Timna turned back once more, looked at Sima. Sima could feel the gaze in her belly, in her knees. “Thank you,” Timna said, and the words coasted through the air between them and wrapped around Sima so that a warmth spread softly across her skin, and she had no words with which to say, bless you.
And then Timna was turning away, leaving them behind.
“Travel safe!” Lev called.
“Take care,” Sima whispered as she watched the night enfold Timna. “Keep well, be well.”
As soon as Timna was gone, Sima went back into the house, leaving Lev on the porch. For once she ignored the dishes in the kitchen, piled up beside the sink, and instead unhooked the door to the basement and disappeared down the steps.
So this is what it’s like, she thought as she sat behind the counter, this is that emptiness that the women talk about, the space left by children grown and gone. She looked toward Timna’s chair, impossibly abandoned when she could imagine so clearly the shadow of Timna working there, the bras before her, the hum of the machine, Timna laughing, saying something offhand, unimportant—just some story that would make Sima smile, just some voice, speaking to her.
She laid her head on the counter, one arm below it for cushion and the other above, cradling. She was alone in the dark with an emptiness inside like she hadn’t felt in years, decades: waking from dreams of babies to a quiet house, the weight of the child in her arms an ache she could not ease. That young woman had invited a ghost into her womb, locked its anger inside for warmth because she could not brave the longing. She thought of all the years she’d withheld herself only to come undone so late in life—a joke, hilarious. Like the line from childhood taunts: so funny I forgot to laugh.
Sima stroked her own hair, wishing she could stroke the hair of that young wife, wishing she could soothe, forgive, encourage the scared, sad woman she’d been, but all the years between them rendered the touch both impossible and unnecessary—she’d hardened early, and all the time gone since only gave gloss to the surface. She buried her head in her arms and whimpered, a child’s cry of fear. It was too late to still the young woman who’d stepped off her porch that evening and too late to cry stop to the young woman she’d once been; joy escaped so quickly and disappeared in the dark of city streets, her legs couldn’t take her fast enough to chase it, her eyes would not know where to look, her arms were too weak to reach out and hold it, swallow it back to a secret place deep inside.
The door opened above her. She could feel a warmth penetrating the dark before the saying of her name, some worry in the voice: “Sima?”
She looked up.
Someone was calling her name. After all the bitter years, after all she had done to betray, someone was calling her name. Sima looked up the green carpet of the staircase to the rectangle of light, her home, the shadow of Lev in the doorway.
“Sima?”
“Lev. Lev, I’m here.” Sima stood. Walked toward him.
“In the dark?”
Sima stepped on the first stair. The second. The third. “I miss her,” she told him, her hand gripping the banister. She looked at him, remembered again that he too had been young once, aching and longing for comfort. “I miss her.”
“I know,” Lev said, “I know.”
At the top of the stairs he met her. His body was warm. So it was him too she’d been missing, and all along.
32
LEV, DO WE HAVE TO STOP HERE? IT’S FREEZING!”
Sima buttoned her cardigan before opening the car door, stepped out with her arms crossed against her chest for warmth. Lev had already stepped into the tall grass beside the road, his camera raised.
“Look at that view!”
“It’s half-covered by fog,” she said, though in truth she was glad to get the picture: the old fishing shack loomed silver-gray against the blue sea, half-swallowed by the tall grass—dots of purple, yellow, white wild flowers—that grew along its edges. “Did you get the island in the distance?” Sima asked, leaning against the car, “Is that in the picture too?”
Lev nodded yes, crossed back toward her. Sima opened the glove compartment and withdrew a map, unfolding it on the hood of the car. “It should be just another ninety miles back to Halifax,” she told him, studying the highlighted route. “Want me to drive?”
Lev shook his head. “For now I’m okay,” he said. “You?”
“I’m good,” Sima told him, looking up. “I’m all right.”
They followed the scenic drive along the ocean, though it was slower than the highway, pausing every now and then to say, “Look.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the organizations and institutions that have provided gifts of space, time, and money: Temple University’s Master in English/Creative Writing Program, The Leeway Foundation, The Ragdale Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Council for the Arts, the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop.
I began writing this novel during a one-on-one tutorial with Dr. Alan Singer at Temple University; I tried to channel his keen critical eye in the years that followed, and hope I did justice to his early encouragement. I also worked closely with the late Dr. William van Wert. His unwavering support has continued to sustain me, and I wish I could share this book with him.
Thank you to my many readers over the many years: Valerie Reynolds, Ilana Kurshan, Juliet Latham, Betsy Frankenberger, and Rebecca Haimowitz. For advice and insight to fertility treatment in the 1960s, thank you to Dr. Aren Gottlieb in New York and Dr. Philip Hall in Winnipeg. Thanks also to my Victoria writing group: Julie Paul, Kari Jones, Laurie Elmquist, Hanako Masutani, and Alisa Gordaneer.
I am so grateful to my agent, Joy Tutela of David Black Literary Agency, who has been an exceptional editor and a tenacious advocate. Joy told me she never gave up on a novel, and meant it. My editor at The Overlook Press, Juliet Grames, is the kind of editor I had ceased believing existed: one unafraid to roll up her sleeves and get dirty in the revision process. Thanks to both of them, along with Francesca Sacasa and the rest of the Overlook team, for hard work on behalf of literary fiction.
Thank you to the wonderful families Stanger and Ross. The Stangers gave me Brooklyn and the bud of a story, and the Rosses gave me Nova Scotia, my very favorite place to write.
Jordan Stanger-Ross is simply the best reader I have encountered. How convenient, then, that he is also my husband. I thank him for smart criticism and stronger encouragement. I also thank him, along with our daughters Eva and Tillie, for joy.
PRAISE FOR Sima’s Undergarments for Women
“A novel alive to the hidden stories all around us, from the bittersweet ambivalence of adulthood’s first choices to the heartbreak and forgiveness that form the under-wire of any long marriage. With grace, good humor, and a seamstress’s eye for the way the unconnected lives can become stitched together, Ilana Stanger-Ross pulls back the curtain on a world of intimacy many know well but no one has described so movingly.”
—PETER MANSEAU, author of Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter
“You’re in for a novel that’s truly novel. Breaking new ground in graceful, unselfconscious, and very funny prose, Stanger-Ross explores the force of thwarted mother-love—its power both to harm and to ultimately heal.”
—ELLIS AVERY, author of The Teahouse Fire
“From the very first page, this is an assured narrative with an even surer voice; readers will know that they are in the hands of a real storyteller.… The bra shop works wonderfully as a stage and forum for the many ladies who tromp through it. This ends up being much more than a novel of female bonding—it’s a subtly powerful treatise on friendship, trust and love, written with plenty of verve.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Debut novelist Stanger-Ross writes about the intimacy among women whose lives are defined by their Orthodox Jewish community. She deftly reveals just enough information about her characters to excite the reader’s curiosity witho
ut making the story line predictable. In the end, this is a tale about appreciating one’s life, and isn’t that what life is about?”
—Library Journal
“ Charming … filled with gentle uplift.”
—Kirkus
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