by Naomi Ragen
“Our street was just fine! It was a nice house, and I owned it!”
“She was probably scared to walk to the playground by herself.”
“Actually, I didn’t usually allow her to walk around the neighborhood by herself. That’s normal in most American cities.”
“You are proving my point! Tabloid horror stories, Parents of Murdered Children support groups, American junk food and junk television and junk culture. That’s your normal life here.” He shook his head. “But it’s not normal, hon. It’s not right.”
“She graduated with honors from one of the best schools in California, Santa Clara University!”
“So? I also graduated with honors from San Jose State, but I’m totally screwed up,” he said placidly, getting up and heading back to the grill. He put on another steak, sprinkling it with generous amounts of some pungent spice that rose like a cloud of incense. Just the smell made her stomach ache.
“What makes you think it has anything to do with her childhood?”
“When people are looking to make big changes in their lives, it doesn’t happen overnight. It starts slowly and builds bit by bit. Believe me, I know. When was the first time you noticed a change in her? I bet she was eight or nine, right? Maybe even earlier.”
What the hell? she thought. How could he know that? The “incident,” as she had labeled it in her mind, was never brought up. Something awful had happened, but it had not been the tabloid horror story it might have been. In the end, it was all right, she told herself. Lola never talked about it. But afterward, she’d never really gone back to being the same kid. She’d begun asking strange questions: Who made the world? Were there angels? Where did bad people go when they died? All kinds of questions about subjects that no normal kid ever talked about, questions for which she had no answers. It got so bad, she’d even called Lola’s biological father, who, in typical self-help guru fashion, told her not to worry about it. “Everyone has a religion, a way of living in the world, of making sense of it. As long as you aren’t pushing anything down her throat and she’s free to find her own way, she’ll be fine.”
Dr. David Kannerman.
It had all started with a new car. She was desperate. In San Jose, only people with canceled driver’s licenses and outpatient mental cases used public transportation. There weren’t even any sidewalks! You’d have to walk in the middle of the road. And unlike Brooklyn, everything was so spread out. If you asked directions, people would say, “Oh, it’s five minutes away.” And then you’d start to walk and walk and walk until you finally realized they’d meant five minutes by car. Nobody walked anywhere.
She’d had no choice but to take out an enormous car loan. To pay it off, she took on a second job, a part-time gig at the Fairmont Hotel hair salon. One night, the concierge called and told her to throw on some clothes because a big shot needed an emergency haircut. It was already after 9:00 p.m. She’d almost told him to go to hell. But then she thought about her adorable new red Honda Civic and the repo men. She got dressed and headed downtown.
It was the year she’d turned nineteen. She’d been on the road for two years, living in communes and couch surfing with members of a thrash metal band she’d met in San Francisco. But then her boyfriend, the lead singer, suddenly and shockingly got tired of the rocker lifestyle and wanted to settle down—with somebody else. She enrolled in hairdressing school and got her diploma. It was either that or back to Flatbush prison. That year, she was the thinnest she would ever be, her long, curly, reddish-blond hair drifting wildly down her back, her eyes big and green and expressive.
He was sitting in the Fairmont lobby, imposingly tall, his back straight, his long arms folded serenely in his lap. His beautiful blond hair was tied back in a ponytail.
She’d always had a thing for men with ponytails.
He looked familiar. It took her a few moments to realize that was because his face had been plastered all over town on posters and billboards advertising a self-help book. He was also the principal speaker at the psychoanalysts’ convention being held in the hotel’s conference room.
“Sorry for dragging you away from your family so late. My agent called and demanded I get shaved and shorn. He said it would give me more credibility and I’d sell more books.” He smiled, a wondrous flash of beautiful white teeth.
“I was just watching television. The A-Team.” She shrugged. “No biggie.”
And when she leaned over him in the chair, clipping the apron around his throat and shoulders, she inhaled a scent of cleanliness mixed with a subtle and expensive cologne that made her ache with desire.
She hadn’t been a hairdresser very long, and touching someone’s hair still felt intimate. “Listen,” she said, because she couldn’t help herself, “I think your agent is nuts. Don’t touch it. It’s perfect.”
He leaned back and laughed, a good strong sound that was free and somehow innocent. “Ah, you think so?” His smile was broad and familiar, as if they’d shared a secret joke. “Well.” He sighed. “That may very well be, but I promised him I’d do it.” He closed his eyes, leaning back. “I’m in your hands.”
She wielded the scissors gently, watching with dismay as the silky golden strands fell to the floor. Perhaps he could see how it pained her, which made him smile. To distract her, he started asking her questions about herself, her family, her job, San Jose. He made a real effort to sound interested.
When she finally finished, brushing the stray hairs from his shoulders and undoing the apron, it almost felt as if they knew each other. She contemplated her work. Considering he was perfect to begin with, she thought she’d done a decent job. She always did, especially on men. It was as if she were molding them into someone she could admire, even love. That was even true of the old ones, the fat ones, the sorry ones.
Catching her admiring glance in the mirror, he nodded his approval, opening his wallet and handing her a generous tip.
She accepted it shyly. “I don’t read much,” she told him. “But I’m planning to go out and buy your book.”
He frowned. “Don’t do that. I’ve got boxes and boxes of them upstairs. I’d be happy to give you one. Come up with me?”
Of course, she should have said no, thank you very much. She should have been stronger, wiser, and more perceptive not only about what he was capable of but what she would allow to happen of own free will.
She remembered that innocent ride up in the deserted elevator, the silent walk down the elegant corridor toward the brightly polished door of his expensive suite. At first, they just talked, he on the couch, she in a chair. He told her about his wife of many years—his college sweetheart—and about their two children with whom he did not spend enough time. The soft yearning of his voice and its buried sadness reached out to her own loneliness like embracing arms, so that when he finally got up and took that one step toward her, one was all that was needed.
She didn’t judge herself. Not anymore. She’d thought about an abortion—for about two seconds. No way she was killing any part of herself willingly, no matter how convenient it might be, especially for her scandalized parents. She never involved Kannerman. Why would she? It was her body, her choice.
The sad truth she had learned about life was that it picks you up like a tornado and sets you down full of bruises and astonishment wherever it wants. Nine months later, when Lola was born, and her sad financial situation became desperate, she’d contacted him. He was surprisingly nice about it, although he did politely ask her to provide some saliva samples for a paternity test. She wasn’t offended, even though she knew what the results would be. After that, he even came to visit a few times, bearing baby presents. Then she got a letter from a lawyer asking her to sign some papers in exchange for a lump sum. It had been more than generous, she thought. She’d used it to put a down payment on a house. Soon after, she’d met Dick Howard, a food-and-drink manager at the hotel, who had two teenagers from his first wife.
It was a decent, if not passionate, marria
ge. They were both tired, looking for a safe harbor away from storms. He died swiftly and unexpectedly from a heart attack at work four years later. He was only forty-four.
She had done her best as a single mom, but Lola was always a strange kid. Instead of bugging her for the latest styles and brand names, she was happy to wear stuff they got on sale or even in Goodwill. After what happened, she never liked playing outside the house or going to the playground, preferring to read or draw inside her room. She did her homework without being asked, studied for tests, and got excellent grades. In fact, at parent-teacher conferences, the teachers seemed shocked when Cheryl showed up with her jeans and biker jacket, like they were expecting someone in a skirt and twin-set.
It was a typical California school, filled with new immigrants who spoke Spanish or Vietnamese and needed to take English as a Second Language. Lola always envied that. She’d go to the library and look up their home countries, thumbing through touristy photographs of teeming rain forests full of brightly colored birds; watery, colorful souks on canoes. “If we lived there, I wouldn’t have to be afraid to walk outside by myself,” she’d say, without elaborating where she’d gotten that crazy idea from. “People there are kind and smart. Not like here in San Jose.”
“People are the same all over, honey,” she’d tried to tell her daughter, then wondered if she were doing the right thing. Maybe it was good for a kid to dream, to think there were places in the world that were beautiful and safe. But on the other hand, to encourage such a dangerous fantasy might have terrible consequences for the future. In the end, instead of deciding, she’d say nothing, lighting up another cigarette and blowing perfect smoke rings toward the ceiling while Lola rushed around opening the windows.
All she ever wanted was for her child to grow up free and happy. Was that too much to ask?
Lola hadn’t seen it that way.
Once, when they were sitting side by side on the couch in front of the television set watching young Olympic gymnasts fly through the air, Lola stood up and cried out, “I wish I could do that!”
“No, you don’t, Lola,” she’d told her. “You don’t have any idea what that poor girl has been through! The pushy parents waking her up at five, driving her to some freezing gym, counting her calories, not giving her time to be a kid, to have friends. That there is child abuse.”
Lola had stared at her stonily. “Anything worth having you have to work for, Mom.”
Talk about role reversal! The kid was barely ten years old.
“Well, I don’t believe that. Life is hard enough without making it worse with all kinds of rules and restrictions. My parents did that to me: ‘Don’t stay out late, don’t wear shorts, don’t ride in cars with boys.’ Listen to what I’m telling you, girl. Do what makes you happy.”
She never sent her to Hebrew school, and there had been no bat mitzvah. She would have been perfectly content if her daughter never knew a single thing about any religion. As it happened, that was not to be. A friend from school, daughter of a high-tech Israeli genius working in Silicon Valley, had invited both of them to join the seder at the local conservative temple. Lola wanted to go, so they went. It wasn’t the traditional seder Cheryl remembered, but long and boring nonetheless. But Lola’s eyes had lit up as she’d followed every word, dipping her pinkie into the wine ten times to count the plagues, standing by the door to welcome in Elijah the Prophet—who, as usual, didn’t show up. The following year, she begged her mother to make their own seder. Cheryl agreed, but on condition she could make up all the rules. She invited the neighbors from Guatemala and Cambodia, all of whom could relate to long journeys fraught with peril; and alongside the horrible flat, inedible cardboard matzo, she made sure to place an organic loaf of sourdough nut bread.
Still, Lola enjoyed it. After that, once in a while, just for the heck of it, she told herself, she’d brought out the silver candlesticks on Friday night, Lola’s inheritance, allowing her daughter to light them while immediately afterward making sure to put on a video she’d gotten from Blockbuster, something silly and full of laughs.
Lola would watch for a while, then go into her room and stick her head inside a book. Lord only knew where the kid had picked up the bookworm bug. Certainly not from her. The only books they had in the house were Danielle Steel and an autographed copy of The Life Choice by Dr. David Kannerman, which she herself had never read.
And now—despite Cheryl doing everything she could to raise her completely differently from how she herself had been raised—Lola was morphing into her grandmother.
Go figure!
She was hurt and insulted and personally offended by the road her daughter had chosen to take. She would never accept it and do everything she could to bring her back to her senses. This wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot.
“Want me to put your steak back on for a few minutes?” Ravi asked.
“Nah. Don’t bother. Just open up another beer for me, will you?” she asked him morosely, tapping out Lola’s number on her iPhone once again.
4
Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum pinned her chin-length dark wig firmly to her head, covering it with an elaborate hat held in place with at least three lethal-looking hatpins. Only after shaking her head vigorously to make sure her head covering would stand up to hurricane winds before flying off to reveal the forbidden sight of her fuzzy gray hair did she put on her coat. Carefully examining the dark material for lint or stray hairs, she buttoned it up to her chin. When she was done, she stared into a full-length mirror. She lifted her chin, satisfied. A queen! An absolute queen, as befitted the widow of the late Admor Yitzchak Chaim Sonnenbaum—of blessed memory—as well as the sister of the deeply revered late Rabbi Eliezer Ungvar.
She glanced at her watch. Oy! It took her so long to get dressed every day. But what could she do? To walk out into the streets of Boro Park without being impeccable to the last detail would besmirch the family name. It was a heavy responsibility.
She reached for the carefully wrapped packages on the kitchen table: two pounds of freshly baked rugelach in an aluminum pan, a jar of homemade prune compote, and a plastic container of cold cuts. They would be waiting, her poor, orphaned grandchildren. Her son-in-law depended on her now. Once again, her heart filled with guilt that she had moved out of her late daughter’s home and back into her own. But what could she do? She’d stayed as long as she could. At seventy-four, she just didn’t have the strength to take her daughter’s place indefinitely. You did what you could, she kept telling herself unconvincingly, pressing the elevator button a little harder than was necessary.
To assuage her guilt, she visited several times a week, bringing over home-cooked food and supervising the children for as long as she felt able. And when people asked her with concern how she was managing, she answered as was expected of her: “God be blessed! I’ll have plenty of time to rest in the grave!” Only in the privacy of her mind did she allow herself to admit the inexcusable truth: she was exhausted.
“Good morning, Rebbitzen!” the people of Boro Park greeted her as she walked through their busy streets, sometimes waylaying her, clutching her hands and pouring blessings on her head as they implored her to send their good wishes to her poor, dear family. “How is your son, the children?” they asked, their faces filled with compassion and concern.
While she had no reason to doubt their sincerity, she couldn’t help but feel resentful. Deep in their hearts, she knew, they asked themselves why the Sonnenbaums had been visited with this catastrophe. After all, HaShem, may His name be blessed forever and ever, was just and full of mercy. So, when such a tragedy struck, as much as one tried not to fall prey to the Evil Inclination of slander and libel, ordinary pious Jews could not but ask themselves—as she herself had numerous times concerning herself and others—what fault, what transgression, had merited such retribution?
Her rancor was soothed by the knowledge that if asked, not one of them would refuse to help if they could. Compassion for the suffering was n
ot only a religious obligation but the norm in their little town. Wherever Torah-observant Jews gathered into a community, they became one big family. People prayed for you when you or yours were ill; they brought you meals when you were mourning or convalescing; they had numerous organizations eager to provide you free of charge with everything from children’s medicine when the pharmacies were closed, to tables and chairs for a family event, to fans to cool you in the summer, to heaters to warm you in the winter, to interest-free loans. You could get everything free of charge—from a wedding dress to pacifiers, from wigs to the special pillow meant to cradle a baby during circumcision to soften the blow. There was no end.
But like any family, there was a pecking order, people who were in charge, who had to be obeyed and respected, whose word was law. If you fell afoul of them, the family that could be so giving and compassionate could turn on a dime, their backs a solid wall blocking you from escaping from the cold into the warm, lit rooms of their loving acceptance.
Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum was one of the people in charge. That knowledge glued together her broken heart as she made her determined way to her late daughter’s family.
Her lovely, lovely Zissele! Child of her old age, born after all her other children were teenagers. Her other children—two girls and a boy—had moved far away. The girls were both in Israel, married to respectable scholars in Jerusalem and B’nai Brak, and her son was busy teaching in the renown Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago. He had ten children of his own to care for. While all of them—God be praised!—were diligent in showing her concern and respect, they had left her behind. Only Zissele had been there. They had been very close, especially at the end.
She knew that one should never question God—blessed be He—but often her thoughts betrayed her, wandering dangerously close to the edge of blasphemy. Why had this happened to her lovely, pious daughter, her strictly God-fearing observant family? Why had there not been hasgacha pratis, Providence, divine intervention? Why?