New York - The Novel

He had Jewish friends; he might go to a wedding or a funeral. The Jewish wedding service, apart from the chuppah and the breaking of the glass, didn’t seem so different from a Christian wedding, as far as Charlie could see. The familiar Christian blessings were clearly taken straight from the Hebrew tradition.
    But beyond that he knew very little. Sometimes he’d ask Sarah about her family life, and about Jewish customs. He became quite curious.
    It was late in March when Sarah suddenly asked him:
    “Do you want to come to a Passover Seder?”
    “A Seder? Where?”
    “In Brooklyn. With my family.”
    “You mean, meet your parents?” He was well aware that Sarah’s parentshad no idea of their relationship. Apart from anything, she had explained, they still imagined, or at least hoped, she was a virgin. The thought of meeting them intrigued Charlie, but also made him nervous. “You really think that’s a good idea?” he said.
    “They’d be so honored. Remember, they’ve heard of you as the owner of the Keller collection. My first really important client. They know you’re a big deal to me.”
    When the day arrived, Charlie drove over the Williamsburg Bridge, and down through Brooklyn. He didn’t know the borough that well. There were the huge acres of docks all along the waterfront, the endless collections of small factories, warehouses and plants that still made it one of the major places of production in the nation. You knew that, of course, but you didn’t really get to see it in Charlie’s world. He had a friend, a professor, who lived in a large and handsome brownstone on the Heights near Prospect Park; he’d been there a few times. It reminded him of the spacious houses on the West Side, and walking in the huge spaces of Prospect Park itself was delightful. A few miles further east, he knew, was Brownsville. He’d heard there were a lot of Jews there, but the thing he really knew was that it was a dangerous slum area where the gangland killing agency of Murder Inc. had been born. From Prospect Park, however, Flatbush Avenue ran south, so he supposed Flatbush itself might be quite a decent sort of place.
    Needless to say, Sarah had made him a perfect map and directions, so he found her parents’ house with no difficulty. She met him at the door, and brought him in.
    They were all there. Her parents, her brothers, her sister Rachel and her family. Even her Aunt Ruth from the Bronx, who hated Robert Moses, had come. He felt a little out of place as the only Gentile in the house, but the Adler family didn’t seem to mind at all. As Sarah had told him, he was the honored guest. “We shall explain the Seder to you as we go,” her sister Rachel assured him. The idea seemed to please the whole family.
    Dr. Adler turned out to be everything Charlie expected. As the father of the family, this was a very important day for him, and his face was beaming with pleasure. It only took Charlie a few moments to engage him in conversation about the composers he most liked to play, and the pianists Charlie had seen at Carnegie Hall.
    The family also wanted to hear about the exhibition of TheodoreKeller’s photographs which Sarah was working so hard at. So he told them about his family’s relationship with the Kellers down the generations, and how close a friend he’d been to Edmund Keller, and how honored he’d felt when Edmund had laid this duty upon him.
    “For me,” he explained, “looking after and showing the collection is an obligation to the Keller family. But it’s more than that. I have a duty of respect toward the work itself.” He turned to Dr. Adler. “Imagine how you’d feel if the family of a composer you admired gave you all his papers, and you found dozens of compositions, even whole symphonies, that had never been played or published.”
    This was greeted with much respect.
    “That’s a big obligation,” said Dr. Adler.
    “Well,” said Charlie, seeing his chance, “I am just so grateful to your daughter for doing such a wonderful job at the gallery. This is very important to me.”
    Dr. Adler beamed. The whole family looked delighted. If they were being friendly and welcoming before, there was a new warmth in their manner toward him now.
    Only one false note interposed itself. Charlie was talking to Rachel when he overheard it. Sarah was speaking to her mother, a few feet away.
    “So,” he heard Mrs. Adler say, “you still didn’t tell me. When are you seeing Adele’s