Atonement

That the money fell into her lap was beside the point, she insisted, but it was the truth. Sonia cocked her chin down slightly as she said it, acting out what she hoped came across as some sense of total seriousness eyes widening, rearing to take in his reaction from across the table: the jealousy she anticipated would lurk permanently behind his sure-to-be-furrowed brow, the work it would take to disguise her delight, the way the miracle had turned her into a child again, had sent her running around the room with nowhere to go and no one to tell and no real sense of what to do with it, anyway. Until now.

His face showed no sign of recognition. The rabbi simply sat, stoic, his gaze fixed evenly on the space between her eyes, emitting a long and low exhale as the story wound to a close. His face betrayed no immediate shock, no quivering lip, no bewilderment at all, really, at the fact that twenty thousand dollars had fallen through the roof of her crummy apartment on Avenue C, that “The point isn’t how I got it,” she repeated, as much to persuade herself as to convince the Rabbi to put in a good word upstairs in case this whole endeavor went south. It wasn’t her fault, really. She didn’t steal it. She didn’t cut anyone down to get it, didn’t step on any toes or cross any lines, and anyway the point wasn’t how she got it.

“The point is that I have a favor to ask,” she said, gingerly dipping her spoon into the foam suspended on the surface of her cappuccino. The café was dimly lit, in part to keep the place on-trend, and in part because the owners had a series of poor investments in the restaurant business (the café itself being the first) and were trying to save on electricity, and had installed candles that hung off the walls instead. She knew this for a fact because she often came alone and sat in a corner with her black notebook for an afternoon of eavesdropping, listening intently to her fellow espresso-sippers for anything interesting to finally write her novel. There, in the back corner beside the window: she turned just so to catch the sound of a woman whisper-shouting into her cellphone at a divorce attorney. And look: the teenage couple seated near the front, eyes darting around the room as each scanned for signs of disaster on the first date, exchanging nervous laughter about that show they both happened to think was just okay. And, finally, the rotund pair at the bar, two balding Spaniards who came regularly to discuss the politics of the day over a cafécito or two. She wrote all of it down and felt almost no remorse.

She had known the Rabbi for at least as long as she’d been finally-getting-around-to-writing-her-novel, which is to say she had known him all her life. At twenty-five, Sonia, with her brazen attitude and disdain for any ritual besides two advil and a gallon of water spiked with electrolytes on a Sunday morning, was hardly a spectacular Jew: she didn’t have the words to politely decline the pork belly dish when offered as a special at the Korean spot she loved on St. Mark’s place, had spent Passover snacking her way through Vermont while on roadtrip to take advantage of the holiday, had skipped her own Bat Mitzvah and run away to Central Park. But her mother (rest in peace) had been a very good Jew, the kind who was so good as to have earned the honor of the rabbi’s company at her weekly Shabbat dinners, and so for as long as she could remember, little Sonia (now pretend-adult Sonia) had turned him into her confidante, her faithful source of advice, the therapist she could not afford, not until now.

On this kind of January afternoon the light was going but there was still enough to study the lack of amazement at her capacity to accept a gift from the Universe.

“Tell me again how it happened.”

“That’s not the point,” she repeated.

“No, but the point is that I don’t believe you, and I can’t agree to do you any sort of favor based on a lie.” She sighed.

“It just… appeared?”

“It fell.”

“Fell where?”

“I told you I had a leak in the living room.” The rabbi nodded in agreement. The apartment on Avenue C was, indeed, crummy. She insisted on making it on her own, had left the Upper West Side apartment for the only place she could afford on the salary of a girl working as a personal assistant to a failing jewelry designer. He had seen it with his own unshakably steady eyes and had calmly instructed her to call the landlord or face very adult problems of mold or the entire building caving in on her head.

“Well, it fell through there. I sat down on the couch and the phone rang, and before I could stand to pick it up an envelope fell through the ceiling, just:” here she demonstrated with a plopping motion the sensation of having all the money in the world dropped in your lap.

The rabbi nodded as though he understood perfectly. “I still don’t believe you,” he said.

“That’s beside the point.”

“What is the point then?”

“The point is that I need a favor, rabbi.”

“You need me to spend the imaginary twenty-thousand dollars that didn’t really fall through your ceiling for you?”

“Sort of.”

“You could hire a therapist instead. You don’t pay me enough.”

“I don’t pay you at all.”

“Exactly.”

“You could buy some very strong, black market anti-psychotic medications. Then maybe you pay someone to fix your ceiling.”

She scoffed at this, swirling the spoon to cut through the foam to the espresso underneath.

“You could probably buy the building, actually,” he said, actually considering it for a moment. She looked up, rolling her eyes. “It can’t cost much more than that,” he continued.

“I could buy a house,” she said. At this the rabbi actually laughed; she sat further in her chair, taken aback. He rarely laughed and only on Fridays. This was decidedly a Tuesday and nothing about it felt remotely funny.

“A house?”

“Why not?”

“Do you know how much a house costs?”

“Well, no. But I could use it for the down payment,” she guessed at this, throwing in what felt like a buzzword for good measure. She had the familiar feeling of turning thirteen and realizing that, under the fluorescent lights of a shopping mall, one hundred dollars doesn’t go nearly as far as she once imagined it did.

“The thing is I know exactly what to spend it on,” she said evenly, waiting for his response. He made no sound but listened, waiting for hers.

“I would like you to absolve me of my sins, please.”

He stared unblinkingly at her. “We don’t do that sort of thing,” he said.

“Well I know that’s not true. Catholics do it all the time. I’ve seen it, in movies, and in that television show Fleabag except she ends up sleeping with the priest and that isn’t at all the point here. I just need to do the whole--” here she waved her hands about in the air for a moment, as though conjuring up a spell, or expressing confusion for why her pastry hadn’t been heated up before serving, “rebirth thing. I need a fresh start,” she explained.

He lifted his cup of coffee and took a long, slow sip.

“Again, we don’t do that sort of thing. It isn’t part of the Jewish faith,” he told her calmly, trying very hard not to laugh.

“Not even for twenty-thousand dollars?”

“Not even for twenty-thousand dollars.”

“It was a gift from God.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“It fell through my ceiling. It has to be a gift from God,” she continued.

“Absolutely, if it really did fall through your ceiling into your lap then I can’t dispute that God himself dropped it there.”

“Hm,” she sat back in her chair, stymied. “Would the Scientologists go for it, do you think?”

“The Catholics might. You could try St. Paul’s down the street.”

She thought for a moment, then took another sip herself.

“You know, rabbi,” she said, “I’m not sure this religion thing is exactly right for me.”

“My darling,” he said, cracking a smile for the first time since she told him of the miracle on Avenue C, “We’ve always known that.”

“I could buy a very large house.”

“Someday, maybe, but not with twenty-thousand.”

“I’d still have to make room for all my sins to live in it. I could buy a yoga studio, or some incense.”

“Money can’t buy happiness,” he replied, shaking his head.

“Whichever God told you that,” she contested, letting out her own long, loaded sigh and closing her notebook, the same one where she’d written down all the sins she had prepared to confess, had steeled herself against the inevitable tears that might come up as she told him out loud of the time she shoplifted a nail polish in the fourth grade, or told her mother she hated her, or forgotten to tip the café staff. She decided it might be better saved for another God, another day. “Didn’t know where to shop.”