Faye Kellerman - Sacred and Profane

“Peter, what upset you so last night?”

He rubbed his chin and realized what a lousy job her electric shaver had done on him this morning. For some odd reason, it embarrassed him to be scruffy in front of her.

“Sometimes my work gets to me,” he answered.

“Are you still working on the bones?” she asked.

“Yes. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“At least you will sit down while I’m talking to you?” He sat back down.

“I’m acting like a jerk, Rina. I do that when I’m under pressure. I’m sorry.”

She patted his hand. “It’s okay. I’m sorry you had a bad day…or night. I wish I could help you. If you’d tell me about it, maybe-”

“Just drop it, Rina.”

He was hurting her. He saw it in her eyes. She said nothing.

“I won’t barge in on you like that again,” he said. “It was an exception.”

“It’s all right.”

“Thanks for taking in a stray dog.”

“You’re not a stray dog, Peter. You’re the man I love.”

Tell her you love her, damn it.

He smiled weakly and was silent.

Withholding son of a bitch. Why are you doing this to her? He ran his fingers through his hair.

“What happened between us last night, Rina?”

She stared at him for clarification.

“I had a blackout,” he said. “Did we make love?”

She shook her head.

“You groped around a little, then passed out on the living room floor. I was scared to death. At first I thought you had a heart attack, but, baruch Hashem, you started snoring.”

He rolled his eyes.

“How’d I get into the bedroom?”

“I’m not as weak as you think I am,” she said, quietly.

“You carried me?”

“Dragged you.”

“You should have left me on the floor to sleep it off,” he reprimanded her. “Why risk straining your back?”

Her patience suddenly snapped.

“Peter, for goodness sake, what if the boys would have seen you like that?”

He looked down.

“You slept on the couch?”

She nodded. “It’s comfortable. I’ve slept on it many times when I’ve had company.”

“Okay. I’ll go now.”

“Wait, I almost forgot.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a pocket siddur, not unlike the one he had burned. But this one was covered with silverplate and studded with blue stones. She handed it to him and he thumbed through the pages.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you very much. I’ll try to take better care of this one.”

“Don’t put it in a glass case and treat it like an object of art. Use it, Peter. Use it until it falls apart. It will help you-”

“I don’t need any help, Rina.”

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone needs help.”

You’re going to start an argument unless you shut your mouth, he warned himself.

He stood up and placed the siddur in his pocket.

“Thanks,” he repeated.

Walking out to his car, he stopped a few feet away from the unmarked. The guilt trip wasn’t over yet. The Rosh Yeshiva was standing against the car, holding a volume of Talmud and reading in the dark with the aid of a penlight.

Shit!

“H’lo, Rabbi,” Decker said. “I assume you’d like to talk to me?”

“Take me for a ride, Peter,” the old man answered, turning off the light.

Decker opened the door for him, then went around and settled in the driver’s seat. He drove out of the grounds and onto the mountain road, the Rosh Yeshiva sitting impassively beside him. The silence was suffocating. The rabbi took out a silver case and pulled out two handmade cigarettes. He lit the first one, gave it to Decker, and lit the second one for himself. The man’s profile was as chiseled and intense as a Rodin sculpture.

They rode on, smoking wordlessly until the old man finally spoke:

“You slept at Rina Miriam’s house,” he said, quietly.

The old guy had eyes behind his head.

“She slept on the couch,” answered Decker.

The Rosh Yeshiva’s voice hardened. “Do you think for one moment I had assumed that you had slept with her?”

Decker said nothing.

“And because you didn’t, do you expect praise?”

The detective remained silent.

“If you were just a gentile converting to please the woman he loved, I would have never started with you, Peter. Never! But that’s not the case. You’re a biological Jew who has had his heritage ripped away from him by a quirk of fate. I checked into your adoption, Peter. Your birth mother had arranged for you to go to a Jewish family, but there was a bureaucratic snafu and you were placed in the wrong agency.”

“It was the right agency,” Decker said harshly. “I have terrific parents.”

“I’m sure you do,” Schulman answered. “And they did a wonderful job raising you. But that’s not the point.”

Decker waited for the old man to continue.

“Four months ago you came to me, saying you were interested in finding out about Judaism. Yes, Rina was the catalyst, but you told me it went deeper than that, and I believed you. Now I wonder about your sincerity, if maybe you weren’t snowing me just to get to Rina.”

“That’s not true.”

“Perhaps. But even if that were the case, I wouldn’t have acted any differently. I was anxious for you to discover your roots, even if it meant hardening my ears to gossip. After all, to the world, you have not officially converted and you are still a gentile. I say nothing as you openly court a religious woman on the yeshiva’s premises. But your actions of last night! You’ve gone too far!”

“Look, Rabbi. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you by sleeping over at Rina’s house. It won’t happen again. I told her that, too. Sometimes my work affects me and makes me do impulsive things.”

Schulman’s face remained stony.

“You’re not the only person with enormous responsibilities, Peter. You’re not the only person who has come into contact with the worst elements of human nature. And you’re not the only person to have suffered pain. The dilemma you face is how best to cope with adversity, and you need help, my friend. You need guidance and you need comfort.”

The old man’s eyes turned to fire. He took out a pocket siddur and slapped it on Decker’s chest.

“This is where you find comfort! This is where you find guidance! You open your heart; you beseech Hashem to give you the strength and understanding to make it through another day, for He alone can give you peace. Hakadosh Baruch Hu! Hashem. Not a woman who will pat you on the hand and say ‘there, there,’ comforting you as she would a child who’s skinned a knee.”

“I tried praying-”

“You didn’t try hard enough!”

“Sometimes you need more!”

“And you expect to find relief for your soul in the arms of a woman? Or worse, from a bottle?”

The words tore through Decker. Rina had betrayed him. He had come to her for solace and she had turned his pain into a matter for public scrutiny.

“She told you,” he said bitterly.

“She’s conscious of the reputation of our institution.”

“Well, now I know where her loyalties lie.”

“Loyalties!” The old man blew smoke out the window. “You have no faith in Hashem. You can’t possibly have faith in human beings-even those you love. Do you honestly think that Rina Miriam called me up and told me you arrived at her house drunk? She phoned and told me that you had come to her, agitated and sick, and she was going to put you up for the night. I told her it was inappropriate for her to do so and I’d come get you. And do you know what she said?”

Decker didn’t speak.

“She said, ‘Absolutely not. He’s going to stay here. If my decision has shamed you, I’ll move from the premises, but he’s sick, he’s sleeping, and I don’t want him moved!’ Do you know what she was really saying?” Schulman said fiercely. “‘I’d rather shame myself than shame him before your eyes, Rav Schulman.’