The Matchmaker's Gift(52)
“You know that my wife died long ago, years before I came to this country. But I never told you how we met, or how she came to be my bride. We had barely spoken before we were married, and our first few months together were far from happy. Of course, it was a different time, but it was almost two years after our wedding that Rivka told me she loved me for the first time.”
“What happened?” Sara asked.
“Her brother was forced to put down a cow, and he brought us a piece of meat for our dinner. Rivka did not know how to cook it—we were so poor, and such luxuries were rare.” He stopped to smile at the memory. “Our hut was filled with so much smoke that we were forced to eat our meal outside. She left the charred meat on her plate, but I ate my portion and told her it was delicious. In our bed that night, she kissed my cheek and told me how much she had grown to love me.” He brushed away the tear that had fallen to his cheek. “On the day my Rivka died, I knew, for certain, that I would never love another woman again.”
Sara considered the rabbi’s words. “I wish I had been at your wedding,” she mused. “I wonder what I would have seen.”
The rabbi shrugged. “Who can say? Love is not always a straight, shining line. Sometimes, love is a shady path, full of unpredictable turns.”
* * *
Nathan was hurt and disappointed but, ultimately, he accepted her decision. She could not reveal the whole of the truth, but she did her best to tell him what she could.
“Joe’s death was a terrible blow,” she began. “It forced me to examine my priorities.”
“I understand, and I want to help. I want to be there for you, and for your family.”
“I can’t ask that of you,” Sara said. “You deserve someone who can love you freely, someone who isn’t held back by grief.”
“But your grief will fade. Over time, it will get easier.” Nathan was pleading with her now.
“You shouldn’t wait for that, Nathan. In my heart, I know that you belong with someone else. You’ll meet her soon enough, I promise. Don’t ask me how, but I know you will. And when you do, you’ll understand that I was right.”
She hadn’t expected it to be so hard. She hadn’t expected the words to burn as they escaped her throat. Before he left, Nathan whispered that he would always remember her, that she would always be his first love. Sara felt her heart shiver inside her chest. What a foolish child I was, she thought, to believe that love was a simple thing.
* * *
Her mother was not half as understanding.
“Fool!” Malka Glikman shouted, loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. “That man wanted to marry you!”
“Mama, calm down. You don’t know that for sure.”
“You think because I’m not the expert like you that I don’t see?” She wagged her finger in Sara’s face. “If it hadn’t been for Joseph’s death, Nathan would have already asked. He delayed his proposal out of respect!”
“Well, none of that matters now,” Sara said. “What’s done is done. It’s over.”
“Why do you have to be so stubborn? When you get back to Barnard, you might change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind, Mama. And I’m not going back to Barnard.”
Whatever combination of disappointment and anger Sara’s mother expressed after the news about Nathan, it was nothing compared to what she unleashed after Sara said she wasn’t returning to Barnard.
“Oy! Oy! Such a stab in the heart! Will you throw Moishe Raskin’s gift in his face? Will you throw away your father’s dream? How can you be so ungrateful? What kind of a selfish child did I raise?” Malka Glikman flung her arms in the air and ran from the apartment into the hallway. There, she cried up and down the corridor, tearing at her hair as if it were on fire.
It took three of them—Hindel, Aaron, and Sara—to calm her down enough to pull her back inside. Hindel went to the stove to make tea, while Aaron tugged absently at his beard. All three of Hindel’s children began to wail, which only added to the chaos. Aaron led two of them outside to play, while Sara lifted the youngest onto her lap.
“Mama, please. Please, sit down. I’m not going to give up college entirely. I’m going to go to Hunter, that’s all. Now that Joe is gone, I want to be closer to home.”
“So, go to Barnard and live at home! You said that’s what a lot of girls do!”
Sara shook her head and sighed. “No, Mama. No. That’s not what I want. Besides, if I’m home, I can help Hindel with the children.”
“What kind of nonsense are you thinking? We already have Esther to help Hindel.”
“Esther won’t be around forever, Mama. She’ll get married and have a family of her own soon enough. Besides, I never should have gone to Barnard in the first place.”
“Says who?”
Sara shrugged. “It’s just a feeling I have.”
After one or two minutes of quiet, Hindel came out of the kitchen with a glass of tea. “Here you go, Mama,” she said, soothingly. “A nice glass of tea, made the way you like.” But their mother pursed her lips and pushed it away. “I don’t want any tea,” she snapped. She turned her attention back to Sara and glared. “Just a feeling,” she muttered. “You and your feelings. How are you going to feel, I wonder, when that nice young man marries someone else?”