Gussie and Isaac sat with his father on the farmhouse’s wide front porch into the early evening when the sun sank low in the sky. Isaac tried not to catalog the house’s failings—the peeling paint, the wood rot, the tree that had grown too close to the porch.
When the mosquitoes came out, Isaac’s father shuffled inside to take the cholent off the stove. He poured wine and unwrapped a loaf of rye bread, a few slices already cut away.
“No challah?” Isaac asked.
“No challah,” said his father, “but this will do.” Isaac wondered how often his father was getting into Vineland to shop and made a note to bring groceries the next time he visited.
Isaac knew that, if it weren’t for this visit, his father would be back at the synagogue now, marking the end of Shabbos with the Havdalah. To his credit, he didn’t try to get Isaac to go. Instead, he lit a candle and led a blessing, both tasks Isaac’s mother would have done when she was alive. After he sang the Shavua Tov, Gussie joined in. Eliyahu hanavi, Eliyahu hatishbi, Eliyahu hagiladi. Bimheirah b’yameinu, yavo eileinu, im Mashiach ben David.
They made a modest dinner of the overcooked meat and potatoes, and Gussie fell asleep on the sofa in the front room because both men had forgotten that seven-year-old children still needed to be put to bed.
Isaac stacked their dirty plates on the drainboard and returned to the kitchen table with the bag of rugelach, a bottle of sherry, and two small glasses.
“How’s business?” his father asked, reaching for the bag.
“Fine. Good.” Isaac poured the sherry, allowing for an extra splash or two in his glass.
“Joseph is a lucky man to have you as his number two.”
Isaac cringed. It was a loaded statement and his father, who would have given anything for Isaac to remain on the farm, knew it.
“Technically, I’m the head of sales. The bakery manager is number two.”
His father dismissed Isaac’s attempt at modesty with a wave of his hand and took a large bite of pastry.
“Joseph is sixty?”
“Closer to fifty.”
“You’ll be running the place in no time,” he said, assuredly.
Would he? Isaac often wondered about that. Is that what he wanted? Was it what Joseph wanted? He’d never said as much. Isaac had spent his entire adult life trying to break out on his own, to be his own man. When he had married Fannie, he’d seen Adler’s Bakery as nothing more than a soft place to land. He hadn’t wanted to be trapped there any more than he’d wanted, growing up, to be trapped on the farm. But that was before Joseph expanded the business. Now Adler’s was booming, and Isaac wondered if he could spend an entire career working in the back office, sustaining his father-in-law’s dream. He knew lots of guys who would give their eyeteeth to have married into a family business like Adler’s.
“I’ve got something new I’m working on—on the side,” Isaac offered.
His father took another bite of rugelach.
“A land deal.”
“In Atlantic County?”
“Florida.”
His father furrowed his eyebrows, licked the cinnamon off his fingers. “I thought you were done with Florida.”
“I thought I was, too,” said Isaac. “But I got a call from an old friend last week. You remember Jim?” Why should his father remember Jim? Isaac could practically count the letters he’d written home from West Palm Beach on one hand.
His father shook the brown paper sack, eyeing the remaining pastries. He held the bag out to Isaac. “Take one.”
Isaac did as he was told. They really were delicious. “Jim’s working on a big deal. A developer went under and there’s a lot of land that’s coming on the market—cheap.”
“How much land?”
“There’s one package I’m looking at that’s a little more than a hundred acres.”
His father let out a low whistle. The farm was forty acres, and Isaac knew that, at harvesttime, it felt like it might as well be a hundred. “In Palm Beach?”
“The county, not the island,” said Isaac. “Toward Lake Okeechobee. It’s an old citrus farm.”
“What would you do with it?” his father asked. Isaac had made it very clear he was no farmer.
“Sell it, when the time’s right. Jim thinks he can get the price down to thirty dollars an acre. Land like that should be selling for at least two times that amount.”
“That’s still a lot of money to come up with.” Isaac didn’t ask but he could feel the question hanging in the air between them: Do you have it?
“I told him that the only way I can consider the opportunity is if I bring on some investors. Heck, it might even be something you want to get in on,” Isaac said, surprised at his own audacity. He looked around the kitchen, then forced himself to finish the thought. “You invest a couple of hundred dollars. It doubles and then triples. Maybe does even better than that.”
His father raised his eyebrows, humored Isaac with a soft chuckle.
“A thousand dollars could go a long way toward fixing up this house,” Isaac pushed. “Maybe hire extra hands to help you with the harvest.”
Isaac had hit on another sore point, so he got out in front of it, “Of course, if I were a better son, I’d come help you.”
His father didn’t say anything, just patted Isaac’s hand.
The following morning, Isaac’s father made eggs for Gussie and black coffee for Isaac. When it was time to go, Isaac whistled for his daughter and carried her small bag out to the car. His father
