This was true. Her reputation for being a welcome guest among the most important rabbinical families in the community would soar! “I’ll mention it to them,” she promised. But what she could really say was that Fruma Esther was on the warpath against those who were turning their backs on her former son-in-law and his family and that they should be cautious not to be one of them if they knew what was good for them. And for her.

12

DUVIE

She stood waiting for him in the shadows of the elevated platform of the subway train out of Boro Park. Above, the F train rumbled ominously as it came and went, the time intervals uneven and unpredictable. After weeks of meeting Duvie in various deserted parks, it was the first time that Shaindele had agreed to actually go into Manhattan with him. This was a thrilling decision that pitted her caution against her growing desires and expanding curiosity.

She thought back to the first time she had ever left Boro Park on her own. It had been more or less a disaster, a secret escape to Baltimore via Grand Central Station, in turn both terrifying and impressive as she tried out the consequences of adult decision-making without parental or rabbinical supervision. It had ended in an ignominious return home by Greyhound bus; her aunt and uncle, whom she had fully expected to supply both sheltering arms and a sympathetic ear did neither, instead traitorously informing her father and handing her a bus ticket and a brown paper bag containing a challah sandwich and high-calorie snacks. But the trip had still proven a milestone, giving her the first taste of what it would be like to meet men who were neither relatives nor friends of the family. Mostly, these random encounters had been unsatisfactory, leaving her disheartened, even a bit disgusted. The irony was not completely lost on her that in running away to find a husband, she’d ended up deciding never to get married at all.

Duvie Halpern had changed all that.