The Mystics of Mile End (34 page)

“It's—I don't know if you know this, but—it's something your dad was working on. The Tree of Life, I mean. Before he died, he was writing a book on it, and I think—I think maybe he wasn't just writing about it, you know?”

Lev's gaze shifted over to an old photo of his dad on the credenza—and stayed there.

“Lev? What is it?”

“Nothing . . . It's just—I just remembered—before my dad died, I saw him once in front of the yeshiva. He had his hand raised to his chest, like this, and he looked like he was . . .”

“Was what?”

Lev ripped his gaze away from the photo. “Praying.”

“Praying?
Your
dad?”

Lev smiled faintly.

“Anyway,” Alex said, “I think Samara is trying to finish what he started. And I think the reason she sent me those letters was because she needed to—ground herself, sort of. Tie herself to something, or someone, before she got too high up. Sort of like ballast.”

Lev blinked. Alex was hoping he wouldn't ask why Samara would want to tie herself to
him
and not her own brother—and, luckily, he didn't. Instead he led the way to Samara's room.

Samara was sitting cross-legged on the bed with her back against the wall. Jenny was leaning over her and whispering in scared, pleading tones.

Lev cleared his throat. “Alex is here.”

“Oh!” Jenny turned around. “Hi. Thank you so much for coming.”

Alex nodded, wondering why in the world
she
would thank
him
for coming. Of course he'd come. Where else would he be?

“I think Alex might be able to help,” Lev said. “Can we maybe give him a minute alone with Samara?”

“Of course, of course,” Jenny said, smiling gratefully at Alex on her way out the door.

Alex edged closer to Samara. Her skin was paler than he'd ever seen it. She was thinner, too. Her dark hair, which had always been full and wavy and beautiful, looked stringy now, as if she hadn't showered in days. The sight of her sitting like a statue with those empty, unfocused eyes pained him, and he looked away toward the window. The old paper sign was gone from it, but he could still see the gummy residue left behind by the Scotch tape that had held her message in place all those years.
Please call
. And he had, easily deciphering her series of taps and rests, the long strings of binary code through which she conveyed her innermost thoughts. But the
silence emanating from her now was different. There were no ones, just zeros. One big zero, to be precise. A zero so large you could crawl through it.

Was that what she was trying to do? Crawl straight through silence, straight through nothingness, to the other side?

Chilled by that thought, he glanced over at her bookshelf, seeking comfort and familiarity. Sure enough, there were all her old books, lined up in a row in the order he knew so well. Five volumes of the Pentateuch interspersed with the five volumes of
Scientific American
he'd given her: her way of telling him without telling him that religious mysticism and scientific study weren't as distinct as he liked to believe. On impulse, he trailed a finger along them. Samara's body suddenly shivered, as if he had run a finger down her spine.

He crouched by the bed. “Samara?”

Silence.

“Can you hear me?”

Silence.

“I know you can hear me.”

Silence.

“Listen, I got your letters. I know what you're trying to do. But it's enough now, okay? You've gone far enough, don't you think? Lev's getting scared. And Jenny. And me, too. Do you think . . .” He watched her closely. “Do you think you could come back now? Please?”

For a second, he thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. His heart lit up with fire—but in the next second her eyes went blank, and a thick fog of silence blanketed the room.

He panicked. All this time he had assumed that he was the one who would be able to save her. That was why she'd sent
him
the letters, wasn't it? That was the simplest explanation. All things being equal, the simplest explanation tended to be the right one. And
yet here he was, helplessly rocking on his heels, babbling on and on, hardly knowing what he said. Trying to drown out the silence. But the silence was winning. It was becoming acrid, corrosive. It burned his throat and bleached his insides. Maybe he couldn't save her. Maybe no one could. He fled.

When he found Lev and Jenny in the living room, the naked hope in their faces was almost more than he could bear.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I couldn't . . . she wouldn't talk to me.”

Jenny burst into tears, dissolving before his eyes, her shoulders crumpling under the weight of her sorrow.

She wept for a long time, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. And the more she cried, the more the darkness was washed from his eyes, ebbing away in small, cold waves. A strange lump was rising in his throat. He was slowly coming to understand that, even if Samara did return, she would not be returning to him.

He looked at Lev and saw a deep sympathy in his friend's face.

“I'm going to get help,” Alex murmured. “I'll be back soon.” When he left the house a moment later, the cold rain that sluiced through his raincoat and bit into the back of his neck came as a beautiful distraction, an exquisite relief.

S
omeone was knocking on Glassman's front door, but it took a few seconds for the sound—desperation on wood—to register in his brain. Even then, he did not rise from his wife's side. Because, just then, he had his hands full: in the left, his wife's palm, and in the right, a pill bottle.

When the knocking stopped, Glassman breathed a sigh of relief. But a second later he heard footsteps clambering up the stairs.

“Mr. Glassman!” Alex's voice ricocheted off the bedroom walls, hitting him between the shoulder blades. “I'm so glad you're still up. I need your help!”

But Glassman, his back to the door, did not respond.

A floorboard creaked as the boy stepped into the room. “Hello?”

Glassman's fingers tightened around the pill bottle, hiding it from view. “Go away,” he said. “I am tired.”

“But—it's Samara—she's back, and she won't talk to anyone, and . . .” The boy's voice faltered, close to hysteria. “I don't know what to do. I mean, I explained to Lev what was happening at least, but—now what?”

Glassman didn't answer.

“Because I mean, before, when I was here, you said she might not be able to come down, and you were right. She's—stuck. But there must be something you can do, right? Some method, some way of helping her? Please, just tell me. What should I do?”

Glassman saw a wretched road forking at his feet. He was being forced to choose between the dying and the living. Between his wife and Samara. He loved them both, wanted to travel both paths simultaneously, but with every passing second he could feel the boy's impatience growing, could feel the pressure mounting to choose, choose already! Left, right, left, right, his eyes flicked from side to side. He heard Alex take another step toward him and the pressure broke him and he blurted, “Come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Alex paused. “If I come back tomorrow, you'll help me?”

He had struck out on a path. Now momentum compelled him down it.

“Come back tomorrow,” Glassman repeated.

The boy hesitated. “Okay. I'll come first thing in the morning, I guess. Are you okay?”

“Thank God,” Glassman said. “Thank God.”

“Okay. Well. See you tomorrow, then, Mr. Glassman. Good night.”

The boy left.

Glassman listened to his receding footsteps. As he heard the front door click shut downstairs, his shoulders relaxed. In a way, he was glad Alex had come. At least now he could be sure he and his wife would be found quickly, before they had a chance to decay.

On the bed, their dead bodies splayed out. Just that. Nothing more.

Because, of course, he knew. That story about the human heart and its ration of words? It was just a story. Just a
meshuggeneh
story. But it was the story he'd signed on to, because that was what he'd thought she wanted, that was what he'd thought she needed—a story that would justify a life of silence. For sixty-three years he had lived by that story. Sixty-three years and no “I love you,” no “I hate you,” sixty-three years without—without even “hello”! What would he not have paid for this one little word, this one little nothing of a word? Hello! And still he did not break the contract. Not even inside his own head! He thought: She wants silence? I will give her silence! He thought: She wants to believe in a
meshuggeneh
story? So I, too, will believe. And he had gone on believing for so many years that to abandon the narrative now, at this stage, was inconceivable.

And Samara? As the minutes trickled by, he told himself he had done his part. He had taught Alex the basics of the Tree of Life. The boy didn't think he'd be able to talk her down, but surely, in time, he would. He was a bright kid. And if Samara had chosen to write to him, she must have known he would eventually be the one to help her.

As for Glassman, he'd already started down this path. To reverse course now would require great energy. And he didn't have any energy left at all.

He tilted the bottle and the pills spilled out onto his palm.

In the darkness of the bedroom, they shone like stars.

Because he wanted to see their brighter counterparts one last time, he went over to the window, but the sky was gray and full of mist. Even that he would not be granted. Even that.

So.

He raised his palm, opened his mouth, tilted his head backward, and—

The pills rolled off his palm and clattered to the floor, skittering in all directions. He blinked. There in the branches of Katz's tin can tree, a sign no amount of mist could obscure. A bright yellow raincoat.

For one beautiful second, he believed that the girl in the yellow raincoat was his wife. Not the woman wasting away behind him, but his wife as a girl, the girl she'd been on the day they reunited after the war. In the moments right before the terrible mistake. But it wasn't his wife. It was Samara.

What was she doing there? In Alex's raincoat. And alone. Through the window of the Meyer house he saw that Alex, Lev, and the blond-haired girl had all fallen asleep in the same room, their tired child limbs splayed out across two couches and a chair. The girl they were all there to keep an eye on had apparently snuck past them.

Samara was halfway up the tree. She was reaching for a branch that did not look strong enough to support her weight. Glassman's body flooded with pity. Not for the girl. For itself. Its tired limbs, its creaking bones. Its envelope of loose skin, stamped with secrets and age spots and numbers, a worn letter someone had forgotten to send. To be sent at last was all he wanted now. But in that instant, he knew he would not be able to leave the world that night. He would not get to depart at the same time as his wife. Because, although it was too late to save her, to pry her out of the shell of silence she was stuck in, it was not too late to save Samara.

G
lassman called her name from his doorway, but his voice was snatched by the wind. Bareheaded, a light drizzle pricking the skin of his face and hands, he wrapped his arms around himself and ventured deeper into the night.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!

Trudging down the street, wiping mist from his eyes, he made out Katz's old oak tree shining in the distance. Its tin cans jangled crazily. He sliced toward it until the figure in the yellow raincoat stood out in sharp relief. He tried again: “Samara!”

Nothing but wind and water rushed back at him.

He came nearer still, shielding his eyes. The girl was perched in the middle branches of the tree, upper body hunched over, hair plastered to her forehead, hands blue with cold. She was deliberately forcing her body to suffer. Ayin. Divestment of the physical. Ego-annihilation.

What could he do, what could he possibly say in the face of such resolve?

In that moment, the mistake that had haunted him for months returned to him in full force. And, though it cost him everything to finally give it voice, he knew it was the only way.

“Samara,” he began, a few feet from the base of the tree. “It is very cold. Are you not cold up there, all by yourself? You are not warm enough—a thin raincoat like that! Just such a raincoat my Chayaleh wore, long, long ago. Soon after the war. If you will permit me, I will tell you the story.”

The girl said nothing, so he went on.

“It was a night like this one. Cold. Very cold. The air that night was ice and also fire, air so cold it burned. She said I should meet her in the park, you see? Or, well, her cousin Reuben says she says I should meet her in the park. Lower . . . East . . . Side, he says, slowly, slowly, into the telephone. As if I am a simpleton. But it doesn't matter, it's not important, the important thing is she is alive and I am going to see her, tonight, tonight!

“So, good, I go to the park. I sit by the fountain. I wait. And, let me tell you, the wind is freezing! The skin on my hands, freezing! My face and my hair and my eyeballs and my
tuches,
freezing, freezing! But, let me also tell you, I do not even think of the cold. Do not even remember I have a body. All I can think of is her. Will she cry? Will I hold her? Will she give me this small gift—her crying, me holding her, not the other way around? Will we talk all night long until our tongues fall out? So much to say to each other! About every brother and sister and mother and father and cousin and friend, so many questions to answer. For example: Left or right? For example: Dead or alive? For example: How? And I think it will take us a very long time, the rest of our lives maybe, to answer all of these questions.

“It is cold. The stars are going down. Almost a whole night I am waiting for her in this park. I think: She is testing me. I think: This silence is a test. But I like tests, I am good at tests. So easy she thinks it is to push me away? Ha! I will show her.