Amen, said the others at Lewyn’s end of the table.
Amen! said the rabbi. Brightly. Too brightly.
Amen, said Lewyn, but only to himself.
Chapter Sixteen
78 East Seneca
In which Sally Oppenheimer discovers the meaning of the term “brown furniture”
Her name was Harriet Greene. She was the last of five generations of Ithacans named Greene, the family having been right here in central New York since disembarking at Montreal in the 1840s. Harriet’s forebear—four or five or who knew how many greats back—had had something of a foundational role with the Ithaca Paper Company Mill, which enriched the family until the business ran out of road in the mid-’50s. Their family home was in a part of town Sally hadn’t yet set foot in, between downtown and College Town. A few weeks later, on a bitter March afternoon, she walked through the campus and out the other side, to get there.
Sally, of course, had grown up in a house just as large as the one she found at 78 East Seneca Street, more or less as old （mid-nineteenth century）， and precisely this style （resolutely Federal, resolutely grand）， but Harriet Greene’s house was dilapidated. She could see that it had most recently been yellow, but also that that wasn’t very recent at all. The shutters were black, about half of them still intact, the other half partly detached or with missing slats. A lot of the windows appeared to be blocked. She stepped up onto the porch, and the floorboards dipped beneath her. One of the porch posts did not seem to be fully in contact with its roof.
Harriet had the door open before she rang the bell. “Oh, it doesn’t work,” she grinned. “I was keeping an eye out.”
There was a large front parlor to the left of the central hall, classically symmetrical and jammed with furniture: tables, bureaus, wing chairs, and cupboards, mostly wrapped in plastic. Canvases, some framed, many unframed, leaned against the walls, but there wasn’t a single piece of art actually on the walls （to the extent Sally could see the walls）。 In the center of the parlor, a patch of floor about the size of an area rug remained uncovered: room to stand and turn around, assuming you could get there.
“It’s a bit crowded,” said Harriet, stating the obvious and moving down the hall.
The kitchen, too, was jammed, not with furniture but with large Rubbermaid tubs, stacked and labeled, reaching up to the plaster ceiling. Sally read her way upward as Harriet rummaged in a cupboard for two elderly mugs: Linens （Table）， Linens （Table）， Linens （Bedding）， Linens （Rickrack）， Linens （Barkcloth）。 She was on the point of asking what rickrack and barkcloth were, when Harriet asked her what she had come to Cornell to study. Not an outlandish question, but it still kind of knocked her back.
“I don’t really know,” she answered. “Most people do. I don’t.”
“Most people?” Harriet had extracted an open box of Entenmann’s orange donuts from the fridge and put it on the table between them. She started eating one right away.
“Oh, well, your basic Cornell student has everything planned out to retirement. My roommate’s going to be a lawyer. I have a brother who’s plotting world domination, God help us.”
Harriet laughed, showing gray teeth. “Older brother?”
“I wish. He’d have been out of my life sooner. No, he’s my…” Annoyingly, there was no simple word for this. You couldn’t say twin; it wasn’t that simple. “Actually, we’re triplets. Came out of a test tube.”
“Test tube!” Harriet looked mildly scandalized. “I’ve heard about that. I never thought I’d meet one…” She trailed off. “Sorry. My mother used to tell me I was so rude, I’d offend Jesus.”
“It’s okay,” said Sally, trying to excavate a teaspoonful of sugar. It was rocklike in its bowl. Evidently Harriet Greene didn’t take sugar in her own tea, or have frequent guests who did. “Actually, it’s not all that uncommon where I come from. The sidewalks are crowded with double strollers. Of course my parents had to go even further and have three of us.”