The Fall of Saints Read Online Free

training there for years. We toyed with giving him a name from both sides of the family.
    Zack’s family history, like mine, was complicated. His grandmother was estranged from his grandfather. She brought up Eha, Zack’s father, single-handedly. Holding Eha, then seven, she had hidden in the forests to avoid the fate of the tens of thousands of Estonians hurled into railroad cars and deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan during the Soviet occupation. Mother and son escaped in a small boat to Germany and finally to the USA, among the early Estonian immigrants.
    Eha grew up in the Bronx and later married Edna, an Italian American schoolteacher. A year later, Zack was born to an absentminded father who spent his days mulling over the fate of his own father, whom he never met. Eha spent entire summers traveling in the US and Russia, diving into archives and libraries, examining this and that record, and asking questions. Failure only whetted his desire to know: Searching for his family became an obsession that intensified with years. In search of his lost family, he neglected the living family.
    Then Eha stopped his quest and never mentioned his father’s name again. He took to the bottle as if hiding from himself or from whatever he had encountered in his final visit to his homeland. Eha died six months after Edna succumbed to breast cancer. Despite his disgust with his father, Zack may have inherited Eha’s obsession to dig up the truth of his past. He told me that although he always went back to Estonia for business, he also wanted to know more about his grandfather. He never forgave his father enough to want to name a baby after him.
    My relationship with my father was one of equal absence. My mother, who raised me, was always vague about him, how or where he lived, so I took it that he had abandoned me. I met him only once, in his office, when I turned eighteen, right before I left for the US, and there was no time to unravel the mystery. Why should I reward him by naming my son after him? In the end, we decided to keep Kobi and turned Yusuf into Joseph, in honor of Joe.
    Kobi seemed unfazed by the new environment, as if used to sudden changes. I wondered about all the hardships he had gone through that I would never know. Though it would have been good to know his family past for medical purposes, the absence of known facts was a blessing. I could own him completely. His history would be the one we would give him.
    You should have seen Zack and me claiming that he already looked like one of us, till Rose laughed and said that he would soon acquire both our features.
    “Haven’t you seen how spouses in time acquire each other’s looks? It is the same with children,” Rose said, an observation that reminded me of David’s story about the twins.
    I gave a party to introduce Kobi to Joe, Mark, and Melinda, thanking them all for the role they had played in the adoption process. Mark protested that he had done nothing to deserve the gratitude, but Melinda stopped the game spoiler with a kiss, saying they were always with us in flesh and spirit. Really, Mark did not know how to let others appreciate his generosity, only his ferocity.
    Kobi was somewhat aloof at the start, but I had expected this. I knew I would win his trust and his love. I wanted to be a good mother to this child, as my mother had been to me, and I could see that Zack was equally committed. Kobi took over my life. I hardly noticed Zack’s absences.
    Though he still traveled, whenever he was home, Zack spent a lot of time with the boy. I enjoyed watching them play soccer or football in the yard. Sometimes they were too engrossed in Frisbee and flying kites to notice me. Melinda joined me a few times and insisted that Kobi had an uncanny resemblance to Zack. “Good,” I said. Rosie’s observation was confirmed when, on another occasion, Joe found me playing with Kobi and said that he bore an uncanny resemblance to me.
    Everything I had made me grateful to