| Calligraphy |

As the Water Flows

By Faigy Shonfeld | October 2, 2017

S ara Leah used to talk poetically about the smell of the ink the way the deep wet fragrance assaulted her when she entered Tatty’s print shop flooding her senses intoxicating her like wine.

Aidy opens the small door to the shop inhales then lets her breath out in a whoosh. To her it just smells overwhelmingly like ink.

“Aidy ” Tatty calls from behind the cutting machine. His voice is chapped and thin. “I’m glad you came.”

“My pleasure ” Aidy says automatically throwing her coat behind the counter. The setting sun glints through the frosted windows. It’s warm inside too warm and she has her own paperwork to complete but Wednesday has always been her day to help out in the shop. Not that there’s much helping to do these days but she hasn’t the heart to say so.

“No I’m glad you came because I need to talk to you.” Tatty looks up from feeding a stack of paper to the folding machine.

Aidy nods. Of course Sara Leah found the ink soothing. She would breeze in peck Tatty on the cheek hum a camp song fiddle with the colored papers; Tatty would smile back mellow. He never looked at her wearily and said he needs to talk.

“Look I’m not going to beat around the bush. We need to talk about you. About Yehuda. About you and Yehuda.” He looks her in the eye. Aidy feels herself go numb. “Yehuda is ready to remarry Aidy. He’s willing to go out with you.”

Heat rushes through her lungs. No. No no no please no—

Tatty spreads his hands, “Look, Aidy, you know Yehuda. He’s smart and kind and… and he was a wonderful husband, Sara Leah was so happy with him. And he’s a ben Torah, a real one. And there’s money, too. What more can you want?”

The presses roll, the silence whirs and clacks. Aidy tries to move, switch on the old computer, but her hands are ice. “What if... what if I don’t want,” she says flatly.

“Aidy.” Tatty’s voice is sharp. “You’re twenty-four. I’m trying, you know that, but we’re not exactly rich. And we haven’t gotten any exciting suggestions for you in a while now.”

His voice simmers with accusation. Aidy swallows and looks away, angry. She reaches for a stack of paper, smooths and flattens until all stray corners are perfectly aligned, the way her father taught her to. She knows her parents feel she’s ruining things for herself. “Smile, mammalah!” Mommy exhorts before dates. “You have to relax,” Her father advises. They think I scare boys away... I probably do. The boys she’s seen got banged up against her rough edges; it’s as if they had expected all girls to be soft and happy and charming, to be like Sara Leah. And that’s good. I can never marry anyone who expects me to be like Sara Leah.

Tatty presses down on the cutting machine; the blade slices through fat piles of paper, clean and beautiful. Aidy stares. She remembers standing on tiptoes as a little girl, mesmerized.

“Look,” Tatty says with a sigh, and when he looks up, she sees sorrow running deep in the lines of his face. “It’s been almost a year now. Yehuda wants to get married. He won’t wait around forever. I know... I know you don’t feel like marrying a widower. You want the fun and freshness... that thing.” He looks at his hands, at the ink stained into the crevices of his palms. “But you have to be mature. He’s an exceptional young man. And he’s interested in you.”

Aidy’s throat burns. Oh, her father, he thinks she won’t marry Yehuda just because he has been a husband. He doesn’t realize that she won’t marry him because he was her sister’s husband.

“Tatty,” She speaks. She keeps her voice smooth, though the rock in her throat hurts. “Tatty, I can’t marry him. Please don’t ask me to.”

“I’m not asking you to marry him!” Tatty’s hand slaps against the cutting machine. “But I am demanding that you go out with him!”

He turns away, sharply, nearly knocking over a glass plate of rubber stamps someone left lying around. Aidy brings the plates to the UV machine, her eyes lowered. She makes out shapes, letters, glinting through the glass. Overdue. Confidential. Denied.

At the door to the darkroom, her father turns, silhouetted by the waning amber of dusk against the dimness behind him. “Not everything in life is easy. But you have to make the right choices. Mommy already spoke to Mrs. Gruner. The date is set for this Wednesday.”

Aidy sucks in her breath. She feels crushed, flattened, ruined, as if her soul has been trampled. She opens her mouth, to say something, to protest, but her father has already disappeared into the dimness.

* * *

Yehuda is too thin and small for these chairs, Aidy thinks, half amused as her former brother-in-law tries to arrange himself on one gigantic sofa, all velvet cushions and lavishly carved gold.

Yehuda smiles easy and talks about nice, good things. His voice is buttery. Aidy toys with the stirrer, watches the bubbles fizz and pop in her soda. When Yehuda breaks, waits for her to reply, she says, “Look, this is weird. I– I need to be open about this.”

Yehuda looks up but he doesn’t flinch.

“Let’s not pretend this is a regular date. There’s something between us, someone, a kind, wonderful someone, and”—Aidy pauses; sadness flares for a moment in his eyes, and she feels bad—“and there’s no need to pretend that it’s not so.”

“There. You said it.” His voice is light, but his eyes are kind. “If that makes you feel better.”

They sit in silence, listening to the chink and rumble of glassware and low voices, heels clicking on polished floors. Finally, Yehuda shrugs, smiling again. “So? Now that we cleared that, can we, um… have a regular date?”

Aidy laughs. “You win.”

Two guards in uniform stroll past. Aidy sees their eyes, flicking toward them, then away, as if the couple sipping drinks on the sofas is too normal, or average, to warrant a longer glance. It makes her feel pleased and sick at the same time.

“...so there we were, all decked out in prison regalia, the game not beginning yet, so one guy says, ‘Let’s go to Walmart.’ ” Yehuda folds his arms, and he looks young, suddenly, carefree. “We made a rather somber procession, Muller leading us inside, in handcuffs. Jacobs asked the first customer service guy he met, where we can find the bolt cutters.”

Aidy smirks. She thinks, briefly, of a slight, fair girl in colorful polos, screaming and cheering, arms around her shoulders. The audience hushed in the darkness of the basketball court, her cheeks flushed, eyes dancing when the spotlight spills over her face. The one summer Aidy had gone to camp, Sara Leah had tried to get her into things, to “have a blast!” as she’d enthusiastically promised her she would all winter long. “I hated camp. It wasn’t my speed.”

“Really?” Yehuda looks at her, eyes bright with interest, and she feels bad for him.

He’s thinking the sister would be as sweet and uncomplicated as the wife. She shrugs. “All that noise, and people with their fingers in my things. Cheering absurdly all day long. I like quiet and private and decent, things like that.” She stops. “Not that it’s wrong to feel differently,” she adds quickly.

Yehuda talks, and with some apprehension, Aidy notes that he really is engaging. But she keeps her shoulders stiff. She knows the lines that frighten the guys, the speculations that make them look up, take a step back. She’s learned to stifle some of them by now, those thoughts and feelings boys seem not to want to hear. She lets it all out tonight and it’s fun. No sweet talk for this guy, no use having him wonder and pontificate if maybe she really could be his second Sara Leah.

“You didn’t tell me anything about seminary. That’s only the first thing my sisters talk about.”

Aidy shrugs. “I only went to seminary because I want to get married.” She waits for him to blink, clear his throat.

He grins. “Ah, okay. That works.”

A bang, voices behind them. They turn to see a group of what clearly looks like Jewish kids, all long hair and loud voices. Yehuda frowns. “It’s sad,” he says, turning back to Aidy. “These kids do a few things wrong, they’re kicked out of school, and the game is over for them.”

Aidy nods. “I was nearly kicked out in tenth grade.”

Yehuda startles.

“Two of my classmates got into a big mess. One got kicked out. The other — her father’s a rich guy, gives a lot of money to the school — she got away with a rap on her knuckles. Barely.” Her eyes flash. “We were stunned, but nobody said a word. So I went up to my principal the next day and I told her — it’s ugly.” Aidy stops, feels the old anger rattle behind her ribs. She shakes her head. “I was suspended for a month.”

It’s late when he drops her off. She stands and studies their tiny stucco, peeling white shingles, grass matted and burned from the cold. She is fairly certain she’s done a good job disabusing him of any notions he may have had. She stares up at the sky, deep and endless and black, swathed in layers of velvet clouds. He and Sara Leah had spent the eight and a half months of their sad, rosy marriage, tucked away in Yerushalayim, so he didn’t know, hadn’t known, that sisters can have differences as vast and unconquerable as the night sky.

She closes her eyes, sees an image of herself in the Marriott, talking, no censoring or cross-outs or cogitating. For a fleeting moment, she feels light.

Wind moans through the trees and she sighs, pulls at her scarf, and heads for the door.

* * *

Indecision, she decides, is the worst thing of all.

Aidy is not one to tarry, not when things need getting done, certainly not when they ought to be decided. It unnerves her, this twilight zone of maybes, of who-knows and what-ifs and the tear-your-hair-out sensation of I just don’t know.

Wind howls in her face. Annoyed, she pats hair out of her eyes with gloved hands, boots slipping and squelching through puddles of crusty gray slush. It snowed last night, not the kind that dusts the world in powdery wonder, just enough to make walking to work a royal pain.

With frozen fingers, she toys with the stuffing leaking into her pockets. You know. You know what you should do, what you must do. Just walk away. Run. You need to start your own life, on your own. You know.

She inhales ice air and holds her breath, the cold burning her lungs. But. But he’s smart and open and honest and he saw who I am and he still wants and—

She exhales. You’re rambling, she tells herself. Relax.

She’s almost at work, the bright lights and colorful glass doors of the therapy center crude in the gray afternoon and her own morbid mood. She doesn’t want to, but her mind strays… to Tatty, arms crossed, Mommy sighing into her hands at the old kitchen table. Tatty, a bang on the counter. Don’t be a fool, Aidy! He wants you. You can’t pass this up! Mommy, rubbing her forehead, endless circular motion, round and round on worry lines and grief.

Aidy stops at the entrance, sees her reflection; black hair swept back with the wind, her dark, brassy eyes strange and liquid on the red glass. She shakes her head slightly. No. I won’t let that figure in the equation.

In the lobby, the gust of hot air and brightly painted walls irritate her, as always, but the brick in her chest softens. She walks these halls stridently, strong and different, but respected. They know her here, the determination and drive and aggressive pursuit of goals that mark her as a therapist. She’s good at what she does and she knows it. Years of feeling sparse in her own skin, of sugary-sweet teachers, patronizing speeches and judging eyes and unasked questions, of never being enough… they make her savor the confidence here every day, again. Growing up had been tough, full of rough edges that scraped and bled against Sara Leah’s smooth drive, but she is here now, thank G-d, committed and unafraid.

If only she knew what to do. It’s been three days. You know what to do! She yanks at her coat, nods at the receptionist, and heads straight to her room. She has just time for a good, black coffee before her first client shows.

Mrs. Einhorn is early today, in a blue sweater and stiff sheitel. Aidy inhales. Pantene Maximum Hold. She smiles.

“Good morning, Mrs. Einhorn.” Her eyes move to twelve-year-old Batya, gentle and sweet-eyed, in a wheelchair. A sullen-faced teenager she hasn’t seen before hangs back.

“I have an appointment so my Dassi will be with Batya today,” Mrs. Einhorn announces, waving a hand behind her. She turns to her daughters. “I have to run.” She says crisply, “Call me when the session is over. And it’ll do you good to stop sulking, Dassi. You’re allowed to help out once in a while.”

The girl turns red. “I always help, Ma, it’s just—” She stops, sneaks a glance at Aidy, “Whatever.” She steps behind the wheelchair.

“I know you have dance practice now, but really, you should be grateful.” Her mother sighs, eyes narrow. “Look at Batya, she’s not in dance this year or next year, but she never complains.” She looks at Aidy, shrugs. “I have to go now.”

She swoops down on Batya with an airy kiss. Then she’s gone. Something stings in Aidy’s chest. “Let’s get started,” she says.

It’s bright and warm in the room, but Aidy feels hollow. She props Batya on a ball, Dassi rests her head in her palms, watching, branches scrape against the windows. So it doesn’t matter how great you are. Dassi is the successful one, pretty and talented, and still, she’s second best to her handicapped sister.

When the session is over, Aidy stands. She wants to shake Dassi around the shoulders, tell her that she needn’t try and sweat and grope for the golden scepter of approval, because no matter how hard she tries, she will never get there. Tell her that she’s okay, even if she’s not sweet like Batya, perfectly okay. She smiles instead, as they leave, and turns back quickly to the quiet inside her room. She leans against the door and closes her eyes. The sharp smell of new rubber toys, her coffee’s aftertaste acrid on her tongue.

I know what it’s like, Dassi. All my life, I’ve been second best.

She opens her eyes, fingers closing over the soft wool of her skirt. It’s been enough. Wearing and living Sara Leah’s hand-me-downs… her clothes, her teachers, her impressions. Aidy thinks of a dress, hunter-green velvet with a wide black sash; it had been beautiful when it was new, a splurge, for Sara Leah in honor of her bas mitzvah. When it became Aidy’s, it was still nice, but the velvet was matted and the hem had to be lowered, leaving a crease on the bottom.

I won’t take Sara Leah’s hand-me-down husband.

She knows she will eat it later, all of it, Tatty’s rage and Mommy’s tears and the bitterness in her heart. But for this moment, clarity fills her, cold and sure like an ice river, and it feels good.

* * *

When she pads downstairs to talk to Tatty, she’s warm in fuzzy slippers, her face a mask of smooth marble. But her fingers scrunch inside the pockets of her hoodie and she pauses at the foot of the stairs to listen.

Her father’s voice comes strong and loud from the kitchen; he must be on the phone. Ever since Sara Leah died, he only speaks to Mommy in dulcet tones, as if she were a child. She sighs and settles on the bottom step to wait. She needs to get this over with.

“Yes, yes, I know, Reb Moshe, I know,” her father is saying, and suddenly he doesn’t sound all that strong anymore, weariness winding in and out of his voice like a drooping ribbon. “Look, give me a few more days, a week at most. I’m trying, Reb Moshe, yes, yes, I know it’s not your problem. I’ll have the rent for you next week.”

Aidy hears the phone bang against the table, clatter to the floor. Silence hisses where her father’s voice rang.

“What are we going to do?” Mommy, her voice shaky. “Avrohom, why did you tell him you’ll have it next week? You shouldn’t have promised anything!”

“Eh, leave it to me, Shaindy.” Her father, a bit gruffly. “I’ll swing it somehow.”

Aidy grips the banister, presses her cheek against its rough wooden finish.

A sigh. “What should I say, it’s not easy. Not easy.” She hears tapping against the table, tap, tap, tap. “Since Sara Leah left us, it’s been particularly tough. You know, Yehuda would give her so much money she didn’t know what to do with it. So she gave.” A cough. “Here and there.”

Aidy sits up. Her heart slams. Here and there, my foot.

“If Aidy won’t marry Yehuda… I don’t know what will be.” Tap, tap, tap.

She hears her mother gasp.

“Of course,” her father continues, quickly, “we’ll manage, we always did, baruch Hashem. And we both know that Yehuda has alle mailehs, the money is just a bonus.”

Something scorches its way down her lungs, sears her chest. Aidy’s hand reaches up, over her mouth. No, please, no. She breathes hard, but the air is stale and her throat blisters, with heat and dust and horror.

She shoots up and makes for the kitchen. No, no, don’t.

“So I made up my mind,” She says. Her lips twitch.

Her mother starts, her father turns slowly to face her.

“I’m ready for another date.”

* * *

There’s a kind of darkness that comes the day after. She felt it the morning after shivah, looking up, only up, as she walked to work, as if the blue and yellow and white of summer sky had another, obscure meaning in a world without her sister. She feels it now again, as she drinks scalding black coffee and talks and bends for colorful squeeze balls; she is somehow apart, separated by a sheer veil of black.

So this is what it feels like to sacrifice your life.

But martyrs are supposed to be holy. Aidy doesn’t feel holy at all; just empty and lonely, a wretched acceptance that splits her on the inside.

When she comes home, she finds a postcard on her dresser, green with a swirly burgundy font: You’re invited! Sixth Class Reunion. Looking forward to see you there! The date is tonight, the card must have been sitting in Mommy’s mail pile for a while. Should she go? Aidy barks a laugh. She hasn’t been to any reunions since graduating. Hugs and squeals and omigosh-you-lost-so-much weight! banter and tossing about memories that aren’t even hers. She has no patience — these are Sara Leah things.

She is staring at her closet, wondering what to wear for her date tomorrow, wondering if she even cares, when Shana calls.

“You know our class reunion’s tonight,” she chirps.

“Mmm.”

“Just saying.” Shana sighs. “I don’t want to be the only one there not talking about sheitels and carriages, Aidy,” she complains. “I wish you would come. Please say you’ll come. Why don’t you ev—”

“Okay, I’ll come.”

Pause. “Eh… you’ll come?”

“Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Aidy grumbles. “I’ll come, okay? What are you wearing?” She turns away from her closet, surprised at herself. Fine. So I’ll go to the reunion.

There’s lots of hugs, lots of squeals, too many omigosh-look-who’s-here/you’re-so-skinny/I-haven’t-seen-you-in-ages! Her classmates look old, Aidy thinks, probably a result of a combination of teething babies, haughty sheitels, and life’s inevitable hard knocks. She wonders if she’s jealous.

Shana plies her with chatter and fruit cups, trying to please her. “See, it’s not that bad,” she whispers, when Esther, the official class rebbetzin, concludes her devar Torah, a winding discourse on motherhood. Esther has two kids, the older one twenty months old, Aidy wants to whisper back, but, feeling charitable, she just smirks. When Bracha gets up and announces a game, Aidy snatches her purse from the table and discreetly makes for the exit.

Shana catches her at the corner. “Wait! Aidy,” she pants. “Why did you run away?”

“It was getting boring.”

“Better question… why did you agree to come?”

Aidy shrugs. Why did you come? “I… I guess I don’t have to prove to Sara Leah anymore that I’m not like her.”

Shana squints at her. Aidy touches her fingers to her jaws, feels the heat creeping up her neck. She shrugs again, embarrassed. “See ya.” She waves and turns away.

She walks quickly, her breath laced with cold. She turns onto the avenue, walks past the shops, lights glaring in the early winter night, down the quiet side streets. So many houses, burnished entranceways in a path of evergreens, narrow doors, paint cracked and brown. People, so many people, scurry past her, men with chins in their shawls, ladies, hands cozy in cute carriage muffs, little boys in colorful cords.

Aidy waits for the light to change, watches her breath coming out in gray rings. Passersby look at her, she looks back and they look away, and she wonders how they don’t see the beautiful, dead girl trapping her. She feels Sara Leah’s breath on her cheek and she wants to reach up and swipe it away.

At home, she hears her mother, talking on the phone about laundry and falafel; must be one of the boys calling from yeshivah. She heads to her room, lies down on her bed. She stares at the ceiling, the crack on the lower left corner reaching up and snaking toward the middle like some grisly vein.

“You know I don’t have to prove myself to you.”

Thump. Thump. Thump. Her heart throbs, slow and hard. “I am different. And I’m fine. I’m not like you. And Tatty and Mommy and everyone else may always mourn that, but I’m fine. I’m good. Really.”

Aidy reaches for a pillow and presses its softness down on her nose. Shame tickles her in the gut. How ridiculous can you be? Talking to yourself?

She inhales sharply and sits up. Of course. You’re not talking to Sara Leah. You’re talking to yourself.

She’s older now, independent, no longer beneath the specter of her parents. Sara Leah is gone. Her heart sinks. This has nothing to do with them, or with Yehuda, or with anybody.

It is she. Locked in the spirit of a phantom sister, destined to remain there. Unless she can scrape and bang her way out, alone.

She is shaking when she climbs out of bed, opens her closet, wonders what to wear for her date tomorrow.

* * *

It’s coming, any minute now. She can feel it, destiny shivering in the cold air, the moon glinting pearl in the choppy waters below. Are you ready?

“It’s funny you like the cold,” Yehuda is saying, rubbing his hands together, one eye on the glass-enclosed lounge near the dock, where couples sit on little couches in their steamed-up bubble, sipping champagne and pretending to watch the water.

Aidy smiles. They walk slowly. Cold wind streams in her face, their shoes clop against the boardwalk. You’re getting engaged to Sara Leah’s husband. This is a nightmare.

“I’m not like Sara Leah,” she says.

“I know.” The slap of water on rocks, an airplane rumbles overhead. He turns his head to face her. “You’re strong. You’re tough. And real.”

Aidy swallows. She holds her frozen cheeks with gloved hands, presses the soft leather against her skin.

“Then again, you’re not so different either.”

She turns sharply.

Yehuda smiles but his eyes are serious. “Both of you are honest. And kind. And passionate. You grew up together, and there’s a lot you share, really.” He shrugs and looks out at the water. “In a beautiful way.”

They reach the dock. They stop, watch the freezing water hiss and slurp in the air, smash against the rocks. The railing is cold and smooth, salty wetness fills her nose.

In the distance, a boat streams toward the dock, majestic and white, festooned with lights that cast the dark ocean beneath them in dance.

“Hey.” Yehuda turns. “Let’s go for a ride!”

Aidy’s eyes follow the boat, gliding toward them like a white princess in the night. Boats… Sara Leah. Images lock in her mind. Sun hot on her neck, oars heavy in her sweaty palms, watching Sara Leah row, and sing, the thwack and splish of her metal oars on the greasy lake.

Hunching over the old computer in the shop, with Mommy, unread messages flashing, saraleah@gmail.com. Waiting, anxious, for the pictures to download. Mommy laughing as a freckled face burst onto the screen, sun in her green eyes, silhouetted by diamond water, beaming beside this strange man she called husband, her fresh blonde sheitel flying in the ocean breeze.

Aidy freezes. Sara Leah loved boats, so he assumes I do too. Naturally.

“Well,” Aidy says. No, say no! She licks her lips. He was a married man once, to Sara Leah. It’s inevitable.

She looks up. Fire flashes in her eyes. Ask him. Ask him why he thinks you like boats.

Yehuda waits. “What’s the matter? You want to come?”

And… so. And so he’s compared you, by mistake. It’s okay. I don’t need to hate boats just ’cuz Sara Leah liked them.

She never cries, never, but the wind is in her eyes and tears sting her cheeks. She knows she will struggle later, chafe and wrestle with her inner trappings, scrape out an identity for herself, unhinged and free.

She takes a deep breath. For this tiny, wondrous moment, she feels her soul lock in step with her sister’s, as if they are dancing, the kind of dance where you hold hands and let go and hold hands again, separate and entwined, all at once.

“Okay,” she says, “let’s go.”

(Originally featured in Calligraphy Succos 5778)

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