The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

by Lynda Cohen Loigman

“Words can do anything,” she said. “A kind word can fix a person’s spirit. A cruel one can break a person’s heart. Wicked words have caused wars, and honest words have made peace. Why shouldn’t they be able to heal?”

That was the nice thing about spending time with a person you’d known for almost all of your life—the memories you shared grew even more vivid when you remembered them together.

Her reflection was a kaleidoscope of buried memories. The sapphire fabric was the evening sky outside her half-open Brooklyn window, it was Esther’s silk robe in the kitchen at midnight, and the bottles of Higgins inks on her father’s store shelves. The trim at the edges of her skirt and sleeves was the silver in Esther’s graying hair, the giant stockpot on the kitchen stove, and the band of her sister’s wedding ring. In the mirror, Augusta’s pewter eyes were the same as her mother’s before she got sick: filled with uncomplicated delight. Past and present, joy and sorrow mingled together in the shining glass. Augusta wasn’t merely her eighty-year-old self—she was fourteen and sixteen, two and twelve. She was a child swimming in the ocean with her mother and a young woman watching her aunt make soup. She was a curious girl who asked too many questions. She was a grieving daughter at her mother’s funeral and a maid of honor at her sister’s wedding.

when your brain is churning away, I swear it makes your whole face light up. There’s nothing more beautiful than that.” Augusta laughed. “You think my brain is beautiful?” Irving refused to be embarrassed. “I think you’re happiest when you’re using it—when you’re doing your homework or studying your formulas or learning whatever is in your books. That’s when you’re the most yourself. And that’s when you’re the most beautiful to me.”

“Well, I just wish your mother were here to advise you about all of this. But I think … I think the way you look at Irving reminds me of the way your mother used to look at me.”