The Mystics of Mile End (33 page)

“Lev, I—”

“This whole time, she's been writing to you, she's been climbing the Tree of Life, and you—” His voice trembled. “You've been hiding her letters from me?”

“I'm sorry! I'm really, really—”

Lev shook his head, one violent motion that cut into Alex like
the sharpest gust of wind. “Are you crazy? Do you know how dangerous this is? It's not safe, she's not safe! You should have told me. I could have helped her!”

“I'm sorry! I didn't want to bother you, you were already so worried and unhappy and this would just be one more—”

“Exactly! You knew how unhappy I was, you knew how much I wanted to hear from her! And this whole time, you just watched and—you said nothing!”

“I thought—”

“What? That you could help her more than I could? That you know her better than me? You don't know anything about her! You think she's in love with you? You're so blind! Don't you know—don't you even see—”

Alex felt cold all over. “See what?”

Lev turned on Glassman. “And you!” he said. A look of fury passed over his face, a mixture of betrayal and hurt and anger and confusion that played out over his features and cast them, somehow, in a light of beauty.

Alex was filled with the terrible sensation of having knocked over a piece of glassware that has yet to strike ground. In that split second before it crashes into a thousand pieces, a pristine silence seems to be all that exists in the world. It was because that silence had lodged itself firmly in his throat that, when his best friend threw the pill bottle down on the desk and stormed out of the house a second later, all he could do was blink.

L
ev slammed the door behind him. He paced the hall, cold fury like a hand at his back, driving him this way, then that. The framed photographs of his parents blurred in the edges of his vision as he whipped past, and that added to his fury—the sensation of looping ceaselessly between their two gravitational pulls, like some crazed planet that couldn't decide which star to orbit.

Tears burned in his throat. How could they? His best friend and his oldest teacher. The only two people he'd thought he had left. Though he'd stopped being able to believe in God's plan, he'd never stopped believing in them—their faithfulness, their good intentions toward him. But now.

He struck the tears from his eyes. He refused to be sad. He was done with sadness. Reaching into his pocket, he located the scrap of paper she'd given him. The scrap of paper with her phone number on it. He dialed and she answered on the first ring. Half an hour later, she was standing there in front of him. Val. Valérie.

He greeted her at the door with two empty wineglasses in hand. The wine was waiting for them on his father's desk.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said, smiling brightly and leading her into the study.

But instead of returning that smile, she inspected him gravely. The tips of her hair were very dark against her red woolen coat, and when she took the coat off and draped it over the chair, they stood on end, static fanning them around her face in a black halo. His pulse quickened at the sight of it.

“You're lying,” she said. “Something
is
wrong.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“But
how
do you know?”

“I know,” she said again, a tiny smile twinkling in the corner of her mouth, as though she was enjoying a private joke at his expense.

“Fine,” he said, turning his back to her and reaching for the wine bottle on the desk. He filled both their glasses and clinked his to hers—somewhat savagely—before bringing it to his lips and draining it.

She sipped her wine more slowly. He felt the heat of her gaze on
his face. Whatever she saw there must have softened her because after a minute she said, “It's Friday night.”

“So?”

“So it's Friday night, and you're a religious Jew, which means you're not supposed to be using the phone. And yet,” she said, “you called me.”

The cold fury was pressing at his back again; it pushed the next words out of his heart, up his throat, and off his tongue in a voice that was almost a snarl. “Did my dad tell you that?”

“I'm sorry?”

“That I'm religious. Did he tell you that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he must have mentioned it at some point, I guess. Why?”

A deep V had appeared between her eyebrows. He said, more calmly, “No reason. I was just wondering, you know, what he used to say about me. What he thought of me.” Sitting on the edge of the desk, he put down his glass and gave a sad little grin. “I miss him, that's all.”

The V vanished from her forehead. She put her glass down next to his and perched beside him on the edge of the desk, where, very briefly, she hesitated. Then she reached out and touched his hand. He laced fingers with her, and found that her palm was warm. Her pulse, beating against his thumb, was racing. “I miss him, too,” she whispered.

He looked up.

Their eyes connected.

And in that instant, he could tell she saw something in his gaze that troubled her—but before her brain could process it and tell her body to stop him, he leaned in and kissed her.

Val's mouth was petal-soft, and for one full moment it surrendered to his mouth breathlessly, passionately, almost gratefully. As if these were the lips she loved and had missed all these months.
Her cardigan was slipping off one shoulder; he brushed it aside and ran his fingers over her skin. He brought his hands to her hips—and felt her body seize up beneath his touch. She froze, her torso ramrod-straight, before pushing him off with both hands.

“You knew,” she said.

He stared down at the carpet.

She took his chin and forced it up. “This whole time, you knew about your dad and me, and you didn't say anything! And now”—she gestured at the space between them—“now
this
?”

With a violent downward motion, he shook his head free of her grasp.

In a whisper that was suddenly strangely kind, strangely devoid of anger and full of pity, she said, “Why? Why would you want to do a thing like this?”

His mouth broke open and an anguished noise escaped him. “Because,” he groaned, “I didn't want to believe anymore . . . I needed to
not
believe . . . and I just had to do something not good, so I could prove to myself that I don't believe. I needed to do something so bad . . .”

He stopped. How could he explain it to her? How he'd needed to do something so bad he'd be shut out of faith for good, no more looping back and forth. How seducing his father's lover was the worst possible thing he could think of to do. How he'd come to her seeking his own perdition.

A look of astonishment came over her face. “No,” she said. “I won't let you. I won't let you do this to yourself. Do you hear me?”

Lev said nothing.

“Do you hear me?” she repeated, louder now.

His throat felt tight.

“Do you hear me?” she said, and this time she took him by the shoulders and shook.

At her touch something in him released. Tears came to his eyes
and he didn't try to stop them. He was nodding, laughing and crying, his shoulders suddenly wonderfully light. He had spent the past few months dangling over the edge of an abyss, psyching himself up to jump—and just when he'd been about to do it, Val had flung out an arm and caught him. And in catching him, in refusing to let him go through with his self-destructive plan, she had performed an act of kindness that he now understood was the very mirror and mechanism of God's kindness. It was not from on high but from on low, not through miracles but through human hands that the divine plan was carried out.

The people in Glassman's story—the ones who had words to describe every experience under the sun—he envied them. Right now, he couldn't find the words to thank her. But they would come. And when they did, she would be around to hear them. So, instead of speaking, he shot her a smile. This time, she returned it.

S
itting with his back to the window the next day, Glassman watched the late-afternoon sunlight brushing his wife's skin with gold. It was unseasonably warm, but he felt cold all over. Earlier that day the nurse had said his wife probably wouldn't make it through the night. Glassman had pressed his ear to her chest and inwardly agreed with the nurse's assessment. The heartbeat was so hollow that he was struck by admiration for his wife's diligence. She had expelled those words, all right. Had disposed of them thoroughly. In her veins and arteries, the blood was running freely now, not a single noun or verb to slow its passage from the heart.

She had expelled the unspoken punctuation of life long since: The exclamation points she'd used up in their lovemaking, nights when they gestured wildly on each other's bodies. The commas she'd baked into curled pastries, never-ending rugelach whose trips in and out of the oven broke each day into smaller, more digestible clauses. And the ellipses, those she had been expressing all
winter long. Because what was this extended sleep if not one last protracted pause before the sentence of life was studded with its final period? After months of waiting, a beautiful and forgiving full stop was finally coming into view, and at the sight of it Glassman breathed a sigh of relief. He was all eager anticipation to end this passage and come up, flush left, against the first paragraph of whatever story awaited them in the next new life.

On the nightstand beside the bed the bottle of white pills beckoned.

He picked it up but did not open it. For a few minutes, he allowed himself the pleasure of floating out into a future he knew he would not inhabit. Allowed himself to picture Alex knocking on the door, climbing the stairs, entering the bedroom. Finding his teacher. Retracing his steps only to return minutes later, breath short and eyes wide, with his best friend. They would stand in the doorway and survey the scene. And what a scene it would be! On the bed, his dead body splayed out. His exploded chest unburdened. The raw flesh of his heart sluggishly leaking the last of what was spattered all around the room. Words. Sticking to the sheets, hanging from the bedposts, clinging to the grooves of the rolltop desk, plastered to the window. All the words he would never have been able to pump from his heart in time if it hadn't been for those little white helpers, contracting the muscle faster and faster and—

The sound of a car honking outside roused him from this fantasy.

Rising from his wife's side, he went to the window. A taxi had stopped in front of the Meyer house. The car door opened and a girl he vaguely recognized stepped out onto the curb. She had pale blond hair, and deep concern was etched across her face. She waited, apparently for someone else to step out of the car.

When nobody did, she reached her hand inside and helped
another girl from the cab. And this girl Glassman recognized instantly, his breath catching in his chest. Joy flared up inside him. But a second later it was snuffed out again. Because, looking at her, he knew immediately that something was wrong.

Samara stood stock-still on the sidewalk, her hair blowing out behind her in the breeze. Her gaze dull and hollow. Her mouth a thin, flat line. She was staring straight at her childhood house, and yet her face registered not even the barest recognition.

L
ev hopped down Katz's front steps with a smile. At the curb, he turned around and saw the man waving from the window. He waved back, his heart full of gratitude. He had been nervous about coming over here, afraid of the reaction he might get, but Katz had accepted his apology instantly. The sick fluid of dread running through his body dissolved and made way for relief. A few weak rays of light landed on his skin and he savored them, bending his steps toward home.

But when he rounded the corner, the smile fell from his face.

Jenny was pounding on the door and ringing the bell. His sister stood absolutely still, staring into space. Her gaze passed over him and in it he saw neither love nor remorse, just a terrifying nothingness. He felt the dread seep back into every corner and crevice of his body, spilling out onto the sidewalk in a long, dark shadow.

Jenny turned and saw him. “Lev!” she called, relief flooding her face as she ran to meet him. “Thank God you're here, I need your help, I don't know what to do. It's Samara—she showed up on my doorstep, and she fainted, and since then she's hardly spoken or eaten or—”

But he was running past Samara, running past Jenny. Climbing the steps to the door, turning his key in the lock, stepping over the threshold. Jenny scrambled up behind him, grabbing his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she cried. Her eyes were full of fear and
her fingernails were digging into his jacket. “You can't just leave us here! You need to help her!”

“I am,” he said before pulling away and racing into the darkness of the house. “I'm calling Alex.”

T
en minutes later Alex was at the door, rain drizzling down the neck of his yellow raincoat, fists balled up tight in his pockets. Lev opened it before he could knock. “Is she okay?” Alex said.

Lev led the way into the hall, then raised a hand to scratch at the tiny scar above his brow. “I don't know,” he murmured, blue eyes blinking fast. “She won't talk. Not to me, not to anyone. She doesn't even really move that much, except when someone kind of pulls her along. Jenny brought her here, and they're in her old room now, so.”

“What do you want me to do?” Alex asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Talk to her. Try to get her to talk to you.” Lev studied the floor, shifting his feet. “You . . . I mean . . . you're the only one who really knows what's going on with her, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. But, honestly? I don't really know that much.”

“But you know what she's trying to do and . . . you probably also know why?”