The pieces were gathering in his hands, one by one. The Syrian boy who’d spoken of Missus Chava like a sailor who’d glimpsed a mermaid. Her former lover, now holed up in an empty building, drawn staggering out into the sunlight by the lure of a Yiddish curse. The phantom presence at the Hotel Earle. His own mother rushing to slam the hallway door. His missing father. The grinning man in his dreams. Taken together, they pointed to something that he could neither see nor name but whose presence he’d felt his entire life, something that lay beyond the reasoned world and shadowed his life with its cobweb traces. And if he stopped looking for it now, he’d lose his chance to learn the truth. So he’d come to Radzin’s, to the beginning of the story, to find out whatever he could.
He went inside and joined the long line that snaked back and forth inside the shop. It was a Friday afternoon, and everyone wanted a challah for the Sabbath; the refrain With raisins or without? rose from the girls at every register. The line moved quickly even so, and before long he reached the counter. The girl on the other side looked to be maybe two or three years older than himself. Going by her placid expression, she was long accustomed to these busy Friday afternoons. “A dozen cookies, please,” he told her.
“What kind?”
“Huh. I don’t know.” He squinted at the gleaming glass, the endless stretch of trays. “Which ones do you like?”
She pursed her lips. “The hamantaschen ain’t bad,” she allowed.
“Then I’ll have four of the poppy-seed ones, and two tea cookies”—he was pointing more or less at random—“And two of those almond macaroons, and a couple of rugelach.”
“That’s ten,” she said. “You got two left.”
“Uh, two more tea cookies.” He was beginning to wonder what he’d do with it all.
The girl pulled a bakery box from a stack by the register and started gathering his order. “Say, my ma used to work here,” he said, as though he’d just remembered the fact himself. “Anna Blumberg?”
The girl frowned as she bent for the macaroons. “Never heard of her.”
“Never heard of who, dear?” A middle-aged woman had appeared next to the girl, carrying a tray of walnut streusel and a near-palpable air of entitled presumption. This, Toby assumed, could only be Thea Radzin.
“Lady named Anna Blumberg,” the girl told her.
Thea’s eyes darkened at once. “Anna? That girl hasn’t worked for us in years.” She peered at Toby. “Is she in trouble again? Never learns, that one.”
Toby felt himself go red.
“That’s her son,” said the girl, nodding at him.
Thea’s face went slack with shock. She stared at him. “No,” she said, “that can’t be right, you’re simply too old—that would’ve been, let’s see—”
“Fifteen years ago,” he said, forcing himself to smile.
The woman recovered quickly. “Fifteen years! Is it so long as that? My goodness, I’ll be an old woman soon. Well, and how is your mother?”
She’s exhausted. She nearly died. “She’s well,” he said. “She works at a laundry, she’s in charge of a dozen girls.”
“A laundry, really!” There was a bright, false note in Mrs. Radzin’s tone that made him picture her telling the story to her friends. She’s still a washerwoman, after all these years. Yes, I heard it from the boy himself.
A customer behind him shuffled impatiently. Toby said, “I was wondering about a friend of hers who used to work here. Chava Levy?”
“Oh, yes!” The name kindled a new light of reverence in the woman’s face. “Chava was the best baker we ever had. Why, she could braid a challah twice as fast as any of these girls—”
The girl tying Toby’s box of cookies paused to glare at her.
“—but she left us in, let’s see, that must have been in ’08, after we expanded the store. We were devastated, we begged her to stay—but she went off to college, and I can’t blame her. Such a smart girl.”
Toby pounced upon the new information. “Do you know which college?”
“Of course I do! It was Teachers College—that’s up at Columbia, of course—for their Domestic Sciences program.” She spoke with such pride that Missus Chava might’ve been her own daughter. “But she must have graduated by now. We heard from her last in . . . Do you know, I’m not certain. So hard to keep track, with all the comings and goings.” She sighed, but then said, “Wait here. I’ll show you something.”
She went to the far wall, lifted a framed photograph from its nail, and presented it for his inspection. It had been taken on the sidewalk outside; the year 1901 was penciled in a corner. Standing by the bakery window were a younger version of Thea and her husband, a boy and a girl who must have been their own children, and three women, one of whom was—
“There’s Chava,” Mrs. Radzin said, pointing at the woman who stood slightly hunched, as though embarrassed to have her picture taken. She was exactly the same as Toby remembered, not a line of her face different.
Nineteen-oh-one, he read again. His brow furrowed in confusion. If anyone had asked, he would’ve said that Missus Chava was younger than his mother—and yet . . .
Someone behind him coughed in protest. The girl handed him his box of cookies—and Mrs. Radzin, in a display of the blithe effrontery for which she’d grown so famous, told Toby to give his mother her best regards.
* * *
The Asylum hallways seethed with children rushing for the synagogue, their thoughts flying past Miss Levy as she navigated a hasty path to the side door.
I can’t be late again, the monitor’ll smack me . . .
I’m so hungry, why do they make us sit through services . . .
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the rabbi skipped the sermon . . .
Yossele, the girl had called him. Her father, the rabbi, must have built him. She thought of Kreindel’s stubborn will, her clear refusal to change an iota of herself to suit the Asylum’s conventions. She’d have to move on from her father’s way of
