10
“SORRY I’M LATE,” TIMNA SAID, PULLING OFF HER JEAN jacket as she entered the shop. “We got back from Philly in the middle of the night, and I could barely get up this morning.”
“Oh?” Sima asked, glancing at her watch as if she hadn’t noticed the time, though she’d checked it repeatedly since coming downstairs twenty minutes before. “You want coffee? There’s some upstairs.”
“That’d be great, thanks.” Timna raised her arms in a stretch; Sima looked quickly away. “And how was your weekend?” Timna asked. “Did you get that thing done—the leaves in the gutter?”
Sima nodded, embarrassed that she’d mentioned such a mundane chore to Timna. How pathetic she must sound, getting Lev to clean the gutters a major weekend event. Yet she had needed to hound him, and it was necessary: the old tree beside their house lost its foliage early; by the first week of October the roof gutter would be crowded with leaves that, left unchecked, would freeze and threaten collapse come winter.
She’d begun reminding Lev two weeks before, and the morning of the big event hurried him through his coffee. Lev protested, pointed out that since it was the only major task of the day, there was no need to rush. Sima didn’t admit that she was afraid for him to have too much caffeine before he climbed up the ladder; instead said only that she knew him, and if he didn’t do it first thing—
“It’s Shabbos, Sima. Relax.”
Sima took his coffee cup from the table, spilled it into the sink.
“Sima!”
She shrugged. “I’ll make you more later. Come on, let’s get to work.”
In the first few years of their marriage they’d observed Shabbat: the proud walk to synagogue in their nicest clothing, Sima’s heels pinching just enough that she would reach for Lev’s hand, hold it close the final block before they separated inside the cool lobby beside the gold-leafed memorial Tree of Life. The women would hurry through one door and the men through another and the children choosing between as she nodded to Lev goodbye, found a seat in the women’s section, and leaned in for “Did you see” and “Have you heard,” pinning straight the lace circle on her head as she widened her eyes, and no, standing up, sitting down, she hadn’t seen, she hadn’t heard. Eventually she’d follow a few of the women out to the lobby so the children could play while they talked, every now and then pausing to call shush as they exchanged their news, the women waiting for the service to end and Sima waiting for the day when her child would join them.
After services there would be a long lunch with friends: the afternoon sun playing on the table, the sleepy fullness of too much bread and wine. They’d return home to the pleasure of an afternoon nap, the luxury of turning to touch each other in the middle of the day, and with the coming of evening a new sense of freedom.
Saturday nights had their own rituals back then, as special, it seemed to Sima, as the lighting of the candles, the blessing over the bread and wine. “What should I wear?” Sima would ask, emerging from the bathroom in evening makeup: black mascara instead of the usual brown, red lips rather than pink. Lev would turn off the television while he considered, finally venturing a guess to make Sima laugh—“The purple? The blue?”—both of them knowing he never noticed what she wore, rarely remembered to compliment an outfit.
“Well,” she’d say, turning to him after she’d dressed, “how about this, is this okay?”
“Yeah,” Lev would tell her, smiling, “that one’s all right.”
They’d hold hands as they walked out the door, on their way to a restaurant or a movie or, a few times a year, a show, the city all lights and waiting for them. And when at the end of the evening he reached for the keys in the small tiled square of their apartment building lobby, held the door open for her to enter, he’d ask, “Did you have a nice time?” and she’d turn to him, her young husband, and say yes.
But things changed. Her own children never racing through the synagogue lobby, forcing the women to call shush and an old man, entering late, to frown; her own business crowding the week, Friday and Saturday her only days off and too many chores, too many errands, to allow time to walk hand in hand to synagogue, linger over a long lunch with friends, indulge in an afternoon nap. So they stopped. As the years passed and the neighborhood became Hasidic, most of their friends moved to different areas: Marine Park, Flatbush, Canarsie. Sima and Lev stayed; her business was in Boro Park, and in the end that was all, she often thought, she had.
Sima watched nervously from the living room window as Lev leaned over the gutter. He was too old for this work, she thought, as she watched the wind blow the soft whiteness of his hair; they should have called a professional. When he seemed to be moving too quickly to maintain his balance, she yelled, “Lev, watch it!” nodding to herself to mark his progress as he moved along the roofline, her lips set thin.
Thank God, she thought when he finished, promising herself next year to find someone through the Yellow Pages, no need to go through such anxiety. But she thanked Lev for just a moment before noticing the dirt on his shoes, and what was he thinking wearing them inside?
“Mud everywhere,” Sima told Timna, though really there’d been just a few scuffs on the floor, nothing her sock couldn’t smooth over.
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
Sima nodded, struggled for what else to say. She wanted to make Timna laugh. “I mean, if I don’t keep an eye on Lev there’s no telling what he’ll do.” She looked at Timna, lowered her voice. “Did I ever tell you the kitchen magnet story?”
Timna shook her head no.
“Oh, I have to—hold on, your coffee. Lev!” Sima called, moving toward the staircase. “Lev!”
“What?” The response came muffled through the door.
“Will you bring Timna some coffee? Coffee! No milk, one sugar!” She turned back to Timna, waved away her thanks. “It’s no trouble, he’s doing nothing all day anyway. So, this is hilarious, we had these magnets, I don’t even know where we got them. They looked like cookies, glazed and with sprinkles.” Sima made an O shape with her thumb and forefinger. “Well. There they were on the fridge I don’t know how long, two years maybe. I mean, just there on the fridge where Lev could look at them every day.”
Timna nodded, placed her hands on the back of her chair.
“One day, who knows why these things happen, one of the cookie magnets falls on the floor. First I know of it is I hear a scream from the kitchen. I come running in—”
“And Lev had eaten the magnet?”
“Well, he bit into it,” Sima said, disappointed that Timna had stolen the punch line. “Almost chipped his tooth. He was lucky, actually, because it costs a lot to get a chip filled and insurance doesn’t pay. But can you imagine? To just see a cookie lying on the floor and, never mind it’s a magnet, pick it up and eat it?”
Lev came down the steps with coffee for Timna, the cup cradled carefully in two hands and held away from his body to prevent spilling.
“Thank you,” Timna said, taking the mug, “You have no idea how badly I needed this.”
Lev shifted, opened his mouth to speak. “Lev,” Sima said, dreading whatever ridiculous comment he might make, “customers will be here any minute. You need to get back upstairs.” He looked at his watch, nodded, and, lifting his hand in a salute goodbye, left. Timna smiled up after him.
“So,” Sima said, waiting until she had Timna’s attention, “big weekend.” She raised her eyebrows, excited to hear about it—she’d tell Lev the details that evening; it would make for a good story.
Timna nodded. “Especially last night,” she said, putting her coffee on the sewing table, taking some hand cream out of a drawer. “Nurit’s into music, and there were a bunch of shows in town—” Timna rubbed the cream between her hands, massaging—“and last night the band just kept going. It was after two by the time we left.”
“And your cousins don’t mind, you coming in so late?” Sima had her doubts about the moral backbone of those cousins; they never ca
me to the shop, seemed to take no interest in Timna’s life.
“Oh, I stayed at Shai’s so I wouldn’t wake them.”
Sima stared a moment, actually shocked. “And where does Shai live, with his brother?” She knew she shouldn’t pry, but didn’t like it: Timna staying out late, sleeping at strangers’ houses.
“No, he lives in the East Village. This apartment, Sima, you would love it. Half the walls are brick and there’s this huge marble fireplace, and the bathroom is so old that to flush the toilet you need to pull on a chain—”
Sima looked at her, wondered why Timna thought she’d like anything of the sort.
“And his bedroom window overlooks this community garden that’s taken care of by a Puerto Rican group. It’s the most amazing garden—there are these massive squash, just huge, and benches where you can sit, and this big statue of a frog that kids can climb into.” She took a sip of coffee. “It’s like an oasis, right in the middle of the city.”
Sima looked at Timna. “That’s quite a view to have from a bedroom.” She thought of Alon, sent a silent message to him: you better come soon. “No wonder you’re late, the train must have taken an hour—”
“I borrowed his car. We have to take it back to New Jersey this evening, anyway.”
Sima was about to ask, he lends you his car?, but the doorbell chimed as someone entered the shop. “Mrs. Gilman,” Sima said, kissing the elderly woman who came inside, glad to escape Timna’s terrible story, each detail worse than the last, “I’ve been thinking about you.” Mrs. Gilman’s hands shook lightly in Sima’s clasp. “I just got a shipment,” Sima said, gesturing vaguely toward the shelves of boxes, “they call them arthritis bras. Front-close Velcro. I tried it myself, it never opened.”
“Velcro?” Mrs. Gilman’s mouth wavered at the edges, a slight turn downward.
“You won’t have to fumble with hooks or snaps; I’m telling you, you’ll love it. Timna?” Sima was relieved to see she’d put down the coffee, gone to get the bras. “Okay, Timna will help you. I just need to run to the bathroom.”
Sima ran the water in the sink while she looked at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at the grim, set face that looked back at her. It’s not your life, she told herself, it’s not your business; let her lose Alon if she chooses, he’s not yours to keep.
She turned off the tap, unconvinced.
While Sima waited for her next doctor’s appointment—hoping he would solve the mystery, fit the final puzzle piece in place—she dreamed of babies. On good mornings she couldn’t remember her dreams, but on bad mornings she could, and though the nightmares were terrible, the dreams of love were worse.
At the supermarket the babies grew thin with hunger and slipped through the metal grating of the shopping carts to disappear in the fluorescent aisles. When she opened her mouth to ask the stockers if they had seen a child, she found herself asking instead for cans of beans, jars of pickles, so terrified was she to reveal what she’d done.
In the swimming pool she meant to dip the baby beneath the water just once but forgot to lift him up again. Weeds flourished along the bottom of the pool, and though she pulled at the plants with clenched hands so that the ground grew muddy between the slick tiles, still she could not find him. Or her own apartment was the scene of her crime—she put the baby in the bag just for a minute, for holding, but he fell so quietly beneath the plastic and when had he stopped breathing, exactly, and was it too late?
In those dreams she searched frantically for missing babies or crouched over the silent bodies of dead ones. They were so fragile, so easily killed, and she was the one forever lost and the regret like a casing around her soul: if only, if only, if only, her empty mouth condemned forevermore to call each day for a child who would never come.
She woke up from those dreams moist with sweat, her teeth clenched and her body curled. But in the shower she rinsed away the shadows and, thank God, she’d tell herself, it was all just a nightmare.
But then there were the other dreams.
It was always a boy. She held him and sang to him and rocked him to sleep. She bathed him, and his skin was warm and soft and there was light in the room; she lay beside him in bed and brought the covers above them, the two of them giggling under the soft weight of their secret world. She played with him in the green outside: blew rainbow bubbles, flew fish kites, bent her head toward the grass to trace the path of beetles, and as she showed him each piece of magic—look, she would say, look—he leaned into her, his body loose with trust, and she wrapped her arms around him and breathed in the scent of his hair and inside felt a fullness that she knew was love and kissed her little boy and sighed with pleasure.
But when she woke up, how then to stop the cold air rushing in to the empty space, needling it like a tongue might worry the hollow where a tooth had been? She would bring her fist to her mouth and bite softly against the tears, but for days and days after she’d feel the loss.
11
“SO WE WENT FIRST TO GREENWICH VILLAGE AND DID some shopping—”
“What did you buy?” Sima asked, bending over some open boxes on the counter, refolding the bras within.
“I bought a pair of jeans and an ankle bracelet. See?” Timna raised the edge of her pants, smiled as Sima admired the thin strap of silver that cut perfectly across her ankle. “I wasn’t going to get it, but Shai made me. Anyway, then we walked to Central Park and went to the zoo. And then—”
“There’s more?”
Timna laughed. “Shai said I was killing him, but I love walking in Manhattan—it’s endless. But the zoo was relaxing. Have you been there recently?”
Sima shook her head no. She remembered, but didn’t tell Timna, occasional Sundays at the children’s zoo with Connie, when Nate and Howie were young. She and Connie would sit on a bench talking while the boys ran between the attractions—the walk-in whale where Howie had once found a rat, the mock-castle’s twisting staircase that smelled faintly of urine—every now and then returning to Connie, stepping between her knees as they explained something wonderful with tumbled-over words while Sima waited for the boys to finish, to allow her and Connie some time alone.
“So after the zoo, then what?” Sima asked, thinking as she looked at Timna how many years had passed since then—the old children’s zoo had been completely renovated, she’d read somewhere, the whale and the castle, the rats and the urine, gone.
“We walked over to Lincoln Center to look at the fountain—”
“You really never stop, huh?”
“But by then we really were tired, so we just went for a drink somewhere. We sat in the bar three, maybe four hours—I thought the waitress was going to kill us.”
Sima imagined Timna laughing in some darkened bar, dizzy with alcohol; replaced the lids on the open boxes before her. “And how does Alon feel about your going out with other men?” she asked, thinking: someone has to. “Does it bother him?”
Timna paused a moment before responding. “He knows to trust me. It’s not like I can’t have my own friends, my own life.”
“Sure,” Sima said, pretending distraction as she climbed the stepladder to return each box to its proper place, “It’s only—”
“We’re just friends. Shai knows about Alon; he understands.” Timna spoke lightly, dismissively. “Like you said yourself, Sima, it’s important for me to get around the city, meet people my own age.”
Sima nodded, though she wasn’t sure she still felt that way.
The door chimed. “I’m back!” Suzanne called, stepping inside the shop.
“Of course you are,” Timna said. “We’re addictive, aren’t we?”
Suzanne sighed dramatically. “Well, my little brother’s getting married, and his witch of a bride has decided we should all wear these cheap sky-blue bridesmaid dresses. Only when I say cheap, they actually cost a small fortune—they just look like something from a junior high prom.”
Sima clucked in sympathy.
“And what mak
es it even worse—the other bridesmaids are all her twenty-something sorority friends. I have a decade on all of them at least, not to mention two kids, but we’ll all be decked out in the same dress. I think she’s trying to humiliate me.”
“Ouch.” Timna cringed.
“Exactly.” Suzanne exhaled. “At any rate, I figured I could at least get the right lingerie for underneath. I need serious stomach control.”
“Not a problem,” Timna told her. “But have you tried speaking to your brother about it? I’m sure if you explain—”
Sima wagged her finger. “Never, ever contradict the bride. It’s never worth it.”
“Yeah? Too late for that. I kind of mentioned the dresses looked like something from The Love Boat, and my brother hasn’t returned my calls in two days.” While Timna fit her, Suzanne recounted the story for them both. Her brother, Adam, was ten years younger than she was. She adored him as a child, still had him for dinner two or three times a week. “My kids worship him,” she told them. “He’s sweet, he’s funny, he’s amazing. But this bitch got him on the rebound, and Adam’s too easily taken advantage of—”
Sima nodded and sighed at the right moments. All the stories sounded the same after so many years, but still they tugged. Suzanne was lonely—anyone could see that.
“Let me bring you one of my sets,” Timna said after fitting her for a bodysuit. “They’re fantastic, and you need a pick-me-up.”
Timna had begun purchasing for the shop a month earlier. Sima had encouraged it—she didn’t want Timna to get bored. Now there were boxes filled with bright lace fabrics that she would never have chosen: animal prints; primary colors. She’d been skeptical. “Remember who our customers are,” she’d told Timna, gesturing toward a rack of long-sleeved, ankle-length black velour robes—some of them even mock-turtle. But Timna had a knack for pushing boundaries, it seemed. She didn’t show the new goods to every customer, but when she did, she sold them.
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