Chapter 19
NINETEEN
NOW: AUGUST
It takes Sam a few weeks to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Things don’t usually work out for him, that’s all.
If his life has taught him anything, it’s not to put too much faith in any stroke of good fortune.
Too often, Sam’s found that good luck is, in fact, ruinous luck in a cheap costume, dressed up to lure him into a false sense of security before sweeping his legs out from under him.
It makes him nervous when things are going too well, especially with the Jake disaster so freshly behind him.
He can’t help but tense up, determined to be prepared for it all to go wrong.
But this time, amazingly, it doesn’t go wrong.
He thought Deb would change her mind with a few days to hang around, observe, and be convinced to turn against him by the thick summer humidity that always used to sour her mood.
He was sure that she would determine upon reflection that he’s not fit to take over after all.
She doesn’t. Instead, she seems more relaxed inside the walls of Silverman’s than he’s ever seen her, joking with the staff and regular customers, doctoring a nametag so it reads, Deb Silverman: Emeritus Proprietor.
Most of the people who see it don’t even register it as a joke, but when Talya arrives three days after Deb does, free from her dig for a few weeks due to some unfortunate flooding, she laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world.
It hurts, honestly, that laugh. Seeing the way their shared humor crackles between them throws Sam back into too many conversations with Jake, how easy it all felt until it became so devastatingly hard.
But it’s good to see Talya, who had made a special effort with Sam from the moment she and Deb first met, a few years into Sam’s time at Silverman’s.
She’s kind for all she’s blunt, and Sam can tell Deb’s filled her in on his romantic agonies.
Talya handles him with the sort of care he imagines she brings to fossils she’s excavating, telling him stories about terrible breakups in her academic circle and insisting he join her and Deb for dinner most nights, even when he can tell Deb herself would have accepted his half-hearted excuses, left him to determine his own fate.
Sam’s not sure if it’s that, or the way the staff throw him a surprise congratulations party at which no one lets him cook anything, or the fact that Eileen bakes him a Black Forest cake; maybe it’s just the bubble of helpless, overwrought pride that swells in his chest as he watches Deb’s name get scraped off the back office door and replaced with his own.
But whatever it is, as one week unwinds into a second, and then a third, Sam finds himself ready not to determine his own fate, but to embrace the one the world has already presented to him.
He said it to Dani at the West Side Market, didn’t he?
Just before Jake turned up and everything kicked off?
Silverman’s is Sam’s one true love, written in huge, bold letters across the ventricles of his heart.
Jake confused things for him for a minute there, made him think that perhaps there was room in his life for another kind of love, but Sam was kidding himself.
The lesson of his teen years, which he’d learned thoroughly and well, was that he was the kind of person who couldn’t be trusted with another person’s heart.
Now he knows that whether that’s true or not, trusting another person with his leads to ruin and anguish and abject humiliation, and isn’t worth the trouble.
But Silverman’s… Silverman’s is worth the trouble.
Silverman’s can’t go behind his back, or lie to him about what it wants, what it’s done, who it is.
Silverman’s can’t hurt him, not the way Jake hurt him, and Sam’s even starting to believe that he can be trusted not to hurt it.
He knows Silverman’s, what it needs and what it’s likely to ask of him, where its weak spots are, how to help it when it’s struggling.
He feels, inside its familiar, beloved walls, not only like he’s part of something, but like that something is worth being part of.
That’s enough. Silverman’s is enough; of course it’s enough. Sam’s pretty sure if he keeps telling himself that, one of these days he’ll even start believing that it’s true.
In service of this goal, Sam does what he’s always done when his personal life is a shambles: He puts his head down and works through the disquieting sense that he’s lost an essential organ.
He clears Deb’s stuff out of her office and replaces it with his own; he reorganizes the entire dining room, as well as the apartment upstairs.
Trying to believe it has nothing to do with what Jake said, he puts the Pastrami Arnold and the green onion blintzes on the menu during the second week Deb’s in town.
She and Talya rave about both dishes, and the customers do, too, extensively enough that Sam drafts up a potential new menu and starts workshopping it during family meal.
The staff are effusive about the results in a way that deeply gratifies him—true food people can’t and won’t fake it when it comes to deliciousness—and that makes him feel good, or close enough to good to get on with.
He’s not sure he’ll ever feel properly good again, with this lingering sense of betrayal and despair biting at the back of his heels, but “close enough” is just fine.
This conclusion—that close enough is just fine—seems to be the one the triplets come to as well.
Deb was right about Joanie and the power of her conflict-resolution skills; that first afternoon all three sisters slink back into the deli after several hours, looking drawn and chastened but, at least, speaking to each other.
To Sam’s amazement, they all willingly come back for several more chat sessions with Joanie playing referee, never discussing a word of what was said upon descending on the dining room for post-conversation sandwiches.
By their last meetup, nearly a full three weeks after the initial blow-out, there’s an easy energy between them that Sam’s never seen before, even when they were small.
Daisy and Iris have agreed to find a roommate, and even seem excited about Luce’s job, and Luce makes it clear that she has abandoned all desire to emancipate herself from triplethood.
“Confidential,” Luce tells him, smirking, when Sam asks her what the hell they talked about to manage that. “Sister stuff. Sorry—as a brother, you’re simply not qualified.”
But Joanie laughs when he asks her, and shakes her head, and says, “Oh, Sammy. Never could leave well enough alone, could you? You get that from your aunt, you know. I won’t tell you what they said—it’s their business—but they just got a little mixed up, that’s all.
Sometimes you get so attached to the idea of who someone is that it’s hard to see the actual person right in front of you. ”
Sam knows how that is all too well, and is sure based on her expression that it must show in his face. He retreats back to the safety of Silverman’s before she can ask him about it.
Unfortunately, the safety of Silverman’s is somewhat conditional, that condition being the disposition of his aunt, his aunt’s wife, and his aunt’s best friend.
In the circumstances, it takes Sam a few days too long to realize this, and, as such, he doesn’t recognize the danger until it’s already upon him.
It’s a Wednesday morning in August when the three of them descend on him in what’s obviously a coordinated attack.
They box him at the front counter like pack hunters in one of those nature documentaries Sam used to binge back in the day, when he first moved in upstairs.
Deb’s causally leaning against the doorway that leads to his office and the kitchen, blocking it off.
Talya’s got her elbows balanced against the flip-top section of the counter, preventing any exit that way.
And Joanie’s to his left, tucked up against the prep space where she’s absolutely not supposed to be and keeping him from turning his focus away from them.
They all have identical anticipatory expressions on their faces—a mixture of concern and resolve that spells nothing but trouble.
“Oh, God,” says Sam.
Deb laughs. “For heaven’s sake, don’t look so scared. You’re not in trouble.”
“Too old,” Talya agrees, and looks surprised when the other two give her identical horrified grimaces. “What? Is that rude? He is! An adult can’t be in trouble with another adult, not really. Not in the way you mean, anyway.”
“My love,” Deb says, in the fondly exasperated tones of the happily married, “it’s not that that’s not a fine point well made, but a bit rude, yes. Comments about someone’s age—”
“Almost always are,” Talya finishes, sounding as though she’s remembering it as she does. “Right, right. Sorry, Sam.”
Sam grins at her, shaking his head. “Not to drive home the wrong point or anything, but I liked it, actually.”
“Too young,” Joanie groans, and everyone laughs, even—if looking slightly confused about it—Talya.
And then, when Sam’s guard is down, they strike: Joanie gives Deb a Look with a decidedly capital “L,” and Deb clears her throat and says, “Speaking of being young, and old, and, uh—”
“You’re moping, Sammy,” Joanie says, cutting to the heart of the thing with a roll of her eyes. “And we’ve all seen you mope like this once before—only once before—”
“Deb didn’t even know Talya then!” Sam doesn’t bother saying, What are you talking about? on the theory that it would be a pointless waste of breath. “She couldn’t have seen me! Foul!”
“Oh no,” Deb says, very dry, “whatever will we do? Kid, come on. You know that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” Sam is very afraid of the answer, because he’s so sure it’s going to be—
“We want you,” Talya says, in bright if slightly fatalistic tones, “to let us set you up!”