A Castle in Brooklyn(33)

It was her first funeral. Until then, she had avoided attending the sad events, figuring that it was bad luck. She made excuses when her elderly aunt passed away at age ninety-four, did the same when she heard of her second cousin’s demise. But now bad luck had caught up with her, and she could no longer avoid it. Her papou was dead.

Esther had always wondered what it would be like, how it would feel to lose a parent. Would she cry hysterically until she had no more tears to shed? Would she lose her mind? But when she heard the news that shortly after their conversation Boris had gone to bed and couldn’t be awakened in the morning, Esther didn’t scream or cry out. Instead, she telephoned an ambulance, then Jacob, and got dressed. By day’s end, she had arranged for the funeral for the next morning, secured his plot at the cemetery, spoken with the rabbi. They decided that Jacob, and Esther’s brother Menashe, would deliver the eulogies. Meanwhile, Esther was to make sure that her mother remained calm during the funeral. She carried a bottle of Valium in her purse just in case. She also had to find a way to tell Gary. She decided to tell him the truth. His zayde had gone to sleep, and he never woke up. He was old and he was sick, and now he was not in pain anymore. They would all miss him very much. The response seemed to satisfy the boy, who nodded and went back to reading one of his comic books.

Everyone remarked how stoic Esther seemed. Just before they entered the chapel, as she looked down at Boris’s face, his body wrapped in white cloth and the tallis he had worn to her wedding, she bit her lip and moved on. She surprised herself. She wasn’t anxious or especially sad. She had too much to do, to help her mother prepare for a life without a husband, to help her child understand what even she could not.

As she listened to Jacob speak, Esther was glad they had decided to let Gary stay at home with Zalman. It would have all been too real, too overwhelming, for a child of six. He spoke of Boris’s devotion first to family, then to work. How as a poor immigrant, Boris had built a thriving business. How he had been respected by rich and poor alike. Everyone whom Boris dealt with called him a fair, generous, and patient man. A real mensch. But, most of all, he loved his family. His greatest joy was little Gary. And there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Sally, Esther, her brothers, and Jacob, the man who had given his daughter such happiness.

“Boris was like a father to me,” added Jacob, wiping a tear from his eye.

As Esther listened to the words, dry eyed, she was glad that it was Jacob, not she, who delivered the eulogy. She held tightly to her mother’s hand. She was proud of her husband, who summoned just the right words when she could not. She also realized how much he and Boris were alike, in their silences, their ambition, their quiet devotion to family. And again she wondered about the family Jacob never spoke of.

Two years later, surprised by Gary’s thoughts of death and his beloved zayde, Esther felt inadequate. How could she comfort him? How could she tell him that you never stopped missing someone who was gone? And sometimes you missed someone even when he was here.



In the morning, Esther had nearly forgotten about Gary’s questions, her worries again turning to Zalman. But she was never given the chance to talk to him. That afternoon, as Gary remained studying in his room, Zalman walked in the door and immediately approached Esther, who had been arranging the flowerpots on the windowsill in the kitchen.

“The zinnias are looking very pretty,” he said as he lifted one of the brown clay pots from the counter and handed it to her.

“Thank you, Zalman,” she said, smiling at him, but his face remained expressionless. Esther had no time to consider her next words, because Zalman’s came in the next instant.

“I’m leaving at the end of the week.”

Suddenly all the platitudes, the well-chosen phrases, flew out of her head, and she had a feeling of becoming unmoored. She had prepared herself to speak, but she was hardly prepared to hear the words from Zalman himself. What had once been a fleeting feeling, an intangible fear, now had substance, a reality. And yet there he was, still standing next to her, waiting for her response. But all she could manage was an astonished “Oh.” Zalman didn’t offer any explanation as the two stood in awkward silence until Esther regained her composure, until finally the words came, fully formed from her mouth.

“I understand, Zalman. And as much as it pains me to say this, you’ve made the right decision for yourself. You’ve wasted too many precious years in Jacob’s house, a house you helped build, with a boy you are helping to raise, and as for me, what a comfort you have been in the years when I was most in need!”

Esther paused only to rinse her soiled hands in the kitchen sink, and briefly considered switching her words to her native Polish so she could truly express her sorrow at seeing him go. But maybe she had said too much already. Still, there had been no response from Zalman, who remained standing a polite few feet away, the same blank expression on his face as when he had entered the room.

“You deserve more, my good friend,” she continued, trying again to fill the void between them, “This home, this wife, this child, is as good as yours, but they are not yours. And we, Jacob and I, can’t keep you from that. We’ve taken too much already.”

As she spoke, her words were gathering speed.

“But where will you go? I hope you will continue to work with Jacob. I can’t see that changing. Don’t feel as if you must rush, you know. You will always have a home in Jacob’s house.”