The Sisters Weiss (36 page)

Only one thing gave Pearl comfort: her sincere faith that even a scarlet thread could become pure white. There was always teshuva, repentance, for their daughter and for themselves. But they would need to prove to God, and to their friends and neighbors, that they and their daughter had learned their lessons and were not the same sinners they had once been. They would have to redouble their efforts “to build a fence around the law,” forbidding more and more things that were permitted so as not to even approach redlines.

The world was filled with temptations, and they had shown themselves and their family vulnerable. They would need to win back their community’s trust if they were to remain respected members in good standing.

For this, they needed first and foremost to deal with their prodigal daughter. In the best case, she would come home after a cover story had been spread about her semester enrollment in a strictly supervised religious girls’ school in Bnei Brak. After a suitable interval in which she would be seen with her hair tightly braided, dressed in ankle-length skirts, long-sleeved, high-necked blouses, and sturdy closed-toe shoes, she would once again be allowed into the bride pool by the most respectable matchmakers.

Of course, they realized that now they would not be able to demand from the shadchan what they had in the past. The foremost scholars of impeccable lineage with provable saintly character traits were forever beyond their grasp, for such boys’ parents would thoroughly investigate the cover story and find it wanting. They mourned this lost son-in-law they had so looked forward to welcoming, a beautiful new branch on their flourishing family tree, as if a true treasure had slipped through their fingers, falling into the depths of the sea. They blamed themselves most of all. A child had no sense, no will, no natural form of its own. It had to be prodded, molded, and directed until it took the proper shape to fit into the space allotted for it in the community. As parents, they had failed to achieve this, and they and their daughter would now pay the price.

The kitchen door opened and closed.

“Zevulun Meir?”

“Yes. It’s me.” His light and pleasant voice was deep and gruff, betraying his inner turmoil.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Just a cup of tea.”

She hurried to prepare it for him, putting an unasked-for but appreciated plate of cinnamon-dusted rugelach down as well. He said the blessing over the tea and then over the pastry, and then he chewed and swallowed without pleasure, as if it were a chore.

“Zevulun Meir, can we talk?”

He looked up at her, puzzled. What, after all, was there left to say? He shrugged.

She exhaled, as if making room in her throat for the words. “About my sister…”

His face clamped shut, his lips bunching.

“We should try to avoid conflict.”

“Where there is a Delilah and a Samson, a Moses and a Pharaoh, there will be conflict! Don’t fool yourself into thinking this will end peaceably!”

“You don’t know my sister. She wouldn’t have invited Rivka to come to her house. She hasn’t been in touch with the family for forty years.”

“Then how did our Rivkaleh wind up there? Magic?”

This was difficult, and truthfully, in all the time she had been married to this principled but compassionate man, this was the first time she felt a little afraid of him.

“I had a box underneath my bed in which I kept some old photos of the family. There were also some secular newspaper clippings and a letter, from my sister.”

He looked at her sharply.

She hurried to finish before she lost her nerve. “The clippings showed my sister, Rose, winning an award for some pictures she had taken. And the letter, it was a mazel tov to me on my engagement … Maybe Rivka saw these things and that’s what gave her the idea to go to my sister. You shouldn’t blame Rose.”

He turned to her in slow motion, heaving with emotion. “And you kept these things in our kosher home? Near our pure child?”

“You don’t know anything at all about my sister…”

“What is there to know?”

“She was very dear to me when we were young. Such a kind, good, loving sister…”

“You are defending her? You! After all she did to you? If not for her, you could have married a brilliant young scholar. You could be a powerful, respected rebbitzin. Instead, you had to marry me, a broken-down widower with a child, who will never amount to anything…”

She moved closer to him, reaching out tentatively and touching the wrinkles on his forehead. “This was not a punishment, Zevulun Meir. This has always been my good fortune.”

He took her fingers in his hands, bringing them to his lips and kissing them gently. “My eshes chayil,” he said gently. “Please, you must not blame yourself. Our Rivkaleh didn’t learn to be so prust and so defiant from a newspaper article or a letter. She also didn’t learn it in our home or from her school or her sisters and brothers.” He shook his head angrily. “Your sister has ruined our daughter, defiled her with her secular ways.”

“But Zevulun, does not our holy Torah teach us to give each man the benefit of the doubt?”

“That is only in the case where there are no witnesses and the matter is unknown. You and I are both witnesses to how our daughter has changed, how she spoke to us.”

She wanted to answer: but why blame my sister for this, when it is we who have raised this child for the last eighteen years? But she did not want to hurt him any more than he was already hurt. Instead, she said vaguely, “But surely there is room for repentance. As it is written, God waits for the sinner to return, even if he has fallen down to the forty-ninth degree of impurity.”

“It is also written: ‘A man who purifies himself after touching a corpse and then touches it again, of what avail will his purification be?’ So with a person who fasts for their sins and then repeats them.”

Let him take his anger out on my sister, then, Pearl thought, giving up. That way, there will be less for me, and less for my baby. “We must have faith that our child is capable of true repentance, Zevulun Meir. This is our child, our baby, our little Rivkaleh.”

He hung his head in grief. “We’ll see.”

*

On the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge, in Manhattan, Rose was putting the finishing touches on her outfit. She had changed at least six times, switching from “want to please” to “want to shock” outfits and back again; from tight pants and short skirts to maxi skirts and wide culottes. She finally settled on a roomy gray dress over a T-shirt, layered with a long-sleeved violet-gray sweater. She wore a pretty beaded necklace and comfortable walking shoes. You couldn’t get more covered up than that! She shook her head, chagrined yet relieved, satisfied she’d done the right thing.

She thought about knocking on Rivka’s door again, but decided against it. The kid was in a state of high tension. The less they spoke, the better off they were. She called Hannah to remind her of the time, but there was no reply. Just as well. Hannah would, or wouldn’t, show up. It didn’t really matter that much either way, she lied to herself, wanting to prepare for disappointment. Of course, it mattered immensely, for reasons she couldn’t even fully explain to herself. Maybe it all came down to just the idea of meeting her family’s wrath head-on with some family of her own?

Finally, an hour before their meeting in her gallery in Chelsea—a fifteen-minute taxi ride away—she knocked urgently on Rivka’s door.

“It’s time to go, Rivka.”

The door opened and the girl came out. She had changed into a longer skirt but otherwise looked exactly as she had earlier. She smiled tensely.

“I’m ready, Aunt Rose.”

They hailed a cab and rode silently to their destination, Rivka checking for messages on her newly acquired cell phone, and Rose picking lint off her sweater.

Rose walked past the guard in the lobby, relieved to see him. “Good morning, John.” She nodded.

“And how are you this morning, Mrs. Gordon? Oh, I see you have a little friend with you this morning.”

“Yes, meet my niece, Rivka.”

“Hello, Rivka.”

Rivka looked him over: the uniform, the tall, fit body with the big black gun in the holster. She smiled broadly, relieved. “Hi, John!”

Rose then turned to the person manning the reception desk. “Michael, we are expecting some visitors today at eleven o’clock. Please don’t send them up. Call me when they arrive, and I’ll come down to get them.”

“Of course.” He wrote it down.

She exchanged glances with Rivka, trying to keep her expression as matter-of-fact as possible to promote the illusion this was something she did a dozen times a day. She could see the girl wasn’t fooled. Well, whatever would happen, it would be in a safe place, she thought, hurrying Rivka into the elevator.

*

About ten minutes to eleven, Pearl and Zevulun walked up the steps from the subway. They had considered asking their two eldest sons to drive them, but that would have necessitated filling them in on all the sordid details, which at present they preferred to keep to themselves, wanting to spare these gentle and scholarly men they had raised, as well as to preserve the relationship between siblings. The more positive things Rivka could come back to, the more attractive an alternative it would be to continuing her rebelliousness.

While they had lived in New York City all their lives, they had never been to this part of Manhattan. At first, they looked curiously into the windows of the high-priced art galleries. They saw a grid photograph of a dozen Asian children in ill-fitting suits with large black eyeglasses, each one looking more strange and forlorn than the next. Zevulun and Pearl shrugged at each other, raising their eyebrows, their mouths twisting in derision as they examined the fantastic prices being charged for this narishkeit. A fool and his money are soon parted, they thought, shaking their heads and continuing on. In the next gallery, there was a skull divided by blue lines into squares, each one a sparkling piece of stained glass. They moved away quickly, disturbed. Then, they came to a photograph that from a distance looked like people in a fancy theater. But as they moved closer, they could see everyone in the photo was as naked as the day they’d been born!

Zevulun turned his head away, spitting on the sidewalk, while Pearl hurried after him. After that, they were afraid to look at anything until they arrived at the address Rose had given them. They walked past the guard and up to the reception desk.

“We’ve come to see Rose Gordon,” Zevulun said.

“Your names, please?”

“We are her family,” he answered, and the words cost him something. “Zevulun and Pearl. Can we go up now?”

“Just a moment. She told me to expect you. I’ll call her.”

They waited, Zevulun impatient, Pearl excited and filled with equal parts joy and apprehension at what lay ahead of them. All she could think of was her daughter, so nearby, after all this time! And her older sister, Rose.

Rose emerged from the elevator, looking anxiously ahead.

There she was. Pearl! Her little sister.

She looks more or less how I remember, Rose realized, surprised and a bit devastated as she smoothed back her own gray, wiry curls, pulling her sweater self-consciously around her to hide her girth. As was sometimes the case with Haredi women who had given birth to many children, Pearl had retained her slim, youthful shape, and her expertly coiffed blond wig hid any hint of gray. She wore a long stylish suit of dark gray with a pretty gray, white, and maroon scarf, no doubt both designer labels purchased at another one of those cut-rate stores or seventy-percent-off sales.

The opposite was true for Zevulun, whom she had met briefly only once, at her mother’s funeral. He was almost unrecognizable. His once erect, distinguished figure was disfigured by rolls of fat that pressed out the sides of his black gabardine coat, the belt buckle barely making the last hole. His once black, neatly trimmed beard was almost white now and had grown to Santa Claus length. He looked like an old man.

“Rose?” Pearl said, staring at the strange woman who approached her, trying to mentally dig out in her face and body the sister she remembered. She found her in the eyes and mouth, which seemed the same, the deep brown ovals flashing with the same passion, the mouth in an ironic grin, a little flicker of the Rose who was once her dearest friend.

“Pearl, Zevulun,” Rose said, finding herself surprisingly unable to hug her sister as she had hoped she would. It was mutual, both of them hanging back in confusion, overwhelmed by emotion. Zevulun nodded, vaguely, looking at the ground. Did he subscribe to the view that a man should never look at a woman other than his wife? Or was it just her? In either case, she found it insulting and demeaning.

“Where is Rivka?” he asked sullenly.

“Come, she is upstairs waiting in my office.”

They walked to the elevator, then entered. Their close physical proximity combined with their emotional distance was awkward and nerve-wracking, Rose thought, willing the machine to move a little faster. The fact that no one spoke made their few seconds together seem like an eternity. When the doors finally opened, releasing her, she felt a knot growing in her throat.

Why she felt like crying she couldn’t exactly explain or neatly sum up. It was a combination of anger, regret, longing, sadness, fear, and disappointment. And, yes, love. That most of all. To see her blood relative after all these years! She waited for Pearl to make some tiny, conciliatory gesture that would allow her to reciprocate, but there was nothing. They walked down the hall and into her gallery.

Michelle, Rose’s gallery manager, stood on the side, having pasted on her best professional face.

“Michelle, this is my sister, Pearl, and her husband, Zevulun. We are going into my office.”

“Hello, welcome!” Michelle said brightly, hiding her shock. She would never in a million years have guessed. Pearl smiled back tentatively, while Zevulun swept past her as if she was air.

The door opened.

“Rivkaleh!” Pearl cried, running to her daughter and embracing her.

“Mameh,” Rivka said in a small voice. She felt crushed, her defiant resolutions dissolving like salt at the first touch of warm water.