Chapter 4: Shabbat

Esther Sklar opened her front door in Margate before we reached the top step.

She was five feet tall in her stocking feet and she hugged me around the ribs.

"Look at you," she said into my blouse. "You have your mother's mouth. You have her gap, God help you."

"Mrs. Sklar," I said.

"Esther. Mrs. Sklar was my mother-in-law, and she hated me."

She let go and pushed her reading glasses up her nose.

"Gina and I ran the church bazaar stove together for six years," she said.

"I made her laugh so hard once that she dropped a tray of cannoli."

My throat closed up.

Nobody had said my mother's name to me in ten years.

"Ma," Asher said, behind me. "Let her in the house."

"I'm letting, I'm letting. Wipe your feet."

It was Friday, six days after the club, and in six nights I had not slept once in the bed he gave me.

The house was brick and narrow, with a long dining table set under a low yellow light.

It smelled of onions and roasting meat and warm bread.

There were two silver candlesticks in the middle of the table, a braided loaf under an embroidered cloth, and three places set.

"Three places," I said. "It's only the two of you."

"Three places," Esther said. "Every Friday for ten years, I set the third one."

"For the guest," Asher said, with a note of warning.

"And nobody ever sat in it," Esther said. "Tonight somebody finally did."

"Ma."

"What? It's true."

She put me in the chair next to her son's and lit the candles.

She waved her hands over the flames three times and covered her eyes.

She said a blessing in a low voice that I did not understand and did not want to interrupt.

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