Among the Living Read Free

neckties were being promised with the purchase of any $49 suit. Goldah noticed one woman, slender and with a child in tow, who was stepping away from the crowd, the silk of her dress brushing against her calves. He watched her and thought how the past here was young and untried, and how the world made sense only in the grasp of such promise and abundance.
    “It’s up here,” Jesler said as he slowed the car. “Friedman Jewelers, Harris the Hub, and us, with the big blue awning.”
    The h of Jesler Shoes had gone slightly askew on the sign above the door, and an older black man stood at the base of a ladder, while a younger one was perched at the top trying to realign it.
    “I don’t want to stop, Abe,” Pearl said. “Just nod to the boys and let’s keep driving.”
    Jesler had been planning on more but knew it was best to keep them moving along. He slowed and leaned his head out the window.
    “Looks like we’re making good progress there, Calvin. We need it by tonight.”
    The older man, gray hair and overalls, quickly took off his soft cap and started toward the car. When he realized it wasn’t going to stop, he nodded and raised a hand. “Yes, suh, Mr. Jesler. Have it done by tonight.”
    Jesler waved back. “They’re good boys there, Yitzhak.”
    He took the next turn, where the stores and shops quickly gave way to a street lined with houses. Staircases and railed balconies huddled under a dense canopy of tree limbs and hanging moss. The heat remained, but it seemed somehow tamed here, as if the air could breathe more fully hidden away like this.
    Jesler drove them around a square with a small park at its center, benches and hedges along the sides, and the ease of the afternoon written in the drowsy gait of the few who were walking through. If Goldah had forgotten the depths of his own exhaustion, he imagined this might be the gentlest reminder of it.
    “We do mostly American,” said Jesler, “but I also sell the Ferragamos. That’s Italian. Very high-end. They’re doing something with a sandal this year. Invisible they call it. Been in all the magazines. You ask me, it looks like a heel with a suspension bridge made out of nylon on the top, but I display it so we’ll have people coming by and taking a look.” He glanced over at Pearl. “You want some invisible shoes, honey?”
    “If I can pay for them with my invisible money, why not?”
    Jesler laughed and Pearl laughed and Jesler cleared his throat. It was only a moment but Goldah saw Jesler sharpen his gaze. Pearl’s smile also disappeared as if she knew full well what her husband was going to say.
    “We were thinking,” Jesler said with a newfound weight in his voice, “and of course this would be entirely up to you, Yitzhak — what with everything that folks are beginning toknow about what was going on during the war, you know, all of that can be difficult to understand, painful even … more so for you — naturally for you — I wouldn’t mean to imply or make light of … You understand what I’m saying. It’s just that we don’t want you to feel outside of things, or for folks not to know how to make it easier to invite you in, make you feel a part of the community.”
    “What Abe is saying,” Pearl piped up, “is that it’s such a different kind of name — Yitzhak. We just don’t hear it all that often, even in shul. Hardly ever, really. You see it’s Isaac there and we were thinking maybe it would be better if you had something more familiar, something that would be more inviting —”
    “Easier,” said Jesler.
    “Yes, I said that, Abe.”
    “I know you did. I just think Yitzhak needed to understand that it’s not that we don’t care for the name.”
    “No, of course not, that’s not the case at all.”
    “Or that we’d be forcing him to do this in any way.”
    “No. Nothing like that. He understands that, Abe. You understand that, Yitzhak.”
    Jesler said, “It’s just more about … protecting