I’m in the city to see family and pick up supplies at Brodsky’s General Store. An older woman is returning an outdoor lounge chair. “I have one at home just like it,” she tells each of us in the checkout line. “I don’t need two of them.”
Eyebrows rise like a curtain. She is looked at with suspicion; it’s already fall, and the days left for outdoor gatherings are few. Another customer—I don’t see who—tells her to keep it for company anyway.
“I don’t get any,” the old woman answers.
A man, thin like a stick of gum and wearing a stylish suit, scarf, and fedora joins the line and greets her.
“Hello, Mrs. Goldberg! Danny, Gertrude’s son. Remember me?”
“No!” the old woman shouts. “And not that slut mother of yours, either.”
There is an audible shuffling of feet. The line of customers lengthens, but not with more shoppers; she is being given space. In the quiet that follows, perhaps only seconds, I hear Elvis Costello on the PA. Traffic outside. A large truck. A horn. A siren in the distance.
Danny laughs, wishes her well, and busies himself rearranging the items in his cart.
“Nu?” the old woman says to the ten or so of us waiting. “How well is that, shlepping this?” She adds that she’s tired and has a bus to catch.
“Why don’t you sit down on that thing and rest?” suggests another man at the front of the line.
“I don’t want to use it,” she answers, and grips the chair with both hands, holding it erect.
“Bubeleh,” the man says, studying her and the chair. “It looks used to me.” He grabs his purchase and exits.
The woman then turns to me for an opinion. I start to look away, but not before I see a small burn hole in its orange webbing where the chair folds. I also see Judi Soberman standing in...
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