Sima slumped forward in mock-collapse. “You’re not making me any cooler.”
“I’m getting there. Anyway, that summer I worked nights at the restaurant. My days were free, so I’d go to the supermarket to see Alon. We planted flowers, and—”
“Timna!”
Timna laughed. “All right, all right. So, one day we discover the freezer.”
“That’s more like it.”
“We were stacking some boxes there, and it was such a relief from the heat that we just stayed. And then we started going in there whenever possible, taking quick breaks to cool down before going back outside.”
“Don’t tell me you got locked in there.”
“Sima, you always assume the worst.”
“No, just you hear stories.” Though she protested, she wondered how Timna had so quickly picked up on that—Connie was always telling her the same thing.
“Anyway, after a few days I decided to bring clothing for the freezer, so we could hang out there longer. I brought us sweatpants and sweatshirts and we kept them beside the freezer door. We’d go for a break and get all dressed up and then we’d be able to stay cool, but warm, for a longer time.”
“My God, is that smart.” Sima imagined Timna and Alon in the crisp darkness, their bodies wrapped in wool like children: hats, mittens, scarves.
“Once we had the right clothes, we made a real space for ourselves. We took two boxes of frozen peas and made them chairs, and a huge box of frozen pita became a table. And then the walls—you know how freezer walls are all iced and wet and stuff? So as a joke we used to leave messages for each other on the walls: Alon loves Timna, that sort of thing.” Timna traced a heart through the stale air of the shop. “By the time Alon left for the army, it’d really become our home. We had these pink tea candles we stole from aisle two, and we’d light them all around the freezer—”
“So you start with helping, and end with stealing.”
Timna laughed. “Alon’s dad didn’t mind. Once it was only a few weeks to army he just wanted us to enjoy ourselves, have fun.” She ran a hand along the spine of the sewing machine. “It’s funny, but whenever I got tense in the army, whenever I couldn’t sleep or wanted to cry or whatever, I would think of that freezer. Just sitting there in our sweatpants with the candles burning, drinking tea or coffee at our makeshift table while outside it was boiling hot in the shade. I never felt more safe than I did there.”
“It’s like a poem,” Sima said, though she was struck as much by the thought that Timna, too, had hard times, cried, as by the beauty of the image: the young couple, the dark freezer, the pink candles.
“You think? I had one friend, she said when I was with Alon it was like the two of us were playing house.”
“But that’s nice, no?”
Timna shook her head. “She meant it to hurt. And we both knew it was sort of silly, hiding in the freezer. But the thing is, it’s something, isn’t it, to have a place like that?” She looked at Sima. “This shop. That’s it for you.”
Sima nodded, startled to suddenly recognize such an obvious truth. “Yes. I guess it is.”
“When you find that, you keep it, you know? No matter what other people say.”
“But you’re so far away now—”
“But it’s not the freezer; it’s Alon. So every time I speak with him, I get the space back. And,” she said, smiling, “like all the stupid love songs say, even when we’re not together I keep him with me.”
“Of course,” Sima said, “that’s true,” though she knew the shop mattered only to her, stood for no special love in her life.
Sima and Lev went on their honeymoon two months after they’d been married, when the novelty of sharing a bed with a man hadn’t yet faded—his breath in the night belonging to her, his body there each morning reaching out, making her laugh as he gathered her close (and though she’d protest she had to brush her teeth, get dressed, yet she cherished all the same the warmth as he hugged her good morning and she thought, I am wanted)—but the fear mostly had. They drove to Boston on a hot May weekend, a city neither had been to before. From Brooklyn to Queens to Westchester to the Hudson Valley, her thighs sticky against the car seat but the breeze blowing her hair, and green pasture on the side of the road just like it should be: dotted with clover, the occasional horse behind a wood fence.
They pulled over for lunch. She spread a blanket in the green shade beneath an old tree, unpacked the food: tuna sandwiches she’d made the night before, two apples, juice in plaid thermoses, and sugar cookies Connie had baked for their trip, carefully wrapped in wax paper. After they ate, Lev leaned back, his hands linked under his head. Sima kicked off her mules, placed her own head on his chest. He stroked her hair and she listened to his breath and together they looked up at the green leaves canopied above them.
“I could stay here forever,” Sima said, but a few minutes later they were standing to straighten and smooth clothing, pat down hair. The rest of the drive they listened to the radio and sang along when they knew the words: save the last dance for me, Georgia on my mind. “You’re tone-deaf,” Lev told her, and so she sang even louder.
When they arrived at the hotel, Sima brought her hand to her mouth to hide her wide smile. White lawn chairs fanned out around a circular blue pool; a white-jacketed waiter paced behind a pink stucco bar. “Where did you find this place?” she asked, slowly removing her sunglasses as she stepped outside. “It’s like Tahiti or something.”
Lev smiled. “I have my ways.” He threw the car keys up in one hand, caught them with the other.
The room was bright and clean. Sima moved through it, calling out to Lev as she admired each luxury: the crisp white sheets, the cut-glass cups, the olive drapes that, pulled back and secured through brass hooks on either side of the window, gave way to a view of the magical courtyard below. After finishing her inspection—a color television, larger than any she’d ever seen, within a wooden cabinet—Sima suggested they change for swimming. But Lev closed the curtains and collapsed on the bed.
“Come on,” she said, the energy of a new place, of vacation, coursing through her.
“Come here, instead.” He smiled up at her, patted the bed beside him.
She was disappointed, yet pleased to be wanted. She watched him watch her as she undressed, his hands behind his head and his shoes kicked off. She unbuttoned her Capri pants—sliding them slowly down her legs, with pointed toes kicking them away—lasso-swung her blouse onto the orange tweed chair across the room. She stood before him in her underwear a full moment (it took something, that moment, but she forced it for him) before crawling into bed beside him, drawing the covers up and over their bodies.
They slept after, a heavy, late-day sleep, then woke and showered and dressed for dinner and Sima thought, so this is what vacation is. She wore her hair in a French roll like Connie had showed her, and when she paused at the top of the outdoor staircase to fix her sandal strap, Lev kissed the back of her neck before taking her hand, leading her slowly down the steps.
They had time before them, everything was time before them, Lev’s eyes sharp on the road and both hands on the wheel and the trip-tik open on her lap with the restaurant she’d chosen a few weeks ago circled, and just because she could, she told him, “I love you,” because for now at least there were no children to roll their eyes in the back seat, and just because he could, he placed a hand on her thigh, squeezed.
Sima leaned back, closed her eyes content.
“I don’t ever want to go home,” Sima told him as they lay in bed on their last evening, having woken together from another late afternoon nap. She thought of the town they’d walked through that day—tiger lilies pressed against the white fences of Victorian homes—and then the gray-brown of Brooklyn, the heat, the garbage. “I want to stay here, like this.”
Lev rolled toward her, smiled. “Okay,” he said.
They allowed themselves to dream a little, how they might keep driving, until Sima, excite
d, got the road map from her purse and unfolded it on the bed between them. She traced the shore highway through the pink state of Maine, pausing a moment at the black border line before continuing into the beige of Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia.
Early the next morning they left their hotel room and began the drive home.
“I brought pictures,” Timna said, turning to Sima as Idy and Chanie exited the shop, a slight argument, the whispers of sisters, between them.
“Oh? Let me see.” Sima stood up from behind the cash register and dragged a chair over to Timna’s table.
Timna opened her purse—new, Sima noticed, feeling a small thrill that her payments allowed Timna such a purchase—and took out a small album, placing it on the table between them. On the cover was a red rose, a few dewdrops on each petal; “Memories” was scrawled underneath the flower in a pink, lipsticked font.
Sima leaned forward as Timna opened the album, looked at the photos: a young girl, blond hair drawn back in a ponytail, held a baby.
“Me and my sister, Liat,” Timna said, smiling. “Wasn’t she a gorgeous baby?”
Sima nodded. “My God—you and the baby both.” She lifted up the album, considered. “You look just like yourself, Timna. How old are you here?”
“Twelve. Liat’s eight now.”
The girl in the picture was holding the baby with both hands, one leg thrust out for balance. She was laughing; the baby looked to the side, her mouth a wide O of pleasure.
“Your parents waited a long time between you two, huh?”
Timna turned the page. “Actually, they’re divorced. My dad remarried; Liat’s my half sister. Here,” she said, pointing at the picture on the left side of the page, “is my dad, Liat, my stepmom, and me and there—” she pointed at the opposite page—“is my mom and me.”
Sima bent over the photographs, focusing on the new family first. Timna’s dad had her broad, confident smile; he looked like the kind of man who advertised watches in magazines—tall, muscular, silver-haired. His wife was much younger—fifteen, twenty years, Sima guessed—with long blond hair like Timna’s. Sima thought but did not say that they could have been sisters.
The four of them stood in a row, arms behind each other’s backs, a slice of beige ruins and the blue of the ocean behind them. “That’s in Caesarea,” Timna said, “right before I left for the army.”
Timna’s hair was longer in the photograph, a few strands streaked a faded red against her face. She wore jean shorts cropped inches above her knees and her legs were long, a little too thin—still the legs of a girl.
Timna rotated the album for the next shot. Timna’s mother was in a kitchen, leaning against brown metal cabinets. She was a thin woman, well-dressed, Sima thought, in dark jeans and a red cashmere sweater, but her face had a pinched quality to it: she lacked Timna’s open expression, smooth skin; she looked not just older but closed.
The kitchen was a mess. The countertop was cluttered with bowls; a small hill of flour spilled onto the floor, dusting the yellow tile white. Timna sat at the kitchen table, which was crowded with newspapers and magazines. It must have been morning: she was dressed in her army uniform, but she was barefoot; she was eating cereal, the spoon half-raised to her lips. She did not look at the camera.
“We were making pancakes,” Timna said.
“But you’re eating cereal.”
Timna smiled. “Very observant.”
Sima blushed, realizing she’d been staring at the picture. She glanced at Timna—an excuse already forming: something about an interest in Israeli kitchens, were they the same as here—but Timna was looking at the photo, a perfect crease between her brows.
“She was trying to impress some guy,” Timna said, “and I just wanted to get back to the base on time.” She shook her head. “I was annoyed, actually. But it’s a good picture, I think. It captures something, doesn’t it?”
Sima nodded, though she wasn’t sure whether that something was worth capturing. “Who took it?”
“Her boyfriend.” Timna looked up at Sima, shrugged. “I never pay much attention to her boyfriends. They’re not bad guys or anything, just she dated one for a few years when I was fourteen and it was hard for me when they broke up.”
“Oh,” Sima said. She’d heard of women who did things like that. “And how old were you at the divorce?”
“Ten and a half. But he was having an affair—he was never home anyway.”
Sima nodded. Such a pity, she thought, looking once more at the chaotic kitchen, so sad for Timna—and yet a relief to discover Timna’s family so flawed.
Timna turned the page. “These are me and my high school friends,” Timna told her, and for the next few pages Sima looked at images of girls with dark red lips and long black hair as they toasted bottles of beer on the beach or ate burgers on sunset patios, palm tree shadows behind them. Sima nodded as Timna moved through the album, a slight envy growing with each image—how popular Timna was, how easy her life seemed.
“And Alon?” Sima asked, looking at a photo of Timna on a girlfriend’s lap, giggling.
“Here.” Timna carefully flipped the page, and Sima saw that Alon’s photos had been looked at so often that the album had grown worn at the center; Timna had to hold both sides to keep it from coming apart.
Sima looked first at his neck, his body. He wore a white, long-sleeved cotton shirt and blue jeans; his chest was broad, his shoulders round but thick, substantial. Around his neck—a slight Adam’s apple, some stubble—was a thin gold chain. The neck was long and sensual; it didn’t match the thick shoulders and was better for that.
Alon was handsome, but not beautiful like Timna. He lacked Timna’s glow, it seemed to Sima as she lifted the album and held it closer for inspection. He had green eyes and slightly hollow cheeks and he was grinning, Sima saw, in that crooked way men do when they’re overwhelmed with happiness but still trying to look tough. In the next picture Sima knew the cause of his joy: he held Timna, both arms wrapped round her body, as she stretched out a hand to capture them. The picture was blurry, but Sima could see they were leaning into each other and laughing in that easy way that signaled love.
The photographs that followed were almost all of Alon and Timna, taken by one or the other: Alon emerging from a tent, the morning sky white with heat above him; Timna, wearing long braids like a child, dipping her hands into a river; Alon in shorts and a T-shirt, kicking a soccer ball in a city park; Timna gorgeous in a tight green dress, her eyes rimmed with black liner and her hair swept back like an old-time Hollywood star.
It seemed to Sima that there was so much joy in the pictures, so much love: in one Timna held Alon’s chin between her hands, kissed his cheek—and the grin on his face, the brightness in his eyes made Sima want to close her own.
“He loves you very much,” Sima said.
“I miss him so much,” Timna told her. “I look at you and Lev, and I can’t wait to be that way—old, having spent a lifetime together.”
Sima did not respond.
Timna turned the page. “I just hope we make it through this year,” she said as she traced the edge of Alon’s body on the beach blanket, asleep. “He’s the best thing in my life.”
“Of course you will,” Sima told her, closing the album. “When you’re in love, it lasts.”
After Timna had left, her photo album tucked back in her purse, Sima stayed in the shop. She wasn’t ready yet for the slow, creaking walk upstairs: her hand heavy on the banister, her ankles swollen after a day on her feet. And the tasks that would follow, the well-worn path from the moment she pulled open the plastic accordion door at the top of the stairs until rolling on to her side, gathering the blanket in her hands. She’d prepare dinner: salad with low-fat dressing followed by chicken breast, or a white fish, or pasta. They’d eat quietly. Sometimes she’d have a story—and more and more it would be about Timna—but often she listened to the sound of their forks on the porcelain, the way the angle altered the noise from tinn
y to coarse, depending.
When they were done, Lev would carry the dishes to the sink and return to the table, sponge in hand, to wipe the yellow placemats clean. Sima would rinse the plates, load the dishwasher, brush crumbs from the counter into her open hand with a wet paper towel. She’d sweep while he went upstairs, making sure to get the broom under the cabinets—that open space she always meant to block in but never did—before banging the dustpan against the side of the garbage can, putting it away with the broom in the pantry, turning off the light.
It’d be eight months still until Alon would get released. Such a long time. Maybe she could do something to speed it up—pay for a plane ticket, host a visit. She indulged a moment in the fantasy, imagined saying, it’s my pleasure, while she watched Timna beam with gratitude. It’d be rushed, sure, the two of them on a whirlwind tour of New York: Timna’s cheeks red with winter outside Rockefeller Center, the Fifth Avenue taxi cabs squealing to a stop as she’d raise a hand, just so, for the ride while Alon, impressed with the ease with which Timna negotiated the city, would hold the door open, gaze at her a moment through the window glass.
But as the two of them leaned back, their heads resting on the green upholstery of the cab, Sima saw herself outside unable to hear the destination they gave the cabbie. And what would she do, she reasoned, while the two of them, running with joined hands, forced the pigeons to scatter from the fountain beside the Met? She’d be alone in the basement, just some old woman wasting her money on a love she would never share. Of course he couldn’t leave the country while in the army, and even if her plane ticket could buy a visit, it wasn’t her gift to give.
Sima walked toward the staircase, turned off the light. She placed her hand on the banister, paused. After Timna had taken that first picture of the two of them together, she would have wrapped her arms around Alon, they would have kissed. He would spread both his hands on her back; feel the bone beneath, the fragility. Their mouths would be warm and open to each other and slowly she’d lean back, exposing the smooth of her throat that his lips, eager, would press against, circle, until, with a moan, her legs bending beneath her and the camera dropping gently down, Timna would pull Alon onto the grass, feel his body against her own, wanting.
Sima's Undergarments for Women Page 4
