The Two-Family House(53)

Teddy looked guilty, but he couldn’t lie to her. “Just for a minute. It’s the new Superman!”

“Teddy! What if Miss Henshaw catches you again? You’ll have to stay inside at recess for a week.”

He grinned. “Do you really think I’d mind?”

“I know, but you don’t want her to call your parents, do you?”

He closed the comic book. “I guess not. Hey, have you seen your uncle Sol lately?” Sol always brought Natalie candy and comics from his newsstand when he came over, and Natalie always gave the comics to Teddy when she was done with them.

“They had dinner with us on Friday night, but all he brought was the new Little Dot.” Natalie made a face.

“Why does he bring you those? They’re so stupid. And why does she like dots so much, anyway?”

Natalie shrugged. “Who knows? Usually he brings me Casper the Friendly Ghost, at least. But he didn’t this time. No Superman either.”

“Too bad.” Teddy looked glum.

“He did bring one good thing.” Natalie reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out two red boxes, each no more than two inches wide. She handed one of them to Teddy.

“Red Hots! Thanks!” Teddy was already tearing into the box of tiny cinnamon candies. After he poured half the box in his mouth, he opened it as wide as he could to show her.

“That’s disgusting,” she told him. But she laughed anyway.

The bus stopped abruptly across the street from Teddy’s house. Plows had left enormous piles of snow on both sides of the road, and the narrowed streets were full of slick patches. Natalie got off first, and Teddy followed. As he crossed in front of the bus, the Superman comic fell out of his textbook and fluttered to the ground. Teddy bent down for it, out of the sight of the driver.

Natalie was already at the front door when she heard the bus lurch forward. Teddy had followed her off the bus, but she didn’t sense his footsteps behind her so she turned around to call for him. When her eyes took in the body on the road, her call turned into a scream. “Teddy!”

She was still screaming his name as she ran into the road, screaming on her knees as she shook his shoulders, screaming for him to wake up as she clung to his hands, screaming at the driver as he stepped off the bus, as he took off his cap and cried into the snow. She could hear herself scream, but she still could not stop. Not when a neighbor tried to pick her up off of him, not when she shut her eyes from the glare of the ambulance and not when the long-faced medics whispered in her ear.

She was screaming his name when they took him away from her, took away Teddy, her playmate, her twin. She screamed for him still, long after he left and the pages of his comic blew by her in the wind. The winter dark came early, and she still hadn’t stopped when her mother appeared with a blanket to cover her and a hot cup of cocoa that cracked in the cold. Her mother looked surprised as the cup came apart right there in her hand, and the cocoa poured out, hot liquid hissing as it hit the cold ground.

Natalie finally stopped screaming then, to speak. “It’s broken,” she told her mother, pointing to the cup. “I know it is,” said Helen, and together they stood in the snow and they cried.





Chapter 40





ABE


The funeral was the next morning, on Friday. It was the Jewish tradition to bury the dead as quickly as possible, but Abe wished they had waited. It’s too fast, he thought.

The last time he had been to the hospital, he had driven Rose there because Teddy had been hurt in a baseball game. Abe had been the one trying to calm everyone down that day, struggling to smooth over everyone’s anger. But this time he had driven to the hospital with his brother, rushing from work after a panicked call from a neighbor. Rose was waiting for them, but there had been nothing for him to do. Nothing but to listen, incredulous, to the doctors; nothing but to wait, unbelieving, for Mort and Rose to say their goodbyes; nothing but to accompany them, in silence, out of the hospital doors without their son.

Abe didn’t like feeling helpless. When his father died, he had busied himself organizing the office, notifying clients, taking care of his mother. And when his mother died, there had been even more things to do—going through the attic, selling the house, making sure to give each one of her cousins the little tchotchkes she wanted them to have. It was easier to be busy.

But now, he had nothing to do, nothing but to show up in a suit for his nephew’s funeral. His nephew’s funeral. Christ. He couldn’t believe it. Teddy wasn’t even nine years old.

The truth was, Abe hadn’t really spent that much time with him. He saw his nephew on Tuesdays for dinner. But Teddy and Natalie were always busy with something—playing twenty rounds of checkers, watching that Mickey Mouse Club show or trying to figure out the math book Teddy lugged over every week. Teddy was a sweet kid; Abe liked him. But if Abe was being honest, he had kept his distance on purpose.

One Sunday afternoon the spring after Teddy turned six, Abe had been at the high school field playing baseball with the boys when he spotted Mort and Teddy in the parking lot across from them. Teddy had been riding one of Harry’s old bikes, but Mort had put training wheels on it. Abe had been embarrassed for Teddy, watching him ride around on a too-small bike with training wheels like a toddler. He told his boys he’d be back in a few minutes and headed over to say hello.