Chapter Fifteen

FIFTEEN

SEPTEMBER 1987

“You wanna tell me why you went on a date with that schmuck ?”

Augusta had fallen asleep by the pool, but at the sound of Irving’s voice, she opened her eyes. When she pulled off her sunglasses, there was Irving beside her, frowning.

“Excuse me?” she said. “What are you talking about?” Augusta raised the back of her lounge chair to a sitting position. She never napped in the afternoon, but the sun was strong and the air was heavy with a somnolent humidity.

“You and Dr. Birnbaum . At the yogurt shop. Drooling over each other like teenagers.” As usual, his voice was a notch too loud. People were turning their heads to see what the commotion was about.

“Shh,” she hissed. “Have you lost your mind? Or did you finally have the stroke we joked about?”

“Don’t be cute,” Irving said. “I’m asking you a serious question.”

“More like making a serious accusation. Yes, I got frozen yogurt with Nathaniel, but we certainly weren’t drooling over each other. Not that frozen yogurt could even make me drool—I prefer real ice cream, in case you’re wondering.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Irving pouted.

“What do you mean, what you heard? ”

He shrugged. “Harold picked up a pint of yogurt last night. He was in and out quick, but he spotted the two of you.”

“He spotted us, huh? And he reported this to you?” Augusta sat up a little straighter. “So now you have people spying on me?”

Irving swiped his hand in the air as if to say it was no big deal. “No one’s spying. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Me, dramatic? You’re the one accusing me of drooling in public, over a man I haven’t seen for six decades.”

“Harold said you were all dressed up.”

Augusta sighed. “ That’s what’s bothering you? Yes, I admit it. I was overdressed for frozen yogurt.”

When Irving continued to pout, she continued. “Fine. You want to know all the details? Yesterday morning I was swimming my laps and Nathaniel was in the pool swimming his. He looked familiar and then we figured out that we knew each other back in Brooklyn. I asked about Evie, his wife—you remember her? She used to be one of my closest friends.”

Irving nodded.

“So then we talked about his grandkids and the house he goes to in Maine. Turned out he had an extra ticket for the symphony, and he asked me if I wanted to go. It was in Palm Beach, so I figured I’d better wear something decent. After the concert, we went for yogurt. And that’s the whole story. Are you happy now?”

“I don’t like you dating him. He’s a snob, is what he is. With his fancy degrees and his summer house.” Irving motioned to the chairs around the pool and the dozing men that occupied them. “You wanna date? Pick someone else.”

Augusta sucked in an angry breath. Her blood was boiling in her veins. “I don’t even know where to begin with that statement. First,” she said, through tightly clenched teeth, “last night was not a date. I’m not dating Nathaniel. Second, even if it had been a date, whether you like it or not makes no difference to me. You have no say in who I choose to date, just as you have no say in what I choose to eat for lunch.”

“Yeah, look how well that turned out.” Irving snorted. “I told you not to get the tuna!”

“This isn’t about a tuna sandwich! What’s your problem with Nathaniel Birnbaum anyway? What did he ever do to you?”

Irving winced as if he’d been punched. “He… took something from me. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“He took something from you? What, like money? Are you telling me that Nathaniel swiped your wallet or something? Because he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy to me.”

“He didn’t take money.”

“What was it then? Whiskey from your bootlegging father-in-law?”

“Lower your voice with that, okay?” Irving whispered. “People here don’t know who my father-in-law was.”

“So you’re allowed to shout at the top of your lungs that I was throwing myself at some man, but I’m supposed to protect your reputation?” At that moment, Augusta wished she were anywhere but Florida. Anywhere but sitting beside Irving Rivkin. She wished she were back home in New York, in her apartment. Alone. She lowered her voice. “Fine,” she whispered. “Whatever you say. But tell me what Nathaniel took that was so terrible.”

“It wasn’t a thing. It was more like… a moment.”

Augusta stared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means…” He paused. “Dammit. Look. All you need to know is that if it hadn’t been for Birnbaum, my life would have turned out the way it was supposed to.”

There was something heartbreaking about the way Irving said it—a hitch in his voice that caught her by surprise. What in the world is he talking about?

If she hadn’t been so annoyed, she might have reached for his hand. But Augusta kept her hands and her thoughts to herself. “Seems to me your life didn’t turn out so badly,” she said.

He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, before shutting it abruptly and turning his head. From the side, he looked like the Irving she once knew—the sweet, funny young man from so long ago. When he finally turned his face back toward hers, the wrinkles and age spots faded away. All that was left were two sad blue eyes staring at her as if time had reversed. As if he were still her father’s delivery boy, still her dance partner, still her best friend.

The Florida sunshine beat down on her chest, but Augusta found herself shivering in the heat. Her body and brain stiffened and froze, as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of ice cream too quickly. She waited for Irving to take his eyes off her, but he refused to look away.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said.

That night, Augusta called her niece. “Are you making new friends?” Jackie asked.

“More like old ones.”

“Come on, Aunt Augusta. We talked about this,” Jackie insisted. “You shouldn’t call people your age old. ”

“I don’t mean old as in age,” said Augusta. “I mean old as in I know them from my youth. Old as in I knew them before you were born.”

Jackie sounded excited now. “Really? Anybody I’ve heard of? Anyone my parents knew?”

Augusta hesitated for a moment. She still hadn’t told her niece about Irving. It hadn’t occurred to her before that he’d known Bess and George as well. She took a deep breath.

“Your parents knew both of them, actually. One was Nathaniel Birnbaum, a guy from the neighborhood. He married Evie Sussman, one of my girlfriends, and they moved to Boston when he started medical school. Nathaniel’s father was a doctor, too—he filled all his prescriptions at our pharmacy. Everyone we knew went to Dr. Birnbaum.”

“And the other old friend?”

“The other used to work at the pharmacy. He was your grandfather’s delivery boy.”

“Wait a minute,” Jackie said. “Are you talking about Irving Rivkin?”

“How do you know that name?”

“My mom used to tell me about him sometimes. She said… now don’t get mad, but she said that the two of you had quite a thing for each other.”

“Your mother was a hopeless romantic, Jackie.”

“Maybe, but—”

“She was always exaggerating.”

“She liked to embellish, maybe, but overall—”

“Trust me, whatever she said about me and Irving was definitely an exaggeration. Did she tell you he married Lois Diamond? Love at first sight, or so people said. It’s a nice idea, if you believe in all that.”

“Which, of course, you do not.”

“Bingo,” said Augusta. “Anyway, Irving and I were friends as kids, and then, when we got older… well, there’s not much to say. We were dating, and I thought it was serious. I even thought we were in love. But he must have been seeing Lois behind my back, because after one of our dates, he disappeared. He didn’t show up for work at the store, and then a week later, he and Lois were engaged. Lois’s family moved out to Chicago, and Irving went with them to work for her father. I never heard from him again.”

“Lois was Zip Diamond’s daughter, right?”

“Exactly. I guess your parents told you about him?”

“A couple of times,” Jackie said. “Zip sounded like a scary man.”

“He was, but we were used to him. The neighborhood was full of guys like that. Everything back then was a racket: kosher chicken, chocolate syrup. Everywhere you looked, someone was on the take, someone was paying someone else off. I was oblivious when I was young—I didn’t realize how dangerous some of those men were. But as I got older, I started paying attention. Those guys would poison someone’s horse to send a message, or shoot up a truck if you crossed them. They put honest people out of business. Sometimes, they killed people who wouldn’t cooperate.”

Augusta remembered the delicate line her father had been forced to walk during Prohibition. “Your grandfather had to be especially careful: Pharmacies were catnip for men like Zip Diamond. Doctors were allowed to write prescriptions for whiskey, and guys like Diamond would get doctors to write fakes. But if the pharmacists refused to go along, their stores would be robbed or vandalized or worse. My father knew a pharmacist in Williamsburg whose store was burned down—his wife and son almost died in the fire. After that, my father was terrified. It was only after Zip moved his family to Chicago that my father finally felt safe.”

“That’s terrible,” Jackie said. “But Irving never got involved in any of that, right?”

Augusta hesitated. She thought about the way Irving stared at her earlier, the way his voice broke when he talked about his past. There was so much she didn’t know about him. She never asked what his work in Chicago was like; she didn’t know how or where to begin.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“What was it like seeing him again?”

Augusta wasn’t sure how to answer. She wished she could forget her conversation with Irving, forget his expression, forget his sad eyes.

“It was fine,” Augusta said when she finally spoke. “Nothing to write home about.”