Brooklyn Love (Crimson Romance) (31 page)

“They’re taking him!” she cried to her son Yossie. “Like they took my grandfather!”

Yossie hugged his mother. “It’s going to be okay, Ma.”

“I can’t save him!” Suri started to cry.

“Shh, Ma,” Yossie said, trying to lead his mother out of the courtroom.

“No!”

Suri bolted forward to grab Michael, to hold him back.

But a bailiff restrained her. A brown-shirted brute with the face of a bulldog.

“No,” she whispered and collapsed to the floor, crying hysterically. “I can’t save him.” She pounded her hands on the floor, tears dripping down her cheeks. “I can’t fight anymore,” she sobbed. “I have nothing left.”

“Ma,” Yossie bent down to help her. “Ma, come on, let’s go.”

Suri stared at the boy, a wild look in her eyes. “Quick, we must hide! Or they’ll take us, too!”

She began to scrape at the floor with her manicured fingernails.

“I have to bury the
gelt
,” she explained, furtively clawing at the intransigent wood, as her mother and grandmother used to do when they had valuables to bury. “They’ll be coming for us! They won’t stop until they kill us all!”

• • •

“We’re busting out of this apartment.” Hindy nodded toward their living room and dining room, which had seemed spacious when they had first rented it.

Aryeh agreed and sat down at the dining room table with his Talmud. “We’ll have to find more suitable accommodations for the students,” he said.

Hindy heard knocking on the door and opened it for Aryeh’s students. A group of young men all said hello to Hindy and took their seats next to Aryeh.

Hindy was still amazed at how quickly Aryeh’s teaching had grown. Since the close of the Kaplinsky Yeshiva, Aryeh Kaufman, with the encouragement of his wife Hindy, had begun a series of Judaic lectures in his apartment. In just a few months, over forty young men packed into their apartment nightly to hear his views on the Torah.

Before her husband’s lecture began, she overheard the boys talking about the demise of the Kaplinsky dynasty. “Maybe we could start again,” they said. “Maybe we won’t make the same mistakes.”

She knew the boys admired Aryeh and that he’d become the next leader of the community, even though he wasn’t a Kaplinsky.
But even Moses’s sons did not take on his mantle, and the leadership passed to Joshua,
Hindy thought as she opened the door for more of Aryeh’s students. And that’s just the way it was, she decided. To be a truly effective leader, you had to earn your Torah.

Hindy stood in her simple yet spotless kitchen preparing
gedempte fleish —
Aryeh’s favorite meat stew. She quickly chopped some onions and threw them into the pot. She looked through the kitchen door, listening to the sweet words of her Aryeh’s voice. He was teaching the tractate in the Talmud and the other boys were listening carefully, some arguing points in their own singsong voices.
Lovely boys,
she thought.
Who do I know for each of the single fellows?

Had Hindy known the boys would ask to marry girls just like Hindy Goldfarb-Kaufman — supportive, capable, warm, and cute — she would have had the last laugh to hear it. With her new wig, which hid her thin hair, and her weight loss from her active life running Aryeh’s business, Hindy actually looked attractive. She wasn’t a girl prone to deep introspection, but even Hindy realized that God had heard her prayers and answered them. She was married to a wonderful person who now learned full-time. She had a lovely apartment, and she was making a good income from their growing accounting business. And what’s more, she had something she hadn’t even prayed for, but the value of which she had grossly underestimated: love. Hindy truly loved her husband, and he loved her.

It hadn’t happened the way she’d imagined it would, and this gift wasn’t packaged the way she’d expected it to be. Maybe God hadn’t answered her when she wanted Him to, or in the way she had envisioned. But He’d answered. She had opened herself to His blessings, and they abounded.

She heard a light knock at the door and wiped her hands on her apron. Smiling her very pretty smile, she opened the door to yet another boy who had come to learn Torah with her husband, her Aryeh.

• • •

Macy tentatively looked in on his mother. Suri lay in her bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling. She turned and her eyes lit with recognition. This was a good day.

“Where is that dark girl you were seeing, Macy?”

“She left me. She went back to Israel.”

Suri sighed. “That’s good. We already have that ugly girl, that Hindy, as Aryeh’s wife. We can’t have dark Jews in the family. Your father has black hair. That’s why they took him from me.”

Macy’s heart ached. His father was, in fact, at his office, preparing his appeal with Yossie. But his mother couldn’t seem to remember any of that. He felt terrible that she was so sick.

And his heart ached all the more over Ilana. All he had left from her was the returned necklace and a note:

Every time Macy read the letter, another tear slid down his cheek. He missed her constantly but doubted he’d ever see her again. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want him. She’d given Jacob strict instructions not to tell him where she was. He’d have flown to Israel ten times and back if it meant they could be together. But he knew her well: If she said it was over — then it was. What could he have done differently? Anything?

Suri cleared her throat and shifted on her bed. “Anyway, Macy, she wasn’t good for you. Not good enough for our family, you know. Aryeh made a mistake. You can’t do the same.”

Macy gazed steadily at his mother, who was insane, and tried to forgive her. But he realized that even if his mother were healthier, she’d say the same thing.

“I have to go now, Ma.”

So he went home, to his new apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He looked out his open window at the millions of lights that made up the apartments of all his neighbors.
Millions of neighbors — but not one Ilana.
He looked around his apartment: duffel bags of clothes and shopping bags of kitchen gear and dried food scattered all over; his guitar still lounging in his unmade bed like a lover — the bed he was supposed to have shared with Ilana. He gathered up his yarmulke, his tefillin, and his prayer books and went to the courtyard, to a plot of ground fragrant with autumn flowers.

It was a quiet evening, and a gentle hum of cars cascaded with the melody of the mild breezy air around him. He started digging. He didn’t have a shovel, so at first he used a rock, and then his bare hands. Blood caked his fingers, but he didn’t care.
Like mother, like son,
he thought, recognizing the irony, but still he dug. He dug with a passion, like a demon possessed.

The night descended over New York, and Macy knew that all the religious Jews would be in shul now, at the Yom Kippur Neilah service. They’d be dressed in white, without shoes like angels, fasting and praying.

But Macy’s religious observance was tied to Brooklyn Jewish culture, and now his culture had abandoned him. His father was a criminal, and his true love had left because … because she was right. It couldn’t have worked. Not really. The culture had little room for their kind of love. And now he had no room left for the Brooklyn Jewish culture. There was no room in his soul for a Brooklyn Love.

When the hole was deep enough he buried all his religious accoutrements. The earth smelled rich. It smelled full of life and death at the same time. He inhaled the sweet smell of the dust and remembered the verse, “From whence man came, and would return.” He patted and smacked and then kicked the earth with his shoe until he was sure his former life would be buried for eternity. He gazed at the spot, bumpy and uneven, gnarled as if what lay beneath was already turning over in its grave. He placed the rock he had used to dig on top for a headstone. “Rest in peace,” he whispered. And then he turned away.

On Yom Kippur night, the time to ask God for forgiveness for all sins, Macy walked past the synagogue on 95th Street. For a split second he thought of going in to pray. But that second passed fleetingly, and instead he headed toward a bar.

On Yom Kippur night, as all his people prayed and fasted, Macy said, “Enough is enough.” Surrounded by lights and smoke and slow, sad music, he ordered a little ham sandwich and flirted seductively with a beautiful girl he was sure was non-Jewish.

Ha
, he thought.
Mother would love her. She’s fair-skinned — and blond!

She invited him to spend the night at her place, and Macy Kaufman had no regrets. He’d moved to the West Side, shed his yarmulke, and proudly become a “Single.” To his Brooklyn people, he was a Living Dead. But Brooklyn didn’t realize the truth: They’d killed him long, long ago.

When Hindy’s elderly maternal grandmother passed away, all her friends came to pay condolences at her mother’s home. The mirrors were covered over; the mourners sat on low stools, as was the custom.

Rachel came in and scanned the room for her friends. The house was so crowded she could barely walk through the living room to visit with Mrs. Goldfarb.

She did see one seat, though, next to a petite girl with straight blonde hair whom she hadn’t spoken to in what felt like years.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” Rachel whispered to Leah as they sat on folding chairs.

“Whose fault is that?”

“I’ve tried to call you a million times. You’ve never returned my calls.”

“Yeah, well you know how it’s been with my uncle in jail, my aunt’s nervous breakdown and our family’s reputation totally destroyed … ”

Rachel squeezed her friend’s hand. “I’m sorry about what happened with Eli.”

Leah smiled, but her eyes seemed blank, her voice hollow. “Once the plans for support fell through — with my family’s illustrious position — ”

Rachel squeezed tight. “I’m sure he loved you, Leah.”

“Love.” Leah exhaled slowly. “Right. Like I love fish — I
eat
fish, I don’t love fish.”

Rachel shook her head. “Don’t say that. I’m sure he felt for you — ”

Leah glared at Rachel. “That’s why he broke off the engagement.”

Rachel stared at her friend. “Your hair. It’s different.”

“Oh this?” Leah smoothed her hair, now straight as a board — and blond. Rachel remembered how Suri had tried to get Leah to lighten her hair the previous year; she had finally succeeded.

Rachel swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Well, I’ve been busy,” Leah said hesitantly.

“With what?”

“I’m kind of seeing someone.”

“I hope your mother approves of him!”

Leah nodded. “Oh, yes. She loves him — even more than me! He’s everything she’s ever wanted. For me. The best deal we could possibly get.”

A chill ran up Rachel’s spine. Those words sounded eerily familiar.

“Do you like him, though?” she asked Leah.

Leah shrugged. “What’s not to like? We’re both social rejects now, so we have a lot in common.”

Without speaking, they looked into each other’s eyes, and everything was understood, everything forgiven.

“Leah, are you sure about this? You don’t have to go through with it.”

And then, for a moment, Rachel saw fury rekindle in Leah’s eyes. “What chances do I have left?”

Rachel grabbed Leah’s hand. “Did you tell your mother about his temper?”

Leah let slowly exhaled. “Yes.”

Rachel shook her head. “Wait this one out. You’ll find a good one — a loving one — ”

Leah withdrew her hand from Rachel’s hold and stared at her friend. “My mother was never as liberal as your parents.”

Rachel didn’t flinch at Leah’s defiant gaze.

“Nobody needs me to be loved,” Leah asserted. “They need me to be taken care of.”

Rachel averted her eyes. She felt her best friend’s pain, and she knew then that Leah didn’t love the boy she was dating, and she probably never would. That her dream of going to medical school was gone, and that she didn’t have the freedom to express the depths of her feelings; she’d had to stifle them, shut them up and throw away the key where she could never, ever feel again.

Because feelings were dangerous. Feelings were a luxury, a luxury she simply couldn’t afford.

Rachel knew just how Leah felt; she’d been there too.

Daniel Gold walked over and cleared his throat.

“Leah, I’m ready to leave now.” He glanced at Rachel with a smirk and mumbled, “Hello.”

Leah dutifully got up and followed Daniel. They paid their respects to the Goldfarbs. Then Leah glanced back, nodding dully as Rachel watched her leave.

Rachel sighed deeply, grieving for her oldest friend. For Leah’s trademark fiery eyes were leaving behind black, smoking embers.

“Ready?” Jacob asked Rachel.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

They walked next to each other, and he gallantly stepped up to the automatic door, creating a grand entrance for Rachel. His Rachel.

They stood together — though not holding hands — and took in the scene: rows and rows of produce, harried checkout girls, sniping customers, wailing babies in shopping carts.

It was rush hour at the supermarket. The air was stale and stifling.

“Crowded enough, Rachel?”

“You bet,” she said. “Just like Ma ordered. Think we’ll discover anything about each other’s character we don’t already know?”