eyes of the mermaid. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yes. My brother was very artistic,” Josef says softly.
“He made this?”
I pick up the vampire and run my finger over the smooth, slick skull of the creature. “Do you play?” I ask.
“Not for years. Marta had no patience for the game.” He looks up. “And you?”
“I’m not very good. You have to think five steps ahead.”
“It’s all about strategy,” Josef says. “And protecting your king.”
“What’s with the mythical creatures?” I ask.
“My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.”
I find myself thinking of Adam; of his daughter, coughing as a pediatrician listens to her lungs. “Maybe,” I say, “you could teach me what you know.”
• • •
Josef becomes a regular at Our Daily Bread, showing up shortly before closing, so that we can spend a half hour chatting before he leaves for the night and I start my workday. When Josef shows up, Rocco yells tome in the kitchen, referring to him as “my boyfriend.” Mary brings him a cutting from the shrine—a daylily—and tells him how to plant it in his backyard. She starts assuming that even after she locks up, I will make sure Josef gets home. The dog biscuits I bake for Eva become a new staple of our menu.
We talk about teachers that I had at the high school when Josef was still working there—Mr. Muchnick, whose toupee once went missing when he fell asleep proctoring an SAT test; Ms. Fiero, who would bring her toddler to school when her nanny got sick and would stick him in the computer lab to play Sesame Street games. We talk about a strudel recipe that his grandmother used to make. He tells me about Eva’s predecessor, a schnauzer named Willie, who used to mummify himself in toilet paper if you left the bathroom door open by accident. Josef admits that it is hard to fill all the hours he has, now that he isn’t working or volunteering regularly.
And me: I find myself talking about things that I have long packed up, like a spinster’s hope chest. I tell Josef about the time my mother and I went shopping together, and she got stuck in a sundress too small for her, and we had to buy it just so that we could rip it off. I tell him how, for years after that, even uttering the word sundress made us both collapse with laughter. I tell him how my father would read the Seder every year in a Donald Duck voice, not out of irreverence, but because it made his little girls laugh. I tell him how, on our birthdays, my mother let us eat our favorite dessert for breakfast and how she could touch your forehead if you were feverish and guess your temperature, within two-tenths of a degree. I tell him how, when I was little and convinced a monster lived in my closet, my father slept for a month sitting upright against the slatted pocket doors so that the beast couldn’t break out in the middle of the night. I tell him how my mother taught me to make hospital corners on a bed; how my father taught me to spit a watermelon seed through my teeth. Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician’s sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they’vebeen let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.
I find myself canceling dates with Adam so that I can instead spend an hour at Josef’s house, playing chess, before my eyelids droop and I have to drive back home and get some rest. He teaches me to control the center of the board. To not give up any pieces unless absolutely necessary, and how to assign arbitrary point values to each knight and bishop and rook and pawn so that I can make those decisions.
As we play, Josef asks me questions. Was my mother a redhead, like me? Did my father ever miss the restaurant industry, once he went into industrial sales? Did either of them ever get a chance to
“Yes. My brother was very artistic,” Josef says softly.
“He made this?”
I pick up the vampire and run my finger over the smooth, slick skull of the creature. “Do you play?” I ask.
“Not for years. Marta had no patience for the game.” He looks up. “And you?”
“I’m not very good. You have to think five steps ahead.”
“It’s all about strategy,” Josef says. “And protecting your king.”
“What’s with the mythical creatures?” I ask.
“My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.”
I find myself thinking of Adam; of his daughter, coughing as a pediatrician listens to her lungs. “Maybe,” I say, “you could teach me what you know.”
• • •
Josef becomes a regular at Our Daily Bread, showing up shortly before closing, so that we can spend a half hour chatting before he leaves for the night and I start my workday. When Josef shows up, Rocco yells tome in the kitchen, referring to him as “my boyfriend.” Mary brings him a cutting from the shrine—a daylily—and tells him how to plant it in his backyard. She starts assuming that even after she locks up, I will make sure Josef gets home. The dog biscuits I bake for Eva become a new staple of our menu.
We talk about teachers that I had at the high school when Josef was still working there—Mr. Muchnick, whose toupee once went missing when he fell asleep proctoring an SAT test; Ms. Fiero, who would bring her toddler to school when her nanny got sick and would stick him in the computer lab to play Sesame Street games. We talk about a strudel recipe that his grandmother used to make. He tells me about Eva’s predecessor, a schnauzer named Willie, who used to mummify himself in toilet paper if you left the bathroom door open by accident. Josef admits that it is hard to fill all the hours he has, now that he isn’t working or volunteering regularly.
And me: I find myself talking about things that I have long packed up, like a spinster’s hope chest. I tell Josef about the time my mother and I went shopping together, and she got stuck in a sundress too small for her, and we had to buy it just so that we could rip it off. I tell him how, for years after that, even uttering the word sundress made us both collapse with laughter. I tell him how my father would read the Seder every year in a Donald Duck voice, not out of irreverence, but because it made his little girls laugh. I tell him how, on our birthdays, my mother let us eat our favorite dessert for breakfast and how she could touch your forehead if you were feverish and guess your temperature, within two-tenths of a degree. I tell him how, when I was little and convinced a monster lived in my closet, my father slept for a month sitting upright against the slatted pocket doors so that the beast couldn’t break out in the middle of the night. I tell him how my mother taught me to make hospital corners on a bed; how my father taught me to spit a watermelon seed through my teeth. Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician’s sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they’vebeen let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.
I find myself canceling dates with Adam so that I can instead spend an hour at Josef’s house, playing chess, before my eyelids droop and I have to drive back home and get some rest. He teaches me to control the center of the board. To not give up any pieces unless absolutely necessary, and how to assign arbitrary point values to each knight and bishop and rook and pawn so that I can make those decisions.
As we play, Josef asks me questions. Was my mother a redhead, like me? Did my father ever miss the restaurant industry, once he went into industrial sales? Did either of them ever get a chance to
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