“The candles are by the shoe polish at the Star Market,” Kathleen s
aid, smiling.
“I’m glad I came, anyway.” Joyce smiled back. “I always wondered about the Gloucester synagogue. It’s kind of a conceptual oxymoron — a Yankee temple. But the service was pretty interesting, much better than the last one I went to, which was just deadly. That must be five or six years ago for a bar mitzvah.”
“Are you here for the weekend?” Kathleen asked, admiring Joyce’s outfit, a casual but sophisticated cream-colored chenille sweater over black silk pants. Her silver earrings caught the light as she talked.
“Actually, my husband and I just bought a little house up here — near East Gloucester square, you know? Over by the theater? We’ll be summer people, I guess, though we’ll probably have to rent the place most of the summer to help cover the mortgage.
“We hope to come up on weekends during the school year. My daughter’s at a sleepover tonight. She’s twelve, so she’s almost always at a sleepover.”
“My sons are long gone,” said Kathleen. “It’s just me and my husband, who’s here somewhere.”
“Frank’s here, too.” Joyce looked around the room. “Actually, I’m kind of mystified that we’re here at all. Normally at this hour, I’d be in bed with a book.”
“Oh? And what are you reading?”
“I’m about to start the new Amy Tan. And you?” Joyce asked, approving of Kathleen’s elegant posture, her thick, white hair and the darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“I’m just finishing the latest of the Harry Potter books — belatedly for me. It’s work as well as pleasure; I’m a children’s librarian.”
“Ah, a librarian.” Joyce put her hand over her heart and bowed her head. “May I kiss the hem of your garment?” She grinned. “I can’t tell you the number of times librarians have saved my deadline.”
“You’re a writer?”
“For women’s magazines, mostly.”
The trays were being cleared as the two of them started for the door, where Buddy waited with a dark-haired man, who held out a jacket to Kathleen’s new acquaintance.
The women turned to each other and laughed. “This is my husband, Buddy Levine. I’m Kathleen.”
“Joyce Tabachnik. This is Frank.”
“You mean you don’t even know each other’s names?” Buddy asked. “You’ve been over there gabbing like you were long-lost cousins.”
The four of them walked out of the synagogue and paused on the steep stairs to the street. The building had served the town’s Jews for a century, but it would always look like the foursquare New England church it was built to be. Below them, the lights of the docks and the big fishing boats were mirrored in black water.
Joyce took a deep breath and said, “God, it smells good up here.” Kathleen shivered and Buddy rushed over to help her into her sweater. They said their good-byes.
“Nice people,” Buddy said as he and Kathleen got into their car.
“Nice people,” said Frank as he and Joyce pulled out of the parking lot.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Kathleen thought she saw Joyce ahead of her in the produce aisle at the Star Market, but she then caught sight of the Naked Coed Golf T-shirt. The woman she had talked to at temple wouldn’t wear such a thing in her own bathroom, much less in public.
Kathleen wondered if Joyce would trade an insider’s tour of Gloucester in exchange for a trip to the mall. The corduroy jumper she had worn to services that night must be fifteen years old.
Joyce had walked past the same bananas earlier the same day, keeping an eye out for Kathleen. “That’s what I want to look like when I grow up,” she had told Frank on their way home from services. Joyce thought about calling Kathleen but worried that she might not want to have coffee with the author of a romance novel — though of course she hadn’t mentioned Magnolia’s Heart when they’d talked.
The following week, Joyce heard her name as she walked into Tomaso’s. “I was hoping to run into you. I see you already know about one of Gloucester’s crown jewels,” Kathleen said, opening her arms in adoration of the crowded Main Street storefront. Mismatched metal shelves held tomatoes, pasta, oil, and tuna with unfamiliar Italian labels crowding out the American brands. Dean Martin crooned from unseen speakers.
While the women behind the counter took orders, Kathleen explained the merits of the special sandwiches, named for neighborhoods and saints. “The calzone always sells out early in the summer.”
Joyce nodded and inhaled the store’s heady mixture of yeast, sawdust, and salami.
A grim-faced woman wearing orange lipstick and a green T-shirt asked for their order.
“Hi, Ginny,” Kathleen said. “How are the grandkids?”