The Believers

by Zoe Heller

  Jean looked at her. “What, dear?”

  “I’ve seen her before.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! She was at the hospital the day Joel had his stroke. She was hanging around outside.”

  “Oh, Audrey, are you sure?”

  “I swear! She gave me a light.”

  “How extraordinary.”

  “How fucking creepy,” Audrey corrected. “What was she doing there? How the fuck did she know Joel was there?”

  “She could have been in the courtroom when he collapsed,” Jean said. “I mean, if she’s really some sort of stalker, she probably goes to all his cases.”

  “Don’t say that. What if she’s one of those freaks like the one who shot John Lennon?”

  Jean made a face. “Perhaps you should let the police know about this, Audrey. I mean, I’m sure she’s perfectly harmless, but it doesn’t hurt to be on the safe—”

  From the hallway there came the sound of the letterbox snapping.

  Audrey stared at Jean. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, “do you think that’s her again?”

  Jean cocked her head, listening. “I don’t know. Do you want me to go and look?”

  “No,” Audrey hissed. “Stay here. What if she’s staring through the letterbox or something?”

  Emboldened by Audrey’s fear, Jean stood up. “I’ll just take a peek.”

  A few moments later, she returned, holding a piece of folded paper in her hand. “This was lying on the mat.”

  Audrey took the note and placed it on the table in front of her. It was addressed to “Ms. Audrey Litvinoff.”

  “It must be from her, right?”

  Jean nodded. “I would imagine so.”

  “What do you think it says?”

  “Why don’t you read it, dear?”

  Audrey reached out her hand and then pulled it back. “Oh, I can’t. You read it to me.”

  Jean unfolded the piece of paper and began to read aloud.

  Dear Audrey,

  Since you have refused to speak to me in person, I feel I have no choice but to communicate with you by letter. I know that what I have to tell you will cause you a lot of pain, and I am sincerely sorry for that. But I believe that the truth is important and that sooner or later, we must all confront life not as we would like it to be, but as it really is. Now that Joel is sick, it is time for the truth to be known.

  For a period of three years between 1996 and 1999, Joel and I were lovers. In 1998, I gave birth to Joel’s child—a beautiful boy whom we named Jamil.

  “Good God!” Jean said, looking up. “She really is mad.”

  “Go on,” Audrey said.

  Jean resumed reading.

  Even though Joel and I are no longer romantically involved, our friendship has endured and the bond we share as Jamil’s parents can never be broken. Joel has a very special love for his son and he has always supported him both financially and emotionally.

  Audrey—I am so sad to think of the shock and sadness you must be feeling as you read this. I know there is nothing that will take away your unhappiness right now. But please believe me when I say Joel and I never intended to hurt you. In time, I hope you can come to terms with what has taken place and honor the important connection that we have—for our children’s sake, at least. I am including my phone number, as well as my e-mail address, and I ask you please, Audrey, to contact me as soon as you feel able.

  In Peace,

  Berenice Mason

  “What a thing!” Jean said. “Has Joel ever mentioned a Berenice?”

  “Of course he hasn’t,” Audrey snapped. “There’s nothing in that letter that’s true.”

  “No, of course not,” Jean said. “I was just asking.”

  Audrey went over to the fridge and got out two graying carrots from the bottom drawer. To be fair to Jean, it wasn’t inconceivable that something had happened between Joel and that woman. Not the child business, obviously—that was rubbish—but it was possible that Joel had slept with her. She wasn’t really Joel’s type, of course: too large, too odd-looking. But Joel’s sexual choices had surprised Audrey before. Perhaps he’d been feeling frisky one night, and mad, chubby Berenice had been the only thing available.

  Jean held out the letter. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Throw it in the bin.”

  Audrey watched as Jean tore the paper carefully in two and thrust the pieces deep in the garbage can. “I told you she was a crazy, didn’t I?” She took one of the carrots and cracked it loudly between her teeth. “Totally fucking tonto.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  Standing at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the bus to Monsey, Rosa quietly celebrated her escape from her mother’s and grandmother’s low-level hostilities. Audrey and Hannah had been at war with each other for as long as Rosa could remember. The ostensible subject of their bickering varied, but the underlying source of conflict was always the same: who understood Joel better, who loved him more passionately, who had the superior claim on his affections. There had been a time when Rosa and Karla also participated in this degrading competition, but Rosa had long ago recused herself from the fight and Karla—well, Karla had never been that serious a contestant to begin with: she was happy just to be able to touch the hem of Joel’s garment from time to time. Audrey and Nana, however, were never going to give up the ghost. They would go on jostling with each other like groupies at a stage door until the bitter end. In fact, now that Joel was sick, the battle between them had only intensified. In his silence, Joel had become a perfectly passive prize, an infinitely interpretable symbol: a Sphinx whose meanings and ownership they could squabble over forever, without fear of decisive contradiction.

  Rosa looked around at the crowd of Orthodox Jews who were waiting with her for the bus. Almost all of the men were wearing dark suits and oversize black fedoras. The female portion of the group had a slightly looser but no less distinctive dress code that involved long skirts, wigs, and an aggressively frumpy layering of shirts and sweaters and cardigans. Rosa felt exposed and slightly flustered to be consorting in broad daylight with such ostentatiously Jewish Jews. She wondered anxiously if any of the pedestrians walking by on Fifth Avenue mistook her for one of this clan. She turned and considered her reflection in a shop window. The outfit she had cobbled together for this occasion was modest enough to daunt the most lascivious gaze. But, she could see now, she was in little danger of passing for an authentic Orthodox woman. She looked like nothing so much as a mad Victorian governess trying to hide a skin disease.

  “Rosa?”

  She looked around and saw a man in shorts and a tank top, staring at her with a slightly irritating expression of round-eyed, drop-jawed surprise. “Rosa? Is that you?”

  Not now, she thought. Please, not now.

  “It’s Chris,” the man cried. “Chris Jackson? From Bard?”

  Rosa lightly smacked her forehead. “Oh! Of course! Sorry, Chris, I was miles away. How are you?”

  “I’m good, I’m good.” He cast a quick, curious glance at her attire. “What’s up? Someone told me you were living in Cuba these days.”

  “Yeah, I was. But I’ve been back for more than a year, now.” She spoke softly in the hope that Chris might follow suit.

  “Wow, that must have been awesome!” he exclaimed. “I hear Cuba is amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Rosa wondered what upset her more: being observed by the Jews chatting with a loud, half-naked gentile, or being discovered by Chris hanging out with the characters from an Isaac Bashevis Singer story.

  “So,” he said, “what’re you up to now?”

  “I’m working at an after-school program for girls in East Harlem.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s cool.”

  With a great hissing and steaming, the big white Monsey bus now pulled up at the curb. It had smoked-glass windows and the words MONSEY TRAILS plastered along its side.

  “How about you?” she aske
d. “You’re living in New York now?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m making documentaries. I have my own company, actually.”

  “Great!”

  “Yeah. We’ve got a movie coming out next fall.”

  “That’s really wonderful, Chris. Good for you.”

  The doors to the bus had wheezed open, and people were now boarding.

  “I mean, it’s not going to be a blockbuster or anything, believe me,” Chris said, “but yeah, we’re pretty psyched about it—”

  Rosa gestured at the bus. “I’m sorry, Chris, I’m going to have to go.”

  Chris looked around. “You’re getting on this?”

  “I’m going upstate for the weekend.”

  “Ohhh.”

  “It was great running into you,” Rosa said.

  “Have you got a card or something? We should get together some time.”

  “A card? No.”

  “What’s your phone number, then?” He took out his cell phone, preparing to add her to his contacts list. After a moment’s hesitation, Rosa surrendered her number.

  “Okay, then!” Chris said. “I’ll give you a call.” He pointed at her suitcase. “Here, let me help you with that.”

  Before Rosa could stop him, he had lifted the case and was carrying it up the bus steps.

  “Wow, this is pretty interesting,” he said loudly, peering into the bus’s dim interior. Coming up behind him, Rosa saw a black curtain hanging down the middle of the aisle, with male passengers on one side and female passengers on the other. She turned to Chris and gently pushed against his chest. “Off you go now,” she said firmly. “I can take it from here.”

  The rabbi with whom Rosa was staying had e-mailed her detailed directions to his house from the bus stop, but she still managed to get lost. What should have been a ten-minute walk from the bus stop ended up being a bewildering forty-minute ramble through the suburban streets of Monsey. She stopped at one point to ask a man who was walking past, if he could help her, but he reared away, as if from a wild animal, and hurried off, his hand pressed to his big black hat, without a word.

  The rabbi’s house, when she finally found it, was grander than she had been expecting: a large 1930s villa of red brick, with a big swath of lawn in front of it and what looked like a larger yard behind. A middle-aged woman in a beige dress and stockinged feet answered the door.

  “You must be Rosa,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Reinman. You’re late! You missed the candle-lighting!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rosa said, “I got a little lost—”

  Mrs. Reinman beckoned her in and took her coat. “It’s such a pity you didn’t get here in time. We waited as long as we could….” She pointed at Rosa’s feet. “Would you mind?”

  Rosa looked at her, mystified.

  “Your shoes,” Mrs. Reinman said.

  Rosa bent down to slip off her black flats. She was wondering what Jewish edict it was that required shoelessness on the Sabbath when Mrs. Reinman gestured at the pale green carpet. “I’m sorry, it’s new, and I’ve found it shows up every mark.”

  In the Reinmans’ elaborately damasked and furbelowed living room, a small group of women and girls were drinking lemonade. “Well, she’s here at last!” Mrs. Reinman said. She held up her arm in Rosa’s direction and let it flop. “Better late than never!” Rosa, who thought it churlish of her host to harp on so about her tardiness, waved apologetically. “Hi, everybody.”

  Mrs. Reinman pointed around the room, identifying people. There were two daughters, twelve-year-old Rebecca and six-year-old Esther; a pregnant niece, Leah, who was visiting from Dallas; and a young friend of the family, Karen. The men were still at shul. Once she had completed the introductions, Mrs. Reinman returned to the kitchen, instructing Karen to show Rosa where she would be sleeping.

  “You and I will be sharing a room,” Karen said as she led the way out into the hall. She glanced around challengingly. “I hope you’re okay with that.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Rosa replied. As they trudged upstairs together, she caught a glimpse of frilled white ankle sock beneath the swishing folds of Karen’s long skirt.

  The guest room, on the third floor of the house, had two alarmingly narrow beds, on one of which Karen had laid out her nightgown and a couple of religious-looking books. “Those things are mine,” Karen said, pointing.

  “Right,” Rosa nodded.

  Karen gazed at her with pale, red-rimmed eyes. “I know you are unfamiliar with the Jewish observances. If you have any questions about what to do or how to behave while you’re here, you should feel free to ask me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Karen pointed out the way to the bathroom and alerted Rosa to the timer device that was set to automatically extinguish the lights in the room at 11:00 pm. “You understand about not turning lights on and off during Shabbos?” she asked.

  Rosa nodded. She was curious to know what people did if they wanted to turn the lights out before eleven o’clock, but, unwilling to encourage Karen in her self-appointed role as religious docent, she kept quiet.

  They went back downstairs to the living room. Leah poured a glass of lemonade for Rosa and invited her to sit down on the sofa. “This is a special room, isn’t it?” she said. “My aunt has such an eye.” She gestured at a set of ruched royal blue curtains behind Rosa. “Aren’t the window treatments lovely?”

  Rosa made a noncommittal noise. “What do you do in Dallas?” she asked.

  Leah seemed puzzled by the question. “Well, I’m recently married.” She looked down at her belly. “And I will have a baby in October, baruch Hashem.”

  “Ah, yes. Congratulations. Boy or girl?”

  Leah shook her head reprovingly. “We don’t try to find these things out,” she said. “We will be happy with whatever Hashem gives us.”

  Rosa was unclear whether Leah was referring to her and her husband’s preference in “these things,” or to some more general community prohibition. In any case, she could think of nothing more to say on the subject of pregnancy. She looked down at the Reinman sisters, who were sitting cross-legged on the floor, examining a sheaf of computer printouts.

  “What grade are you in, Rebecca?” she asked.

  “Sixth.”

  “I thought so. You know, I work in an after-school program with girls your age.”

  Rebecca did not seem very interested in this information. She nodded and looked down at her papers with an air of embarrassment.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” Rosa persevered.

  The younger sister, Esther, turned around. “Commentaries on this week’s parsha,” she told Rosa. She was a pretty, grave-faced little girl who had recently lost both of her front teeth. Two new ones, their edges serrated like postage stamps, were just beginning to poke through the gum.

  “She means commentaries on the Torah portion,” Rebecca said. “We read a portion of the Torah every week.” She nudged her sister. “Goyim don’t know what parsha is, silly!”

  “I’m not a goy,” Rosa said indignantly.

  Karen sniggered.

  Rosa stood up. “Where would I find the bathroom?”

  The Reinmans’ guest facilities were just down the hall, signposted with a porcelain “Powder Room” plaque. Once she had safely locked herself inside, Rosa sank down on the toilet seat and took a deep inhalation of potpourri-scented air. She was horribly disappointed. She had imagined Rabbi Reinman’s house as a humble, cozy, Fiddler on the Roof sort of place, filled with boisterous children and plates of kugel and at least one feisty old grandma telling stories from the shtetl: instead, she found herself in a harem of suburban prisses, discussing soft furnishings.

  She considered her escape options. Coming down with food poisoning was a possibility. She doubted that she had the acting chops, though. The simplest ruse—the one that her hosts would be least likely to challenge—would be to pretend to call her mother and hear of some fresh medical crisis involving her father. But she was not brave enoug
h to risk the karmic repercussions of such a dastardly lie. And besides, she was pretty sure she wasn’t allowed to use her cell phone on the Sabbath. No, there was nothing for it but to stay and endure. She got up and batted vaguely at her hair in the mirror. She was being babyish, she told herself. It was silly to reject this experience simply because it failed to deliver the anticipated clichés. Where was her sense of adventure? Her curiosity?

  When she opened the door, she was startled to find Karen standing outside. “Don’t turn the light off!” Karen cried. But Rosa’s finger was already flicking the switch. Karen let out a yelp as the bathroom went dark.

  “I thought you might forget,” Karen said. “That’s why I came to remind you.”

  Rosa clenched her teeth. “Oh, God. Sorry. I didn’t…Shall I turn it back on again?”

  “No!” Karen said. “You can’t.”

  There were voices in the entrance hall heralding the return of the shul party.

  Karen folded her arms. “Oh, well,” she said, “we shall have to keep it dark now until the end of Shabbos.”

  In the living room, Rosa was introduced to the men: Rabbi Reinman and the three teenage Reinman sons; Leah’s husband, Michael; and Mrs. Reinman’s ancient, bald father, Mr. Riskin.

  “Ah, yes!” Mr. Riskin cried when Rosa was presented to him by Leah. “The naughty girl who missed lichts-bentschen!”

  Rosa observed him warily. His bare scalp had the mottled, fragile look of a quail’s egg. At its center, there was a shallow depression that seemed to pulse, like an infant’s fontanel.

  “What held you up?” he asked, leering at her with doddery aggression. “Too busy talking to your boyfriends?”

  “Grandpa!” Leah exclaimed indulgently.

  Mr. Riskin’s mouth began to twitch, signaling the approach of another witticism. “I hear you turned off the light in the bathroom,” he said. “You wanted to make us do our pee-pees in the dark this evening?”

  Leah covered her mouth with her hands, pretending to be scandalized by her old scoundrel of a grandfather.

  “Your family does not keep Shabbos?” Mr. Riskin asked.