Standing on the precipice, naked, looking out into space. Stars, stardust, nebulae, rings. Should I stay or should I go? I closed my eyes, willing my heart to slow down. It obeyed. I inhaled against resistance in just the right way and felt, in my core, my gut, my chest, a familiar feeling I’d never felt before but knew it for what it was. The visceral feeling you get when you’re just getting off on LSD. The cone opened up for me and the cards were fanned out. All the possibilities of the universe were open to me and I laughed joyfully.

My laughter woke me up. It was 3:05am and the second hand was at 20 seconds. I tried what I’d done in the dream and the fannings opened up for me. Get up or stay in bed. Those were my options for actions. All the possibilities seemed to end in me going back to sleep. I snapped back to the present. The second hand was at 20 seconds. I sat up. “What the fuck?!” I whispered. I called up the fannings again and again and one final time. I thought, I wonder if this means they’re not gonna come unbidden any more. “Wow . . . fucking wow . . .”  I lay back down, closed my eyes, slowly drifting back to sleep, looking forward to telling Rivka about this in the morning.

I woke up again at 7am. I had an uneasy feeling. I made my way out of the house silently and ran to Rivka’s thinking, What’s your rush, Mickey? It’s not like she’s not going to be there. I got there and knew something was wrong.

All three of their cars were parked on the curb. The front door was open and all the lights were off. I ran in, directly up the stairs to her room. It was empty. It hadn’t been ransacked. It just wasn’t in the usual orderly state in which I almost always found it. Drawers were half open, the closet door was open with some gaps on the closet rod and the bed was unmade. I ran the few feet down the hall to her parents’ room. Same state. Empty.

  I called out. “Rivka! Mama Rakhel! Papa Itzak! Where are you?!”

No answer. I ran back downstairs, starting to fear the worst, that I might find them dead on the floor, pools of blood, but I found no one there either. I sat down on the floor in the middle of the living room and tried to calm myself. It wasn’t working. I picked up the phone to call my home. Dead phone. I ran home and up to my parents’ room and knocked on the door harder than I needed but I was freaking out.

My papa opened the door with his robe on. “What? What’s going on?”

“They’re gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

“The Koens, all of them, they’re gone!”

“Maybe they just went away.”

I told him about the state of the house. “Plus, all their cars are there.”

“Let’s call the police,” Papa said.

On the phone, the police were not helpful. “Maybe they took a cab to the airport, or the train station,” I heard, listening with my papa.

Papa was having none of that. “And left their house open? Look, officer, there’s something bad happening here and you need to check it out. Is Captain Murphy there?”

The police were crawling all over the Koen house the rest of that day. Blockades were set up and the whole property was roped off. I had called Itzak’s and Rakhel’s Department heads at Reed already and no one seemed to know anything. Likewise with Uncle Yakov in New York. Ava, Maria, Steve and I sat on the sidewalk across the street, watching the activity as cops went in and out seemingly at random, trampling over any forensic evidence that might have existed.

I was beyond freaking out. “It seems pretty evident to me they were kidnapped . . . why isn’t the FBI here?”

Maria sat next to me on the curb, her arm around my shoulder. She said tenderly, “Miguelito, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.”

Steve was on the other side and put his arm around my waist. “They’ll turn up, Mickey. I know they will.”

“Who would kidnap them? It’s not like they have any money. Plus, even if they did, everyone in the family’s been taken. Who would pay the ransom? I mean, Yakov’s got some money but he’s not rich.,” I said to no one in particular.

Over the next three days it finally sunk in to the cops that Rivka and her family had been taken. The FBI was finally called in. What did they do? Nothing. The Hillsdale cops had pretty much botched the investigation in terms of any evidence left behind by the kidnappers. So the feds interviewed everyone who knew the family, including the G5, my family, their friends in the Portland Russian Friendship Organization, their colleagues at Reed. After two weeks they still had nothing.

I was growing desperate. School was about to start. I couldn’t imagine going to school not knowing what had happened to Rivka. Then, a few days into September, two FBI agents appeared at our door. They wanted to talk to my parents. Mama and Papa insisted on having me present in the dining room. We were all standing

A tall, horse-faced agent in a stupid hat said, “We have received a communication from the State Department.”

His partner, a short, rat-faced agent in a stupid hat said, “It appears the Koens have been engaging in UnAmerican activities and have been deported to the Soviet Union.”

Horse-face said, “This investigation has shifted from a missing persons investigation to an investigation of any people who may have been involved in these activities with the Koen family.”

My papa walked up to Horse-face and got right in his horse-face. “That is bullshit. Those folks are good people. They weren’t doing anything wrong. You got any idea what they had to go through to get here?”

Horse-face said, “We’re pretty sure they concocted that story.”

I spoke up. “I know the Koens as well as anyone. I have been with them a lot in the last six years. They have embraced this country. I think I would have noticed if anything secret, anything . . . unAmerican had been going on.”

Rat-face said, “How old are you, son?”

“I’m fourteen and I’m not your son, thank God!”

He paused, ignored my insult and continued, “We understand you and the daughter were involved in a romantic relationship. That may have clouded your judgment. Our information, she was just as involved as her parents.”

“What’s the “I” stand for in FBI? Idiots? Like Fucking Bunch of Idiots?” I looked over at my parents and quietly said, “Sorry.” There are some words not to be said around Mama. “Where are you getting all this information? You can’t possibly have gotten this information talking to her friends, people who know her, or are you just mindlessly regurgitating what someone in the State Department has said?”

***

Sean Patrick had interned with Senator Morse and he asked the Senator to check on the Koens. That was a dead-end. Ava, Maria, Steve and I lied our way in to the US Attorney’s office and, for our efforts, were thrown out onto the sidewalk. I felt I had exhausted all my options except maybe storming the State Department with a gun. I summoned the fannings. My death or imprisonment were the only outcomes I saw.

“How can I go back to school?”

On the front porch Sean Patrick had his arm around my shoulder. “It’s gonna be hard. I know. It won’t do you any good to stay at home. Maybe going to school will take your mind off, you know . . .”

“Rivka?”

“Look, Mom and Dad won’t let you just stay at home . . . not go to school.”

“Yeah, they’ve kind of moved on, haven’t they?”

“I don’t know that they’ve moved on. I think they’re thinking, there’s just nothing they can do about it.”

“I thought about storming the State Department with a shotgun.” Sean Patrick looked at me, alarmed. “I decided not to do that.” He seemed relieved.

“How can they just give up on their friends, on Rivka? How can they just expect me to carry on? Rivka, her parents, probably languishing in some cold, damp prison cell in Moscow or someplace in Siberia. Sean P . . . it’s killing me. It’s absolutely killing me.”

“Hey, squirt, if it was up to me you could take the year off but it’s not . . . up to me.”

“Brother . . . nothing makes any sense to me. Nothing matters . . . it’s all just pointless bullshit.”

“Mickey, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you . . . I’m not saying forget about Rivka. It’s just, you have to find a way of, you know, of continuing. Living your life. Not giving up.”

I buried my face in my arms. I hadn’t even started crying since the abduction. I was still in shock. “Ok, Sean Patrick, you’ve said what you wanted to say . . . now please, just leave me alone.” I walked to Rivka’s house, used my key to let me in, got her keys from the key rack and drove her Chevy to my house and parked it in the garage, carefully covering it. I thought, The government’s probably going to confiscate everything, auction it off, but not her car, not her beautiful blue Chevy.

                                                                                                    ***

Al was home, just recently honorably discharged from the Army. He was almost always drunk. I knocked on his door. There was a vague response. I went in. He was half on and half off his bed, face down. Liquor bottles everywhere. Smelled like a distillery. I had come to ask him to get me some whiskey as my parents had started locking the booze cabinet. I just took a fifth of whiskey off his desk, turned around and left.

Thus began my career as a drunk. Fourteen-year-old drunk. I decided to return to school. Make everybody happy.

Ava came up to me on the lawn in front of the High School. “Oh, Mickey, how are you?” I could see she was concerned. I was drunk and didn’t care.

“I’m alright.”

“God, are you drunk?”

“Define drunk.”

“Oh, Mickey . . . I miss her too.”

“Yeah, well, haven’t you heard . . . whole family . . . spies.”

“Mickey, you know we don’t believe that.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m late.” I wandered off in the direction of my third period class, Chemistry.

Kid who used to hang out with Garth saw me and smirked. “Girlfriend was a Russian spy, huh? I always knew there was something queer”

Far as he got. Next moment he was on the ground, covering his head with his arms as I kicked him repeatedly. And then I was in the back of a cop car, hands cuffed behind my back, singing loudly, “My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble . . .” I had told Rivka we should do that song for a laugh the last night we were together in the Nurse’s office at the High School, but she sounded awesome when she sang it. I continued, “Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back!” 

I was suspended. Should have been expelled but our lawyer, Mr. Rusch, argued to the school district there were mitigating circumstances and I had just suffered major trauma and blah blah blah . . . I was out of school for a month.

I knew this guy who sold weed. I spent the whole month drunk and stoned, mostly outside, walking the streets of Hillsdale, returning home late at night sometimes after my parents had gone to bed. Sally Anne was back at Cal. Sean Patrick was in a Master’s program at Oregon. Al was in Al-land doing Al-things. It was pretty much my parents and me in the house and then only for the few hours I slept before getting up and starting all over again. Steve tried to reach me. I didn’t return his calls. Same with Ava and Maria. I told Paul and John about Rivka and that I wouldn’t be participating in Mother Lode any more. I don’t remember what their response was. Too wasted. Too numb.

My first day back at school after Halloween some kid joked about Rivka. He obviously hadn’t gotten the memo. I broke his arm. Not by twisting it. I stomped on it. Another trip in a cop car. This time I was expelled and almost got sent to the Juvenile Detention Center. Good old Dwayne Rusch got me probation on condition I was in psych counseling and maintained sobriety.

So I was at home, sober, straight, sitting in my room all day with the curtains drawn, dark as I could make it. The first Sunday I had a visitor. My Rabbi, Levi Roi dropped in to see me. He wasn’t supposed to be my Rabbi. He’d escaped Hungary with his family just before the Nazis invaded. Jews don’t allow you to convert until you’re eighteen so my study with him had been conducted secretly. I had attended Saturday morning services often and participated in Torah study before the services. He had assumed I was Jewish since I chanted along with everyone in the synagogue and we had become friends. 

My G5 friends who I’d confided in about my Jewish studies, had spoken to my parents who contacted Rabbi Roi. If I hadn’t been so numb and disinterested I think I would have been astonished by Sharon and Owen reaching out to a Jew. Instead I thought, Oh, Rabbi Roi, you think you can make it all better with a teaching?

“So, they took your friends . . . your friend.” He paused.

“Yeah, Rabbi. They took my Rivka.” More silence.

“That must be terrible.”

“Pretty much the worst . . . I haven’t spoken to God since.”

“Yeah, he probably understands.”

I looked at him, my face blank. Looked at this man who had taught me so many wonderful things that even Papa Itzak and Mama Rakhel were surprised at. And I gave him nothing. Then, finally, “I’ve done some bad things the last few months. Been drunk, on drugs. Beat up two guys who made cracks about Rivka. Mean things . . . Rabbi, I’m not sorry.”

“Hmm . . . at least you recognize that the things you did were bad.”

“I’ve decided not to drink any more . . . I drank to numb the pain, but I’m finding I want to feel it. Don’t know why, Rabbi. I’ve just decided it’s something I want to feel.”

He sat silently in thought, gently nodding his head. “I’ll bet you’re angry . . . probably just as angry with God as with anyone else.”

I realized he was right. I was so fucking angry. Angry at the cops, the FBI, my parents for not understanding I’d just had my soul ripped apart, my friends for not having their lovers ripped away from them, the faceless government kidnappers I didn’t even have a name for, but most of all with God. It’s not that I’d ever been this “God moves in mysterious ways” believer. I’d always felt God was there to make evil things that happen to us bearable. But now I had a special repository for my anger, a special box for the Holocaust, Nazis and Rivka’s kidnapping. God. Those poor guys I beat up, I started to feel sorry for. Who I really wanted to kick the living shit out of . . . was God.

I started walking around the town again, hoping I could maybe go places Rivka and I’d never been. Hillsdale was not that big. We’d covered pretty much every bit of it on our bikes or our runs or in her Chevy. I found myself in front of her house. The barricades and ropes were gone. Some windows were broken but it was otherwise pretty much as it had been the last time I’d seen it that morning they’d disappeared. Only thing different was a Public Auction notice nailed close to the mezuzah that was still in place. I used my key and went in the front door. Nothing had changed in the last four months. I went like a sleepwalker up to her room and sat on her bed. I lay down holding her pillow to my face. I could still smell her and that’s when the weeping began.

Hours later I was temporarily cried out and I got up and started touching her things, picking up books, pictures of us alone and with the G5 and with Mother Lode. I put a few in my pocket. There were some pictures of us missing from her dresser. I imagined her, sitting on a cold floor in a cell, looking at a picture of us. I picked up this Russian language Brothers Karamazov I’d given her one Chanukah to replace the one she’d had to leave behind in Moscow years earlier. I was flipping through the pages and came upon a note in her handwriting on a few empty pages of the book.

“My dearest Misha. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know who these people are. They’re not speaking to us. We have twenty-five minutes to gather up whatever we are taking. I don’t know where we’re going. I tried to call you but our phone is dead. I’m writing this fast as the guard was called downstairs. Wherever we end up please believe I will always love you. Have to . . .” 

It wasn’t signed. I guessed the guard had come back. She’d probably grabbed the first thing she saw and used it to communicate with me instead of taking it with her. I crumpled to the floor. I had her last words to me in my hands when I woke up. At least I had something.

                                                                                                     ***

“Mickey boy, there’s a private school that’s willing to accept you on probation. It’s in Portland. You’ll have to sign a pledge not to be violent. Can you do that?” My papa’s face was hard. Mama looked a little more compassionate. We were sitting around the table in the dining room.

“I’m not going to school anywhere.”

“Then you’re gonna have to get a job.”

“Alright.” I nodded.

“That’s it. Just ‘alright’?”

“Sorry, Papa. Alright, I’ll get a fucking job . . . is that better?” I said venomously.

He struggled to keep from losing his temper, shook his head and left the room. I couldn’t even feel bad for making him feel bad. I had always been close with my papa. Not so much these last several months. 

“He’s havin’ a hard time understandin’ what you’re going through, Hon . . . maybe just give him some time.”

“I’m sorry about the f-word, but do you understand what I’m going through, Mama? Do you understand that everywhere I go I’m reminded of her? Everytime one of my friends tries to talk to me it just reminds me of her. I can’t get her out of my head and I don’t want to. Mama, we were in love, deep deep in love. I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her. I feel like half of me is gone and I’m never going to see her again. Never going to hold her in my arms. Can you understand what that feels like?”

“I’m tryin’ to. It’s hard for me too. Rachel and I were good friends. I don’t believe that crap about them bein’ spies. But you have to try and live.”

“It’s pretty hard. Really pretty hard.”

“I’ll talk to your Dad. He just wants you to be strong. He just wants what’s best for you.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ll try to be strong, Mama. I really will. But I can’t go back to school. It’d be a total waste of time for everyone concerned and I really can’t guarantee I won’t fly off the handle again.”

She hugged me and pulled my head down so she could kiss my forehead. “It’ll get better, Hon.” 

It’ll get better . . .  that’s all she had for me. But I knew it wouldn’t . . . get better. That’s when I knew I had to leave.