The Big Nap (18 page)

That was a surprise. I guess I’d been expecting to hear that he’d told Fraydle, and her shock and her fear of marrying a man who would rather be with another man had made her run away from home. I hadn’t expected to hear that the two of them had discussed the issue openly and nonetheless reached an agreement to marry.

“She agreed to go forward with the wedding?”

“Not at first. She was upset at first. But she didn’t reject me right away. She told me she needed some time to think.”

“Then what happened?”

“I went back to New York. She called me on the telephone, a few days later. She told me that she had thought about it and that we should marry.”

“Ari, did she tell her parents?”

He shook his head. “No. We agreed to keep the secret between us.”

“Are you sure she kept this agreement?”

“Yes. She promised not to tell her parents. I don’t think she would have broken her promise.”

“Did she tell you anything about herself, of her own doubts about marriage?”

Ari didn’t take his eyes off the long thin fingers knotted in his lap. He shook his head.

It surprised me that despite the fact that her fiancé had been so honest with her, Fraydle had failed to confide in him about Yossi. However, the truth was that none of this helped me at all. If Fraydle and Ari had worked this out between them, there was no reason for her to run away. A chill ran across the back of my neck. Since the first days of Fraydle’s disappearance, I’d done my best to think of her as a runaway. But I’d always known that the odds were good, and getting better with each day, that she hadn’t run anywhere. It was all too possible that someone had taken her, had done something to her. Maybe that someone was sitting next to me under the elephant tusks. Or maybe that someone was in Borough Park or back in Los Angeles. I had to get on a plane to Los Angeles as soon as possible. I needed to see the Finkelsteins and convince them to go to the police. And if the rabbi refused, I would make the report myself.

The young man interrupted my thoughts. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, Ari. I’m not going to tell anyone about you. I’m just trying to find Fraydle.”

“You must call me as soon as you know anything.”

“I will. Of course I will. Thank you for talking to me.”

“No, thank
you.
Thank you for telling me. You said you are a friend of Fraydle’s?” He looked at me, obviously not understanding what I, a non-Hasidic woman in a pair of overalls, could have to do with his wife-to-be.

“She was my baby-sitter.” It was, I knew, a ridiculously thin connection. Not a friend. Not a member of my family. Just a girl who watched my baby one morning. So that I could take a nap.

“Ah, yes. Well, goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye, Ari.”

I rushed off to where my father was standing with the kids, looking at a diorama of the African veldt.

“Look, Mama,” Ruby said, “A Thompson’s gazelle.”

I looked at the sign next to the exhibit box. Lo and behold, it was, in fact, a Thompson’s gazelle.

“How do you know what a Thompson’s gazelle looks like?” I asked.

“The Kratt Brothers told me!” she replied. Thank goodness for public television.

I hustled the three of them through the rest of the museum as fast as I could, zipping by the dinosaurs and the giant blue whale. I wanted to get back to New Jersey and call the airline. The fates were conspiring against me, however, and we ended up stuck on the West Side Highway, creeping slowly north toward the George Washington Bridge. It took almost ninety minutes to get home. Luckily, Isaac fell asleep in the back of the car, after he’d screamed for an hour at the top of his lungs.

When he finally crashed into slumber, my father looked at me and said, “For a minute there I thought he’d shatter the windshield.”

B
Y
the time we pulled into my parents’ driveway, it was dark. As my father and I unloaded the kids from the car, I noticed a big black Cadillac pulled up in front of the house. The car stuck out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood where my parents’ Chrysler was the only American car that wasn’t a sports utility vehicle.

I lumbered up the porch stairs with a sleeping Isaac draped over my shoulder and Ruby wrapped around my leg. A group of Hasidic men stood waiting outside the front door. All wore hats, but only a few were bearded. They did not look particularly friendly.

“Hello? Can I help you?” I asked. My father, who had been coming up the steps behind me, said, at the same time, “Who are all these people?”

A large man with a big belly stepped forward. He
pointed a finger at me. “You are Juliet Applebaum,” he said, rather than asked.

“Well, you’re ahead of me, sir. You know who I am, but I don’t know who you are,” I said, trying not to show how nervous I was. I did a quick head count. There were six men standing on the porch. I decided to pretend this was a social call.

“Why don’t we go inside so I can get the baby out of the cold.” I walked by the man who’d spoken to me and unlocked the front door. My father followed me, reaching out for Ruby’s hand.

“What’s going on?” he whispered as he walked past me into the house.

“I have no idea,” I answered, in a loud, clear voice.

I held the door open and the men filed in, one by one. I walked into the living room area and sat down on the couch, still holding the baby on my lap.

“Daddy,” I said, “why don’t you go set Ruby up with a video, upstairs.”

He nodded and led her away. Meanwhile, the men had followed me across the floor and stood in a little huddle in the center of the living room. I looked them over. There were two older men, the big one who’d spoken to me and another of about the same size, but with a long, grizzled beard. The four other men were much younger. Two looked to be about my age, and two seemed no more than boys. One of the younger men, with short blond hair, a trimmed beard, and broad shoulders, looked vaguely familiar. Where had I seen him before?

“Please sit down,” I said.

They all looked at the leader of the pack, who shook his head angrily. “We are not staying in this house. We came
only to warn you, Juliet Applebaum. Stay away from the Hirsch family. You are not welcome.”

Ah. The uncles.

“You must be Esther Hirsch’s brother. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. Here’s the thing about having been a public defender: After a while, scary guys just don’t scare you anymore. My clients had almost all been scary guys. They were gangbangers with elaborate tattoos, jittery bank robbers with thousand-dollar-a-day smack habits, car-jackers with arsenals of Glock 9mm semi-automatics. As their lawyer, and often the only person who really cared about what happened to them, I almost always became their confidante, confessor, and even their friend. I’d learned to look behind the crime and see the man. And the person standing in front of me, for all that he looked intimidating and even dangerous, was just a man. An old Jewish man. Like my father, but with a fur hat.

“Who I am is not important!” my rude visitor bellowed. My father came running downstairs at the sound of the shout.

“Daddy, please go up and stay with Ruby,” I said.

“But—” he began.

“Daddy! I need you to stay with her. I don’t want her to be scared.” Though clearly reluctant, he headed back up the stairs.

I turned to the spokesman, who was pointing a finger in my face. “Stop shouting,” I said. “You’ll wake the baby.”

The blond man, the one who looked familiar, stepped forward. “We are here to ask you to refrain from prying into the affairs of Ari Hirsch. That is all.” He spoke with a faint accent.

“Ask nothing!” the leader shouted. “We are telling you! Mind your own business, you
churva
!”

At that moment, the front door opened and my mother walked in the door.

“
Churva
?” she said. “Did I hear someone say the word
churva
in my house? What’s going on here?” She looked at me, and at the group of men still standing in the middle of the living room. “Josef?” she said. “Josef Petrovsky, what are you doing here? What is your mother going to say when I tell her your friend called my daughter a whore?”

M
Y
mother’s scolding seemed momentarily to take the wind out of the sails of my second-cousin-twice-removed and his cabal of hostile Hasidim. Then the leader raised his fist. “This is a warning,” he bellowed.

The older man with the grizzled beard, who had been silent up until then, put a restraining hand on his cohort’s arm. He turned to me and, in a voice made somehow more ominous by its softness, said, “We are a close family.” I didn’t answer. “We protect each other.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “But what does that have to do with me?”

He smiled thinly. “You should know this about us, that is all.”

“Listen, you,” my mother squawked. “What do you think you are, the Jewish Gambini family? I want you out of my house. All of you. Out now, or I’m calling the police.”

The quiet man ignored her and looked at me. I stood my ground.

“I think you should leave,” I said.

“Out, out!” My mother grabbed the young man closest to her by the arm and began pushing him in the direction of the door. He shook her off with a rough jerk and she stared at him, her mouth open.

“Please leave,” I repeated.

“Yes,” the soft-voiced man said. “And you, of course, will no longer make my nephew a subject of your conversation.” I said nothing. “Good. That is settled. Thank you for your time.” He nodded once and walked to the front door. He waited for a moment for one of the young men to open it for him, and then walked out the door, followed by the others. My cousin was the last to leave. He walked over to my mother but she pushed him away. “Out of my house, Josef Petrovsky. You are no longer welcome here!” He slunk out the door.

“Humph!” my mother said.

“Yeah, no kidding. Hey, Ma?”

“Yes, darling?”

“What the hell was that about?”

“You’re asking me? You’re the one out raking muck. You tell me what happened.”

“First of all,” I said, “muckraking is investigative journalism. I’m not raking muck. Second of all, what was cousin Josef Petrovsky doing in our house? And why was he with Ari Hirsch’s uncles?”

She shrugged her coat off her shoulders and tossed it over a chair. “First of all, that sure looked like muck to me. Second of all, I haven’t any idea what Josef was doing with those horrible men.”

“But you know why he was here?”

“I talked to Bella Petrovsky, Josef’s mother, this morning. You’ve met her, darling. At Tante Tsunya’s funeral years ago, when you still lived in New York. For that matter, that’s where you met Josef for the first time.”

I gritted my teeth in exasperation. “Ma! What did you tell her?”

“I told her you needed Josef’s help.”

“That’s all?”

She busied herself with picking lint off her skirt.

“Ma!”

“So maybe I told her that you thought that this boy, Ari Hirsch, was a homosexual and did she ever hear any rumors about him from her son, about whom, incidentally, I’ve always had my doubts.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mom.”

“Look, darling, how was I supposed to know that Josef knew Ari Hirsch’s uncles? What, all observant Jews know each other now? Josef manages apartment buildings, for God’s sake. What does he know from rabbis?”

“Oh, Mom. Ari’s
father
is a rabbi. His uncles are in real estate. Josef probably works for them.”

My mother put her hand to her throat. “You think?”

“Yeah, I think. Here, take the baby.” I handed Isaac to her. “I’d better go upstairs and make sure Daddy and Ruby haven’t barricaded themselves into a closet.”

I found Ruby happily watching
101 Dalmatians
perched on my father’s lap, his arms crossed protectively over her chest. He jumped about three feet into the air when I walked into the room. “All clear, Pop,” I said.

“Oh, thank God. What a nightmare. Were they armed?” he asked.

“Oh, Daddy, don’t be ridiculous. They were not packing heat.”

“
I’m
ridiculous?” He put his hands over Ruby’s ears. “I’m not the one who’s been shot, young lady.” Ruby squawked and batted at his hands.

“I can’t hear!” she shrieked.

“Sorry,
maydele
,” he said, taking away his hands and kissing the top of her head. She settled back against his chest.

“It’s okay, Grandpa. I still love you,” Ruby said.

I left the pair to Cruella DeVil and went to the telephone. I wanted to warn Ari Hirsch that his uncles knew that I had been looking for him. When I told him, he seemed resigned rather than upset, and I hung up the phone wondering if my search for Fraydle had accomplished anything other than making a confused young man’s life that much more difficult. I then called the airline and managed to book us on a flight for the next morning. We were going to have to make two transfers and the trip would take us thirteen hours door to door, but we’d be home by tomorrow night. My parents weren’t surprised at my decision, although they did extract a promise from me that we’d be back again in a couple of months. When I called Peter, he sounded overjoyed and promised to pick us up at the airport.

About the trip home I won’t say anything other than that babies cry most when planes take off and land because of the change in cabin pressure. And we took off and landed six separate times. If I’d had any doubts about Isaac’s lung capacity before the trip, they were entirely dispelled.

T
HE
morning after we got home was a Sunday. Upon waking, Ruby begged to be taken to the Santa Monica Pier and Peter happily agreed to drive her. Isaac and I unpacked and then headed out to Nettie’s store. I needed to find out what was happening with the search for Fraydle and if Fraydle had told Nettie anything about Ari.

Nettie was behind the counter, as usual. She shouted my name when she saw me and rushed out to hug me.

“Did you find anything?” she whispered in my ear, eyeing her waiting customers.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” I replied.