beautiful
She pulled back, startled by the thought. He saw her as she truly was; he thought that she was beautiful. Am I? she thought, dazed. She never would’ve said so, not even to herself. She returned his marble gaze, examining his rough-hewn features, the whorls pressed into his skin—two sets of fingerprints, she realized, one large and one small. Kreindel’s, and her father’s. How different his creation had been! Not an illicit purchase made by a scoundrel, but a task shared between father and daughter. He wasn’t beautiful—she couldn’t think of him that way—but in the marks of his makers she saw the work of love and care. In that sense, there was nothing sinister about him.
She felt his impulse to touch her, and thus wasn’t surprised when he reached out, slowly, and took her hand in his.
She closed her eyes, strangely overwhelmed by the feel of rough and solid earth. She lifted her other hand, touched his cheek—and the sensation redoubled. A blissful strength was waking in her, spreading through her. She could feel him now, not just his thoughts but him, every particle of his body coming alive in her mind. She was herself, and she was him, too; they were merging together like layers of sediment. She gripped his hand harder, willing the boundary between them to grow thinner, to disappear—
She gasped, and fell inside him—and found Kreindel.
Kreindel’s dream had changed.
She was in a forest, walking barefoot on the warm, needle-strewn ground. A river ran nearby, its waters clear and musical. On its bank stood an ancient, slanted shack. Flowering vines threaded themselves through the gaps in the timbers. Above her rose the anchoring tower for a new bridge, its roadway hanging unfinished in a net of cables. Or perhaps the bridge had been finished long ago, and now, like the shack, was returning to the forest.
The door to the shack hung from a single hinge. Inside was a cot, streaked with mud; and upon that cot lay the man she’d seen on the night of the fire, the man she’d never forgotten. He held a woman’s cloak, bunched in his hands.
She spread the cloak over him, as she always did. I’m sorry that your friend is gone, she told him. May her memory be for a blessing.
She isn’t gone, a voice said.
It was Miss Levy. She stood at a table nearby, dressed in her cook’s whites, rolling out a pie-crust with quick, even motions.
Kreindel frowned. What do you mean?
Miss Levy didn’t reply. Her fingers lifted the dough, braiding it. It wasn’t a pie-crust, Kreindel realized, but a challah. The starched white jacket and hat had disappeared; she wore a shirtwaist and a dark skirt made of rough cotton, the sort that the mothers in the tenement had worn. A golden chain glinted around her neck. She put the challah in the oven, and when she straightened again, there was a piece of cloth in her hand.
Here, the woman said. Give him this, when he wakes.
It was a square of muslin, embroidered in golden cord with the outline of a woman—no, a girl, in a knee-length shift. A fire spread behind her, reaching to the heavens.
Is this me? Kreindel asked—but Miss Levy was fading, confusion on her face—
—as the sound of the rising bell pierced through the dream.
Kreindel struggled to remember it, to hold onto the dream before it faded. There’d been a shack in a forest, and Miss Levy had been inside it, and Kreindel was supposed to give someone a . . . piece of cloth? It had seemed so important; already it was nearly gone.
Sighing, she stood from her cot, grabbed her soap and toothbrush, and joined the line for the lavatory.
Charlotte Levy blinked up at a tower of boxes.
She was sprawled upon the alcove floor, lying there as though she’d fallen. For a moment she thought it was snowing—but it was only motes of dust, drifting through the watery sunlight.
She sat up. Yossele was immobile in his usual spot, his mind upon Kreindel. The whole Asylum was awake, the children yawning and rising from their cots above.
What had happened? How long had she been there, in the basement? Yossele had taken her hand, and . . . What was it, that they’d done together? What could she even call it? She hadn’t meant to enter Kreindel’s dreams, hadn’t known that such a thing was possible. She’d acted on impulse and desire, without considering where it might lead—and it had simply . . . happened. She wasn’t even certain whether she ought to be ashamed.
She stood slowly, straightened her dress, picked up her hat from the floor. “Yossele?” she said quietly—but he barely noticed her. Kreindel was awake, and he must be vigilant. For a moment she envied him deeply.
She navigated through the maze—an easier journey in the morning light—and met no one in the hallway. She left the Asylum, and walked home.
* * *
The nightmare propelled Toby awake.
He jumped up from his pallet, ready to grab his bicycle—and saw his mother sitting on the sofa behind him, dressed for work. Her eyes had a sleepless, haunted look.
“Ma? Aren’t you going to be late?” He needed motion, he was about to jump out of his skin—but it was clear that something was wrong.
“Sit down, boychik,” she said, her voice strange. He did so, trying not to twitch—and without preamble his mother said, “Your father’s name is Irving Wasserman. We started courting when I was seventeen.”
For a moment Toby didn’t understand what was happening. Then his heart began to pound.
“He lived in the building next to mine,” she said. “I’d see him on the stoop with his friends, in the afternoons. All the girls
