Chapter Five
FIVE
Faye knew she was about to get the lecture of her life. Standing in her backyard, she took the phone off mute. Miranda was having a conniption.
“Do you know how worried Shulamit and I were?” Miranda said. “You sent one text. One poorly spelled and cryptic text about missing today’s meeting at the synagogue because you killed someone with your bicycle...and then, we don’t hear from you for six hours!”
“I didn’t kill him,” Faye cut her off.
“What?” Miranda said, clearly confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I gave him amnesia. Which I suppose is better than killing someone...though probably not by much.”
“Excuse me?”
Faye sighed and attempted to boil down the whole sordid story into a palatable three-minute tale. She explained hitting the man with the bike, following him to hospital, learning he had amnesia. She talked about how they were planning to send him to a shelter—completely ignoring Miranda’s gasps and grumbles throughout—before just coming out with it. “So, I had him lie to the doctors, tell them I was his wife...and I brought him home with me.”
The phone went silent.
Faye wasn’t sure if Miranda had dropped it or simply died from the shock.
“Hello?” Faye spoke into the receiver. “Miranda? Are you there?”
“Have you lost your damn mind?” Miranda finally said. Her best friend since she was eight did not bother to hold back.
“What was I supposed to do?” Faye defended her actions.
Miranda bellowed into Faye’s ear. “You don’t even know this man. There are anti-Semites leaving flyers all over town...and you just welcomed this stranger, this possible white supremacist into your home, like you were taking in a lost puppy from the animal shelter?”
“His name is Greg,” Faye said, resolutely. “And he’s not.”
“Not...what?”
“He’s not a white supremacist,” Faye exclaimed simply. “I spent some time questioning him before I brought him home. I am totally comfortable that I made the right choice.”
“You kidnapped the man, Faye.”
“First off,” she felt the need to point this out, “he asked to come home with me. Practically begged, in fact. Greg had no interest in staying at that hospital, or going to the shelter. Second, he came of his own free will and volition. And I gave him the choice. Whatever lies we entangled ourselves up in, we did it together. You’d be very hard-pressed to prove I committed a felony in a court of American law.”
“Well, I’m glad I won’t be baking nail files into your babka anytime soon.”
“You brought it up,” Faye reminded her.
“So now what?” Miranda asked, incredulous. “You’re just gonna keep him in your house until you find his real owners? Feed him three times a day and take him on walks like Hillel?”
“The doctors were very optimistic that his memory will return in no time.”
“And what if someone is looking for him, Faye? What if someone—right now—is worried sick, missing their husband, brother, father, or son?”
The words caused a stone to land inside her belly.
She shook the thought away.
Goddess willing, he wouldn’t be staying with her long enough for anyone to become attached. Faye returned to making her argument.
“Well, they’re far more likely to get him back if he’s with me than at some shelter. For the Shechinah’s sake...the man had no memory, Miranda. No ability to make good decisions or be safe on his own accord. You remember what my father was like when he was dying of dementia? I couldn’t just...leave him behind like that.”
“This man is not your father, Faye.”
“I know that,” she said, emphatically. “But he feels like my responsibility all the same.”
The universe kept the score, after all.
Miranda continued lecturing. Faye could only half listen. She was wondering about Greg, wondering how he was managing all alone downstairs, hoping that he wasn’t getting into too much trouble. She was eager to get off the phone and get back to him.
Not that her feelings were romantic. She was simply being practical. Like with her father, she knew how dangerous it was to leave a man without a memory alone. And then, her eyes caught on the back fence, where an unexpected sight drew her entire focus. The row of pink-and-red rosebushes that lined her back fence had all shriveled up and died.
It couldn’t be possible.
She thought back to the previous evening. Granted, her memory was hazy...but she was positive, certain, that as of yesterday evening, her rosebushes had been alive. Thriving, in fact. Now, tiptoeing through the grass, moving closer to inspect, she came across what appeared to be a tiny grave. A small mound of disturbed dirt, like one would make for a goldfish, or a pet hamster...
Her stomach twisted. The memory of the previous evening, burying something, caused her heart to palpitate.
No, there had to be rational explanations for her perfectly blooming rosebushes to have died so suddenly. She laid them out like evidence in a trial. Most likely, her rosebushes had already been in the process of dying, and in her drunken state, she had mistaken one perfectly blooming petal for an entire bush. It was nature. The natural way of the universe. Nothing more.
“I want to meet him,” Miranda said, interrupting her thoughts. “Today.”
“Not today,” Faye said, adamant.
“I am not letting you spend the night with a stranger!”
“Oh, please.” Faye scoffed aloud at that one. “You and I both engaged in plenty of reckless decision-making in our younger days. We’re both still alive...nothing terrible happened to us. Believe me, this man is completely harmless.”
“Faye,” Miranda said, cutting her off, “put out the hard kosher salami, because Shulamit and I are coming over whether you like it or not.”
“Look,” Faye said, feeling the need to protect Greg from the onslaught of her friends and their questions, “the poor man is still struggling to make three-word sentences. He’s in no place for visitors. But maybe in a few days when his memory and his vocabulary begin to improve—” It was at that exact moment that a scream, piercing and terrible, erupted from inside her house.
“Miranda,” Faye said, twisting back to her building, “I have to go.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
Faye wasted no time. Clicking off her phone, she raced back inside.
She found Greg squeezed between her bookshelves and the couch, hands raised in open surrender, and Nelly holding him hostage. With a stun baton aimed at his chest, she zapped at the air repeatedly, causing the sound of electricity—followed by Greg’s half-hearted grunts and screams—to pierce the entire building of Magic Mud Pottery.
“What on Earth are you doing?” Faye shouted over the zapping.
“I caught him,” Nelly said, out of breath, a wild twinkle in her eyes. “I caught the Nazi.”
Faye clutched her heart. “He’s not a Nazi.”
“Then what —” Nelly asked, incredulous “—was he doing in your apartment?”
Faye took a deep breath. “I invited him.”
Nelly dropped the stun baton, turning directly to Faye in disbelief. “But he’s... a man ?”
“I’m aware of that,” Faye said, annoyed.
“In your apartment?”
“Yes,” Faye said, exasperated. “In my apartment. Haman’s hat. He’s going to be staying with me for a while...” With the way Nelly was looking at her, Faye might as well have been crawling on the ceiling. “And will you please put that thing away before you hurt yourself...or somebody else?”
Nelly’s eyes darted from Faye to Greg, before returning to Faye. Finally, suspicion cleared from her face, and the old woman returned to some semblance of her normal. With a slight shrug of shoulders, Nelly placed her stun baton in the bag she was carrying.
“A man in your apartment,” Nelly said, shaking her head, sidestepping Faye to head back downstairs. “No wonder I thought he was a Nazi.”