… out of the blue, he’ll be the nicest person in the world for about a week. Do all your chores for you, straighten up your clothes, just be real … nice. But it never lasts long. I can’t figure him out. Honestly, I’ve given up trying.”
Boruch was nodding in agreement.
Decker said, “That sound about right to you?”
“Yes, sir,” Boruch said. “Noam’s always the one who remembers the birthdays, more than Abba and Eema do. But most of the time, he either ignores me or beats me up.” He paused, clearly upset. “Is he in trouble?”
Decker said, “I don’t know, Boruch.” He smiled reassuringly. It was the best he could offer the boy. “Does Noam have any hobbies—baseball-card collecting, stamp collecting? Is he into cars or hot rods?”
The boys shook their heads.
“Does he spend a lot of time riding his bike, playing sports, skateboarding—”
The boys laughed.
“Skateboarding not too big around here?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Does he play a lot of sports?”
“Not that I know of,” Aaron said.
“Then if he doesn’t play or learn a lot,” Decker said, “if he doesn’t have any hobbies, what does he do with his time?”
Boruch said, “He spends lots of time with the computer.”
“Games?” Decker asked.
Boruch said, “We don’t own any computer games. We use it for school, for our reports. We have a Gemara program that asks us questions. It’s really neat.”
“Noam use that program?” Decker asked.
Both shook their heads no. No latency of response.
“Could you play games on the computer if you wanted to?” Decker asked.
Aaron said, “No. It doesn’t have a graphics card. Unless Noam’s put one in there. I don’t think he knows enough about computers to do that. You have to know where to put it. Then you have to reset the dipswitches. Noam can’t program. I can’t see him tinkering with the hardware.”
Boruch added, “He has trouble just using canned software.”
“Then what does he do with the computer?” Decker asked.
Aaron said, “I think he writes stuff. I once tried to look at what he was doing, but he hid the monitor with his arms.”
“Yeah, he does that to me, too.”
“Is Noam a good student?” Decker asked.
“Not really,” Aaron said. “He’s sort of … well, lazy.”
“You boys have no idea where he wanders off to?”
Again, they shook their heads.
Aaron said, “He has a few friends. They might know better than us.”
Decker said, “I’ll ask them a little later. First, how about we take a walk over to your house?”
The boys said sure.
Nice kids, Decker thought. Breina and Ezra must be doing something right.
Up until yesterday, the pain had only surfaced on his birthday. Now it was an open wound festering inside Frieda Levine’s shattered heart. None of this would ever resolve until she made peace with the one she had abandoned.
God was giving her a test, using His most precious gifts to her. Though all her grandchildren were special, Noam was her most cherished because he had always been so troubled. In the many hours they had spent together, Noam seldom talked. But oh, how he’d been captivated by her tales, entranced by the criminal cases that had passed over her desk in the years she had worked at the court.
Hours of talking her throat dry, with him staring with those mystical eyes, drinking in her every word. Communicating without speaking, saying to her: So this is what the goyishe world is like.
Noam never asked questions, even when they were begging to be asked. Frieda felt he wasn’t very bright. But unlike Ezra, who also wasn’t bright, Noam never had the determination to overcompensate.
She and Noam hadn’t talked like that in four or five years, yet she remembered those conversations as if they had taken place yesterday.
Then he had stopped coming to her.
She thought nothing of it. There is that aching point in every grandmother’s life when the grandchildren cease to look at her as fun and simply view her as an old lady. It was normal.
But it hurt a little more with Noam—his rejection had been so sudden, so complete. As the others grew, they still made periodic stabs at being interested in her, inquiring about her health, pinching her cheek, complimenting her baking skills.
Your cookies are the best, Bubbe.
But Noam had withdrawn without looking back.
Still, she couldn’t take it personally. Noam was retreating from everyone. She should have seen it for what it was, a sign of deep-seated trouble. But having been accustomed to burying grief, she had looked the other way.
Now she was encountering both of her mistakes head-on. As she lay in her darkened bedroom, shades tightly drawn, tears skiing down her cheeks, she realized that she could no longer be an ostrich. She must right what had been wronged years ago.
But first she must wait until Noam was found.
If he was ever found.
The thought gave her chills.
He would do it. Her firstborn—brought to her by God. If it was meant, if it was basheert, it would be he who would save Noam. God had deemed it so. She felt this as surely as she had felt his little feet kicking in her womb. As surely as she had seen his face emerge from her body, a head full of bright orange hair, cheeks sunburn red, his head misshapen and bruised from a long and painful labor.
The doctors had considered taking him out by cesarean. But her father had remained steadfast that she deliver normally. A cesarean would have left a scar, a telltale sign to her future husband that he had not been the first.
At the last minute, he had saved her, had come out on his own. His downy soft body molded with muscle even at birth—long limbs, big barrel chest. Nine pounds, twenty-three inches. But what she had remembered most was his temperament. He never cried—only let out small whimpers to remind everyone that he was a healthy newborn. The doctor even remarked upon it.
Big guy seems pretty happy.
Frieda heard deep soft sobs. She thought it might be Breina in the next room and she should go and comfort her daughter-in-law. Then she realized that the sounds were coming from her own throat.
Ezra’s
