Sweet Like Sugar by Wayne Hoffman Page A

about that? What would he say if he knew I’d eaten sausage just hours before, as part of a pork-laden breakfast sandwich I bought at the drive-through at the very Temple of Treyf, McDonald’s? I didn’t want to know.
    â€œYou have to eat something,” I said. “That’s why you’re feeling weak.”
    â€œI’m not hungry,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    He wouldn’t look at me.
    â€œWhy aren’t you eating?” I asked.
    â€œMy Sophie used to cook for me.” He sighed.
    I wondered: This is an explanation? I looked at him and realized that it was.
    He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and rolled away from me on the futon, his back to me. Were there tears in his eyes? I could not see.
    He rested, perhaps ten minutes, long enough to stop that conversation from going any further. Then he rolled back over, opened his eyes, and said, “It is time to go home.”
    â€œI’ll get the car and drive you,” I said.
    â€œIt is Shabbat,” he said. Driving—even riding in a car—was forbidden.
    â€œYou’re not strong enough to walk up that hill,” I said. “I think God will understand.”
    â€œIt is Shabbat,” he repeated. Translation: God will most certainly not understand.
    So I helped the rabbi put on his suit jacket, handed him his hat, took him by the elbow, and walked him out the door. Past my Corolla, which had a folder filled with semiporno-graphic photos on the passenger seat, and clear across the parking lot. I walked him up the hill, slowly, stopping periodically so he could lean against a street sign and catch his breath. It took almost fifteen minutes to walk the four blocks to his house.
    When we got to his door, we both went inside, and I made him a sandwich.
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    Sitting next to the wall at his small kitchen table, under a plastic wall clock that had Hebrew letters instead of numbers, Rabbi Zuckerman ate slowly. Perhaps he wanted some company and figured I’d stay as long as he was eating. Or perhaps the sandwich I’d prepared left him unimpressed—prepackaged salami was the best thing I could find in his refrigerator.
    At least the rye bread looked good. From a bakery.
    â€œMy father was a baker,” the rabbi told me between bites. “To this day, I only buy fresh bread. Never from a supermarket.”
    I asked about his father, and he told me how his parents had come to the States after the First World War, with a young son and an infant daughter who had been born in Poland. They settled in Jersey City, where his father opened a bakery. And then, a few years later, came Jacob, the baby who would one day become a rabbi, the only member of his family born in America.
    â€œMy brother and sister didn’t remember anything about Europe—they came as tiny children,” he explained. “In the house, we spoke Yiddish with our parents, but we all spoke perfect English, too. Still, I used to tease them and tell them I couldn’t understand their accent. I called them ‘my brother and sister from Poland.’ ”
    Seated across from me at his kitchen table, he was looking past me, out the window and into space, pausing for a moment to remember. “They are both gone,” he said. “My brother for many years already. My sister just a year before my Sophie.”
    I didn’t want the sad memories to lead him back to silence, just when he was starting to open up. I got up and fetched a glass of water, hoping I might get him back on track.
    â€œYou should drink something,” I said, putting the glass in front of him. It worked; he snapped out of his trance and looked up at me. Grabbing the opportunity, I tried to get him back to the happier memories: “What was the name of your father’s bakery?”
    â€œZuckerman’s Bakery,” he said. “Our stores did not have such clever names back then.”
    The rabbi’s bookstore was