Chapter Twenty
TWENTY
It broke Greg’s heart seeing Faye over the next week.
Despite the good front she put on for him, and when customers came into the store, he could tell that something was wrong. She was distracted. On edge. At night, she couldn’t sleep. More than once, Greg had looked up from a book he was reading to find Faye racing to the bathroom, having just awoken from a nightmare.
She didn’t get a break during the day, either. She was always picking up her phone, looking at the news, checking to see if something else terrible had happened. Her eyes drifted to corners, and out onto the street, scanning for some unknown assailant lurking in the darkness. Her wrist bothered her constantly.
Greg did his best to comfort her. He was there when she couldn’t sleep, offering up conversation and hard kosher salami. He got her ice. Tried to take on more responsibility when folks came into the store. But nothing really seemed to help. Once, he had even lain down in bed beside her, rubbing her back until she finally felt safe enough to sleep.
She wasn’t safe, though. Nobody could feel safe when they were constantly under attack. As for Greg, all he felt was rage. All he could think about was tracking down The Paper Boys. Justice, justice, you shall pursue. The words ran constantly in his head.
Greg was sitting on the pullout bed upstairs and reading a memoir called Fearless when he heard Faye sigh. Looking up, he saw she was sitting at the kitchen counter upstairs, a dozen different sketches laid out around her. He glanced over to the clock sitting on the nightstand. It was late. Once again, Faye wasn’t sleeping.
It didn’t bother him, of course. He liked having her in the room with him. But he could tell by the way she kept sighing, shuffling papers around, scribbling notes all over the pages with her colored pencils, that something was wrong.
Faye sighed again. Loudly.
Greg got the hint and put his book down.
“Everything okay?” Greg asked.
“Yeah,” she said, twisting on her chair to face him. “Just trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the new storefront window.”
She had been debating what to do with the window for several hours.
“You can always just go with what you had,” he reminded her.
“I know,” she said. She turned back to her papers, pursing her lips, obsessing over her new sketches once more.
He couldn’t help but think that what she really needed right now was a break. Some space to clear her head. Figure out, like Sandra B. Klatz in the memoir he was reading, what the issues really were that were leading to her indecision. He debated offering up a snack, or a walk outside with Hillel...when his eyes landed on that Scrabble board at the very bottom of her bookshelf.
He wasn’t sure why he was drawn to it. Maybe it was the bright red box, or the fact that it had letters on tiles splattered across the front and edges. He had come to find he had a real affinity for words and language. He leaned across the mattress, pulling it out.
“Up for a game?” Greg asked.
Faye twisted back around. “Scrabble?” she asked, her eyes drifting to the board he was holding. “You remember how to play it?”
“Not at all.” He grinned back her. “But I figured, I know a good teacher.”
She laughed, a moment of freedom from her worry, before stretching out her back and hands. “Add a snack to that offer,” she said, “and you have a deal.”
Faye laid out a six-letter word on a double word score: softer .
“Excellent,” Greg said, writing her score down on a tiny pad with a pen. “Eighteen points.”
She appreciated him being a good sport, but it wasn’t her best word. Beyond being distracted—she still hadn’t decided what to do with her storefront window—Greg was absolutely killing her in the game. She glanced back down at the board.
“I can’t get over how good you are at Scrabble,” Faye said.
“You think?” Greg said.
“ Scarp, butte, bulwark. Those aren’t everyday words.”
Greg laid down the word defense . “Twenty-seven points.”
“That’s it,” Faye said, throwing her hands up. “I admit defeat. You win!”
He inhaled. “Game’s still not over.”
It might not have been over, but it certainly felt like it was heading that way.
She watched Greg move around his tiles when a memory returned. She thought back to the night she had created her clay effigy, scribbling the words loves Scrabble onto one leg. The recollection was foggy, but there. Her eyes wandered down to the board. He had asked her to play Scrabble.
It could have just been coincidence, but it was so damn weird. Another impossibility in a long list of oddities associated with Greg. Her fears, like all her anxieties, returned swiftly.
He was going to hurt her. Destroy her. Because the world was unsafe. It had always been unsafe for Faye. An anxious sense of spinning returned to her chest again. She touched her heart, certain that it had stopped beating. Greg immediately took notice.
“Should we do some breathing?” he asked.
She nodded. Closing her eyes, she breathed along as he counted. “One,” he said. “Two...”
He counted to seven. A lucky number in Jewitch magic. A number that reminded her of the knots, that little red bracelet, still dangling from his wrist. He brought her back to herself. The smooth intonation in his words. The warmth and size of his hands. Panic attack avoided. She opened her eyes and found herself situated back in reality.
Because Greg was a man.
A man who would eventually leave her...
She didn’t know which option was better, honestly.
She wished she was braver, that the evil of the world didn’t constantly make her feel so damn vulnerable, but she had no control. She wished she did, but like always, she was at the mercy of other people’s choices. Choices that left her changed, and usually not for the better. She braved a glance back to the sketches sitting on the counter.
“You want to talk about it?” Greg asked.
She couldn’t even pocket her surprise. “How...how did you know?”
“I can read you,” he grinned, “like a book.”
She laughed. Goddess, how she loved all the ways he could make her smile.
“It’s stressing me out,” she admitted.
“The window?”
“Everything.”
She needed to make a decision.
If it had been one thing, she would have been better equipped to deal with everything. But it was all her layers of trauma. Her past, bumping up against her present. It was Greg, bringing that softness out in her, at the same time she needed to be stronger than ever.
No wonder she kept thinking the man was a golem. The way her life was going, he had to be inhuman.
The window was just the icing on the cake.
It was one more thing on a list she didn’t feel at all capable of handling. And she was overwhelmed. Ordering the glass, needing to plan out the stenciling and images with the sign people. The simplest option was to just go with what she’d had—the name of the store, a tiny cauldron with a wooden spoon floating above it—but she was hesitating.
“When do you have to decide by?” Greg asked.
“Ideally, by the end of this week.”
He pressed his lips together. “Not much time.”
Of course, she could delay. Put it off for a few more days and weeks. The wood beams nailed up across her storefront window were effective. But she hated looking at them. They were a constant reminder of what had happened, and every time she glanced their way, it made her stomach churn. She just wanted those boards gone...and yet she was hesitating on what to replace them with.
“Can you focus on what you’re feeling?” Greg asked.
“Powerless,” Faye said, throwing her hands up. “Hopeless. Vulnerable. The total lack of recourse I have in defending myself, in confronting these Paper Boys for myself.”
“Shulamit is hosting another rally,” Greg offered up.
“I don’t know if I’m in a loving mood this time,” Faye admitted, out of ideas.
“You could always join up with Nelly.” He smirked.
“Ha!” She scoffed outright. “Please, I’m already stressed out enough.”
She ran one hand through her curls. He laid out another word on the board: steward .
Faye shook her head at the seven-letter word. “You’re killing me here, Greg.”
“I only play with worthy opponents.”
“Hm.” She shifted in her seat.
He was so good to her.
In every interaction, in every moment—perfect. Like she had crafted him from clay. She shook the thought away once more. No, it was so much more than simple magic. It was something he had said, all the way back on one their first nights together. You deserve to be in relationships that bring out the softness in you. He brought out the softness in her. He reversed time, turning her back into the clay that she was certain had already hardened.
Granted, he had regurgitated his wisdom, like many bits and pieces of his personality, from one of her books...but still, it meant something to her. She could feel bile gathering in the back of her throat. The taste of acid, enveloping her. Because she knew what she felt. Finally. She found her damn words.
“I’m tired of apologizing for surviving.”
Greg sat back, his gaze pinned on her.
But that was exactly it. The feeling that she had been holding inside of her. The feeling that began with her mother. That there was something wrong with her. That she had to hide. She hid her mistakes from her mother so that the woman would love her. She hid her real feelings from Stuart so that he wouldn’t leave her. And she hid her Jewish identity from a bunch of anti-Semites...so that they wouldn’t throw a brick through her window.
And, at the end of the day, none of that making herself smaller mattered. Because nothing about what these people had done to her, chosen for her, was fair. Or right.
Just like it had never, ever been her fault.
But she was exhausted from a lifetime of making other people feel comfortable. And suddenly, she was done. Straight-up finished with all these less than deserving people arriving to her shoreline. Damn the silence. Damn the consequences. She was ready to live her life without constantly interrupting herself to say that she was sorry.
“I wish I was braver,” she said finally. “I wish I could drink that wine in my closet, and have a relationship without losing myself, and make broke-ass pottery with my disabled finger, even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not right...because who gives a flying broomstick as long as I’m happy! But I don’t do these things, Greg. I don’t know how to do these things, because despite all my protestations about being brave, and independent...deep down inside, I’m a damn coward.”
There. She had admitted her truth. She had told Greg one of her biggest secrets. She waited for him to be disgusted, to shift in his seat, grimace and come up with some excuse for both of them to go to bed. She waited for him to leave her, prepared herself for it, rallied that terra-cotta soldier that lived inside of her. Instead, Greg moved closer to her. He shifted the game board off to the side, so that their legs and arms were touching on the mattress.
“Perhaps,” he said, his gaze boring into her soul, “both Shulamit and Nelly have found what works for them. Shulamit holds a rally. Nelly buys a stun gun. They’re both experiencing the same sort of fear, the same sense of powerlessness...but they each rely on different items in their emotional toolbox to deal with the situation.”
He had a point.
Even though he had probably stolen it from a book.
“So,” Greg said. “What do you need?”
His question rattled her.
She thought back to all those nights, hiding from her mother. She thought about her dad, too—the way she was there for him when he was dying—even though he had failed her so often throughout her youth. And she thought about Stuart. How she never got to tell him that he was awful, wrong, that she deserved better , after he dumped her on a snowdrift in Lapland.
She gave others what she had always needed from them—love and affection, security and protection, a place to land when things got bad—while never demanding the same for herself.
Her thoughts wandered to The Paper Boys, these invisible assailants, who had the audacity— the cowardice —to throw a brick through her window in the middle of the night. And the only thing she could think, the words that came up from her belly in a rage, were simply...
Hex. Them. All.
“I want to take my power back,” Faye said suddenly.
“And what will help you reclaim your power?”
“Art,” she said. “Art makes me feel better. And caving, obviously. Connecting with nature. But I don’t know if making a vase and a trip underground is going to suffice right now. I don’t know if pottery is big enough, loud enough, for all these feelings bubbling around inside of me.”
“So, what will be big enough to handle all those large feelings?”
He reached over to remove a piece of hair that had fallen across her face. She allowed the intrusion, the palm of his hand brushing against her cheek, the weight of his support, sinking into her like they were sinking into the mattress.
“I want to...no, I need to make a statement, to say something...to make it clear that this is not okay. I want to respond.”
“But you’re hesitating?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Because I’m afraid. I’m always afraid, Greg.”
“What would it look like if you weren’t afraid?” Greg asked.
“Not afraid...”
She scoffed at the idea. The concept. Because Faye was The Great Pretender. She acted strong, played at independence...but, she was a coward. She had built up this whole new life in Woodstock, trying to return to herself, trying to live out the dream that had been stolen from her, and yet nothing had really changed.
But then, there was Greg. The man who had come into her life—who may very well have also been some sort of Scrabble-playing, book-reading golem—and he hadn’t yet run away from her. He shifted closer, his eyes impossibly serious, his lips dangerously close to her own. “Don’t think it through,” he said, enveloping her in his gaze. “Just go with your heart, with your gut. The first thing that comes to mind. If you could separate out your fear from the thing you wanted to do—it doesn’t mean you have to do it, obviously—but what would it look like to free yourself from self-criticism and judgment?”
She would kiss him.
It was the first thought that came to mind. The thing she had been wanting to do since forever. But there were so many barriers to a happy ending. There were so many ways it was likely to go wrong—and she returned her thoughts to the window.
“Seriously,” Faye said, shifting to sit up in her seat once more, “I really need to do a re-read on my self-help books.”
“They were quite useful,” he admitted.
“I swear...you’re better than therapy.”
The room fell into silence once more. And Greg gave her space. Space to be free from judgment, space to be free from fear. He let her take up all the air, all that emotional energy, without complaining he was suffocating. And Faye was grateful, for this man, for this person— for this totally not a golem —who had read all her books and used the words he had found there to change her.
Change. It didn’t always have to be scary.
“I would change the window,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I would put something on that window that really speaks to my beliefs, my pride in being a Jewitch woman...and a giant screw-you to all the anti-Semites and all these people trying to run me out of my home and my business.”
The words came, free and clear.
Greg let her have the space to keep going with them.
“And then,” Faye said, rising from her seat, growing more animated with each passing moment, “just to show I wasn’t afraid, I would throw a giant party. I would invite the entire neighborhood, all the people I love and trust, all the people I don’t know, too... I would make it open to everyone, and I would bake cupcakes with Jewitch stars on them, and give away all my ring dishes, and serve all that expensive and fancy kosher red wine that never got drunk from my wedding—because screw Stuart, too!”
After which she would have totally amazing and completely reckless sex with Greg.
But, obviously , she left that part out.
Greg waited patiently for her to finish. He lay there on the squeaky mattress beside her, never overstepping her boundaries, always a comfort—and God, how she wanted to kiss him, but she turned her head back to the ceiling instead.
“Is this when you tell me I have my answer?” Faye asked.
“No.” Greg grinned devilishly. “I would never do that.”
“But it’s what I should do, right?” she said, sitting up again. “Separate out my present life from my fear. Live my best and proudest Jewitch life. Say screw you to the anti-Semites.”
He shrugged.
She tossed a throw pillow at him. “You are no help.”
Greg laughed and caught it. They were so close to each other now. They were so comfortable with each other, too. It seemed impossible. They were impossible together. And yet, she wanted him to touch her. She wanted him, in every single way.
“Whatever you decide, Faye,” he said, submerged in her eyes, “I’m here for you.”
Faye nodded. “I know.”
But what would happen when Greg wasn’t there? If she allowed these feelings, and he left her—like Stuart, like her father—forever. She didn’t want to think about these things. She didn’t want to think about how much losing him for good, for forever, would hurt. But she knew if she needed anything in her life right now, it was courage. Perhaps one courageous act would make taking on another easier.
“Okay,” Faye said, after a few thoughtful beats. “I know what I want to do.”