Rachel’s mother passed her hand across her forehead. “Please, Rachel, please.” Her mother’s hand trembled, Rachel saw it, felt guilty, and started clearing the table to make amends, but on her way into the kitchen she bumped the server and chipped the wall mirror again. Her mother closed her eyes.

“We’ll go to Alter’s,” her grandmother said, still laughing. “Steak, brains, karnatzlach, all kosher. My party . . .”

Mr. Alter kissed her grandmother’s hand, brought the white wine, seltzer, pickles, and sour tomatoes himself.

Rachel sat next to the window looking out on Second Avenue. Rappaport’s was still there. The baths were still on Houston, the gypsies were still on St. Mark’s Place, and the Ukrainians on Eleventh, but the people who moved past the restaurant window like spirits wore beads, sandals, jeans, and looked like they came from Colorado.

She looked up and saw Adam and his father coming toward them. The father was beautiful, which made her realize that Adam was, too. Their noses were thin and straight, their eyes were dark and wide-­set, they had thin nervous pale faces, with full, chiseled lips. The father had a short thick beard and Adam was clean shaven and had a cleft in his chin.

At first Rachel’s father worried about drinking in front of a rabbi, but Levy drank, told jokes in Yiddish, and laughed so helplessly that everyone laughed with him, even Rachel who didn’t understand Yiddish. She relaxed in his company, and for once she didn’t spill or break anything.

Her father got drunk and talked about the old country. He told Levy about the village he came from and about his older brother being killed on the village street. Then he asked Levy where he’d been born and Levy answered, “Poland.”

“What about Adam?” her father asked. Her grandmother leaned forward.

“Poland, too.”

Her father was confused. “When was he born?”

“Nineteen forty-­one,” Levy said.

“Nineteen forty-­one in Poland?” her grandmother asked.

“Yes,” Levy said. “Adam’s mother was transported—I don’t know where—and a Gentile wine merchant who knew us hid him until 1944, then helped get him out of there to Palestine.”

Danny—it would be Danny, Rachel thought—asked, “Where were you all this time?”

“Belzec,” Levy answered.