Jason wondered if he was looking in the wrong drawer. Maybe his mother still kept her address books within close reach, by the dial-up phone, in the coffee table by the couch. He crept back over to her, holding his breath as she continued to snore.
In the coffee-table drawer, he found three timeworn address books. Skimming through each of them, he recognized some of the names—his dad’s old friend Alan Friedman, for instance, and the Hoffmans from Kings Highway.
Then, finally, the one he had been looking for: his father’s broker.
718-599-2939.
This was who Sadie needed to talk to.
JASON & SADIE
Squeezed between nurses, PT specialists, and wheelchairs, Sadie and Jason rode an elevator to the fifth floor of the Yorkville Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. Surrounded by beeping machines and the perpetual murmur ofLaw & Order, patients languished in dim lighting. At the end of the hall, they found the PT room—and near the stress balls, Jack Schmidt.
Though it had been years since they’d last seen each other, and Jack had shriveled to half his former size, Jason recognized Jack immediately. Sadie was amused by how harmless the little man looked in his khaki shorts, T-shirt, and Mets hat. As he stretched his legs with a resistance band, she saw flabs of arm flesh riddled with melanoma.
He smiled widely as they approached, dropping the band.
“Correct me if I’m Wong, but that looks like the Wong family!”
Sadie tried not to choke. The nurse said they could take Jack to lunch.
“I took a fall. A bad one. At least I’m not dead like your pa!” he said as Jason wheeled him to the elevator, and then he looked at Sadie and grinned. “She’s a beautiful girl. A beautiful girl, looks just like Foo Foo. And my boy Jason! You’re getting older. You look just like your dad.” With his good arm he reached out and patted Jason’s stomach.
Jason looked down at himself, self-conscious.
“But you don’t sound like him,” Jack added. “You sound made for radio. Went to a fancy school and got rid of your Brooklyn accent, huh? Columbia, right?”
Sadie decided it was time to come to her father’s rescue.
“So, Jack, how long have you been here?”
“Two months? Three months? Who knows?” Schmidt raised his hands in the air. “My nephew had me committed. You’re young, but wait and see. You’ll start going backward until you’re in the cradle.”
They took the elevator to the cafeteria on the sixth floor and found seats at an empty table. In the corner, a few seniors played dominoes and checkers. Sadie wondered what her grandfather would have been like at Jack’s age, had he survived. She’d heard that Richard had been gregarious, an extrovert—cruel when he wanted to be, charming when he needed to be.
The nurse brought them each a tray containing a ham sandwich, a plastic bag of apple slices, and a chocolate Ensure.
“What about Foo Foo? Your mother okay?”
“She’s doing well. She’s living in Chinatown.”
“God bless her. You know I loved eating at your mother’s. Chow mein, lo mein, shrimp in that cream sauce—Foo Foo was the best cook in Brownsville. Now I eat garbage,” he said, pointing to the tray.
According to Jack’s nephew, who had answered his uncle’s old number the prior week, Jack had lost all his money in dicey real estate moves. He’d had to sell his house and move in with the nephew, who had taken care of him until Jack fell on the street and broke his hip.
“That house, your house in Brownsville. Your house in East Flatbush too. I found them for your dad!” Jack exclaimed. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah, he was grateful to you for that.”
“Well, I never had anything against the Chinese,” Schmidt said with an innocent shrug. “And I knew how to hook Richie up with the right people. Some owners didn’t want to sell to a Chinese back then,can you believe that? But times have changed. Now the Chinese own half the city.”
Sadie glanced at her father and tried not to laugh. Of course, a millennial had to put up with this sort of Greatest Generation blather if she wanted access to the past. “That’s actually something we’d like to talk about,” Sadie said, scooting her chair closer to Jack and lowering her voice. “I wanted to ask you about the buildings on Livonia—78 and 80 Livonia Avenue. Do you remember when my grandfather bought them?”
“Oh, I didn’t sell himthose. Arnie Cohen gave them to him. For zilch. The neighborhood was falling apart by then.”
“But then he sold them off, in 1978. To this group called 78 Livonia Avenue LLC. Do you remember?”
It took Jack a moment. Then the grin disappeared from his face.
