The Storyteller

  "Amen," Leo says finally.

  I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds. I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for--even if it's just a better tomorrow--is the most powerful drug on this planet.

  The rabbi gives the closing prayer, and when he lifts his face to the congregation, it is clear and renewed: the surface of a lake at dawn. If I'm going to be honest, I feel a little like that myself. Like I've turned the page, found a fresh start.

  "Shabbat shalom," the rabbi says.

  The woman sitting next to me, who is about the same age as my mother and who sports a gravity-defying spiral of cherry-red hair, smiles so widely I can see her fillings. "Shabbat shalom," she says, clasping my hand tightly, as if she has known me forever. A little boy in front of us, who has been wiggling most of the time, bounces onto his knees and holds out his chubby starfish fingers, a toddler's high five. His father laughs. "What do you say?" he prompts. "Shabbat . . . ?" The boy buries his face in his father's sleeve, suddenly shy. "Next time," the man says, grinning.

  All around us the same words are being spoken, like a ribbon that sews its way through a crowd, a drawstring pulling everyone together. As people begin to drift away, milling into the lobby where Oneg Shabbat--tea and cookies and conversation--has been set up, I stand. Leo, however, doesn't.

  He is gazing around the room, with an expression on his face I cannot quite place. Wistfulness, maybe. Pride. Finally, he looks at me. "This," he says. "This is why I do what I do."

  *

  At the Oneg Shabbat, Leo brings me iced tea in a plastic cup and a rugelach that I politely decline, because it's clearly store-bought and I know I could do better. He calls me a pastry snob, and we are still laughing about that when an older couple approaches. I start to turn away, instinctively trying to conceal the bad half of my face, but a sudden thought of my grandmother flashes through my mind, explaining her mastectomy scar years ago and today, her memories of the Holocaust. But see how much of me is left?

  I lift my chin and directly face the couple, daring them to comment on my rippled skin.

  But they don't. They ask us if we're new in town.

  "Just passing through," Leo tells them.

  "It's a nice community for settling down," the woman says. "So many young families."

  Clearly, they assume we're a couple. "Oh. We're not--I mean, he isn't--"

  "What she's trying to say is that we're not married," Leo finishes.

  "Not for long," the man says. "Finishing her sentences, that's the first step."

  Twice more we are approached and asked if we've just moved here. The first time, Leo says that we were going to go to the movies but nothing was playing so we came to temple instead. The second time, he replies that he is a federal agent and I'm helping him crack a case. The man who's been chatting with us laughs. "Good one," he says.

  "You'd be surprised how hard it is to get people to believe the truth," Leo tells me later, as we walk across the parking lot.

  But I'm not surprised. Look at how hard I fought Josef, when he tried to tell me who he used to be. "I guess that's because most of the time we don't want to admit it to ourselves."

  "That's true," Leo says thoughtfully. "It's amazing what you can convince yourself of, if you buy into the lie."

  You can believe, for example, that a dead-end job is a career. You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you're crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to potentially scar you even more deeply. You can tell yourself that it's safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can't lose someone you never had.

  Maybe it is because Leo is a professional keeper of secrets; maybe it is because I have been so emotionally bruised today; maybe it is just because he listens more carefully than anyone else I've ever met--for whatever reason, I find myself telling him things I have never before admitted out loud. As we drive north again, I talk about how I was always an outsider, even in the confines of my family. I tell him that I worry my parents died wondering if I'd ever be able to support myself. I admit that when my sisters come to visit, I tune out their talk of carpools and Moroccanoil treatments and what Dr. Oz has to say about colon health. I tell him that once, I went for a whole week without speaking a word, just to see if I could, and if I would recognize my voice when I finally did. I tell him that the moment bread comes out of the oven, when I hear each loaf crackle and sing as it hits the cool air, is the closest I've come to believing in God.

  It is nearly eleven o'clock when we pull into Westerbrook, but I'm not tired. "Coffee?" I suggest. "There's a great place in town that stays open till midnight."

  "If I drink coffee now I'll be bouncing off the ceiling till dawn," Leo says.

  I look down at my hands in my lap, feeling impossibly naive. Someone other than me would have been able to pick up on social cues, would know that this camaraderie between us is forced by the case Leo's investigating, and not an actual friendship.

  "But," he adds, "maybe they have herbal tea?"

  Westerbrook is a sleepy town, so there are only a handful of people in the cafe, even though it is a Friday night. A girl with purple hair who is absorbed in a volume of Proust looks annoyed when we interrupt her to place an order. "I'd make a snide comment about the youth of America," Leo says, after he insists on paying for my latte, "but I'm too impressed by the fact that she's reading something other than Fifty Shades of Grey."

  "Maybe this will be the generation that saves the world," I say.

  "Doesn't every generation think they'll be the one to do it?"

  Did mine? Or were we so wrapped up in ourselves that we didn't think to look for answers in the experiences of others? I had known what the Holocaust was, of course, but even after learning my grandmother was a survivor I had studiously avoided asking questions. Was I too apathetic--or too terrified--to think such ancient history had anything to do with my present, or my future?

  Did Josef's? By his own account he had believed, as a boy, that a world without Jews would be a better place. So does he see the outcome, now, as a failure? Or as a bullet that was dodged?

  "I keep wondering which is the real him," I murmur. "The man who wrote college recommendations for hundreds of kids and who cheered a baseball team to the state playoffs and who shares his roll with his dog--or the one my grandmother described."

  "It might not be an either-or," Leo says. "He could be both."

  "Then did he have to lose his conscience to do what he did in the camps? Or did he never have one?"

  "Does it even matter, Sage? He clearly has no sense of right and wrong. If he did, he would have turned down the orders to commit murder. And if he committed murder, he could never develop a conscience afterward, because it would be suspect--like finding God on your hospital deathbed. So what if he was a saint for the past seventy years? That doesn't bring back to life the people he killed. He knows that, or he wouldn't have bothered to ask you for forgiveness. He feels like there's still a stain on him." Leo leans forward. "You know, in Judaism, there are two wrongs that can't be forgiven. The first is murder, because you have to actually go to the wronged party and plead your case, and obviously you can't if the victim is six feet underground. But the second unforgivable wrong is ruining someone's reputation. Just like a dead person can't forgive the murderer, a good reputation can't ever be reclaimed. During the Holocaust, Jews were killed, and their reputation was destroyed. So no matter how much Josef repents for what he did, he's really striking out on two counts."

  "Then why try?" I ask. "Why would he spend seventy years doing good deeds and giving back to his community?"

  "That's easy," Leo says. "Guilt."

  "But if you feel guilty, that means you have a conscience," I point out. "And you just said that's impossible fo
r Josef."

  Leo's eyes light up at our verbal sparring. "You are far too smart for me, but only because it's past my bedtime."

  He keeps talking, but I do not hear him. I do not hear anything, because suddenly the door of the cafe opens and in walks Adam, with his arm around his wife.

  Shannon's head is bent close to his, and she is laughing at something he's just said.

  One morning, when we were tangled in the sheets of my bed, Adam and I had tried to top each other by telling the worst joke ever.

  What's green and has wheels? Grass--I lied about the wheels.

  What's red and smells like blue paint? Red paint.

  A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, What'll it be? The duck doesn't answer because it's a duck.

  Have you seen Stevie Wonder's new house? Well, it's really nice.

  So . . . a seal walks into a club.

  How do you make a clown cry? You kill his family.

  What do you call a man with no arms and no legs who is on your doorstep? Whatever his name happens to be.

  We had laughed so hard that I started to sob, and I couldn't stop, and I think it had nothing to do with the jokes.

  Did he just tell Shannon one of the one-liners? Maybe a joke I'd told him?

  This is only the third time I've seen Shannon in person, the first without a great distance or a pane of glass between us. She is one of those effortlessly pretty women, like the Ralph Lauren models, who don't need makeup and who have all the right streaks in their blond hair and who can wear an untucked shirt and have it be a fashion choice instead of sloppiness.

  Without really thinking about what I'm doing, I slide my chair closer to Leo's.

  "Sage?" Adam says. I don't know how he can speak my name without his face becoming flushed. I wonder if his heart is racing like mine is, and if his wife notices.

  "Oh," I reply, trying to act surprised. "Hey."

  "Shannon, this is Sage Singer. Her family was one of our clients. Sage, this is my wife." I feel sick to my stomach at his description of me. But then again, what would I have expected him to say?

  Adam's eyes flicker to Leo, waiting for an introduction. I slip my arm through his. To his credit, he doesn't look at me like I've just lost my mind. "This is Leo Stein."

  Leo holds out his hand to shake Adam's, and then his wife's. "Pleasure."

  "Just saw the new Tom Cruise film," Adam says. "Have you seen it?"

  "Not yet," Leo replies. I have to stifle a smile; Leo probably thinks the "new" Tom Cruise film is Risky Business.

  "It was a compromise," Shannon says. "Guns and aliens for him, and Tom Cruise for me. But then again, I would have watched paint dry if it meant getting a sitter and leaving the house." She is smiling, never breaking eye contact, as if she is trying to prove to both of us that my scar doesn't bother her in the least.

  "I don't have kids," I say. I never really had your husband, either.

  Leo puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes. "Yet."

  My jaw drops. When I turn to him, a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. "How did you say you know Sage, again?" he asks Adam.

  "Business," we say in unison.

  "Would you two like to join us?" Leo asks.

  "No," I quickly reply. "I mean, weren't we just leaving?"

  Taking my cue, Leo stands up, grinning. "You know Sage. She doesn't like to be kept waiting. If you know what I mean." Putting his arm around my waist, he says his good-byes and leads me out of the cafe.

  As soon as we have turned the corner, I light into him. "What the hell was that?"

  "From your reaction, I'm assuming it was the boyfriend you told me you didn't have. And his wife."

  "You made it sound like I'm a sex fiend . . . like we . . . you and me . . ."

  "Are sleeping together? Isn't that what you wanted him to think?"

  I bury my face in my hands. "I don't know what I want him to think."

  "Is he a cop? I'm getting that vibe . . ."

  "He's a funeral director," I say. "I met him when my mother died."

  Leo's brows shoot up to his hairline. "Wow. My gut instinct was way off there." I watch the usual interplay of emotions across his face as he connects the dots: this man touches dead bodies; this man touched me.

  "It's just a job," I point out. "It's not like you go and reenact the Allied victory in the bedroom."

  "How would you know? I do a mean Eisenhower impression." Leo stops walking. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I guess it's a pretty big shock to find out that a guy you were involved with is married."

  "I already knew," I confess.

  Leo shakes his head, as if he can't quite figure out how to say what he needs to. I can tell he's biting his tongue. "None of my business," he says finally, walking briskly to the car.

  He's right. It's none of his business. He doesn't know what love is like, for someone who looks like me. I have three options: (1) Be sad and lonely. (2) Be the woman who is cheated on. (3) Be the other woman.

  "Hey," I shout, catching up to him. "You have no right to judge me. You know nothing about me."

  "Actually, I know a lot about you," Leo counters. "I know that you're brave--brave enough to call my office and open a can of worms that could have stayed shut your whole life. I know that you love your grandma. I know that your heart is so big you're struggling with whether or not you can forgive a guy who's done something unforgivable. You're pretty remarkable in a lot of ways, Sage, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little disappointed to find out that you're not quite as bright and shiny as I thought you were."

  "And you? Have you never done anything wrong in your life?" I argue.

  "No, I've done plenty wrong. But I didn't go back and do it again."

  I don't know why seeing Leo disillusioned feels even worse than running into Adam and Shannon. "We're not together," I explain. "It's complicated."

  "Do you still love him?" Leo asks.

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

  I love feeling loved.

  I don't love knowing that I will always come in second place.

  I love the fact that at least sometimes when I am in my home, I'm not alone.

  I don't love the fact that it's not always.

  I love not having to answer to him.

  I don't love that he doesn't answer to me.

  I love the way I feel when I am with him.

  I don't love the way I feel when I'm not.

  When I don't respond, Leo turns away. "Then it's really not complicated," he says.

  *

  That night I sleep like I haven't slept in months. I don't hear my alarm go off, and it isn't until the phone rings that I sit up awake, expecting Leo. After our argument last night, he was polite to me, but the easy camaraderie we'd had had disappeared. When he dropped me off at my place, he talked about business, and what would happen after he received the FedEx delivery of the photo spread.

  It is probably better this way--treating him like a colleague and not like a friend. I just don't understand how I can miss something I barely even had.

  I think I might have dreamed an apology to him. I can't be sure what I'm apologizing for, though. "I wanted to talk about last night," I blurt into the receiver.

  "Me, too," Adam says on the other end of the phone.

  "Oh. It's you."

  "You don't sound too thrilled. I've been going crazy all morning trying to find five minutes to call you. Who was that guy?"

  "You're kidding, right? You couldn't possibly be complaining because I was out with someone else . . ."

  "Look, I know you're angry. And I know you asked for some time apart. But I miss you, Sage. You're the one I want to be with," Adam promises. "It's just not as simple as you think."

  Immediately, I think back to my conversation with Leo. "Actually, it is," I say.

  "If you went out with Lou--"

  "Leo."

  "Whatever . . . to get my attention, it worked. When can I see you again?"

&n
bsp; "How could I have been trying to get your attention when I didn't even know you and your wife would be having Date Night?" I cannot believe Adam's making this about him. But then again, it's always about him.

  There is a beep on the phone, my other line. I recognize Leo's cell number. "I have to go," I tell Adam.

  "But--"

  As I hang up, I realize that I have always been the one calling Adam, instead of the other way around. Have I suddenly become attractive because I'm not available?

  And if so, what does that say about my attraction to him?

  "Morning," Leo says.

  His voice sounds rough around the edges, like he needs a cup of coffee. "How did you sleep?" I ask.

  "About as well as can be expected when the hotel is filled with preteen girls who are here for a soccer tournament. I have some impressive dark circles under my eyes. But on the bright side, I now know all the words to the new Justin Bieber single."

  "I can only imagine that will come in handy in your line of work."

  "If me singing that stuff doesn't make former war criminals confess, I have no idea what will."

  He sounds . . . well, like the way he sounded before we ran into Adam last night. The fact that this makes me unaccountably happy is something I don't understand, and don't really want to question.

  "So according to the desk clerk here at the luxurious Courtyard by Marriott, who I think may be violating child labor laws, the FedEx truck shows up shortly before eleven," Leo says.

  "What should I do in the meantime?"

  "I don't know," Leo replies. "Take a shower, paint your nails, read People magazine, rent a chick flick. That's what I'm going to do."

  "My tax dollars are being put to such good use in your salary . . ."

  "Okay, fine, I'll read Us Weekly instead."

  I laugh. "I'm serious."

  "Call your grandma and make sure she's still feeling up to a visit from us. And then--well, if you really want to do something, you could go visit Josef Weber."

  I feel my breath catch in my throat. "Alone?"

  "Don't you usually visit him alone?"

  "Yes but--"

  "It's going to take time to build our case, Sage. Which means that during the process Josef has to believe you're still considering doing what he asked you to do. If I hadn't been here today, would you have seen him?"

  "Probably," I admit. "But that was before . . ." My voice trails off.

  "Before you knew he was a Nazi? Or before you understood what that really meant?" His voice is sober now, no more joking. "If anything, that's exactly why you should keep up pretenses. You know now what's at stake."