The Night, The Day (4 page)

“How does he know me?”

“Maybe he caught one of your countless talk show appearances or saw your name on the best-sellers list. You’re not the most inconspicuous man in America, Marty.”

“How long was he in the hospital?”

“Four days. Got out yesterday.”

“Only four days for a suicide attempt? What kind of treatment is that?”

“HMO special,” Reddy responded, chuckling.

“Come on, Ashok, get serious.” Martin knew that a man like Benoît would have nothing but the best medical insurance and would have paid out of pocket for any expenses having to do with something like this.

Reddy stopped laughing. “Boy, Marty, you sound a bit uptight over there. Everything all right?”

Martin had long ago realized that there wasn’t much he could get past Reddy. “Everything’s okay, I suppose.”

Reddy was silent. He had been concerned about Martin’s return to Chicago since he’d first heard of the invitation to speak at the convention. Being a good friend, he had held his tongue then and would do so now.

“Anyway,” Martin continued, “let’s get back to Benoît.”

“Okay,” Reddy agreed. “We kept him for four days because he was behaving fairly normally and insisted he was perfectly fine. He didn’t appear to need any medication, and was genuinely contrite about his act. Promised not to do it again, to go for therapy and all that. There wasn’t much more we could do for him and, as you know, there are patients in worse shape waiting for beds.”

“Business must be good for you to so quickly discharge a cash-paying patient,” Martin said snidely.

“Just great. Anyway, will you take the case?”

“Sure. I’ll uncover the deep mysteries of the man’s mind.”

“Good, then I will give him the go-ahead to call you. I told him I wanted to speak with you first to see if you were taking on any new patients.”

“Never too busy for you, Ashok.”

“That is good to hear. When you get back, you will come for dinner. Savitri has a friend she thinks you might be interested in.”

Martin was used to Reddy’s efforts at matchmaking. “Sure. Okay.”

“Talk to you soon then.”

“Yes. And thanks for the referral.”

“Anytime.”

Martin hung up the phone, then picked it up again and dialed for the hotel operator.

“Can you connect me with Dr. Nancy Hartledge’s room?” he asked.

“Please hold.”

He held the phone for a moment, but hung up before he even heard a ring. He didn’t know why he hung up, nor why he placed the call to begin with.

He got up and started packing. He would grab an early dinner, then head out to the airport. Soon he would be back with his daughter, the only thing in his world that made any sense.

chapter 3

November 10, 1994

Brooklyn, New York

M
artin stood on the street,
immune to the evening chill, staring at the house. The pavement, wet from an earlier rain, reflected the streetlights above. It was close to 10, quiet and serene.

He had come not knowing what to expect. Whether he would actually cross the street and ring the bell, or keep his distance and simply watch, he couldn’t choose.

It had been the worst day of his life. Desperately in need of connecting to something, he had returned here, to the place where his life had begun and where, one day years ago, a part of that life had ended.

He had been standing in the same spot for close to an hour. Paralyzed, almost inert, he found himself beyond tears, beyond grief.

The living room and dining room were dark, but through a street-level window, he could see light emanating from the kitchen in the back and the figure of a familiar woman moving about. Upstairs, another light burned in the room that used to be – and probably still was – his father’s study.

Martin’s mind traveled back five years to the night he had given his parents the news of his engagement to Katherine, the very last time he had talked with either of them. He would never forget his mother’s silence, the anguish in her eyes as his father lashed into him. He remembered having waited for her to intercede, to make peace between them as she always had. But this time things were different.

“So, this is what you do to us. This is how you finally kill us!” his father harangued.

“No, Papa, this is how I find love and happiness for myself.”

“Love and happiness?” Abraham Rosen looked at his wife. “Our son is unable to find love and happiness from a Jewish girl.” He threw up his hands.

Leah Rosen couldn’t respond.

“I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry my life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to. I’m sorry I didn’t become a rabbi like you, that I didn’t devote my life to my religion and my people.”

“Your religion! Your people! You have no religion. You have no people. All you have is that foolish psychology, and now you will have a
shiksa
wife and
goyish
children. A fine return for all the work your mother and I have done!”

Martin was silent. There was nothing to be gained with words. From his earliest days in yeshiva, when his rebelliousness and skepticism took root, he had always known that some day it might come to this.

Abraham addressed his wife again. “I told you this was going to happen. From the day you convinced me to let him go to University of Chicago, I knew he would be lost to us.” Abraham’s face turned crimson. He pointed at Martin. “And for this, my parents and my brother walked into the gas chambers.” He was trembling.

Leah Rosen finally broke her silence. “Enough!” Tears rushed from her eyes.

Martin moved to embrace her, but she held out her hand to stop him.

“Mama,” he pleaded.

“No, Martin, I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

There had been two other times when Martin had stood in this spot, watching the house as he was now. The first had been a year after his marriage to Katherine, the day she gave birth to their son, Ethan; the second was two years later, after the birth of Elizabeth. On both occasions, he had lacked the temerity to cross the street, and now he once again wondered if he could bring himself to do it.

He wasn’t afraid of being turned away; he was confident they would never do that. The rift between them had not been a “disowning,” it had been an estrangement that probably could have been repaired over time with a little nurturing. But Martin, in his own way, was as stubborn as his father.

Katherine, ironically, had encouraged him to mend things. She felt strongly about the children having a relationship with their grandparents, and her own parents lived far away in Illinois. Martin agreed, and frequently promised to “eventually” do something about it. But now it was too late, at least as far as Katherine and Ethan were concerned. A few hours earlier, he had buried them both.

He had met Katherine during his first week at college, almost twenty years earlier, at a bar called Jarod’s. It was his first Saturday night in Chicago, and his roommate, a Jewish kid from Springfield, Massachusetts, had invited him to come along with some other guys. “Just lose the yarmulke,” his roommate said. Martin, who had never gone anywhere without his head covered, was drawn to the idea, wondering what it might feel like. He soon learned that this mere change in appearance would engender a sense of liberation he had never known.

So, when the young woman sitting at the next table smiled at him, he had no hesitation in simply saying “hello.” His new friends were awestruck at the ease with which he did this. He was neither afraid nor imbued with the arrogance that normally obviates such fear. He was simply innocent.

And Martin had found Katherine irresistible. She was his height, with soft, unblemished skin, flaming red hair, green eyes, a dancer’s figure, and a smile that lit up the room. They left Jarod’s together and walked around the campus talking for hours – finding they had absolutely nothing in common. Next thing they knew, they were inseparable.

It took quite some time for Martin to muster the nerve to marry her. She had always understood and never pushed. But he knew he wanted a complete life with her. After eight years together, through college and graduate school, they became engaged and decided to relocate to New York. Martin hoped that the proximity to his parents might facilitate their eventual acceptance of Katherine, but it was not to be.

At first, they lived in Forest Hills and Martin opened a private practice in the affluent town of Great Neck on the north shore of Long Island. Katherine worked as a nurse at the North Shore University Hospital and, over time, befriended several doctors, all of whom were happy to refer patients to Martin. Martin’s reputation and practice grew, and he eventually earned the position of associate professor in the hospital’s department of psychiatry. Shortly after Elizabeth’s birth, they bought a house in Lake Success, just minutes from the hospital and Martin’s office.

Now Katherine was gone, and Ethan along with her, taken needlessly by a drunk driver who flew over an embankment on the Long Island Expressway and came head-on into their car at 60 miles an hour. Their bodies had been charred. The medical examiner said they had died instantly. There had been no suffering. It was little consolation.

Martin, feeling nothing but the crisp air against his face, wondered once again what to do. He was tired and empty, having spent much of the day cursing a God he probably never believed in, hating the world and everything in it, save his little girl. The grief had already graduated to numbness. Soon, he knew, it would turn to guilt. He would somehow manage to blame himself. Perhaps because he had married her in the first place; because he had scorned his parents, his God, and his people; because he had renounced who he was, abandoned those who had perished for revering that which he had so freely discarded. The guilt would never leave him. In that respect, he would always be the boy who grew up in that house across the street.

The light in the kitchen went off and he could no longer see his mother walking about. He knew she was heading upstairs with a cup of tea for his father; that she would quietly place it on the desk in his study without distracting the rabbi from whatever religious text he was pondering. This was the ritual Martin remembered, every evening like clockwork. In that, he found some repose.

He glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He had waited for Elizabeth to fall asleep before leaving home and had instructed the nanny to beep him if she should awaken. He wanted to be next to her as she slept, to make sure she was safe and protected. He wanted her to know he would always be there. But tonight, he just had this thing he needed to do.

He contemplated once more whether to take those steps to cross the street. What would he even say to them? How would they receive him? He looked at his watch again, wondering why the hell time always moved so quickly, and with a final gaze at the house, he turned on his heel and went back to his car.