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By Root 434 0

weren’t a religious family; in fact, we hardly ever went to church. My father was a self-proclaimed agnostic, and the only gods I could ever remember my mother worshipping were the great gourmands of the world, people like Pellegrino Artusi, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Auguste Escoffier, and Phileas Gilbert, followed in later years by Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels. (If our neighbors considered us an oddity, perhaps it wasn’t solely due to our lack of religious affiliation.) For the most part, though, we’d been accepted, more or less generously, into their fold and over the years had been invited to our share of dinners in their sukkahs, Yom Kippur break fasts, and Passover seders.

Few of our old neighbors are left. Mrs. Favish sold her house and moved to a retirement community in Sarasota shortly after I left for culinary school. For years afterward I sent her a card and a box of homemade rugelach at Rosh Hashannah, but about ten years ago, I received a note from her granddaughter, thanking me for my thoughtfulness and informing me that she’d died. Only two of the families—the Friedmans and the Silvermans, both of whom had sons my age—still live in the neighborhood. Young Shlomo Friedman, who would’ve been in my grade except that he’d gone to yeshiva, wore Orthodox tzitzis and had side curls. The other boy, Ronnie Silverman, the brother of the recently widowed Debbie Silverman Levine, had been a year ahead of me in school. Ronnie and I had had a couple of sweaty adolescent encounters back then—several unsatisfying metal-on-metal kisses, along with some furtive groping. He was never without his Star of David, which he wore on a heavy gold chain that invariably got stuck in my long hair when we made out.

I’ve run into Mrs. Silverman a couple of times since I’ve been back, once while picking up Chinese takeout and then again when we were both unloading groceries. Both times she presented me with a whole wallet’s worth of photos of Debbie and her children and Ronnie and his family, two daughters and a wife, a lovely Jewish girl, and a lawyer to boot. Rona Silverman had never liked me, mostly, I had assumed, because she didn’t like her son being interested in a shiksa, even a fourteen-year-old one. But as I learned one muggy summer’s evening when the Silvermans’ windows were open and Ronnie and I were making out on the Silvermans’ back porch, the real reason she didn’t like me was because she thought my mother was damaged and it was her belief that those kinds of things run in families.

When she hauled out the photos of Ronnie and his family, she cross-examined me about why I was back home and didn’t seem at all surprised to learn I was divorced. During our brief conversation, I caught her examining me for signs of alcoholism or other sorts of goyish afflictions. She was probably barely inside the front door before placing a call to Ronnie to tell him how lucky he was to have escaped me.

She also asked me about Grappa. A friend of hers had eaten there on a trip to New York a few weeks ago and had raved about the food. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d lost that, too, my only capital, the only stake I had in anything useful, meaningful, or worthwhile. Instead, I smiled and lied, telling her I was taking a sabbatical from the restaurant, but that Chloe and I were headed back there soon. And then I had to hurry into the house before, unable to resist the impulse, I’d wheedle the friend’s phone number from Mrs. Silverman so that I might grill her about the meal she’d eaten, looking for a misstep: a broken sauce, lumps in the polenta, an inadequately braised piece of meat.

Afraid of running into her again, I’ve taken to scoping out her house from the upstairs window before venturing out, looking for her car in the driveway, or waiting until Saturday morning when she’ll be at services. This particular Saturday morning, I’ve waited until the Silvermans left their house on foot for Shabbat services before setting off to buy some decongestant for Chloe. She’s been sniffling for the last couple of days and woke up last