"Dad?"
Walter's caution kicked in with the despondent way she said that word. It gave him the terrible feeling that he was at last face to face with the precedent. And he was unprepared. He'd never heard a peep from her about her father, and now they were staring straight at each other all of a sudden. It couldn't go well. The expression on the man's face only accentuated the eery suspense. There was an unmatched contempt in it, and it spoke for itself.
The yellow shade of his skin, likely from so many cigarettes, didn't help his case. He hadn't lost any weight from smoking, though. His beer belly was fuller, barely disguised behind a worn out bomber jacket. Jeff Bradley had never been an obese man, and he still wasn't, but his body clearly stated 'I've given up', now more than ever. His dark hair was so shiny, it looked like it was covered in molasses. He was a lot worse off than when they'd left him.
"After everything, after the shit we went through, you just leave and to top it off this is where I have to find ya?"
That croaky voice again. Her ears had almost forgotten it already. But the shrill noise was back, entering her head uninvited.
"How—" There was no point in questioning how he'd found her. If he remembered where Carlo and Julia's townhouse, where he'd only been once before, was, he could've easily began to trail her. "You've been following me?"
He took one step closer, bringing with him the unwanted and still too recent memories.
"You mean trying to get you back home? Of course I have."
"I am home," she dared to respond.
The sarcasm in his assessment of their surroundings was painfully obnoxious. "Sure doesn't look anything like it." His head nudged forward, flaring his narrow nostrils "Who's the kike?"
"Don't call him that." Her retort was immediate, and though she was trying her best to confront him, it was obvious she dared not to speak up. The attempt to defend Walter was barely heard by the man himself, so it was questionable if Jeff even picked up on it at all.
"We're getting outta here." With an abrupt motion, Jeff yanked the sleeve of Phoebe's sweater to pull her forward and away from Walter. "And get that shit off your head." He ripped the kippah from her head, taking some hairs along with the clip attached to it and threw it. Phoebe protested at the sudden stinging on her scalp.
"Hey!" Walter shouted at him, in shock at the man's rough treatment of his daughter.
Some unbelieving gasps came from behind. Onlookers, from both people on the street, and the ones still leaving the synagogue.
Phoebe tried to resist, but Jeff kept a firm grip on her. In a reflex she timidly called out the name of the only one she trusted.
"Walter." Get me out of this, said worry the on her face.
"Let go of her," he snarled with anger and impatience that were only fueled by the hunger. All Walter wanted was to get home and fill his stomach. Having to deal with this was not at all what he had in mind.
"You don't tell me what to do with my own daughter."
Mr Rosenthal was one of the onlookers, but unlike them, he didn't remain just standing by. He tried to take action.
"I would leave her alone if I were you, mister. She clearly doesn't want to go with you." The voice wasn't wrinkly any longer. He sounded like someone not to be reckoned with.
Jeff maintained his hand around Phoebe's wrist, turning the skin beneath his fingers ghostly white. "Mind your fucking business, old man."
"This is my business," he snapped. It seemed Mr Rosenthal was just as cranky as Walter and couldn't wait to get to his 'break-fast' dinner. "This is where I pray and where I seek God's shelter. I will not let you disrupt that for me, for us," he made a generalized gesture at the others, then managed with a shocking amount of strength to snatch Phoebe from Jeff's grasp. "or for her."
Mr Rosenthal took the shelter analogy to a literal level when he interposed his body between Jeff and Phoebe, giving her a safe distance from him.
"You're praying to their God now?!" He scoffed and flailed his arms in a defeatist manner. "Of course... What else could one expect from Jew York!"
Walter took two more steps forward, reinforcing the barrier isolating Phoebe. Jeff may have been big in size, but Walter was taller, and, needless to day, in shape. His broad shoulders—now puffed up—made the fortitude that was usually hidden under his loose-fit suits stand out more notoriously. His imposing stance worked. Jeff remained stern in his expression, but his overly-confident pose was finally wavering. It was one against the rest of the congregation who was still there, and had approached in support.
There was not another peep from Jeff, whose last word was, instead, projecting his spit inches away from Walter's shoes before he retreated with a resentful walk down the street.
They all let out a breath of relief. All but Phoebe, who knew it was not the end of it. And yet, a sudden warmth on her palm managed to bring some comfort to her. It was Walter's hand, which had taken a hold of hers to beckon her away from where the incident had taken place.
"Who was that schmuck?" Mr Rosenthal asked while they passed by in front of him. He bent down stiffly to pick up the discarded yarmulke. He kissed it—an action which must've had some meaning—before catching up with them to give it back to Phoebe.
"Thank you, Mr Rosenthal," she told him with affliction because of the mortifying scene they'd caused, but grateful that he'd defended her.
"Don't mention it."
Walter had taken his cellphone out to place a call, and he still hadn't let go of her hand.
"Yeah, we're done here," he spoke into the phone.
In a matter of a couple of minutes, his driver appeared and stopped the car right in front of them. With haste, Walter opened the door for Phoebe, almost shoving her inside.
Mr Rosenthal poked his head through the open window a little.
"I'm sorry this happened. But I hope it doesn't put you off from visiting us again," he told Phoebe.
She only managed to give him a nod.
"Thanks again, Abel," said Walter.
Mr Reade drove away and Phoebe kept twisting her head back to look at the cars behind them at first.
"Let's stop for groceries," she said firmly when they were reaching the downtown.
"Phoebe, you don't have to cook anything now, okay? Let's just get something at the deli. Or better yet, we can get you home, if you prefer that."
"No, no. You haven't eaten in over a day... you need a good home cooked meal."
The last thing he wanted was to argue with her. If that was what she felt like doing, he would not stop her. Maybe it would even make her feel better, distract her. But he was concerned. This attitude, pretending like nothing had happened, that she was not shaken up at all... It could go either way.
At the grocery store, she walked ahead of him, throwing items into the cart that he was pushing. If not for that, the silence around them would have been absolute.
The moment they left the groceries on the kitchen counter, Phoebe washed her hands and began getting down to business. First, cutting up the vegetables for a stew that would sit well on an empty stomach.
Walter said a prayer and gulped down two big glasses of water—something that had been also been restricted for him over the last twenty-five hours. He gasped while he placed the glass down.
Phoebe, absorbed in her little world, only noticed that he'd started a cigarette, as if it was also a vital human necessity, when she felt the urge to cough. Waving a hand in front of her nose, she complained.
"Could you take that outside?"
His lips closed tightly around the fuming stick, staring apologetically at her scowl. He backed away, sliding open the doors to the majestic terrace. The view normally enchanted him. However, it strangely did not quite hit the spot that evening. And the cigarette tasted like a cigarette, and not like the bittersweet illusion of relief. These things made him averse to waste much me time in the pointless poison and unnatural scenery. The scents from inside were what deserved the attention of his senses.
"Put those peas into the stew, will you?" Phoebe asked of him only because she was occupied with the second dish.
"One can easily tell you're not a New Yorker," he mentioned after fulfilling her request.
"Why's that?" With her back to him, she hoped her curious voice could fool him.
"Because you'd rather cook than eat out. Before you, the only food this kitchen ever saw were cups of coffee in the morning and the ocasional challah."
Walter watched her shoulders go up.
"It just needed a little soul."
He stood right next to her, trying to catch a glimpse of the face hidden behind the curls that had escaped from the ponytail.
"You're saying I'm soulless."
"I'm saying a home's soul is in the kitchen." Phoebe picked up one of the deviled eggs and forced it into his mouth so he could not talk back. "Without that, this is just a place where you sleep."
He stepped aside while he dealt with that exposition. Turning his apartment into something close to a domestic space was not what he had foreseen. It kind of paid off that evening though, considering it managed to quench his hunger.
For dessert, they'd picked out a chocolate and cinnamon babka from the store's bakery, which Phoebe served with apple slices covered in a drizzle of honey.
When they were finished, Walter moved his seat back to clear the plates from the table, but before he could, Phoebe leaned at his side and took it herself.
"You're in the clean plate club," she commended him before marching toward the sink to rinse them. Her attention drifted to all that was left of the banquet she'd gone overboard with. "You could offer some of the leftovers to your family, if you'd like." She turned to him with a smile that he did not match.
"Are we going to keep avoiding the subject like nothing happened?"
The smile lasted little.
"It's not that big a deal."
Walter had never met a person so adept at deflection.
"You haven't seen your dad in over a year, you've never once mentioned him in that span of time... He shows up out of nowhere today and you're going to try to tell me that there's nothing going on? That this will just blow over?" Seeing Walter, the famously composed man she'd always known him to be so far, so worked up got her by surprise. Not that it wasn't comprehensible, given it kind of involved him too, what with Jeff's remarks and everything. And probably the explanations some of the fellow worshipers at the synagogue would likely attempt to pry from him. "I'm not blind or deaf—we all witnessed his display back there, and let me tell you, some of it seemed a little familiar to me."
"I'm fine."
"This is denial, Phoebe," he insisted. "You need to talk about it with someone—you are not fine."
He was beginning to cross the line with that sort of talk.
"I am, okay?! Stop trippin' off me!" Things had escalated quickly, riling Phoebe's mind up. Fortunately, not as much as it used to get. Either she was better at keeping it under control or denial was actually playing some part. "It's like you want me to not be fine!"
"That's not what I meant. I would simply like to help you deal with any unresolved matters... You are not alone in this."
"Why you gotta be all up on my shit? What about you, huh? You also hold back. I barely know anything about you. Took me months to find out you're one of five siblings. The only other thing I know for sure is that your dad ain't easy to deal with either, right?" She questioned him, recalling his story about the football game his father had taken him to. "Let me guess; is Terrence Hezekiah Cooperman one of those men who spends more time at the office than at home? Is that why you are the way you are?"
"I didn't realize we were psychoanalyzing me now."
She looked at him as though to let him know she'd accomplished what she'd meant with her little rant.
Phoebe then remembered the necklace she was wearing and took it off, setting it down in front of him.
"Don't put me under a looking glass."
There were no more words between them when he brought her home other than 'good night'. It felt like something had broken a little, or like there was a strain in the odd and delicate string holding them together.
But Phoebe wasn't thinking about that the moment she got into the apartment. Worried that she'd made an unwise decision going to Walter's to cook a whole meal for him and 'pretending nothing happened' instead of going straight home after the synagogue like he had suggested.
Dana was inelegantly laying back on the couch, a gossipy magazine hovered over her face.
"How was the service? Did you convert yet?" Her cousin asked jestingly without looking up from the photos on the pages.
When Phoebe avoided giving an answer in favor of frantically reaching for the telephone, the magazine fell down on Dana's face. She flicked it away to leap from the couch.
"What? What happened?" She asked then, hurrying to Phoebe's side.
Phoebe pressed the telephone against her ear, impatiently waiting for that standby tone to be replaced by her mom's voice.
"Mom," Phoebe said after hearing the 'yes?' on the other side. "Mom... he's here. Dad found us."
Dana scooted closer trying to hear what Joanna said as well, but wasn't able to make out more than a gasp of surprise. The kind you make when words fail you.
"What do you mean how?" Phoebe asked her mom. "We all attended uncle Carlo and Auntie Julia's housewarming just a little before we went away. Do you really think he forgot where the place was?"
"I think he's been watching us for a while," Phoebe continued, raising the uncertainty in everyone. "I don't know for how long, but there's no doubt he was following me—he knew exactly where I was."
"What does that matter? He made a scene and he's not going to leave it at that." It was most definitely not the time to reveal where Phoebe had been and with whom. "Whatever you do, don't open the door or leave the house without uncle Carlo. I don't want dad to blindside you like he did with me."
"Yes, I know that. But he said he's here to take us back to Connecticut. And I don't think he cares much about whether we want to or not."
There was a long uninterrupted silence while Phoebe listened to Joanna. After a while, she closed her eyes and nodded.
"Take care. Good night." Phoebe hung up with a slow movement.
The pout on her lips had formed involuntarily, but she did not need to pretend with Dana.
"Oh, honey." Dana put her arms around her. The fluffy sweater she was wearing made it feel like a bear was hugging her. A weirdly cuddly bear.
"Fuck! Just when everything was going right!" She cried out, stomping the floor with her foot.
Dana squeezed gently, trying to make her relax.
"You'll see, everything will continue to go right... Don't let yourself be discouraged by him."
"No, Dana." Phoebe stepped back to look Dana in the eye and make her understand. "He was there as I walked out of the synagogue with Walter, and now thinks I've become the very thing he hates. He's not just about to let that go."
The strangeness of the following weeks was due to Jeff's absence. He had oddly made no more appearances. But that just added a crazy amount of uneasiness each time Phoebe walked down the street and went anywhere. The sensation of eyes glued to her back made it all but comprehensible whenever Phoebe looked over her shoulder—which was quite often. She used to think of the vastness and overcrowding of New York as a source of anxiety and stress, but lately she had begun to see it as a blessing, something that could protect her. Yet, with her father's untimely surfacing from it, she no longer deemed it reliable.
Joanna called various times a day to check in and so did Phoebe. Carlo was dizzying himself going from his house to work, and to Dana's apartment, and back to his home each day.
"I don't know where that fuck must be staying, but there ain't no way I'm letting him drag you away again," her uncle ranted while they were all gathered at the townhouse for what used to be family time. That day, though, it turned into a situation room for.
Julia poked her head from the kitchen door and spoke in a soft voice to her. "Want to help me with the bolognese, Phoebe?"
Phoebe nodded, leaving the salon behind, where Joanna had been listening to Carlo's loud proclamations since she had arrived from work.
"Listen, this is gonna drive your uncle crazy," Julia mentioned as she coped with the onion's stinginess threatening to reach her eyes. Phoebe picked up a knife and began chopping the tomatoes. "He might end up doing what he didn't do to him back then. And I don't want Carlo to lose his job over some spiteful assault, even if it is well justified."
Her aunt's was concern was comprehensible. Phoebe couldn't bear the thought of Carlo losing the job he'd loved for more than twenty years. Working at the Port Authority meant the life to him, he always gave his all to the job, because to him it was more than just that. Without it, he wouldn't know what to do.
"I will try my best to not let it come to that."
With Walter also absent from her life for the next week—and apparently busy with yet another one of his holidays, 'Succulent' or whatever—Phoebe fully concentrated on college and nothing else. It was a way of keeping paranoid thoughts about Jeff at bay. If he truly kept watching her from afar, at least he was seeing no more of Walter for the time being.
Deciding to go to the cafe after studying with Sylvia was Phoebe's only glimpse of social life that week. Carrying the weight of their countless notes in their backpacks, the pair chose a place that was unsurprisingly occupied by their peers, academically speaking; entitled, opinionated students that were either fully suited-up proto-Walters pretending to be the real deal, or dressed in rags that they claimed were somehow simultaneously representative of their revolutionary view on the world and laid-back attitude. They occasionally mingled accidentally, mixing like oil and water and getting into heated debates. The only ones keeping to themselves were the computer geeks, glueing their eyes to laptop screens.
The decoration of the establishment wasn't any less pretentious, with somewhat biased propaganda and holier-than-thou messages hanging on its walls. Phoebe doubted she'd be coming back.
Sylvia complained when she picked her order from the counter, claiming the cup was too hot. Phoebe blew a few times over her caramel latte, dispersing the vapor into dancing spirals.
She briefly checked her cellphone. No new messages on it. She pondered over whether she should be the first one to say something. Thinking about him made her bring up a question she hadn't remembered to ask since the discovery at the synagogue.
"What's the deal with Walter? How exactly do you know him?"
Sylvia oozed wit along with her grin, looking like she had been waiting to hear it, and was likely surprised it had taken that long.
"My dad used to officiate at the conservative synagogue in Park Avenue, and Walter was friends with him and my aunt Annie, so he usually was at every event with our family. When we transferred here he joined us not long after."
"Back up... Your aunt Annie?" Phoebe couldn't believe her ears. But it just was too close a coincidence to consider her as any other Annie. "Not Annie Meyerowitz?"
"Ha, I can't believe you've met her too."
Infamous Annie.
"Okay, not to sound insensitive, but you all seem to know or be connected to each other one way or another."
She chuckled briefly. "We're a tight community in Manhattan, it happens." Sylvia finally decided her coffee was safe to drink, but just in case, she concealed her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater before touching the cup again. "What what I still can't really visualize is how you got to meet Walter and get so close to him. He barely ever lets anyone ten feet near him, much less his apartment. He's like a dragon guarding his treasure when it comes to his stuff."
Phoebe shrugged her right shoulder. "I told you, we met at the tower."
"Yeah, yeah. But how in the world did you convince him to feed your wallet?"
Phoebe tried to take no offense, as she understood that was not Sylvia's intention.
"I didn't convince him of shit," she said flatly. "The weirdo volunteered."
"There is defo something else going on here." She tapped her nail against the table, a smug curve showing on her lips again that brought a brief pause to the conversation.
"Is there anything you can tell me about him? You must know a thing or two more than me." This was Phoebe's way of deflecting Sylvia's insinuation. "He never tells me anything, and yet demands for me to be an open book with him. Like I owe it to him or sum'."
"Well, what I do know about him is that he likes to be his own master, likes to be in control of things in every circumstance. That's probably why you get the impression of him being demanding with you and yet holding back about himself," she explained, or rather, guessed. "Any idea why he might be so insistent?"
Phoebe's jaw tightened, her teeth forcefully grinded against each other uncomfortably.
"Maybe 'cause of some beef that happened between us at the beginning... He did nothing, though. I started it. I was a big asshole. It was such a freaking dumb and unnecessary thing to do." Sylvia stared ahead, having forgotten her cooling beverage which by then was probably straight up cold, and that stare communicated both 'what could you have done that is so bad' and 'please continue, I'm dying to know'. But Phoebe was in no rush to continue. She dreaded it. Dreaded how small she felt each time she had to own up. "Don't take it the wrong way, because I am not that person anymore—thanks to you and him..."
Trailing off served no purpose, it wouldn't get her out of it, but Phoebe did it anyway, raising Sylvia's impatience.
"What is it?"
"When I met Walter I detested him right from the start, before knowing anything about him other than his first name." Stop making excuses for yourself. "But when I learned his last name... I shut him out."
"What are you saying, Pheebs? I'm not following."
Phoebe gathered a big breath.
"I was taught that last names which ended, for example, in 'stein', 'berg', or 'man' were usually Jewish. And I was taught this precisely to avoid them." Phoebe looked downward to the point that her eyelids completely concealed the search for atonement behind them. The shame of confession, the humility brought upon by the grace of God. "I avoided Walter when I learned his name was Cooperman."
Sylvia wiped clean any previous remnants from her expression the moment she grasped what Phoebe had just admitted. It looked like a gray cloud had just settled over her. The cloud being Phoebe. Her friend was regretting ever being so eager to know.
"You're an anti-Semite?" Sylvia asked way too loudly.
"Yes. No!" Oh my God. Phoebe got her answer mixed up amidst the panic that ensued with thinking the whole cafe had condemnatory eyes on her. It wasn't the ideal place to suddenly have this kind of talk. Not that there were many ideal places for that. "I guess you could say I was. Not anymore. It was just ignorance."
Hand around her chin and conflicted in thought, Sylvia's tense body language was eerie. "I guess this explains why Annie was ranting that time about some 'gold-digging gentile bitch' hanging around Walter," she said lowly, like talking to herself.
"A what now?"
There was a sharp silence, sharper than the knife that could've tried to cut it.
"I can't believe how you pretended all this time."
Phoebe shook her anguished fits underneath the table, painfully and sadly frustrated at Sylvia's reasonable disappointment. "C'mon Sylvia, I've been your friend all along. I never once thought ill of you or Ben."
She issued a sarcastic 'wow, thanks' with her incredibly articulate silver-like eyes. "Yeah? Was it like that when you shook my hand and learned that my name was Friedman?" She accentuated the last syllable with hurt. "I feel as though I don't know you all of a sudden. Or if I can even fully rely on you like I thought I did ten minutes ago."
Phoebe shifted forward in her seat, anxious for Sylvia to be as understanding and forgiving as Walter had thankfully been. And he'd been the one to actually have reasons not to.
"All right, remember how you were talking about Hanukkah that day and I asked you about it? I did so because after school I was gonna be on my way to apologize to Walter." A hopeful flat smile as if it would make it more convincing. But Sylvia had significantly slid her chair back and away from the table a few minutes ago already. "You can't tell me you don't trust who I am anymore because you never met the Phoebe that you couldn't trust. She was already part of history."
"Yeah, probably right next to Hitler." When Sylvia's sarcastic laugh reached Phoebe's ears it was like a slap.
Discouraged, her tense posture lost all its vigor and will to continue to parley and find persuasive argumentations.
"That's way harsh."
"You know, you being part black... you're the last person I would have expected this from."
"It's the way this fucked up world works. There's a million voices telling you what you should be thinking and you got no choice but to listen to the one closest to you."
Sylvia stayed silent again for a moment. When she stood from the metallic chair that was nowhere near where it had been originally, Phoebe knew she'd screwed up big time.
"I just... I need some time, Phoebe," Sylvia said, and swung her bag over her shoulder.
The redhead's nails were digging so deep into her knees that there would probably be marks on them for a while.
"Fine. You just holla when you feel like it," Phoebe told her, but Sylvia's back was already toward her, heading outside and leaving her behind, forgetting how they were originally supposed to spend the rest of the afternoon together.
Dropping her face onto the palms of her hands, Phoebe exhaled loudly and melted helplessly onto the table. The talent she had to mess things up outperformed any of her other attributes. One would think she'd be used to it by now, but each time, it was the same kind of gut-wrenching, desolate sensation.
Phoebe at last decided she would say the first word. She no longer cared about self-pride or about sealing herself from the one man—other than her uncle—that truly cared for her. Without rising from her defeatist posture, she reached into her pocket, head now resting sideways on her forearm to be able to see the phone's screen and type a message.
You up for a wander?
The message was blunt. It was intended that way; to come across as though it hadn't been quite a while since they'd last spoken. 'a wander' was just a cover, an excuse, and he pretty surely would see through it.
The aversion to open up about her father was still there, and she couldn't guarantee not getting sensitive about it. But the urge to speak to Walter after that unfortunate exchange with Sylvia was overwhelming.
[Walter]
Sunday morning good?
Good enough. She would have preferred to see him to be right at that instant... but beggars can't be choosers. Walter's schedule was what it was, and if he'd said Sunday morning it was because it literally was the only moment that he was free. Phoebe didn't have that many options either.
(This was the original version I made of the drawing. I still hadn't decided/pictured whether Phoebe had blue or brown eyes. That's why I've never mentioned either, I think. I still like the first one better, but yeah, I'm now pretty sure she has brown eyes. It's taken me a while to visualize it lol)
A/N: so this book is supposed to have two parts. But I'm not going to designate the second part to any chapter yet. I'll wait until I finish the story and see where the separation fits better.