Authors: Naomi Ragen
Abigail paled. “How do you know all this? It hasn’t been publicized. Did Dad tell you?”
She looked at her mother, confused. “You told me, didn’t you?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, then, maybe it was Dad,” she hedged. “But I didn’t know about Dorset’s testimony. That must be new.”
“It just happened yesterday”—Abigail nodded—“though I still can’t believe that anyone will take that Vegas-partying bimbo chaser seriously.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Mom. He’s a tax attorney who knows a lot of people in high places. He knows all the ins and outs of the court system. In the hands of someone like Dorset, the law is a lethal weapon. There is no one more dangerous than a crooked lawyer.” She shook her head, then suddenly looked up. “Didn’t you tell me a while back that this whole thing started at the mixer for Harvard Law parents? Gregory Van doesn’t have a child in Harvard Law, and as far as I know, Christopher Dorset doesn’t have any children. So what were they both doing there? And—”
“Look, Kayla,” Abigail cut her off wearily. “I’m glad to hear that you haven’t forgotten your father and are analyzing his case. But this is not what I flew halfway around the world to discuss with you. Kayla, your father sent me here because he feels your being here is a tragedy and that it’s his fault. He feels he’s destroyed you.”
“WHAT? That’s so not true!”
“And I can tell you, of all the things he’s suffered, your leaving hurt him the most.”
Kayla’s eyes stung. “Really? But why?”
“Come on, be honest! You know that without this court case, you’d be at Harvard right now, studying hard, planning your wedding to Seth, with a job offer waiting for you at graduation.”
“Yes, exactly. So you can tell Dad this court case, this wrench in the works, was the best thing that could have ever happened to me!”
“You can’t mean that!” Abigail countered, flabbergasted.
“Rav Natan says that one of the reasons God gives us troubles is to soften our hearts and make us open up to the truths we have been shutting out.”
“What truths have you been shutting out, Kayla?” Abigail demanded.
“In the past, so many of the choices I’ve made were based on wanting people to think I was doing really well. I’d gotten into the habit of listening for unspoken messages from everyone about what I should do—from you and Dad, teachers, guys, whomever. I always felt as if everyone was giving me assignments I needed to complete with honor to earn their respect and love. And so, whether or not it mattered to me, I tried really hard so that everyone would say to themselves: ‘Look at that Kayla Samuels! How well she’s doing!’ I never realized how hollow that was. How meaningless. For a long time, I just felt empty. I mean, I knew I was doing all the things everyone else thought was great, but in the end, it was just so stripped of any joy or meaning for me.”
“I never knew…”
“No, how could you? I didn’t know myself. Until recently.”
“And now, you are sure that this”—she waved her arms in a sweeping circle—“is what you want to do?”
“I’m not sure what ‘this’ is or what ‘to do’ means. I’m not up to that yet. All I know is that I have been searching and I’ve found a few answers. I can’t imagine leaving here before I find the rest.”
“How long is that going to take?”
Kayla tensed, looking over her mother’s shoulder at the desert landscape, so
stark and unforgiving, altered only by eons of wind and water pressure. Some things could never be changed in your lifetime. But you had to try.
“Mom, can’t you just try, for a minute, to understand what happened to me?”
“I’m listening.”
Kayla sighed. “One minute, you are on top of the world, and the next your name and face are all over the place as the child of a national traitor. Millions of people you don’t know hate you and your family. Your phone doesn’t stop ringing. Your professors give you strange looks… You go for job interviews and… I don’t want to talk about it! Look, I just needed to get away, at least until the media frenzy died down. I admit it was impulsive, and my plan was vague, even to me. But I think deep down all I wanted was to give myself a little time to pull myself together before coming back. But then something happened… something I didn’t expect…”
“What? What happened to you, Kayla?”
“I started to figure out a little bit about who I am and what I don’t want to be. I came here to hide. But I stayed because it’s a better place, and because I’m a better person when I’m here. That’s what happened.”
“What possible future can this life hold for you, my darling? Whatever its charms—and I admit the view is magnificent and the people I’ve met so far incredibly kind—what kind of life do you envision here that will fulfill you in the long run? It’s not a few weeks we are talking about. It’s not summer camp. Life is a long, hard, drawn-out business, Kayla! What can a place like this possibly offer your ambition, your intelligence, your deepest needs?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I’m not distraught anymore. I feel whole, and calm, and full of energy and creativity.”
“Look, Kayla. You went through hell. We all did. I’m happy you’ve gotten back some strength and clarity. Why not use those things now to regain all you’ve worked so hard for, all the things you’ve always wanted, instead of giving up?”
“Aren’t you listening to me, Mom? I don’t know if I want them anymore… if I ever wanted them.”
Abigail leaned forward, stunned. “How can you say that? You always chose your own paths, made your own decisions.”
Kayla looked at her sideways. “Is that right? Is that what you remember?”
Abigail stared at her, confused. “Yes. That’s what I remember.”
“Well, I remember writing poetry, and how next thing I knew, I was being dragged off to math tutors, who convinced me poetry was a waste of time…”
“Your math grades were pulling down your entire average! We didn’t care if you studied English, or writing. We just wanted you to have the opportunity to choose the best college…”
“Yes. You were only thinking of me…” Kayla snorted, humming the tune from
Man of La Mancha
: . . .
Whatever I may do or say, I’m only thinking of you. In my body it’s well-known, there is not one selfish bone…
It was disgustingly unfair, Abigail thought. “We encouraged your writing!”
“But as a hobby, right?”
Abigail hesitated. “You were the one who stopped writing! You were the one who decided to study law!”
“Because there was no money in poetry! Look at how you treat Joshua. Like a loser, no matter how he struggles.”
Abigail wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. “We’ve supported your brother. But there are limits. An adult has to take responsibility for himself at a certain point.”
“Mom, it has always been about money. That house we lived in, all that money we spent fixing it up to impress the neighbors. What was that supposed to teach me? And so, big surprise, I did everything I could to prepare myself for a life of moneymaking and money-spending, and rich-husband-attracting… And that was the real message you and Dad were so good at, with all those big Sabbath dinners with so many people Dad hoped to impress and butter up and reel in as clients. The Sabbath wasn’t a day of rest at all, just business as usual, no?”
Abigail felt breathless, so hurt she could not speak.
“How can you paint this ugly picture of us?”
“I’m not painting anything, Mom. It’s a photograph. I’m sorry the lighting isn’t better, and you find it unflattering.”
Abigail felt her stomach ache. She was suddenly weary. God, she realized, might be compassionate and forgiving, but children were not. Their delicate
antennae picked up every lapse, every hypocrisy, every gap between what one preached and what one practiced.
Was that really all it amounted to? All those years of trying, sincerely, so hard to bring up a family that honored tradition and were upstanding members of the community? Were all the things she and Adam thought they were doing really just a façade? And now, because of some unexpected outside force, had the camouflage been ripped away? Was the portrait her daughter had sketched the truth, or an ugly distortion? Worse, was it the picture of Dorian Gray?
“If that is how you really feel, that your father and I are moneygrubbing hypocrites, then there is nothing left for me to say. I wish you well, Kayla. You were my youngest child, my little heart. I spoiled you. Made excuses for you. You were always such an extremist. The year you decided to be a poet, you woke up in the morning and wrote poetry. You wrote poetry during algebra and refused to participate in gym. You barely passed math and science, and they were even talking about having you repeat the year. Did we complain? No. We sat on the sofa and listened to you read. We went to school and battled your ‘insensitive’ teachers. We accepted everything you thought; everything you said about yourself. You were so convincing all the time. And every few months you were convincing about the exact opposite. And we let you get away with it. We paid for tutors. Paid for classes. Begged published authors to read your incoherent, childish scribblings as if you were the next Carl Sandburg. We were in awe of you. And, I’ll admit, a bit terrified also. You always knew better. And now you also know better. Well, let me tell you something…”
But she couldn’t say another word, feeling a sudden, almost frightening loss of control, her stomach throbbing as she gave in to unwanted, uncontrollable paroxysms of grief-filled tears.
“Mom…” Kayla reached out, touching her shoulder.
Abigail shook her off. “All my life, I believed in God. I tried to be hospitable and kind. Yes, I invited your father’s business contacts, because that’s what your father wanted. Yes, maybe I did get too caught up in redoing our home, making beautiful rooms for you and Josh and Shoshana because that’s what I
thought my children wanted! That’s not a mortal crime! All I ever thought I was doing was making everybody happy! It was NEVER what I wanted. Never!” She choked, blinded.
“Mom, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean… I just felt… It was that woman in the lawyer’s office, that day I went to New York. She was staring at me. And then I saw her call another one of the secretaries over, and they sort of put their heads together and looked in my direction. I finally got up and went over to them. ‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked.
“They pushed a copy of
Newsweek
at me. ‘We were just wondering if you were that Samuels.’ It was a picture of Dad in handcuffs being led from his office.”
“Oh, Kayla!”
“I didn’t know what to do. But it finally dawned on me that I WAS that Samuels. And that my life, as I knew it, whatever happened, was over, everything I worked so hard for, everything that I’d invested in. And it wasn’t because of something I’d done, or hadn’t done. There were simply forces out there beyond my control. And so, I decided, given that that was the way the world really worked, as opposed to the way it was supposed to work… the way you’d brought me up to think it worked…”
“The world has changed. That’s not my fault or your father’s…”
“Exactly! Which is why I decided right then and there to finally take some control, to do something that made sense to
me.
I saw all those dead fish washing up on the shore and knew I had to get as far away as possible from the tsunami coming my way…”
“Abandon us? Abandon your father?”
“I wasn’t thinking about you,” she admitted. It sounded shameless in her ears. Shameless and honest. If she’d learned nothing else, it was that the two often went together, and it was just as well to be truthful about it and stop kidding herself that she was a nice person. She wasn’t. Nothing in her spoiled upbringing had punished selfishness and lack of consideration. And even though she liked to tell herself that she was a better person than she could have turned into—which, all things considered, was probably true—at the present moment, she didn’t feel particularly proud of that.
“So you’ve changed your mind. Again. And we are to blame. Is that it? So, tell me, Kayla, what is it now? What do you want, or think you want, now?”
Kayla stiffened, bracing herself as if against a strong wind. The negating maternal power turned in her direction with full force would take all her strength to withstand, she thought a bit desperately. But to let her mother win was to lose her life. It was all or nothing. “I know why you’re here. But it won’t work. I’m not coming back to your and Daddy’s idea of the perfect life. Mom, look at your own life. Where has all this dogma, following all these rules, gotten you?”
It was as if her daughter had deliberately taken aim and jabbed viciously at a broken arm or leg swathed in bandages.
Where was she, indeed?
She tried to think of a response that would be so devastatingly brutal to her daughter’s ego it would end the conversation then and there. But it would have taken an energy and sense of righteousness she no longer possessed. Instead, she took the apple out of her pocket and bit into it. It was deliciously sweet and a bit tart, with that perfect crackle and spurt of juice. “Do they grow these here as well?”
Kayla nodded, relieved. “Yes. Apples in the desert. We’re like the people who lived here thousands of years ago. They also fled society. They lived simple lives, provided for their own needs, and left behind scrolls that still have the world in awe.”
“And that’s what you want to be? An Essene? Living in the desert, writing prophetic scrolls for the next century?”
She smiled, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I want to be. That is the greatest gift of all. Uncertainty. Time to choose, without pressure. Time to commune with my own soul. And whatever path I choose, I understand now, as I never have before, that the path itself has to be its own reward, no matter where it leads. Because you and Dad are living proof that anything can happen along the way. You can sacrifice, and sludge through and suffer, and spend most of your life doing things you hate, to reach some elusive pot of gold. Yet no matter how much you follow the straight and narrow, you might never get there. The journey itself is your life, and that has to be good, whatever the eventual goal that may or may not be reached. It doesn’t matter if you succeed
or you fail, because the journey is everything, and they can never take that away from you.”