“Are you serious? This phone call is taped? Oh, well, then, I’m totally thrilled and flattered to be recorded for your vast archive of scholarship, for posterity. As Esther used to say, that eats the cake!”

“Your grandmother was not this sarcastic, but I do not think you are very much like her in as many ways as I first supposed.”

“You’re the expert on Esther Gottesfeld, apparently, so I am sure you know far more about her character than I possibly could.”

“Surely you are speaking in sarcastic tones with me because of your sorrow and loss, so I will not take umbrage. But I must say, your attitude is not a productive one. I am very disappointed. I had hoped we could establish some common ground. Some rapport as feminists. Woman to woman. I really do want to dialogue with you. Don’t you think your grandmother would have wanted that?”

“Do you really feel qualified to say what my grandmother would have wanted? You know what? I think you are remarkably perceptive, Ruth Zion, herstorian extraordinaire. My attitude is definitely not a productive one. I am definitely being sarcastic. Woman to woman—please just leave me the hell alone. Do not call me ever again. I mean it.”

“Why don’t I call you back to set up a meeting after you have perused the materials I am mailing you—Rebecca? Hello?”

Nine

“You don’t have to come with me, George. Seriously. Whatever it is, it’s small enough to fit in the smallest size safe-deposit box they have, so it can’t be very heavy. Even if she had a solid-gold ingot in there, I should be able to manage, since only one would fit in that box, and that would be only, what, twenty-seven pounds.”

“I love the way you know things like that. Anyway, I don’t doubt your physical strength,” George said.

They were in the coffee shop on the corner of Twelfth Street and Sixth Avenue, with the Sunday New York Times and the rubbery western omelettes that Rebecca always required on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, which they had spent on their own, perversely eating spaghetti, despite no shortage of invitations from various friends and acquaintances. It would have been different at Scott and Aaron’s, since they were practically family, but they had taken Mya to spend time with her Cincinnati grandparents. Neither George nor Rebecca had especially wanted to join some other family’s traditional celebration as token lonely people with no Thanksgiving to go to, no matter how generous and openhearted it might have made their hosts feel, and anyway, both had an absolute horror of football on television.

They had always spent Thanksgivings with Esther, every year taking her out for a traditional Thanksgiving meal in a restaurant. This contradicted precisely how “traditional” the meal could possibly be, George would usually point out, a moment that Rebecca would then point out was part of their tradition. Meanwhile, Esther would be ignoring this conversation entirely while scanning the menu for creamed pearl onions, for which she had such a fondness that nothing else about any particular Thanksgiving meal registered one way or the other with her, just so long as there were creamed pearl onions on the menu.