She didn’t look at me. She just nestled closer, pressing one hand flat against my chest. I wondered what my heart felt like against her palm, if it was beating too fast or too slow.
“You know what,” she said, and I did.
I did know. And it broke my fucking heart, because I also knew that, no, I couldn’t stop. I would never stop.
I didn’t want to stop.
“Go back to sleep, Devi,” I whispered, and I kissed her forehead, and the next morning as we shuffled down to breakfast, two ghosts amid the raucous chaos of a family with five children plus a newborn baby, I wished I could have told her something different. I wished I could have lied.
Instead I ate my cold cereal and made myself sit there and watch her with her young face carefully poised in a mask of innocence that was no longer real, thanks to me. Now Dvora kept my secrets. I’d dragged her down into the muck with me.
And I’d keep dragging her, and everyone, down. I’d bury us, and I wouldn’t rest until I’d ruined both our lives.
The least I could do was look her in the eye while I did it.
12
I thought sleeping would get Chaya out of my mind, but it doesn’t work. She’s still there when I wake up, a specter haunting my steps as I get dressed and tie my messy hair up in a ponytail. She watches me tap my phone at 30th Avenue and hangs on to the subway pole next to me all the way to Union Square.
I believed I had erased her over these past eight years. She didn’t occupy all the dark corners of my mind anymore; in fact, I hardly thought of her at all out in LA. Something about being back here has resurrected her.
I just hope this place doesn’t bring back other, darker sides of my past.
Back when I was doing drugs, I had no self-control to speak of. I went skinny-dipping at Venice Beach and drove fast cars with no seatbelt and shot strange liquids into my veins without fully knowing what they were. But that’s kind of what addictionis—a full-tilt sprint toward the mindless void. And if the worst should happen, well, you probably deserve it.
This time when I decide on my next steps, it isn’t impulse driving me. It’s decisiveness.
At least that’s what I tell myself. But the fear that lurches up in the back of my throat every time I think about what I have to do next makes me feel like there’s something reckless about it as I walk into my Digital Photography class, slide into the seat next to Michal Pereira, and say, “Is the invite for Erev Shabbos still good? Not this week. But next week, maybe?”
Michal, for her part, doesn’t seem surprised at all. “Of course,” she says, smiling back at me. “Anytime. But we’re ordering in bagels from Russ & Daughters for the oneg this week, if that makes a difference….”
Russ & Daughters?Say less.“Okay, fine, this week. Those bagels have been starring in my dreams for eight years straight.”
It’s all so easy. The entire interaction is over and done with in less than a minute, as the professor shows up and calls the class to order. I doubt Michal has any idea how monumental the moment was for me. And maybe it shouldn’t be monumental; maybe it’s my nasty ego getting in the way again, still bruised from being shunned eight years ago. But I can’t escape the feeling that I’ve done something that can’t beundone. Even if I were to change my mind and cancel Friday plans, it’s too late.
I can’t pretend I don’t want it anymore.
I’m proud of me too. Being back in New York hasn’t been anything like I thought it would be. I expected to see ghosts everywhere. I thought I would hunker down at Parker and get my work done and emerge from my chrysalis like a beautiful fucking butterfly, a star of the art scene, and I’d never have to actually face the reality of what happened here eight years ago.
But New York refused to hold me at arm’s length. It grabbed me with both hands and pulled me in, wrapping me up tight. I met Ophelia and Diego, the best roommates anyone could possibly dream of. I met Michal, who defies all my prejudices about what it means to be Orthodox. And then there’s Wyatt, of course. Wyatt, who is both infuriating and alluring. Wyatt,who makes me want to smack him and kiss him at the same time.
I want to be a part of this city. I want to sink my hands wrist-deep into its muck and wallow there.
Only after I get home do I start to regret what I did, just a little. I dump my bag on my bedroom floor, then dump my body on the bed, burying my face in my pillow and muffling my groan against the down. I don’t know what I was thinking, signing up for this. It’s not as if it’s some Reform thing where the women wear kippot and people snap photos of the challah for Instagram. Michal is frum. She’s religious—Orthodox. I have no idea what stream of Judaism she follows or what their practices are, whether the people at this dinner will be Sephardi or Ashkenazi or—
I text Wyatt.
I just did a stupid thing,I tell him.I’m trying to decide if I should flee the country.
He writes back immediately, which tells me everything I need to know about his evening life.
Wyatt:Stupid like drunk sexting an ex? Or stupid like buying an NFT of Baby Yoda in meme glasses?
Me:I agreed to go to a religious thing with someone.
Wyatt:You’re right, that’s worse. What are you going to do? Do you have any uncles who can die last minute?
Me:Maybe I could invent one. But then there’s always next week. Or the next. Or the next….
