Acts of Assumption Read online

  Acts of Assumption

  Twisted Road Publications LLC

  Copyright © 2018 by S. W. Leicher

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-940189-22-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-940189-23-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953251

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Photo by Getty Images

  www.twistedroadpublications.com

  For Mama Belen—who taught me about the BVM

  And for Aunt Lucy—who believed

  Acts of Assumption

  A Novel

  S. W. Leicher

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: An Unusual Shiva

  PART ONE: Serach’s Tale

  PART TWO: Paloma’s Tale

  EPILOGUE: Shmuely’s Accident

  GLOSSARY

  Definition of Assumption:

  1. The act of believing something or taking it for granted without actual proof.

  2. The act of taking up a new position, possession, or burden.

  3. The act of rising straight up into heaven.

  Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

  PROLOGUE: AN UNUSUAL SHIVA

  “Magnified and sanctified and blessed and praised and glorified and raised and exalted and honored and uplifted and lauded be the Name of the Holy One.”

  Mourner’s Kaddish

  The first day of the Gottesman shiva was unfolding exactly as planned. And how could it be any different, given who was in charge? When Serach’s mother, Gittel Gottesman, takes control, things go just the way she wants.

  The little Spanish cleaning girl that Bertha Weinstein had recommended had arrived before eight o’clock that morning, as promised, and had scrupulously complied with every one of Gittel’s complicated instructions. The beige carpets in the halls and living room had been vacuumed not once but twice. Every surface had been polished to a high gloss. The bathrooms gleamed and the kitchen was spotless—the counters cleared of all their usual messes. The house had never looked so good.

  The Russian maintenance worker from the synagogue had come over precisely at ten o’clock to chip the last ice off the sidewalk and steps so that no one should slip. And he had brought over the two hot water urns and forty folding chairs that the synagogue generously lent out to houses of mourning—lugging them out of his van armful by armful and carrying them carefully into the house. It had taken him eight trips up and down those steps to do it.

  Gittel’s two brothers-in-law, Uncle Yonatan and Uncle Shlomo, had caught the morning shuttle from Cleveland with their wives to arrive comfortably before eleven. Gittel’s two older sisters had driven in from Long Island—husbands in tow—pulling into the driveway just minutes after the uncles’ taxi had pulled out. They scrambled into the house and immediately began making sure that everything was in place.

  And the rabbi had come two full hours early to offer some special words of comfort and to personally take responsibility for covering all the mirrors with cloth so no one would be tempted to indulge in vanity at such a sad time.

  By three thirty, Serach’s mother and her four younger sisters had arranged their mourners’ boxes in a neat line on the floor of the hallway so as to be appropriately seated when everyone else began arriving. And, in fact, no sooner than they had settled in on them than a stream of men began pushing through the unlocked front door with their prayer books while a similarly robust group of women began swinging open the back door to the kitchen, bearing their platters of food.

  “The best thing about a shiva,” Gittel had remarked as she lowered her bulk carefully down onto her box, “is that there are no surprises. Everyone knows exactly what to do. And everyone does it.”

  “The best thing about our whole religion,” the rabbi had responded with his kindly smile, “is that everyone knows exactly what to do. And everyone does it. I don’t know how the rest of the world manages.”

  Only Serach’s baby brother, Shmuely—lone male of the immediate family—was behaving out of character. He had spent the afternoon peering anxiously through a crack between the curtains of the living room window. And as soon as he spotted the first community members converging on the front steps, he had grabbed his mourner’s box and scuttled up into his room.

  Shmuely was ten years old—old enough to have sat with the men during prayer services. And he generally took great pride in doing so. But today he was so terrified he would burst out crying in the middle of everything, he was willing to forego the privilege. And fortunately, everyone was so focused on davening that his absence was not noted till much later.

  The service began precisely at four thirty-three, the moment when afternoon services begin across all of Boro Park at that time of year. The men davened in the living room, their voices ebbing and flowing as they stood and sat, bowed and paced, and came to stillness again. And in the meantime, their wives and sisters and daughters laid out the food, prepared the coffee, and heated the water for tea.

  And no one—not a soul—as much as whispered Serach’s name during the service or at either end of it. And since that crowd could so easily have been buzzing with talk of the scandal, the total and seemingly unspoken agreement to remain silent represented a true sign of collective respect.

  And Serach herself? What was Serach doing while the community marked her precipitous demise with such impressive tact?

  She was sitting quietly at the kitchen table of her new home, barely more than a mile from all the commotion.

  Absent-mindedly letting her own cup of tea grow cold.

  Patiently waiting for Paloma to return home from work and gather her into her arms.

  PART ONE: SERACH’S TALE

  “She is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her.”

  Proverbs, Chapter 3, Verse 18

  1

  The concept of the real number line has always intrigued me. The idea that the infinite set of rational numbers and the infinite set of irrational numbers can somehow fit neatly together on the same line without either set having anything to do with the other and without either set elbowing the other one out of the way.

  My two universes—Boro Park and Prospect Park South—coexist in similarly complicated fashion. There is no conjunction between their vastly divergent realities. They are governed by completely different rules. They are impossible to consider simultaneously. And yet they remain tight neighbors—a mere twenty-six blocks away from one another on the map. And obstinately side by side within my heart.

  Some people call the approach that I take to life “compartmentalizing.” I call it torment. Not that I’m always consumed with it. Generally, I can make it all work. And, in fact, in the early hours of that fateful Sunday morning, I was feeling particularly well-adjusted. Comfortably ensconced at the desk of my snug little study. Happily contemplating how best to preface my client’s thoroughly-parsed tax returns. Prospect Park South was holding steady. Boro Park was holding its peace.

  And then everything shifted.

  “Serach!” Paloma called, bumping the half-ajar door open with one softly curved hip and stepping into my space. “Turn off your computer!”

  “Paloma. I’m working.”

  “Serach, trust me. You’re going to be very glad that I interrupted you. Rise out of your chair and come with me!”

  Reluctantly, I logged off, stood up, and trailed her down the two flights of stairs to the living room.

  And there with his hat and coat still on, pressed flat against the wall like a post-it and peering apprehensively into the room, stood my baby brother Shmuely.

  Throughout Shmuely’s childhood, Mama—ever practical, ever aware that her son’s clothes would n
ever be passed down from sibling to sibling like our pleated plaid school skirts—avoided buying anything the right size for him. Shoes, okay, they always fit. But everything else remained far too large for him for at least a year and sometimes two. Poor Shmuely was obliged to wear each outfit as it passed from huge to well-proportioned to stretched-out and threadbare, singlehandedly impersonating the string of brothers who would never follow him.

  And clearly things hadn’t changed very much in the time I’d been away. Even with my two married sisters and me out of the house and Mama’s business thriving (for news like that still reached me) maternal frugality prevailed. So there he stood, taller than I had ever seen him but still drowning in his enormous coat and with his hat falling down on his brow. Nothing interrupted the familiar head-to-toe swath of black cloth save the thin vertical triangle of his white shirt and his beautiful porcelain face.

  “Shmuely, Shmuely you’ve come to see me at last! Shmuely my angel! Come here, let me look at you! Let me hug you!” I moved toward him, arms outstretched.

  But he flinched away from me, shaking his head. “Don’t touch me, Serach.”

  He looked so severe—so pinched and white—that I stepped back. I waited. “Okay, Shmuely. Never mind. I won’t take offense. I know it’s been awhile. I know I look different. I suppose I’ve become quite the apikoris in your eyes. But I promise you: I’m no different than I ever was. Not inside. Not where it counts. So, come on into the room. Sit down. Take off your hat. Show me those pretty curls of yours. And let me get you something to drink. Some water? Some juice?”

  More shakes, and I felt Paloma gently touch my elbow. I had completely forgotten she was there. “Shush, Serach,” she whispered, gliding behind me to exit the room. “Just let him alone for a moment.”

  So there we stood for a good long time, Shmuely and I. He still wouldn’t as much as look at me full face. Those glinting, shielded eyes—those turquoise eyes—fixed themselves on our rug, on all those green and gold roses twirling around in garlands on their wine-red background. His gaze traveled across the parquet floor and up the walls on which our paintings hung—oh dear, the paintings!—before finally landing on the piano.

  Only then did his expression change from stolid blankness. Recognition, resistance, and then that marvelous little half-smile of his. He looked straight at me at last, and our eyes locked into the complicity that we had shared for so long.

  “So that’s where Zayde Izzie’s tallis went! We went crazy looking for it! You stole it!”

  “Yes, I did! Stuffed our grandfather’s prayer shawl in my bag like Ruchel with her father Laban’s idols. Took a little bit of him away with me when I fled.”

  “And you draped it on that piano!”

  “All grand pianos need a fringed shawl, Shmuely. Surely you know that. And Zayde’s prayer shawl is one beautifully-fringed specimen, you must admit. Nothing but the best—very Paris circa 1928, don’t you think? Or don’t they teach you that sort of thing in that yeshiva of yours?”

  “Ruchel paid dearly for taking those idols, Serach! And a tallis on the piano! It’s blasphemy.” But traces of the smile persisted.

  “Oh Shmuely, it’s not blasphemy. It’s just a little repurposing. I bet if Ruchel had openly set up those idols on her patio like garden gnomes instead of trying to hide what she’d done, nothing bad would have happened to her.”

  “I’m not listening to you!”

  But it was too late. He was caught up in my mischief as he always was. I was the only one he couldn’t resist. He pulled off his hat, his sweet head bare but for the yarmulke beneath it. And then he walked toward one of our needlepoint-covered chairs and dropped into it.

  I waited some more. I came no closer. I watched quietly while he stroked the rim of his big round hat as it sat in his lap. I choked back my impulse to rush to him, grab him, yank him out of the chair, and smother him in my embrace.

  “Frayda told me where you were,” he said. As if I didn’t already know.

  2

  Early death runs in my family. My Tatteh’s mother, my grandmother, died of cancer when Tatteh was just a little boy. And his father had his first heart attack when Tatteh was barely twenty. Mama’s father, Zayde Izzie, lost his first wife ten years into their marriage and his second wife, Mama’s mother, when Mama was a teenager.

  Thus it was not entirely unexpected when Tatteh got the call about his father on that hot afternoon, the summer that I turned ten. Nor was it so unusual for Mama to respond by announcing that Tatteh would have to make the trip to Cleveland alone. That it was too hard to pack us all up. That she couldn’t abandon her business. That she wasn’t feeling so strong.

  Mama does not deal well with bad news.

  Fortunately for us, she had never been close to Tatteh’s father. We had only gone to Cleveland to see him once, when I was very young. And he had never come here. So her reaction was not as severe as it might have been. She kept up appearances in the outside world for the full week that Tatteh sat shiva with his brothers. She dropped Chava and Shayna off at day care while the rest of us traveled to day camp on the yellow school bus. She navigated her usual seven-block walk to work. And I suspect that once she was in her shop she was fine. Selling wigs seems to revive her.

  The evenings, however, were a different matter. By the time the school bus dropped us back home at six o’clock, her mood would have darkened. Her expression as she opened the door to us would be both belligerent and spent. There would be no food cooking, and the table would not be set. She would hand Chava and Shayna over to me before I’d even put down my backpack and lumber into the living room to sink into a chair with the lights out.

  I quickly developed a workable routine. I would place Chava in her high chair with a bunch of cookies. I would arrange Beile, Mierle, and Shayna with their dolls on the floor in one corner of the kitchen, where I could keep an eye on them. And then I would get supper ready for everyone. “Spring Valley Frozen Beef Kreplach in Broth” is my specialty.

  I couldn’t tell you whether or when Mama ate that week for she never joined us. Yet she somehow always seemed to know when we were finished and would come in to gather Chava out of her high chair. And then she would trudge upstairs with all my sisters in tow—a large lump surrounded by her smaller lumps. Bedtime was not always easy in our house. But when Mama was having one of her episodes, everyone tended to fall into line. And so as soon as I saw that slow procession moving upward, I would permit myself to linger in the peace of the kitchen for a little while, cleaning up.

  Which is why when Tatteh pushed himself and his bags through the back door and into the kitchen, he found me standing by the sink with a pot in one hand and a sponge in the other, wondering what to do next. He spun me around, took everything out of my hands and kissed the top of my head. He looked smaller than I remembered.

  “Serach,” he said. “Mameleh. What’s happening? Where is everyone? Where’s your mother? Why are you in here doing the dishes all alone?”

  “Everyone’s upstairs. But don’t worry, Tatteh. It’s okay.”

  “Things bad with her again?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Well don’t you worry, Mameleh. I’m home now and I’m definitely fine. A little sad, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But guess what? I’ve been thinking about something. Something that would really help me. And I bet you’ll like it, too. How would you like to come to shul with me when I say Kaddish for my father?”

  “This Shabbos?”

  “Every morning. Seven days a week. All summer. We can be a little creative since you aren’t in school. I can take you to camp myself when we’re done with services. It won’t matter if you are a little late from time to time. What do you say?”

  But by then Mama had heard the cab pull into the driveway and the door click open and shut (she hears everything, even when she is in one of her moods) and had rushed down the stairs. She loomed in the doorway in her big flowered housecoat with Chava in her arms and the three other gir
ls scurrying out from behind her in their pajamas to grab Tatteh by the legs and waist.

  “Asher! Asher! You couldn’t phone when you landed? You just sneak into the house like a mouse? And what is this about taking Serach to services? She’s too old to be sitting downstairs with the men. Someone will say something. And what do you mean you’ll take her to camp? She goes with Beile and Mierle every morning on the bus. We’ve already paid for it.”

  Tatteh walked toward Mama, took Chava out of her arms, and bent down to kiss each sister in turn. “Hello, Gittel. Hello, girls. It’s good to see you. Don’t worry, Gittel. No one will say anything about Serach if she’s with me. And I’ll call the bus company in the morning to explain that she will only be traveling with them in the afternoon. Maybe they’ll even give us a refund for her morning pick-up. And if not, it’s not the end of the world.”

  But Mama had already turned her back on us and had begun straightening out something on the counter.

  The next morning when I sped downstairs to set things up for breakfast, I found Mama already in the kitchen pouring out everyone’s cereal. I bolted down a glass of orange juice, grabbed my own handful of Cheerios out of the box, and merrily waved goodbye to everyone. And then I took Tatteh’s hand and walked the five blocks to shul with him.

  “Is Mama right, Tatteh? Am I too old to sit downstairs with you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll handle things with your mother. And meanwhile, here’s something nice to think about. Remember what I told you about the first Serach? About how she was the only one of Yakov’s granddaughters to be mentioned by name in the Torah? Well now, my modern-day Serach, you will be the only granddaughter of my father of blessed memory to be honoring him in this very special way.”