Chapter 12

12

I thought sleeping would get Chaya out of my mind, but it doesn’t work. She’s still there when I wake up, a specter haunting my steps as I get dressed and tie my messy hair up in a ponytail. She watches me tap my phone at 30th Avenue and hangs on to the subway pole next to me all the way to Union Square.

I believed I had erased her over these past eight years. She didn’t occupy all the dark corners of my mind anymore; in fact, I hardly thought of her at all out in LA. Something about being back here has resurrected her.

I just hope this place doesn’t bring back other, darker sides of my past.

Back when I was doing drugs, I had no self-control to speak of. I went skinny-dipping at Venice Beach and drove fast cars with no seatbelt and shot strange liquids into my veins without fully knowing what they were. But that’s kind of what addiction is—a full-tilt sprint toward the mindless void. And if the worst should happen, well, you probably deserve it.

This time when I decide on my next steps, it isn’t impulse driving me. It’s decisiveness.

At least that’s what I tell myself. But the fear that lurches up in the back of my throat every time I think about what I have to do next makes me feel like there’s something reckless about it as I walk into my Digital Photography class, slide into the seat next to Michal Pereira, and say, “Is the invite for Erev Shabbos still good? Not this week. But next week, maybe?”

Michal, for her part, doesn’t seem surprised at all. “Of course,” she says, smiling back at me. “Anytime. But we’re ordering in bagels from Russ & Daughters for the oneg this week, if that makes a difference….”

Russ & Daughters? Say less. “Okay, fine, this week. Those bagels have been starring in my dreams for eight years straight.”

It’s all so easy. The entire interaction is over and done with in less than a minute, as the professor shows up and calls the class to order. I doubt Michal has any idea how monumental the moment was for me. And maybe it shouldn’t be monumental; maybe it’s my nasty ego getting in the way again, still bruised from being shunned eight years ago. But I can’t escape the feeling that I’ve done something that can’t be undone. Even if I were to change my mind and cancel Friday plans, it’s too late.

I can’t pretend I don’t want it anymore.

I’m proud of me too. Being back in New York hasn’t been anything like I thought it would be. I expected to see ghosts everywhere. I thought I would hunker down at Parker and get my work done and emerge from my chrysalis like a beautiful fucking butterfly, a star of the art scene, and I’d never have to actually face the reality of what happened here eight years ago.

But New York refused to hold me at arm’s length. It grabbed me with both hands and pulled me in, wrapping me up tight. I met Ophelia and Diego, the best roommates anyone could possibly dream of. I met Michal, who defies all my prejudices about what it means to be Orthodox. And then there’s Wyatt, of course. Wyatt, who is both infuriating and alluring. Wyatt, who makes me want to smack him and kiss him at the same time.

I want to be a part of this city. I want to sink my hands wrist-deep into its muck and wallow there.

Only after I get home do I start to regret what I did, just a little. I dump my bag on my bedroom floor, then dump my body on the bed, burying my face in my pillow and muffling my groan against the down. I don’t know what I was thinking, signing up for this. It’s not as if it’s some Reform thing where the women wear kippot and people snap photos of the challah for Instagram. Michal is frum. She’s religious—Orthodox. I have no idea what stream of Judaism she follows or what their practices are, whether the people at this dinner will be Sephardi or Ashkenazi or—

I text Wyatt.

I just did a stupid thing, I tell him. I’m trying to decide if I should flee the country.

He writes back immediately, which tells me everything I need to know about his evening life.

Wyatt: Stupid like drunk sexting an ex? Or stupid like buying an NFT of Baby Yoda in meme glasses?

Me: I agreed to go to a religious thing with someone.

Wyatt: You’re right, that’s worse. What are you going to do? Do you have any uncles who can die last minute?

Me: Maybe I could invent one. But then there’s always next week. Or the next. Or the next….

Wyatt: How much do you care about disappointing this friend?

Me: She’s in my class and about thirty times cooler than I am. I want her to like me.

Wyatt: Well then, I hate to say it, but you might have to go to whatever it is. Think of this like an anthropological expedition. You’re an intrepid explorer, studying hitherto unknown spiritual practices of the rare and oft-misunderstood New York theist.

I cringe so hard I can basically feel myself disappearing into my own bones.

And then I type the next bit anyway.

Me: Yeah, maybe. Only I wish it was as exotic as going to some Pentecostal speaking-in-tongues revival. But it’s just Jewish people, so, you know, I’ve been intrepidly exploring this particular brand of New York theist since birth.

Me: It’s for my capstone project.

Me: don’t hate me.

It does take Wyatt a moment to respond this time. Probably because he’s punching himself in the face out of sheer disappointment in me.

Then he starts typing. I stare at those three dots.

Finally:

Wyatt: I could never. Do it for the bagels.

Well, I can’t disappoint Wyatt. So I guess I’m going to Shabbos with Michal.

Just for the bagels, of course.

■

But when Friday comes, dread rises with it. Trepidation settles like sickness in my gut, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t ignore it.

Sorry, I’m not feeling well. I don’t think I’m going to make it tonight. Raincheck?

There’s not gonna be a raincheck. But still, it feels more polite to pretend.

Michal texts back about an hour later: Of course, no problem. Hope you feel better soon! Let me know if I can bring you some soup or something.

Her kindness only worsens the guilt.

But all I feel as I head home at the end of the day, crammed into a subway car with all the other exhausted commuters ready for the weekend, is relief.

■

Ophelia’s there when I get home that day. She’s perched on the sofa wielding a bottle of sparkly gold nail polish. Her fingers already glitter—she’s hunched over taking care of her toes, although she spares a glance up as I dump my bag on the island and head for the fridge to pour myself a glass of grapefruit juice.

I can’t help it—I laugh, because she’s probably right. “Sorry. It’s nothing. I made plans to hang out with someone, then I chickened out.” I down half the glass of juice in one go. “So. What are you up to tonight?”

I can picture it now, some artist’s garret on Avenue C with sultry mood lighting and Bowie on repeat. The hazy miasma of weed smoke. Pizza going cold in boxes on the counter. The host’s overly affectionate cat crawling from lap to lap. Spilled beer, a stranger’s urine speckling the toilet seat. Kissing someone in a dark bedroom while the music thrums—indistinct—just outside.

It’s so far from my plans with Michal, so much so that the two experiences feel like they should exist in opposition to each other. Shabbos is candlelight and prayers in Hebrew and challah crumbs down the front of your shirt. It’s eating until you feel sick. It’s your uncle’s tone-deaf and wordless singing to an ancient tune that lives in your blood. It’s the Shabbos bride dressed in splendor, G-d turning his brilliant face to gaze on mankind.

And right now, frankly, I’ll take the pee toilet.

The place Diego brings us is a sixth-floor walk-up off St. Marks. By the time we make it to the actual apartment I’m already sweaty and out of breath; no place in New York has air-conditioning, not even in the pit of summer, which is a unique brand of awful. Clearly I’ve been cradled in the slothful embrace of LA traffic too long if an East Village walk-up can defeat me.

Even without the heat, I wouldn’t recommend taking the subway from Astoria to St. Marks. The train doesn’t get off at a super-convenient station, it’s a lot of walking, and the commute takes an hour of your life each way. Drunk tourist city isn’t worth it.

Ophelia looks infuriatingly perfect still, not even winded, her violet eyeliner just as crisp as it was when we left Astoria. “I go to a lot of spin classes,” she says when I ask.

Diego doesn’t bother knocking. Not that I think anyone would have heard him over the bass of the music or the crescendo of voices talking and laughing beyond the door. Inside, the party is about how I expected, only there’s more than just weed smoke overhead—someone is burning sandalwood incense in a little golden bowl on the kitchen counter.

Diego digs around in the ice and surfaces with two IPAs. “You sure, Ely? They’ve got cider too, if you have a gluten thing.”

Like I haven’t eaten five hundred bagels in front of him this past week. “No, really. I’ll get something in a bit.” Lukewarm tap water probably, but it’s not like I’m expecting craft mocktails. Ask a sober person what they have to drink, and they’ll show you a whole fridge full of twenty different seltzer flavors. Last time I asked a drinker for seltzer, they handed me a White Claw.

Diego shrugs as if to say, Your funeral, and passes Ophelia both the beers. “I can’t open these with my nails,” he says, flicking his fingers toward us to show off his rhinestoned talons. “Do you mind…?”

Ophelia rolls her eyes with plenty of gusto, but she does it. “I’m starting to think you just get those things so you don’t have to open your own cans. Or wash your own dishes…or scrub out the oven…”

We delve deeper into the crowd, and Diego finds the host somewhere and introduces us, which turns into offers to roll a few blunts—and I take that as my cue. I slip off and make my way back to the refreshments table, where I pour myself a red Solo Cup of tap water and take a bite of one of the little cheese cubes on display.

I used to be a riot at parties. Chaya and I would pause in the building foyer to roll off our stockings and unbutton the high collars of our shirts enough to show a daring slice of collarbone. We’d fold the waists of our skirts to hitch them up above the knees. And then we’d descend like birds of prey—at college frat parties, boho soirées hosted by someone’s online friend’s brother, bars that wouldn’t look too hard at our IDs.

Going out like that was such a thrill. Because for those few hours, we weren’t us. We weren’t the weird, frumpy Chassidic girls that goyish people stared at on the subway. We weren’t the troublemakers threatening to tarnish our families’ good names. And if we drank enough vodka sodas, swallowed enough pills, we kind of forgot we were any of those things ourselves.

Here, at this party, I catch myself staring at the mess of liquor bottles on the kitchen table. I yank my gaze away, but it’s too late. I’m already thinking about tequila, nectar sweet on my tongue. About the way getting drunk feels like slipping underwater.

And thinking about being drunk makes me think about being in other, more fractured mental states.

Okay, now I’m just getting melancholic. Time to do something with myself.

I’ve brought my camera, actually. I feel a little weird having it out, which is different for me—I used to bring my camera everywhere back in LA. It was as much a part of me as a necklace I’d never take off. People in my social circle knew to expect it. Ely Cohen, always there to snap candids, always watching everything and everyone through the lens of a Nikon.

I came to Parker to take pictures, and yet I’ve hardly done any of that so far. I’ve been so busy with classes and obsessing over this thing with Wyatt and trying to make friends that I haven’t done the one thing that never fails to help me put down roots: taking photos of people in the community I’m trying to be a part of.

I’d tried so hard when I was younger. I took hundreds of pictures a day: the young mothers in their brand-new wigs pushing strollers, old bubbes shuffling down the street to the corner store, the anxious bochur scurrying—late, books clutched to chest—to class. I would develop them in the darkroom at Yeshiva University, where one of the studio-arts professors knew my English teacher and was willing to let me take advantage of the college’s resources.

My parents looked at my photography habit the same way they looked at my sister Dvora’s ability to speak French: a fun fact to put on your résumé when it was time to find a marriage match but otherwise frivolous. They still hung up my photos around the house, still farmed out my services for all the cousins’ b’nei mitzvot, but they never really saw it as a valid career choice.

I lift the camera and focus on a girl who’s sitting on the sofa, curled up with her drink perched on one knee, watching the party swirl around her. She seems as if she’s a part of this world but not at the same time. As if she knows these people and likes them but is maybe a little tired, already thinking of going home.

I’ve only been here for five minutes, but I know how she feels.

I check the lighting, the white balance. Looks good, at least for my first time out after a week away from Albert.

That’s my camera. I named my camera Albert.

When I lift Albert again, I zero in on two people in conversation, a man and a woman. She has her head tilted slightly to one side, a lock of black hair twisting around her finger. He’s saying something with a small smile curving his lips. Flirting, or perhaps manipulating. I snap the photo.

I shift my lens to the left, and it finds a man with curly hair tipping forward to snort a line of cocaine off the coffee table.

My finger stutters against the shutter button, and I accidentally take the damn photo. I close my eyes before I turn away, but it’s too late. That image has already painted itself across the backs of my eyelids. And now it’s immortalized on film.

I shove my camera back into my bag and stagger away, hardly paying attention to the people I elbow aside. I don’t breathe properly until I’m in the bathroom with the door shut and locked behind me, cold water splashing my face.

I rub the heels of both hands over my forehead and exhale slowly, counting down from ten. I’m flush cheeked when I finally meet my gaze in the mirror again, the edges of my hair wet and stuck to my cheeks.

Someone knocks on the door. “It’s busy!” I shout, and put the toilet cover down so I can sit, clutching Albert against my chest.

The music thrums on outside, more muffled now, the lyrics indistinct. I pull my phone out of my back pocket and swipe over to the Messenger app.

I almost text Wyatt. I can imagine the way he’d respond, all comfort and reassurance. I would feel his words like a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

But of course, that’s fantasy. Texting him now would just be forcing him to metaphorically rub my shoulders and would probably be weird.

I originally got this phone out to text my sponsor. Or…well, Shannon isn’t really my sponsor anymore, I guess. I’m supposed to find a new one here in New York. But she’s still one of my closest friends, so she’s on the hook for witnessing at least 10 percent of my meltdowns.

Not that I’ve texted her much since moving away from LA. I’ve gotten plenty of texts from her, but the only thing I ever actually talked about was the time I whined to her about the Wyatt situation. I just kind of ignored all the other things she said.

Once again I prove to the universe that I’m the world’s shittiest friend. First there was Chaya. Then I ghosted all my dope-fiend friends when I got clean. And now Shannon.

Texting her right now, just to make her help me, once again the selfish friend who takes takes takes and never gives…it wouldn’t be a good look.

Fuck. Okay. Fuck being professional; I’m going in.

I text Wyatt instead.

Me: hey. I didn’t go to the Shabbos dinner, went to a party. someone’s doing coke out there and it’s got me a bit fucked up

My heart pounds as I sit there and stare at the screen, anxiety crawling at the nape of my neck. I shouldn’t expect a response. I probably shouldn’t have sent this text in the first place. God, if I don’t get a reply, it’s going to be so fucking humiliating come Monday—

Three dots. Oh my god. Oh my god.

Wyatt: Are you okay? Do you need me to call?

Me: no, I’ll be alright. Just holed up in the bathroom trying to figure out how to be a normal human again.

Wyatt: You should leave. I can call you an Uber. What’s your address?

Me: I’ll be ok. I came here with my roommates, I don’t want to ditch them.

Wyatt: I’m sure they’d understand your sobriety is more important.

Ophelia and Diego, naturally, have no idea I’m an addict. It’s a part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in California. I should have known that four years clean doesn’t make me the same as everybody else. They said that a million times in meetings, and I filed it away as information irrelevant to me. After all, I’d reinvented myself once; I could do it again.

Me: i’m fine. seriously

Wyatt: Have you been to a meeting in New York yet?

I cringe and bite the inside of my cheek. Honestly, I had kind of hoped to just…not go back. NA was helpful. I used to need it every day—sometimes more than once in a day, in fact. But it’s been four years. Aside from parties with unanticipated cokeheads presenting themselves in front of my camera lens, I actually do pretty well most of the time.

Me: No. I don’t want addiction to become my life, the way it used to be

Wyatt, of course, replies almost instantly to that one.

Wyatt: If recovery becomes your life, that’s not the worst thing in the world. Have you told anyone else here about your history? Do you have any friends you trust?

The little ellipsis at the bottom of the screen suggests he’s typing another text. A part of me doesn’t even want to know what he’ll say. It’s going to be something grotesquely kind and wise, and I don’t deserve either of those things from him.

From anyone, really.

It’s my own fault for texting him. Now I’ve gone and made myself look pitiful in his eyes. Now he’ll want to fix me, and the thought is terrible enough to make me wish I’d stayed home tonight in the first place.

Wyatt: Recovery isn’t something to be ashamed of. But I get it. And I’m here, if you need to talk.

Oh, fuck me.

My stupid brain can’t decide if I’m embarrassed beyond all belief or if it was worth it. My predictions were right, of course. Everything Wyatt says to me feels like a hug, his fingers squeezing my shoulders and the skin of his cheek warm against mine.

But he didn’t sign up to be my sponsor. Or my dad.

And I don’t want him to be either of those things either.

I shut off my phone and stand, shoving it into my back pocket and facing myself in the mirror once more. I pinch my cheeks; it only serves to make me look feverish. I make a face at my reflection instead and turn and open the door and find myself face-to-face with Ophelia.

She has a beer in hand, so she’s already enjoying it far more than I am. “Sure. Yeah. How about you?”

But of course, Ophelia’s too smart to fall for that. Her purple-painted lips tilt into a frown. “Are you okay?”

A ragged laugh shudders up from my chest, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel like I’m on the verge of bursting into tears.

Ophelia’s eyes widen and she reaches for my hand, squeezing tight. “Come here,” she says, tugging me after her. “Let’s go get some air, yeah?”

I follow her through the stuffy main rooms of the apartment and into the bedroom, which is less busy—just a few people hanging around sharing drinks and chatting in lowered voices. Ophelia pushes open the window and climbs through, out onto the fire escape. It’s a warm night, balmy, and smells like smoke. I realize why when I peer over the railing and spot someone a couple of stories below leaning against the rail, the lit coal of their cigarette a glowing ember in the dark.

Ophelia sits down near the edge, her legs dangling out over open air. She pats the spot to her right and I join her, watching my feet hover far above the sidewalk. My socks, the ones with pineapples on them, look childish juxtaposed with Ophelia’s pink fishnets.

Outside is better. There’s air on my face, even if it’s tobacco laced. And I prefer the sound of honking cars and miscellaneous shouting to the white noise of a drunken party. The old Ely would be horrified by how square I am now, but it’s true.

I’m already kicking myself. This isn’t flattering—who says that? It sounds like I’m fishing for reassurance. “Nothing. Sorry. I just…got a little freaked-out for a second. But I’m fine now. It’s fine.”

But somehow this only serves to make Ophelia look even more concerned. “What happened? Do I need to talk to someone?”

I dig my fingers against the grate of the fire escape and try to focus on that, on the chilly iron against my skin.

I pretend to be overly concerned with my nails for a second, digging at a cuticle as if I’m the kind of person who gives a shit about my cuticles.

I must look even worse than I feel, because Ophelia scootches closer and rests her hand atop mine, her palm warm and heavy. I shift so that she can lock our fingers together, and when she squeezes, I squeeze back.

Ophelia’s being nice, but I know better than to trust it. Addicts don’t get sympathy. And honestly, that’s pretty fair most of the time. When we’re using, we’ll do anything to get our next fix. I must have stolen thousands of dollars from my parents by the time I finally got caught. Addiction makes villains even out of good people, and I was never a moral beacon in the first place.

There’s a reason I keep this shit a secret from people I’ve just met.

A flush of heat blooms in my chest. Maybe I should be humiliated that I’m so easy to please. But ever since what happened with Chaya and me, I’ve felt like…well, like the person who’s always lurking at the fringes of social groups, there but not really there. Just an annoying leech hanging on by its teeth.

But Ophelia called me her friend. And that’s pretty much enough to make me ride or die for her.

I smile, the first real smile of the night. “Thanks. You’re…a very kind person, you know that?”

I look out past the confines of the microworld that is our fire escape, at the yellow window light of the apartments across the street. One apartment has a plant on a windowsill. Next door, a man passes into an adjoining room, and the lamp switches off, casting the scene into darkness. That’s one thing I missed about New York. All these people—all these lives, each with its own story, its own history and hopes and fears. Millions of people in this city living in their own social webs, silver threads connecting them to friends, lovers, sisters. The tenuous, fragile thread that connects them to me, in this moment where our stories intersect before we depart in our own separate directions.

Makes you feel small. A tiny plankton in a massive ocean teeming with life. Your own problems become small, too.

I laugh and she laughs back, but it sounds fake.

I might not understand the design industry, but I can understand this: The drive for perfection. The inability to ever let anything be done. “This isn’t the final product,” I say after a moment, as gently as I can. “You still get to work on the actual label. And you’ll have plenty of time to do revisions on that.”

She doesn’t believe me, of course. I don’t know why she would; I’ve been pretty up-front about knowing precisely zero about design work. But Ophelia’s a good illustrator. As little as I might know about this kind of art, I can tell that much.

I wonder if it’s stupid to even be telling her this, like Ophelia doesn’t freaking know. But she finally gives me the first tiny, real smile I’ve seen since we left the apartment. And—fuck it—I reach over and grab her hand, squeezing tight.

She’s not wrong. Even so, I wonder if she realizes how lucky she is. So many people would kill to be in her position. Yeah, she has a lot to lose, but at least she isn’t starting from zero. At least she has some kind of legitimacy in the field. I might have gotten my work into a few shows in LA, but I’m still very definitely an amateur. I’m constantly, unforgettably aware that I’m just two steps up from being back on the Venice Beach boardwalk trying to sell my work to tourists who veer away from me as if I’m visibly diseased.

Maybe some of that shows on my face, because Ophelia twists hers up and says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like this. Like, please, I literally won, so why am I over here bitching about how hard it is to be in the spotlight? And you’re already going through some shit tonight. Jesus. I didn’t mean to make this all about me.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re allowed to feel what you feel. It’s not like you stop being human or having emotions just because you’re successful.” After a beat, I go on. “Anyway, it’s going to be amazing. They’re lucky to have you.”

I grin. And somehow, sitting out here on this humid night with Ophelia’s hand still wrapped around mine, I feel like I’ve put down something heavy that I didn’t even realize I was carrying.

I feel like maybe I’m not so alone, after all.