The next morning brought a ring of the doorbell and a call from the other side. “Everyone decent?”
Weird, it sounded like Stavroula. But it couldn’t be.
It was her.
“You live here too?” Geno said.
“My mother does,” she said. “And she has summoned you to breakfast.”
“Me?”
“All of you. Lilia made matzo brei. Hi, cookie.” She hugged Jav as Stef tapped Geno’s shoulder and handed him a new toothbrush. Geno retrieved his black jeans and shirt from the dryer, ran wet hands through his hair and used a few swipes of the Right Guard he found in the medicine cabinet. They went upstairs to a gorgeous apartment, inhabited by two white-haired ladies.
“This is my mother, Rory” Stef said, indicating the neater-dressed of the pair.
“And this is my mother, Lilia,” Stav said, an arm around the other.
Geno looked at the two women. He looked at Jav and Stef, then back.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said, deciding nothing was going to surprise him for the rest of the day.
Two matzo breis graced the dining room table. Circles of crisp, unleavened bread fried with beaten eggs and cinnamon, each bigger than a steering wheel.
“Wow, I haven’t had this in years,” Geno said, pulling his chair in.
“You’re Jewish?” Lilia said, leaning on his chair to pour coffee. “Who made it for you?”
“My mother. We called it matzo surprise.”
“Did she make savory or sweet?”
“Sweet. Sprinkled with sugar.”
“I make both,” Lilia said. “Help yourself. Please.” As her hand made an encompassing gesture to the food, Geno caught the tattooed numbers on her forearm.
Maybe nothing would surprise him for the rest of his life.
He ate a big triangle of the sweet brei, piled high with fresh peaches, strawberries and blueberries and sprinkled with coarse sugar. Then he managed a small piece of the savory, topped with a poached egg.
“Ugh.” Jav put his napkin down, groaning. “I ate too much.”
“Wimp,” Stef said, stabbing the last pieces off Jav’s plate.
“You’re a garbage disposal.”
“He used to be the pickiest eater,” Rory said, setting her silverware across her plate. “Drove me demented.”
“What’s everyone up to today?” Stav said, checking her phone.
“I have to finish my taxes,” Stef said morosely, picking up brei crumbs with a fingertip.
“I have editing,” Jav said, looking even more morose.
“Lilia and I have tickets to Avery Fisher Hall,” Rory said, glancing at her watch.
Stav set her elbows on the table and her chin on her fists. Her eyes met Geno’s. “Feel like being of service?”
Stav opened the door of The Bake & Bagel on Horatio Street and ushered Geno in. The shop was humming. A din of conversation and shouted orders mixed with heady, crisp smells of dough, coffee and bacon. Like a couple of goodfellas, Stav and Geno went behind the counter and into the back room. It was hotter in here, the yeasty, baked smell stronger. Stav walked around a half-dozen shelved rolling carts and big wire baskets. Two huge industrial ovens took up the back wall, and two men were loading them with long planks, each plank lined with plump, boiled bagels.
“Baking is done up here,” Stav said. “Dough is made downstairs.” She stopped and looked back at Geno. “You did want the tour, yes?”
“Oh hell, yeah,” he said.
She took him through a door and down a flight of wooden stairs. They emerged into the cool, low-ceilinged dough room. Everything was clean, white and silver. Two big mixers, each coming up to the middle of Geno’s thigh. More rolling carts with white shelves. White five-gallon buckets. White sacks of flour. Two metal doors leading, Geno guessed, to walk-in coolers. Dean Martin warbled from a radio and Micah Kalo sang along as he tidied up the work surfaces.
“Dad, this is Geno,” Stav said.
“I remember you,” Micah said. “You know good music.” His handshake was dry and dusty, leaving Geno’s palm coated with flour.
“He’s agreed to be your slave for the afternoon.”
Micah drove a van for Meals on Wheels. His regular partner was sick, so Geno rode shotgun through the route in Brooklyn. The spring day was beautiful. Clear blue skies over the Big Apple. Cool enough for a jacket, bright enough for shades and frequent pauses to let the sun shine on your face. The afternoon also carried the odd sensation of a blind date. Geno was sure Stav hadn’t teamed him up with Micah out of need. She wanted them to spend the day together for a reason.
Whatever the ulterior motive, Geno enjoyed the work. They delivered the pre-made meals mostly to homebound senior citizens. At some stops, they carried in milk crates of pantry items as well. Lots of boxes of matzo, bottles of wine and grape juice, kosher salt and horseradish.
“Getting ready for Passover,” Micah said. “This is nothing, though. Week before, when we’re running around delivering fifty shank bones and a hundred dozen eggs? It’s crazy. Then some of the real orthodox ones box up and sell me all their leavened items.” He made air quotes around sell. “I hold the boxes a week and then they buy it all back. It’s a charade but it makes the rabbis happy.”
As they moved in and out of apartments and duplexes and houses, Geno noticed Micah could converse in several languages.
“It’s what I did after the war,” Micah said.
“What?”
“Translate for the British.”
“Where?”
“Bergen-Belsen.”
“Oh.”
The day passed quickly. Geno relished long, deep breaths into the bottom of his stomach and the wide-open tunnel of his chest. How for once, his thoughts didn’t rest in a snarly tangle in his head, but moved aside to let other people’s problems take priority. Or even let absolutely nothing have a turn.
“Volunteering is like soul food,” Micah said. “Sometimes you need to do selfless things for a selfish reason. But everyone wins, so no harm, no foul.”
Back in Manhattan, Micah checked the van in and took Geno to the Bake & Bagel for a late lunch.
“House special,” Stavroula said, setting down two paper plates. “Grilled cheese and tomato on the bacon bagel.”
“Holy crap,” Geno said.
“Reward for a job well done,” Micah said, taking an enormous bite with a grunt of pleasure.
“You don’t keep kosher?” Geno asked.
“I’m not Jewish,” Micah said behind his fist.
“Oh. I thought because you were in the camps…”
Still shielded behind his hand, Micah shook his head. “My father was a top gun in the Greek Resistance. Nazis arrested me and my mother and my siblings trying to flush him out.”
“No shit.”
“We wore green triangles. Not yellow stars.”
“And they sent you to Belsen?”
“Haidari first. Mean little camp outside Athens. My mother died there. Then we were sent to Auschwitz. When the Reds were advancing, the Germans evacuated the camp and marched us west. The British liberated us from Belsen.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
Geno smiled weakly. “My mother died too but it doesn’t really compare.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she didn’t die in a concentration camp.”
“How did she die?”
“Cancer. When I was fifteen.”
“Same age as me, then. Your mother is your mother. Whether she’s snatched away from you by disease or violence, you’re never the same.”
“It’s kind of like the end of the world.”
Micah nodded and wiped off his mustache. “For me, though, the world had already ended. When the Nazis came and then the famine, the world I knew was over. When my mother and older brother died at Haidari, I was already numb. I was sad, but the sadness was detached. It wasn’t a priority. It required too much energy.”
“Like your brain noted it on a clipboard,” Geno said. “The human is sad. This is unfortunate. We will address it later.”
Micah’s finger raised off his coffee cup. “Exactly.”
“Like you made all the feeling and emotion happen to someone else.”
The old man’s eyes were steady on him, the chin continuing to nod. “You speak like one who knows.”
“Did anyone from your family survive?”
“No.”
“You’re the only one left?”
“Yes.”
“Same with me.”
But that wasn’t quite true. And later that night, he called Zoe.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I was just about to call you. Tom and I read the news in the paper. The FBI arrested Anthony Fox. Geno, they got him.”
“They got him.”
“It was right in Manhattan.” Her voice was raised, shaking a little. “I mean he was right there, close to where you’re living.”
“I know,” Geno said, and told her what happened at the bar.
“Oh my God. Geno, thank God. Holy shit, you must’ve been terrified.”
“I was but it was so surreal, it feels like a dream now.”
“Still, the relief…”
“I’m still taking it in.”
“I’m so happy for you. Does happy sound weird? Should I be saying something else?”
“No,” Geno said, laughing. “Happy for me works fine. But actually, I wanted to ask you something else. Totally unrelated.”
“Fire away.”
“Do you know where Dad’s relatives lived in Europe?”
“Oh God, no. Dad was third-generation, his great-grandparents came here in the eighteen-nineties. They were from somewhere in Germany. Why?”
“I was talking to a man today who was in the camps. I wondered if we had family who were caught up in that whole thing.”
“Well, I don’t doubt some Caan ancestors and relations were caught up in it, but I couldn’t say who.”
“I was just wondering.”
“It might be an interesting project. I’m always seeing commercials for ancestry websites and it gets me thinking about my roots.”
“Yeah. Well. How is everyone?”
“Good. Matthew still misses you.”
“I miss him too,” Geno said. “Anyway, I wanted to say hi.”
“I’m so glad you called,” Zoe said, sounding exactly like Nathan. “And I’m so weirdly happy for you about everything.”
He laughed. “Me too.”