Someone put on a record of slower, sadder music, and the men began to sing. Rachel left the window and, walking as quietly as she could, went up the temple steps and inside. The sanctuary was right over the men in the basement, the floor was wooden, and she took off her boots so they wouldn’t hear her. The celotex ceiling soaked up most of the singing, and the music was faint. She stood at the aisle, in front of the altar lit by the suspended lantern meant to symbolize the eternal light. The Torah was hidden by a panel. She went to it, slid the panel open, and there were the scrolls, covered in velvet that was embroidered with gold thread. A hammered silver plate hung from the scroll’s handles by a silver chain. On it, a crowned lion held up stone tablets. She knew that if a woman touched the scrolls, they were considered defiled and had to be destroyed. She stood in front of the scrolls in the glow of the eternal light and thought about her father who was dead; and her brother, who was a podiatrist on East Ninety-­second Street and bragged about fucking his patients. She thought about her mother who’d sold the handbag business, had bought bigger diamonds and a wardrobe of tight silk jersey dresses and had moved to Fort Lauderdale. Rachel had taken Leah there in the fall. But her mother played cards or mah-jongg every day they were there, and the afternoon Rachel insisted on going to the beach, her mother stayed in a hotel lobby reading the National Star because the ocean wind gave her sinus. Rachel gazed at her reflection in the beautiful silver plate over the Torah. She had meant to stay with her mother for two weeks, but she’d left after one. She was sure the old lady was glad to be rid of her with her tourist’s plans and her baby’s needs. But at the last minute, as the cab pulled away from the patio of the condominium, Rachel saw a stricken look on her mother’s face, as if she had just realized that instant that she would never see her daughter or grand­daughter again.

Rachel wanted to touch the scrolls. She even reached out to them, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She stood still in the dim light for a minute, then she slid the ark closed and left the shul.

It was snowing again, the air was silent and freezing. The street was dark and empty and she walked fast. The houses looked strange in the snow, and she was suddenly terribly lonely.