Zalman gazed down at the fingers entwined in his as a thought occurred to him. Maybe Esther hadn’t thought of him at all. Maybe, even in death, Jacob was still in control of her actions, her feelings. Seeing the familiar figure through the window, she would walk away, go up the stairs, where she would creep under the covers of their bed, the one she had shared with Jacob all those years, the door shut. Maybe she had forgotten.
He glanced at Miriam as they turned the corner on the way home. She caught his eye then and smiled. His wife had a strange capacity for reading his thoughts, and he wondered if she could read them now.
Zalman leaned back into the gray leather seat of the light-blue Chevy Celebrity, the car he had received as a parting gift from his father-in-law, the rabbi. After two years, the automobile still felt new, and sometimes he could swear that it even had that new-car smell. It had barely been driven since the family’s cross-country journey from Minnesota. Now, except for the occasional trip to visit his wife’s cousins, who lived in Queens, the car mostly sat in front of their home, Zalman moving it on Tuesdays and Thursdays only to comply with parking regulations. He could walk to the shop now and took the truck for calls to customers and, as for Debbie, well, he didn’t even want to think about his only child behind the wheel right now. He should have sold the vehicle, he knew, as it would have been the practical thing to do; he might still recover a reasonable sum. Still, he couldn’t imagine giving it up. He shifted the car into drive.
The Chevy purred alive, and he pulled the visor down to avoid the sun in his vision. He should have left earlier, he thought, because the sun was always a hindrance at this time of day. Again, despite it all, Miriam and Debbie popped into his mind—Miriam giving him an extra squeeze that morning as he hugged her goodbye, advising him to send her regards; Debbie’s quick “Have fun, Daddy,” as she slipped back into her room. How much did she know of his reasons for the journey? he wondered.
He entered onto the Belt Parkway, joining the steady stream of traffic. The distance was relatively short, but the ride was not pleasurable, with it being a Friday and, worse yet, all the family vacationers seeking that sweet spot to spend their Memorial Day weekend. He knew Esther wasn’t one of them. As a teacher, she easily might have left for her brothers’ homes in Florida, but he knew she’d be in the home that she had lived in with Jacob, the home of her husband’s dreams.
As Zalman cruised past the tired fishers along the waterfront, the joggers, their water bottles hugging their hips, a few college students flying kites or loitering on benches beneath a violet, breezy sky, he felt his fingers gripping the wheel tighter, the image of the home taking shape in his mind. It was the Brooklyn home that was once Jacob’s dream, true, but the house had been just as much his own, maybe more. The idea of it had sprung from Jacob’s mind, to be sure, but it was Zalman’s brain that had worked out the plans. It was Zalman who sketched the slope of the roof, angled each corner of the bedrooms, he who lovingly increased the span of the windows that looked out at a thousand days of sun and rain. It was Zalman’s house from the baseboards to the moldings to the chimney, and he had a right to it as much as anyone. But what about Esther? That day in the coffee shop when he could barely look at her face. No, Zalman had no right to that house, just as he had no right to his best friend’s wife.
Esther. Again, he scanned the highway for the exit, the pace of traffic slowing, then picking up once more as her face appeared before him, the gentle curve of her cheeks, the way she would sweep away the waves of her auburn hair as the strands fell against her face, and the eyes with their particular shade of stellar blue. More than that, there was an earnestness to them as they filled with tears as she poured out her sorrows to him. That moment brought him confidence that she felt the same way he did; that she loved him too; that she held back from reaching out to him out of respect, lest she disrupt his life; and that all that was needed was his return, the spark that would set her feelings aflame.
And yet, like tinnitus, an insistent buzz in the ear, he could not let go of Miriam, whose devotion had remained steadfast from the moment they met. And there was Debbie, of course, his dear child and the beacon of his future. It was because of them that he only recently revealed the tragedy experienced by Jacob and Esther—the loss of their only child. It had taken him years before he was able to truly rein in his feelings, to hide them from Miriam’s discerning sight.
The sun was high in the sky now as he felt his heart beating faster. He swerved only slightly into the right lane and quickly straightened the blue Celebrity to meet the line of increasing traffic. In the same way he adjusted his thinking, not quite banishing the thoughts of his wife and daughter, but letting them rest, at least for now, in the corner of his brain.