94 – Portland, Maine
“I’m going back to Boston,” Judy Katz announced to the people sitting at the kitchen table, finishing the omelets Shapiro had cooked to order. “They have no idea I’m involved with anything. I’ll be safe. Besides, I’m the only ADL lawyer with a security clearance so I’m the only one who can visit our clients on the Cape.”
She gave Shapiro a serious, probing look. He didn’t know how to interpret it, although several possibilities came to mind. “Somebody still has to act like a lawyer, right Ben?”
“Judy, you know as soon as I show my face you’ll be visiting me at that camp,” Shapiro said. “I didn’t please those FBI agents by paddling away from them. But if you feel you can still play at being an attorney, well, go for it girl. Those days are over for me.”
“I’m not going to play at being a lawyer, Ben. I still am a lawyer.” Katz was angry. There was no need for him to put her down. She understood his pain, no, she knew she couldn’t even begin to understand it, but she recognized the pain he was in. She was in pain, too. But did he have to act like an asshole?
“I missed my meeting with my boss, my farewell meeting. I want to see him face to face, see what he’ll say to me,” she said. “I have too many loose ends to tie up. I, I have to find my Nana. Somebody has to get down to that camp to find out what’s happening there. That’s still important, isn’t it?”
Sarah felt there was a plot line to the conversation between Shapiro and Katz that she was not catching, but she agreed somebody should go to the camp on Cape Cod.
“Do you really think they’ll let you in there, Judy?” she asked.
“They have to. They don’t know I was at the March. I’m the lawyer for the organization that represents the detainees,” she said. “I may have to get a court order, but they have to let me in. These people have a right to be represented by an attorney, don’t they?”
“Do they?” Shapiro made a show of noisily rising from the table and walking from the room.
Judy left to pack the few items she’d brought when she and Sarah left her apartment to meet Shapiro at the beach. She came down the stairs after several minutes and waited at the front door for Sarah. Shapiro asked her to step outside.
He took her hand.
“Judy, I’m worried about you,” he said. “The world’s gone crazy. It’s not like it was just a month ago. You push them now and they’ll lock you up. I’m worried that if you push too hard to get into that camp, you’ll get in, but you won’t get out.”
She squeezed his hand, then threw her arms around him and drew him close to her. He stiffened, then relaxed. His arms hung limply, wanting to hug her but unable to do so. After an awkward moment he stepped back and tried to smile at her.
“I have to try, don’t I Ben?” she asked. “We can’t just stop trying. When we do that, they win.” She tried to smile at him. He tried to smile back.
“OK, be the lawyer,” he said. “Use my office. Tell my partners I’m off on a secret mission. They’ll want to know more but they won’t be too surprised. One last thing, Judy.”
She looked at him. “I doubt whether you can actually say just one thing, Ben, but go ahead.”
“Be a lawyer. Sue the bastards, Judy,” he said, grinning for the first time since he’d arrived home from Washington.
“I’ll sue their asses, Ben,” Katz said. “I’ll do good, you’ll see.”
She held both his hands in hers. “Ben, I haven’t been able to find words to tell you how horrible I feel about your son, and your wife. I know I wouldn’t have been her favorite person if she’d known about me, but they didn’t deserve what happened to them. To think that Jews did that. Ben, does that make you wonder about what else we might have to do, who else we might have to hurt?” He did not respond. She continued.
“Ben, what those people did at the mall, what Abram’s people did in Washington, how is that any different from what has been happening between Jews and Arabs for a thousand years?”
“I haven’t stopped wondering about that, Judy,” he said quietly. “But what happens if we do nothing? And if they shut off all other options, if we can’t use the courts, if the government won’t listen to us, what choices do we have?
“I know there is one thing we absolutely can not do, Judy. You are right. We can’t do nothing, we can’t simply submit. That’s been tried. It didn’t work. We can’t do that.”
She raised her face toward his, leaned forward and placed her lips gently on his, then circled him with her arms and held him tightly. This time he gave in to his body’s need for comfort, his need to touch and be supported. The kiss deepened as they held each other tightly, their bodies merging against each other, pain and comfort flowing from one to the other and back again.
Debra Reuben watched through the living room window. He just lost his wife, his son, she thought. How could he do that? The outrage she tried to summon refused to respond, replaced by another thought. He’s so alone. I just lost Chaim. I wish somebody could hold me right now, could reassure me that Chaim died for a purpose, that it is going to be better.
Finally, Judy Katz stepped back. She gave Shapiro a final punch in the chest and walked to her car.
He returned to the house. Abram Goldhersh placed a huge arm over Shapiro’s shoulder and forcefully guided him to the living room. Debra and Sarah were sitting on the sofa.
“Can we trust her?” Abram asked. “She knows everything, and until last week, she worked for the government.”
“She’s a bit confused,” Shapiro said. “It might be my fault, or some of it. She might think I led her on about, well about my feelings. I might even have led myself on, come to think of it. But after what happened to Sally, Adam . . .” his voice trailed off.
“She’s angry and she’s frightened,” Reuben said. “She told me about her dreams, they’re all nightmares. She’s in a camp, hair shaved, striped clothes. And she is being marched to the showers. Did you know her grandparents were in Warsaw, in the Ghetto during the Uprising? She won’t let that happen, not again, she said.”
Debra turned to speak directly to Ben Shapiro.
“Ben, don’t compliment yourself that it’s all about you not sleeping with Judy, OK? She’s a Jew. Like the rest of us, she had to decide for herself what that means. She’s decided. She’ll be all right. We’ve been doing a lot of talking, Judy and I. Trust me, she’s OK. There’s a reason each of us is here, including Judy. Just give her a little time.”
“A little time is all we may have,” Abram replied. “Nonetheless, can we agree to keep an eye on our own federal prosecutor. Agreed?”