” I asked.

  “Every Wednesday and Monday. Look for your friend tonight. They all come in to hear the music.”

  I thanked her and scanned the room. There were lots of young men with Yossi’s short haircut. There were even a few wearing similar brown leather jackets. None of them looked familiar, though.

  The truth was, I didn’t have a lot of faith in my ability to recognize Fraydle’s Israeli, even if he should walk into the room. Eyewitness identification is notoriously unreliable. When I’d been a federal public defender I’d represented people in cases where every single eyewitness had provided a detailed description of the perpetrator—each one completely different from the others. One person would insist that the bank robber had blond hair and was six foot two. Another would swear that a Filipino dwarf had committed the crime. More than one witness usually meant that my client had a fighting chance. The real problem was when there was only one. It was virtually impossible to convince a judge to let me present expert testimony on the problems with eyewitness identification. Even if the judge did let me put a couple of scientists on the stand, juries never could get beyond their reaction to the bank teller who’d pointed a trembling finger at my client, whispering, “His face is burned into my mind.”

  I knew firsthand just how often eyewitnesses made mistakes. In law school my evidence professor had started class one day with a whispered discussion with a strange man who then left the room. An hour later she stopped, mid-lecture, and asked us to provide a physical description of the man. I thought he was about six feet tall or so, and I was absolutely positive that he was a young Latino man in his early twenties. I knew that he was wearing a blue wind-breaker and khaki pants. I raised my hand and described the individual, absolutely certain that I was correct. A good half of the class agreed with me. My professor then walked to the door and opened it. In walked the man. He was a light-skinned black man who looked about thirty years old. He was a good deal shorter than six feet, but looked taller standing next to my petite professor. He was wearing a denim jacket and a pair of stonewashed jeans. I’d been absolutely wrong. And worse, the sheer force of my conviction had swept many of the other eyewitnesses along with me.

  For all I knew, Yossi would turn out not to be the medium-height, brown-haired Israeli I remembered, but rather an eighty-year-old Inuit in a wheelchair.

  While I pondered this and other challenges of detection, Ruby grew bored with her crayons and Isaac lost patience with his car seat. The next few minutes were taken up with bouncing him on my lap and trying to entertain her with a story. Finally, the food arrived. Ruby tucked into her felafel with vigor and I popped Isaac on my breast, covered his back with a napkin, and stared at the vast plate covered with multicolored salads that the waitress set before me. There was easily enough food for three hungry men or one nursing woman. I almost groaned with delight as I scooped up garlicky hummus with warm pita.

  I was so engrossed in cramming as much food into my mouth as I could before Isaac finished nursing that I almost forgot the object of my search. Luckily, I had stopped for a breather when a group of young men walked into the restaurant. From across the room I heard a voice call out, “Shalom Yossi, Yiftach! Ma ha-inyanim? What’s up?” Any one of the four or five guys could have been my particular Yossi. They were all of short to medium height with close-cropped, brown hair. Two were wearing bomber jackets. “Yossi!” I said loudly.

  One of the young men turned to look at me. He pointed to his chest and frowned as if to ask, Who, me?

  Of all the felafel joints in all the towns in all the world.

  “Yossi?” I said again.

  He walked over to me. “Do I know you?” he asked. His voice was soft with just the slightest trace of accent.

  “I think you know a friend of mine, Fraydle Finkelstein?”

  He stiffened for a moment and looked at me more intently. “Do I know you?” he asked again.

  “My name is Juliet Applebaum. Fraydle was watching my baby the other day? On Orange Drive?”

  “We did not meet.”

  “No. No, we didn’t. But Fraydle told me all about you.”

  He looked doubtful.

  “Well, maybe not all about you. She told me that you guys are friends.”

  He smiled ruefully. “Friends. Yes, we are friends, I suppose.”

  “Yossi, would you sit down a minute so that we can talk?”

  “I’m sorry. I cannot help you. I know her only a little. Just from the neighborhood.” He turned his back to me and began to walk across the floor.

  “Yossi!” I was almost shouting.

  He turned back to me. “Please. I don’t know what you want from me. I barely know this girl. We talk once, maybe twice. I did nothing wrong.”

  I looked at him. What made him assume that I was accusing him of anything?

  “Do you know where Fraydle is?”

  “What do you mean? She is where she always is. She is with her father. The rabbi.” He fairly spat the words out.

  “Actually, that’s just where she’s not. She hasn’t been home since yesterday.” It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t spoken to Fraydle’s family all afternoon. For all I knew, she was back home safe and sound.

  “At least, she hadn’t come home as of this morning,” I continued.

  Either Yossi was an accomplished actor or he was genuinely surprised at what I’d said. He pulled a chair over from another table and sat down between Ruby and me.

  “Hey!” my daughter cried. “This is our table!”

  “Ruby, this is Yossi. Mama just has to talk to him for a minute. Eat your felafel.”

  Ruby listened to me for once and turned back to her dinner. At that moment, Isaac gave a belch and I switched him to the other side. Yossi studiously avoided looking at my exposed breast.

  “You said Fraydle is not home?” he asked.

  I recounted to him how she’d failed to show up for work and my subsequent experiences with her father. “Not the most easygoing of men,” I said.

  “I have not met him. Your name is Juliet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Juliet, this is not good. This is not like Fraydle to go away. She is not, how do you say, sophisticate?”

  “Sophisticated.”

  “Yes, sophisticated. She is not. She has not spent a night away from her parents in her life. She would not just go away.”

  “And you have no idea where she is?” I was suspicious. After all, the first thing this guy had done was proclaim his innocence. And that was before I’d told him there might be something for him to be guilty of.

  “I? Is that what you think? That she is maybe with me? That is crazy. I know this girl only a little bit.”

  “So you said. But you do know her enough to know she isn’t sophisticated. Right?” He didn’t answer. “Yossi,” I said, “is Fraydle your girlfriend?”

  “No! No! Nothing like that. I know her from the neighborhood. I told you this!” He shook his head angrily. “None of this is important. Where is she, that is what is importa
nt. You said you did not speak to them, to her family, this evening?”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “So maybe she is at home.” With that, he got up to leave.

  “Wait. Yossi. Please wait. Let me just call her mother and see if she’s home. If she is, fine. I won’t bother you anymore. If not, then don’t you think we should try to figure out where she might be?”

  He looked at me for a moment, and then, shrugging his shoulders, sat back down at the table.

  Ruby mumbled something incomprehensible from around a mouthful of fries.

  “Just a minute, peach. Mama’s got to make a phone call,” I told her.

  Reaching around Isaac’s head, I dug in my purse for my cell phone and the scrap of paper with the Finkelsteins’ phone number. I punched in the numbers. The phone rang only once.

  “Hello? Fraydle?” a voice shouted into the phone. She wasn’t home yet.

  “No, this is Juliet Applebaum. Is this Rabbi Finkelstein?”

  “Mrs. Applebaum. Yes. You have news of my daughter?” I could tell that I was not high on the rabbi’s list of desirable conversation partners. I could also tell that he was desperate for news of his child.

  “No, no, I’m terribly sorry, Rabbi. I was just calling to find out if she’d come home.”

  “No.” And he hung up.

  I stared dumbly into the phone receiver. “He hung up on me!” I announced.

  Yossi didn’t look surprised. “She is not home,” he said, rather than asked.

  “No.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Exactly what are you and Fraydle to each other?” He didn’t answer. “I know that you don’t think this is any of my business, but maybe we can work together to figure out where Fraydle has gone.” He remained silent. “Is it that you’re afraid I’ll tell her parents about you two? Is that it?” Silence.

  “Hey, mister! My mama asked you something!”

  “Shh! Ruby!”

  Yossi looked at me for a moment and then, his face pale, he stood up again. “I cannot help you. I know her only a little bit. From the neighborhood,” he repeated and made as if to walk away.