Sima wiped her hands on a towel, sat on the closed toilet seat to unbutton her blouse, unroll her pantyhose, remove her bra. Standing, she lowered her skirt and underwear, folded her clothing into a neat pile, and placed it atop a digital scale. She lifted her bathrobe from its Lucite hook, wrapped it round her body, and sat on the edge of the tub to survey the bath.
The bubbles were a disappointment—thin, concentrated only around the edges. Sima unsealed a canister of dark blue and green bath beads and tossed them into the bath; from a pastel box unpacked a lavender starfish-shaped soap and, dipping her hand into the water, let it sink to the bottom. With her teeth she bit open a bag of bath salts and poured them slowly into the tub, watching the water grow cloudy. It smelled like the soap shops in malls—something antiseptic in the air not quite hidden by the cloying sweetness as the bubbles crowded the water and the skins of the bath beads floated along the surface, limp.
Sima untied her bathrobe and shrugged it onto the tile floor. Holding on to the wall for support, she lowered one foot in the tub. The water was hot, burned along the edges of her skin. She hesitated a moment, remembering how Timna had asked for the sugar and just after—as if it only occurred to her then, as she ripped open the pink packet said, “We’ve broken up.” Sima raised her other foot, placed it square in the tub, and edged herself slowly into the water. Some suds splashed onto the floor; she reached with a soapy hand outside the tub to pull the bathmat closer, as an afterthought removed her wedding ring and placed it in the center of the small green rug.
She’d thought for a minute that Timna was speaking of Shai, “broken up” a euphemism, an admittance that she had been seeing too much of him. But Timna had kept talking, said something about the time difference, about leave, and Sima realized it was Alon—he was gone. Though she kept her face controlled, she felt for a moment what it would be like if her jaw could drop, exposing that empty place inside that gathered wind, garbage circling, as someone else she’d loved, another ghost she’d turned to, was taken from her.
Of course it was different than with Art and Connie. She’d been friends with Art and Connie a lifetime; losing them as a couple felt like losing a part of herself. And yet: somehow it was this new loss of Timna and Alon—a man she’d never met, a fantasy future she would never even share—that had truly brought the tears.
She leaned back against the cold porcelain of the tub, lowered her shoulders beneath the water. It was hard to think he was gone. She’d wanted to scream, yell at Timna—how could you, what were you—but had stayed quiet not from propriety but from fear: she was afraid to cry in front of Timna. Instead she’d raised her mug to her lips, waited for Timna to tell her story. But Timna only said, “It was time,” as if every intimacy had an expiration date.
She’s scared, Sima thought, she’s a coward.
She felt the lavender starfish press against her calf, lifted it out of the water, and began to clean her body. She dipped the soap into the hollow of her armpits, the crease beneath her breasts, the space between her thighs. She knew her feelings were laughable, bizarre. Lev had said all along she had to remember she was not the girl’s mother—even then, hadn’t she told her customers for years and years not to take their child’s life for their own?
The water cooled around her and the drain gurgled—she turned the hot tap on a steady drip, lowered her ears beneath the water not to hear it. He was gone, and maybe Timna would leave soon too; despite Timna’s insistence that she loved the work, she had no reason to wait around anymore, and those friends of hers would probably be willing to take off, quit their jobs at any moment. You could depend on no one. She’d given Timna a job, a community, she’d given her what was left of her own heart, and Lev too, and now she’d find herself waving goodbye as Timna pulled away in someone else’s car.
Sima turned off the tap; closed her eyes to take in the quiet. Maybe she had maps somewhere, maybe some old maps that, if the highway names hadn’t changed too much, might be of use for Timna’s journey.
DECEMBER
18
SIMA STOOD OUTSIDE THE JEWELRY SHOP, GAZING AT THE window display. Strands of gold and silver, pearls and diamonds curved delicately around imaginary necks, arched above soft gray molds. Sima studied the jewelry, concentrating on the earrings: gold knots, diamond studs, pearl drops. She imagined Timna sweeping her hair back into a ponytail, revealing each pair in turn.
She’d walked by the shop three times in the last five days, each time pausing before the window. Since deciding to buy Timna something special for Hanukah, she’d taken to strolling all over Boro Park, staring at the shop displays: flower-pressed pastel paper journals in one window, brightly colored French cooking pottery in another. “Why don’t you just get her whatever it is you usually get your assistant?” Lev had asked, when she complained to him that nothing she’d seen so far was right. She’d looked at him, rolled her eyes: as if Timna were just another seamstress.
It was true that she usually just gave the seamstresses a fifty-dollar bonus and two days off: never a gift, and certainly not jewelry. But in search of a wedding gift for Esther Adelman’s daughter, she’d wandered through the silver shop the week before—glass counters stuffed with candlesticks and spice boxes, silverware and serving platters—and overheard a saleslady explain to a customer that the candlesticks she held, seemingly skeptical of the price, were an heirloom. The saleslady said the word slowly, letting it linger a moment, floating above the white glint of silver and the deep blue of the plush carpet. “Every time she lights the Shabbos candles,” the saleslady continued, “she’ll think of you. And after you’re gone, she’ll always have those candlesticks to remember you by.”
A standard sales line, Sima knew; if she could convince women that bras were heirlooms, she’d use it herself. And yet she couldn’t be cynical when she saw how the candlestick customer blinked away a low brim of tears, knowing the vision the customer saw: her daughter bending over a halo of candlelight , remembering her as she brought her hands to her eyes, closed them in blessing.
Yes, Sima had thought, that’s what I’d want for Timna: something that would remind her, every now and again, of our time together.
There was no telling how long she’d have Timna. Though Timna had insisted, when Sima finally worked up the courage to ask, that she wouldn’t be leaving before the spring, still Sima felt she might disappear at any moment. It was all the more crucial, then, to make this gift special. As Sima gazed in the window of the jewelry shop, the tips of her gloved fingers just touching the glass, she hoped to find among the metals and gems spread before her the gift that Timna would wear over a lifetime, the piece she’d reach up and touch, absently, for years to come.
Sima rang the bell, waited while a well-dressed woman in an auburn wig evaluated her through the glass. After buzzing her in, the woman returned to a customer—a young man, a tray of diamond rings on the counter beside him—while Sima paced before the display cases. Immediately she felt disappointed: the jewelry was too staid for a young woman like Timna, the rows of Stars of David and heart-shaped pendants were designed for a different breed.
She paused before the watches, feigning interest—it would be rude, she felt, to leave too quickly. But as she watched the young man shyly point to a princess-cut diamond ring—the saleslady assuring him, “It’s our most popular setting”—she hesitated. Occasionally women would come to her shop looking for transformation. They’d criticize everything Sima brought them—this one didn’t hold in the belly enough, another made their breasts too flat—until she reminded them that while good lingerie made a difference, it wasn’t plastic surgery. There wasn’t a shop in all New York City, she realized, that would sell her what she wanted: a combination of gold and jewel that could capture Timna’s own beauty, bind her forever close.
The saleslady walked over to Sima as the young man wrote out a check. “See anything you like?” she asked. Sima looked again at the earrings. In the center, a pair of gold hoops was on displa
y: wire-thin at the top, gradually thickening toward the center. She pictured Timna running a finger along the sharp edge of metal, light glinting off the gold and catching in the soft waves of her hair.
“Those,” Sima said, “I’ll take those.”
Sima gave Timna the gift the next day. “Before I forget,” she told her, as if it hadn’t been on her mind all morning, “I got you a little something—”
Timna opened the card first, a little square that matched the rainbow-candle wrapping paper and said only: “Happy Chanukah, thanks for all the hard work!” Sima had meant to write a real letter, but she gave up after ruining six sheets of the pink sheared stationery Connie had given her for her sixty-fifth birthday. “Dearest Timna,” she’d write each time, pausing for a moment before losing herself on the unlined paper, the words coming too quickly as she struggled to explain how different it felt to get up each morning—even with winter outside and the bedroom cold because Lev always insisted on a window half-open—since Timna had come to work with her; how much richer her days felt, how much more joyful. “I want to tell you,” she’d write, “I have to say”—but as she reached the end of a page and traced back to the beginning, she’d see it was all wrong: her praise too heavy on the pale paper, like her envy an unwelcome burden. She crumpled the pages, took out the recycling herself so that Lev would not see her pastel drafts.
“I wasn’t expecting—” Timna said as she peeled back the wrapping paper, opened the cardboard box beneath, “Thank you so much—”
Sima looked down, nervous for Timna’s reaction. “I didn’t know what you liked,” she said, “but you had silver hoops, so I figured—”
“Sima, they’re beautiful.” Timna held the earrings up to the light, took off her own turquoise studs and placed the hoops through. “What do you think?”
Sima looked. There was only one word for Timna, always. “Lovely,” she said, “Absolutely lovely.”
Timna began to thank her again, but Sima cut her off. “Come upstairs,” she told her, “we’ll eat some latkes, celebrate a little. And then you can go home early, enjoy half a day off.”
Timna slipped her old earrings into the front pocket of her jeans. “Let’s go.”
Sima had to push aside stacks of Tupperware—takeout containers cleaned and saved—to find the electric frying pan. She’d grated the potatoes and chopped the onions the night before, pausing frequently to rub her hands, ease the stiffness.
While Timna told Lev about her trip to D.C.—Sima had hardly asked, hadn’t wanted the details—she added eggs, baking soda, and flour. Pressing small scoops of the mixture flat, she released them, careful of the hissing oil, into the frying pan.
“We did mean to go to the Smithsonian,” Timna was saying while Sima opened the fridge, took out sour cream and applesauce, “but then we got up so late—”
Sima browned both sides of the latkes before placing them on a paper-toweled plate in the oven, dropping more of the mixture in the pan. When she’d worked her way through the mixture, she removed the latkes from the oven and carried them to the table.
“So, Lev,” Sima said, placing a bakery box of jelly doughnuts beside the latkes, “Mrs. Klein was in before, talking about her son-in-law like you wouldn’t believe. Turns out he’s not a doctor at all, just has some pharmaceutical degree from someplace in South America.” Sima spread a thick layer of sour cream on a latke, lifted it to her mouth.
“Someplace in South America?”
Sima nodded, chewing. “One of those countries, yeah. So they get married, you know, and—”
“Who gets married?”
“Mrs. Klein’s daughter and this doctor.”
“But you just said he’s not a doctor,” Lev said, tearing off a piece of the latke with his hands, dipping the edge in applesauce.
“Are you listening to me?” Sima looked at Timna, pushed the doughnuts toward her. “Try them, they’re from the good bakery. We never eat jelly doughnuts, but someone told me in Israel—”
Timna motioned to the latke in her hand. “In a minute,” she said, one finger on her lips to hide the chewing, “these are excellent.”
Sima beamed. “So, anyway, at the time they thought—”
“Who thought what?” Lev reached for a doughnut. “The Kleins thought that their son-in-law was a doctor.” “Okay, Okay. So then what?” Lev bit into the doughnut, releasing a squirt of pink jelly onto his chin.
“So then what, what?”
“What happened?” Lev wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing?”
“That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“Why do you keep interrupting? Just that. That he’s not a doctor at all. The police came and closed his office, and now they’re threatening to move to Miami.” Sima turned to Timna, who had taken a doughnut. “Good?”
Timna nodded.
“Who’s threatening to move to Miami?”
“You know, you’re really driving me crazy.” Sima dipped a corner of her napkin in seltzer, passed the napkin to Lev. “Wipe your chin, there’s jelly all over it.”
Lev took the napkin, rubbed at the spot. “Sima, who’s moving to Miami?”
“Who do you think? Mrs. Klein’s daughter and the doctor.”
Lev looked at Timna. “You understand this?”
“You two are the ones who have been married all those years. You’re supposed to understand each other.”
Lev lifted his glass; Sima, noticing wet rings on the table, reached forward with another napkin. “How many times do I have to tell you you’ll ruin the wood? Use the place mat.”
Lev turned to Timna. “That’s how well we understand each other.”
Timna drummed her fingers on the table while Sima searched desperately for something to say. She was trying to remember if she’d told Timna about Helene and her latkes—she’d forgotten the eggs at a party for her daughter’s engagement and they’d all fallen apart on the tray, but everyone was too polite to say and Helene hadn’t noticed until the end because she was too busy to eat, can you imagine—when Timna stood up, and walked over to a picture hanging on the wall behind Lev. “Is it you guys in this picture?” she asked, looking at a couple on a boardwalk bench on a windy day, the ocean stewing behind them.
Sima nodded. “Art took that, when he first started doing photography.”
Sima was laughing as she struggled to hold her coat closed against the wind; Lev had one hand on his hat.
“I never noticed it was you before,” Timna said. “It’s a great photograph.”
“Yeah? Art gave it to us framed like that, so I put it up. Personally, I think I’m the least photogenic—”
“Oh Sima, you are not,” Lev said, “we have lots of nice pictures of you, when you used to let me take them.”
“I used to let you? What, you need permission?”
Lev looked at Timna, opened his hands. “She didn’t like being photographed, so I guess I stopped.”
Sima saw Timna glance at her watch, but instead of making an excuse to leave, she asked if they had more pictures she could see. Though Sima suspected Timna was just being polite, still she found herself crouching before the den bookshelf to sort through a pile of old albums, unable to resist Timna as an audience.
They sat on a brown leather sofa trimmed with rivets: Lev and Sima on either side watching as Timna turn the yellow-edged pages. There were snapshots on the beach, at the Catskills, outside their home: Sima in a white cotton dress with a handkerchief round her head, proudly clutching a striped purse and blushing at the camera; the two of them at a cousin’s wedding, Lev in a pale blue tuxedo, Sima in a sparkling black dress; Sima and Lev on the porch of a bungalow, a puppy propped into a sitting position on Lev’s lap.
“I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“I bought Poncho for Sima. What was he for—your birthday?”
Sima nodded. “He was cute, but he just wasn’t ma
de for an apartment. He tore up everything, peed everywhere. We gave him to a couple moving to a farm in Connecticut.”
“You never got another?”
“Too much work. We thought kids would like a dog, but then, for just us—”
Sima didn’t finish the sentence; Lev groaned softly.
Timna quickly turned the page. “Look—you’ve been on the Cyclone? I went last weekend with my cousin.”
Sima and Lev stood with their arms round each other beside Connie and Art. The men had horn-rimmed glasses; the women wore their hair piled high on their heads.
Sima sighed loudly. Art and Connie, her sigh said, such a shame.
“You guys look like fashion models,” Timna said. “Seriously, all that stuff is back in style now—you could be a Vogue spread.”
“No,” Sima said, “We weren’t much to look at.”
“How can you say that, Sima?” Lev asked. “You were lovely.”
“Now you say it?” She looked at Lev, disgusted—he was posing for Timna, pretending to be the devoted husband. “I never heard that then.”
“You still look nice,” Timna told her, turning another page. “If I look like you at your age, I’ll be thrilled.”
Sima raised an eyebrow. “You, look like me? You must be insane. Anyway, your life will be completely different. My body was ruined by hormone therapy, whereas—”
Lev sighed.
“What are you making noises for?” Sima asked. “I’m just saying—”
Lev shook his head. “Enough.” He looked at Timna. “Sima can show you the rest of the album, she prefers that anyway. I’m going to go lie down.”
Sima didn’t watch him leave. Instead she studied a gray and white photograph where the two of them, bundled in heavy coats, scarves, hats, cried out for the lowering of the ball in Times Square: a new year to celebrate. After she heard the click of the bedroom door—quiet, of course, Lev would never slam—she closed the album, and stood.
She smiled at Timna. “Well, now you know the worst of it.”
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