“There you go again. I
said
I was sorry. Do you plan to throw gross accusations against me for the duration of our lives together?”
Rachel sighed. “No. I don’t plan on doing that.”
“When can I see you? My calendar is clear for Thursday night.”
“Thursday is days away.” Rachel glanced over at Jacob and Ilana sitting quietly.
“Actually, I have a big meeting starting in the next five minutes.”
“And after that?”
Daniel chuckled. “Rachel, I’m sure you wouldn’t really want company right now.”
“I do, Daniel. All my friends have been here to see me. All of them.”
Except Leah.
“But Rachel, I’m sure you aren’t looking your best right now.”
“So that’s it. It all goes back to how I look beside Daniel Gold.”
“That’s not fair, Rachel. Look, as soon as you’re better, and your bruises have all healed, I’ll take you out someplace nice. How about Medici’s?”
“I don’t want to go to Medici’s with you.”
“Oh, come on now. I’ll exchange the bracelet for emerald earrings, and we’ll have a great time.”
“I don’t want your earrings. I want a friend.”
“A friend? We can’t go out and have a good time now, with you all bruised up. I’ll come by on Thursday.”
“Don’t bother, Daniel. Don’t bother coming Thursday, or Friday — or ever — for that matter.”
“What are you saying, Rachel?”
“Get out of my life.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Get out of my life.”
“If this is about trying to sue me, forget it. I’ve already — ”
“I don’t want to sue you. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
“Rachel, come on.”
Rachel was beyond tears. “I’m tired of your obscene behavior followed by apologies. I don’t want to marry you, Daniel. Just leave me alone.”
“Rachel, you just don’t understand — ”
“I understand a lot, Daniel. I understand that I was really naïve and shallow and let social pressures push me into seriously dating a boy who is really, really wrong for me.”
“Rachel, we just need to talk.”
Rachel nodded emphatically. “Okay, I’ll talk. I’ll tell you something loud and clear: It’s over. You lose. If you ever so much as call me again, I will file with the police for harassment.” She slammed the phone down.
Beside her, Jacob looked up from his Talmud. “You’ll be okay,” he said softly.
She smiled at him. “I already am.” For the first time in her life, she felt free.
• • •
Rachel sidled over as Ilana came to sit next to her on the living room couch. Jacob was resting in his chair, snoring gently.
“You’re looking better, Rachel,” Ilana said. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”
“I am feeling better, thanks.” Rachel looked out the window. “My parents are coming back today.”
“I know.” Ilana handed her a handful of Hershey’s Kisses. “We’ll miss having you.”
“Thanks,” Rachel laughed, and then bit into a Kiss.
“Yeah.” Ilana sighed.
“What’s up? You seem upset.”
Ilana leaned back against the couch. “It’s been going well with Macy, but our families don’t want us seeing each other anymore.”
Rachel held Ilana’s hand. “Suri’s bark is worse than her bite, Ilana.”
Ilana shrugged. “My aunt and uncle don’t want me involved with his family.”
“Look, Suri’s nutty — but Macy’s not like his mother. He can come across as immature, but he’s warm and sweet,” Rachel said, praising her good friend. He would be perfect for the right girl. For someone like Ilana.
Ilana looked out the window, too. “I know. So we’ve been going out, anyway. And I hate sneaking around.”
“So when will you tell them?”
Ilana leaned her head close to Rachel. “We hope to tell them after we elope.”
Rachel giggled, feeling somewhat shocked. “Everyone will be majorly upset — and Suri will
hate
getting gypped out of a new wedding outfit. But you have to do what you have to do.”
“I’m just a little scared. I mean what if — ”
“What if Suri finds out about your plans? What if your aunt and uncle are offended that you disobeyed them? What if nobody supports you at all in your choice of marriage partner? What if it’s just you and your husband against the world?”
“How’d you know?” Ilana asked, genuinely surprised.
“Ilana, go for what’s in your heart and you’ll make it work out. Wow. If I ever had someone I truly loved and who loved me, too … ”
“Then?”
Rachel gazed at Jacob. “Then I’d never let him go. No matter what anybody thought or said.”
“But how could it possibly work without everyone’s involvement? Don’t we need the support of our families — our community?”
Rachel nodded slowly. “When it comes down to it, Ilana, who besides God is
ever
there for anyone, really? But to have someone to love — that’s a precious gift. Don’t let him go.”
Ilana frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure what to think anymore. But I hope you are right.”
The phone rang again. Rachel heard Mrs. Zohar pick it up in the kitchen.
Ilana grabbed Rachel’s hand. “I realize the accident left you bruised. But has it affected your sight, too, Rachel?”
“My sight?”
Ilana rolled her eyes, nodding toward her cousin, who was once again engrossed in his tomes of Jewish law.
“Can’t you see, Rachel?” she whispered. “Can’t you
see? Never let him go?
”
• • •
On a warm June morning, Shayna found that she couldn’t close her zipper. Every time she tried, she felt like she was going to pop.
I just bought this skirt,
she thought.
It fit me fine two weeks ago.
She decided to put on a different skirt instead and stood in front of her closet searching for anything that could fit.
She found nothing. Shayna gazed at herself in the closet mirror.
It’s all his fault,
she thought.
I’m working too hard and Shim keeps buying those awful doughnuts.
She stared at the reflection and couldn’t decide who that woman in the mirror was. Whoever was looking back at her certainly wasn’t the drop-dead gorgeous Shayna Goldfarb-Kaplinsky.
She traced her hands over her stomach, her thighs. That evil scale in the bathroom insisted that she had gained thirty pounds in three months. Shayna noticed that her voluptuous curves now looked fat, but somehow she couldn’t reverse the trend.
How can I lose any weight when we are always eating doughnuts and take-out specials?
Shayna stared at herself and sighed. She had no time to take care of herself, which she constantly pointed out to Shim — she had her business to run.
Nu
, she decided.
No time to feel sorry for myself.
She grabbed a skirt with an elastic waist and quickly dressed.
Gotta
get to work now. Will lose the weight some other time.
Shayna rushed off to Avenue J, where she and Shim ran a shop. She smiled at Shim as soon as she got there, excited that customers were already waiting on line to speak with her. “Cars R Us,” she said into the phone as Shim smiled at her, happy that his clever wife figured out how to make good money. He handed her a chocolate doughnut over the counter where he stood. She loved the chocolate ones the best — but in a pinch the jelly ones were okay, too.
Shortly after their wedding, when their wedding gifts ran out and they had little money left, Shayna and Shim had opened up a motor vehicles office to help people with their license plates, registrations, and traffic offenses. Shayna had realized that there were no other shops like that in the neighborhood, and it was a niche they could fill. She felt happy at how her business had grown, though tense about the bills she had to pay. The rent on their apartment, rent for the shop. Gas, electric, utilities … No matter how much they brought in, there was always another bill to pay.
She finished speaking to her customer and hung up the phone.
Mmm,
she thought.
This doughnut is good.
• • •
Shimshon looked at his beautiful wife, amazed at her efficiency. He loved how she had cooked up this business idea and how pragmatic she was about getting everything done. As he stood at the counter in their shop, he drank down a container of chocolate milk that he had bought at the bagel store earlier that morning.
She’s the best!
Shimshon worked the register, delighted at how their lives progressed. When they first opened the shop, Shimshon had told his parents he was learning in the yeshiva, though he spent most of his time at their business. As his commitments to their business grew and his attendance at the yeshiva decreased, Shimshon found himself making elaborate excuses to his father as to why he wasn’t learning.
After a while, even Shimshon got sick of the hypocrisy, and the guy voted most likely to become the Great One of the Generation — who had his Torah handed to him on a silver platter — left the yeshiva.
“Why are you learning?” Shayna had said to him. “We need more money, and I can’t do it all myself!”
“But how can I disappoint my father?” Shim had asked Shayna one night in bed.
“It’s either him or me,” she’d said and turned her back to him.
Under the influence of his wife, he’d unceremoniously said to his father, “Ta, it’s not for me anymore.” And he’d walked out of the Kaplinsky Yeshiva, never to return.
She sure is something else!
Shim thought, biting into his bagel.
Another client entered the shop and Shim took out his clipboard to take notes and attend to him. He felt deeply satisfied at how their business had grown to servicing a steady stream of clients, but the pressures of maintaining it were taking their toll. As they lived on carryout meals, caffeinated drinks, and no exercise, they soon looked ten years older than they actually were. And before long, Shayna’s inner personality began to show on her face.
Nobody entering their shop would ever guess that this plain woman had ever been a beauty, or that the guy behind the counter who helped them fight their parking tickets had at one time been the Prince of the Orthodox Brooklyn Jews.
Only one person breathed freely about the end of Shimshon Kaplinsky’s potential: Shayna’s father, Reb Goldfarb, who could now take Shimshon off his payroll.
• • •
It took a few months of searching, but Macy got a job: an entry-level advertising position at fifteen dollars an hour. They would train him in computer graphics, and the possibilities seemed endless. Offer letter in hand, he signed a lease on his own apartment, the one where he would live with Ilana. With both of them working, they really could afford to get married.
Excited, Macy drove to Brooklyn College to meet Ilana between classes. It was the last day of the semester and she spotted him just as she exited her class.
“I got it!” he shouted, jumping on the great green lawn in the midst of the old gothic classroom buildings.
“That’s amazing!” Ilana shielded her eyes from the sun and smiled as Macy took her books to carry.
“So we’re getting married,” he whispered close to her ear. How he longed to hug her!
Ilana furrowed her brows. “But everyone is against it. Nobody will make us a wedding, and nobody will come.”
“Tonight,” he said.
Ilana laughed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I mean it. I’m going to find a rabbi who will marry us. He’ll get two witnesses to make it a kosher marriage and he’ll tell us what we’re supposed to do. We love each other. I have a job. Why should we wait?”
“But don’t we need a quorum for blessings?”
Macy shrugged. “We’ll do that tomorrow night, and the whole week after if you want. But let’s get married tonight!”
Students walked by on the way to class as Ilana’s face reddened. “Macy, I have to go to the ritual bath before the wedding.”
“So I’ll drop you off at the
mikveh
before we go see the rabbi.”
“My aunt and uncle will have a cow,” Ilana giggled.
“Don’t tell them. Just meet me at our place — the landmark house where those Hessian soldiers slept — on East 22nd Street.”
She nodded. They’d strolled past that old farmhouse dozens of times on Shabbos walks; she knew the landmark well. “This is wild,” she said. “But don’t you think some of our family would want to be involved in our wedding?”
Macy grinned. “We’ll have a week of partying with everybody afterward. I just don’t want to complicate things. As the rabbis say, ‘If not now, then when?’”
Ilana laughed, caught up in his enthusiasm. “Call me if anything comes up. Otherwise, I’ll meet you at our place at eight!”
Abe Shine opened the door to his office and waved hello to Michael Kaufman, who sat at his desk in the office across the hall.
“Good vacation?” Michael asked.
Abe nodded.
“That was a scare with Rachel. Is she all right?”
“She’s recuperating nicely — thanks to the Zohars. I think Debby is in worse shape than Rachel over this — but they’ll both heal.”
Michael laughed. “That Jacob is a solid guy. I hope they get together.”
Abe sat down at his desk and checked his e-mail. “Time to put family matters aside and get back to work,” he said, and rifled through the one hundred-plus messages that had filled his inbox during his short time away.
After taking care of a few clients, Abe looked up from his desk. A haze of Michael’s cigarette smoke enveloped the offices. Coughing, Abe stood up to open a window.
Abe stood by the window inhaling a deep breath of car exhaust. He turned his head to see Michael stub out his cigarette and simultaneously bite his nails. “What’s eating you, Michael?” he said, but Michael didn’t hear him.
Instead, Abe heard the office buzzer ring, and opened the door to two heavyset men in suits, brandishing badges and legal documents.
“This is Agent Thompson. I’m Agent Jackson of the FBI. We are here for the arrest of Michael Kaufman, Esquire, on charges related to illegal money laundering.” The agents proceeded to read Michael the Miranda Act. “You have the right to remain silent … ”