Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
L eah mentally kicked herself all the way to Erie. Why on earth had she let Avi Wolfson, of all people, look at the bucket list? She chalked it up to some sort of boba tea-induced bonding moment hallucination.
Of course he was going to make fun. And think she had no life beyond the walls of the retirement community. It had hit a little too close to home – perhaps that’s why when she opened her mouth, she let the fib about Mrs. Ackerman’s grandson fly.
A friend is setting us up. On the Matzo Baller.
Jaz could send all the dick emojis in the world and not come close to manifesting that. And now, to learn Avi himself would be on said boat? Good times.
At least he’d be out of her latke-scented hair as soon as this errand was over and she could drop him at the bus terminal.
Avi took the box of Mrs. Horowitz’s belongings from Leah. “I’ll carry it in.”
Leah appreciated the offer, as she had been growing more apprehensive the closer they got to Hattie’s address. Stories of the two sisters’ rivalry were legendary and frankly, the elder Hattie made Linda Horowitz sound like even more of a saint.
“Welcome, welcome.” The octogenarian held the door just wide enough for them to slip past. Introductions were made, but Hattie’s eyes were on the cardboard box. They widened.
She pushed aside her sister’s urn; even ignored the antique jewelry box in search of something else. Her dentures flashed and she gasped as if she were removing the Ark of the Covenant from deep within. “There it is, finally.”
She held a battered recipe box aloft, decoupaged with what looked like the fronts of old greeting cards. Flowers and Victorian women graced the top.
“Saul’s a coward. Couldn’t bring himself to visit? He was my beau first, you know. We flirted at the school dance. I drank too much Schnapps that night, he drove me home. Next thing I know, I wake up in my bed still in my dress shoes and wham blam, Linda’s got a date with him the next night. All she wrote! Linda got her own wedding china, her own silver. I never married. I got my mother’s dreck . What I really wanted were her recipes, but she left them to Linda . But now…now I’ll finally be able to make her brisket! Her latkes this year, for Hanukkah!”
She greedily flipped through the box, tossing other handwritten cards onto the dining room table.
“That spiteful bitch! Where are they?” She sucked on her dentures in disbelief before looking the messengers straight in the eye. “I knew it was too good to be true. Linda always said she would take them to her grave. Unless you took them?”
Hattie threw a mistrustful eye at the young couple before her. Then she flipped open the jewelry box, rummaging to the bottom in case what she sought had been stashed there. Letting necklaces drip through her splayed fingers. “Mostly costume.”
“She wanted you to have – ”
“I don’t want any of this! I want my mother’s brisket.” She shoved the box back into Avi’s arms. “You can keep it all for your trouble. Including that gawdawful coat. What would I want with fifty pounds of musty Persian lamb?”
“But…she wanted you to scatter her ashes at Niagara Falls this spring. Where she and Saul honeymooned, fifty years next April.”
“No brisket, no second honeymoon.”
It was a standoff.
“Better call Saul,” Avi whispered.
Leah pulled the urn from the box. “No. I will take her there myself. I’ve always wanted to see the Falls, anyway.” What was one more item added to the bucket list, anyway? And a few extra hours?
She marched out of the house, and down the front steps. “Leave the box, we could use the extra cargo space. She can deal with it how she likes.”
Leah turned as Avi dropped the box on the stoop. Hattie was staring at them through the storm door, get-off-my-lawn vibes in full effect.
“It was orange juice, you know!”
“What’s that?” Hattie opened the storm door a crack.
“It was orange juice. That’s what made your mom’s brisket so good. Linda made it for every temple potluck, every Hadassah fundraiser. It was legendary. And everyone knew it was the orange juice, because she would tell them when they asked!”
Mrs. Horowitz had been the kindest, warmest woman. She was the one who showed up at their door, fed them for weeks after her mother left. Brisket and chicken fricassee and all her dad’s favorites. She was always there for them. In that fur coat that didn’t smell musty, but like the fabulous Chanel no 5 she always wore.
“She always said the secret ingredient was love. So obviously you will never be able to recreate it, even if you had the recipe in your petty little hand!”
With that, Leah stomped to the car, carefully placed the urn back in the hatchback, and got back behind the wheel. Her hands shook as she fought to jam the keys in the ignition.
Was this how the rest of the trip was going to be? Full of false hope and disappointment? It didn’t bode well for the rest of the bucket list.
There was a knock on her window. With her nerves on edge and her thoughts spiraling, she flinched. Avi’s knuckles tapped again, gentler this time, before he shoved his hands in the pockets of the fur coat for warmth.
She rolled down the window.
“Let me drive.”
“I’m fine.” Her fingers fumbled with her phone. “Let me just… I’ll map it to the bus terminal.” Her shaking hands knocked it clear off its stand and down by her feet. “Dammit!” She felt around on the floormat, gritty with road salt, for her errant device. “I don’t want you to miss – ”
“Fuck the bus terminal, Leah.”
She looked up. Avi puffed a locomotive breath in the frigid air, hands still jammed in the pockets. “Buffalo’s on the way to Niagara Falls. My turn to drive.”
“You don’t have a license.”
“Yes I do.” He grinned. “I have Tobin’s.”
Relief flooded her nervous system, replacing the adrenaline. She wouldn’t have to make the next unexpected leg of the trip alone.
“And I have this.” From the left hand pocket of Mrs. Horowitz’s coat, he pulled a fifty dollar Canadian bill. “Looks like gas is on Linda.”
“Do you think it’s left over from their honeymoon?”
“Maybe? That would be pretty cool.”
The bill was definitely old. Paper. Not like the newer, polymer-plastic money with their holographs of the Queen that Buck would dole out for per diem when they played Toronto, Quebec, Montreal.
Avi wondered what Buck was doing right now. And whether he himself would become just one of the tour manager’s anecdotes. Then there was the time we forgot the lead singer of Painted Doors at a rest stop!
What was his name again?
Leah held the foreign currency up to the light as Avi maneuvered them along the shores of Lake Erie. The mental map in his head told him he could follow this particular Great Lake all the way up to Buffalo.
There was no way he was going to let her drive on her own, not after the cage match with that crotchety bee-otch Hattie. Leah had been bold in her delivery, standing up to the old broad, but Avi could tell it had knocked some of the wind out of her sails.
And that damn oil light was still on.
“Maybe we shouldn’t spend it, just in case.”
“It’s cash money, Letty. With the exchange rate in our favor, it’s a tank full.”
The nickname slid from his lips again, as easily as if they were old friends with history, and not just acquaintances from the past. He thought about all the people crossing his adult path, how he had had to train his brain to even remember a first name, a last name, an association. And here he was remembering little Letty? Leah Tova bat Yael?
Not to mention her Hebrew name, Lirit . Meaning “musical.”
“We’ll see,” she said, popping open her glove compartment to stash the bill. “Oh my God.” She began to laugh.
Avi glanced over. She had pulled out a folded piece of paper. It had grease spatters on it, and looked well-worn.
“Saul gave it to me the other day! So I could make that industrial batch of latkes for the building. ‘Scant flour, pinch of salt…’ Should we go back?”
“Hell no! That woman deserves to eat soggy, mediocre latkes for the rest of her days.” Avi smiled as she smoothed the old recipe against her denim-clad leg. “He gave it to you for a reason.”
“Yeah. I think he did.” Leah laughed as she pretended to yell back over her shoulder toward Erie. “Better blanch those potatoes after grating, Hattie!”
“Sounds like the ancient Jewish secret to me.” Avi flicked on the cruise control. “Maybe you’ll have time to make them for whatshisface. Doctor Perfect.”
He didn’t have to take his eyes from the road to know Leah was giving him that brow lift. Gone was her pre-teen unibrow, and in its place, carefully sculpted arches that conveyed a myriad of emotions. Currently calling him out on his bullshit.
“Please refrain from adding items to my bucket list where the doctor is concerned.”
Avi shrugged. “Sounds more ‘ bashert ’ than ‘bucket’ to me. Just saying.”
She tossed him a glance. “Is that something you believe in? The whole destiny, find-your-soulmate thing?”
“Jury’s still out.”
“Well, tease me all you want,” Leah said, reaching for her phone. “I should at least make sure we’re still on for our meetup on Friday.”
Avi was keenly aware that the ‘we’ and ‘our’ were no longer about the two of them, and that their adventure would be over soon after they crossed the PA line into New York state. And yet each time they climbed back into the car, it was smelling less like latke grease and more like...
Sweet, warm, happy.
He still couldn’t quite identify it – or the feeling in the pit of his belly – and whether it was due to Leah, no food since the mall food court, or the realization that he was one show away from the Baller and seeing Sylvie.
It was as if some spell cast over the SUV had made that eventuality feel very far away. A spell that he wasn’t quite ready to break just yet.