The Sisters Weiss (31 page)

“A few days ago? I haven’t seen her in two weeks.”

She was shocked. “Really?” She’d been out there on her own doing God knows what for weeks before she finally brought herself to pick up the phone! And I told her off. I told her no. Her heart felt heavy, filled with fury at Simon and at herself.

“Did she tell you why she left me?”

She searched his face carefully. “Are you telling me that you really, really don’t know?”

He put his hand over his heart. “It’s the truth! She didn’t even leave a note. Never even returned my keys!” He smoothed back his hair calmly. He’d had to change the locks. “But hey, it was her choice. She wasn’t in jail.”

Something in the words and gesture made her see red.

“Yeah, you said that already. But I’ll tell you something, Romeo, you just might be.”

“What?”

“Statutory rape. She wasn’t eighteen when you did her the big favor of joining her in bed.”

With a sense of satisfaction, she saw her words had hit the mark, the blood draining from his face, his hands shaking. “I just … thought…”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“Um, you know, I’d really like to talk to her, Hannah. Maybe apologize. Can you tell me how I can reach her?”

“Oh, so now suddenly you want to reach her? What’s the matter, Simon? Afraid Little Bird is going to sing to the cops, or her parents, who might have a problem with the idea of her seducing you?”

His face turned colors. He gnawed his lip, thinking of his parents and the generous allowance they deposited in his account every month. If they ever … “Do you think she would?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. Apparently, she doesn’t tell me anything. We’ll just both have to wait and see now, won’t we? If she needs to talk to you, she’s got your number. And, believe me, so do I. So this is what is going to happen. Listen carefully.” She paused. “You don’t know me. You don’t see me. You don’t wave, say hello, sit next to me … You’re like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, invisible, got that? And if you ever make contact with Rivka again, I won’t wait for her to get the guts to go to the cops. I will go myself.”

He pushed his glasses back up as they slid down his sweaty nose. He said nothing, walking to the door and out into the hall. He did not turn around.

31

They sat down to breakfast like an old married couple, wordlessly passing each other the jam and butter. It had been a week since Rivka arrived. Rose, who had pretty much let her be, finally felt compelled to broach the subject of the future.

“So, what’s going to be with you?”

Rivka shook her head. “Whenever I decide something, all the reasons not to do it jump up and start yelling.”

“Well, anything is better than nothing. Aren’t you bored stiff?”

“When I was with Hannah, all the housework I did. But you already have a cleaning lady. In your house, I could eat off the floors.” She hesitated, suddenly shy. “But maybe … I could go and watch you work? I could help even.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Rose hedged. That’s all she needed! It was bad enough this waif was in her apartment all day and all night! But then she gave it further thought. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Her assistant had dumped her the week before to head out to Las Vegas with her petty criminal/artist boyfriend. She could actually use a hand.

“Well, we can try it. But if you don’t like it, you have to promise to tell me, okay? I’m working on a book about life in different ethnic neighborhoods in New York City. I think I’m going to head over to Chinatown this morning. I’m warning you, though, it’s hard work. There’s lots of heavy equipment to haul, and lots of time on your feet waiting and waiting for the clouds to move and the light to change…”

Rivka’s eyes lit up. “It would make me very happy to help you.”

“Good. And maybe in the process, you can have some fun taking some photographs yourself.”

Rivka hesitated. “Some people say that cameras are forbidden because they make ‘graven images.’”

Rose sighed. “Really, things are getting out of hand over there in Williamsburg! Soon, nothing will be permissible. No food will be kosher enough—everyone will learn to live on shmurah matzah. No clothes will be modest enough, except maybe a burka. And a man and his wife won’t even be buried side by side anymore because of ‘immodesty.’”

“Oh, Aunt Rose. Men and women are already buried in separate sections of the cemetery … because of immodesty.”

“You’re kidding!” She shook her head, smiling. “So, what do you say?” Rose challenged her.

“I don’t agree. I’d love to learn how to take pictures like you, Aunt Rose.”

“Good. Come get dressed, then.”

She came out wearing her Sabbath best: a long blue skirt with a long-sleeved white shirt and a jacket. The material was pilling, the buttonholes frayed, and the shirt had a dark red stain on the cuff.

“Maybe if we have time afterwards, we’ll stop off and get you something to wear?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Never mind. I do. And if you are going to be my assistant, you deserve a salary.”

She hung her head, dwarfed, almost crushed, by her aunt’s unending kindness and generosity. What a naive, brainwashed little twit she’d been to listen to and believe all those terrible things they’d said about her aunt!

She lugged the equipment, learning how to set it up, how to wait with endless patience until her aunt was satisfied that she had the perfect natural lighting for a particular shot, how to hurry when her aunt was rushing to capture someone or something in the passing parade of human activity. Despite the sheer hard work and the tedium, she found herself loving every moment. She felt a sudden stab of envy for her cousin.

“Hannah’s probably done this with you a million times.”

Rose was quiet. “Actually, Hannah … well … she wasn’t very interested in my work.”

“How could that be? If I was your daughter, I’d make you teach me everything you know.”

Rose smiled. “Would you now, really?”

“I would, Aunt.”

They took a short break for lunch in a kosher restaurant outside Chinatown.

“You look green,” Rose told her.

“It’s the smell of the meat!”

“Are you sure you’re not a vegetarian?”

“Believe me, I’m not.”

“Maybe you have a stomach virus?”

“I don’t have fever or any other symptoms.”

“If you don’t feel like yourself soon, I’ll make you a doctor’s appointment. In the meantime, get some soup.”

“Just not chicken soup!”

After she ate, Rivka felt better, but very tired.

“You look wasted! I think we can call it a day. But before we go, I want you to take some photos yourself.”

Rivka protested. “No, Aunt Rose! I could drop your camera! Besides, I don’t want to waste your expensive film!”

Rose ignored her, putting a camera strap around her neck. “There, it can’t possibly fall. And there is no film, kid. You’re thinking of the Kodak-moment fifties. Today, it’s all digital. Only crazy people like me still use film. And even die-hards like myself are secretly exploring the joys of digital photography.”

Rivka felt herself fill with adrenaline as she held the camera in her hands.

“This will be easy for you to use. It’s a digital automatic. The camera will adjust itself to lighting conditions. See that little screen? Just think of it as a picture frame. All you need to do is fill it with something that interests you. This was the first thing I learned about photography. I’ve never gotten better advice.”

“Something beautiful?”

“Not necessarily. Ugliness has equal strength in a photo, and is sometimes much more fascinating. Remind me to show you a book of Diane Arbus images when we get home. Just look around for a person, a moment, a scene that has meaning for you, something you want to rescue from oblivion in order to look at it again and again.”

It couldn’t possibly be that easy, Rivka thought. But the camera did feel comfortable in her hands as she slid her palms around the compact metal and plastic. She looked through the lens. It was exactly as her aunt had said: an empty picture frame waiting to be filled.

She walked down the street, losing track of time and of her tiredness, clicking away, trying to capture the moment when a baby was lifted in her mother’s arms and smiled through her tears, the moment the greengrocer’s face rose above a box of bright red tomatoes he was carrying, the expressions on the faces of two old men who turned to look at a beautiful teenage girl walking by.

“Having fun?” Rose smiled at her.

“It’s amazing how many things you can see through a camera lens you would never have noticed with just your eyes.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Like carving away at life until you reveal the form and meaning inside it.”

“Like a sculptor, right?”

“Right!” Rose answered, impressed. “Who but Michelangelo knew there was a David trapped inside that ruined chunk of Carrara marble the church fathers were getting ready to throw away?”

Rivka handed Rose back the camera. “Thanks so much!”

“Why don’t you hold on to it for a while, kid?”

“I don’t want to use it up. You might need it.”

She laughed. “It’s impossible to ‘use it up’! It has a memory card that holds hundreds of photos.”

“Hundreds!”

“Yeah, and when that fills up, we’ll just download all the photos to the computer and free up the space again for hundreds more!”

For the first time since they’d met, Rose got to see how her niece Rivka looked when she was happy. She felt her own dark place open for a moment, nourished and warmed.

“I think we’re done for the day. The light is all wrong now. Why don’t we drop all this stuff off at the house, then go shopping for some clothes? Stores are open late tonight. Unless you’re too tired.”

She wasn’t tired. She was exhausted. But the idea of shopping with her aunt’s credit card was too delicious. “Oh, thank you, Aunt! That would be wonderful! But I can’t go to any of the big department stores. My family shops there!”

Later that afternoon, Rose took her to some little upscale boutiques near her studio. They were throbbing with rock music. Mannequins dressed in tiny skirts over leggings and transparent tops looked at them bewitchingly.

“Oh, I don’t think…” Rivka shook her head.

“Okay, there’s a Talbots near my apartment. They are very conservative, and they have a whole petite department.”

That was better, the atmosphere dainty and subdued, and the mannequins charmingly chic. Rivka went through the racks with a practiced hand, concentrating on the merchandise on the reduced racks. But even then, she found the prices shocking.

“Thank you very much, Aunt Rose, but it’s not shayich.”

It had been so long since she’d heard that word, Rose chuckled. It meant “not connected to, not part of, irrelevant, a waste of time.” It was a word that peppered the sentences of ultra-Orthodox Jews in a wide variety of ways: Some things were permanently not shayich, like movie theaters. Some things were situationally not shayich, like Sephardic boys in a Hassidic groom pool. And some things were temporarily not shayich, like the present too-high prices of Talbots’ clothes, which even on sale did not begin to compare to Macy’s or Lord & Taylor’s seventy percent off with coupon sales.

“We could get the same clothes in Borough Park for half the price!”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be discovered if we go there?”

“No, no,” she said. Her family didn’t shop in Borough Park unless a holiday or wedding was looming. Still, it was a risk. But she just couldn’t resist. She couldn’t stand overpaying.

She took her aunt’s arm, and soon Rose found herself hurtling toward Brooklyn in the subway.

She had not been back to such a neighborhood since she’d visited her stroke-felled grandmother in the nursing home. She looked around. It was forty years later, but nothing had changed. The same bewigged and turbaned matrons with their long-sleeved, thick-stockinged little girls looking at her suspiciously. The same men in black satin waistcoats with black hats avoiding looking in her direction at all. You were either conspicuous or unwanted. Your existence was never just accepted, unless they knew you and you were just like them. In that case, either you needed them or they needed you, and so it was worth it to be friendly.

She bit her lip. No, that wasn’t fair. Whether they knew you personally or not, if you looked and acted the part of a member in good standing of the community, you would benefit from endless friendship and caring love from every quarter. You’d never be alone, never without help or companionship. Whatever you needed, be it food, clothing, extra chairs for Seder night, antibiotics when the drugstores were closed, the community would see to it that you got it. She’d found nothing remotely similar outside the Haredi world.

The store was a long, narrow strip stuffed with women’s clothing. Religious women pawed through the piles of clothing bearing carelessly chopped-off designer labels. They were probably designer samples, the sizes ranging from zero to four, with a rare and occasional six or eight. The prices were ridiculously low.

“Go ahead, try something on,” Rose urged her.

Rivka brought basketfuls of clothes into the makeshift dressing room, but soon opened the curtain wearing her old, frayed suit. “Let’s go, Aunt Rose.”

“What! Didn’t you like anything?”

“It’s not shayich.”

“What’s not shayich?” she asked, beginning to hate that word.

“New clothes, size two. I’m gaining weight so fast. I don’t know why. Nothing fits me anymore.”

She saw there were tears in Rivka’s eyes.

“Listen, kid, gaining weight is nothing to cry over! Otherwise, we women would be weeping nonstop until the grave! Just get a larger size. It’s not the end of the world to go from a size two to a size four!”

“But it’s a waste of money! At the rate I’m going, I might outgrow them in a month!”

“So, get some skirts with an elastic waistband and some peasant blouses. It’s very stylish now. I suppose I won’t be able to talk you into wearing slacks or jeans?”

She shook her head, scandalized. “No! This is assur. ‘Women shall not wear men’s clothing.’ It’s forbidden by the Torah.”