The Auerbach Will by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

in the men’s clothing business. Essie sketched him with a mustache, didn’t like that, and erased it off. Then she sketched him with a small, pointed beard, but didn’t care for that, either.
    One afternoon, as she was leaving school, she encountered him on the steps. He smiled at her, and said, “Do you live near here?”
    â€œOn Norfolk Street,” she said.
    â€œI’ll walk you home,” he said. “Here, let me carry your books,” and he took her packet of books that were tied together with a slender string. She had actually been headed for the library. But that could wait.
    Up close to him, not separated from him by rows of students and their desks, and by the lecture platform, she saw that he really was extraordinarily handsome.
    In that memory, he still is.
    It is February there, and the low late-afternoon sun is leaden and cold. There is a damp wind coming up from the river, and instinctively Essie draws her scarf up over her nose and mouth, and they push forward, heads lowered, clutching their coats, against the wind. It is too cold for conversation, and there seems no point in trying. Warm gusts of steam blow up from the storm sewers, the hot innards of the city that he has described in his lectures, and fling up soot and candy wrappers, all the detritus of the city, spiraling into the air. A blowing sheet of newspaper cuffs about his trouser legs and he does a little dance to rid himself of it. Essie cups her hand across her eyes to keep cinders from flying into them.
    In that memory, the city is all motion, people rocking about on the pavements like passengers on a huge ship on a stormy sea, swaying to keep their balance, grasping for handholds as the vessel that is Manhattan Island pitches and tosses in the waves. But in more ways than one this short journey to Norfolk Street seems to Essie Litsky like an ocean crossing, and in the wind she and only she feels that she is walking on sheer air. Where will this journey lead? For this young man himself, in his fine clothes, with his highly polished dark brown shoes, is from the Other Side. And on the Other Side, she knows from what she has read in her books and magazines, stand open spaces, green lawns and picket fences, trees and streams and fountains, gardens where children play in swings and sandboxes, where sunshine falls on all four sides, not just slanted narrowly through streets and airshafts. This is where she suddenly feels herself headed now, with this fine-looking young man as her escort and her guide. The trip may be full of perils, but it need not be long, and she knows immediately that this is the trip she has always dreamed of making, and it is as though, if she stood on tiptoe, she could see and greet the horizon of that shining opposite shore. Because it is as simple as this: he is taking her out of the Old World, and into America at last.
    I must make him fall in love with me , she tells herself. I must make no false moves. Then, holding tight to him, I will leap to it.
    They turn into Hester Street, and the wind falls, trapped behind the buildings, but there another storm assails them—a moving sea of humanity and sound. The street is lined on both sides with pushcarts topped by makeshift canopies and umbrellas as far as the eye can see, and in between are people—bearded men in heavy coats, women in long skirts and aprons and shawls, children, and everyone, it seems, is carrying some sort of bundle or basket, buying, selling, bickering, haggling: newsboys, egg-sellers, fish-peddlers, the matzoh men, the cash-for-clothes men, thrusting goods at one another. Blocking their way is a group of women arguing loudly with a yard-goods dealer over a bit of cotton cloth. People lean against each other, shout and move away. Fists shake. Threats are issued. Terrible terrors and curses are invoked. Then there is a sudden burst of laughter and from somewhere the sound of an organ-grinder’s music. The crowd sways