Chapter Four

FOUR

SEPTEMBER 1922

Six months after her mother died, Augusta’s great-aunt came to stay. Esther would have come to Brooklyn sooner, but for reasons Augusta did not yet comprehend, her father was reluctant to welcome his mother’s sister into his home. But one morning, after Bess burned the scrambled eggs and the dust on the mantel was half an inch thick, Solomon Stern finally admitted that their family needed help.

Esther had been living in America for years—first with a brother in Philadelphia, then with cousins outside of Boston, and most recently, with a different set of cousins in a tiny apartment in the Bronx. As a single woman with minimal funds, she’d gone wherever there was room and wherever she was needed.

The family gossip was that, though she was helpful, Esther was peculiar and old-fashioned. The dresses she kept in her brass-hinged trunk were more like potato sacks than clothes. Even worse was the black babushka on her head, which only accentuated her owl-like eyes and her heavy silver brows.

Solomon Stern explained to his daughters that Esther had stayed in Russia for decades, long after her sisters and brothers had left. Augusta wondered why the woman felt tied to a place with so few comforts and even fewer opportunities. Esther had no children to keep her there. Apparently, she had never married. When Augusta pressed her father on the matter, he said that Esther’s letters to his mother were full of descriptions of her patients. “She was the self-proclaimed apothecary of her village,” he said. “Though she never had any formal training.”

Whatever initial goodwill Augusta felt when she was first told her great-aunt would be joining the household disappeared when she learned that the two of them would be sharing a bedroom. Both girls assumed that Esther would sleep in their mother’s sewing room behind the kitchen. But when Esther peered inside, she told their father she couldn’t stay in a room without a window. “I can’t sleep if I can’t see the sky,” she said. Despite her accent, her English was decent enough. “Bess is old enough for her own room. She should have this for herself. I will move in with Augusta.”

This development was like a dagger driven straight through Augusta’s adolescent heart. She and Bess had always shared a bedroom, even after their mother was gone. Neither one of them had thought to move into the sewing room, preferring instead to keep their mother’s belongings exactly where they had always been. Now, with the arrival of Aunt Esther, not only would Augusta be sharing a room with a stranger who smelled like tea bags and wet potatoes, but she would be losing the comfort of her closest confidante. It hurt even more when Bess seemed excited about the new living arrangement.

The main benefit to having Esther around was that she immediately took over the preparation of the family meals. Every morning, she slipped a long white apron over whatever hideous dress she had chosen. Both of the girls felt too guilty to admit it, but it was obvious that their great-aunt was a better cook even than their mother had been. Her brisket was tender, her vegetables were crisp, and her chicken soup was the most delicious concoction any of them had ever tasted. It brimmed with tiny homemade kreplach—meat-filled dumplings that melted on the tongue.

Despite the culinary benefits, however, the transition of welcoming Esther into the household was full of unforeseen challenges—not only for Augusta and Bess, but for their father as well.

A few days after Esther’s arrival, Augusta’s father was late for dinner. Typically, he was late once or twice a week—sometimes due to last-minute prescriptions and sometimes because a new shipment of cigars begged to be sampled with his cohorts: three other shop owners who lived and worked on the same block.

If cigars were involved, there was likely to be whiskey (with Prohibition in force, Stern’s Pharmacy was one of few places in the neighborhood legally allowed to sell liquor). Irene Stern had been used to this arrangement, and now Augusta and Bess were used to it, too. Neither of them minded their father’s harmless bit of weekly recreation.

On that particular night, it was cigars and whiskey that kept Solomon Stern from his family. When he eventually got home, three hours later than usual, his aunt was waiting for him at the front door of his apartment. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and a disapproving frown etched into her features. Augusta and Bess stood behind her.

“I had to work late,” he said defensively. “The girls know my routine. They understand.”

Esther sniffed the air in the doorway, her yellow-green eyes glinting under the lamplight. “In America, cigars and liquor are work ?”

He stammered a string of lame excuses, but Esther was not deterred. “Next time,” she said, “tell me first. That way, at least I won’t worry.”

After that came the matter of the night bell. The bell was meant to be used by pharmacy customers only in cases of genuine emergency after the store had closed for the evening. Still, there were several frivolous patrons who rang at all hours without crisis or need. In some instances, they rang the bell out of boredom; in others, the reason was impatience or a simple lack of consideration for others. Augusta’s father had been awakened for talcum powder, Epsom salts, and other nonessentials, sometimes even after midnight. Once Esther arrived, however, she made it her business to put an end to such foolishness.

Against her nephew’s wishes, she began accompanying him downstairs whenever the night bell roused him from slumber. If an after-hours customer was in real trouble, no one was kinder or more sympathetic than the stout and spirited aunt of the pharmacist. But if the late-night patron had rung the bell for a purchase that could have waited until morning, if he had woken the hardworking, dedicated druggist (and his family) without good cause, Esther made it clear that such behavior would not be tolerated going forward. She did not even have to open her mouth—the customers knew immediately what her steely scowl conveyed.

“Esther,” said her nephew, “you have to stop making the customers uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” Esther said. “I care about their comfort as much as they care about your sleep.”

“Things are different in New York,” said Augusta. “Customers want convenience here.”

“How convenient will it be,” Esther queried, “when the pharmacist drops dead from exhaustion?”

One customer who had rung the bell after midnight to purchase aspirin for a simple headache had been so shamed by Esther’s withering glare that he returned the next afternoon, during proper hours, to request the woman’s forgiveness. Augusta had heard all about him.

“I’m so sorry,” said the middle-aged man. “I have insomnia, you see, and sometimes I forget how late it is.” He glanced quickly around the well-stocked shelves for something to purchase as a gesture of goodwill. Eventually he chose a second box of aspirin, a tube of Huxley’s Menthol maybe they just like toast and jam.”

“But they can’t eat toast for dinner forever,” said Bess.

“That’s why I gave Mrs. Lowenstein a little something.”

Augusta’s father let out a sigh. “What exactly did you give her?”

“I gave her a jar of my chicken soup and told her to give it to her boys. Watch—they won’t have any stomach pains tonight.”

“And what happens when she makes fish for them again?”

Esther avoided his stare and busied herself with her napkin. “I told her to stop with the fish and the spinach. It’s possible fish doesn’t agree with them, I said. Spinach can be difficult to digest. Stick to meat and potatoes for a while, I said. Boys like meat and potatoes . ”

“You can’t diagnose digestive issues without any evidence!”

“Who needs evidence?” Esther said. “Besides, better the woman should think her children have bad stomachs than find out she’s killing them with her own cooking!”

“Esther,” Augusta’s father said sternly, “I have a reputation to uphold. If people find out you’re giving fake medical advice, that undermines my authority.”

“Who’s giving medical advice?” Esther scoffed. “All I did was give the woman a jar of soup.”

Eventually, Augusta’s father forgave Esther for meddling with his customers. Augusta, however, was less forbearing, not only because she found herself frustrated by the steady stream of her great-aunt’s flippant comments, but because she did not like the way Esther spoke to her father. Since spending so much time in the prescription room, Augusta’s admi ration for her father had multiplied. The more she watched her father at work, the more she understood why he was so well respected. Despite constant bouts of debilitating headaches, Solomon Stern maintained a strict schedule. No matter how bad his own pain was, he refused to slack off on his responsibilities to his customers.

For her part, Augusta tried to learn what she could about headache treatments. She scanned the advertisements in American Druggist magazine and read about the benefits of caffeine. When she noticed her father rubbing his temples, she brought him a cup of steaming hot coffee or a Coca-Cola from the soda fountain. Sometimes she turned off the lights in the prescription room and made her father sit quietly in the dark. Once, when she’d brought him a compress for his forehead, Esther walked in looking for a bottle of white pine syrup for a customer’s cough. After finding what she needed, the old woman patted Augusta’s shoulder and murmured a few words of praise. “You do a good job taking care of him,” she said.

Esther didn’t dole out compliments often, however—she was far more likely to scold than to flatter. Her presence posed other problems, too. When she cleaned the kitchen drawers and reorganized the cabinets, it made Augusta feel as if the memory of her mother was somehow being scrubbed away. Her great-aunt ran the household differently from the way her mother had. Intellectually, Augusta knew she and her family had been struggling before Esther arrived. Even so, she couldn’t help being upset when small things were altered—when the cloth on the kitchen table was changed, or when an extra lamp was purchased for the living room. It didn’t matter that the space became physically brighter—for Augusta, the light only illuminated the fact that the person who’d loved her most was missing.

The last straw was when Bess came to breakfast wearing one of their mother’s old dresses. “Who said you could wear Mama’s clothes?” asked Augusta, sucking in her breath at the ghostly sight.

But Bess didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. “Aunt Esther,” she said. “My dresses are all too short and she said it made no sense to let Mama’s go to waste. I might as well get some use out of them.”

The words spilled out before Augusta could stop them. She turned to her great-aunt, who was boiling eggs. “You can’t just come in here and change things!” she shouted.

Immediately, Bess reached for Augusta’s hand. “Shh,” she said softly, “it’s going to be all right.” Tears spilled down Augusta’s cheeks and all her breath left her, as if she’d been punched. Only Bess’s whispers had the power to calm her. “Mama wanted us to have her things. She told us so before she died, remember? I’m sorry, Augusta. I don’t want to upset you.”

When Augusta stopped crying, Esther set a bowl of warm oatmeal in front of her. She patted Augusta on the shoulder, as if to communicate that she was forgiven for her outburst. She stroked Augusta’s flaxen braids with a rough and wrinkled hand. “Such pretty hair,” Esther murmured. “Little Goldie, with the beautiful braids. You have hair like my sister.”

“Don’t call me Goldie,” Augusta said, pushing her oatmeal away. Augusta’s father, watching the exchange, released a brief, beleaguered sigh into his morning cup of coffee, as if he had a feeling the conversation between the two would not end well.

Esther raised a silver eyebrow, but Augusta would not be intimidated. “I don’t like nicknames,” she said sharply. “I prefer the name my mother gave me.”

“We called your grandmother, my sister, Goldie,” said Esther. “With that hair, Goldie is a perfect name for you, too.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Augusta. “That’s like saying I should call you Hazel because you have hazel eyes.”

Her great-aunt shrugged and lifted her chin with a practiced nonchalance. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ve been called far worse.” She squared her shoulders like a boxer in the ring. “It makes no difference what anyone calls me. I know exactly who I am.”

To Augusta, the reply was the worst kind of challenge—meant to put her in her place. “I know who I am, too,” she insisted, but without any of the confidence of Esther’s assertion. She wished she sounded less like a child and more like the adult she wanted to be. Even as the words left her lips, she was certain that Esther knew she was lying.