Rivi looks up when Penina ducks into the room. She isn’t wearing her sheitel. Instead, she’s dressed to empty a dusty house in a knotted turquoise tichel with a glittery sheen to it. A few stray hairs have gotten free, framing Rivi’s narrow, exhausted face. She manages a smile for Penina. “Thanks for helping out. Gabe is downstairs with Ezra and the kids, so you might not even have to see him today. Last I checked, he was buried under an ancient set of encyclopedias.”

Penina laughs. “He’s never coming back upstairs.” She wouldn’t be annoyed if he did, though. He’d been on his best behavior when he came to the office, and her resentment for him lessened considerably. “I figured I could help with the study.”

“You’re helping Gabe look into my father, aren’t you?” Rivi narrows her eyes at Penina.

Penina ducks her head in acknowledgement. “Is that okay?”

“Just as long as I don’t hear about it.” Rivi hesitates, then, a little gentler, says, “Be careful around Gabe, okay?”

Penina doesn’t know which of them Rivi is protecting with that request. Be careful with Gabe. Because of how he’d hurt her? Because Rivi is worried that Penina might hurt him? She doesn’t want to think too much about what it means that she’s been dragged into this investigation, that she’s spending time around Gabe again. It’s about Mr. Cohen, she assures herself, nothing else.

“I don’t love Ezra being here,” Rivi admits after a few minutes of quiet sorting. Penina pulls papers from a file cabinet, one at a time, perusing them for anything relevant before she puts them into a garbage bag. “It’s just… this place is humiliating.”

“He won’t think that. I don’t think that.” Penina gestures at the house. “You told me the same thing when I stayed with you in college, but it never seemed that way to me. Just a big house without a lot of people.”

“It’s like it’s rotting from the ground up.” Rivi pulls another stack of papers from the cabinet. “In high school, I had a friend over once. She said it was depressing and never came back.”

Penina privately thinks that that girl wasn’t much of a friend, to complain about a house without a mother in it. Aloud, she says, “I never found it depressing.”

“I did.” Rivi yanks out another sheaf of papers. There are two old photocopies of birth certificates for Riva and Gavriel Cohen, born to Avigdor and Raizel Cohen in Bearwood, New Jersey. Penina stares at them. They look like official documents, which means they’ll be searchable in databases.

Rivi must see her pensive study of them, because she repeats, “As long as I don’t hear about it,” and shoves them toward Penina.

“Are you sure you don’t want to know anything?” If it were her, she’d be obsessed until she got answers, researching every lead that might take her to the truth.

“My sister-in-law is trying to start World War III in the family. I still have to empty out this house, which means that my husband is going to understand exactly how dysfunctional my childhood was.” Rivi crumples some old bills and throws them into the garbage with extra force. “And I got an email this morning from my boss, asking me to come into his office tomorrow for an unexpected meeting. So no, I don’t want to deal with this insanity right now.”

“Unexpected meeting could be a good thing,” Penina offers.

“Could be. Could be I’m getting fired. I didn’t work enough hours in January—”

“You were sitting shivah!”

“And if I were some grade-school teacher at a yeshivah, then maybe that would be okay. But I’m not.” Rivi shoves the last few papers from the middle drawer into the bottom drawer with barely a glance at them. Penina sees snatches of them — a water bill, an old ID badge, a birthday card. “I chose to do this instead.” At the bottom of the file cabinet, she pulls out a wad of yellowed business cards, and Penina grabs one before Rivi can toss them all. Rivi smiles humorlessly. “At least I don’t have any parents left to lose. Now I’m an asset again.”

“Rivi.” Penina puts a hand on her arm. “Do you… do you still enjoy your job?” Rivi speaks about it with resentment, a bitterness that Penina hates to see in her.

“I love it.” Rivi shuts her eyes, tilts her head up. “I must seem so… I have everything I want,” she says. “I feel so selfish even complaining about it to you.”

“Hey. You might have a husband, but I don’t have to deal with your sisters-in-law. We’ve all got something.” This is what they do, prod at sensitive spots like they’re light jokes instead of painful bruises. It’s how they’ve always communicated, and Penina feels a familiar comfort in it.

“Hey, is this your father’s business card?”

“Allegedly.” Rivi drops to the floor to peer into the drawer where she’s dumped some of the documents while Penina peruses the card. It’s a business card for Lenape Accounting, so probably not Rivi’s father’s at all. This file cabinet predates the identity theft.

She moves to the desk, leaving the last drawer of the file cabinet for Rivi. Someone has left a key in the lock of one of the drawers. There are scattered papers inside, and she takes them out, going through them one at a time before she stacks them on the desk for the garbage.

“Oh,” Rivi says suddenly, and Penina turns. Rivi is sitting on the floor, a stack of folded colored card stock in her hands. “This is… these are all of my old report cards.” She flips through them. “Rivi is a bright girl with much to offer the class. She is a good friend and well-liked by her classmates. She is encouraged to bring all of the appropriate school supplies to class daily. If she can do that, I have no doubt that she will continue to have a successful year.” Rivi stares down at the pile. “I can’t believe that Abba really saved all of these. I didn’t even think he read through them some years.”

“I’m sure he did. He was probably so proud of you. Tiny, overachieving Rivi.” Penina flashes her a grin. Rivi doesn’t smile back.

“I just… he never seemed all that invested in our schooling. Or in us, really. He was… difficult. And a liar,” she adds swiftly. “And this doesn’t— it doesn’t mean anything.” She puts the report cards back into the drawer.

“Right.” But Penina suddenly remembers the last time  she saw Mr. Cohen. Rivi had just had baby Meir, and Penina came over with pizza and fries. Mr. Cohen hovered in the main room of Rivi’s tiny apartment, not an uncommon sight back then, and Ezra talked easily to him while the young father rocked Meir to sleep.

Mr. Cohen was staring at Meir like he was his entire world. Penina had always thought of him as an odd but kind man who struggled around other people. But there was nothing complicated in the way he looked at Meir. He clearly loved his grandson, even as he barely spoke a word to Rivi.

When he turned to leave, he asked if he could come again the next night. Just for a little while, he said. I’ll stay out of your hair. Or maybe I could babysit while you two take a break? He sounded so hopeful, so desperate to see Meir again, that Penina had been suddenly fond of him.

Rivi had said, I don’t think that’s a good idea, her face sharp and closed off, and Penina had understood, kind of, but thought that it was a shame. There had been love in that family, even if Rivi denies it now. She wonders if Rivi feels any regrets, but she isn’t bold enough to ask.

She rifles through the desk drawer. It’s even more dis- organized than the haphazard file cabinet. There are newspaper clippings, old cards, unpaid bills, and dog-eared shopping lists. Some of it might be important, but she couldn’t say what was.

A paper catches her eye, half stuck to a shopping list by some unknown substance. It’s a typewritten letter, yellowed with age and cracked in spots, and it’s very brief.

Avigdor—

I was surprised to hear that you were on campus yesterday asking for me. I appreciate that you didn’t come to the house, but I suspect that you just didn’t know my new address. I won’t be giving it to you. I’m sure you understand.

As the years go on, I find that I regret the things we’ve done. I am ready to move past it to a better future.

Please do not contact me again.

                                                                                                                —M

Now this seems promising. Penina snaps a picture of the letter for her records.

“Hey, Rivi? Do you know who might have written this?” She keeps her voice even, casual, though she isn’t fooling Rivi. Rivi gives her a look but peers over at the letter.

“No. My father didn’t get out much. And this is typewritten. It could have been… it could have been for the other one. The real Avigdor.”  It takes some effort for her to get that out. Rivi runs an anxious finger under her tichel, smoothing escaping hairs back beneath it. “I’m going to pack up some of this stuff and work on the shelves downstairs,” she says abruptly. “I can’t be in this room anymore.”

Penina knows what she means. It’s unnerving, thinking about the two Avigdors who had lived in this house, who had left their own marks in the same places, layered over each other like buildings constructed on ruins of the past.

Rivi’s father hadn’t just stolen Avigdor’s identity. He had merged the two of them together, a Frankenstein’s monster of different histories and lifestyles and memories.

The things we’ve done. And what had Avigdor Cohen done before his death?

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 913)