The 12th Commandment: A Novel

BOOK ONE

IN NO TIME

The afternoon he arrives in Central Ohio for Gram’s funeral, Ezekiel Leger is stuck in a van heading east on I-70 amid heavy snow. Snow falls lightly over Manhattan. Snow inundates Ohio. Zeke walks out of the Columbus airport to the rental car place, only to discover that the rental car has been rented elsewhere. He will have to take a shuttle van to Mt. Izmir, where later in the day he will have access to the same car.

You’ll be able to pick a sedan up there in no time, the man at the counter says. He is not apologetic.

Zeke walks back curbside to await his shuttle. He stands under a concrete overhang. Snow blows sideways in chunks the size and glint of airborne mica. Wafers bearing the body of someone’s Lord. Not Zeke’s Lord. Zeke does not himself yet believe in the Lord Almighty.

The shuttle arrives, and six departing passengers board it. By the time it reaches State Route 36 heading northeast into the rural hinterland, snow has piled on asphalt. Snow falls and keeps falling. Cows lie in fields upon their forelegs as if at worship. Singular barns flake red paint. Roofs sag long past childbearing, silos and wet green fields of wilted long-dead soy and corn. Zeke leans forward to talk to the woman in the seat in front of him. She does not respond, pretends as if he is not there to begin with. He texts his two old college friends who will be at the funeral, waits for the gray ellipses of acknowledgment to appear on his screen, but they do not appear.

While he is looking down, the van lurches across the double yellow lines.

The driver crosses one arm over the other to turn the van fierce right. It judders back left. The van’s wheels touch the rut next to the road. It flips. Luggage tumbles and dumps from overhead racks. Trees appear to upturn through snowy windows. Inside the van all is chaos—bodies slam windows, plastic water bottles crink as they hit ceiling and floor. For just a glimpse before his head smacks window, Zeke feels the prick of glass against his cheek and nose; the van lands, rolls across snowy grass, then soy. There is nothing to see above but field horizoned by sky. Zeke loses consciousness. He is confronted by endless vast nothing.

Zeke comes to seconds later. He is briefly alone in the gelid white of this otherwise unoccupied white van. The window is shattered. His face is sensationless against cold wet Ohio grass. A head pops in from what had previously been a driver-side rear window.

You’re gonna be OK, son, we’ve got paramedics right on their way, the man says. He is grandfather-aged, reddish goatee and an Ohio state trooper’s hat, a look that conjures the undergraduate paranoia of being out on the highway drunken and stony. Zeke says he is fine. He pulls himself out of the van. Snow drops in cakes from the sky. It blows against his face, but he feels no cold. He wonders if this is how Gram felt when he took his life, just before his car left the road—then pushes the thought away. It is an obsessive thought, reflexive, one of many he’s been unable to control since learning Gram killed himself, moving himself into Gram’s head, then quickly out. Under a nearby tree the woman from in front of him sits with a cowl draped across her shoulders. It is taking on a light white rime from the falling snow.

Why don’t you just have a seat over here, the cop says.

The cop says his name is Paul, a last name. Zeke says he’s fine, but he puts his hand to his face and feels blood tacky on his cheek. Fire pipes from the skin around his right eye when he touches it. Now he doesn’t feel cold, but hot, and he begins to feel more but again pushes it down. Down. He decides Paul is right. He accepts a glass of water. Soon there is a wash of red lights from an arriving ambulance, then another. It is as if the day has turned from the hard white of cold to the hard red hot of night. His ambulance heads north the twenty miles to the Mt. Vernon Hospital, just ten miles from his Airbnb, where he’s set to stay through to the weekend. And bid Gram farewell.

MOURNING IN OHIO

Zeke sat through a silent cab ride amid the dark black nothing of Central Ohio night. The Airbnb he’d found was on the banks of the river, in a small one-room cabin at the edge of a campground. Gram’s family suggested the area to out-of-towners so there might be some sense of community. But Zeke’s two closest friends from his college days still lived near Columbus, so he alone found this rental. When he arrived, it was well past midnight, and they’d long since texted to say they were going to sleep. And his eye ached. His body felt as if it had been touched by the whirlwind. When he woke in the morning, he hauled himself over to the mirror in the cabin’s small bathroom and peeled the tape and gauze from his eye. The eye had healed far more than it should have. Scabbing over stitches was minimal; healthy skin had begun to heal. He examined his face so close to the mirror the muscles at the back of his eyes hurt.

Zeke put the bandage back over his eye. The hour was so late that Declan and Johanna had both already texted to say they had headed to the cemetery. The funeral was to be held just outside the campus where they’d all gone to school. Zeke could meet them there and take the time he needed. I promised the family I’d be there to help finish the arrangements, Declan wrote; as he was still living there in Central Ohio, and now a professor at William James College, many of the funeral preparations had fallen to him.

It was a twenty-seven-minute wait for an Uber. Zeke called for a cab, as well, given how uncertain it would be to actually get a ride here in the hinterland. Thin sun cut at an angle into the glass doors at the back of the cabin. Zeke strolled out back where the tinkling sound of water under ice trickled up from the river. He was standing on a slope maybe two hundred feet above its bank, another three or four hundred feet across to the other. Snow blanketed a stand of kayaks available to renters in summer. Off to the right of the cabin, seven RVs sat with the smoke of spent fires drifting toward the gray sky. Footprints circled each white vehicle, but there was no further sign of anyone there.

When the cab finally rolled up, it was a white Honda Civic with checkers laminated on its flanks and an Uber sticker in the rear window.

You call an Uber? the driver said. He was maybe nineteen, pamphlet-thin in a black hoodie and a brown rime of beard. Snow drifted in chunks like Downy flakes in the air and hung as if suspended in their descent.

I did, but then I called a cab.

An older man in a green trucker hat now hung his head out of the window of a nearby RV. The Uber driver said, Oh, hey, Clive, and the old man waved and said, What’s up, Meta? and he waved back and then said to Zeke, Oh, yeah, I’m cab and Uber and Lyft and whatever else, bro. Kinda the only game in town.

Meta drove out along the rural roads and on through downtown Mt. Izmir, a shabby atavistic vestige of a business district. At the center of town, off State Route 229, was a roundabout. At its center stood a statue of the author of one of the most famous Confederate songs of the Civil War. A smattering of wilted flowers drooped under the weight of the snow that continued to fall. On one corner of the roundabout was the Ohio Diner, and all around it awnings and buildings in a sickly mustard-yellow brick. The college campus was far out in the cornfields of the rural hills to their east, but the only way out there was through town.

What happened to that eye there, bro? Meta said. He glanced into the rearview mirror and then back down to the road as he navigated the roundabout. Zeke said he’d been in a car accident on his way from the airport.

Shit looks painful, Meta said. What you say your name was? Zee? Fuck kind of name is that?

Zeke, Zeke said. Though in sports and stuff people have called me Zee, which is fine with me. But Zeke. Like Ezekiel.

Meta looked back at the road.

What’re you doing here in glorious Central Ohio anyway? You’re with the college?

I’m an alum, yeah. But no. I’m here for a funeral.

Oh, man, another death up at the crazy Jewish cult? Meta said.

No, no. An old friend from college committed suicide. Died by suicide—died. He wanted to be buried out here. Wanted a ceremony in the cemetery near campus. So we all came.

Sorry, man, Meta said.

They were silent as they passed through the north end of Mt. Izmir, past decrepit Victorians with their faded pastel facades.

Where’d you head in from?

From New York. I’m a reporter. A magazine editor. Well, a writer and an editor.

"Well, dude, a writer or an editor—you should definitely look into the murder up at that Jewish cult, then, Meta said. They say there’s a guy there who thinks he’s a prophet, that he killed his son. Nothing ever seems right there. I been living here more than a decade and nothing ever seemed right out there. Weird folk. They’re like Jews and Muslims at the same time. Or something. Sketchy as hell. And a lot more people out there now than there were before."

Twin sadnesses hit Zeke: There was the sadness when someone learned he worked at a national magazine and tried to give him a story idea—which never worked out, and always felt depressing. And there was the sadness of his instinct to listen, which threatened to be the worst kind of busman’s holiday, thinking about work while he was here to mourn Gram’s passing. Suicide. He thought the word, and something wrapped tight in his chest, like the wringing of a sopping towel deep inside.

Zeke didn’t respond for a second and then decided he’d never see this guy again. I find my own stories. I know how to find my own stories. I’m here to bury a friend, not to work.

All right, man, Meta said. I didn’t mean to—

Neither of them spoke again until they reached the cemetery.

From a far distance as they crested the hill, Zeke could see mourners already gathered. At the edge of the college campus, beyond soccer fields and a football field and an oblong white postmodern building shaped like an inefficient grounded spacecraft, in a long low reedy field covered in snow, was the graveyard where Gram had bought a plot as a gag back when they were sophomores. He came from money—Central Ohio Jewish money, but money here was money—and when they learned there was going to be a Halloween party at the edge of the field, Gram had snuck ahead and bought a plot there for himself. He’d had the headstone made up. No dates, it just read, GRAM ANDREW SILVER / 1981–TK / HE DIED AS HE LIVED: IN THE MIDWEST. His gallows humor always made them laugh. They’d shotgun beers or smoke a bowl and head down to lie atop Gram’s empty grave and tell ghost stories of their living friend. And laugh. He did make them laugh.

Until today.

Zeke hadn’t anticipated such a large group for the funeral; he hadn’t seen Gram in over a year, since they played one last gig in Brooklyn, a kind of novelty performance for a Guns N’ Roses cover band Gram was in. Gram was as serious about music as he was funny about life, and years ago Zeke had given up taking music seriously in favor of writing. Now Gram was a nexus of hurt. The fact of grief was overtaken in a flash by the realization that Zeke no longer knew Gram’s life here in Ohio. He’d occasionally texted with Declan and gotten the sense something was wrong, that Gram had taken on water and was sinking, but texts did not reveal details. Now. Now here he was. Everyone gathered around the cemetery was coupled off, bundled up; from this distance, every thirty-something in a charcoal-gray wool overcoat looked middle-aged. Fuck. They had graduated barely ten years ago, and somehow Gram had been welcomed into a community of early dotage. Before his end.

How late am I, Zeke said. Declan and Johanna were standing on the edge of the worshippers.

Characteristically late, Johanna said. The thinnest collection of creases had begun to develop around the edges of her eyes. Otherwise she looked exactly as she did when they’d first kissed freshman year, freckled and fair with a toasted touch of sun across her nose and cheeks—exactly as she had the day she’d ended things, their graduation, when he said he needed freedom to pursue his life as a journalist in New York, and Johanna said she wasn’t coming.

But what’s going on here, friend, Declan said. He pushed a gloved finger against the bandage. Zeke made no move away from it. Bad accident?

Bad accident. He could barely get a bead on Declan, who was professorially dressed in a high-collared Zara overcoat and a pair of wingtips dusted with snow. His face was hidden behind all the accoutrements. I mean I’d just landed and then—

And then the rabbi began to intone the Kaddish. All went silent among the mourners. The silver swish of wind across the Ohio plain, the low rush of wind in their eyes carrying spiking droplets of ice, the overwhelming suggestion of the whirlwind blowing over them all. Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba—he remembered only so much of the prayer from childhood. With the frigid wind and the memory the ancient language evoked, Zeke’s eyes welled with thin water. He was crying. He was in an Ohio field, saying goodbye to Gram, and his shoulders began to pitch forward, eyes so filled with tears he could not tell if the other mourners were slowly moving forward and then back with the intonation of the rabbi in prayer, with the heavy wind, or if they were standing still and he was rocking back and forth himself.

Declan drove Zeke to the Ohio Diner on the circle at the center of Mt. Izmir; Johanna drove separately. The low snow-covered fields passed their windows, utterly unchanged since the two were undergrads.

Do you even see all of this anymore?

How do you mean, Declan said. He tapped his brakes and his Subaru Outback skidded, fishtailed, regained purchase on the road.

Like, now that you’ve been living here more than a decade, do you see the paint flaking, the old people getting older? How bleak this place is in winter. Or do you just kind of start going through your life, waiting for the next crop of freshmen.

I guess I’d have to think about it to give you a worthy answer, Declan said. He put on his blinker, turned right. I guess more than anything I think about my classes. About Kant. About Germany, and when I’ll go back to Berlin next, the friends and colleagues I’ll see there. And about my kid. I mean, do you still notice every New York City landmark when you pass it?

Zeke hadn’t realized the judgmental tone to his question, the way he’d been calling Declan out for living in the town where they went to college: the ease of his life as an academic. His status as literal, actual Midwesterner after their four years of pantomiming it as undergrads.

I don’t. Zeke looked out the window. The sound of the Ohio wind carrying over the hood of the car, then shifting and pushing them left, then right, distracted them both. They were almost at the center of town.

I did notice Johanna.

I noticed you noticing, Declan said. I mean there has to be something left there, right? She’s still on her own.

She lives in Columbus, Ohio, Zeke said.

And you live in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, Declan said.

A tight frozen feeling sat in the middle of Zeke’s chest, pushing his thoughts down again and again. The way a top layer of snow might crunch underfoot until it hits solid ice below.

They parked and met Johanna in the diner. She’d already gotten them a booth.

They still have the coffee cake with the caramel sauce? Zeke said.

The very same, Johanna said. She did not look up from the menu. She surely knew every item on it. You gonna survive your injuries there? Then her eyes met his like a physical blow, the grief in his chest repelling her gaze. Nothing compounds depression like seeing it reflected in the eyes of someone you care about. It was this now: the experience of sitting at this diner booth layered atop memories of so many mornings they had come here with debilitating hangovers, with groups of friends or just the two of them—smoked and drank coffee until morning hardened into freezing early winter Ohio nights.

Johanna reached across the table to touch the bandage. He didn’t recoil.

It’s hard to explain, but it honestly doesn’t hurt that much, Zeke said. I know. I know. It was just yesterday I was in the accident. But when I looked in the mirror it was … well, it was kind of near healed. Scabby, but. What hurts most now is the six stitches they put in there.

‘Central Ohio town has mysterious healing properties in air,’ Declan said. He, too, hadn’t looked up from the menu. Sounds like a national magazine story to be sure.

It was as if the physical manifestation of Gram’s suicide was sitting at the table among them; the longer they failed to look at it directly, the longer they could go without talking about it. Of course I hear there’s more intrigue than that around here, Declan continued. The DA herself has been at work on it. You going to tell us about it?

All three of them met the others’ eyes.

I can tell you, but first. What do you know.

About the case you’re working on? Zeke said.

No, she said. No. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it.

About Gram, Declan said.

Zeke had been farthest from it, most disconnected from Gram. He’d only gotten some texts from Declan, letting him know that after Gram returned from the program where he was studying in Boston, at Berklee, he’d holed up. Then been admitted to Ohio State. And then one night drove off an overpass onto I-70.

Both Johanna and Declan looked down at their hands.

I honestly just find myself feeling fucking pissed at him, Declan said. I know that’s not how you’re supposed to take these things on. I know it’s not a choice, like it’s just something you read about in a book. But it still feels like a choice. A choice to leave us—

That’s really not fair, Zeke said. Declan had a look on his face like he’d jumped into an icy river.

Whoa ho ho, Johanna said. What’s not fair is not giving your old friend space to grieve in his own way. Decky, if you feel pissed at Gram, you should feel pissed at Gram. It’s OK to say that. It’s always OK to say that.

The grief itself once again sat in the space between them. Zeke was about to speak when the waitress came to take their order.

Coffee, Johanna said. ASAP coffee. They ordered and the waitress left them to their silence.

Remember him sitting on that grave with his cowboy hat, playing Leonard Cohen songs? The specter of memory softened Declan.

There wasn’t anything funny about it, Declan said. He paused. But it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. He was just always so full of life. I remember that first Halloween when he ate like six hits of acid, but he was still checking in with everyone to make sure they were having a good trip. Keeping it together. He kept saying, ‘Tell me your story, brother, live your story.’ Sounds cheesy to think about it now, but it was lifesaving at the time. Mind-saving.

He’s always so—so there for everyone, Johanna said.

Was, Zeke said. He looked across the table and saw tears in Johanna’s eyes. She wiped them away. Declan was staring daggers at him. Sorry. I guess I’m swinging between grief and blame, too.

It’s OK, Declan said. He was a philosopher, and he took a philosophical tone. Stepped back. Stepped off.

They were quiet, each alone with memory. Coffee. Illness in the head. Coffee. Declan lit a cigarette.

So, Johanna said. What’ve you been working on, successful-magazine-editor friend. Zeke put his forearms down on the sticky table, his head atop them, a sagging balloon. He told them he didn’t know. He was on staff, an associate editor.

Is that good? Declan said.

It’s better than assistant. But. But it’s not what I want, you know? I want to write full-time. I have always wanted to write full-time. The advice you always get: tell a story only you can tell. I’m thirty-five and I’m not there yet, you know? And I’ve given up a lot.

Johanna and Declan looked at each other.

You really should tell him more about the case, Jo, Declan said.

I did hear something from my Uber driver on the way over, Zeke said. About some religious sect here—

The Dönme, Declan said. "The murder there has kind of overtaken everyone’s lives, and the headlines, for a year. More than that. And DA Johanna Franklin here was the lead prosecutor for the state. She could open up some files for you, I’d guess, being an old—well, not old, but being—"

His estranged college sweetheart? Johanna said. The waitress arrived with their coffee and food, and Johanna said, Oh, fucking thank God, and plunged one, then two, then five creamers into the cup. That will not get you anywhere, she said.

Well, I didn’t say I’d— Zeke said. He kicked out a leg to sit up a little straighter, and it rubbed across Johanna’s. He was lucky not to have kicked her, but feeling the bulge of her calf, his leg sliding past hers, brought on another surge of memory. She looked up.

But it would be a good story, Johanna said. She looked down into her mug. It would. It would make a good magazine story. And it is a directive from the top that we cooperate with journalists. So I’d be happy to set you up with the comms department at the office in Columbus.

Jo, Declan said. C’mon. Your field office is literally across the street.

Right, Johanna said. A flush came to the tips of her cheeks that made her look fifteen years younger. College Jo. Sleep-three-hours-after-a-night-of-drinking-and-still-ace-an-exam Jo. Zeke had to look down into the yolky eggs on his plate. "Right. OK. If you want, after brunch, I can walk you over there and go through the files. If it seems like something you might be interested in. We can. We can talk about it. But now. Now let’s remember Gram to each other, OK? No judgments, no qualms, just the love we have for him from the past. I want to remember Gram to you