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yourself,” his mother says. “Look at her. Everything’s the same. She doesn’t age.”
    â€œNo no no no.” She closes her eyes modestly. Those stove hoods for eyelids. Not stove hoods but something like them. Roll tops of roll-top desks. Her sister is very sick. He asked. “She lives with us now. She has since Fritz died. I don’t want to say this, but it’s possible she won’t live out the year. Age is awful, awful, when it gets like that.”
    â€œAwful,” his mother says. “No matter how good you feel one day; at our age, the next you could snap, go.”
    Her nephew married and moved to Atlanta and bought a house. He asked. “They want to have children. Buy a house after you have a child, Martin and I told them, but they wanted one first. He’s an air controller, went to a special school for it. Six to six for months. We loaned him five thousand dollars of our savings for the house. After all, he’s our only nephew and we love him, and his wife is like our only niece. So he’s like our only son in many ways. You were like one of my children when I worked here. I can still see you pulling your wagon down the street. Red, do you remember?”
    â€œI do if he doesn’t. It said Fire Chief on the sides.”
    â€œI don’t remember that,” Frieda says, “but it probably did, since it was that color red. A very fine wagon—very sturdily made—and with a long metal handle he pulled. You were so small you couldn’t even carry it up to the sidewalk.”
    â€œIt was even almost too heavy for me,” his mother says. “We got it from our friends the Kashas. It was their son Carl’s.”
    â€œThey were so old then they must be both dead now.”
    â€œHe did about fifteen years ago. Bea—Mrs. Kasha—moved to Arizona and I never heard from her again.”
    â€œToo bad. Nice people. But I’d do most of the carrying up the steps for his wagon. The neighborhood was very safe then so we’d—your mother and I—let you go by yourself to the stores you could get to without crossing the street. Think of anyone letting their child do that today. He wasn’t even four.”
    â€œHe was so beautiful that today he’d be kidnapped the first time.”
    â€œYou’d have a note in your hand. It would say this, when he went to Grossinger’s, which is where he wanted to go most: ‘Three sugar doughnuts, three jelly doughnuts,’ and perhaps some Vienna or their special onion rolls and a challah or seeded rye. You had a charge there, didn’t you?”
    â€œAt all the stores on Columbus. Gristede Brothers. Hazelkorn’s kosher butcher. Al and Phil’s green grocers. Sam’s hardware and so on. But sometimes we gave him money to buy. Shopkeepers were honest to a fault then, and when he did carry money I think the note always said to take the bills out of his pocket and put the change back in.”
    â€œIt would have had to. So you’d go around the corner with your wagon and park it outside the store. Then you’d go inside and give the note to the saleslady, who was usually Mrs. Grossinger—”
    â€œShe passed away I think it was two years ago. She had a bad heart for years but never stopped going in every day.”
    â€œOh, that’s too bad; a very nice lady. I hope the store was kept up. There aren’t any good home bakeries where we are.”
    â€œHer son runs it and even opened a branch store farther up Columbus.”
    â€œGood for him. So Mrs. Grossinger or the saleslady would give you whatever was on the note and you’d put the bags in your wagon one by one and start home. But sometimes I got so worried for you, or your mother did where she’d send me after you, that I’d follow you all the way there and back—maybe he was around five when he did this, what do you say?”
    â€œI’d think at least