Read Online Bertrand Court by Michelle Brafman - Free Book Online Page B

and reached for the sifter with her right; the flour fell like snow into the mixing bowl, green as Katie Flanagan’s eyes.
    September 1990
    Sylvia
    It was the third Rosh Hashanah after Irving died before Sylvia found herself back on Goldie’s street, now treeless thanks to that Dutch elm business. Irving’s stroke was as good a reason as any for Sylvia to drift from Goldie’s life; she had spent fifteen years feeding him applesauce and toileting him. Like a baby.
    Broken glass and greasy McDonald’s bags littered the playground where she’d once watched Simon play kick-the-can and Hannah and Amy swing across the bars like monkeys. A Hmong woman wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt nodded to her as she checked what Sylvia would always regard as Zelda Greenberg’s mailbox. A little girl, probably the woman’s granddaughter, played cat’s cradle with an old shoelace on the steps.
    Sylvia never thought she’d miss Zelda, just as she didn’t realize how much she’d missed Goldie until Simon called last week to tell her that his mother was getting confused, that the fire department had come twice to her duplex after she’d gone to bed with a kugel in the oven, that he’d hired a nurse to make sure that she ate and bathed, that there might not be too many good conversations with Goldie left.
    She was glad Simon had called. Both Simon and his son Eric had inherited Hyman’s bad skin and good heart. For the past fifteen years, the first of the month had always brought that thin envelope addressed to “Aunt Sylvia Savitz” in Simon’s doctor’s scrawl. Sylvia could never repay Goldie, or Simon for that matter, for all the money they’d given her over the years, but she had another idea. Her pocketbook dangled from her forearm, slapping her hip as she walked. Zipped safely in the side pocket, wrapped in one of Mama’s old handkerchiefs, was the freshly polished baby spoon, her peace offering to Goldie. She would give it to her right away.
    All those years of schlepping Irving around had given Sylvia a bad back, which now ached from walking four blocks with the bags holding her Rosh Hashanah feast: cabbage rolls, kishke, a brisket, an icebox cake, and a few raspberries from her backyard. She climbed the steps to Goldie’s duplex, that old burn in her gut catching fire just from thinking about what had to be done. When she let herself into the kitchen, she was rattled to find a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts and an old coffee cup on the counter. The potato bowl sat empty. Mama had taught Goldie and Sylvia to always keep a potato or two in the house to fill out a meal. The kitchen smelled clean, though — maybe too clean.
    â€œIn here, Heidi,” Goldie called out from the living room. “Did you pick up the chocolate chips?”
    Heidi must be her help. Just like Goldie to order people to the grocery store. Sylvia smiled, relieved that her sister was up to her usual tricks, took a deep breath, and went into the living room, which smelled as her own had during Irving’s last year, like fish and antiseptic.
    Goldie looked as if her old chair — threadbare and faded to a mustard green — might swallow her up. Her arthritic hands sat folded on her lap, and as she shifted her weight, the plastic cover made a crinkling noise under her shrunken frame.
    â€œSylvia?” Goldie smiled like a child opening her first Hanukkah present, too surprised to show the practiced cold shoulder she’d been perfecting these past years.
    â€œI brought you a few things.” Sylvia was still holding the shopping bags.
    Goldie stared at her sister, grinning, adjusting her loose housedress, revealing her bony shoulders and freckled skin. “You know Viola Schnitz died. Dropped dead. Heart attack,” she said, as if she’d seen Sylvia just yesterday. She patted her chest.
    Viola Schnitz had been dead for thirteen years, but maybe Goldie