“My God.” Sima remembered Debra as a child, the way she’d sit cross-legged under the nightgown rack while her mother shopped. “You look like a gypsy,” Sima used to joke, smiling to see how the brightly colored silks and satins spilled around Debra’s shoulders, sashes coiling against her dark hair.
“Debra was hardly leaving her room, and the roommate thought maybe she was suicidal—”
“Oh, Rose.” Sima pressed her hand to her neck, felt her pulse echo lightly against her fingers—a gesture of sympathy, a wish for protection.
“Remember how I used to bring her here,” Rose asked, “and you’d let her try on those silk nightgowns?”
Sima nodded.
“I never thought I’d be one of those women moaning about where does the time go,” she said, pulling on tan cashmere gloves, “but here I am, wishing so fiercely I could just turn back the clock.”
Sima nodded again, aware from the presence of a certain warmth that Timna was approaching.
Rose took the bag Sima handed her, walked to the door. “Anyway,” she said, her hand on the doorknob, “I’ll send you the chicken recipe I told you about, the one with the mustard. It calls for cream, but I leave it out and it still tastes wonderful.”
Sima waved goodbye.
“Old customer?” Timna asked.
Sima nodded.
“She seemed so sad.”
“She is.” Sima looked at her.
Timna turned back to her customer. “The navy and the ivory?” she asked, “Are you going to go with those?”
The woman nodded. “I think so.”
“And what about you,” Sima asked, following Timna, “are you feeling better since you had the coffee?”
Timna didn’t answer, instead took the two gowns from the customer, said something about care, color. “This is Natalie,” Timna said as she handed Sima the nightgowns, “she just started working around the corner, at that big children’s store.”
Sima shook her hand, absently praised her choices. She rang up Natalie’s purchase, waited for Timna to respond to her question. When she didn’t, she tried again. “You’re feeling okay?” she asked as she swiped Natalie’s credit card through the machine. “Because you seem so exhausted—” Sima tore off the receipt, handed it to Natalie. “I know it’s winter and all, but—”
“I’m just tired,” Timna said, as she folded Natalie’s nightgowns into a bag. “I swear—you’re worse than my own mother.”
Sima smiled, though she wasn’t sure what to make of the comment—Timna’s mother wasn’t much to be compared with, after all.
“And Shai?” Sima asked, as Timna walked back to the sewing table, “What’s the story with him? Are you two dating?” Her words came out high, unnatural; she felt herself warm to pink.
Timna looked over, a blank stare Sima couldn’t read. “Why does everything need to have a label? I just left a relationship, I’m not looking for another.”
Sima nodded. “Sure,” she said, thinking of the nighttime subway car, the touch of a stranger’s body as the train curved along the tracks, everything dark and hidden outside. “Just so long as everything is safe—” She looked at the counter, avoiding Timna’s gaze. “I mean, I know you can take of yourself,” Sima said, knowing she thought nothing of the sort, “but things can happen so fast—”
She hesitated, tempted to tell Timna her own story, a once-upon-a-time fairytale with a moral as clear as those they’d read in grade school—the wolf in the forest, do not stop—but though she wanted to warn Timna how much might be lost for one mistake, she felt ashamed, too, to expose herself. As terrible as it was to admit her flawed history, it would be worse still to observe its effect: the disbelief with which the long-ago stories of the old were inevitably met, the pain of watching Timna realize, so you were young once too.
“You sound so serious, Sima,” Timna told her, before she had a chance for the warning. “Everything is fine—I’d tell you if it weren’t.”
Sima looked at her. Let me take care of you, she wanted to say, let me be there for you. The words burned the back of her throat, but she did not let them out, and then Timna was already walking away, returning to the nightgown rack to put back in order what had been misplaced.
Sima followed Timna again.
What was the point, she told herself even as she walked behind Timna to the bus stop, what was the point in standing there silent and stupid as Timna once again boarded a bus, pulled away. As if in witnessing she could change anything, as if she could protect by watching.
But then two buses pulled up together—”Make us wait fifteen minutes,” a woman in fuchsia lipstick complained, stamping out her cigarette, “and then come two at once”—and Sima found herself reaching for her purse, counting out quarters.
“Transfer?” the driver asked, and Sima nodded yes.
She kept her eyes on Timna’s bus ahead, feeling like a character from one of those late-night action films Lev occasionally watched. “What are you wasting your time with this for?” she’d ask him, pausing in the doorway as something blew up on screen, but sometimes she came inside, sat down beside him, asked “Who is he? Is that the bad guy?” listening while Lev, in the pauses between the action, explained the story, his voice a whisper between them in the dark room.
When the buses pulled up to the subway station, Sima got off, waving her transfer like everyone else. She could hear the squealing brakes of a train pulling in; let the crowd surge around her, pushing her along so that looking back she might say, I didn’t choose to follow her, really I just found myself there, and then—
And then underneath the streets of Brooklyn and over the bridge to Manhattan and under again like some hide-and-seek game and then whispering “Excuse me” as she struggled off the train after Timna, whom she’d been watching nervously from across the subway car.
Timna took the stairs two at a time. So that’s how, Sima thought as she scrambled after, those thighs. She followed Timna down a corridor and then up another flight and into the sky and the night and the city.
They emerged into Union Square, where the market was closing down for the evening. Sima looked around, amazed. She seldom went into Manhattan. There was the lingerie trade show once a year, and then every now and then she and Lev met another couple for dinner, or attended an event—a wedding, a bris—but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d simply walked around the city at night. It felt immediately romantic: the dark winter sky, the tremendous buildings, the open space of the square. A woman in a pink coat packed beeswax candles into cardboard boxes and Sima paused a moment, looking at the candles and dried flowers and jams, thinking how beautiful, and why had she never thought, and maybe she could come back on a Sunday, with Lev. But Timna kept walking, and so she did too, crossing in front of a taxi, hurrying past a Starbucks, following Timna down darkening streets of beige brick buildings. As they walked east, the buildings showed their age—grayed brick, pock-tiled entrances—but the restaurants were all wood and soft lighting and the clothing shops bright-white, lines of colored dresses on narrow racks. Where am I, Sima wondered, knowing the street numbers and the hospital and so yes, it had to be the same neighborhood—Connie’s cousin Marty had grown up here, and they’d visit on weekends sometimes—but so much had changed and could it have been so long ago?
Timna stopped in front of an old tenement and pressed the buzzer. Sima watched from across the street as Timna spoke into the intercom and then leaned against the glass door.
The city swallowed, and she was gone.
Sima scanned the building, wondering which apartment Timna had disappeared into. There were windows curtained in leopard print, in neon pink, in yellow and orange flowers Sima knew would be called retro; there were silver micro-blinds and cheap white shades and one bare window that revealed a sliver of white wall, black metal bookcases.
It was impossible to know which window hid Timna.
She began walking. Dinnertime already and she was cold and hungry like
a kitten, a line she knew from somewhere that now rang in her ears. She called Lev on the cell phone, always in her purse for an emergency that never came, and directed him to defrost a few perogies. She hung up before he could ask where she was.
Every block had a gleaming restaurant, but where, Sima thought, seeing the chalkboard menus, the prices, does one eat around here? She was tired. It was freezing. Seeing a small clothing store before her—three steps down into the basement of a tenement—she entered, thinking only to get warm.
A woman looked up from behind a glass counter, smiled. She was in her forties, dyed red hair and big jangly earrings. She wore a vintage pale blue cashmere sweater half-buttoned over large breasts, a rhinestone snowflake pinned to one side. “Let me know if you need anything,” the woman said, flashing a bright lipstick smile. A newspaper was spread open before her, a salad in a plastic take-out container on the side. Sima smiled back.
There was a rack of camisoles in candy colors; of course Sima went to them first. Some were similar to the ones she sold, but she realized immediately they were old. The white lace yellowed; the pink nylon loose around the armpits. Sima reached for a pale green polyester camisole—thick straps twisted through an old buckle, a tiny ribbon above the rounded neck.
“Do you want to try it on?”
Sima shook her head. “It’s just—it’s the same as one my mother used to wear. Same brand it must be, though the color is different. She had it in blue and pink.”
The shopkeeper smiled. “That one’s a favorite of mine. Sure you don’t want to try it?”
Sima touched the worn fabric. “I don’t think I could handle wearing my mother’s lingerie. But where do you get them?”
The shopkeeper (“Liza,” she had said, shaking Sima’s hand) came over, dragging her stool behind her (“my back,” she said by way of apology, and Sima looked down at her old-fashioned heels and thought, well, what do you expect), explained how it worked. She waved her hands as she talked, indicating the buildings all around them—the old tenements and the 1960s highrises—how she collected clothing when the old people moved out. So much great vintage clothing for the taking, and with just some cleaning, maybe a bit of mending, they were better quality than most new things. “I get from a supplier too, of course, but the stuff I love best is what I find on my own. Otherwise these things would have just been tossed out. Such a sad waste, don’t you think?” She gazed fondly at the green camisole.
Sima nodded. She didn’t ask where the old people went, but understood now why the neighborhood felt so changed. It had been purged.
“Did you grow up here?” Liza asked.
Sima told her no, told her Brooklyn, and Liza nodded eagerly, as if that made sense. She told Sima she came from a small town in Ohio, had wanted to live in New York since she was a kid. “But enough chitchat,” Liza said, as Sima glanced up and out to the street, “what can I get for you?”
Sima was about to say nothing when a rack of coats caught her eye. “I know,” the woman said, following Sima’s gaze, “it’s that time of year. At the beginning of winter last year’s coat isn’t so bad, but midway through I find myself just yearning for something new, you know?”
The lines were familiar but different too—she would never say yearning, would never employ such bright-eyed dewiness. Sima pulled out the coat that had caught her eye, black wool, midcalf, with gray paisley lining. Taking off her own black coat, worn thin already at the wrists and the pockets bulging, she tried on the new one. It fit nice: a little slimmer than her old coat. The yellow tag at the wrist said $75, and though Sima had never spent such money on anything used, still it wasn’t much for a coat—
“It’s a great cut, classic, but it’s just like the one you had,” Liza told her. “Can we try something a little different?” Before Sima could object, she was being handed a green coat. Viridian, Sima thought, imagining it in a catalog.
“Oh, I prefer black.”
“Try it.”
Because Liza was so nice and because she’d been Liza, too, in her own way, Sima tried it. It came with a belt that tied across her waist; Liza pulled it inches tighter than Sima would have. “Like something out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Liza said, and Sima thought, now that kind of exaggeration I never do, but she smiled all the same, because it looked all right, in a dress-up kind of way. With the belt pulled, she did look thinner.
“Now this one needs a scarf, because of how the neck opens up.” Liza handed her a polka-dot silk scarf, pale green with pale blue dots.
“Oh no. I look like a clown.”
“Okay, this one’s simpler.” It was black with tiny pink roses. Pretty, though not something she’d wear. Sima looked at herself one last time in the mirror, admiring the original effect even as she thought: not me, never. But then the woman was so kind and the store so empty and Sima knew days like that and how it wasn’t even so much the money from the sale as it was feeling that someone had wanted what you had to offer. “I don’t know,” Sima told her. “Now I have visions of someone like you ransacking my closet after I die, taking this coat straight back to sell.”
Liza laughed. “I should sell them with some kind of homing device. But think of it this way—it’s coat reincarnation. Good karma. Maybe with you the coat is moving up the soul-ladder.”
Sima smiled. Though she had no idea what Liza was talking about, she did know that in this coat Timna wouldn’t recognize her. Her spy get-up, she thought, pivoting before the mirror.
“Do you take checks?”
“Big news,” Connie said, shaking her hair loose from under her hat. “I have a date!”
Timna paused mid-yawn. “No! Who? Tell us everything.”
Sima gave a stunned smile, listened while Connie ran through the details. She and Estie were in the dressing room at Loehmann’s together, talking. As she was zipping up, Estie ran into someone she knew.
“Myrna Silver,” Connie said, turning to Sima. “You know her?”
Sima shook her head no.
“Me neither. But she and Estie carpooled together a million years ago. Well, one thing led to another, and it turns out this Myrna has an orthodontist brother who’s widowed two years. At first I say no way, I’m not ready, but Estie says, ‘How many years do you have left that you’re going to take your time?’ So I figure what the hell and give her my number—”
“Good for you!” Timna grinned her approval.
Connie nodded. “Get this: he calls that evening. We talk, we laugh, so on and so forth. Long and short of it is, he’s taking me out for dinner Friday night. Manhattan.”
“Go, Connie!” Timna gave her a hug.
“Wow,” Sima said. “That was fast.”
Connie looked at Sima, but then turned away. Taking Timna’s hand, she pulled her toward the dressing room. “Come, give me everything you’ve got. This is my first date in almost fifty years—I think it calls for some new lingerie.”
Sima watched as Timna, giggling, escorted Connie to the dressing room. She didn’t follow.
Connie had been her customer for as long as she owned the shop. A good customer: she liked lingerie, always chose what was pretty, hardly minded the cost. For years Sima had envied that about Connie—that she still cared. About her body; about Art.
But now—
There was no question of loyalty. Lev had met Art for lunch, and it went without saying she wouldn’t come. She and Connie even laughed about it—what would they talk about, anyway, just the two of them?
And yet, to fit Connie for the dating scene felt like cheating. She loved Art, after all; he was like family. If she wasn’t ready to leave him behind, how could Connie?
“I’m thinking that watercolor number,” Timna said as she took hold of the step stool.
Sima nodded, distracted. She remembered the first time they’d met Art. “That one’s cute,” Connie had said, pointing him out to Sima from across a crowded bus. He was a college boy; they were still in high school. Here we go again, Sima had though
t, as Connie dragged her through the crush until they were beside him.
Connie had turned to Sima, mouthed a command: “Watch.” Then, smiling, she’d boldly clasped the center pole so that her fingers touched his.
Art had looked up, surprised. He smiled when he saw Connie. He asked Connie her name; Connie feigned aloofness. He pressed; Connie made him guess. Sima couldn’t believe that something so obvious, so insipid, could work so well. “Alice?” Art had asked, “Grace?”
They were both beaming.
It was Sima who had given Connie the pen with which she’d written her name and number on the back of Art’s hand. Sima could still see Art’s shy grin as he watched Connie draw a perfect cartoon heart over the letter “i.”
How could it be, Sima thought, that their lives had changed that day and only to lead here: Connie in the dressing room, calling across the shop floor to ask if it was really true that garters were back in style? From the dressing room came laughter, whispers. High school again, she thought. Here We Go Again. And she was supposed to be ready with the pen as always.
21
SIMA CLOSED HER EYES, TRIED TO PRESS AWAY THE thought that had appeared, a sentence fully formed, in her mind. She saw it like the story in the Bible, the Babylonian king whose walls had been covered with writing from God, each letter alive in flames. The thought was that hot, that searing; she covered her eyes with her hands.
Timna did not notice. She was assisting Leah Korngold, who wanted a corset for her niece’s wedding. Sima knew the rivalry between Leah and her sister from decades past; knew Leah would spend any amount of money to look an ounce thinner than her sister. “Show her the Dior,” Sima had told Timna, and Timna, understanding, had immediately picked out the top of the line in lingerie. “It’s the latest thing,” Sima could hear her saying to Leah, and Sima smiled despite herself. How unself-conscious the phrase was, coming from Timna’s lips—she’d learned it from Sima, noticed the power it had to convince, and repeated it without the slightest sense of mimicry whenever a customer expressed hesitation.
Sima's Undergarments for Women Page 16
