Like No Other (12 page)

D
evorah

S
EPTEMBER
7, 4:30
PM

“D
evorah?” Jacob calls again. “Are you in there?”

I’m pretty sure he’ll hear me if I move, but I can’t stand still. I feel like I’m on the Cyclone at Coney Island, back before it reopened, when it was so jerky and screechy you had to hold on for dear life or you thought you
really
might fly out.

That kiss. I can’t believe it just happened. My lips are still tingling—is that normal? And there’s a weird, fluttery feeling in my chest, which gets worse (or better, I should say, since it feels like floating) when I think about how I could feel his breath on my neck. As I walk on rubbery legs to the fourth-floor landing, it occurs to me that maybe I’m not on the roller coaster after all; maybe I’ve already fallen off. Maybe I’m suspended in the popcorn-scented air over the boardwalk, about to come crashing back to earth.

“Hi,” I say as calmly as possible as I step back out into the hallway outside the NICU, coming face-to-face with a frustrated-looking Jacob. It’s all I can do to keep from trembling uncontrollably; I’m
sure
he can tell. My face must be bright red, my pupils dilated, lips swollen from the shock of being used for the first time for what it seems like they were designed to do; after all, why eat or speak or whistle when you could do
that
? I put my hand up to my face as if I’m scratching an itch, covering my mouth, which feels like it might as well be a three-story neon sign flashing the news of my sin across Times Square.

“What were you doing in there?” Jacob demands. “I came out to look for you and heard voices.”

“I . . .” For a second my mind draws a blank, but then a lie comes into focus; I’m getting very good at coming up with them now. “I was afraid to take the elevator,” I mumble. “And there were some orderlies talking on the landing downstairs.” I hope I’m reading my lines right and sounding casual. I feel like my own understudy.
Tonight
, I think maniacally,
the part of Normal Devorah will be played by Off the Derech Devorah.

“Hmmm.” He squints at me for a second like he’s trying to see through me, but then seems to let it go. “Well, the others are already waiting down the hall. You missed your chance to hold the baby.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. Usually when I apologize to Jacob I’m secretly calling him names in my head, but this time I’m sincere. There’s so much that I want to escape, but being part of my niece’s life isn’t part of it. I’m ashamed that my selfishness has caused me to miss a moment I’ll never get back—even if it also created a moment I’ll never forget.

As I walk back to the waiting area, following a good ten feet behind Jacob, I realize for the first time that what I’m doing with Jaxon can’t be undone. If I keep seeing him, I’ll have to keep lying, or worse, reveal to my parents that I’ve ruined everything they’ve hoped for me. Devorah, the
frum
princess, who would make any
shadchan
’s job easy—gone. Devorah, the doting daughter, eager to please and quick to obey—gone. I will just become another cautionary tale whispered to teenagers around the Shabbos table:
You heard what happened to Devorah Blum. Don’t end up like her. She kissed a black boy, and then
—

“There she is!” my mother says, standing up as I round the corner.

“You missed it,” Miri squeals. “The baby burped and threw up all over Rose!”

“It was sick,” Hanna says, just as Amos says, “It was great!”

“What did you eat?” Mom asks, studying my face. “You look better.”

“Oh, um . . . an apple,” I mumble, not realizing the parallel before it’s too late.
Like Eve
,
and look how well that turned out.

“There’s a blush in your cheek,” Zeidy says, reaching forward to poke me in the arm. “You look just like your grandmother when we would go dancing.”

“She climbed the stairs,” Jacob says dismissively.

“
Why?
” Amos asks. “Just because you didn’t want to get stuck on the elevator with a—”

“Amos,” my mother warns, and I take the opportunity to change the subject.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Rose, who is cradling Miri, stroking her hair as gently as if she were Liya. “I wanted to see her. My stomach”—(
my heart
)—“had bad timing.” She smiles serenely.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You were the very first person she met; I don’t think she’ll forget you. And besides, the doctors say she can come home next week!”

“As soon as she gets to five pounds, one ounce,” my mother says, clapping her hands.

“Which is only three ounces away!” Rose beams.

The tears come unexpectedly, as if they’ve been spring-loaded, waiting for this bit of good news to bring relief to what’s come to feel like a permanent ache deep in my bones.

“
Zeeskyte
,” Zeidy laughs, “what’s wrong? This is a cause for celebration.”

“Hormones,” my mother whispers, as if I’m not right there.

“It’s not
hormones
,” I say, sniffing, wiping my eyes with my shirtsleeve. “I’m just
happy
.”

“We can all see that,” Jacob says quietly, almost to himself, and as the rest of my family moves in to embrace me, all I can do is look over their shoulders at him, a dark shadow puppet in his black suit against the bland beige hospital walls, and wonder if I was wrong. Maybe he can see through my lies after all.

• • •

It’s two
AM
, and I can’t sleep. I used to have bouts of insomnia in middle school, but that was when Rose still shared my room. In the clutches of that acute but somehow unidentifiable anxiety, as I would listen to the faint thrum of night traffic drifting in from Eastern Parkway through the cracks in the windows, the sight of her chest rising and falling beneath the blankets just a few feet away never failed to calm me. But now I’m on my own. And I know exactly what’s making me so anxious.

The rational part of my brain keeps telling me what Shoshana told me over lunch last week: I do not have a choice. This is not one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to leaf through in the library on rainy weekend afternoons; there is only one path to take, and that is to forget about Jaxon and get back to the only life that I know, which has been plotted out for me long before I was even born. In this life, I will go back to school and to work at the store, make good grades and braid challah every Friday, celebrate the high holidays and usher in a new year with apples and honey, a new year that will see me turn seventeen and enter my senior year of high school. Before I know it I’ll graduate and it will be two Junes from now, and as the streets fill with the sounds of children playing on the hot cement my parents will meet with a matchmaker and will pick a boy to become my husband. And then I’ll be married and will choose a wig—long and sleek and black like Rose’s—and move into an apartment that’s probably less than five blocks from where I’m lying right now, stock-still, with my covers up to my neck and my eyes wide open with worry. I try to imagine what it will feel like to share my bed with a strange man. Will I be able to choose when I want to touch him, or will I be at the mercy of his urges? Will I like the way he smells? Will his smile light up his face like a slow sunrise, or will he be like Jacob, gruff and moody? In the life I have set out for me, my husband seems like the only unknown variable.

And then there is the irrational part of my brain, the part that tells me to go find Jaxon and lie with my head in his lap in the park, listening to his jokes and watching his eyes flash with warmth and laughing until I can’t breathe. This story is much more unfinished; in fact, I have no idea where it will lead. I know only that in this alternate reality, I will have Jaxon. He is the only thing I know for sure. The only nonvariable.

I told him I would find him, and I desperately want to make good on that promise. But all my life I’ve been told that there is nothing for me outside the Chabad community, no opportunity for any happiness in the greater world. I only wish I knew if this were true.

And then it hits me, as I stare up at my ceiling: One floor above me, there is a way to find out.

I leave my slippers on and the hall lights off, creeping like a burglar up to my father’s study, taking care to skip the creaky step at the top of the stairs. As usual, my parents’ bedroom door is shut tight, which means I’ll have at least a second of warning if one of them gets up to use the bathroom—long enough, at least, to shut the laptop.

As I pry it open with delicate fingers, a chime rings out, causing my heart to lurch. I spring to my feet in case I need to abandon my mission, but after a few seconds with no discernible movement from the next room, I gingerly sit back down and squint into the bright blue screen littered with tiny icons. Once again, I open the web browser and type a name into the search bar. But this time I enter a full name: Ruchy Silverman.

The very first link that pops up is a Facebook profile. I know about Facebook, mostly thanks to the fact that when I was in ninth grade, my school made us all sign a form pledging not to use it, and anyone who got caught with a profile got fined $100. I don’t know if Ruchy had a profile back then, but apparently she doesn’t care now. And why should she? I click on the bright blue text and hold my breath.

Instantly, a photo appears of Ruchy, as beautiful as ever, with a cute, layered short haircut, grinning and holding a chubby infant in her arms. Underneath the photo there are boxes that read “About,” “Photos,” and “More.” I start with “About,” hoping, I guess, that there will be some biography or something that will tell me everything I want to know about her life now. But instead, it just says that she lives in New York, New York, and is in a relationship with someone named Matteo Barone.

I click on “Photos” next, hunching forward guiltily as I scroll through an album of Ruchy’s life. They don’t seem to be in chronological order, because the first batch are from the past few years. In these she is posing arm in arm with friends, all of whom wear the telltale crew necks and wrist-length sleeves of Hasidim (even though, with her glowing skin and Barbie-doll hair, Ruchy looks like her head was pasted on the photos from a swimsuit catalog). But then there seems to be a jump. Suddenly Ruchy is embracing a tall, olive-skinned man with a shaved head and stubble across his chin. Here they are on a beach, her with a big straw hat and a toothy smile; him with a sunburn and a cigarette hanging from his lips. Here they are kissing in close-up, out of focus. Here they are at a dinner table, him with his arms around her waist, cupping her belly. There are a series of pregnant shots that Ruchy must have taken by setting up an automatic timer on her camera, showing her standing sideways with a window and a radiator in the background, her outfit changing in each shot as her middle grows rounder and rounder. And then, she is in a hospital bed, swollen and sweaty, holding a tiny pink burrito-baby that looks just like Liya. There are a lot of shots of the newborn—“Sal,” according to her captions—lying limply in a bassinet. And then I come across the most shocking picture, one that nearly makes me gasp out loud.

It’s Ruchy, her baby, her boyfriend . . . and her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Silverman, who still live on Carroll Street in a big maroon brownstone with Ruchy’s younger brothers, who still go to temple, who still come by the store from time to time to buy paper plates in bulk. From the way people whispered about her, I just assumed that Ruchy was excommunicated from her family. But here are her beaming parents, holding their grandson with tears in their eyes and embracing the man who led her astray. I shut the browser window and push myself back from the desk, not knowing what to think.

Ruchy doesn’t look ruined at all. Certainly being an unwed teenage mom must be an incredible hardship not without its low moments, but the thing that strikes me the most about her photos is that she doesn’t look like she’s suffering, at least not on any grand scale. Instead, she looks joyful and grateful. At peace. It’s hard to reconcile what I’m seeing with what I have been taught to believe. There is supposedly no happiness to be had, no chance to succeed outside our small and insular world, and yet here is a glimpse through the looking glass that tells me different. My own slideshow starts playing in my mind: Me in a cap and gown, not from high school but from college. Maybe even nursing school, so that I could become a nurse-midwife, so that I can take care of scared Hasidic women like my sister and Ruchy. Then, me and Jaxon, holding hands in public, posing with my family. Jaxon at Shabbos dinner, lighting a candle. Our sisters playing together. Could my parents ever accept a different path for me?

Almost without thinking, my fingers drift back to the keyboard. If I can find Ruchy so easily on this Facebook site, then maybe . . . maybe . . .

Holding my breath, I type “Jaxon” into the search bar and hit enter. A sea of faces appears on the screen, but none are his. I scroll through four pages and am about to give up and tiptoe back downstairs when I see a search toolbox at the top of the screen, with the word “Location.” I type in “Brooklyn, New York.” And then, from the thousands of Jaxons, there are only thirteen. And number seven is mine. Jaxon Hunte. Student at Brooklyn Technical High School. Busboy at Wonder Wings. Elevator hero. First kiss.

Do you know Jaxon?
his page prompts me.
Send him a message.

I grin stupidly into the darkness as I click on his photo, feeling relief wash over me. I promised him I would find him. And now I have.

J
axon

S
EPTEMBER
8 (T
IME
S
TAND
S
S
TILL
)

W
hen Devorah said she’d find me, I thought that meant she’d come to Wonder Wings again. I even packed a special bag when I got home from the hospital, with a nice change of clothes and extra deodorant and the mix CD and one of my mom’s off-season tablecloths I figured could double as a picnic blanket if we had time to go somewhere (no actual picnic, though; other than water I’m still not sure what the girl can eat).

But then my phone pings at 3:12
AM
on Sunday night, with an e-mail telling me I have a Facebook message from someone named Pandora Bloom. I almost sleepily delete it, thinking it’s spam, since I don’t recognize the name and the picture is blank, just one of those generic silhouettes with a big question mark where the face should go. But then I have a nanosecond of pause, because if—hypothetically
if
—someone had to create an alias to protect her identity and
if
that person also happens to be the most wonderful kind of nerd alive, then
maybe
she would name herself after the first human woman in Greek mythology, who was too curious not to open her infamous box.

And I’m right. She wrote, and I quote (yeah, I’m a poet and I just don’t know it):

Jaxon,

I told you I would find you, didn’t I? Sorry I’m not using my real name, but I have to be careful. Also I might not be able to check the computer very often, so it might be better for you not to write back.

Meet me at the Kingston Avenue subway station tomorrow (today, that is—it’s late; I can’t sleep) at 3. I don’t have to work, and we can take the train into the city. You’ll see me on the platform, but don’t talk to me or act like you know me. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.

Devorah

• • •

I have work at three, but I don’t have to think about what to do; it’s no contest. First thing in the morning I text Cora and tell her I’m sick with stomach flu, which no one ever challenges because of the puke factor. Then I tell my mom that I have a tutoring job and that Cora let me swap my schedule. I know I’m taking a slight risk going back to the Kingston Avenue stop after school, but I figure I’m probably safe. In a city like New York, with eight million people streaming all across it each day, the chances of running into someone you actually know at any given moment are pretty slim.

So my Monday already feels charmed, but it gets even better when Ryan comes up to me at my locker before first period and apologizes for being such a dick for the past few days. He says that his parents know the skateboarding accident isn’t my fault and that I can come hang after school whenever. I have to tell him an abridged version of my week since we have only a few minutes before class, but we make plans to meet up later. The rest of school is a blur; my feet barely touch the ground. I pray that some subconscious part of my brain is still working to keep me from academic ruin, and I hope it shows up for my calculus quiz on Friday, because God knows I can’t remember a damn thing except for three o’clock, Kingston Avenue. (That’s almost like a math problem, right? If a Manhattan-bound 3 train leaves Kingston Avenue at three
PM
, going sixty miles per hour, carrying both Jaxon and Devorah, what time will it be when they get to Times Square, which is eight miles and seventeen subway stops away? Extra credit for calculating how many feet from Devorah Jaxon must stand at all times to keep his heart rate under 160 beats per minute.)

She’s already there when I get to the platform at 2:58. Dressed in a white button-down and a navy skirt to just below her knees, with the ever-present tights and flat black shoes, her hair a waterfall of ringlets. She’s staring out into the tracks with her hands clasped in front of her, holding an unmarked paper shopping bag, but she smiles as soon as my feet hit the bottom step and reaches a hand up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear—her way of waving.

The station is full of kids letting off steam after school, punching one another and laughing like hyenas and every so often some girl shrieking at the top of her lungs like she’s getting stabbed. I notice one or two Hasidic men standing reading their Hebrew newspapers, but there aren’t too many. Usually they commute the other way, so there are always a ton on my ride to school. Now whenever I see one I wonder if he knows Devorah. Maybe that’s racist, though, to think they all know one another.

The train lurches into the station, and it’s medium-full; no empty seats but no armpit-to-armpit sardine can, either. I follow Devorah’s lead, so when she stands by the pole in the middle of the car, I lean on one of the doors down at the end, keeping her in my line of sight but trying not to look too much. We meet eyes once, as the train leaves Grand Army Plaza, and both duck our heads, folding our smiles into our chests.

At Hoyt Street two seats open up, right across from each other, and as Devorah makes a move to sit down in one of them, I break protocol and all but dive for the other. “Relax, son, there’s no cash prize,” grumbles an elderly man a few seats down, and Devorah shakes her head gently, biting her lip to keep from laughing. So to get her back, for the next five stops I play a game with her. The way the game works is, I stare at her until she feels me looking. Then, as soon as she looks at me, I look away. It’s driving her crazy, I can tell.

In lower Manhattan the train fills up so that people are standing between us, and at Fulton I give my seat to a pregnant lady (at least, I hope she’s pregnant; my mom taught me to just get up, never ask) and maneuver so that I’m standing in front of the sleeping Asian man sitting next to Devorah. She keeps her eyes down until the train pulls into Forty-second Street, and then she coughs, primly but purposefully, into her palms. That must be my signal. I follow her out onto the packed platform, and as we walk up the stairs, I reach my right hand up to squeeze her left, just for a second. “Wait” is all she says, not even turning around. This time, I’m the one going crazy.

(So back to that math problem. There are two answers, depending on how you look at it. From a mathematical perspective, it takes us forty-five minutes from the time we step onto the train at 3:02 to when we emerge into the throngs of sunburned tourists at 3:47. But in reality, time almost ceases to exist. You hear things like “time stood still,” and it sounds impossibly corny, but that’s what it feels like. So. We could have been on that train for thirty seconds or thirty days, I have no idea.)

“Hi,” she finally says when we reach the street, squinting like moles into the bright afternoon sun.

“Hi,” I say. “So what now?”

“I don’t know,” she says, laughing. “I just thought this would be a good place to get lost.”

“It’s a good place to get run over,” I say, pulling her out of the way of a bike messenger trying to circumvent a stopped tour bus by riding up on the sidewalk. “But you know, to be honest I was hoping for somewhere we could be alone.”

“What’s more alone than standing in the white-noise center of the free world?” she asks, gesturing to the mob streaming around us.

“See, now you’re just showing off.” I grab her hand, but this time I don’t let go. She stiffens for a second. “Can I hold your hand?” I ask, to make sure, and the Beatles’ famous refrain rings in my tingling ears.

She nods. “I have only two requests. One is that you please not kiss me again.” That knocks the wind right out of my sails, but she must notice my face fall because she quickly adds, “Not because I didn’t like it but because I
did
, and I don’t want it to get in the way of us being able to talk.”

“Okay,” I say, relieved but also reluctantly mentally deleting the steamy makeout session I’ve been hoping for. “What’s the second one?”

She smiles self-consciously and holds out the shopping bag. “That you help me change my shoes.” I peer inside and see a pair of bright red Converse pull-on low-tops.

“These are sweet!” I say, holding out the sneakers one by one as she stands beside me under the flashing Quiksilver marquee, grabbing my shoulder for balance. She slips off her flats and steps gingerly into the Converse, doing a little twirl.

“I’ve always wanted them,” she says excitedly. “Shosh—my friend Shoshana—has a pair in black, but her parents are a lot more laid back than mine. And she’s only allowed to wear them on weekends.”

“She sounds wild,” I crack, and Devorah punches me lightly on the arm.

“You have to remember, Jax, this is a big deal for me,” she says, suddenly shy again. “I’m risking everything coming here. My parents think I’m visiting Rose at the hospital, since we were”—she blushes, stumbling over her words—“since I didn’t get a chance to visit yesterday.”

“Rose is covering for you?” I can barely hide my excitement, even though I know she’s trying to be serious. If her sister is cool with us, then there must be a chance her parents might come around. But Devorah looks stricken.

“
No
,” she says, like I’ve just suggested we go streaking down Broadway. “She has no idea. I’m just praying she doesn’t talk to my mom before I get home.” She looks down at her sneakers, shifting from foot to foot, as if she’s still testing whether they truly fit.

“Hey, don’t worry,” I say, trying to stop her confidence from nose-diving. “Let’s forget about everybody else and take these fancy new kicks for a spin.”

“I’m not like you, Jax,” Devorah says, still not meeting my eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

“You’re not like anyone,” I reply, and she finally looks up at me and it’s all I can do not to break my promise and kiss her right then and there. Devorah smiles nervously and takes a tentative step toward Broadway.

“Okay, fine, I’ll let you help me break them in,” she says, holding out her hand. I take it.

• • •

“You know,” I say as we snake our way through the hordes of tourists and day workers and comedy club–voucher hawkers clogging up the crosswalk, “this is what it could be like for us anyplace else.”

“What?” Devorah asks distractedly, gazing up at the bright theater marquees.

“We’d just disappear,” I say. “No one would look twice.”

“That’s a nice thought.” She smiles dreamily.

“It’s true.”

Devorah doesn’t respond, and I realize we’ve wandered our way to the foot of the red steps that stretch out over the TKTS booth. She looks up at them longingly.

“Go on,” I say.

“No.” She laughs. “It’s okay.”

“C’mon, the girl in the red shoes climbing the red steps at the center of the free world? It was meant to be.”

She shakes her head, suddenly looking uncomfortable again. I wonder if it will always be like this, a mini roller coaster from happiness to terror every ten seconds. “I don’t want anyone to see me,” she whispers. I look around, but there’s not a black fedora to be found for a block in any direction.

“No one’s looking,” I assure her.

“You don’t know that.”

“Why did you pick Times Square then? If it makes you so worried?”

Devorah looks up at me, frowning apologetically. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it would feel safe, but it doesn’t. It just feels claustrophobic.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let me take you someplace where I guarantee you no one will be looking at us.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because,” I say as the idea takes shape in my head, “it’s a place nobody goes.”

As we scamper back down into the subway, a gust of ninety-degree air blowing our shirts back against our skin like shrink-wrap, I say a silent prayer that I’m not lying.

• • •

We get off the 7 train at Vernon Boulevard–Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, which is luckily just as desolate and industrial as I remember from when I used to come here to tutor Vinnie Chan, who lived with his family in one of two luxury high-rise apartment buildings facing Midtown across the water.

“Where are we?” Devorah asks in a tone that manages to be somehow both impressed and underwhelmed.

“Queens!” I announce proudly. “The ass end of it, anyway.”

“It’s perfect,” she says. “Where should we go?”

“Let’s just walk.” I hold out my hand. “See where the wind takes us.” She looks at me funny for a second but then breaks into a grin.

“Remind me to tell you a story later,” she says.

• • •

Fiftieth Avenue is the bleakest, blandest, most unromantic street I’ve ever been on, so when it veers off onto an overpass after a few blocks I steer us left, onto the Pulaski Bridge. Speaking of unromantic, we’re not exactly talking Brooklyn Bridge here; the Pulaski’s just a highway on stilts. But still, there’s sort of a view of the city, once you look past the E-ZPass toll lanes on the way into the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. And it’s got red trim, which is in keeping with the color of the day.

“So did I get you in trouble?” I ask Devorah as we start off on the footbridge, which sandwiches us in between two gray lanes of traffic and a six-foot chain-link fence. “At the hospital?”

“No,” she says. “But it was close. I had to lie.” She takes a deep breath of the exhaust-tinged air. “I hate lying.”

“Me, too,” I say softly. “It’s awful. But the alternative is not seeing you, and that’s worse.”

She smiles. “You always say the right thing.”

I make a face. “Are you kidding? I never say the right thing. I’m always putting my foot in my mouth.”

“I don’t see that,” she says, frowning.

“Well, maybe you’re not listening.”

“Or maybe you aren’t talking to the right people.”

There’s that urge to kiss her again. I have to bite my tongue to keep from trying.

“So what if we stop lying?” I blurt out. “Just be together and make people deal with it?”

She smiles. “That would be nice.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

“Go ahead,” she says, a little sarcastically. “Your parents probably wouldn’t care.”

“Yes, they would!” I try to imagine bringing Devorah home: My mother’s strained smile, the eyes she and my dad would make back and forth at each other. Mom serving meat loaf and au gratin potatoes, the awkward exchange when Devorah politely declines (“Just scrape the cheese off” . . . “Jaxon, why didn’t you tell me she was lactose intolerant?” . . . “Separate dishes? You mean like a dessert plate?”). Dad’s paint-stained coveralls, his thick-soled bare feet propped up on the coffee table. “They wouldn’t know what to do with you,” I say with a sigh. Which is depressingly true.