New York - The Novel

her parents blessed their children, her father recited
kiddush
over the wine, the prayer was recited over the two loaves of challah, and then they started their meal.
    All through her childhood, Sarah had known what food she would eat. Friday was chicken. Wednesday lamb chops. That was the meat. Tuesdays meant fish, and Thursdays egg salad and potato latkes. Only Monday was unpredictable.
    The rest of Shabbat passed quietly. The Saturday-morning service was always long, from nine to twelve. She used to find it burdensome, but strangely she didn’t any more. Then the pleasant, leisurely family lunch. After that, her father read to them for a while, then went to take a nap, while she and Michael played checkers. Sarah and her brother always enjoyed each other’s company. Michael was musical, and on Sunday afternoon, he and his father were going to a concert at the Brooklyn Museum. There was no television allowed until the end of Shabbat, but on Saturday evening, her father asked her if she’d like to listen to a record he’d just acquired. It was an RCA recording of Bernstein conducting his own First Symphony. So she sat on the sofa beside him, and watched affectionately as her father’s round face relaxed into an expression of perfect happiness. They turned in early after that. It had been a perfect day.
    On Sunday morning, however, when Sarah came into the kitchen, things weren’t so good. Her mother was alone, making French toast. Downstairs, she could hear the sound of her father practicing on the piano, but when she started to go down to say good morning to him, her mother called her back.
    “Your father had a bad night.” She shook her head. “He was thinking about your Uncle Herman.”
    Sarah sighed. In the year before the Second World War began, UncleHerman had been based in London. But he spoke French well, and he’d been spending time in France, where he had a small exporting business.
    If they didn’t hear from Uncle Herman for a year, they weren’t surprised. “He never writes letters. He just shows up,” her father used to complain. But late in 1939 they did get a letter. It came from London, and said he would be going to France. That had worried her father. “I don’t know how you get in there,” he’d said, “or how you get out.” Months had passed. No further word had come. They hoped he was in London. When the Blitz came, her father said: “Maybe I should hope he’s in France.”
    The silence continued.
    It was more than four years before they finally learned the truth. It was the only time Sarah had seen her father truly outraged, and inconsolable. It was the first time, also, that she had understood the power of grief. And seeing her father’s suffering, young though she was, she had wanted so much to protect him.
    Then the Adlers did what a Jewish family does when it loses a loved one: they sat shiva.
    It is a kindly custom. For seven days, unless one observes a less strict practice, family and friends come to the house bringing food and comfort. After saying the traditional Hebrew words of condolence as they enter, the visitors talk softly to the bereaved, who sit on low boxes or stools.
    Sarah’s mother had covered every mirror in the house with cloth. The children all wore a black ribbon, pinned on their front, but their father ripped his shirt and sat in a corner. Many friends came by; everyone understood Daniel Adler’s grief and sought to console him. Sarah never forgot it.
    “The days we sat shiva for your Uncle Herman were the worst in my life,” her mother said. “Worse even than the day I got fired.”
    The day her mother got fired had always been part of family lore. It had been long before Sarah was born, before her mother married. She’d gone to work in Midtown, and got a job as a secretary in a bank. Her father had warned her not to do it, but something had prompted her to prove him wrong. With the reddish hair she had then and her blue eyes, people didn’t usually think she was Jewish. “And my name’s Susan Miller,” she said. “It was Millstein, once,” her father said. He could also have added that Miller was the third most common Jewish name in America.
    But the bank had employed her without awkward questions, and forsix months she’d worked there and been quite happy. True, it had meant that she didn’t observe Shabbat, but her family weren’t religious, so they didn’t mind too much.
    It was a chance remark that had let her down. One