Sima's Undergarments for Women

by Ilana Stranger-Ross

  Sima didn’t smile on the subway ride home, instead stared out the windows at the dark tunnel walls, waiting to catch the moment they’d emerge into light.

  13

  TIMNA ARRIVED TO WORK RAIN-WET: HER HAIR PRESSED to her head and dull with water, her blue jeans and black sweater damp against her body.

  “What, they don’t make umbrellas in Israel?” Sima asked.

  “It doesn’t usually rain like this there,” Timna replied, almost defensive. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, flipped her hair toward the ground, and tried to dry it with a few squares of paper towel.

  “Enough,” Sima told her, smiling, “you’re soaking the floor. Come upstairs and we’ll get you dry. I must have something that can fit you.”

  Timna followed Sima up the stairs and into the kitchen, where Lev sat reading the New York Times. “There’s an interesting article in here about Israeli youth,” he began, as soon as Timna entered the room, “it says that—”

  “Lev, what are you, blind? This girl is soaked. Come, Timna, go into the bedroom and then give me your clothing. I’ll put it all in the dryer.”

  Timna winked at Lev. “I like hearing about articles,” she told Sima, “I’ve learned more about Israel being here—”

  “You’re a real peacemaker, huh?” Sima said, shaking her head. “Well, that’s not the job of an Israeli.” Sima led Timna down a short hall lined with framed pictures: seabirds, a woods scene somewhere. At the end of the hall she opened a door. “Change here,” she said, her hand sweeping across their bedroom. “You can wear my robe—it’s on the bathroom door.”

  Lev looked up when Timna returned to the kitchen in a green terrycloth robe, her hair pushed back behind her ears revealing her long neck. Sima caught Lev’s glance and the slight blush that followed, thought, with some satisfaction, that she’d seen Timna in less.

  “There won’t be customers this morning anyway,” Sima said, taken with how beautiful Timna looked dressed even in her old robe, the worn material all soft folds along her body. “I should have just told you not to come,” she said, reluctantly turning away as she took Timna’s wet clothes to the dryer, “but here you are, so you might as well stay a little. It’s supposed to be like this all day—heavy rains and winds.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Timna told her, “if I wasn’t here I’d just be moping around my cousins’.” She sat down at the table, her feet tucked under her body. Lev brought her coffee, which she sipped as he described the article to her. He spoke quickly, his eyes on the paper; when he raised his head Sima saw his eyes linger just a moment on the soft shadow of cleavage visible at the robe’s opening.

  How long, Sima wondered, since she’d seen his eyes linger on her body? How much longer since she’d wanted them to?

  “Since he retired,” Sima told Timna, noticing how the faded green of the robe matched perfectly Timna’s olive eyes, “he goes out every morning to get the paper. We used to have a subscription; he canceled it. This is his joy,” Sima said, gesturing toward Lev, “a daily trip to the newsstand.”

  Lev rubbed a coffee stain off the dark wood table. “A walk and the paper,” he told Timna, “these are the good things in life.”

  “He reads it all morning. All morning, right, Lev?” Lev paused before answering. “Most days.”

  “Most days. And then what?” Sima looked at Lev. “The TV?”

  Lev traced a finger absently across the table.

  “The TV,” Sima said.

  Lev looked at her and frowned; Sima shrugged. He turned away to where the rain came down in sideways wind-blown sheets, staining the concrete square of their backyard a darker shade of gray, filling the uncovered garbage cans with brown water.

  They drank coffee and shared the paper while they waited for Timna’s clothing. Sima ignored the whine of the dryer, but Lev jumped up immediately, quickly retreating to the den so Timna could dress in the laundry room off the kitchen.

  “Do you need a bathrobe?” Sima asked, as Timna stood to change. “You can keep it if you want—it looks a thousand times better on you than it does on me.”

  Timna looked surprised. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks, but I don’t usually wear one—”

  “Well, maybe you should start. I’m telling you, it looks terrific—”

  “That’s so generous of you,” Timna told her as she entered the laundry room, “But really, I’m okay.”

  “Are you sure? Because I should get a new one anyway, and the green matches your eyes so well—” It felt suddenly important, to give Timna that little piece of her own life. She could imagine Timna wearing it on a rainy day, curled up beside Alon, or, even better, pregnant, the robe’s roominess just right as she’d pull the soft fabric across her belly—

  “Thank you,” Timna called back, “but I don’t think I’d wear it. I mean, it was perfect for this morning, but—”

  Sima bit her lip as she imagined the rest of the sentence: perfect for this morning when sitting around with just her and Lev, but not something she’d otherwise be caught dead in. An old robe, faded and stretched and dull—just right for herself, but nothing Timna could possibly want.

  “So speaking of rain,” Sima said, to change the subject, “A little rain like this shouldn’t be such a big deal for you. I picture you in the army, running through the mud, water streaming down your face—”

  “Right, like Rambo. In the army I taught Hebrew to Russian immigrants—I wasn’t exactly wearing face paint and crouching in the bushes. Some of the women, the ones who train the men, they get to do some real soldier stuff.”

  “The women really train the men?”

  “Sure,” Timna said, reentering the kitchen, her jeans, Sima noticed, that much tighter from the dryer. “They watch over a unit during basic training, organize things. A bunch of my friends did it. But it’s difficult—you’re supposed to care for these guys like a mother, but they’re your age. And when someone gets a crush—”

  Sima nodded, her head lowered as she watched Timna pull on a pair of lavender socks, her ankle bracelet disappearing under the cotton. “I always liked working just for myself,” Sima told her, “not having to answer to anyone else.”

  “And Lev?” Timna asked. “He seems lonely now, no?” Sima looked up. “What does Lev know of lonely?” Timna didn’t respond.

  “I mean, it’s not like he has friends—”

  Sima paused, ashamed by the look Timna gave her: a frown like that you’d give a child caught acting badly. Though she usually reacted defensively to such judgment—what does she know, Sima might have once said—she couldn’t bear to have Timna disappointed with her.

  “You know what,” Sima said, standing, “why don’t you stay here with Lev, keep him company a little while. I need to catch up on the books, but you might as well sit, relax until the storm passes.” She noted with pleasure Timna’s approval—she smiled, said call me if you need anything.

  In the basement Sima listened to their laughter, swallowed her jealousy as she congratulated herself on making him happy, just this once.

  NOVEMBER

  14

  SIMA HEARD THE LAUGHTER JUST BEFORE TIMNA’S friends entered, touched her hands to her hair to check for smoothness. Timna had asked a week ago whether she could bring Shai and Nurit to the shop. “I tell them so much about it, they want to see for themselves.” Sima had agreed, assuring Timna she’d love to meet them, though she knew she was being duplicitous—she didn’t trust these new friends, this new life. She looked up only after Timna called hello, pretended surprise—”Oh, I wasn’t expecting—”

  “Sima,” Timna said, still flushed with some joke, “This is Shai and Nurit.”

  Sima stepped out from behind the counter, shook their hands, said what was expected: an exchange of I’ve-heard-so-much-about-you, so-nice-to-finally-meet-you. She tried not to look too closely at Shai—he was good-looking, tall and broad with brown, curly hair that hung just a little into his eyes—for fear of being too impressed.<
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  Sima looked up every now and again as Timna, speaking quickly in Hebrew, showed Nurit and Shai around the shop. Nurit, Sima decided, was not a nice girl. As a rule she never trusted friendships between unattractive women and beautiful women, and Nurit, bony, awkward, her dyed-red hair flat against a pale, narrow face, was too plain not to envy Timna. There was that, and then Sima did not like the way Nurit touched a slip here, a nightgown there, rubbing the fabric between her fingers as if she was entitled to it. Still, she had to admit that Nurit and Timna seemed close—they touched each other when they talked, and sometimes one or the other would bend her knees in laughter, smile wide with pleasure.

  Shai stood awkwardly during those moments. Like Sima, he seemed separate from the two, and in the shrugs and apologetic smiles he tried to exchange with her when the girls laughed was a vulnerability that, Sima had to admit, was appealing.

  But she drew the line at returning his smile. There was Alon to think of, and if Timna couldn’t be loyal—well, she could be.

  “Sima,” Timna asked, grinning, “Should I show them the old people’s lingerie?”

  Sima cringed as the two girls giggled over the thick canvas of the corsets. It was her fault—she’d made fun of the pieces herself one of Timna’s first weeks there. “I told Connie,” she’d told Timna, “when it comes down to me wearing one of these, shoot me.” Timna was speaking in Hebrew, maybe repeating the exact line for Nurit.

  “Look at this, Shai,” Nurit called, and Sima turned to see Nurit seize a training bra left on the sewing table, drape it across her chest. Sima frowned: the truth was Nurit had only a little more than that—if she were Nurit she wouldn’t call attention to that fact. Timna, laughing, pulled a purple silk bathrobe off the rack, slipped it over her clothing, and modeled with one arm out like a game show girl. Sima wanted to object—customers would come soon—but as she looked at Timna, sharing the gaze with Shai and Nurit, she lost the words: the purple fabric fell against Timna’s body in soft sweeps; she looked too wonderful to resent.

  The door opened, and Rivkah Shapiro entered. Timna hurried to replace the robe on the rack while Sima approached Rivkah, taking her hands in her own. “Mazel Tov,” she told her, “your sister was here last week and told me the news.” She pulled back, glanced down Rivkah’s body. “I’d hardly notice if she hadn’t warned me—you’re barely showing. How far along are you again?”

  “Four months,” Rivkah told her, glancing at Shai. “You really can’t tell? I think I look huge.”

  “You’re tiny. But never mind, the first time women can’t wait to start showing, then by the end when you’re carrying around this pumpkin everywhere you go”—Sima held her hands before her, rounded across an imaginary belly, “you’ll wonder why you ever wished for it.” She turned to Timna, who was making plans to see Shai and Nurit after work. “Timna, why don’t you go too? Rivkah can always pick up any alterations later—”

  Rivkah nodded.

  “And this way you can show them around the neighborhood a bit.”

  Timna hesitated, but Sima insisted, urging her to show them the local businesses: the groceries and bakeries, the discount shoe stores and upscale clothing shops. “You can do better here than anywhere in Manhattan, and they have every Israeli product you can think of. Go, go,” she said, waving them off, “and take your time.”

  As the three stepped out of the shop, Sima could hear Nurit say, “Nice boss,” and she felt proud, for a moment. But as she moved the stepladder along the shelves and climbed three rungs toward the boxes, she realized what a pushover she’d been, so desperate to win the approval of Timna’s friends that she’d sent her out the door just as a customer arrived. She remembered how Lev used to complain about teachers who tried too hard to be popular and ended up behaving worse than their students. She was becoming no better.

  Sima was surprised to see Timna return ten minutes later, just as Rivkah was trying on the first of three support bras.

  “I can’t believe I’ve gone up an entire cup size already,” Rivkah said, clearly pleased.

  “And when the milk comes in, you’ll go up another. Come back two, three weeks before your due date and we’ll fit you for a couple of early nursing bras. You want a few that are really soft and stretchy—as comfortable as can be for those first weeks.”

  Rivkah nodded, drawing in her breath slightly as Sima pressed her hands across each cup.

  “Then, when everything’s settled down again, say when the baby is six weeks, come back, and we’ll take these bras you buy today and make them into nursing bras for the long haul.” Sima stood back, looked at Rivkah. “That fits well. You like it?”

  Rivkah nodded.

  “Okay, slip back on your shirt and see how it looks.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Rivkah said, buttoning her blouse, “that you made nursing bras—”

  “This one,” Sima said, pointing at Timna, “does it. She just cuts the shoulder strap where it meets the bra, adds a hook and,” she waved her hand in small circles like a magician unveiling a rabbit from a top hat, “Voilà. Right, Timna?”

  Timna grinned. “Right.”

  As Sima rang up Rivkah, Naomi Cantor stopped by looking for underwear, followed by Florence’s daughter-in-law, Tamar, who bought three camisoles with support shelves, and then two women Sima had never met who came, they told her, all the way from Toronto. When the shop finally cleared in the early afternoon, Sima turned to Timna, asked if she wanted anything from the kitchen. “I need a cup of coffee,” Sima said, moving toward the stairs, “I haven’t stopped for one second all morning—“

  Timna looked up from behind the seamstress table. “Sima,” she said, “before you go—”

  Sima paused, one hand on the banister.

  “About this morning—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sima said. “I didn’t mind you bringing your friends by, and thought it’d be nice—”

  But Timna shook her head, said she felt bad leaving work like that. “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” she told Sima, sweeping a few loose threads from the sewing table into her palm. “When I came to New York, I was so terrified, I’ve never been so nervous in my life. But since getting this job, it’s like everything fell into place: I had work, so then I could relax and meet people, have fun too.” She closed her hand around the threads. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be crying on the phone to Alon every night.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” Sima said, though she was unsure whether to be flattered or alarmed—her shop the stable base that gave Timna the courage to explore.

  * * *

  “Anything else?”

  Mario himself served their table, one hand clapped casually on Art’s shoulder. Sima and Lev had been meeting Art and Connie at Mario’s for nearly two decades. The restaurant had not changed much in that time: red carpet, stone-mural walls, white stalactite-stucco ceiling trimmed with plastic grapevines. On a shelf beside the kitchen entrance stood three old-fashioned wicker wine carafes and a terra-cotta donkey pulling a cart; at the take-out counter a crystal bowl of pastel mints, the silver spoon always mid-plunge.

  They sat in the corner. They drank red wine, ate baked pastas. A Saturday night every six, eight weeks—Connie liked to joke that each meal kept her full until their next visit.

  “More coffee?” Mario asked.

  They all demurred, and Mario promised the check.

  “Where was I?” Sima asked. She had been telling a Timna story: how she had celebrated a friend’s birthday on the Staten Island Ferry with a bottle of champagne. Five of them had ridden it back and forth for two hours; totally free and the same view as the cruise lines. “I didn’t know anything in New York was free these days,” Sima said.

  “Aren’t all the best things free?” Art asked, running a hand down Connie’s arm.

  Connie turned to him, rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Art. That’s really romantic.”

  He laughed.

  “Anyway,” Connie told him, �
��you don’t know how this Timna character has shaken things up. In what, just two months—?”

  “Three—”

  “Three months and Sima’s selling stuff she’s never carried before. Bikinis, in November no less. Bikinis!”‘

  “From the men of Boro Park,” Art said, “let me say thank you. You have taken things up a notch. That peach outfit, with the red trim—”

  Connie looked at him, considering. “What peach red trim?”

  “You know, the lacy number.”

  Sima saw it emerge, this new truth. She didn’t want to see it, but there it was: gleaming, exposed, undeniable.

  She felt calm and detached, the world slowing as it had once when an oncoming car had sped through a red light as she advanced through green. She’d seen the car, thought: it’s going to hit me. She braked hard; wrenched the wheel. In the end it just grazed her bumper, but it was a close enough call that when she pulled over to catch her breath, a knot of pedestrians gathered beside her, shaking their heads.

  She looked to see what Art would do, strangely curious. He could laugh. He could say he was just teasing, it was a dream, it was a joke, it was a fantasy. But instead, he stammered. Blushed. Looked ridiculous the way only a man caught cheating could.

  “It’s Alzheimer’s, isn’t it?” Connie asked, smiling.

  Art looked at Sima. Please, he was saying, his eyes wide and terrified, Don’t. She looked back at him, the high screech of the brakes still reverberating in her ears.

  “What?” Connie asked, catching their silent exchange. “What’s the big secret?” When they didn’t respond, she tried again. “What, did I ruin a lingerie birthday surprise?”

  Mario approached with the check. He laid it on the table with his usual flourish but then, sensing something, quickly retreated.