(January 1957)
Helen was making beds when she heard the doorbell ring. Natalie and the younger boys were long gone, but Harry’s first class was late that day, and he still had an hour or so before he had to leave for the train. Helen heard the sound of the shower running from the end of the upstairs hallway, so she knew he was awake.
By the time she got to the bottom of the steps, the doorbell had rung several more times. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she called out. “Hold your horses!”
A familiar voice on the other side of the door answered, “What if I don’t wanna hold my horses? What then?”
Helen opened the door to find Sol waving a white bakery box in the air by the strings. “Who wants a Danish? You got a cup of coffee for me?” Helen stepped to the side to make way for him, and Sol breezed past her as if it were his house, not hers. “What are you doing here? It’s ten in the morning—why aren’t you at work?”
“Whatsa matter, you think somebody fired me? I wanted to see my sister. Is that so terrible?” He placed the box on the kitchen table and took some plates out of the cabinet. In his navy silk suit and bright red tie, he looked out of place sitting at Helen’s yellow Formica table. Like a city mouse in the suburbs, complete with a gold pinkie ring.
“You just don’t usually visit me on a weekday morning.”
“You want me to go?” He picked the box up and pretended to leave, but Helen pushed him back down.
“Don’t be such a comedian,” she told him. “Sit and I’ll pour us some coffee.” Sol sat. “I got Ralph covering the early shift at the newsstand,” he explained to her, picking a piece of lint off his tie. “God forbid all the lawyers shouldn’t have their papers first thing.”
“Mornings must be your busiest time.”
“How hard is it to sell newspapers to lawyers? They all got their nickels ready. Nah, lunch is when we see all the action. The fellas come over then, grab a candy bar, make a bet—”
Helen didn’t want to hear about Sol’s side business, so she interrupted. “Here, take your coffee. It’s hot.” Sol held the cup up to his nose. “Now that smells terrific.” He took a gulp of the coffee and set down the cup. “All right.” He opened the Danish box and looked inside. “I got prune, cheese and cherry. Whaddya want?”
“You know I like the prune.” Sol took one from the box and set it on her plate. “Good, I’ll take the cheese.” He took a large bite and smacked his lips. “Best Danish outside the city. From that little bakery by the gas station on Clark Street.”
“They’re nice in there. They always give Natalie a cookie when I bring her in.”
“Yeah.” Sol shifted in his chair and lowered his voice. “Listen, how’ve you been?” He put his hand over hers on the table and squeezed. Sol’s hands were huge, his nails buffed to a brilliant shine. The bottom of his pinkie ring pressed uncomfortably on Helen’s fingers.
It had been a month since Teddy’s accident. After the first week of sitting shiva, Helen hadn’t really known what to do with herself. So she cleaned. Every drawer and closet had been given a thorough going-over. Sometimes she would find things that reminded her of Teddy. A marble that had gotten lost behind the living room sofa, a pair of snow pants in the closet, too small for her boys, that Teddy borrowed when he came over. She would sit wherever she found these things, on the couch or the floor, and cry until her tears ran out. She made sure to cry when the kids were in school. She didn’t want to upset them, especially Natalie.
At last, she answered her brother. “I’m all right.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s nice that you’re worried about me.”
“Yeah, well. It’s a horrible thing that happened. A tragedy. And for Natalie to see it—I can’t even think about it.”
“I know.”
“How’s she doing?”
Helen shook her head. “Teddy was her best friend.”
“Yeah, I knew she’d take it hard.” He cleared his throat. “I was a little surprised about you, though.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you know … You got a little carried away at the funeral. For a while there I thought you had lost it. But then I said to myself, This is how Helen is. She loves all these kids. She loves them all like they’re hers. What if it was Johnny? I said to myself. She’d have been the same way. Worse, even, if Johnny had the accident.”
Helen couldn’t look at him. Her eyes began to tear.
“Ah, don’t start crying. I shudda never said that. All this talk, I shudda never brought it up. I’m sorry.” He patted her hand. “Don’t get started, okay? I came over to cheer you up, not to make you cry.”
Helen took a paper napkin from the holder on the table and wiped her eyes. She stared down at the napkin and began pulling it into pieces. When she realized what she was doing, she got up from her chair, blew her nose with what was left of the napkin and tossed it in the garbage. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the Danish.”
“Good, right?”
“I can’t believe you left the cherry, though.”
“Whaddya mean? I love a cheese Danish.”
“I thought you loved cherries.” She started wiping the crumbs off the table. “Remember that cake Grandma used to bring us when we were little, from Gus’s? You always wanted the cherry from the top. Remember?”
Sol grinned. “Yeah, I remember. Every Friday.”
“She always let you have the cherry—you were her favorite.”
Sol brought his empty coffee cup over to the sink. “I wasn’t her favorite. Cousin Susan was her favorite.”
“Well, she liked you better than me.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Then how come she always gave you the cherry?”
“Jeez, Helen, you been stewing over that for twenty-five years? A stinking cherry?”
“It was a symbol!” As soon as she said it, she realized how ridiculous it sounded. Sol started to laugh.
“Who are you? Sigmund Freud?”
“She liked you better! You were the boy.”
“Bullshit!”
“Sol!” She didn’t like it when he talked that way.
“Sorry, sorry.”
“Anyway, why’d she give you the cherry every time? How come I never got it?” Helen started rinsing out the coffee cups.
“You didn’t need it.”
She turned off the water and looked at her brother. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means she didn’t give it to you because you didn’t need it. You were a happy kid, lots of friends. Why’d you need the stupid cherry?” Sol took one of the dish towels hanging from the handle of the oven and started drying the mugs.
“Why did you?”
“Because I was a miserable little bastard! Don’t you remember me at that age? I was terrible at school—I could barely read!”
“But Grandma always said how brilliant you were!”
“To make me feel better about being so stupid! Plus, I used to get beat up every day after school by that Rodney what’s-his-name. The kid a few blocks over. Him and his older brother.”
“Why’d they pick on you?”
Sol shrugged. “They had a sister, Juliette, Julie, something like that. Beautiful girl. Couldn’t take my eyes off her. I gave her a candy bar once.”
“That was nice.”
“Not to them. Every time they caught me looking at her, they’d practically murder me.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t know any of this.…”
“That’s why she gave me the cherry. You didn’t need it. Pretty, good grades, always smiling. You had it all. Me, I had bupkis. So the old lady tried to make me feel special. Gave me the lousy cherry to cheer me up. If I had known it was such a big deal to you…”
“I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Now I feel terrible.”
“Why? That’s life, kiddo. Two sides to every story. You gotta look at things from every angle.”
“When did you get so smart?” She punched him in the arm and laughed.
“You better watch it, toots.…” And then he was chasing her around the kitchen like they were children again, Sol in his fancy suit and Helen in her housecoat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. She could barely breathe.