Sima gave Timna the stepladder, watched as she selected a few items for Suzanne. “These are from the ‘Sunset Horizons’ collection,” Timna called out. “With your auburn hair—” She chose three bra-and-panty sets: peach, gold, and lavender, each with a red-lace trim.
Naming, even noticing, a collection, matching color to hair-dye—Sima had never done either. It felt gimmicky, yet she had to admit it worked.
Suzanne chose the peach bra-and-panty set. “Who knows,” she said, as Sima rang up the purchase. “Maybe I’ll catch the bouquet, hook up with the band leader, and live happily ever after, right?” She smiled bitterly, her eyes cold and bright.
Sima handed her the shopping bag. “It’ll be better once the wedding is over,” she said. “I see it all the time.”
“Yeah, right. They’re moving to Michigan, so I’ll never get him back.” Suzanne exhaled again. “Oh well, all good things, right?”
“Right,” Sima said, thinking how had she missed it, and had Connie and Art noticed—Suzanne was one of the saddest women she knew.
Sima returned to the doctor a month after her first appointment. It was a comfort, almost, to be back, now that everything felt familiar: the waiting room with its yellow tweed sofas squared around a white rug; the ladies magazines she’d leafed through last time, too nervous to read, fanned on a small side table beside a crystal ashtray; the smooth curve of the receptionist’s desk where she gave her name, watched as a young woman—dark hair, a quiet smile—checked her off a list. The doctor shook her hand warmly when he came into the waiting room, said, “Good to see you again,” like he meant it.
Her blood tests had been normal, and Lev’s sperm count too. “Congratulations,” she’d told Lev, when they received the report, and he joked about it, pretended he was going to call the sample jar for another date. She laughed, feigned jealousy that he got to have all the fun, but was aware of a deeper envy, hidden: it was over for him; anything the doctor discovered now would be her fault.
“I guess you’re off the hook, then,” Sima told him, a false brightness in her voice.
“I guess so,” he said, still smiling.
He was teasing, she knew, but it hurt like a slap and how wrong for him not to know, not to guess how alone she felt. She moved away to avoid his touch. “I have to check on the laundry,” she told him, her voice wavering, “I told Mrs. Rosen that I’d knock when we were through with the dryer—”
“Sima,” he called after, “it’s not a competition—”
She was crying by the time she reached the stairwell, her feet quick on the tiled floor, her hand loose on the wrought-iron banister as she propelled herself down each flight. She’d worried about Lev’s test, already imagined her reaction to the news: how she’d hold him, tell him she loved him, smooth his skin the way he liked—her fingers brushing upwards from his chin to his cheek, caressing—let him know it wasn’t his failing, she didn’t blame him. “It’s not an end,” she’d tell him, “but a new beginning.” When they felt ready they’d adopt, and one day they’d tell their children, “We chose you, just like we chose each other.”
But instead it was Lev who had called after her, his voice thick with the same soft pity she’d already rehearsed. “It’s not a competition,” he’d told her, and all she could think was: that’s easy for you to say. Sima pushed open the heavy basement door, stepped inside the dim room: concrete floor coated with dust, splintered pieces of old wood stacked beside the cinderblock walls. Sima opened the dryer and gathered the warm clothing to her breasts, rocking slowly back and forth. She hated herself for the clarity of her longing: I wish it had been him, I wish it had been him.
“So, Sima,” the doctor said as he entered the examining room, her file in one hand, a clipboard in the other, “let’s see where we’re at today.”
Sima lay back, slipping her feet through the stirrups as he glanced at her file.
“You remembered to have intercourse within the last twenty-four hours?”
She nodded yes.
“Good girl,” he told her, pushing her knees apart. “We’ll just get a sample of that sperm, then, to see if it’s still active inside you—”
Sima turned her head to the side, trying not to hear what he said. The exposure of this most intimate of details, even more than her own body stretched around the speculum, filled her with shame.
The doctor inserted a thin tube inside her body, withdrew something small from deep inside. “There,” he said, patting her knee, “we’re nearly done, nearly done.”
She passed the test.
“The sperm were active and abundant,” he told her over the phone, “everything looked fine.”
Sima held the receiver against her ear, unsure how to respond. She focused on the grocery list on the wall beside the phone: carrots, cucumber, tomato, thought about walking to the store to buy them, chopping them into neat squares. “Terrific,” she told the doctor, “I’m so glad.”
“It means your body isn’t killing the sperm,” he said. He paused for a moment to ask his secretary a question—Sima could make out a few words, something about his brother-in-law, had he called—and Sima thought that at least it would make for an amusing report: guess what, she’d tell Connie, turns out I’m not a sperm murderer.
“Where were we?” he asked. “Oh, right, the next test. So we’ll do the endometrial biopsy. Take a sample from the uterine lining, make sure your uterus is able to support a fetus—”
“Oh,” Sima said, “okay, that sounds fine,” and when Connie called that evening, Sima did not joke about the test results, terrified that despite having passed one test, it was only a matter of time until her body betrayed her on another.
12
“ARE YOU FEELING OKAY?” SIMA ASKED AS TIMNA pitched her empty coffee cup into the garbage. Timna’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her mascara smudged below her eyes.
“I’m fine.”
“Your cousins okay?”
“They’re fine. Everyone’s excited because Leah, that’s their daughter, got a promotion at work.”
“That’s good.”
Timna nodded, pulled an old Vogue magazine across the counter.
Sima looked, saw there was a pull to her lips, some sadness scratched there. She opened her mouth to ask why, but paused, unsure she wanted the answer. Still, she stole sidelong glances at Timna, noted the way Timna wrapped her hands in the sleeves of her sweater like a child.
It was distracting, Timna’s sadness. Sima tried to concentrate on her books, and though usually she blamed Timna’s stories for taking her attention away from the accounts—before Timna arrived she’d always been organized about bookkeeping, but now she’d take three hours to add a column, putting down her pen to ask a question or giggle over a comment like a teenager on a study date—it was her silence she now found disruptive. She could hear the garbage truck on its uneven path outside, the scream of the brakes and the creak of its metal jaws, the scuff of the garbage cans tossed to the sidewalk, spinning on their edges before settling. Sima lowered her head to her hands, lightly closed her eyes.
It wasn’t that Timna was always in a good mood—she was tired sometimes, or had a headache, but Sima had never seen her sad. “Why is that?” she’d asked Lev once. “Why is she never homesick?”
Lev said something about being young, experiencing new things.
“Sure,” Sima told him, “but still, to be so far away for so long, and not to miss home. And even Alon—Timna talks about him all the time, and it’s obvious she loves him, but she never seems to fight with him or worry about him, fear that he’ll meet someone else or that they’ll drift apart.”
“So she’s young and happy,” Lev had told her. “So are lots of people. You may not know this, Sima, but there’s nothing that strange about being happy.”
“Very funny,” Sima had said, thinking of course he wouldn’t anticipate a young woman’s sadness, of course he wouldn’t know.
Helene Neuman’s daughter Ne
chama came in for an exercise bra; Sima grabbed a few and followed Nechama, along with her three-year-old son, her two-year-old daughter, and a baby in a carriage, to the dressing room. Nechama’s son leaned against her leg as she unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra. He had long blond curls that would be cut for the first time in a week—Nechama had already started cleaning the house to prepare for visiting relatives who wanted to witness the rite of passage.
“I’ll never lose the weight from this baby,” Nechama said, sighing at her reflection in the mirror: the heavy breasts full with milk. “With Yossi and Leah it was bad, but this time my whole body aches.”
Sima fastened the bra across Nechama’s back, tugged at one of the straps. “You need to sleep in a bra is all—your body needs more support.”
“My mother used to sleep in a bra. I always swore I never would. And here I am, not even thirty—”
“And with three children. Give it a few months; you know that. A few months from now you’ll hardly remember the ache.” Sima moved in front of Nechama, looked at the bra. “Too narrow,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t like the way the cups pinch like that.” She reached for another.
Nechama nodded, unhooked the bra, and held it out for Sima. “You’re right, you know,” she said as she slipped the other bra over her head, pulled it down over her swollen breasts, “I’ll hardly remember the ache, and then I’ll be pregnant again in a year.” She nodded with her chin toward the baby carriage. “I know they’re a blessing. But Sima, I get so tired sometimes.”
“This bra is better for you,” Sima told Nechama, forcing a finger underneath the thick cotton straps, “See? Almost no give, but it doesn’t pinch.”
Nechama frowned at her reflection. “It makes me look like I have just one breast.”
“That’s what an exercise bra does,” Sima said, “presses you down so you won’t bounce. Flattering it’s not, but it does the trick.” She held her hand out for the bra; waited while Nechama pulled it off over her head. “Now, I’ll get you a sleeping bra,” Sima told her, “something cotton, without underwire.”
As she closed the curtain behind her, she glanced at Timna, who was staring absently out the window. There was nothing to see: the cement wall of the outdoor staircase; a few thin cracks curved unevenly as if drawn by a child’s hand.
“Timna, you sure you’re okay?” Sima asked, a slight tease in her voice to hide her concern.
Timna shook her head, smiled. “Sorry. Just tired, I guess.”
Sima nodded, wanted to ask Timna more—thought Timna would want to say more—but Timna simply turned back toward the sewing table and began cleaning up the remains of that morning’s breakfast: a paper bag from a chain doughnut shop, a Styrofoam coffee cup stuffed with damp napkins.
Yossi was leaning over the baby’s carriage when Sima reentered the dressing room. Nechama smiled at her son, but when she turned back toward the mirror, the sleep bra on, she took his hand firmly in her own. “When Leah was two weeks,” she whispered to Sima, “Yossi started stroking her cheek, soft like that. Then when I went into the other room, he pinched her so hard her skin turned blue.” She looked at him, sighed. “He begged me for a little brother this time,” she told Sima as she posed sideways in the mirror, checked the fit, “he thinks I made another girl on purpose, and he’s angry with me.”
“He’ll be all right,” Sima told her. “Next week he’ll get all the attention at his first haircut, and then he’ll be proud to be the only boy.” Sima glanced over at Yossi. “Such beautiful curls he has. It’s really something, cutting them.”
Nechama followed Sima’s gaze. “It breaks my heart to think of him without those curls. He won’t be my little boy anymore. Even this, even just being here with him in the dressing room—he’ll have to start waiting outside.”
“It’s just a curtain.”
“It’s more than that.”
At the register Nechama pulled out folded bills from the change purse of her wallet, one eye on her son as he slowly pushed the carriage, his whole body leaning into it, back and forth before the counter. Sima gave her the bras in a plastic bag, dark brown with gold diamonds, which Nechama asked Yossi to hold for her. He cradled it carefully, proud of such an adult responsibility.
Timna held the door open and helped Nechama negotiate the carriage up the steps; Sima could hear her outside, complimenting the children, calling goodbye.
Sima didn’t hesitate this time.
Something was wrong for Timna to be so sad; she’d follow her just a little bit, to see if anything came up. She rushed up the stairs, calling, “Lev! I’m going out!” even as she slipped on her coat, fumbled for her keys. Just before closing the door she grabbed a paisley scarf from its hook inside the front closet, threw it over her hair, and knotted it under her neck, not quite admitting it was for disguise.
Timna was still within sight.
Sima hurried after her, slowing when she came within twenty feet. Her breath was ragged from rushing; she watched, everything suddenly still, as Timna turned her head to the side, registering the heavy breath behind her.
A cell phone rang. Thank you, Sima silently intoned as Timna paused to unzip her purse, check the number on the phone. “Nurit!” she cried out as she brought the phone to her ear, “What’s up?”
Sima moved in pace behind Timna, who spoke rapidly in Hebrew, gesturing with her free hand as they walked up one block and along another, passing the corner where Timna should have turned for her cousin’s house.
Where is she going, Sima wondered, thinking an apartment building, an empty lot, and thank goodness she was there to watch over her. She crossed the street when Timna said goodbye, forewarned by the series of “okays” that proceeded it. She felt proud of her sleuthing—such discreet choreography, to know the right moment to cross. But then two Hasidic teenage boys passed Timna too closely—they should have stepped aside for extra space—and while Sima watched, they turned around, one play-punching the other’s arm as they grinned after Timna.
Sima looked away, appalled at how low she’d sunk.
Timna turned onto 16th Avenue and stopped into a small convenience store; Sima watched for her from the windowed ATM room of a bank across the street. It was a store Sima had never been to, though like so many others she had: outside the plate-glass windows, plastered with fluorescent signs promising calling cards and a sale on Half-n-Half, a Daily News–sponsored blue wooden rack was stacked high with newspapers. A kerchiefed woman sat on the ground beside the stand, held out a paper coffee cup for change.
Timna emerged from the store, a glossy magazine tucked under one arm, just as a bus pulled up. How does she time it so well, Sima thought, watching as Timna paused before the driver to insert and retrieve her metro-card before pushing her way through the crowd.
The bus pulled away, and Timna was gone. Impossible to follow her further, though Sima suspected she’d take the bus to the subway station, and from there into the city. It was getting dark already; it’d be nearly night by the time she arrived. Sima shook her head, too late to protest, and slowly made her way home.
Another month gone, a series of slashes through the daily boxes of her calendar until Sima reached the appointment she’d recorded there, her neat handwriting a direct contrast to the dread she felt: the doctor again, the uterine biopsy. She struggled to stay alert during the early morning subway ride, aware of the men around her, their eyes. There were so many people on the subway, so many strangers, and to be pressed so close—someone else’s thigh warm against her own as the train jostled them together—was an intrusion Sima had never before experienced.
At first she kept her lips pressed tight, her eyes on the advertisements, windows, floors—not wanting to smell or see. But then she began to sneak looks, stare: the faded outline of a bull tattooed on the arm of a middle-aged Italian man, one hoof raised, ready to run; the proud shadow of a mustache above the chapped lips of a Puerto Rican teenager, blue-pen scribbles covering his canvas sneak
ers.
How strange she thought, as she scanned the subway car, that each one here had once been cooed over, doted on: white ribbons carefully tied beneath their soft chins, scallop-trimmed cotton hats centered on wispy-haired scalps. Each had been a baby like the one she coveted, now grown to mediocrity: this one a mole on her chin with the obligatory curl jutting from it; another a pale belly not quite concealed by a gray oil-stained tee. Had this ugliness not always existed? Were the large pores, the gummy smiles, the stink of slick-backed hair—a stripe of grease still glistening on a yellow-nailed finger—really once concealed beneath a newborn’s smooth-skinned perfection?
She’d always thought of the subway as both exciting—the giddy rush of escape as she surged under the city—and terrifying—the people pressed tight together the same she would flee from on a dark street. Up close, though, she saw it was neither. There was no mystery among strangers, just the same imperfections arranged in different ways. She began to smile whenever she caught someone’s eye, an innocuous nice-day smile, thinking how far she’d come, already, to relax on the subway, a stranger in a strange land.
And then she knew her way to the doctor’s office—two long blocks, two short—could casually tell the elevator boy “Twelve,” as she checked her reflection in the gilt-edged mirror, not caring if he caught her glance. And the receptionist smiled when she entered the room, asking “And how are you today?” and the doctor shook her hand when he saw her, said, “Ah, there you are.”
But then the gown; the cold table; the long wait before a cracked-open door for the doctor to reenter, for it all to begin again.
She closed her eyes not to see the long needle, managed to stay silent but for a slight whimper when they inserted it into her spine. She felt nothing when they rolled her onto her back, spread her ankles and secured them in stirrups, inserted scissors deep inside to cut a tiny piece of tissue, a little flag to wave around the lab.
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