ASHER BLUM

Asher paced back and forth across his study between the window and the wall holding the photo collage Lexi framed for their last wedding anniversary. Ten images of Iris and him, spread out over their six-plus decades together. His favorite photo was the oldest, shortly after they met at Brooklyn College. And the one taken the day they moved onto Azalea Court, the gray paint still glistening wet on the front porch. It was the day after their wedding and the day before he started his position at the state hospital. The latest image was already five years old. Why didn’t they take photos anymore?

He glanced at the clock on his desk. How long would it take Eric to get here?

Eric was his only real friend, besides Iris. At first, Eric made him nervous. Actually, Asher didn’t approve of him. In Asher’s world, men went to work and their wives looked after the house and kids. Asher would sit in his leather recliner by the front window and watch Eric’s progress through the flowerbeds, snapping the dead blooms off with a sharp twist of his wrist, dropping them into that canvas bag he wore like an apron, clomping around in orange plastic garden shoes. Orange is no color for a man. He wasn’t crazy about Eric’s garden philosophy either. Why bother working so hard on planting and weeding if the result is going to be just as messy as nature? Iris always pulled any weed that dared to poke through the cedar mulch and lined her beds with corrugated edging. Asher helped her unroll the stiff metal and press it into the soft earth with his weekend shoes.

But Iris liked Eric, and she was a sharp woman for all her soft ways. And once retired, Asher needed someone to talk to. Some people might think that after a career of talking he would like silence in retirement, but it didn’t work out that way. Besides, most of his patients would just as soon he didn’t talk so they didn’t have to listen and could return uninterrupted to whatever stories spiraled in their heads.

He didn’t love being retired, but the timing worked well for him, with the hospital transferring its final patients the week before his sixty-seventh birthday. He wasn’t a man to sit around watching Masterpiece Theater reruns. He worked every day on his research, reviewing patient notes and revising his manuscript, and that kept his mind nimble and his attention engaged. After four decades of clinical work, he had a lot to say about treating the mentally ill, even if he sometimes doubted that he was right about any of it. That’s why his working title for the book was “What We Thought We Knew,” even though Iris declared it was a stupid title. No, he didn’t love being retired, but he had been content, until his carefully erected life somehow spun out of control.

He and Iris had worked hard. That’s what you did if you grew up during difficult times. You carried a responsibility to give something back to your people, your community. God knows there was no glory in the work he did, treating the people society labeled as nuts and locked away, but he did his best. These younger doctors seemed to feel they owe nothing except to their stockbrokers. Even Eric’s wife. Asher heard she had good hands, but what satisfaction could a surgeon get reshaping noses to make women look less Jewish?

He was glad when Eric and Bea moved in next door and the condo association hired Eric to shovel snow and manage the grounds, although he still disapproved of Eric’s wishy-washy way with the garden. Sometimes a man had to make difficult decisions.

As a physician, Asher was used to examining the evidence, considering the possible scenarios, making logical decisions, and then treating the situation. When everything changed with Iris a month earlier, he thought he handled it well. But maybe not, because now she was gone. She must have left very early. When he woke up this morning the coffeepot was cold. Iris, her pocketbook, and her favorite flannel-lined blue jacket with fur trim around the hood were gone. Her cell phone was on the kitchen counter—some kind of secret message that he couldn’t decipher.

He tried to keep calm, but inside he was reeling. And he had to face facts: his take-charge methods might not be working so well in this new and dangerous situation. Iris was gone. Who knows what she might say or do? A cop was standing at his front door, waiting for detectives to arrive and take over the investigation. He needed someone to talk to and the best candidate was Eric. But how on Earth could he adequately explain things to a young man who had never faced Asher’s challenges?

He probably couldn’t, but he had to try.