“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Sima dismissed the apology: “Nothing to be sorry for.” She patted the album, returned it to the bookshelf. “Maybe you were right, Timna,” she said, her hands on the shelves as she pulled herself up, “maybe it is better to end things sooner, better not to let it last until all the love is gone.”
“I won’t adopt,” Sima told Lev. “I don’t want someone else’s children. Those kids have problems—brain damage, delinquency. I won’t have it.”
What she didn’t say: she no longer felt she deserved to be a mother.
Lev barely protested. “Give it time,” he told her, “you’ll feel differently after a while.”
Sima waited, wishing it true, through the nights and the mornings and the shut-in weekends—Lev no longer rushed through his paperwork so they could spend time together, go on a walk, instead pored over essays and exams and committee meeting notes for hours while she read in the kitchen, met with a friend—hoping for him to see how she hurt, assure her of his love.
In the dark of the bedroom she longed for his touch and, sometimes, Lev tried, because he had no words, to open Sima instead with his body. He stroked her belly, breasts; he bent to kiss her cheek and ear. But, despite her longing, she did not turn toward him. It was always all wrong: his breath too thick in her ear and his hands too heavy on her skin, and though she allowed him to part her legs and move forward into her, when he asked her how she was, when he tried to meet her eyes, she kept quiet, her face turned away toward the pillow.
At night when she could not sleep, she curled her body tight, clenching her eyes shut against the years ahead with just the two of them on the beach and no children to crowd the blanket with bright, plastic toys. At night, desperate, she reached for Lev to hold on to, but he rarely awoke, comforted her through closed eyes when he did, “Sima, in the morning. We’ll talk then.” At night, alone, she suffered, raged, blamed herself, wished to be held and recoiled, all the same, from the weight of his arm around her.
And always the fear: he would find out the truth, he would discover her secret and shun her, hate her as she deserved to be hated.
As the disappointment stretched into months Lev seemed to resent her martyred breathing. Sima could hear him some nights, turning, and though they were both awake neither asked the other why.
Like that, they withdrew from each other: just a couple rolling toward either side of the bed, away from the center, backs faced in protectively, guarding.
19
SIGHING, SIMA LOWERED HERSELF INTO BED. “I’M exhausted,” she bragged to Lev. “Between Connie and Timna, you have no idea.” She squeezed a dollop of peppermint moisturizer onto her hand, rubbed it into her feet.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so needed.
It was both terrible and wonderful.
Connie had stopped by the shop that morning. She had cried; Timna had moped. “They both looked like hell,” Sima told Lev, raising her voice so he could hear her in the bathroom. “And there I was, running from one customer to the next, needing double the energy to cover for Timna’s monotone, like a zombie that one, and then stopping to dry Connie’s eyes in between—”
Of course, she hadn’t really dried Connie’s eyes. Lev knew that. But the cheap exaggeration hid a real sorrow; Connie was broken, and Sima ached for her. Sima had watched the familiar way in which Connie reached into her purse, carefully drew out one tissue, wiped her eyes, blew her nose. Her Connie: her brash, loud, always-envied Connie. A well-practiced, pathetic gesture. It stung.
Connie had taken possession of a folding chair, occupied it for most of the morning. When Sima wasn’t busy—and sometimes when she was—Connie spoke about the separation: updates on Art, ensconced in some overpriced hotel beside the Brooklyn- Queens Expressway, and insights from her lawyer. Himself married three times, he’d told Connie: “You get through it.”
“Sure,” she told Sima, “but how?”
There was nothing to say, but still Sima couldn’t stop herself from trying. “Treat yourself to something,” she offered. “A massage, new boots.”
Connie had nodded, blotting her eyes.
Sima brought her water, coffee.
Connie cried.
Sima comforted.
Meantime, Sima led the customers one by one between the changing room and the cash register. All the time listening, agreeing, intervening—this one’s crazy daughter-in-law, that one’s weight-loss regimen.
In and out of bras, bathrobes, nightgowns, corsets. Yes. No. Yes. No.
“If only I’d died two months ago,” Connie had said, reaching for her coat. “A car accident, an explosion. Think of it: I’d have died loved. But now—” she raised a hand dismissively, “nothing.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Timna had said, “you’re still loved.”
But Sima had thought: she has a point.
“What’ll become of her?” she called out to Lev. “How should we help her?” She rolled over, sighed. “We should have her over more often. Only I’m so tired at the end of the day that the thought of serving someone else dinner—”
“She’ll be fine.” Lev shut the bathroom door behind him. “She can take care of herself. She’ll land on her feet.”
“We’re talking about a woman, Lev, not a cat.”
“So have her over more often.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“It’s just what?”
“Nothing.” Sima reached for her book from the bedside table. A page-turning novel, only she’d cheated by reading the book club questions at the back and now she knew how it all turned out. Still, a little worry niggling in her head: to be so needed by both Connie and Timna—she almost didn’t want him to be right.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Sima said, though Timna, on the phone, had not really asked for approval, “just get some rest, and make sure to drink lots of water. I’ll call later to see how you’re doing.” Sima twisted the phone cord a few times round her wrist, picked up a pen, and tested it against a yellow legal pad, “Yeah? Okay then, just in case you’re asleep, I won’t call. And if you need anything, soup or whatever, let me know.” Sima sketched a cube on the paper, two connected squares with reaching lines like she’d been taught in junior high. “Uh huh, sure. So listen, will you be around this weekend? Because if you want—” The door opened, and Sima smiled at a mother and daughter, held up her hand to signal, one minute. “Okay,” she said, shaking her head no, “but I don’t know if you should go to the concert if you’re not feeling—” She nodded at Miri, in an auburn wig, who had motioned toward the rack of nightgowns, waved her hand for them to look through them. “All right, if you say so. Sure. Call me if you need something.” Sighing, Sima hung up the phone.
The older woman looked at Sima, her eyebrows raised with a question. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were speaking with your own daughter. Who was that?”
Sima forced herself to smile. “Just my employee,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve met her.”
“But I’ve heard of her. Reva told me, ‘Such a beauty Sima has hiding in her basement,’ she said. Nu, so what’s the problem?”
Sima ran her nails lightly against the counter, raising her fingers at the knuckle. “No problem. She’s sick is all, she’s Israeli; she’s not used to the weather changes.”
“No? It snows sometimes in Jerusalem.”
Sima smiled: of course she knew it snowed in Jerusalem, every business in the area used the same snowy shot of the Western Wall as the January image on the free calendars they gave out. She was tempted to tell this to Miri, point out that she was not after all a complete idiot, but, glancing at Miri’s daughter and seeing some nervousness there, paused instead. “Who’s shopping today?” Sima asked, looking at the slight swells beneath the girl’s cable-knit sweater, “Is it for you, Netya?”
Netya blushed, looked at the ground. “You think it’s time?” Miri asked. “She wants one, but I wasn’t
sure. The girls start earlier and earlier—”
“How old are you Netya, twelve?”
Netya nodded.
“It’s the perfect time,” Sima said, pleased at herself for remembering Netya’s name and age, wishing Timna had been there to see. “Tell you what, I’ll bring you a few styles, and you can see what you like best, okay? Go wait in the dressing room.”
“You really think she has enough?” Miri asked as Netya walked toward the curtain.
“Of course there’s enough, Mirela.” Sima grabbed the stepladder, turning her back to Miri. “You can’t keep her a baby forever, you know,” Sima said, reaching casually for a stack of cotton bras.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Sima said, “you have to let her grow up sometime.” She set aside one white and one beige cotton bra, pretended absorption.
“You think I’m one of those mothers?”
“Everyone’s one of those mothers.”
“Maybe so. But believe me, if anything it’s more the other way—I’m always pushing her to try new things, grow up. With five others at home I can’t keep them all children, that’s for sure.” She paused, considering. “Do you remember when I used to bring her here as a baby, and everyone said she looked unreal, like a painting?”
Sima nodded. All babies received the same overblown compliments, she thought, when would these mothers realize that?
“But I worry about her. She seems younger than the other girls. In a few years we’ll be looking for a husband, and sometimes she plays with dolls still. Can you believe? A girl old enough for a bra.”
“Of course she plays with dolls—she has three younger sisters.”
“But in a few years—”
“How few? Seven, eight? Think how you changed from twelve to nineteen.”
“I had Netya by then.”
“So, you see, you never gave up playing with dolls.” Sima lowered herself carefully down the ladder, though she felt like dancing at her own jab. Miri followed her to the dressing room.
“I’ll ignore that comment,” Miri told her.
Sima laid a hand on her arm. “I’m just teasing,” Sima said, “like you do.” Before Miri could respond, Sima added, “Is that new hair?” and when Miri nodded yes, “it looks like it was made for you. I love the color.”
Miri smiled, appeased.
After they left—Netya with three new bras, white, beige, and pink though she’d wanted black (“Who’s going to see it?” Miri had asked, and of course Netya had no response)—Sima glanced at her watch, debated going upstairs for coffee. Lev would be up; he would ask after Timna.
Anticipating Lev’s question—where’s Timna, he’d want to know, the coffee ready, cream on the side the way Timna liked it—Sima asked it herself. Where is she, Sima thought, smiling at her own game, and pictured Timna not home sick under the covers, where she clearly wasn’t, but outside somewhere, with friends. She’d be ice-skating in Central Park, Sima decided, and she closed her eyes to think of the way Timna would giggle as she stood unsteadily in her skates, a cup of hot chocolate and the boy who bought it for her close by on a bench.
She sat down behind the counter, taken with her game. Maybe Alon would be at the rink, and he and Timna wouldn’t have to say anything because just looking at each other, they’d know. Timna would crawl into his lap, and he would grin to feel her warmth against him as he reached his arms around to keep her close. How he would laugh as he brought the hot chocolate to her lips, held it while she blew on it and then, leaning forward, the cup still in his hands, took a sip—
Oh, Sima thought, as she imagined the warm sweetness passing Timna’s lips, to be her, to be her.
Sima turned off the TV when Lev walked into the room, but she knew he could see, just before the picture went black, that she’d been watching a talk show.
“I thought you’d given up on those,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his socks.
“I did. But I was bored.”
“Where’s Timna?”
Sima looked up at him, annoyed. “How should I know? It’s Saturday, she doesn’t hang out here on Saturday.” “Sorry. I just thought—”
“You thought wrong.” Sima lay back on the bed, put a hand to her forehead. “My head is killing me.”
Lev didn’t answer, walked over to the bathroom, and closed the door. A moment later he returned, a faded chart in one hand. “What’s this?” he asked.
Sima watched the blank screen of the television set, concentrated on not revealing the fear that gathered in her stomach.
“What do you think it is? It’s an ovulation chart.”
“From when?”
“I don’t know. 1964 or something, I guess.”
“But where’d it come from? Why is it here?”
The anxiety in his voice surprised Sima, but she didn’t show it. “It was under the sink, all this time. I finally finished cleaning away all those old bath products, and there it was, just waiting. So I dropped it in the sink and—”
“Turned on the TV?”
Sima nodded. She could tell him it was nothing, just that she found it and then paused to watch a show—no big deal, no grand connection. Instead she sighed a thin stream of breath, allowed the clouds to gather above, the thunder, the lightning.
“My God, Sima, what is it with you? Is this because of Timna, this obsession again with not having had children?”
Sima stared at the screen. She longed to hide under the blanket, pillow, under the very bed itself with the dust-ruffle tent safe on all sides, but, running her hands along the sheeted surface of the mattress, nails digging slightly, forced herself to stay still, speak. “What do you mean, ‘again’?” she asked. “Has there ever been a time it hasn’t consumed me?”
Lev looked toward the door, but did not retreat. Sima saw that his face was flushed; he gripped the paper so tightly that it creased in the middle, the edges curling in toward the center. He’s pushing too, she thought. They were like children in a schoolyard, circling, wanting to strike but afraid to step forward first, stand exposed.
“Oh Sima.” Lev shook his head, glanced down at the chart. “It’s such a waste, isn’t it,” he said, taking the graph gently in both hands, smoothing out the creases, “to throw our own lives away just because we couldn’t have children?” He walked over to the side of the bed, sat down softly. “It wasn’t our fault,” he said, placing his hand on the bed between them, “we didn’t fail. Look at Art and Connie, at all they had and still, now, nothing. We’re still together—doesn’t that count for something?”
Her rage disappeared before his quiet protest, but the hollow it left was more frightening than the anger. She thought of Art leaving Connie, Timna leaving Alon, separation as easy as a push away from the concrete edge of a pool, strong strokes into the open. She wanted, too, to be free.
“Why this punishment, Sima? Why all this—”
Sima clenched her fists, enough. “Lev,” she said, “Lev.” Her face creased, gathering his pillow to her she turned on her side, wrapped her body around its bulk. “Lev.” She thought, even then, to turn back, but she was like a cartoon character who, having walked out on the sky, now understood it was time to fall. “It was my fault,” Sima said, speaking more into the pillow than to him, “It was my fault.”
“No, Sima,” Lev said, moving his hand full on her knee, “I never thought that, not once. These things happen, bad luck. You know I never blamed you.”
Sima spoke quietly. “Yes. I know you never—”
“Blamed you.”
Sima nodded. “But the thing is,” she looked at Lev a moment, covered her face in her hands. She rubbed her eyes and looked up again, breathing deep. “Lev, it was my fault. I was sterile because of a disease that I got,” she paused just a moment, “from another man.”
Lev shook his head. “No, that makes no—what are you saying, Sima?”
“When I was sixteen,” she bit her lip, her face contorted. “Oh Go
d, I was so young. I was a camp counselor, and there was this boy—”
“A boy?”
“A boy. He was eighteen; I thought he was a man. But he was just a boy, too. It took years for me to forgive him, but now I understand how young he was.”
“Forgive him for what, Sima?”
“Lev,” she said, “I couldn’t have a baby because my tubes were scarred.”
“I know.”
She shook her head, smiling. “Do you know, you never asked why? That whole time I was going through the testing, and then after, you never asked where the scars came from?”
Lev looked at her, not responding. He brought his hand back toward his own body, cradled it against his stomach.
“We only had sex the once. Like they taught us in health class, it only takes one time and—”
“And what Sima, what?”
“It’s so stupid, you know? One time. One” —she paused, her voice wavering—“one fucking mistake when I was sixteen and I can never have a child. Like that, just like that.”
Lev looked down at the pink, plush carpet, the dark of his footsteps from moments ago still visible. “You had sex with someone, that’s what you’re saying?”
Sima nodded.
“Before me?”
“Before I ever met you.”
“And he gave you what? A disease?”
She nodded.
“And so—”
“So it made me sterile. Scarred the fallopian tubes.” It was easy, this part, answering his questions; she hoped he would continue asking until it was all solved and stored away.
Instead Lev shook his head, stood.
Sima felt suddenly terrified. He couldn’t leave—she couldn’t stand to be alone, abandoned on the bed with the false warmth of the winter sun casting triangles on the comforter and unable, she felt, to stand even to close the curtain, turn off the light. It wasn’t freedom she wanted, she realized, but forgiveness. Sima reached out her hand. “Lev, don’t leave,” she said, the words heavy in her mouth, “I know I should have told you, but I was so ashamed. For forty-six years I didn’t speak, and now, please don’t—”
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