A Castle in Brooklyn(40)

It wasn’t the last he heard from her. A week after he had left their home for the last time, just as the first hints of light teased beyond the horizon, and still at his cousin’s apartment, Zalman heard a strident ring slicing through the early-morning quiet. He jumped out of bed and ran for the phone in the living room.

Her voice, so dear and unexpected, sent shivers through his skin.

“Zalman? It’s you, right? Sorry to call so early.” And then, just in case, “It’s Esther.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Look, Zalman, I’m sorry to bother you again. But I think we need to talk.” He felt his throat clenching up on him and, fearing he might drop it, held on tightly to the receiver.

Hearing no response on the other end, she continued.

“Zalman? Did you hear me? I have something to tell you, but I can’t say what I need to say over the telephone. It is—how do they put it?” For a moment she stumbled, trying to find the English word she needed. “Discreet?” She accentuated the e—“I have to be discreet. I will not take up too much of your time, I promise. Only we must be discreet, if not for us, then for Jacob. Zalman, are you still on the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“Well. So, there is a place Florrie has told me about. It’s near the school where she graduated college. Brooklyn College. Jacob would not be there. Wolfie’s—that’s it. Just like the animal. So I think maybe we meet there lunchtime. Twelve o’clock. Twelve o’clock to talk.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Zalman, please.” A high-pitched urgency.

“Twelve o’clock tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

The phone clicked off.



Wolfie’s on Bedford Avenue was only steps away from the towering arch leading into the imposing square of buildings and lush greenery of the Brooklyn College campus. Summer classes were in session now, and a handful of students, the young males in their short-sleeve button-down shirts and T-shirts, and the females in flowered sundresses, all with denim knapsacks on their backs, sauntered into the air-conditioned café as escape from the sidewalks, still thick with heat.

Entering the establishment, he noticed her immediately. She was seated in the back, facing him. Looking at her now, he felt as if the air had seeped from the room. Except for the hot-pink woven cape and hair prematurely streaked with gray (had he noticed before?), she could have been mistaken for any one of the handful of students chatting and smoking within the room. She was more beautiful than he remembered.

He approached the table with a barely perceptible nod and sat down. A thirtysomething waitress with stark buck teeth, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy bun, came over immediately. Introducing herself as Jean, she scribbled their order with the nub of a pencil—a Lipton tea with lemon for Esther, and despite the tantalizing smell of juicy burgers and stacks of french fries being served at the surrounding tables, a plain black coffee for Zalman. Neither one had come to eat. Finally, her voice, familiar, light as ripples over a lake, broke the silence.

“How have you been, Zalman?”

He could feel her eyes looking at him intensely, though he was afraid to meet them with his own.

“Fine,” he said, barely above a whisper as he unraveled the table napkin, freeing the utensils.

“You look tired.”

He shrugged. He didn’t want to be here. Still, he had a question.

“How is Jacob?”

“He’s okay. What I mean to say is, he’s holding up. We’re still together if that’s what you mean. He didn’t leave me.”

“No . . . I didn’t think he would. And I didn’t want him to.”

“I know you didn’t. You never meant for those few minutes to happen.” Her voice was low, discreet.

“He was not himself, Zalman. He hasn’t been himself since—you know. We were all changed. He couldn’t be reached, he couldn’t be helped, not in the way you helped me to—as the saying goes—take it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other.” Her voice gained a newfound strength as she continued.

“I thought at first it was best to leave him alone, that he would come to understand that he was not responsible for what happened to Gary”—a catch in her throat—“he only wanted to throw the ball with his son.”

The waitress came over with two mugs of the steaming liquid, set them down along with milk, still bubbling, filled to the brim in a metal tin.

“Anything else I can get ya?”

Both declined, and wiping her hands quickly on the black apron at her waist, Jean went back to the kitchen, leaving them to their beverages, which remained untouched.

Esther began again, quieter this time than even before. His chin still tilted close to his chest, Zalman couldn’t help but glance up at her eyes, where droplets of water glistened, islands in a blue sea.

“After he came home that day, after all that happened, he went upstairs to our room. He didn’t come down for the rest of the night, and if truth be known, I no longer had the energy for explanation, apologies—”

“But why would you?”

She placed her hand then on Zalman’s, but it felt like a fire had lit in his tendons, and he quickly pulled the hand away.

“I don’t know anything anymore, Zalman. I only know that you were—that you are—my very good friend. Maybe my actions, I don’t know, sent the wrong message.”