Like No Other (13 page)

Devorah grimaces. “My parents would probably call the police. Or the Shomrim.”

“The Shom-what?”

“Shomrim,” she repeats. “Like Hasidic police. Only they don’t have guns.”

“Phew,” I joke, “’cause I’d be a moving target.”

Now
that
is definitely the wrong thing to say. Her face goes blank, and her smile disappears. She looks out at the skyscrapers, shimmering in the distance like stalagmites against the watercolor-pink sky.

“I don’t know why it has to be like that,” she says softly.

“It’s bad blood,” I say. “
Old
bad blood.”

Her jaw tenses; she’s mad, too. “But whatever happened . . . doesn’t have anything to
do
with us.”

“I know,” I say, hearing my dad’s angry voice in my head:
Whoever told you life was supposed to be fair?

“We should just be able to be with whoever we want.” She kicks a bottle cap on the walkway that ricochets off the railing and onto the asphalt.

We stop and face the skyline, weaving our fingers into the rusty chain link fence. Conversation stalls, and when I looked over at Devorah her face is still dark and tense.

“So tell me that story,” I say, trying once again to lighten the mood.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She shrugs, but she smiles a little, sun breaking through her cloudy eyes. “There’s just a story my mother likes to tell about my grandmother being lifted up by the wind on the beach. You made me think of it when you said we’d go where the wind took us. But I don’t even know how much of it really happened. My mother tends to exaggerate.”

“It makes you happy, though, I can tell.”

Her smile spreads, and her eyes drift up again toward the sky. “Yeah, it does. It just—I like the image of it. Of her flying. Sometimes I wish she was still alive so I could ask her.”

“If it’s true?”

“No, how it felt,” Devorah murmurs. “To be so free.”

I squeeze her hand. “Don’t you feel that now?”

“A little,” she says. “But not enough. We’re not far enough.”

“How far would we have to be?”

She closes her eyes. “Far enough so no one could find us.” I start to lean in, but then her eyes flutter open and she takes a step back.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly.

She smiles and playfully pushes me away. “You know, I never broke a single rule in my life before I met you.”

“Me neither,” I say. Mostly the truth.

“So does that make us bad influences on each other?”

“No.” I grab onto the fence with one hand and swing my free arm like Gene Kelly in
Singin’ in the Rain
. “This feeling can’t be bad. It’s like no other feeling I’ve ever had. It does—”

I’m trying to be poetic, but suddenly Devorah lets out a guffaw and points up at a green traffic sign above our heads, hanging from the red-painted metal archway that marks the Pulaski’s end in Greenpoint.
WELCOME
TO
BROO
KLYN
! the sign reads, the big white letters flashing in the last of the day’s sunlight.
LIKE
NO
OTHER
P
LACE
IN
THE
WORLD
!

“Great—I’m trying to pour my heart out, and instead I’m quoting the New York City Department of Transportation,” I say with a sigh.

“No.” She laughs, putting her arms around my neck. “It was beautiful. And I’m sorry I interrupted you. Please finish what you were saying.”

“I was just gonna say that it
does
feel like flying. To me at least.”

Devorah stands on tiptoe and gives me a soft, sweet kiss.

“Let’s run away,” she whispers, and this time I close
my
eyes, letting Brooklyn fade to black, imagining nothing but white sand and blue-green ocean stretching out in front of us, on and on, sprinting toward an endless horizon.

• • •

When we leave each other at the G train in the ass end of Queens, we make plans to meet the next afternoon at the same time and place. But Tuesday morning I get another of Pandora’s Facebook messages, and this time it makes my heart skip a beat for the wrong reason.

Dear Jax,

Good news: You were right, I didn’t get caught in my lie. Maybe the shoes are magic? Maybe you are? Bad news: Business is picking up and Rose is still at the hospital every day and I don’t think I can get out of working tomorrow without arousing suspicion. But I thought of a way we can still “meet”: If you happen to be standing outside of Wonder Wings at 4:30 and I happen to pass by then we could see each other at least. I hope?

I won’t be wearing my magic shoes but hopefully you’ll recognize me. I’m your bad influence. :)

Devorah

• • •

This sucks on a number of epic levels, but mostly because I have a whole trip planned this time, much better than hoofing it over a seventh-rate bridge in the relative middle of nowhere: I was going to take her up to the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History, where we could have sat together in the anonymous dark and let the universe swallow us. I had it all planned out so we could get home by six, too, since when I came in at 6:31 on Monday, my mother raised her eyebrow (only one—she’s skilled like that) and said she thought my tutoring sessions were only supposed to be an hour, and I had to invent some serious subway trouble that not only accounted for my lateness but also for the fact that I didn’t call to
say
I was running late.

But all that has to be scrapped, so instead I go to work like normal, and since I’m “recovering” from a “stomach bug,” Cora makes me wear one of those face masks doctors wear when they’re dealing with pandemic diseases, and all the kitchen guys laugh at me and call me “J1N1,” like the code for swine flu. And the only thing that keeps me going is knowing I’ll see Devorah at four thirty and that I can
finally
give her the CD—which I have so far ironically been too excited to remember to bring with me, and which is as close to a love letter as I can come up with on short notice.

At 4:15 I can tell we’re about to get swamped, since about ten middle-school kids start gathering on the sidewalk out front, all pooling their dollars, counting and recounting, trying to figure out if they can afford the daily special: five pounds of wings for $29.99. So I tell Cora I need some air, which she gladly gives me just so I won’t pretend-puke on any of the customers. I grab a Coke from the bodega next door and walk around the block a few times with the dinky dollar-store jewel case getting sweaty in my hand until I spot Devorah walking down Union Street. I intercept her at the corner and hold out my gift.

“I made something for you,” I say, but instead of the flirty smile I was expecting, she looks horrified.

“It’s not safe to talk here,” she whispers, darting around me. “I just wanted to see your face.”

I jog after her. “Do you want to go somewhere?”

She shakes her head and pretends to study a sign in the bodega window advertising a sale on condensed milk. “No, I just—I’m sorry, Jax, I thought we could just
see
each other. As in look, not talk.”

“Yes, you did write that,” I say with what I hope is an irresistibly charming grin. “I just didn’t know you were being literal.”

Devorah glances around nervously and gestures for me to keep walking. We fall into awkward step, keeping a few feet between us. She still hasn’t acknowledged the CD.

“So how are you?” I ask, settling for small talk—whatever will get me more time with her.

“Fine.” It’s like talking to a ventriloquist; I can barely see her lips move.

“Do you miss me?” I’m sort of joking, but not really. I just need something to get me through until we can see each other again, for real. But she just nods once, and then looks away like she doesn’t know me.

“Okaaaaaay,” I say with a sigh, giving in. “I get it. But will you at least tell me when I can see you again? As in spend time with you, not just gaze at your face from a predetermined distance?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon. Please stop walking next to me.”

“At least take the CD.” I press it into her hands, and she stops in her tracks, looking at me helplessly; a deer in headlights.

“Where would I say I got it?” She crosses her arms, rejecting the gift, and I tuck the case back into my pocket, trying not to let her see how much it stings. Devorah lowers her voice to a whisper, her eyes softening. “Of course I want it,” she says. “And of
course
I miss you, but if we’re keeping things a secret then we can’t leave any kind of trail.” She touches my arm, but before I can so much as blink, she’s gone. And I’m left to serve five pounds of wings to ten loud preteens who find my face mask hilarious, to say the least.

If Monday was a 10, Tuesday rates a 1. Maybe. Maybe less.

• • •

On Wednesday I’m listening to my own perfect mix CD and refreshing my Facebook page every thirty seconds, but there’s still no new message. And I don’t know what to do. I am officially in full-on Devorah withdrawal.

“Dude,” Ryan says from his bed, where he’s paging through a comic while I monopolize his MacBook Air, “I thought you said things were going
great
.” (I called in sick again today; I just couldn’t go through the motions of work with this pit in my stomach.)

“They were. They
are
,” I say. “I’m just waiting to hear from her.”

“Quit giving her all the power, man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ryan just makes the sound of a whip cracking and laughs, and I give him the finger.

“I’m serious, though,” he says. “If there’s one thing my parents learned from their couples therapy it’s that communication is key to any relationship. And it sounds like your communication with Devorah is, to borrow from the Yiddish,
fercockt
.”

I’m about to shoot something back about how what’s really
fercockt
is that his parents talk to him about their marriage counseling, but then I realize that Ryan actually has a point. It’s
not
fair that I never get to decide when we see each other, or when or where. It’s
not
fair for her to expect me to act like I don’t know her if we pass on the street. If we’re actually together—and I think we are—then we need to spend time together and figure out what we’re going to do and how this is going to work. We need another day like Monday, on the bridge. Hell, we need a whole month of days like that. I know I could convince her of this if I could only
find
her and talk to her.

“How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?” I groan.

“She didn’t give you her number?” Ryan asks absentmindedly.

“She doesn’t have her own phone.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Ryan,” I say, turning away from the computer for the first time since we got to his room, “she’s Hasidic. It’s against her religion to use electronics.”

“Nope, you’re thinking of Amish people,” Ryan says, not looking up from his vintage copy of
Amazing Spider-Man
. “Jews can use electricity. Take it from a member of the tribe.”

“You’re a
quarter
Jewish,” I say.

“Which is a quarter more than you.”

“Fine—so tell me, Rabbi Hendrick, what am I supposed to do, call her house and ask her dad if I can talk to her?”

“Why not?” he says. “Just say your name is Shlomo or something.”

“I don’t know why I’m even talking about this with you,” I say, and sigh. “I should know better.”

“Hey,” Ryan says, putting down the comic. “I care a lot about this.”

“Shut up.”

“I
do
. I want you to get your woman, Jax. You deserve it.”

“Thanks.” I drop my head down on Ryan’s graffiti-covered desk and bang it lightly three times. “It’s just making me so crazy that I can’t get in touch with her! She can send me messages, but I’m not supposed to e-mail her back. She knows where I work, but I don’t have any way of finding her apart from this fake Facebook page she set up and doesn’t even check.”

“Wait,” Ryan says, jumping off the bed and elbowing me away from the laptop. “I might be able to get the IP address she sent the messages from.”

“Since when can you do that?”

“Since I didn’t have shit to do all summer but try to hack into Lindsay Lohan’s Twitter account.” He brings up Devorah’s latest message, opens a command window, and starts typing letters that make no sense to me. “See?” he says proudly after a few minutes. I stare at the chain of meaningless numbers.

“That’s . . . not an address.”

“Give me a second; now I have to trace it,” he says, rolling his eyes, and opens a new browser window. After a few clicks he points to the screen with a smug smile. “Aaron Blum, 482 Crown Street, you’re welcome.”

I know he’s expecting to be thanked, so I clap him on the back and smile, but inside I’m more terrified than anything else. Now I have to follow through. I can’t just sit licking my wounds and listening to moody emo songs. I have to go stand outside her window declaring my love like some ghetto Shakespeare character and hope no one calls the cops, or the Sham-Wows or whatever that Hasidic mafia is called.

“Maybe I should write her a letter first,” I hedge, but Ryan shakes his head firmly.

“We’re going,” he says. “I’m not letting you back out.”

I know he’s right. It’s a dangerous and possibly stupid plan, but it feels like all I have left. If I see Hasids on my side of Eastern Parkway, in Times Square, and even on Jones Beach in the summertime, then it’s got to be at least sort of normal for non-Jews to wander over to their side occasionally, right? Ryan and I could pass for rubes who just made a wrong turn—couldn’t we?

I compulsively refresh my Facebook page one more time and feel the pang of rejection and longing bloom fresh in my chest when my inbox comes up empty. I don’t want to disrespect Devorah by showing up at her house unannounced, but she’s making it impossible for us to be together. We have to get face-to-face time. And if she’s not willing to make that happen, then I will.

D
evorah

S
EPTEMBER
11, 5:15
PM

“A
hhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhhhh!
Ahhhhhhggggghhhh!
”

I look down at the miniature, contorted face of my screaming niece, which is turning a deep magenta pink, at least ten shades darker than the pale blush cashmere blanket she’s wrapped in, the one made from the possibly cursed yarn that her mother believes may have caused her premature birth. Every ten seconds the poor thing chokes on her own tears, gags, and then immediately resets, as if programmed on an endless loop of ear-splitting sounds, like a car alarm.

“Shhhh, bunny, shhhhh,” I purr, poking the soft nipple of a pacifier between her angry gums, but Liya’s tiny body only stiffens in protest, her cries getting louder and more guttural. I am not the one she wants, clearly. The one she wants (Rose) is out having her
mikveh
, the ritual purification bath that will end her sentence as a
yoledet.
(Another sign—as if I needed one—that boys are the chosen ones: after having a girl, a mother has to wait fourteen days to be “pure,” but after a boy it’s only seven. So unfair.)

Up to the moment she was left alone with me, Liya alternated between two states: sleeping or blinking disinterestedly, her eyes impassive and unfocused. All afternoon, ever since she arrived home bundled in her cream-colored car seat on Jacob’s arm, we siblings have taken turns holding her, studying her face for signs that she has acknowledged and anointed us as the favorite aunt or uncle. My parents came home briefly but then had to return to the store, where Rosh Hashanah business is clearing out shelves now on a daily basis. Hanna went back to the store, too, and while I was awarded the privilege of babysitting, Miri, Amos, and Zeidy wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace . . . until, that is, the baby started to cry. Now they’ve all disappeared, the kids to the street and Zeidy to his bedroom, leaving me to sing loud, off-key nursery rhymes alone, roaming the parlor floor and bouncing like my life depended on it.

“Would you like the swing?” I ask Liya, placing her gingerly in the podlike contraption that vibrates and sways at the touch of a button, which Jacob set up between the couches in the living room (they’re staying with us for a week, until the nursery is assembled in their apartment, so I get to see Jacob first thing every morning—lucky me).

But no. She would not like the swing.

“Do you need to burp?” I pick her up and lay her over my shoulder like Rose showed me, her body like a wriggling sack of sugar, her soft, sweet-smelling head nestled into my neck. I pat her back once, twice, then three times without so much as the slightest variation in the volume and spacing of her wails; but then, on the fourth pat, she heaves, and I feel warm liquid spill down my back. The good news is that this development shocks her enough to give my ringing ears five seconds of rest before the crying starts back up again. The bad news is that there’s vomit in my hair.

I wipe Liya’s face and set her down in her bassinet while I wring out my curls in the sink (I choose the dairy sink, which seems if not very palatable then at least technically correct), letting the running water drown out her screams. Then I take a deep breath and use the hall phone to call Shoshana.

“Is that the baby?!” she cries when her mother puts her on the line. Then: “She sounds upset.”

“Yes, either she’s hungry or tired or she hates me,” I say with a sigh. “Maybe all three. Want to come over?”

“I’m supposed to set the table.”

“That takes five minutes,” I plead. “I’m literally covered in throw-up, and I can’t make Liya stop crying. Please, Shosh? I need you!”

“Isn’t your zeidy around somewhere? Newborn babies love old men,” Shoshana says, audibly examining her nails. “Maybe it’s because they look so much alike.”

“Thanks anyway,” I say miserably, and hang up. I know I should feel grateful that Rose and Jacob trusted me with their tiny preemie, but it’s hard when my once-colorful sister is a barely ambulatory zombie and her formerly tolerably if obnoxiously arrogant husband is suddenly acting like some villain of Victorian literature, appearing around corners in dark robes, drumming his bony fingers like he’s plotting to destroy me.

Once she has my attention again, Liya cries with renewed energy, her little pink fists clenched in despair. I pick her up and kiss her tear-streaked face, knowing that there is only one person I could call who would be here in a heartbeat to help me with whatever I needed. And I don’t even know his number.

I feel awful about the last time I saw Jaxon, when he tried to give me the CD outside the restaurant. I could tell he was hurt that I didn’t want him to talk to me out in the open. And after what we shared on Monday I can’t blame him; it’s hard to go back to pretending to be strangers after having such an amazing afternoon. I can’t stop thinking about it, either—I play it over and over in my head instead of sleeping—and of course I want to see him every day. But he still doesn’t seem to understand what’s at stake for me. If even one person from the neighborhood sees us talking, my life as I know it will be over, and there’ll be no chance for us to sneak out ever again. I even hid the red Converse at the back of Isaac’s closet after he left for yeshiva on Tuesday so that just in case they were found they couldn’t be traced to me.

But I know I’m being the worst kind of hypocrite. I told Jaxon we can’t leave any trail, and yet I’m the one who made a Facebook page for the express purpose of the forbidden act of writing to him, a page I had to link to my father’s business e-mail account so that I could activate it and prove I wasn’t a robot. I deleted the “Welcome to Facebook!” e-mails that popped up right away, but it was the middle of the night and I was desperate and sloppy, so now I have to sneak up to the study three or four times a day just to refresh the inbox and cover my tracks if necessary. I should just delete the account, but then I would have no way of contacting him, and closing that window would mean resigning myself to—

“
Ahhhhhhgggggghhhhhhhhhh!
” Liya screams, interrupting my train of thought to conveniently remind me exactly what I have to look forward to if I cut off contact with Jax. Not immediately, of course, but two years down the line, this could be
my
baby that I don’t know how to take care of, and I would be just as alone, only in a different and unfamiliar house—an apartment, probably, cramped and dark—decorated with useless, expensive wedding gifts, like the handcrafted hourglass someone gave Rose and Jacob from the MoMA store.

But maybe not.
That photo of Ruchy and her family at the hospital swims up through my consciousness. Ruchy, who made the dangerous choice. Ruchy, who seems not to have gotten what she “deserved,” according to Jacob, but what she wanted for herself. What she consciously
chose
. Not that I would ever let myself get pregnant, not even with Jaxon’s baby. But maybe we could re-create the rest of that photo. Maybe . . . maybe . . .

I bounce Liya faster, whisper-singing the lullaby my grandmother used to sing to us when we were small:
“How the winds are laughing, they laugh with all their might . . . laugh and laugh the whole day through, and half the summer’s night.”

When Jaxon and I kissed on that bridge I felt like the world was limitless, spinning out to infinity in all directions, making anything seem possible. Now three days later I feel like the world could fit inside that ugly MoMA hourglass that Rose keeps on her bedside table, and I’m drowning in the sands.

• • •

My nerves are so shot from Liya’s incessant strangled cries that I’m actually relieved when Jacob lets himself in at five thirty. It’s early for him to be getting home—normally he studies until just before dinner—but I don’t question it, especially not when he takes the baby from my anxious embrace and holds her close, bouncing and humming for all of sixty seconds before she quiets and falls gratefully asleep in his arms (but not before sending one last defiant fart in my direction). I’ve never seen Jacob successfully comfort another human being before. Maybe fatherhood is changing him. One can always hope.

“Thank you,” I whisper, moving toward the stairs to take a much-needed shower.

“Devorah, wait,” he says, in a voice that makes me freeze in fear. Jacob never talks to me when there isn’t someone else nearby to ensure that
yichud
isn’t being violated. I turn to see Jacob lay Liya down in the swing.

“Should I get Zeidy or Amos?” I ask innocently.

“Frankly,” he says, giving me a hard stare, “I don’t think you’d want them to hear what I have to say.”

My blood runs cold. “Okay,” I say evenly, staying where I am, clutching the banister so hard the white bones of my knuckles press up against the skin. “What is it?”

“I know.” Jacob sits on the couch, folding his hands in his lap and giving me a look that defies me to ask him what he means.

“You know what?” I have no choice but to play along.

“I know you’ve been seeing that boy,” he says. “I saw you with him.”

“You couldn’t have,” I say with a laugh. “Your eyes must be playing tricks on you. It might be time for some new glasses.”

“Don’t,” he says sharply, standing up and taking a step toward me. “I was on my way to the store on Tuesday to talk to your father when I saw you leave at a few minutes past four. I also saw you look around to make sure no one was following you. So—”

“You followed me,” I finish hollowly. My chest is starting to feel tight.

“Smart girl,” Jacob says. “Yes, I followed you down Union Street and saw you meet him at the corner of Nostrand. I saw you lean in to him.”

I want to protest and to make up another lie, but my brain feels stunned and sluggish. All I can do is shake my head slowly.

“You saw him in the hospital last weekend, didn’t you?” Jacob continues quietly. “I knew it was fishy that you took the stairs. And I’m sure I heard you talking to someone.”

“No,” I say, but my weak voice gives away the lie.

“You left your family, your sick premature niece, to run around with a
schwarze,
” Jacob whispers, the words tinged with hateful venom. Suddenly I feel like I can’t breathe.

“Do you have any idea what this means?” Jacob asks. “Not just for you but for all of us? The shame we would all suffer if this got out? What it could cost the business? Your father’s standing in the community?”

“Please, Jacob, I’ve done
nothing
,” I say with what I hope is believable conviction. “All I did was talk to him.”

“Good,” he says. “I hope for your sake that’s true. Because if you’re lying, you do realize that no self-respecting Chabadnik is going to want you for a wife, not even with that pretty face. They’ll have to find someone out of state for you, someone with a limp or a lazy eye or some other defect lowly enough to qualify him for damaged goods.”

Jacob wipes his hands on his trousers like he’s just touched something slimy and gives me another of his penetrating stares.
I know
. The words are still echoing in my head. How could I have ever thought I could get away with this? How could I have been so careless and stupid? If I had only waited to meet Jaxon somewhere it would be safe, instead of risking everything in broad daylight . . . and for what? For a selfish glimpse of the boy I’m falling for so hard just the sight of him makes me light-headed?

“I hope it goes without saying that you are never to see him again,” Jacob says, a self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. He is relishing this moment, I can tell. “Unless of course you’d like me to share what I know with your father.”

He walks off into the kitchen, and I finally let my hand slip from the banister, where it falls, shaking, at my side. Now that Jacob knows my secret, I have no options left. I know what I have to do, and it breaks my heart. Tears spill down my cheeks as I climb the stairs two at a time up to the study, where I erase every trace of our correspondence, wiping the computer’s memory clean and wishing that someone could do the same to my heart.