had nearly destroyed them.
That first Friday morning at the beach, once Ada, Vivie, and Bec had stuffed their long manes into their caps, the three sisters strolled, more gingerly than before, toward the water. Arriving at its edge, Bec was the one to plunge right in, no hesitation, then to come up from under with a yelp and a smile. Ada and Vivie watched, ankle deep. They glanced at each other. If you go, I’ll go, Ada thought. They were only little more than knee deep but they held their arms out as if the water already rose to their waists. They laughed. They whooped. Vivie bent down and splashed water onto her belly and shoulders. Ada watched, then followed her older sister’s actions in a way that was as automatic as when she was a child. Oh, how she’d loved being a child! They had never fought then, in those days of early innocence, when Vivie, older, doing everything Ada wanted to do but doing it better, more easily, was only to be imitated, worshiped, chased, revered. Here at the beach, each morning when they dunked, all that goodness they were born into, all that they had ever been to each other, was restored. The salty air, cool with breezes, an air wholly other than that in Middletown, had to be responsible, she reasoned. How else could you explain this transformation in their relationship? If you go, I’ll go, her eyes told her sister once again. And at that Vivie raised her arms over her head, hands together, and dove forward, and Ada raised her arms over her head, hands together, and followed her sister into the cool waters of the Long Island Sound.
The three floated on their backs, kicking occasionally, their arms sculling beside them to keep them afloat. This was happiness, my mother knew, this early-morning chill they so willingly endured. She raised her head briefly, enough to look shoreward, in the direction of their cottage and of Hillside Avenue running behind it. Later in the day they’d confront a whole body of men: the peddlers driving past—the iceman, the fish man, the milkman, the produce man, the ice cream man—and, later still, their husbands would return for a Shabbos meal they had yet to even think about making. But for now she was here, buoyant on her back in the waters of her childhood, her sisters by her side, and not a single one of those many men had the power to change that fact. They were here, doing just what they wanted. She took a deep breath. How glorious, she thought, simply to breathe.
Of Minyans and Baseball
T hat same Friday my father, Mort, alone in his bed in Middletown, woke in the morning from a marvelous dream. My father had had this dream before, but not in a long while. In it he was already at shul, praying at the morning service. The other men of the usual minyan were there too—Jerome Kaminsky, Nathan Novak, Abe Leiberman, Stanley Levine, Harold Sokull, Marvin Abkin, Sid Pasternack, Freddy Horowitz, Mort’s brother Nelson Leibritsky, and his brother-in-law, that sorry-ass (as my father typically put it) Leo Cohen—but special to the service was the presence of my father’s father, standing right next to him, Zelik Leibritsky’s body wrapped in his old tallis, its white fabric as aged as the man’s beard but its gold embroidery still bold and shiny. More than the others, my grandfather Zelik prayed especially fervently, as in life he always had, bowing and rocking, mumbling and sometimes singing the Hebrew words. Nevertheless, because the laws of dreams were not the laws of life, the two men—father and son—were simultaneously talking.
“How’s business?” Zelik asked.
“Good, good,” Mort answered, relieved to say as much. He explained to his father how the war had broken the relentless economic depression. And with the war over, along with its rationing, sales were so much better. In the past year—the time since their last dream-talk—Mort had felt secure enough to get the store’s floor professionally polished and its walls painted.
That first Friday morning at the beach, once Ada, Vivie, and Bec had stuffed their long manes into their caps, the three sisters strolled, more gingerly than before, toward the water. Arriving at its edge, Bec was the one to plunge right in, no hesitation, then to come up from under with a yelp and a smile. Ada and Vivie watched, ankle deep. They glanced at each other. If you go, I’ll go, Ada thought. They were only little more than knee deep but they held their arms out as if the water already rose to their waists. They laughed. They whooped. Vivie bent down and splashed water onto her belly and shoulders. Ada watched, then followed her older sister’s actions in a way that was as automatic as when she was a child. Oh, how she’d loved being a child! They had never fought then, in those days of early innocence, when Vivie, older, doing everything Ada wanted to do but doing it better, more easily, was only to be imitated, worshiped, chased, revered. Here at the beach, each morning when they dunked, all that goodness they were born into, all that they had ever been to each other, was restored. The salty air, cool with breezes, an air wholly other than that in Middletown, had to be responsible, she reasoned. How else could you explain this transformation in their relationship? If you go, I’ll go, her eyes told her sister once again. And at that Vivie raised her arms over her head, hands together, and dove forward, and Ada raised her arms over her head, hands together, and followed her sister into the cool waters of the Long Island Sound.
The three floated on their backs, kicking occasionally, their arms sculling beside them to keep them afloat. This was happiness, my mother knew, this early-morning chill they so willingly endured. She raised her head briefly, enough to look shoreward, in the direction of their cottage and of Hillside Avenue running behind it. Later in the day they’d confront a whole body of men: the peddlers driving past—the iceman, the fish man, the milkman, the produce man, the ice cream man—and, later still, their husbands would return for a Shabbos meal they had yet to even think about making. But for now she was here, buoyant on her back in the waters of her childhood, her sisters by her side, and not a single one of those many men had the power to change that fact. They were here, doing just what they wanted. She took a deep breath. How glorious, she thought, simply to breathe.
Of Minyans and Baseball
T hat same Friday my father, Mort, alone in his bed in Middletown, woke in the morning from a marvelous dream. My father had had this dream before, but not in a long while. In it he was already at shul, praying at the morning service. The other men of the usual minyan were there too—Jerome Kaminsky, Nathan Novak, Abe Leiberman, Stanley Levine, Harold Sokull, Marvin Abkin, Sid Pasternack, Freddy Horowitz, Mort’s brother Nelson Leibritsky, and his brother-in-law, that sorry-ass (as my father typically put it) Leo Cohen—but special to the service was the presence of my father’s father, standing right next to him, Zelik Leibritsky’s body wrapped in his old tallis, its white fabric as aged as the man’s beard but its gold embroidery still bold and shiny. More than the others, my grandfather Zelik prayed especially fervently, as in life he always had, bowing and rocking, mumbling and sometimes singing the Hebrew words. Nevertheless, because the laws of dreams were not the laws of life, the two men—father and son—were simultaneously talking.
“How’s business?” Zelik asked.
“Good, good,” Mort answered, relieved to say as much. He explained to his father how the war had broken the relentless economic depression. And with the war over, along with its rationing, sales were so much better. In the past year—the time since their last dream-talk—Mort had felt secure enough to get the store’s floor professionally polished and its walls painted.
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