Emboldened, and hoping he didn’t sound bitter, Ephraim persisted. “Yeah, but everyone has family and memories, there’s something else here”

"In our family, first cousins are like siblings,” Chaya said, “you know, ’cuz of—”

“ ’Cuz of Buttercup Street,” Ephraim finished, and then felt a bit bad, because he knew he sounded mocking.

He wasn’t trying to mock. Memories, he knew well, were hard currency, valuable as cash.

She sat down, her face colored by nostalgia. “I mean, Shmuel Chaim was the one who got us to pick all those berries, our hands were scratched like you wouldn’t believe. My fingers were the color of raspberries until Succos. He convinced us we would sell them at the farmers’ market in Spring Glen and make enough money for us all to get new bikes.”

Ephraim arranged his face to look especially interested, even though he knew the story.

“Turned out that the farmers’ market wasn’t just open to anyone who wanted to set up shop, and after we walked three miles carrying the huge tray of raspberries, we had nowhere to sell them, and some kindly farmer said he’d buy the whole bushel for ten dollars.”

“Yeah, I hear,” Ephraim said. “Just I have PTA Monday and Tuesday night, and Thursday is night seder with the boys. Wednesday is my only night off that week, but if you really want to go to the wedding, we’ll do it.”

Chaya brightened. “Yes, family simchahs are important. I’ll get a babysitter and be ready to leave when you come home from learning.”

  

Wednesday night, Ephraim Krohman sat at the Rubinoff-Granger wedding in Lakewood (all weddings, he’d concluded glumly, until the arrival of Mashiach, would be in Lakewood. That was just the reality and everyone else would have to go along with it and spend their galus years on the Garden State Parkway, heavy traffic around Exit 153). He was at the Granger-cousins table, and inevitably Buttercup Road came up — Gavriel Landa, a first cousin, pushed away the pickles because he was allergic and Mendy Granger, who lived in Baltimore, said, “Oh, we know it, don’t we? Remember the pickle barrel at Templeton’s Store and how you passed out there?”

And like they always did, they politely shared the background to the story, allowing the others around the table to share in the great hilarity and special atmosphere of those magical years on Buttercup Road.

Memories, Ephraim reminded himself, are hard currency.

Even if he’d been to see the house and it didn’t seem quite so impressive in real life. Big, for sure, rambling, yes, but also sagging and peeling and sort of sad, to be honest.

He’d kept that assessment to himself, of course, because Chaya saw only the splendor. One Chol Hamoed, she’d suggested they drive all the way from Queens to the mountains, just so she could take the kids on a tour.

The door had been locked, but she’d swallowed hard and called Uncle Ronnie, who told her the back door would open if she pushed hard, and, with sunlight flooding her features, she’d led them all inside, her words coming out in a rush, like a broken faucet suddenly come to life.

“The dinner bell Grandpa liked to use, we could hear it out to the meadow and he would shake it until we all showed up. My cousin Mimi lost her tooth and it fell into this hole and we spent half the night looking and really her brother Benjy had found it and hid it but we were sure there were ghosts. We walked to the lake and forgot our towels — we were freezing, but the fireplace… wow…”

Ephraim had been a sport, laughing along, and the kids had certainly enjoyed the memories.

They didn’t have a country house. He and Chaya tried to take them out of hot Queens every summer — Niagara, Lake George, Lancaster — and that would create memories, too.

There was summer beyond Buttercup Road, no?