Ben's Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle

by Penelope Peters

  It was the thought of waking up every day next to Ben. Sitting in his living room, lighting candles on the Friday nights he wasn’t on the road. A Passover seder with their friends around the table, finding seats together at Friday evening services at Ben’s synagogue, sampling whatever ridiculous thing Ben had in mind to serve for the next holiday in his shop.

  No one’s going to welcome me home in Hartford, either.

  It was so easy to picture himself fitting into Ben’s life, just like he was one of the Hanukkah candles in his menorah.

  Bob Haskell’s going to make you an offer to coach the Quincy team.

  Maybe. Maybe.

  TALK TO YOUR DAD, Nilsson had said.

  Adam had to admit the timing wasn’t bad, since he’d already planned to call his father that afternoon. The boys’ early game had ended with them two points ahead, and they were too excited and full of energy to stay cooped up in the hotel.

  “History,” announced Farida, while they groaned and moaned and complained, but they followed her dutifully out of the hotel and into the prospect of a Duck Tour and pastries in the North End.

  Adam tidied the room while the messaging program on his computer dialed Ephraim Bernard in Montreal. Ephraim would be expecting the call, but that didn’t mean he was sitting anxiously by the computer. Even if he was sitting across the room, it would take him several minutes to reach it so he could answer.

  The ringing stopped abruptly. “Hello?”

  Adam stood up, startled by the briefly unfamiliar voice. It wasn’t until he saw the face on the screen that he recognized it. “Imam Mohammed! Bonjour.”

  “Bonjour, Adam,” said Mohammed Mustafa cheerfully. He smiled broadly through a beard that was somewhat bushier than Adam’s, but no less groomed. His eyes twinkled with kindness and good humor, and not a bit of the devilish spark that animated his daughter, Farida. Mohammed continued in French. “We were just visiting your father when he said you’d be calling, and I admit I was somewhat selfish and was hoping to see Farida as well.”

  “She took the boys sight-seeing.”

  “Ah, of course. She’s been scouring tourist guides for the last month.”

  “As if that surprises anyone!” laughed a woman in the background – Emilie Mohammed, who looked exactly like Farida would in another twenty years, or would if Farida ever wore a hijab designed to actually stay on her head. “Hello, Adam! How did you escape my daughter’s historical tirade?”

  “Luck,” deadpanned Adam.

  The screen began to waver as Mohammed moved out of view. For a moment, all Adam could hear was the chair moving back, and the familiar sounds of something scraping against the speaker as the computer was shifted on the table and everyone changed places.

  When the motion on the screen finally slowed and the picture snapped back to focus, Ephraim Bernard was sitting in front of the computer, smiling and blinking with unseeing eyes.

  Adam’s first memories of his father were in the synagogue on Saturday mornings, standing at the bima and laughing. It had been years before Adam realized that not everyone laughed their way through a Saturday morning service, but that was probably one of the reasons that everyone loved Ephraim. He found joy in the most simplistic and mundane of rituals and had the gift of expressing that joy in a way that made others feel it, too. He led his congregation with gentle humor, but never lost sight that some things were serious. He spent his Sundays at soup kitchens, sponsored local Muslim youth on pilgrimages to Mecca, and took his congregants on their own semi-annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. When Adam had been small, he’d wanted to be a rabbi just like his father – at least, until he’d discovered hockey.

  True to his nature, Ephraim had howled with laughter and learned how to play, too. “So I can be like him when I retire, instead of the other way around,” he joked to his congregation.

  The man Adam remembered in childhood bore little resemblance to the man who sat in the assisted living apartment now. Ephraim Bernard had been larger than life, clean-shaven with bright eyes. He’d never been particularly muscular – “I lift a Torah and a Talmud, why lift anything else?” he said when asked about exercise – but now he was thin and gaunt. His skin was yellowed and pale, and rosy red cheeks were a thing of the past. He wore a beard now, but only because he found shaving difficult, and the nurses only had so much time to help.

  The biggest difference, however, were the thin tubes providing oxygen in Ephraim’s nose, and the scarring from the emergency tracheotomy on his throat.

  The eyes still had their shine, even if they couldn’t focus on the screen. Ephraim’s beard was newly trimmed, too, as was the thinning, greying hair on his head.

  “Hey, Papa, looking good,” said Adam, quickly scratching a note to himself to send a thank-you to Emilie later.

  Ephraim shrugged, but the smile told all. He reached for the computer, and Adam heard the soft sounds of typing just before the words appeared in the text box at the bottom of the screen.

  “Emilie wants to dye it purple.”

  The words were slow in coming, but Adam was patient. It was still easier than the voice box, which no one liked and was never audible over the computer line anyway. Typing, though slow, was much, much easier.

  “Are you going to let her?” asked Adam.

  Ephraim made a face. “I keep telling her green. She says I’m not Slytherin enough for green.”

  Adam chuckled. “She’s probably right.”

  “Ambition is not inherently evil, Adam. Purple is no good for my new career.”

  “New career?”

  Ephraim grinned. “I’m a matchmaker.”

  “Oh no,” groaned Adam.

  Ephraim’s grin turned to a glare. “It’s true! I set Nurse Georges on a date with Nurse Bethany. They’ve been together two weeks.”

  “Congratulations,” said Adam, amused. “Do you get a finder’s fee?”

  “They’re inviting me to the wedding,” said Ephraim. “Maybe they name their first-born after me.”

  Mohammed leaned into view. “Adam, I have a few congregants we’d like to visit while we’re here, but Emilie and I will be back in about half an hour. It was good seeing you.”

  “Thanks, Mohammed,” said Adam.

  Mohammed squeezed Ephraim’s shoulder. “Don’t talk his ear off, Ephraim. Want us to lock the door?”

  Ephraim frowned and waved him off, saying something through the voice box that sounded more like static to Adam, but clearly made sense to Mohammed, who laughed in response. A moment later, Adam heard the front door close with a somewhat noisy click.

  “I thought Mohammed and Emilie only visited on Saturdays,” said Adam.

  Ephraim shrugged again. “They knew you were gone and thought I’d be lonely. They’re good friends.”

  “You don’t make any other kind,” said Adam, thinking of the parade of visitors that had never slowed down after the accident or his father’s move into the assisted living facility.

  Ephraim brightened. “Emilie made latkes. We’re going to break the rules and light candles tonight.”

  Adam laughed. “Papa, please don’t get yourself thrown out before I get back!”

  Ephraim made a face. “All they’d do is scold me. And take away next week’s movie privileges. Like I want to see another movie with talking dogs.”

  “Pretty sure it’s the new Marvel movie next week, Papa.”

  “Oh. Better stay then. We’ll open a window for the smoke.”

  Adam snorted. “And here I thought I was the rebellious one.”

  Ephraim started typing again. It took a while for the words to appear. Despite Adam’s resolve not to appear bored, he found himself doodling on the pad next to the computer: squiggles and circles in an increasingly complicated pattern.

  Finally: “You could stay online, and we could light candles with you too.”

  Adam wondered how many sentences his father had typed before erasing them, trying to find something that wasn’t going to inflect too
much guilt in his son for skipping the holiday entirely.

  “It’s fine,” said Adam.

  Ephraim frowned. “You always loved Hanukkah. You can’t light candles in a hotel room.”

  “Can’t light them in your room either,” Adam pointed out.

  “Emilie said she’d save some latkes for you, put them in the freezer.”

  “Tell her thanks.”

  Ephraim leaned in close. “They’re terrible. Don’t tell her.”

  Adam burst into laughter. “I’m sure they’re better than the eggplant ones I had the other night.”

  Ephraim’s eyes went wide. “Eggplant? Where did you get eggplant latkes?”

  Adam’s heart twisted. “Oh. Um. A friend made them.”

  “A friend?” Ephraim began to sit up straighter. The words were flying out quickly now, as if he had too much to say to stop typing. “You have a friend in Boston?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You know I have friends, Papa.”

  “Who is he? What’s his name? Have I met him? Did he play hockey with you?”

  Adam groaned. “His name is Ben. You haven’t met him, I don’t think he’s ever been to Montreal. And he was a speed skater, not a hockey player.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of a Ben. How do you know him?”

  “He has a kosher bakery here, the kids have been buying his treats all week. Well. Kosher-style.”

  “Don’t be a snob. You just met him?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’ve been seeing him every day, he’s a nice guy. He invited me over for latkes when he realized I was in a hotel and couldn’t light candles.”

  “Eggplant latkes?” Ephraim’s expression made it clear he was doubtful.

  Adam grinned. “They weren’t that bad. He made a really good regular potato one, too. And he’s been making sufganiyot all week, with some fantastic fillings.”

  Ephraim continued to look skeptical. “What fantastic fillings? Raspberry is the only acceptable filling.”

  Adam laughed. “Okay, Papa, I’ll tell him.”

  “And he has a kosher bakery? Is he Jewish?”

  Adam picked up the pen again and started tapping it against the desk. “Sort of.”

  Ephraim frowned. There was a flurry of typing. “What do you mean, sort of? You are or you aren’t.”

  “Well,” hedged Adam. “His parents are Jewish, but he wasn’t really raised in a Jewish community. I don’t think they even had a congregation, just a couple of other families they celebrated holidays with. He knows the basics, but...” Adam shrugged.

  Ephraim frowned. “So?”

  “Papa, you know it’s more than that.”

  “And you know that’s only window dressing. Is he Jewish in his actions, in his life? Is he Jewish in his heart? Does he perform mitzvah? Does he love GD with all his soul? Those are the things that matter – not whether or not he lights candles or hangs a mezuzah or owns a tallis.”

  There were more words appearing, but Adam didn’t see them. Instead, he saw Ben packing white boxes full of treats to hand out to the homeless men and women behind the shop. He saw Ben researching as many types of latkes as he could, all with some amount of historical context. He saw the simple mezuzah on Ben’s doorpost, and the tenacity with which he’d been determined to celebrate Hanukkah with as much verve as his surrounding neighbors celebrated Christmas.

  “Papa,” said Adam, “I think he might be a better Jew than I am.”

  Ephraim snorted. “I don’t think GD grades on a scale. You like this boy?”

  Adam blinked. “I... yeah?”

  Ephraim nodded. “I hear they play hockey in Boston, too.”

  Ephraim’s expression was pointed, insistent: the same it’d always been when the subject of Adam’s abandoned career came up.

  Every other time, Adam had deflected it, saying, Papa, no, I can’t leave you.

  This time... Adam twisted his mouth and said, “I know, Papa.”

  Ephraim widened his eyes. “Oh, you know this now? How do you know this?”

  Adam bit his lip. “Um... they made me an offer.”

  Ephraim was quick. “Who? What offer?”

  “There’s a junior league team here. They want me to come and coach for them.”

  There was a loud bang as Ephraim hit the table with the flat of his hand. His eyes practically glittered. “I knew it! I knew you went for a reason!”

  “Papa, we came because the kids were invited, not because they wanted to offer me a job.”

  “Maybe it was both! I hope you’re considering it. This is a good chance for you.”

  Adam sighed. “I know, Papa.”

  “And if it brings you closer to this boy...”

  “Papa!”

  “I know that sound. I’m your father, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t think it. I’m fine. I have too many visitors already, I could deal with one less.”

  Adam groaned. “Papa...”

  “What does this boy think? Ben? Have you told him?”

  Adam threw up his hands. “I haven’t even decided yet!”

  “Then I’ll decide for you,” said Ephraim. “You talk to him, you see if he likes you back, you move to Boston, you be happy. End of discussion. I told you I had a new career as a matchmaker.”

  Adam chuckled. “All right, Papa. I’ll talk to him. But I’m not making any decisions yet.”

  “Because I made them for you! He skates, yes? That’s good to have things in common.”

  Adam smiled. “He doesn’t skate anymore. He was injured a few years ago.”

  “Like you.”

  Adam shook his head. “I wasn’t the one injured, Papa.”

  Ephraim shrugged. “Just because you weren’t in the car with us doesn’t mean you weren’t hurt, Adam. And you still skate.”

  “He doesn’t.” Adam paused, not sure how much he should divulge. “He actually got on the ice for the first time a few days ago. I didn’t even realize until after how hard that must have been for him.”

  “A brave one, then.”

  “Yeah.” Adam smiled to himself. “Way braver than me.”

  Ephraim nodded slowly, typing slowly, too. “You should talk to him. If he is brave, you could learn from him.”

  The thought was almost a funny one – but Adam rather liked it. “Yeah. I probably could. I’m seeing him tonight again.”

  “Again? So serious?” But Ephraim didn’t look concerned – in fact, he looked delighted.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We don’t exactly live near each other, Papa.”

  “So maybe that will change.” Ephraim shifted in his chair. “You talk to him. Now, tell me about the games. How are your boys playing?”

  “Great,” said Adam, and then went into a more detailed description of the games, much to his father’s pleasure.

  But somewhere in the back of his mind, he couldn’t quite shake the idea of telling Ben, What if I stayed?

  And what Ben might say.

  BEN HADN’T EXACTLY been counting the hours. It’d helped that the day ended up being busier than anticipated. It was lunchtime before he even realized it, and then his afternoon helpers came in, bubbling over with teenaged energy.

  Ben spent a blissful two hours decorating cookies and preparing the fillings for the next batch of sufganiyot. When it finally came time to start winding the shop down for the evening, he was surprised to find that he actually had managed to make it through the afternoon without once noticing the time.

  “Got a hot date, boss?” asked Justin. He was covered in pimples and had red hair that stood straight up at the back of his head, but Ben had seen him successfully convince an outraged mother-of-four-boys that a pink-and-purple birthday cake was the best idea for her sons, who were undoubtedly going to be ecstatic to have a reason to eat the entire thing in one go.

  On top of that, he sold her another half dozen cupcakes in shades of red, purple, and pink, too.

  “Just a hot
donut,” said Ben, eyeing the faintly green cream in the mixing bowl.

  “Mint?” asked Justin hopefully.

  “Jalapeño,” said Ben.

  Justin blanched “I don’t think people go much in for spicy breakfast pastries, boss.”

  “Yeah,” said Ben with a sigh. “Dammit. I really wanted something interesting for tomorrow. I can’t get this one right. I think I’ll just repeat the raspberry.”

  “You could spice up the raspberry,” suggested Justin.

  “It’s a thought,” said Ben dubiously.

  Someone knocked on the front door, and Justin leaned back out into the storefront. “We’re closed!” he yelled, but whoever it was knocked again, this time more insistently. “Uh, boss?”

  Ben looked over Justin’s shoulder and broke into a grin. “My hot date.”

  “Ooooohhhhh,” sang Justin. “I always knew tall, dark, and handsome was your type.”

  “Go home, Justin,” Ben said, waving at Adam and motioning that he’d only be another minute.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to be here for the debauchery,” said Justin. He crossed the kitchen to the coatrack.

  “We’re not debauching the kitchen,” said Ben. He hoped Justin didn’t notice the way his ears were heating up.

  “Whatever, man. It’s your kitchen.” Justin zipped up his coat. “Hey, fruitcakes go on sale Tuesday, right? Since Hanukkah’s over on Monday.”

  It hit Ben like a jolt. “Yeah,” he said, even though the realization was an uncomfortable one. “Sunday night’s the last night. I’ll put up a sign on Monday.”

  “Thank GD, Mrs. Richardson’s getting seriously antsy. Okay, later!”

  “Later,” echoed Ben. He glanced at the rows of fruitcakes, all lined up neatly on the highest shelf around the kitchen and tried not to be resentful.

  It’s not their fault. And they’re going to put me so squarely in the black, even Sheldon will stay off my case for a few weeks.

  Adam was still waiting on the other side of the door, stomping his feet to keep warm in the cold. Ben unlocked the door as quickly as he could to let him in.

  “Sorry,” Adam apologized. “I was talking to my dad and lost track of time.”