The Matchmaker's Gift(20)
A few days later, Miss Perelman told Sara that she’d gone to Grand Street to pick up some strawberries. Sara tried her best not to show her excitement. “How were they?” she asked.
Miss Perelman’s cheeks turned glossy pink. Her eyes, dull as soap the day before, flashed with a new, white-hot resolve. “They were the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted.”
The moment the bell rang, Sara ran to Grand Street, where Sam was working in front of the store. Not only was his apron clean and pressed, but his wayward curls were neatly combed. He was stacking pints of strawberries on a long wooden table, displaying them as artfully as if they were flowers.
Sara gestured to the table, to his apron, and his hair. “What’s all of this?” she asked, feigning surprise.
“I had a special customer yesterday,” Sam confessed. “I am hoping she returns this afternoon.”
* * *
Sara went on making matches in secret this way, pairing people together like a rogue puppeteer. One year passed, and then another. Slowly, the neighborhood shadchanim noticed something curious: engagements and weddings were on the rise, but fewer families seemed to require their services. Suspicious, they listened on the streets and in the synagogues for Sara’s name. When they did not hear it, they began to wonder whether a different matchmaker was interfering.
The Lewis Street shadchan came to her house again, but this time, Sara’s father was not strong enough to see him. Sara’s mother asked her to send the man away.
Sara stood in front of the open doorway. “My father is sleeping,” she explained. “He isn’t well.”
“I am sorry to hear,” said the marriage broker. “His health should only improve in the future.” He shifted back and forth on his feet, clearly uncomfortable in her presence. The shadchan was a deeply religious man, and the rules of modesty did not permit him to be alone with her, not even for a brief conversation. At sixteen, she was technically of marriageable age, and in the shadchan’s eyes, she was a woman.
He took a few steps backward so that he stood firmly in the hallway. “My colleagues and I have been perplexed,” he admitted. “Will you allow me to ask you a question?”
Sara straightened her shoulders and looked the man in the eye. Almost three years had passed since the last time they spoke, and he was more beleaguered than she remembered. His tall silk hat had lost its shine. “Go ahead,” Sara said.
“Everywhere we look, our people stand beneath the chuppah, yet my brethren and I see our business decline. Do you have any idea why this might be?”
Sara shrugged. “Perhaps, in this country, with all of its freedoms and choices, a shadchan is less necessary than in the old world.”
The matchmaker wrung his hands and sighed. He tipped his tall hat and made a small bow before shuffling down the hall toward the stairs. “I hope and pray that you are wrong,” he said. “My best to your father. Zie gezunt!”
* * *
Despite the marriage broker’s blessing, her father’s health continued to decline. Since coming to New York, Sara’s father had worked as a presser for a suit maker on the corner of Pelham Street. Sara’s oldest brother, Joe, worked alongside him, and her younger brothers helped out after school. Even with all of them holding down jobs, there was barely enough money to cover household expenses. The money Aaron brought home from teaching young boys Hebrew helped a little, but he was still saving to buy tickets to bring his siblings to New York.
When their father became too sick to work, Hindel took a job sewing pockets into women’s coats. But soon her stomach swelled with her second child, and the boss of the shop asked her to leave. Sara offered to quit school to take Hindel’s place, but her father and mother would not hear of it. “Enough with such nonsense!” her mother cried. “You will be the first in the family to finish school in this country. If you quit now, why did we come?”
Her father called Sara to his bedside. His beard, once so full, had grown sparse and white. His breathing was labored; his face was flushed. “A mind like yours is a gift,” he said. “No matter what happens, you must try to get as much education as you can. Will you promise me?”
“Yes, Papa. I promise.”
The months that followed brought conflicting emotions. While Hindel expanded, her father shrank. In the crowded apartment, there was no escape—growth and decay were pressed together like teeth.
Hindel’s daughter arrived on an August afternoon, in the middle of a week-long heat wave. Aaron ran down to the pushcart on the corner and bought everyone paper cups of lemon ice to celebrate. Sara spooned the shavings into her father’s mouth while he lay propped up against a pillow in bed. The baby was named for their father’s mother, Fannie, but they called her Florence, a “good American name.”
On the seventh morning after Florence was born, Sara’s father couldn’t be roused. Her mother’s shouts woke everyone but the baby, who slept peacefully through the doctor’s visit. “I am sorry to tell you,” the doctor said, “but you should prepare yourselves.”
In the evening, when Sara’s father took his last breath, Florence opened her eyes and began to wail. The noise filled the apartment and flooded the hall. The cries were so mournful, so loud and long, that even the ice man on the corner was concerned. When he learned the sad news from one of the neighbors, he murmured a prayer under his breath. “What is life but a cup of lemon ice?” he said. “Sweet and bitter and gone too soon.”