Another Three Dogs in a Row Read online

  He hopped up on my lap, his big tail wagging over the coffee table in front of me, and he knocked the Bible I’d left there to the floor. Some atavistic impulse told me to dust it off and kiss it, and as I did I remembered the practice of either pressing your prayer book, or the fringe of your tallis, against the Torah as the rabbi paraded it around the sanctuary at the end of the weekly Torah service.

  “The rabbi has to speak Hebrew,” I said to Rochester. “I’ll call him tomorrow and have him translate.” I rubbed my hand over the soft top of his head. “Good boy. Good clue.”

  A short time later, Lili returned like a successful hunter with news about the ring Rick had chosen. “It’s exactly what I was looking for,” she said. “An oval-cut, one-carat emerald in a white gold setting with a diamond baguette on each side.”

  I couldn’t help but hear the “what I was looking for.” Was this some kind of big hint as to what kind of engagement ring she wanted? That she wanted to get engaged?

  Before I could obsess too much, she continued, “I think it’s what Tamsen will like. Not something I’d wear—too traditional.”

  “Mary’s was very contemporary,” I said, relieved that she’d deflected my unasked question, and giving me the chance to indulge my curiosity. “Did you have engagement rings from either of your marriages?”

  “Not from Adriano, just a narrow gold band when we got married. Philip insisted on a big ring, like I was a trophy he could show off. A circle of diamonds and sapphires. I sold it as soon as the divorce was final and used the money for air fare to Tanzania to try my hand at photojournalism. I swore I’d never wear a ring like that again.”

  I waited a couple of beats, but when she didn’t say anything more, I knew I had to plunge in. “Does that mean you never want an engagement ring, or that you never want to get married again?” I asked. “I know we’ve talked about this before, but I want to make sure we’re still on the same page.”

  She cocked her head and looked at me, and then burst out laughing. “Did you think I was hinting that I want a ring from you?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t understand why she was laughing.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she said, and she leaned forward and kissed me. “You know I’m not the shy type. If I change my mind about getting married, you’ll be the first to know.” Then she pulled back. “You haven’t changed, have you?”

  I shook my head. “I love you and I want to be with you. I don’t need a bunch of legal paperwork for that.”

  “And we both know how awful it is to go through divorce. So we’re good?”

  “We’re better than good,” I said, smiling. “Great. Awesome. Outrageously wonderful.”

  Maybe it was my visit to the old shul that morning, but I thought that if Lili and I ever did get married, I’d want a Jewish ceremony, preferably in a synagogue. Lili’s family, and the remains of my own, a few distant cousins, there to witness our commitment.

  It all came back to family, didn’t it? The legacy my parents and grandparents had left me in Trenton and Stewart’s Crossing, Lili’s issues with her mother, the rabbi’s loss of his brother. At least there was one of those I could do something about.

  Lili’s phone trilled, and she groaned. “That’s Fedi,” she said. “Dios mio, I can’t believe he’s calling me again. We just hung up an hour ago.”

  She picked up her phone and answered in Spanish. After a moment or two of spirited conversation, in which I only understood a few words, she hung up.

  “My mother fell,” she said. “It looks like she fractured her pelvis.”

  “Oh my,” I said. “The poor woman.”

  “I can’t keep doing this remotely. I told Fedi I’ll fly down there tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll get someone to cover my classes. Can you drive me to the airport?”

  “Of course. You don’t want me to go with you?”

  “Trust me, this isn’t the way you want to meet my mother.”

  I ran out to DeLorenzo’s for hoagies while Lili worked the phone, setting up her flight, her rental car, and her substitutes. I felt bad that I couldn’t go with her, but I understood that this was something she had to do herself. We ate our sandwiches at the kitchen table, brainstorming things she had to do before she could leave, and questions she needed to ask once she was in Florida.

  The situation made me wonder who would take care of Lili and me when we were old? Lili was a couple of years older than I was, but typically women lived longer than men. Both my parents had died young, too, which I guessed made me statistically likely to pass before Lili did. So assuming we were still together, she’d take care of me. But what about her? Would she be able to rely on her brother, her niece and nephew?

  “Do you have one of those living wills?” I asked, as we walked upstairs so that she could pack.

  “I’m not my mother, Steve. I have a long way to go before I end up like her.”

  “You never know. Look at all the people we know who died young. I’m just saying, I think we should have those. I had a will made up once Rochester came to live with me, because I wanted to make sure he was taken care of. I should change that now.”

  I looked at her. “You’d keep him if anything happened to me, wouldn’t you?”

  “So he can drag me around to crime scenes?” She smiled. “Of course I will, mi amor. And you’re right, we should both have up-to-date wills. We’ll take care of that when I come home.”

  I kissed her, and because he knew we’d been talking about him, Rochester nosed between us, looking for love.

  I sat on the bedroom floor with him, rubbing his belly and telling him he was a good boy, as Lili packed. He and I went out for our late evening walk, and by the time we returned Lili was already in bed.

  I stripped down and slid beside her. “I’ll miss you,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Just remember. Illegitimi non carborundum.”

  She laughed. “No, I won’t let the bastards grind me down. Though if my mother or my brother knew you were calling them bastards they’d have words for you.”

  “Why I said it in Latin,” I said. We curled into each other and Lili gave me something to remember her by – as if I needed the reminder. But I wasn’t complaining.

  The next morning we hurried through a dozen last minute things before we could leave for the airport. “You’ll take those papers I was grading into my office so the students can pick them up?” Lili asked.

  “Yes, love. You’ve already asked me that twice. And I’ll call the dentist Monday and reschedule your checkup. I have the ticket for the dry cleaner’s so I’ll pick up your dress.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit frantic.”

  “Don’t worry. Focus on helping your mother.”

  “But what can I really do for her in a couple of days? We’ll argue and she’ll play the martyr and nothing will change.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re going to talk to her doctors and you and Fedi will figure out exactly what’s wrong with her and what you can do to make her comfortable and speed up her healing. I’m sure she’ll feel better having you there.”

  I carried her bag out to the car and put it in the trunk, then opened the back door for Rochester. Lili slid into the front seat, then said, “Coño! Did I bring the keys to my mother’s apartment?”

  She patted her pockets. “Yes. They’re here. Let’s get on the road before I have a nervous breakdown.”

  Rochester nosed forward from the back seat, sniffing her shoulder, and she turned to pet him as we sped down the highway. “Thank God everything is digital now,” she said. “My boarding pass and the email confirming my rental car are both on my phone. I’m pretty sure I remember how to get to her apartment but I can put the address into the GPS.”

  We talked about how much easier our lives were now that we didn’t have to fret about carrying so much paperwork with us, and Lili seemed to relax.

  When I pulled up in the drop-off lane at the airport, I kissed her goodbye and told her to call me whenever she ne
eded to vent. And then, as I drove back up the highway, I felt a weird sense of freedom—I was single again, if only briefly, and my time was my own – and Rochester’s, of course. Everyone, even those happily coupled, liked a little private time, didn’t they?

  Not that I wouldn’t miss Lili – I had grown accustomed to sharing my life with her, to discussing our days over dinner, to walking the dog with her sometimes, to fitting together in a hundred small ways. But it was going to be fun to be on my own for a few days, doing just what I wanted when I wanted, eating fast food without worrying about calories, having a second beer after dinner if I chose.

  What did I want to do? I could go back home and get started on the to-do list Lili had left me—but instead I called Rabbi Goldberg. I wanted to show him the paper written in Hebrew that I’d found at the old shul and see what he could make of it.

  He said that he’d be in his office for the next few hours, so Rochester and I stopped at the house to pick up the paper and then drove to Shomrei Torah, where we found the rabbi and Sadie in his office. While the dogs played together, I showed the rabbi the sheet and explained where I’d found it. I still didn’t understand where it had come from, and how Joel, who wasn’t a Trenton native, had stumbled on it.

  He looked at it for a couple of minutes, his brow knotted in concentration. “This isn’t Hebrew,” he said after a while. “Though it’s in the Hebrew alphabet, it’s Yiddish. My parents were first generation Americans and they were determined to be assimilated. Joel and I almost never heard Yiddish at home, so I’m sure he couldn’t make anything out of it, either.”

  “My dad’s parents spoke to him in Yiddish and he answered in Yiddish, so he was pretty fluent. My mom could understand, but she’d always answered her parents in English. They only spoke Yiddish when they didn’t want me to understand, so all I know of the language is a few colorful curses. Do you know anyone who could translate this?”

  “Daniel Epstein probably could,” he said. “Do you remember him from Talmud study? The elderly man who walks with a cane?”

  “Sure. He’s the one who was so sweet to Rochester. Could you call and ask him?”

  He did, and Mr. Epstein extended an invitation to Rochester and me to come over to his house and show him the paper.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing, Steve. I feel like I’m getting closer to Joel with every detail you find.”

  “Have you been able to make funeral arrangements?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Joel’s body was released by the medical examiner yesterday afternoon. My parents want him to be buried near them, in Scottsdale, so the body will be shipped there today. I’m flying out this afternoon and we’ll have the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Your parents must be very upset.”

  “They are. It’s hard to lose a child—I’ve counseled many parents through that. But we all have to believe that Joel will be at peace now.”

  He thanked me again, and I led Rochester back out to the car and plugged Daniel Epstein’s address into my phone, reminded as I did that Lili would be doing the same thing once she landed in Miami.

  The directions led me down toward the river, on the other side of Stewart’s Crossing from River Bend. Epstein lived in Crossing Estates, a development of large homes on what had been farmland when I was growing up.

  I parked in the driveway on an imposing two-story in a faux Tudor style, and he appeared at the front door, leaning on the burnished wood cane I’d seen him use at the rabbi’s study.

  He greeted Rochester first, sticking his hand out for my golden to sniff, then petting him. “I wish I could have another dog,” he said. “But I can’t manage the walking.”

  “Thanks for agreeing to look at this paper,” I said as he led us into a two-story foyer with a staircase in front of us. On the wall I noted a couple of framed sepia-toned photographs of the area where my grandparents had lived when they came to Trenton. “That’s New Street, isn’t it?” I asked, looking at one photo.

  “You recognize it?”

  “My great-uncle had a junkyard there. It was gone by the time I was born, but we had some old pictures. Nothing as nice as these, though.”

  “I took these pictures myself,” Epstein said proudly. “When I was in college, for a history project. I found them a few years ago, had them blown up and framed. Always good to remember where we come from.”

  I agreed with that as I looked around the house. “You have a beautiful home.”

  “I love it,” he said. “My children want me to sell it and move somewhere more manageable, but I’m not quite there yet. I have a bedroom and a full bath on this level, and I rarely climb the stairs anymore.”

  Rochester and I followed him into the living room, where the walls were lined with so much art that it reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Gertrude Stein’s salon. I recognized an Andy Warhol of green Coca-Cola bottles, what looked like a Rothko with big blobs of color, and a couple of photo-realist works I knew Lili would love.

  Epstein motioned me to an overstuffed armchair and sat at a small antique desk, with the paper in front of him.

  As he pulled out a pair of reading glasses, I noticed a postcard beside his desk, what looked like a sign from a store in a tropical location. It read “Se habla Yiddish,” and even I could get the joke. Must have been Miami, where Hispanics and Jews melded. The card was a good sign—I hoped it meant that Mr. Epstein had a real familiarity with the language.

  While he read, Rochester sprawled on the floor beside him. “Hmm, hmm,” Epstein said. Then he looked up at me. “This is a documentation form for Yad Vashem. You know what that is?”

  “The Holocaust center in Israel?”

  “The largest collection of Holocaust documentation in the world. Volunteers used to go to people in the resettlement camps after the war, and to survivors, and ask them to fill out forms about their family and friends and neighbors, who was lost in the Shoah and who was saved. Where did you find this?”

  I explained about the metal box behind the Belgian block wall. “Any indication who wrote the document?” I asked.

  “Myer Hafetz, native of Berlin, Germany.”

  Had Joel Goldberg’s family come from Berlin? I’d have to ask the rabbi. “Is there any indication of who hid it there? Or a reason why someone would have hidden it?”

  “I can’t speculate without translating the whole document. I can do that for you, if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Maybe one of the names will trigger something.”

  He made a photocopy of the document and returned the original to me. He wasn’t big on using email, so I gave him my mailing address, and he promised to mail the translation to me in the next couple of days.

  It was strange to return home with Rochester and not have Lili there to meet us. The house seemed emptier somehow. How had I lived on my own at first, and then with Rochester, before she had joined us?

  To stave off any loneliness, I called Rick and invited him to bring Rascal over. I made a big pan of lasagna and put it in the oven.

  Since many immigration records had been digitized, I wondered if I could find anything on line about Myer Hafetz. He was from Berlin, Epstein had said, and I knew that Hafetz had to be in Trenton by September 1948, when the document was dated.

  The National Archives included many immigration records for arrivals to the United States from foreign ports between approximately 1820 and 1982, but they were all on microfilm. I had to go to one of the ancestry sites for online records, and there were way too many places to look and too little information to narrow a search.

  I made a couple of quick tries but then Lili called and I gave up. “It’s chaos here,” she said. “My mother is very agitated, and Fedi and Sara are worn out, so it’s all on me.”

  “I wish I could be there to help out,” I said.

  “She’s supposed to have an oxygen mask on but she keeps pulling it off. She just keeps rambling in a weird combination of Spanish and Yiddish,” she said. “I have
no idea what she’s saying most of the time.”

  I felt bad for Lili, and guilty at the same time. My mother had gotten sick when I was living in California, right after my ex-wife’s first miscarriage. I had to be there for Mary, and I didn’t realize my mother would pass so quickly. And then my father had gone into his decline while I was in prison, and I even had to miss his funeral. I hadn’t been able to be there for either of them, and I couldn’t do or say anything to damage Lili’s relationship with her mother and lead her to the same kind of feelings I had.

  I could, perhaps, do something for Joel Goldberg, and his brother. We’d see.

  13 – Agitation

  Rick and Rascal arrived a short while later. “Any news on the death of the rabbi’s brother?” I asked, after I’d given him a beer and Rascal and Rochester both got treats.

  “I tracked down the driver of the bus that night,” he said. “The regular driver was sick and he was filling in. He thinks he remembers a homeless-looking guy get on at the train station, and then getting off at the synagogue. He does remember that two guys got off there, but couldn’t identify a photo of Joel Goldberg. He wasn’t paying attention, just wanted to finish the run and go home.”

  “Someone else got off at the synagogue with Joel. Maybe this other guy saw something.”

  “If I trust this driver’s memory. There are a couple of developments within walking distance of that bus stop, so it could have been some guy on his way home. I’m going to meet the bus tomorrow night and see if maybe this guy is a regular, and if he or anyone else saw anything that night.”

  He sighed. “I don’t have much to go on, and the chief is not happy. There hasn’t been much in the press beyond a single mention in the Courier-Times, but because this is a township crime, he’s getting pressure from over there, as well as from our side. It’s possible that someone meant to rob the temple, and Joel got in the way. Which means there could be a burglar slash killer loose in town. No one likes that idea.”

  I served up the lasagna, and as we ate I told him what Daniel Epstein had said about the paper I’d found at the synagogue. “He says it’s written in Yiddish, a lot of names. He’s going to translate it for me and mail it back to me.”