The Sea Beach Line (43 page)

“Yeah, I'm starting to,” I lied. “I'm back here at Becca's for a minute, trying to sort things out.”

“Oh. Well, it's good that you're with your sister. She needs your support right now. How is she holding up?”

“I don't know. She's doing fine I think. She's strong. You know that.”

“I know she acts strong. I did the same thing, every time your father disappeared.”

“Okay.” I'd heard so many things about Al over the past few months. I knew he wasn't just like I'd remembered him. I was sure he would act as callously as Timur and Roman. But I needed to judge him for myself. I didn't want to keep listening to Becca and my mother knocking him.

“Andrew meant a lot to her. They were planning a life together. She was depending on him.”

“I saw him today.”

“I see. Have you told her?”

“No. But I will. She wants to know he's okay.”

“Maybe she wants to cut him out of her life altogether. He's bad news.”

“How are you doing, Mom?” She hadn't answered the question the first time.

“I'm fine, Izzy, I'm fine. It's sunny out here, and our neighbors are nice. I wouldn't go back to New York for a million dollars. I hate that you kids are there, and having such a rough time of everything. Take care of each other.”

“We are.” My mom talked on for another fifteen minutes, about the importance of siblings, and how she had forgiven Uncle Howard. She was still mad about the papercuts, but she didn't need them to remember her mother. Her monologue segued into the importance of starting a career, and how the decisions you make in your twenties impact the rest of your life. She told a long story about the daughter of a friend who had just been accepted to law school, but wasn't sure if she wanted to go or not. Lawyers would never be out of work, she pointed out—the situation with Andrew was a prime example of that.

After a while, I cut her off.

“It's good to talk to you, Mom, but I have to go. I have to go see about a job thing.” I figured I'd leave her with that morsel.

“Fine. Go. Though, I thought after all this time you'd want to talk to me more.”

When I got off the phone with my mom, I went back to the Glupsker website, and clicked into the form to request an audience with the rebbe. A calendar of available times popped up, and there were a couple open slots for the next day. I typed in a fake name and my e-mail address. If I was granted an audience, I could meet Rayna's father face-to-face. The time had come for direct confrontation. I refreshed my e-mail every ten minutes. After two hours, a message from the Glupsker World Council appeared:

         
BS”D

         
Dear Supplicant,

         
Per your request, you have been granted an audience with the Great Rebbe of Glupsk.

         
Your audience is scheduled from 11:15 AM to 11:30 AM tomorrow.

         
Rabbi Moishe Nemirov

         
Secretary of the Great Rebbe of Glupsk

I was going to meet Rayna's father. He would be a real person, not a dark weight. Rayna's world would no longer be an abstract place where she had been hurt, had escaped from, and had been dragged back to. The obstacles would come into focus.

I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. Should I make up a fake story, and try to find a way to stick around the Glupskers until
I found Rayna? Should I come barging in with guns blazing, and demand to see her?

At the bottom of the e-mail was an address. I looked it up on the map online. I had circled around the building the day before, without realizing it. Now I knew where to go. Now I would be granted entrance.

21

THE ROOM I WAITED
in the next day was like the reception area of a dentist's office. People sat in matching chairs, stealing nervous glances at the closed door. Instead of a woman in flowered scrubs, the clipboard-wielding gatekeeper was a skinny rabbi with round glasses and a pointy red beard. He swooped around in front of the door to the rebbe's office, like some exotic pet bird who had been made trusty of the birdcage.

Two eager yeshiva bochers sat next to me. They sat upright on the edges of their seats, waiting for the red bird to squawk their names. Across from me was a fat man wearing Velcro sneakers and a pinstripe suit with no tie. He poked furiously at his wristwatch, and I realized that he had an old-school Casio calculator watch. Maybe the man was using the calculator to do gematria, to divine mysteries. He looked a little schlubby to be doing such work. Maybe he was one of the thirty-six hidden
tzadikim
. If so, he was well hidden indeed. No, he was probably a vendor of some sort, trying to determine what the rebbe owed him.

“Fischer,” the voice called. “The rebbe will see you now, Isaac Fischer.” That was me. When I had filled out the online form, I had used Bernie and my mom's last name, in case the name Edel sent up a red flag.

I was swept into the rebbe's office, and the door shut behind me. The room was lined with bookshelves. The black, pictureless volumes Rayna had spoken of. I was in Rayna's world. How close was she?

There was one picture in the room: the Galuth portrait of the rabbi that Roman and I had stolen. It was now in a tacky gold frame, with a layer of polished glass over the painting itself. I'd examined it closely in the warehouse; I knew it well, and there was no mistaking it now. This confirmed the theory that I had developed in the library. Galuth and Rayna were both members of the rabbinic Langer family. The rebbe traced his lineage back through previous rebbes; Rayna could trace her legacy back to Galuth. My search for my own legacy—my father—had brought me face-to-face with Rayna again and again: in the museum, in Al's sketches, then in person on the street. Now I had come to find her again.

“You have already wasted two of your fifteen minutes shuffling around and staring at my wall.” I looked at the rebbe. His eyes were focused on documents on his desk, even as he spoke. His beard was still thick and black. A short-brimmed hat hung on a rack behind him, and he wore a large velvet kippah. “You must learn to make the most of your time on this earth, young man.” His voice was firm and paternal. “Come, what can I do for you? Are you not here to ask me something? About a personal or business trouble, perhaps? About your studies?”

“That's a fine painting,” I said, pointing over his shoulder. “I'd like to get one like it. Who painted it? Where did you get it?”

“It is a portrait of my great-grandfather.” He answered without looking at the painting. “It was lost during the Shoah, but was recently returned to my family, by an anonymous donor. That's what you came here to ask me?” Asking about a stolen painting should have made the man nervous, but in his domain, the rebbe was the king. He was untouchable.

“No,” I said. “I came here to ask you what you've done to Rayna. I need to see her.”

He took his reading classes off, and looked up at me for the first time. “I suppose you are the boy. Edel. The peddler who was harboring my youngest daughter.”

“Yes,” I said. The way he said “harbored” made it sound like it was something illicit, a concealment. But I didn't object; it was the right word. I had offered her refuge, like a harbor offered a ship coming off a stormy sea. “I am Edel the book peddler. Where is Rayna? Is she all right?”

“Is that any business of yours?”

“Yes, it is. Tell me. Please. Where is Rayna? Have you hurt her?”

“Hurt her?” He seemed shocked by the question. “Of course not. She is my daughter. My youngest daughter. My most precious jewel.”

“You send thugs to manhandle your most precious jewel?”

“No. I sent my sons to fetch their sister home. I do not want you to get the wrong idea. My daughter is safe, with family. Where she is supposed to be. She is to be married next month. She will be making a new home for herself and her husband, safe inside the hundred gates. Mea Shearim,
Yerushalayim
.” Rayna had said that her family wanted to place her in an arranged marriage, against her will. Not only were they forcing her into the union, they were dragging her five thousand miles away from me. I couldn't let them do this.

“No,” I said. “I'll . . . I'll . . .” What could I do? “I'll go there. To Jerusalem.”

“I would advise against that. You will not be welcomed in that neighborhood.”

“I don't care.”

“Many zealots have come from America to Jerusalem, and lost their minds. No one is surprised when they disappear as quickly as they have come.”

“But I love her.” I did. Was that worth anything?

“You lust after her.”

“No. It wasn't about that. We never had sex.” I didn't think our juvenile fumbling counted.

“So she also claims. It does not matter. She has been matched with a young man—a righteous man, a student of mine—who has the humility to forgive her impurity. They are to be married very soon.” I felt as if the rebbe had struck me across the face. It would have been better if I had fought her brothers, and been beaten with the crowbar.

“I should be the one to marry her,” I said. Hearing that she would be getting married, that someone else would be living with her, eating meals with her, lying beside her at night, and protecting her made me jealous and angry. That was my role. Rayna and I had made a home together. If Rayna had to have a husband, I should be her husband.

“You? You fancy yourself a good match for my daughter?”

“Yes. I'm the only one that took care of her.”

“You took care of her?”

“I tried.”

“You tried? Really? That's so? Then why, when my sons came for her, did you let them take her?” I had asked myself this over and over.

“How did you know where we were?”

“We have many friends. One of them saw her working with you on the street.” This was actually helpful; it narrowed down my list of suspects considerably. “Why did you not defend her?” the rebbe said. “Why did you allow her to be dragged away into the night?” I couldn't answer. I had no answer. Seeing this, the rebbe leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands together. “She will be protected now, by her husband.”

“If I had a chance,” I said, trying to justify myself, “I could live a good life and make a good husband for her.”

“Perhaps that was true once. Or perhaps you did have chances, and squandered them. I cannot say. Either way, it is too late for you now. The evil is deep down inside you, and you will never be pure. Just go now.” He waved me away with a pale hand, and turned his attention back toward his papers. “Please. Go. Return to your sick world.”

“Can I leave a note with you? A letter, that you could pass on to her, so she knows that I came?”

“Certainly not. There is nothing you need to say to her. Leave. You are no longer part of our story.” He wanted to blot out my name like Elisha ben Abuyah's.

My hand was on the doorknob when I stopped and turned back toward the rebbe. This might be my only chance to confront Rayna's father. I couldn't let myself be intimidated into wasting it and leaving without even getting my piece in. “What it was like between us is something you can't understand,” I said. “It wasn't something to be sanctioned, or arranged. It was like something from an old tale.” I wanted this man to know that what I felt for his daughter was real, that it went beyond the grime and physicality he had heard about. “She appeared to me on the street. Like it was meant to be. It
was
meant to be. We were both lost, and it was destined we should find each other. She was . . . like a ghost to me. An apparition. It was beyond the physical world.”

“You are a foolish man. You suffer delusions. My daughter is just a girl. A troubled girl, but a girl. Ghosts do not walk the earth.”

“My father is a ghost,” I said. “He walks all over this city. I do too now.”

“Your father was an
oysvorf
! He was a thug!” the rebbe shouted, as two bearded men grabbed me and began dragging me from the office. “There was nothing magical about him either.”