Love Saves the Day

Laura and I lived happily in our six-floor walk-up on Stanton Street. There was a bodega downstairs that was open twenty-four hours, making it easy enough to run downstairs if I realized belatedly that I had no milk or peanut butter for Laura’s lunch the next day. The Verdes lived two floors above us, and as Laura grew, their second-oldest child, Maria Elena, became her closest friend. Their kids were always in our apartment, or Laura was in theirs.

And then there were the Mandelbaums in the apartment right above ours. Max Mandelbaum drove a cab, and Ida Mandelbaum kept house. They were a gregarious couple, Mr. Mandelbaum’s voice so loud and powerful that you could hear it reverberating throughout the building, even when their door was closed. But he never yelled. He was never angry. He adored his wife, even after fifty years of marriage, and she adored him, too. She had a habit of sending him downstairs for a quart of milk every day when he got home, and every day he would grumble about it. “Hush, Max,” she always chided him. “You know the doctor says you need to get exercise.” When he returned, Mrs. Mandelbaum would say to whoever happened to be there, “He complains, but he likes being nagged by his wife. Better open rebuke than hidden love.” And Mr. Mandelbaum would continue to grouse under his breath, but the look in his eyes belied his words.

Mrs. Mandelbaum never really “nagged” him. Her voice was never as loud as his, and her ways were softer. But bright eyes beamed in both sets of faces, always happy to see you and eager to press whatever creature comforts—a soft couch, hot tea, trays of strudel and bowls of hard candies, leftovers from the dinners Mrs. Mandelbaum cooked every night—were available in their small apartment.

Mrs. Mandelbaum delighted in keeping Laura occupied with picture books or lessons on how to bake cookies while Mr. Mandelbaum would accompany me to the neighborhood butcher or baker or fruit vendors. As I made selections, he would keep a shrewd eye on the scales to make sure nobody tried to cheat me. “A young girl like you, alone with a daughter!” he would exclaim. “Someone needs to make sure nobody takes advantage.” When I could finally afford to fix up Laura’s bedroom, it was Mrs. Mandelbaum who insisted on making beautiful lace curtains from “just a few old schmatas I have lying around.”

Laura seemed as entranced with them as they were with her, although maybe she wouldn’t have loved spending time with them as much as she did if not for their cat—a brown tabby with green eyes and a white chest and paws who’d followed them home from the butcher shop one day. “What could we do?” Mrs. Mandelbaum liked to say. “We took her in. Max never could say no to a damsel in distress.”

As if the cat knew that Mr. Mandelbaum had been her salvation, she devoted herself to him. She would follow him from room to room, curling at his feet or in his lap as her moods dictated. She was fond of people and had a gentle disposition, although the only person she seemed to love nearly as much as Mr. Mandelbaum was Laura. Many was the time when I would come to pick her up after a late night at the store to find her curled up on the small bed in what had been their son’s bedroom, sleeping on her side with one arm thrown around the soft tabby curled up on the pillow beside her.

I knew, of course, that Laura and I were replacements for the son they’d lost and the grandchild they would never have. Still, it was impossible not to love the Mandelbaums. We needed a family, too, Laura and I.

Every so often, Mrs. Mandelbaum would cup my chin gently in her hand and say, “A pretty young girl like you should get out more. You should find someone to love. People weren’t meant to be alone.”

“I’m not alone,” I would protest. “I have Laura, and the two of you, and my store. How much less alone could I be?”

I knew what she meant, though. I thought about Nick, who I couldn’t stop loving even though I knew he was worthless. I thought about my mother with her sad, drifting eyes after she lost my infant brother. The Mandelbaums had found the strength to carry on after a similar loss. But the people in my family were different from the Mandelbaums. When we broke, we stayed broken.