The fantasy world I construct for Liam is a much better world to live in, I think.
36
ELY
I wait until Sunday, and I don’t call her. I text. Not that it makes much difference at this point; if I can’t bear to hear her voice over the phone, I’m not sure how I’ll stand seeing her in the flesh. But by the time I’m sitting in this cramped coffee shop in Crown Heights, hyperaware of how exposed my legs are in shorts compared to those of all the women around me in skirts and stockings, it’s too late to cancel. Every time the bell rings above the door, I inch a little closer to the edge of my seat.
I could always ghost her. It’s not too late.
The door swings open again, and I do the same immediate forward lean and neck crane. Only this time I’m right. There’s no mistaking her.
Dvora’s once-wild hair has been neatly tucked beneath the cap of a modest sheitel, its straight black locks obscuring the tangled waves I know hide underneath. She’s gained weight since the last time I saw her, no longer the gangly kid I shared a bedroom with but a grown woman. But I still recognize the structure of her long limbs and the irregular angle of her Cupid’s bow, which makes it look like G-d put her mouth on crooked. She’s still my sister, despite the stroller she lugs through the door behind her—and the other children she’s probably had by now.
I expected all this, of course. But I didn’t expect how much it would feel like getting the wind knocked out of me. I don’t know why, but some part of me thought maybe it was all a big joke. If you’d ever asked me, as a child, what Dvora and I would be like all grown up, I never would have said this. I would have imagined us rolling into adulthood like slightly larger carbon copies of our previous selves. I thought we’d always spend our nights together, whispering secrets across the telephone wire if we couldn’t murmur them into each other’s ears.
But Dvora is an adult now, a real one. And I guess that means I am too.
Her gaze scans the restaurant, and when it lands on me, I lift one hand. Watching her maneuver the hulking stroller through the narrow aisles between the café chairs would be a form of schadenfreude if I didn’t actually feel kind of bad for her.
Dvora always wanted kids. But that doesn’t make it seem any less miserable to me.
“I like the wig,” I tell her when she sits down, even though I don’t.
“Thank you. So do I.”
I wonder if she’s lying.
The creature in the stroller makes a soft, disgruntled noise, and Dvora leans over to adjust something in the bassinet—from this angle I can’t see her baby’s face. For all I know it’s an octopus in there.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” I say after a moment, once the baby is satisfied with its new pacifier (or whatever it is). “You didn’t have to. I know…I know I caused a lot of pain, before I left.”
“And since,” Dvora says, blunt as she ever was.
It might be fair, but her words still sting. I grip the seat of my chair to keep from recoiling too obviously. “I’m sorry. For everything. I know I…If I could go back, I would. I’ll never forgive myself for expecting you to keep my secrets. Or for all the horrible…horrible things I made you watch.”
Like Chaya’s dead body, gone cold next to mine.
We just stare at each other for a moment, Dvora’s gaze hot and narrowed. I don’t have any right to wish she’d look at me any different. Not after what I did. So I look away first, dropping my focus to the scone I crumbled onto my plate waiting for her arrival. But a beat later Dvora softens and sits back in her chair, hands falling lax in her lap—and when I look up, that awful heat has cooled.
“I’m glad you’re doing well,” she says. “I mean…you look good, that’s all. Are you really clean now?”
“Yeah,” I say, and venture the tiniest of smiles. It feels so fragile on my lips. “A little over four years now.” Not counting a few weeks back, anyway. But Wyatt’s right—one slip doesn’t erase all the work I’ve done. That still counts for something.
“That’s great, Ely. Seriously. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. Took a lot to get here, but I’m never going back.” I reach for my scone before remembering I’ve already reduced it to a pile of crumbs. I awkwardly fiddle with the sleeve on my coffee cup instead. “How have you been? You…you got married, I see.”
She smiles, even if the expression doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Eventually. Yes.”
I can’t help myself. “Eventually?”
She nods. “To Zalman Horowitz. Do you remember him?”
I do, vaguely. I’m pretty sure he was our brother Sholom’s friend—one of the ones always running around shooting fake lasers out of their fingers at each other. Presumably he’s stopped doing that now. “Congratulations.”
Dvora shrugs one shoulder. “I was lucky he would take me, after everything. Our yichus wasn’t worth as much after what happened with you and Chaya.”
I knew that must have been the case, that my expulsion from our community would have left a black mark on my family’s reputation, that even our established, respectable lineage—descended from some of the most revered rabbis and scholars from Lubavitch itself—wouldn’t make up for what I did.
Dvora probably counts herself lucky she ended up married to someone close to our own age, even if he did have laser fingers.
“What about Malka?” I ask. “And our brothers? Did they…?”
“Gedaliah and Sholom Ber have just started shidduchim, so we’ll see. But Malka is married. She didn’t fare quite as well as me. She started the matchmaking process right after you left, so she was still…. It was too soon, I guess. It took her four years to find her bashert. But they’re happy together. She just had another son.”
“Baruch Hashem,” I murmur. Praise G-d. I don’t know what else to say.
I wish I could have danced with Malka at her wedding. With Dvora at hers. I wish I could have seen Dvora’s beautiful face emerge from beneath her veil, beaming with happiness.
Is she happy? Is her husband a good man? Did she learn to love Zalman and his laser fingers? Does he love her in return?
I can’t ask her any of that. Maybe one day, a dozen years from now, if she ever forgives me. Maybe then.
But I doubt it.
I think about Malka and her last-chance husband, her four years of waiting, alone and wondering more and more if anyone would ever consent to marry her. I wonder if she hates me every day for making that her life or if she just smiles and turns her face toward heaven and recites the same prayers as always, her faith perennially unshaken.