A Castle in Brooklyn(66)

When Miriam decided one afternoon in late spring that she wanted to go on a family picnic in the wonderful Central Park she had heard so much about, Zalman finally made sense of it, even if he could not yet give voice to the feeling. It had now been nearly two years since Jacob’s death.

“Daddy! Come sit by me on the blanket,” Debbie called out as she placed salami-and-tomato sandwiches on a navy-blue blanket that she and Miriam had spread on the grass.

Zalman put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shook his head.

“On the dirt you want me to sit?”

Miriam laughed as she glanced at her husband’s face, stern and contemplative, despite the sunny spring day. She eased herself onto the blanket.

“I think your father can just as well sit on the bench over here and eat his sandwich.”

His daughter, giving up the fight, shrugged and held out one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches to him, then stretched her legs in front of her.

Zalman unwrapped the sandwich, took a bottled water from the ice case, and chewed his food thoughtfully as his wife and daughter chatted. He paid no attention to their conversation but instead let the sounds of birds chirping, the scents of roses beginning to bloom amid the shrubs, the cooling breezes, all the season wash over him as he closed his eyes. He thought about the monkeys and their antics that he would soon see at the park’s zoo. It had been a long time since he had visited a zoo—on one of the excursions taken with Jacob, Esther, and, of course, young Gary. When he opened them, his eyes fell upon another family just a short distance away, under a circle of trees. A mother tending to a toddler in a stroller as the father and son were having a game of catch.

And then, as if a light had been suddenly switched on in his brain, he knew what it had all been about. He knew he missed her. He missed Esther.

Still, for days and months after the realization, Zalman was plagued by anxiety, an anxiety that affected his stomach so badly that, seeing the flushed look on his face, hearing his refusal more than once when his favorite dishes, even her special cholent—a mixture of beef, potatoes, and beans that had cooked in a large pot for eight hours—Miriam insisted that he see a doctor. No sign of ulcers, he was assured, but nevertheless Dr. Steinberg had advised, somewhat firmly, that Zalman give up smoking. Nothing good, he admonished, could come from the habit. And that same afternoon, after a lifetime of inhaling nicotine, Zalman had his last cigarette. In fact, both his wife and daughter were surprised that he never fell back into the habit, never sneaked one as he went on his daily walk each evening, never even craved it. Eventually, his smoker’s cough, which had been so much a part of him, dissipated altogether, and Miriam stopped giving his tobacco-plagued shirts a second rinse in the wash. But although he received a clean bill of health, the lack of appetite, his inattentiveness, the sleepless nights, all persisted.

And while Miriam continued to prepare a full cup of coffee—black, no sugar—in the morning, and wrap her arms around him as the two got under the covers at night, all with the smile, the same smile, brightening her porcelain face, Zalman knew she was worried. At first, Miriam sympathized with his preoccupation, his sadness when he received word of Jacob’s passing. Many years ago, even before they had married, he had confided in her about how Jacob had saved his life during the darkest of days and had become more than a brother to him. He told her, too, of how he had helped Jacob build the home he had always dreamed of having, of how he had moved in with the couple as they battled infertility when the home seemed as barren, as empty, as his wife’s womb. And how Zalman decided to go back to the farm, back to the work of his hands, the work he loved to do, back to Miriam. She knew that his heart ached for the loss, for deserting both Jacob and Esther. But Zalman had not told her all. He could never confess how he really felt about Esther, the wife that was not his own.

Jacob had cried upon hearing the news that Zalman was leaving, he told her. They had both cried the hazy summer day he took the train to Minnesota. Still, it could not be helped. Didn’t Zalman deserve a life of his own, his chance at happiness?

Zalman understood that when Miriam saw him collapse as if he were drowning in his own tears once he received the phone call about Jacob, she was frightened. She began to cry, too, as Zalman, placing the receiver down, turned to her, water seeming to gush suddenly from his eyes, a helpless stare on his face, the same look that was on his two-year-old daughter’s face, a mixture of shock and sadness, the morning Miriam had accidentally slammed the car door on her thumb. Miriam tried to comfort her husband just as she had her child, with soft words and gentle smiles, but his sorrow was not to be appeased. When she heard, finally, of the child they had lost, Miriam cried even more. It was unimaginable. He had wiped his tears, not wanting his wife and child to see him weep, and left the house.

That was when Zalman took to long walks by himself, not returning for hours at a time, and the silences had become equally long, so bad that it seemed he had lost his zest for living. He had even stopped helping Debbie with her mathematics workbook, stopped applauding when she would stand and read one of her nature poems to him, stopped insisting she resume piano lessons with a tutor. The only thing, it seemed, that had remained consistent in Zalman’s life was work. The daily routine of going to the shop each day, picking up the paint cans, the brushes, the daily routine of painting. Miriam had given up arguing about his hours as she realized that the business was the one thing, the only thing, that gave him solace.