January 1974
Walter takes a hit of cardamom mixed with ginger and mace, places his palms flat on the floor, and springs his body into a headstand. Fluid as paint, he thinks. Still in the game. He lands on his feet and considers the drawing he wants to finish before the new semester begins. Walter is sketching Sonia as he remembers her, but he has no photograph to work from and his memory is vague. He has found the shape of her cheeks, her eyes, her cascading hair—certainly not a true representation, but he captured something.
When he returned home from Eden Ranch that last time Sonia began appearing in his dreams and she has become a frequent guest. She doesn’t speak, just stands before him in the slip and sweater she was wearing when she was shot, and stares at him with cool indifference. At first Walter wasn’t taunted by her appearance but the regularity of the dream seemed to him like a request, and he picked up a piece of charcoal and began. His studio has become a tangle of sketchbooks and ungraded papers; the books he and Rosalie tore through for their project are stacked in a corner, exactly where they left them.
The door has shut, he thinks. Eden Ranch was the ending, sealed by the fire. May life be sweet for the rebbetzin and her rabbi. May they grow old together in the place where their words bloom, where their Torah flowers and bears fruit. May they teach others. May they prosper without me.
Walter groans and shouts: No! He takes another hit of the spice and sorts through his pile of unopened mail. No papers; just a few journals and a letter postmarked from London.
January 4, 1974
Dear Walter,
You may remember me from the American Colony Hotel—I am Rosalie’s friend. I don’t think she has any intention of telling you directly, but she and Sol lost their son Lenny to Hodgkin’s. As you can probably imagine, they are not shouldering this tragedy very well. I don’t want to intrude but I believe Rosalie would like you to know what has befallen them.
Madeline Rosenblum
Walter phones Rosalie and insists she fly out to see him; Rosalie tells Sol that Madeline has invited her to London. At first Sol grumbles about the cost of the ticket and then asks how long she plans to be away. Rosalie arrives at Walter’s empty studio on a Monday afternoon. She lets herself in, lies down on her coat, and sleeps on the floor. When Walter arrives he lies beside her, rests his hand on her hair, and asks for nothing. He cancels classes and meetings for the rest of the week and he stays with Rosalie and offers no words. When they finally make love they become swimmers in a familiar ocean. Time loses its context and the dimensions of the studio become meaningless. Walter passes spices over Rosalie’s body as he once did, and they kindle a hunger that rivals their days in the upper geniza and the lower geniza, only this time with a slow passion that carries its own language. They barely speak. They allow the peacocks to wander inside and scatter droppings and feathers. They forget to buy food and consume only what Walter has on hand in the studio: peanuts dipped in cumin, pickles and chopped herring from a jar, a bottle of Champagne, stale Saltines laced with cardamom and garlic.
The studio is their deserted mountain cabin, their geniza, their cave in the snow, every hidden place in the world and no place at all. It is the most ugly slum on earth and the most heavenly palace. At night Rosalie lifts her head from the futon and gazes at the city lights surrounding the East Bay. She believes the lights are stars and she is floating in the sky. Only their bodies are real. Rosalie is forty-six years old. Walter is fifty-four. They are alone for four days and their recognizable lives become obliterated, irrelevant. For both of them, this time is not joyful, but necessary.
Rosalie is scheduled to be picked up in two hours to make her flight home. She has not unpacked her bag, showered, or combed her hair since she arrived. Walter holds up a mirror so she can see how her hair is knotted into haphazard dreadlocks, her face parched and sallow.
“You were making love to a witch,” she says.
“A goddess,” says Walter. “My holy rebbetzin.”
“What does that make you?”
“Not a rabbi.”
“Thank God,” says Rosalie.
“We are the excommunicated; free to live our prayers out of bounds.”
“I thought you don’t pray.”
“My whole life is a prayer,” says Walter. “So is yours.”
“You sound like a rabbi.”
Walter laughs. “Our transcendent trifecta.”
“Don’t bring Sol into this,” says Rosalie.
“There is always a third,” says Walter.
“What I felt for you was always separate from my marriage; it still is—”
“The third is not always a person.”
“Oh. God in the room. The three under the wedding canopy. Pulpit words. Convenient lies. Take them and parade them before your students, Walter. They are free for the asking. I’m finished with all that.”
She reaches for the bottle of Champagne and takes a swig. “No more lies,” she says. “No more dried flowers falling out of a book in a geniza. No more holy rebbetzin channeling some precious wisdom. I fell into this world; an accident of lineage. The rabbi’s daughter marries a rabbi. But it didn’t have to be this way. I could have become an archaeologist and my Torah would have been a threshing bowl I unearthed in Indonesia. I could have become a cellist and my Torah would have been Bach. The celestial answer would be unspoken; I’d have no use for these misleading words, this constant attempt at awkward metaphors. What a life that would be!”
“We traveled the route of words, darling. Both of us.”
“Years ago I would have conjured some lovely quip to suggest a hidden truth. Such fun I had! But I’m too old to dredge up meanings. And yes, I love you. And I’m tired of this. And Sol—”
“You saved him.”
“The purple binder, placed into the rabbi’s hands by his loyal wife. Such a bullshit artist. And these congregants, dumb and hungry and needy, they hang on to my words, our words, his words. I despise them for it. Even now they expect us to show up and say, Oh, we learned from our loss, oh, God took Lenny for a reason, oh, it all makes sense in some kabbalistic terrain.”
“The myth of the eternal—”
“At least you don’t pretend, Walter. Your God has no name. You don’t parade your spiritual life in front of an eager audience.”
“Saved by indirection and distance. Wise me.”
“I used to envy you. I would picture you looking out over the Pacific, free to think your own unmollified, uncorrupted thoughts. I wanted to live in your brain, not this Shabbat-addled Torah-true fiction that I can’t escape.”
“It was your illusion to live, just like my illusion belongs to me. Does anyone live without some veneer of faith? Even the so-called faithless are circling a great mystery. No one is immune.”
“We wanted it both ways, Walter. Spices for the body and poetic words about the soul to satisfy ourselves beyond the body. A seesaw of meaning.”
“Wanted? Past tense, Rosalie?”
“Wanted. Want. But it’s not only you that I want; there’s something else I have no words for. Oh, Walter. Don’t let me stop talking. I can’t stop—”
Walter kisses Rosalie, and the sky darkens around them. The only place they can travel now is where their bodies take them and they travel there together all night.
Rosalie misses her plane.
Six weeks later Sol and Rosalie lie in bed. The sun has not yet risen but Sol kicks off the blanket and reaches for his tallit and tefillin. Rosalie grabs his hand, pulls him toward her, and whispers in his good ear.
“Is this some kind of biblical joke? You’re on the pill!”
“I stopped taking it when Lenny got sick. What was the point? I was getting older and we barely bothered.”
“Barely is not never and forty-six is not too old,” says Sol. His eyes mist. “This is a blessing.”
“Yes it is.”
“We will have to tell Walter.”
“What does he have to do with it?”
“He called me. Oh, Rosalie. I didn’t tell you.”
“You’re telling me now.”
“It was almost one in the morning, about six weeks ago, when you were in London. You had missed your flight and rescheduled for the next day, and I was up late, reading. I didn’t even realize Walter knew about Lenny. When I heard his voice I started crying, and I cried and cried while he just listened on the other end of the phone. Hours of this, Rosalie, hours. And just before sunrise, I asked him if he was still listening. He was. And then he said to me—at least what I heard him say—maybe you will be blessed with another child.”
Rosalie closes her eyes. “We need to tell the boys.”
“Yes,” says Sol. “And Walter.”
“You said that already.”
“He wished it for us, Rosalie.” He pulls her close and lifts her nightgown.
“You’ll miss services.”
“This is my prayer today,” he says. “This, this, and oh, yes, this.”
Three times in her life Rosalie leaned into the arms of a nurse and waited for an anesthesiologist to deliver an epidural into her lower spine to obliterate the pain of contractions. Three times she would wait for the needle that numbed her legs into tree trunks. Three times she would sit up in a hospital bed, Sol beside her, and watch the peaks on the monitor register the pain she did not feel, as if she were witnessing another woman’s birth drama. Three times Stu Katz would mosey in and out of the room, nod, touch her shoulder, and look at his watch. Now, in her eighth month, Rosalie lies back on the familiar exam table in Stu Katz’s office, her belly covered in goo, and listens to the whosh-whosh of the baby’s heartbeat.
“Sounds good, rebbetzin,” says Stu. “We’re in the home stretch, no pun intended.”
“Excellent,” says Rosalie. “I’m pushing out this baby without any drugs.”
“Are you out of your mind? I already scheduled a C-section. You’re too old for a natural delivery.”
“I was young enough to get pregnant! No C. And no drugs. It’s my last chance to experience what I missed with the other three.”
“You can read about it,” he says. “We have advanced technology now, rebbetzin. The only women who aren’t delighted by this are either shamefully primitive or emotionally unstable. You’ve been through this three times. This one will be no different, only surgical.”
“No surgery. No epidural.”
Rosalie thinks of Giselle at Eden Ranch, how she crouched on the ground and let her belly rest there like a pumpkin in a patch. She is certain that Giselle delivered in a squatting position, with Paul standing close by, ready to catch the baby.
“I must insist,” says Stu.
“Are you telling me how to give birth to my own child?”
“This birth is more risky than I can explain.”
“Try.”
“I would need a medical dictionary and I’m sure the details would either bore or frighten you. Look, rebbetzin. You trusted me before, and my hands delivered your three boys into this world. I loved Lenny the most, and I will mourn with you and Rabbi Kerem for the rest of my life. Just trust me once more.”
Rosalie glances at Stu’s hands and realizes that he touched her children before she did. She notices the age spots on his knuckles and begins to feel nauseated.
“Give me my records,” she says.
“What?”
Rosalie adjusts her bulk and rolls off the examining table.
“The folder with my charts. Every recorded heart beat, every added pound, every notch of blood pressure. Every damn detail.”
“That’s for me—”
She reaches to the counter and snatches the folder.
“Where are you taking that?”
“To a midwife,” she says.
Stu laughs. “Good luck with that! And even if you find a misguided midwife who wants to stand in harm’s way and risk a lawsuit, no one will treat you in your eighth month, not in your condition.”
When she returns home Sol is standing in front of the garage, his hands on his hips.
“What do you think you’re doing, Rosalie?”
“I’m going inside. I have to make some calls.”
“Are you out of your mind? Stu Katz just phoned and told me what you’re up to.”
“What we are up to, Sol. We. Together.”
“Are you risking my baby’s life?”
“This is my baby, Sol. The last one.”
“Our baby.”
“Yes. And so will you help me find a midwife in this backwater suburb or are you going to wring hands with Stu Katz over my foolishness?”
In her thirty-fifth week of pregnancy, Rosalie is learning how to breathe. A midwife named Gail instructs her to exhale, and Rosalie opens her mouth, panting like a thirsty dog.
“Natural breath,” says Gail.
“You have to treat me like a first-time mother,” says Rosalie. “I can’t even remember how to exhale.”
“You’ve been breathing all your life. Try it again.”
“I have no patience for this.” Rosalie bursts into tears. “Can I just have the baby now?”
“You’re not in labor, honey. We don’t make appointments for giving birth, and you have to learn a few things, be reminded of what your body already knows.”
“It’s just—”
“This was your choice, Rosalie. If you want to work with someone else I’m sure your doctor will take you back. Are you with me or not?”
“My husband is not the baby’s father.”
“And are you the mother?”
Rosalie smiles.
“Then look at me and breathe normally.”
Rosalie reaches for Gail’s hands and holds them tight.
“I’m sorry to blurt. It’s so different with this one.”
“No more sleepwalking. Now inhale and exhale. When the time is right, we’ll see if you are dilated.”
When Rosalie’s water breaks later that week, Sol picks up the phone to call Stu Katz.
“What are you doing?” Rosalie screams. “If you call that idiot, I will chain myself to our bed and deliver this baby myself.”
Sol puts down the phone, sits beside her, and waits. When the contractions begin she pushes her weight against his, then cries into his arms during the endless taxi ride to the birthing center.
Rosalie labors for seven hours. Sol stands in the corner of the room and davens. When she is fully dilated, Rosalie calls out her mother’s name and asks Sol to explain why he couldn’t be more like her father and why the fuck can’t he quit being a lying rabbi and why did she marry him when she had been far too young to be a wife and too young to be a mother and look at them now, just look at this mess of a tribe. And when Rosalie closes her eyes she thinks of Walter at Eden Ranch calling out the names of the dead and she pictures the animals walking out of the forest and feels their eyes holding her in their creaturely gazes. With every contraction she believes her body will split open but then Gail calmly asks her to bring her breath to the center of this moment and they breathe in sync and this goes on for an eternity during which Rosalie trusts Gail’s knowing instructions—what choice does she have?—but secretly longs for death or deliverance from this body that betrays her, cursing its history, spitting on her divided life, and then she finds a brief moment with the animals in the forest, locking eyes and then losing them again, until, miraculously, Gail shouts, “Push! Now!” and Sol repeats “Now!” Gail and Sol look at each other and reach for Rosalie’s armpits. They pull her up to a crouching position and she grinds her feet on the sheet and groans in a voice she does not recognize as her own, and then she hears Gail say, “The baby is crowning,” and Rosalie imagines her baby wearing a garland of flowers, and then Gail’s hands catch the baby’s head and she gently pulls and Sol cries out, “We have a girl, Rosalie. This one is a girl.”
Rosalie asks Sol if he wants to choose the first name. “Maya,” he says. He explains how the baby connects him to the prayer for rain he recited on Shemini Atzeret. As he stood on the bima in his white robe he glanced at Rosalie’s swollen belly and asked God to provide the water—mayim—that would repair their broken souls. As the baby suckles from her breast Sol asks Rosalie to choose a middle name.
“Oh, there are so many,” says Rosalie.
“We have our grandmothers—”
“No grandmothers.”
“What then?”
Rosalie pauses.
“Sonia. I like the name Sonia.”
“Significance?” asks Sol.
“It’s a lovely name; that’s all.” She brushes her baby’s soft cheeks and smiles. “It suits her, don’t you think?”
Walter and Paul have box seats for the San Francisco Orchestra performance of Haydn’s “Nelson Mass,” a gift from one of Walter’s wealthy doctoral students. Before the music begins, Paul peruses the libretto.
“We should write about this outing,” he says. “An evening of music with the scholars of religion. Just look at the words of the Mass. Everything beautiful connects to God in some way. I know several editors who would be happy to publish our reveries in their journals.”
“A night at the symphony as career promotion,” says Walter.
Paul laughs. “It’s not self-promotion. It’s love. All this wonder, everywhere. Let’s create a Music and Awe retreat at the ranch.”
“You’ve been tainted by fatherhood.”
Paul pulls a baby picture from his pocket and passes it to Walter.
“Jacob Rabindranath Richardson.”
“Such an august name for an ordinary baby.”
“My son is anything but ordinary. He’s a cathedral of magnificence, Walter! A work of art! As exalted as the music that embraces our longings in this concert hall we share with thousands of strangers. Holiness is everywhere!”
Walter gazes at Paul. His mentor’s white hair falls past his shoulders, the creases around his eyes are pronounced, his skin has darkened from the sun. The man with the brown felt hat has morphed himself yet again, while Walter still feels like a lost refugee who wanders around a foreign spice market, looking for the single hit of cardamom that will change his life.
During the Qui Tollis movement, Walter thinks of the daughter who isn’t quite his. They named her Maya Sonia Kerem. Her middle name is the thread that connects us, Rosalie said to him on the phone. Our little secret. The baby belongs to Sol and Rosalie, his gift to them. Given in consolation, conceived with love. He closes his eyes and tries to still his mind by following the line of the chords that resolve and open, invite and sustain and bear so much beauty.
After the performance Paul says, “I listen to this music through my child’s ears. I evaluate everything in my path with a single question: Is this worthy of bequeathing to Jacob Rabindranath? Nothing else matters to me now. My tolerance for mediocrity is nil. I want everything to be as transcendent as this Mass.”
Walter stares ahead at the empty stage.
“I’m sorry,” says Paul. “You have no idea what I’m talking about and I’ve intruded somehow. I try so hard to be good to you, and often feel as if I’m letting you down. I once promised you everything and look at you now.”
“What do you see?”
“You are so very successful and so very alone.”
“You made good on your promise,” says Walter. “You gave me an American life.”
“I hope it’s been good for you.”
“I have a daughter now,” says Walter. “A newborn, a love child. She belongs to another family.”
Paul takes Walter’s hand and holds it against his wet cheek.
“You’re crying,” says Walter.
The concert hall empties out and the two of them sit in their seats until an usher asks them to leave.
Maya has colic. She screams more than she sleeps; Rosalie weeps from exhaustion, and longs for the brief spells when the baby gets milk-drunk at her breast and falls into a deep nap. She wonders if the incessant crying is a curse. Her boys were such easy babies, but Maya’s face is set in a hard, wizened scowl. But one day, seemingly out of nowhere, Maya quits crying and her features soften. Rosalie gazes at her face with new understanding. The baby does not resemble Walter or Sol; Maya looks just like Rosalie. No one would ask her to explain why she doesn’t look like her father, the rabbi. She would go to school and she would go to camp and on Shabbat she would listen to her father deliver words from the bima, and no one would ever doubt that she belonged to him.
After Sol bathes Maya at night, he wraps her in a towel, and sings, Yessir, that’s my baby, no sir I don’t mean maybe, yessir that’s my baby now—oww.
On weekday afternoons Walter rushes home from the university and waits for Rosalie to call and tell him when he can come to New York to see Maya. He can’t concentrate on grading papers; his class lectures are based on old notes, outdated research. He has abandoned his drawing of Sonia and he no longer invites models to the studio for inspiration or for sex. Weeks go by. Then months. Walter stares at babies in their strollers and asks their mothers and nannies, How many months old? Why does the baby need a pacifier? Where did you buy such a pretty blanket?
When Rosalie finally calls, Walter doesn’t tell her he has been waiting. Years ago when they used to speak late at night, Rosalie’s voice was sultry and the hours unfolded before them like an open field. But now she speaks quickly and her voice is harried.
“Tell me about her,” says Walter.
Rosalie rushes through her words. “What’s there to say? She’s a baby. Delightful, cooing, babbling. A girl who notices everything.”
“You talk so fast and say so little. Slow down. I want to hear this again.”
“Oh, Walter. I’ve got six loads of laundry and Sol is at a meeting. There’s no time.”
“You sound different.”
“I’m a new mother. Of course I sound this way.”
“This is not new for you.”
“But for you it is.” Rosalie closes her eyes and waits. She wants to offer him something, but has no idea what to say.
“When, Rosalie?”
Two years later, Walter is invited to speak at a conference in Boston and he arranges for a stopover in New York. Walter and Rosalie sit side by side in a crowded terminal at JFK. They lightly hold hands while Maya runs in circles, pretending to be an airplane, shrieking with pleasure.
“You can play with her,” says Rosalie. “Go ahead.”
Walter hesitates at first, but then he lopes along, following Maya’s stride, waving his arms, tears streaming down his cheeks. Rosalie glances at his face and winces. She remembers the names he called out at Eden Ranch, and how he filled the night air with words she didn’t understand. She had never known anyone so very alone, and now he seemed more alone then ever.
Just before they part, Walter tells Rosalie that in Sanskrit, the word maya means illusion.
“Our daughter is no illusion,” she says.
“I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“Everything.”
“It’s about time—”
“—that I’ve become like the rest of you?” asks Walter. “Well, yes. I’ve arrived.”
“Welcome to the aching world of ordinary mortals. Join our little party. Joy in one corner, heartbreak in another. Now help me trim the crust off their sandwiches and watch where you dribble peanut butter because half the children are allergic to it, and give me the back of your hand to wipe up their snot.”
“Do you disdain me?”
Rosalie bursts into tears and Walter wraps his arms around her. He reaches for Maya, places her awkwardly between their bodies for a moment, kisses the top of her head, and then turns away.
Charlie and Philip live in Manhattan and only return to the house for holidays and an occasional Friday night dinner. To Charlie, Rosalie no longer seems like the same mother who raised them; he can barely remember the clothes she wore when he was Maya’s age. Philip believes Maya is the replacement child for Lenny, and looking at her prompts old sadness. Maya’s presence in the house makes her brothers feel as if the door to their childhood has been closed a second time; first when Lenny died, and now with this new addition.
At shul, Maya is everyone’s child, passed from shoulder to shoulder, lap to lap. During services congregants reach out their hands to touch her. When she jumps on her lap, Missy shouts, “Oh, lucky me!” Bev calls her my girl, my maidele, my Maya.
On a Shabbat morning in the middle of winter, the synagogue is packed with bar mitzvah guests. While the boy gives his speech, Sol peers down from his velvet chair, Rosalie sits in the front row, and Maya loiters in the aisle, smiling at the congregants. Rosalie turns around to beckon Maya back to her seat, and she sees him in the very back of the sanctuary, wearing a suit, leaning against the doorframe. She looks again. A man in a suit, yes. But Walter? Rosalie rises and walks to the door but when she gets there the man is gone.
She never asks Walter if he passed through town that morning to have a glimpse of his little girl, but Rosalie believes that he did.
A year later Sol and Rosalie arrive in Jerusalem for the wedding of Missy and Nathan’s son. Maya sits between her parents in the back of a taxi that races through traffic.
“Where are we staying?” asks Rosalie.
“The American Colony,” says Sol. “Right near the wedding venue.”
“Find another hotel. Please.”
The driver glances at them in the rearview mirror.
“But we already have a reservation.”
Rosalie stares out the window. She can’t go back to the American Colony with her husband. That hotel belonged to Walter, not Sol. It was impossible to trespass from one life to another, as if she could put on a different skin. And yet she did it again and again, made the interweave of three strands possible and beautiful and wrong all at the same time. Those three words were her braid: possible wrong beautiful, wrong possible beautiful, beautiful possible—
“Not that hotel,” says Rosalie.
“I thought you’d be pleased. Walter stayed there, as you recall. Anyway, the Samuels arranged everything; we’re their honored guests.”
“Of course we are. Nathan kept you employed so you could one day officiate at his kid’s wedding, pro bono.”
“They mean well, Rosalie; don’t mock them.”
Maya listens to her parents banter. The driver mutters something about the congested streets, takes a detour through Old Katamon and speeds through the narrow alleys, calling it a shortcut.
“Stop the car,” says Rosalie. “Let me off here.”
“Are you carsick?” asks Sol.
“No. I’ll meet you later. The American Colony will do. Whatever. Just let me out.”
“Mommy! I’m coming with you!” calls Maya.
“Rosalie—”
She leans into the window. “It’s okay, Sol. I just need time to walk.” Maya runs after Rosalie and asks where they are going.
“To visit an old friend.”
Rosalie steps through the familiar blue door framed with bougainvillea. The courtyard is empty, and at first Rosalie doesn’t notice Madame Sylvie sitting in a corner, shaded by a tree.
“That old lady scares me,” whispers Maya.
Madame Sylvie approaches and kisses Rosalie on both cheeks.
“Asseyez-vous.” She turns to Maya and asks if she would like some cake. Maya nods. Her eyes follow the ancient woman as she disappears into the house and returns with a slice of lemon cake. She takes a bite and tries to make out what Madame Sylvie says to her mother.
“I have thought of you often. I regret that I couldn’t offer you an astonishment back then, nothing beyond a strange braid. You have suffered a great loss, n’est-ce pas?” Sylvie taps Rosalie’s chin with her wrinkled hand, coaxing her to meet her eyes. “You lost a child; it is written on your face.”
“Yes. A son. This is Maya, my little girl.”
“This one is a great blessing.”
Rosalie’s body shakes and she begins to sob. Madame Sylvie leads her into a corner.
“Ma chère,” says Madame Sylvie. “A woman with two men has an impossible life. Better to suffer with one.”
“It’s too late.”
“Close your eyes.”
“I didn’t come for an astonishment today.”
“Ça ne fait rien. You will take what I have to offer.”
“I don’t want anything now.”
“You walked through this door for a reason. Now shut your eyes. You and your daughter are alone in a dark cavern. You look around for one of your men but the darkness overwhelms you. You call their names but the sound of your own voice echoes off the cavern walls. Birds fly out. Your daughter holds your hand tightly. You keep walking until you find the opening to daylight.”
“That’s it? After all this time?”
“What do you expect?”
“I was hoping for guidance, for comfort.”
“Then why did you come to me?”
After the wedding, Rosalie walks alone to the Western Wall and tucks a note between the stones: Ani Ma’amin. I believe. With all my strength I believe that the man I saw in the back of the sanctuary was Walter and he will always find his way to Maya. And one day she will understand.
Rosalie sits cross-legged in front of the Religion shelves at the new bookstore in town. She scans the books that bear Walter’s name and reads sentences at random. She skips from page to page and book to book, listening for the cadence of his words, hoping to find him in the prose. But his books don’t bear a trace of his voice, his touch. The purple binder was their secret project, separate from the books that define his career. She wishes his words would help her understand the shul she has grown to love, but she can’t find the connection between Walter’s temple of religious scholarship and her Temple Briar Wood. Walter held every religion in his brain and what does Rosalie hold? A paneled room filled with Jews who bring themselves inside every seventh day (a selected few, barely) and three times a year (a selected many, barely) whose yearnings and voices have become her entire geography. Walter’s flights take him to New Delhi and Istanbul and Oxford and Paris for conferences and book parties, with stopovers in New York so he can appear like a ghost at the back of the sanctuary, behold the sight of his daughter, and then disappear. He lives with his peacocks in a studio where no one cooks a meal or shuckles in prayer or pours her little-girl body into his arms. Rosalie’s trajectory is limited to the cubits of a prescribed life that seems very small and quite vast. She sits on the floor of the bookstore and ponders this until closing time. She drives home, kisses her sleeping daughter, and slips into bed alongside her husband.
Every night after her bath, Maya runs into Sol’s study and climbs onto his lap. He takes his tallit out of its bag and wraps it around both of them. Sol opens a volume of Talmud to a random page and points out the words to Maya. He lays his hand over hers and leads her fingers around the black letters, the two of them exploring where black ink meets white paper. Rosalie watches them from the corner of the room. Maya concentrates on the words and twirls her hair in ringlets just as Rosalie did when she learned with her father.
She’elah: How is the world passed down?
Teshuvah: Only the days can answer this question.