Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(42)

I wrote to Sammy with my new address and he wrote back. When I called, he picked up the phone. He asked if he could come visit me and I didn’t bother telling him to ask Eli. The next Sunday morning I picked him up a quarter mile from his house, behind a ladies’ clothing store, and we went to Stewart’s for ice cream cones. We sat on the bench outside and watched the people come and go, filling up their cars with gas, buying groceries and lottery tickets. I didn’t ask him about yeshiva, and he didn’t mention it. Sundays became our day. That summer we had picnics in Harriman State Park and when it got cold we went to the Galleria mall in Poughkeepsie and saw movies at the theater. Sometimes Isaac came with us, and sometimes Sammy helped us with projects at the yellow house. Within a year, the families had left and it was just me and Isaac, plus the occasional Borough Park refugee needing a place to stay for a few days or weeks. We tore up the ugly carpet and got on our hands and knees to sand the floors beneath. We dug a garden, and by the third year we were growing tomatoes and herbs and green beans and squash. Sammy loved it. Manual labor was not encouraged in Roseville; extra time is spent studying. Isaac had begun working odd jobs for a contractor in New Paltz, and he taught me and Sammy how to use an electric drill and a level. For my birthday one year, Sammy surprised me with a window box for flowers. He said the work made him feel strong. He asked me and Isaac if we thought someday he could make a living using his hands.

“There are people moving to Roseville all the time,” he told us. “Maybe I could help build houses like Isaac?”

“You can do whatever you want,” I told him. “You have so much life ahead of you.”

One week, a girl was with Sammy when I got to our meeting spot.

“Can Pessie come, too?” he asked me.

“Why not?” I said. And off we went, with Pessie in the backseat. Immediately I could see why Sammy liked Pessie so much. She had as much energy as he did, and a wild, fantastic imagination. She reminded me a little bit of Gitty when she was a girl, although she wasn’t as mischievous. Pessie could make up a story that took an hour to tell. She could stand in an empty yard and find as much to do as if she were in the middle of Times Square. She was a tiny thing, with frizzy brown hair and an underbite. She wore the frum uniform—blue button-up blouse, long black skirt, ballet flats—which made her look ten even as she turned into a teenager. She was very different from me at her age—I had been more restless, always looking for a button to push, a dark place to explore—but when I looked at Pessie I remembered how little I knew about the world as a child. And when she came to me and asked about the blood in her underwear I knew they still weren’t teaching girls about their bodies. We went to the drugstore for pads and the bookstore to look at Our Bodies, Ourselves. Pessie couldn’t take a book like that home, but I bought it for her, and she read it when she came to visit.

Sammy was more alive with Pessie beside him. They talked over each other, excited and overflowing with stories and details about this neighbor who smelled bad and that cousin whose wife had stopped shaving her head. One afternoon, as we sat around my kitchen table drinking Cokes and eating Doritos Cool Ranch chips—Sammy’s favorite—Pessie said that her older sister had just gotten engaged to a boy from Borough Park.

“She is scared,” Pessie said.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Does she love him?”

Pessie shrugged. “No. But my mommy says that eighteen is too young for love. She says you get married first and then Hashem brings you love.”

“I fell in love when I was eighteen,” I said. “With a goy.”

For a moment, Pessie and Sammy, who were probably sixteen at the time, were speechless. They looked at me, and then each other, and then Isaac, trying to decide if I was teasing them.

“No, you didn’t,” said Sammy, his lips furry with yellow powder.

“I did,” I said. “His name was Brian.”

“Was he Chassidish?” asked Pessie.

I shook my head. “He was studying to be a Christian minister.”

They looked so shocked, I laughed.

“Does Eli know?” asked Sammy.

“He only knows I left with a man for a little while. He doesn’t know what happened while I was gone.”

“What happened?” said Pessie, leaning in, ready for gossip.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes!” screamed Pessie. Sammy and Isaac exchanged a look. Perhaps I should have read something into it, but I didn’t. I was ready to tell them. I was thinking that knowing something about my life that no one else in the family knew might make Sammy feel closer to me. I told them about the bookstore in Manhattan and the pool at the YMCA and the trips to Coney Island and the bus to Florida. I told them about living in the college dorm and about your grandfather’s job at Disney World. Pessie asked lots of questions, but Sammy was quiet. I keep looking at him, trying to figure out what he was thinking, but his face gave nothing away.

“What was your wedding like?” asked Pessie.

“We did not get married,” I said.

“Sammy said you were married, though.”

“That was later. In Israel. Brian and I were engaged, but things changed.” I looked at Sammy. I needed to see his face as I said this. “I had a baby.”