Max and Sara

Max and Sara

By

Kenn Brody

Max, my grandfather, was a solid man with dark hair and a moustache. Typically, he wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, secured with an elastic band, and a vest. He owned a small neighborhood store and ran it himself. If the store was open, he was there, waiting on customers, stocking the shelves, doing the books. He hung up a sign and walked home for lunch. He closed one day a week for the Sabbath.

Sara was a blonde, blue-eyed butterball of a woman who had a collection of flower-print dresses and aprons, and nearly nothing else to wear. She loved Max with a cheerful ferocity. She darned his socks, made his favorite food three times a day, kept his house the way he liked it, and made a wonderful mother to his children. Everything she did was a devotion to her Max; her natural joy and accommodating nature were permanent traits. She had a will of iron that belied her marshmallow body, however, and there was never any question of her taking a back seat in family decisions.

Max never demonstrated much affection, but you could see it in his eyes. He ceased having a life separate from Sara the day he met her and never considered an alternative. In his stoic way, he provided for Sara as an expression of his love for her.

The depression came and the neighborhood suffered. Some days Max gave away more goods than he sold. He came home one night, discouraged, but said nothing. Sara needed no words. She rubbed his back, sat him in a chair and brought him his slippers. She sat beside him and held his hand. Finally, Max spoke.

“Sara, there isn’t enough money to pay the wholesaler. They say they’re coming to close us down.”

“Max,” Sara said, “You have always provided for us. These are hard times, but I know we will find a way.”

Max kept the store open until late at night, hoping people would spend their meager incomes with him after work. Sara brought him his lunch wrapped in newspaper, and trundled hot soup in a pot on cold days. They took the money for a new stove and gave it to the wholesaler to hold off foreclosure. When Max grew too exhausted to keep the books, Sara took on that responsibility. Out of the household expenses, she saved some money in a blue sock in the drawer of their tiny bedside table. On his birthday she bought him a Waltham pocket watch and a fob.

Toward closing time Max would carefully slide that watch from his vest pocket as if it were the most precious object in the world, open it, check the time and wind it. He never said anything, but you could see what that gift meant to him.

Twenty years went by, then thirty. The store prospered, and Max built a house for Sara, with a new kitchen and a new stove. Cautiously, they took out a mortgage, and even had enough money to take a vacation and buy some jewelry for Sara. Max lost his hair, his moustache showed some gray, but he remained as solid and stoic as ever. Sara’s hair went white, but her blue eyes sparkled. They never went anywhere without each other. Sara still made Max’s potato pancakes the way he liked them, grating each potato on a hand grater even when arthritis pained her. Their children grew up, married and had children of their own. Sara neglected none of them. Max provided his gentle support.

A chain store moved in down the block. Max’s store no longer provided sufficient income. Again, Max sat, frowning in a chair while Sara held his hand patiently.

“Sara, I don’t know what to do. The chain store takes all the business and now they are fighting to keep the city from renewing our business license. We don’t have enough money to pay the mortgage.”

“We’ll find a way, Max. You have always provided. There will be a way.”

Max found a new wholesaler with imported goods that undersold the chain, and brought in a few specialty items that the chain did not carry. Sara would push a shopping cart through the chain store, secretly recording prices in a little black notebook. Max printed up handbills with the new merchandise and bribed the local kids to distribute them. The store once again provided.

Her doctor told Sara that she had cancer of the lungs. There was no cure. She did not tell Max - he would worry. In a few months she was obviously too ill to hide it.

The doctor, knowing there was nothing he could really do, nevertheless gave Sara a little hope with some breathing exercises. She did them, painfully, because she was convinced Max could not get along without her. Max sometimes watched, his eyes filled with tears, then turned away.

A few more weeks and Sara’s illness caused her to be hospitalized. She withered, her marshmallow body eaten by the cancer.

“Max, this hospital is too expensive.”

“Money is nothing, Sara. It should help you.”

“Max, don’t be stubborn. Here, use this.” She handed him an overstuffed blue sock. This was her savings over 30 years, kept in the drawer in their tiny bedside table. Max counted out hundred dollar bills, $20,000 of them. He stuffed it back into the sock, frowning, refusing to look at it. He knew what she was saving for.

At the end her blue eyes closed against the pain as the rabbi said final prayers. The rabbi asked, “Do you have anything to atone for? Perhaps a deed you regret?”

Her blue eyes traced the circle of her children and grandchildren and finally came to rest on Max. She looked in his eyes and said, “No. Nothing. I have no regrets.” As she closed her eyes her presence left the room.

Max sat still as a stone, his strong hands on her arm. Into the silence he whispered, “She was right, I can’t live without her.”

C Kenn Brody, February 2021