Connor laughs. “Gabe? Certified Jew. Keeps the Sabbath and the dietary restrictions and everything. I always said that it was a shame he didn’t stick around in Lenape Falls and study the Hasidic community instead.”

“It’s not really chassidic — I mean, it’s more of a mixture of….” Gabe’s voice trails off, and he shrugs away Connor’s comment. “I don’t think that would be for me.”

“Still,” Anita says, leaning forward eagerly. “You must have an intimate knowledge of the community. A lot of the work out there is from outsiders, and it’s such an insular culture — they’re so reluctant to speak in depth to strangers. You should really get in there while you’re local. Write a paper. Do a study. We’d hire you for an article.”

There is something about the offer that feels uncomfortable. Gabe tries to pin down the source of his instinctive distaste. Do a study, as though Lenape Falls is another culture under a microscope, a mystery to be unraveled.

“I don’t think they’d appreciate being studied,” he says finally. He can imagine Ezra’s eyebrows shooting up, Rivi’s eyes narrowing. Hillel would probably throw his head back and laugh at the idea, and Penina — if she deigned to speak to him — would explain, in patient detail, exactly how offensive his study is.

“What do you mean?” Connor’s eyes crinkle in confusion. “This is anthropology, Gabe. We’re scientists. We study every subculture and counterculture. Anita did an eight-page spread on skateboarders in Central Park last month. This is no different.”

Except it feels like it is. Skateboarders aren’t constantly under a lens, being scrutinized until some scandal can make the front-page news. There are no hate groups dedicated to skateboarders, no history of persecution and genocide. Gabe has spent years throwing off the instinctive distrust of outsiders, choosing to live what he likes to think is an enlightened-yet-frum life, but he still feels that simmering wariness when it comes to his own people, that certainty that they are the butt of the joke.

“Yeah,” Gabe says. “So what are you working on this month?” Connor and Anita brighten at the chance to show him, and Gabe busies himself with the more comfortable topics of other cultures. He enjoys discussing the pitfalls of their research and their areas of expertise, but isn’t unhappy when he finally leaves.

“When are you heading back to Brazil?” Connor asks him.

“Soon, I think. I have to book a return ticket.” He hadn’t thought about it until now. His work ranges from on-site research to off-site writing, and he has a fairly free schedule because of it.

“I guess I’ll look into flights. My sister might want me to help clean out my father’s old house.” They hadn’t discussed it during shivah, but Tatty’s house is packed with 30 years of possessions. It must look like a museum of the past by now, never-changing, their childhood preserved within peeling wallpaper and dusty floors.

He sends Rivi a text and then wanders the city for a while, until the museums are closed and night begins to fall. The response comes soon after. Are you still in the city? Heading back now.

He just has to find Penn Station again. It’s… somewhere underground nearby, he thinks, but when he climbs down a subway staircase, he finds himself in a single station. He tries another staircase without much luck, and his phone sends him in circles.

He’ll find the station eventually, he figures, but he’s going to miss Rivi if he doesn’t hurry. He glances around, clears his throat and says, “Excuse me,” to a pedestrian. The man keeps walking.

There’s a frum woman with a stroller at the corner, waiting for the light, and an inborn sense of recognition send him hurrying toward her. He’s startled when she averts her eyes and flinches.

Oh. He feels the sudden, irrational urge to gesture at his narrow peyos, to tug his tzitzis out from under his shirt. Like a monkey signaling its safe intentions to another in the wilderness. Instead, he clears his throat and says, “You don’t know how to get to Penn Station, do you? Trying to get back to Lenape Falls.”

The woman relaxes at Lenape Falls, and Gabe feels almost like he’s playacting. Like he’s pretending to be like her, a frum stranger in the city, when he sometimes feels strangest of all in Lenape Falls. “One block over,” she offers. “There’s an entrance at the corner.”

He thanks her and hurries off. Rivi won’t wait long.

He finds her in the station, striding through the crowd with a briefcase rocking to her gait. He falls into step with her. “It’s good you’re here, because I have no idea how to get back.”

Rivi snorts. “It’s just two transfers. Not a big deal.” But she leads him to the train, and Gabe feels very much like the little brother again, moving through an unfamiliar place with only Rivi’s back as his guide. He sits beside her on the train, and Rivi lets out a little sigh.

“Today was harrowing. I have to be in court on Monday and I have to meet with three clients tomorrow. My paralegal’s been swamped—”

“You have a paralegal,” Gabe teases her. “Very fancy.” It’s exactly where he’d always imagined Rivi, accomplished and in charge. When he left Lenape Falls, Rivi had been only a couple of years into her career, working nonstop but with little reward. Now, she’s a senior associate at a respected firm, and Gabe feels a little bolt of regret that he’d missed out on her journey.

Early on, he’d texted Rivi all the time — updates, pictures, anything that had come to mind. She had rarely responded, usually days after his messages, and he’d slowly gotten the sense that she hadn’t wanted to speak to him. She’d been angry at the mess he’d left behind.

Now, he chews on his lip and dares to broach the topic. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Rivi looks at him in confusion. “For running out on Penina and leaving you to break the news. That’s why you stopped talking to me, right? You were angry about Penina.”

Rivi’s face tightens, and she glances at an ad on the wall. “No,” she says. “I mean, yes. I’m still furious at what you did to my best friend—” Her voice is sharp, but then it quiets. “But it wasn’t that. It was just… I guess I was ready to move forward, you know?” Her fingers play with her briefcase handle, flipping it back and forth, and she watches it instead of Gabe. “And you were part of my past.”

“Oh.” Her honesty stings. He knows all of this about Rivi — she’s embraced a new life, a new family, and she’d pushed Abba away long before he’d died — but it’s painful to be included with Abba, considered another stressor of her childhood. Although, of course, he had been. He’d been the younger brother she’d been forced to parent, a child who hadn’t been easy and who had needed her desperately. He was as much a burden as Abba. He’d just never thought that Rivi had seen it that way.

“Was it really that bad?” he asks.

“Yes,” Rivi says fiercely. “Look, Gabe, you’ve been… studying family structures in the rainforest. But I’ve been here all this time. I see how other families are. I see Ezra’s family, and as much as some of them get on my nerves, they’re normal. They grew up playing outside with their friends and going to school functions and pizza shops and parks. Their parents left the house and had people over for Shabbos meals and went to therapy when there were mental health issues. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

A part of Gabe is defensive, protective of Abba even now. “We were never… CPS never showed up and took us away. We were healthy and safe. We had what we needed.”

“Right. And we got good at pretending that everything was fine at home.”

Gabe nods. He remembers shrugging off rebbeim who had pried about the father who hadn’t returned their calls, remembers skipping father-son events, remembers standing close to Abba in shul as though he might be able to shield him from the world. As though he might be able to hide the fact that his father had been different.

They had been fine. There had been no red flags, no greater concerns. The Cohens struggle financially, but their father does his best, a neighbor had once told a friend while Gabe had eavesdropped. It’s a rough situation, but they’re good kids. And that Rivi is so capable….

Rivi turns to him, her voice low and pleading. “But we shouldn’t have had to pretend, Gavriel. I shouldn’t have had to schedule our doctors’ appointments so that Abba would have to take us. We shouldn’t have had to do the grocery shopping when I was ten. I shouldn’t have gotten survival training before I got new school uniforms.” She takes a deep breath. “And Abba is gone now and we can’t tell him that, but I wish… I wish he understood what he did to us. What he didn’t do for us. We deserved better than that.”

Gabe is left without a retort, without an excuse. Rivi leans back against her seat as the train pulls into the station. “We deserved better,” she says again, and her voice — always strong, always fierce — is tired and sad.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 903)