“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.”
Before he could protest, her voice hurried on, more urgently than before as she stared down at the table.
“It had become like a contest with us, Jacob at work during the day, upstairs in our bedroom, while I stayed downstairs on the couch at night. I did not mind it, not really. The bed, the hall, all the rooms on that level, held too many memories for me, memories which had turned sour in only a couple of months. After five days of this war of silence between us, he finally came down one evening, made two cups of tea, and set them on the kitchen table. At first, he only wanted to know why. And I told him all that had happened between us was a friend comforting another, and truly, Zalman, you were a comfort to me. You brought me out of the deep water so I could breathe again. You showed me how to live. You were the best friend a grieving mother could ask for.” She looked up at him then, noticed Zalman shaking his head, his lips tightly set.
“Anyway, I assured him of your loyalty and my love. He has forgiven me, it seems, but has yet to forgive himself. If he ever can at all.”
“No,” said Zalman, his voice low and groggy as if he had just awakened from sleep, “he hasn’t forgiven me, this I know. And he would be a fool to do so.”
“Oh, but that is the thing I came to you about,” she said, moving her tea, now cooled, to the side so she could lean across the table.
“You know Jacob perhaps better than anyone. He would never like my saying this, but he is, as my mother would say about my father, ‘a shtila marook,’ as silent as a stone, keeping all his worries locked inside. And because of this, I now know that he will one day understand and forgive you. You understand, I’m sure, how there’s something, a secret something, that happened to Jacob many years ago back in the old country. It took this tragedy to finally pry open his lips, so that he finally told me all. He now knows the cost of holding on to bitterness until it is too late, and he can’t afford to let that happen again. Oh, Zalman, I now know he will forgive you one day. Only please give him time. And then maybe you can even come back to us—our home. Not the same as things once were, never that. But maybe—”
The light shining off her auburn hair. A whiff of Shalimar.
The table shook suddenly. The unused utensils clattered as forks and spoons hit the ceramic tiled floor. Zalman was on his feet.
“No!” he exclaimed, not bothering to modulate his voice. “I don’t want your forgiveness. All I want is for you to leave me alone!” Pausing only long enough to collect his straw hat, Zalman left the restaurant.
He did not turn around to look at her that afternoon, but if he had, he would have seen her mouth agape, still in midsentence, more astonished than sad. He hated the possibility that his abrupt departure might have hurt her, but he knew that he could not stay one minute longer in her presence. If he had, he might have weakened, confessed his true feelings for her. He could never allow that to happen. So he tried to convince himself that it didn’t really matter how she felt. Nor did it matter that his curiosity about Jacob’s past was quenched. None of it did.