Now You See Me... (4 page)

“Even though the students are more modern?”

“We weren’t worried.”

“You
weren’t worried,” his wife said.

The rabbi flushed. “Dassie knows who she is, what her values are. Some of the girls dress and behave inappropriately. Dassie’s sleeves are so long you can’t see her wrists. If anything,
tznius
has become
more
important to her.”

The laws of modesty. Skirts well below the knee, sleeves covering the elbow, necklines that expose a minimum of skin, general decorum. Those are some of the rules I continue to bend, though because of Zack, I’ve compromised.

“But it must be difficult for Hadassah,” I pressed. “Most of the students socialize, go on dates. . . .”

“Dating was out of the question,” he said, impatient. “Dassie never pressured us about it. So all of this . . .” The rabbi’s shoulders sagged. “You must think I’m a fool,” he said quietly. “Obviously, Dassie felt pressured. Maybe we made a mistake.” He glanced at his wife. “Maybe
I
made a mistake.”

Nechama turned her head away. It was another private, painful moment that made me wish I were somewhere else.

“She wrote a beautiful essay,” the rabbi said. “She had help, but the ideas were hers, and the style.”

“Who helped her?”

“Mrs. Wexner. Many of our students hire her for help with the application process—the competition to get into a top college is intense. And Mrs. Wexner didn’t charge us, because I’m studying with her son.”

“Using hours you could put to better use,” his wife said. “You barely have time to breathe, Chaim.”

“The young man wants to deepen his understanding of Judaism, Nechama. How is that a waste of time?”

“It’s not.” She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tense.”

He made a move to take her hand. Instead, he curled his fingers into a ball that he pressed against his mouth.

“Do you have Mrs. Wexner’s phone number?” I asked. “Hadassah may have told her something she wouldn’t tell her parents.”

“I used to think she told us everything.” The rabbi looked at his wife. She was lost in thought. “It’s a good idea, Molly. Dassie likes Mrs. Wexner. I have her number at school. I’ll get it for you tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be discreet,” he added, glancing again at his wife.

I asked whether Hadassah had kept a journal. Nechama told me she hadn’t found one.

“If she
did
have one, she took it with her,” she said.

Disappointing, but not surprising. “I’d like to see the essay she wrote.”

“It won’t tell you anything,” Rabbi Bailor said. “She talks about her desire to protect society and the rights of the individual. Nothing in it explains why she ran away.”

“True, but it may give me a sense of your daughter’s personality, her interests.”

He adjusted his yarmulke. “And how is that relevant?”

“I don’t know that it is.” I was back in Rabbi Bailor’s class, forced to defend my position. In high school I’d enjoyed being challenged. Now I bristled. “As I told your brother-in-law, I’ve never tried to find a missing person. You should really hire a detective.”

“I thought you understood our situation, Molly.” The rabbi sounded pained.

“That’s why I’m here. But I need your cooperation, not your resistance.” I couldn’t believe I was talking with such chutzpah to the teacher I had revered.

He drew back, bewildered. “I’m not resisting.”

“Chaim.”
Nechama sighed his name.

He faced his wife. “Since when is asking questions ‘resisting’?” To me, he said, “Of course, you can read the essay, Molly. I just didn’t see the point. What else?”

He was right. I’d been seeking a justification to vent my resentment from the moment I’d arrived. “I’ll need to talk to Hadassah’s siblings. Who’s the dark-haired young man who was leaving when I arrived?”

“Gavriel. He’s twenty-three, our oldest.” Nechama named with pride a top-ranked New York yeshiva where her son was studying. “He came home Tuesday to give us moral support. He hasn’t talked to Dassie in weeks. Longer, really. And our three younger boys don’t know about Dassie.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“I can’t think of anything.” She turned to her husband. “Chaim?”

“No, nothing,” her husband said. “That’s it?”

I had detected a beat of hesitation and wondered what, if anything, the rabbi was withholding. And why. “I’d like to see Hadassah’s room.”

“Fine. Whatever you want.”

He sounded defeated. The former student in me was uncomfortable. Another part—a part I’m not proud of—enjoyed the moment, and I was flustered by my petty victory.

Nechama pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ll get the essay.”

She left the room through a doorway that led to the hall and shut the door behind her. I was alone with the rabbi. For over a decade I had fantasized about confronting him, but this wasn’t the time.

“Tomorrow is
Shabbos,”
he said. “I keep wondering where Dassie is, what she’s doing. What kind of
Shabbos
will she have?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“It’s been many years since you’ve been here, Molly.”

“Fourteen.” I broke off a cluster of flame grapes from the platter on the table and slipped it onto a plate.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d come. I know you’re still angry with me.”

I plucked a grape and silently recited the blessing before biting into it.

“It wasn’t my decision, Molly.”

“You allowed the school to suspend me for something I didn’t do. You let Rabbi Ingel harangue me in front of all my friends and teachers.”

For a moment I was back in the large, crowded cafeteria. Ingel, tall and rotund with blond hair cut so short it was almost invisible, loomed over me, his blue eyes sparking with fury that contorted the otherwise ordinary features of his clean-shaven face. His words, thundering with a ferocity that bounced off the walls in that awful silence, torched my cheeks and pierced my heart. I couldn’t breathe. I willed the floor to open up and swallow me.

“Rabbi Ingel was agitated, Molly. He—”

“He called me a liar and a cheater, and you didn’t say anything.” My cheeks flamed. My voice quivered with fourteen-year-old hurt. “He said my children would be liars and cheaters.”

Rabbi Bailor sighed. “Rabbi Ingel told me the next day that he wished he could take back what he’d said. He was agitated. He said you got hold of a copy of his final and circulated it before the exam.”

I shook my head.

“Why would Rabbi Ingel accuse you of something you didn’t do, Molly?” he asked gently.

“Because he never liked me? Because I asked questions he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer? Because he didn’t want to give me an A? Because he couldn’t imagine that one of the ‘good girls’ who sucked up to him could have done what he accused me of doing?” I took a breath. “The answer is, all of the above.”

“Rabbi Ingel told us he had proof.”

“And you believed him. That’s what hurts. You
knew
I’d never do something like that. But you didn’t defend me.”

“The truth is, Molly—”

Nechama entered the dining room. I wondered how long she’d been on the other side of the door, what she’d heard.

She handed me a manila folder. “Here’s the essay, and Hadassah’s yearbook photo.” She glanced at her husband, then at me. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine,” I said.

Chapter 7

Aliza had talked to her sister around seven on Saturday night.

“I was getting ready for a date, and she was on the computer,” Aliza told me. “Dassie’s
always
on the computer. And I’m always going on dates.” There was a hint of sadness behind the wry smile.

She was nineteen, petite and more striking than Hadassah, with her father’s dark eyes and a long sleek waterfall of dark brown hair that she kept pushing behind her ears. With her midcalf skirt billowing around her, she sat cross-legged on the baby blue matelassé spread on one of the two twin beds, surrounded by skirts and sweaters, stuffed animals, and an assortment of throw pillows that picked up the blue and mauve in the floral wallpaper. More clothes lay on Hadassah’s bed. Aliza had shoved a pile aside so that I could sit.

“I’m going to the Valley for
Shabbos,”
she said after apologizing for the mess of clothes. “A high school reunion. My parents said I have to go. I’m supposed to smile and pretend everything’s fine, when Dassie could be. . . .” Her lips trembled. “I can’t believe she ran away with a guy she met in a chat room. Why would she do something so
stupid?”

“Hadassah never confided in you about being interested in anyone? Visiting chat rooms?”

“No. She probably figured I’d tell my parents. And to be honest, we aren’t that close.” Aliza shrugged. “She told her friend, though.”

She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but I heard a touch of envy. Though my three sisters and I experienced the typical rivalries and spats, and we occasionally get on one another’s nerves, we’ve always been close.

“Even though you’re roommates?” I said.

“Last year I was in seminary. This year we don’t see each other much. I get home from teaching after six, and I’m taking computer classes at night.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “And dating.” There was the ironic smile again.

“But you’re the one Dassie phoned. How did she reach you, by the way?”

“On my cell. I guess she figured it was easier talking to me than to my mom or dad.”

“What did she say?”

“That she was safe, and we shouldn’t worry. She sounded nervous and hung up before I could ask her anything. I called her back, but she didn’t answer.”

“What about the second call?”

“Yesterday morning, you mean. She asked how our parents were doing. I said, ‘How do you
think
they’re doing?’ ” Aliza scowled. “She said to tell them she was sorry, that she hoped they’d forgive her. I
begged
her to come home. She said she couldn’t. They probably had . . . relations, and she’s ashamed to face my parents.” The girl’s face had turned pink.

I had a squirrelly feeling in my stomach. “Did you get the sense that she was being kept against her will? That she was afraid of this man?”

“I don’t know. She sounded scared, like she was about to cry. I thought it was because she realized what she’d done. But she
said
she was safe. She wouldn’t say that if she wasn’t, right?”

Aliza’s voice was imploring. Her eyes were anxious. I wanted to reassure her, but my unease was growing. I’m not sure why.

“Tell me about the morning Hadassah left, Aliza.”

“There’s not much to tell. I heard her do
negel vasser.”
The ritual morning rinsing of the hands. “And I heard her on the computer.”

“Something for school?” I prompted when Aliza fell silent. “It may not be important, Aliza. Or it could be very important.”

She traced a circle on the spread. “Dassie was on the Internet, instant-messaging someone. I heard a sound every time someone wrote back.”

“What kind of sound?”

“Drums? Something like that.” She hesitated. “I heard it before. A few weeks ago Dassie left and forgot to go off-line. Someone was IM’ing her, over and over. The sound was making me crazy, so I IM’ed the person and said Dassie wasn’t home.”

“Did you read the messages?”

“Just the last few lines. They were all the same. ‘Where are you, sweetie?’ That’s how Dassie sometimes talks with her friends, so I thought it was a girlfriend.”

With drums as a background noise? “Do you remember this person’s screen name?”

“Something with ‘For Jew’ in it. But it was spelled J-U. Dassie found out. She yelled at me, said I was violating her privacy. It was probably this guy, right?” Aliza’s eyes looked troubled.

That was my bet. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Do your parents know about this?”

“No.” Aliza traced another circle on the spread. “I thought they’d be upset I didn’t tell them right away. But it’s not like I knew who it was.” She looked up at me. “Can you tell them?”

On the wall facing the beds were two desks, one of which belonged to Hadassah. I switched on her computer and checked the documents she had recently worked on. A paper on the
Canterbury Tales,
another on the French Revolution. One file folder, COLLEGE APPS, included several versions of the essay Hadassah had written. I would have liked to view the websites she’d visited, but neither Aliza nor her parents knew Hadassah’s password.

They couldn’t tell whether any of her clothing was missing, either. Since she’d started driving, Hadassah usually shopped alone, and she often used her babysitting earnings for her purchases, so her parents weren’t aware of what she bought.

Aliza wasn’t familiar with her sister’s wardrobe.

“We don’t share clothes—well, except sweaters,” she said. “Dassie and I have different figures. She’s much taller, for one thing.”

While Aliza sorted through the mounds of clothes on both beds, I rummaged through Hadassah’s drawers and found clothing typical of the average Orthodox Jewish teenager, along with assorted memorabilia. Ticket stubs to Jewish concerts, letters from camp friends, an elementary school autograph book. Included among the letters was a photo of a brown-haired girl. I showed it to Aliza.

“That’s Batya Weinberg,” she said, her somber tone telegraphing bad news. “She was in Dassie’s class. She died last May.”

I looked at the thin young face and felt a twinge of sadness for someone I didn’t even know. “What happened?”

“She had a heart attack. It happened very fast—like with that athlete who died on the field? They didn’t know he had a heart condition. After Batya died, my dad had a psychologist talk to all the students. It wasn’t just because of Batya. A boy in their class who had cancer died a few months before Batya. And the year before, another girl lost her sister in a car accident.”

A heavy load of grief for one class. “Did Hadassah talk with this psychologist?”

“I guess. She was depressed about Batya and the other kids who died. Everybody was. But you’d have to ask my father.”

I made a mental note to do that. “Aside from Sara Mellon, who else would your sister have confided in?”

Aliza looked sheepish. “Like I said, we’re not close.”

The backpack and overnight bag that Hadassah had taken to Sara’s were in a corner of the room. The bag held her school uniform, underwear, opaque tights, and a pink vinyl zippered bag with toiletries. The school bag contained spiral notebooks, a notepad, pens, folders. I checked the folders and notebooks (in high school I’d written “Mrs. Zack Abrams” countless times), but I found no clue to the identity of Hadassah’s Internet boyfriend.

In the closet I flipped through the clothes in the section Aliza indicated was Hadassah’s. Most of the skirts and blouses (all long-sleeved, as Rabbi Bailor had said) were size two. A few were size 0, a size I’ll never understand. And Abercrombie and Fitch, I heard, sells clothes in size 00.

“Dassie can eat a dozen doughnuts and not gain an ounce,” Aliza said with envy when I remarked on the sizes. “I gained fifteen pounds in Israel and still haven’t lost everything.”

“Everybody gains weight in seminary.” The wonderful fresh bread, the falafel, the chumous and tehina. “You look fine, Aliza.”

“That’s what my parents say, but tell it to the guys. They all want skinny, skinny, skinny.” She sucked in her cheeks, then let out her breath with an uncertain laugh. “And tall. I’m short, so every ounce shows. But I’m on South Beach now, and I lost three pounds.”

I’ve tried the South Beach diet. And The Zone, and a few others. So have my sisters and my mother, who is struggling with the pounds menopause has added. I mostly struggle with chocolate.

Aliza moved back to the bed and picked up a black sweater. “Dassie reads everything you write. She wants to be a lawyer, so I guess that’s why.” She folded a sleeve of the sweater, her eyes on me. “My father said you worked with the police to solve some cases.”

“Not in an official capacity. But I
was
able to help them,” I said, not wanting to sound immodest, yet hoping to give her assurance.

“Do you think you can find Dassie?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to try.”

She finished folding the sweater. “I don’t care what people say if they find out. I just want Dassie home.” Tears flooded her eyes. “I keep thinking, what if I’d told my parents about the IM. . . .”

“Don’t.” I took her hand. “If Dassie was determined to meet this man, she would have figured out a way, even if your parents had kept a watch on her.”

“You really think so?”

I nodded.

Aliza left the room in search of luggage. I took advantage of her absence to poke through the trash can at the side of Hadassah’s bed. Underneath crumpled papers, a handful of used unbent staples that poked my fingers, soiled cotton balls, and tissues stained with dark red lipstick, I discovered tags from Forever XXI, a trendy store. That was interesting. So was the stack of magazines under the bed:
In Style, Us,
Teen Ink, Seventeen.
Maybe typical reading for a Torat Tzion girl, but it didn’t fit with the girl who kept a basin and laver at her bedside so that she could perform the ritual morning hand-washing.

I pushed the magazines back under the bed, but kept the tags.