by Shosha Pearl
All the muscles down Sholem's back and legs were tense; they felt so good to Esther's touch. He drove in and out of her slowly, sucking in his breath; Esther turned her pelvis to meet each thrust. She wanted him to pummel her, to drive himself so far inside her that she could not breathe. She felt she could accept this pleasure for hours; that she needed to be beaten and bruised with the impact of his thrusts so that her mind would be calmed and she could be still again.
"Push yourself inside me," Esther called out. She had never spoken to him this way. It felt empowering and she wanted to keep calling out her desires. But then, in that moment, Esther felt the swelling of hot fluids inside her. Her night of passion was already over.
They lay together without moving. Sholem's limpness eventually caused him to slip from inside her. He moved his head down to her breasts and closed his eyes. Esther lay awake long after Sholem had fallen asleep, her fingers stroking his hair, her body still raging with desire. She wondered what it would take to settle her restless soul.
A few days later, Esther told Sholem in a rough whisper that her period had come so she was now niddah. She could see that his disappointment was only a little stronger than his relief. Perhaps he was right to respond in this way. Perhaps it would be easier to have a break from each other - to go for twelve days without physical contact, to reassess and reconvene after a little distance. Perhaps they both needed time in view of her newfound sexual consciousness. At the end of their time apart, Esther would go to mikveh where she would immerse herself in the waters, according to the requirements of Jewish law. Sometimes separation can help – or so they were told and told others in turn.
But the tension did not go away. If anything, it just got worse. Esther sensed Sholem didn't know what to make of his wife as she watched him over breakfast. She knew that he was confused by the change in her. Perhaps he thought she was a little crazy. Perhaps he was right.
The day before her menstruation had begun and she had become niddah, she had followed him to the door in the morning, to see him out on his way to teach. Outside it had been bursting with sunlight and the exuberant chatter of birds, but in the closeness of the apartment's dark entrance, even the quietest sounds had seemed to echo. Sholem had stood in the entrance, waiting to leave, wanting to break free from her and the tension that hovered between.
She had not been quick to let him go. Instead, she had run a hand down his chest and round to his back, where her nails had spread out like claws. When she had raised her lips to his, her eyes were unblinking and daring. Never before had she been so open in her sexuality. She could feel his desire and confusion stirring in equal measure. Gently, he had extracted himself from her hold, his eyes watching hers, waiting to see what she might do next. But she had let him go.
The night after she had announced she was niddah, they had lain in their separate beds in silence, uncertainty hovering between them. "Are you OK?" he had asked, when he heard her sigh.
"I'm OK," she had answered.
The darkness had been filled with their sleeplessness. Esther had listened to Sholem turn from one side to the next, until the sounds of his restlessness faded.
It was a strange thing to look out the window and see your husband chatting amicably with a woman you had recently watched having sex. Esther stopped in her place the moment she saw them together - a quick stab of confusion in her belly. They were not alone. Chaim stood next to his father, looking down at a tiny dog jumping about on the grass. The dog seemed so small and energetic that even from the distance of her apartment Esther realized it must have been a puppy. Chaim ventured on to the lawn with a short stick extended towards the animal. He was soon holding one end and laughing while the pup pulled at the other with his mouth.
Esther watched Michelle smiling at Sholem, her lovely open face turned towards him. They may not have been alone in the garden, but from where Esther was standing, there seemed to be familiarity in the way they interacted. Michelle pointed behind her, in the direction of the apartment she shared with Jason. When Sholem turned to point at the window where Esther stood, she stepped back guiltily, not wanting to be seen watching them.
A key turned in the lock just as Meir's murmurings started to grow louder. It was Esther’s daughter Aviva. Sprays of dark curls fell out around her small flushed face; her school uniform drawn to one side under the pull of her backpack strap.
"Where's abba?" Esther asked.
"He's gone with Chaim to the store," Aviva answered, dropping her bag. Esther watched her, still thinking about Sholem out there in the sunshine, talking to their neighbor in her short, blue dress – her knees so confidently visible, her long pale legs smooth and unashamed. Her daughter stood still, looking closely at the nails on her left hand, unaware of her mother's musings.
"Come," Esther said, extending her arms, "Come give me a hug and tell me about your day."
When Sholem came home from the store he had brought ice-creams for the family. "Are we eating fleishig tonight?" he asked.
"No, we're having fish," she answered.
"So, we'll have the ice-creams after dinner," Sholem said to Chaim, who didn't look happy about having to wait. Esther hovered for a moment. She wanted to see if Sholem would mention his conversation with Michelle, but he disappeared to his study within minutes and didn't emerge until dinner was ready.
Family mealtimes were usually quick, but it was also often the only occasion that Esther and Sholem had to discuss functional matters. They would talk through the day, the week, Shabbos - whatever subject needed to be addressed in the few still moments they had together. That evening, the only subject that Esther was really interested in talking about was Michelle, but she did not want to raise the subject herself. Sholem seemed distracted; he also appeared not to notice his wife's lack of conversation or the fact that she was fidgeting next to him. The children, oblivious to their parents' silence, ran the dinnertime conversation.
It was still hot outside. Inside, sitting so close to the heat of the kitchen, each member of the family seemed to have a fine film of perspiration coating their skins. As soon as the dinner plates were cleared, Chaim was on his feet, pulling ice-creams out of the freezer. Everyone, including Esther, was excited to try them and each was soon making their way to the boy’s side.
Sholem had bought chocolate ice-creams – as he always did. It made Esther laugh, the predictability of his choice. She had once asked him if he knew there were other flavors. "I've tried them," he had said, with a shrug.
"All of them?" she had asked, smiling.
"Enough of them. Nothing's as good as chocolate," he had said.
It was almost ritualized, the way they all stood in a circle, taking their first bites – even Meir. A summer wind blew in the short, high-pitched bark of a dog somewhere in the distance.
"Is that Sandy?" Chaim asked, strolling towards the lounge room windows, his half-finished ice-cream still in his hand.
"Uh-uh!" Esther said. "Not with that! Finish your ice-cream here or in the kitchen and then you can go into the lounge when you are done. You know that!"
"OK, sorry, I just wanted to see if it was Sandy," her son said.
"Sandy?" Esther asked, looking at her husband.
"It's a dog. One of the neighbor's dog," he said. "Chaim stopped to play with it on the way to the store."
"Which neighbor?" she asked, when he didn't say anything further.
"I can't remember her name. She works in the florist near Menachem's Butcher," he said.
"She works there? Really?" Esther asked.
Sholem gave a careless shrug. "She lives in one of the apartments in the building across from ours."
"And she has a dog called Sandy," Chaim added.
And that was it. As soon as Chaim had finished his ice-cream he ran to the open windows to see if he could find the source of the receding barks.
"Your son likes dogs?" Esther asked her husband, smiling.
"It comes from your side of the family," he replied,
licking his fingers. She wondered if he could feel her eyes upon his back as he walked away.
Normally, their period of separation before her immersion in the mikveh merged into one long, celibate moment for Sholem and Esther. On most occasions Esther suspected that her husband did not know whether she was counting her five days of niddah or the following seven clean days. It was only when Esther suggested to him discreetly that he would need to be at home on a particular night with the children that he understood their period of separation was coming to a close.
This time was so different. While no one verbalized the passing of time, Sholem and Esther were aware, from the moment they woke to the second they went to sleep, exactly which day they were living. When they were both in the house Esther found herself constantly watching Sholem and, with a sense of guilt, she knew just how conscious he was of her gaze. But then, he was just as guilty of raising the tension between them. Sholem was raw with awareness of every sound his wife made, every room she was in, every word she uttered. Esther sensed that he followed her in his mind. At night, they climbed into their two beds, pushed apart during this period of niddah, exhausted and emotionally stretched. After nights of listening to each other’s breathing, of their closeness to one another, Esther began to withdraw into herself and Sholem started to appear strained and anxious.
Each day the situation grew worse. Sholem looked as heavy-lidded as a new mother. He became short-tempered and critical with the children and avoided his wife, who sometimes felt as though her presence tormented him. It did not surprise Esther that Sholem was spending longer hours away from home, finding new classes to teach, new communal responsibilities for which he was needed.
Esther was taken aback, however, by his announcement that he had agreed to stand in at the last minute for one of the rabbis at a summer camp in the mountains that Shabbos. Normally, he avoided camps. He found communal Shabbos gatherings neither spiritual nor restful, but somehow that seemed all forgotten. Suddenly, Sholem was behaving as though this was the most natural decision in the world. When he told Esther that he would not be home that Shabbos, they were standing at either end of the kitchen. Esther paused for a moment and then turned to her husband with a smile, her eyes seeking his without hesitation. She knew what he was doing.
"But we are going to the Levinskys’ for lunch," she said.
"You go. They won't miss me," he said, lifting a tea towel that was strewn across the bench and rolling it between his hands.
"You don't want us to come with you?" Her eyes watched the towel sliding between his fingers.
"Of course I'd like it, but it's easier for you to stay. Go to the Levinskys’. Racheli would be disappointed if you cancelled now.”
"OK," she said, her eyes still on his hands. "But you don't think it's a bit strange? Normally you'd do just about anything to avoid a Shabbaton."
"I know, but Yossi is sick and they couldn't find anyone else," he said. "It seemed like the right thing to do."
"But..." she began. The words didn’t come; instead, Esther finished her sentence with a shrug.
"I probably should have tried harder to find someone else. But I said yes so now it looks as though I have to go..." he said.
He disappeared to his study for a while. Later, when he returned, Esther was lost in her own thoughts. She could see he was trying to work out what was going on with her. She didn't think she was being so strange. After all, she wasn’t the one who had accepted an invitation that she would usually have run a mile from. And for what? So that he didn't have to deal with the weirdness that was going on between them? She turned to her anxious husband and looked him up and down. What was he so afraid of? Who did he think she was? Lilith? The thought made her want to laugh; in part because the thought was so ridiculous, in part because the mere flash of this idea filled her with desire.
From the moment Sholem told her that Michelle worked at the florist just near Menachem's Kosher Butcher, Esther knew she would be buying flowers from her neighbor the following Friday. Normally, Sholem was in charge of getting the Shabbos flowers. He had been doing so for as long as they had been married, which meant for the past seven years she had rarely set foot in this or any flower store. This Friday, Sholem was out the door and on his way to the Shabbaton by late morning although he had offered to pick up flowers and challah for her before he left.
"No, I'll do it," Esther had said, opening the freezer. Inside she had seen two of the foil trays she needed for dinner that night, packed in tightly at the back of the middle drawer. She had pulled them out, one at a time, leaving them on the counter, and then turned back to the freezer.
"Are you OK?" Sholem had asked. He’d been watching her, standing stiffly at the edge of the kitchen.
"I'm fine," she had said.
She had known why he was asking. Her tone was curt, her words short. Esther had seen the uncertainty in his expression.
"Are you angry with me?"
"No," she had said, finding the last foil tray she was seeking in the top drawer. The word “schnitzel” had been partially smudged from the wrapping. She’d pulled it from the drawer and placed it on the counter top beside the other two. She knew the brevity of her responses hung between them. She could have elaborated to have made him feel better, but she’d chosen not to. As far as Esther had been concerned, Sholem could read what he wanted from her words; her conscience had been clear enough that she had not felt the need to help him with his.
In truth, she hadn’t been angry with him, but she was annoyed. Esther knew why Sholem was going away. She knew he was escaping; leaving her at home, alone with the children, because he didn't know how to deal with the energy between them. Nor did she, for that matter, but running away was not an option available to her. Instead, she faced having to account for her husband's absence to friends who also knew how much Sholem avoided being away from his family for Shabbos. She already knew that Racheli would look at her strangely when she arrived the following day for lunch with children but no husband. No doubt, at some point in the afternoon, her friend would take Esther to one side to ask if everything was OK between her and Sholem.
Anticipating this awkward moment did not help Esther's mood, nor did it increase her inclination to alleviate her husband's guilt. But at least she was free to get the flowers for Shabbos. Even if Sholem had not been running away this week, she would have found an excuse to be able to buy them. She would have done whatever was needed to go into that store to see her neighbor up close, to have an excuse to talk to her. This way it was so much easier; Sholem had already made his escape - driving off with an apologetic smile - by the time Esther made it to the florist.
The store was large and clean, with white walls and dark concrete floors; it had a heady, overpowering mix of scents that hit her immediately when she walked inside. Esther saw Michelle as soon as she entered the shop. Her neighbor was smiling and chatting with a couple across the counter; her blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her hands moving quickly. She wore a green T-shirt with short, capped sleeves which revealed toned arms and creamy white skin.
There was a line of people waiting; holding bunches of dripping flowers in their hands. Working alongside Michelle was a greying, portly man, with smooth tanned skin and a shiny bald patch. Esther stood in line with her flowers, hoping that when she reached the front of the line it would be Michelle who was free to serve her.
Luck was on her side. As Esther took her place at the head of the queue Michelle finished up with her customer. "Hi!" Michelle greeted her as if they were old friends, taking the two bunches that Esther held in her wet, cold hands. "Great choice! I love these!"
Esther nodded. She stood quietly watching her neighbor, desperately wanting to say something to her, but she couldn’t think of anything casual to say other than: "I think we're neighbors."
"Are we?" Michelle asked, momentarily pausing from cutting flower stems to look up at Esther.
"Yes, I met your husband a while ago. Jason, isn't
it? He very kindly helped me with my shopping one afternoon," Esther said.
"Did he?" Michelle replied. "He's such a sweetie."
"Yes, it was very nice of him," Esther said. "I think you know my husband, too. Rabbi Gordon? Sholem? You saw him and my son, Chaim, in the garden last week. You were walking your dog," Esther said.
"Oh yes! Sholem, of course! I know your husband. He comes in every week. He's so lovely. Yes, that's right, I was dog-sitting for a friend – little Sandy. What a busy dog! He loved your son. It was so sweet seeing them play," Michelle said.
Watching her as she spoke, Esther was transported back to the memory of this woman's pale breasts pushed against glass – the sounds of her pleasure seeping through the walls of Esther's home. Esther shook her head to dispel the image, she felt terribly uncomfortable as she became aware of the rising tide of arousal pulsing through her body. She tried to say something normal, to be someone normal.
"Chaim had a lovely time playing with him. He was looking out for him for days after," she said.
"Aww, how cute! Well, if we ever dog-sit him again I'll be sure to let you know! Which apartment are you?" she asked.
"B25," Esther answered.
"That's easy for me to remember; we're E25," Michelle said. "How funny! Our apartments might even be facing each other." Esther tried to smile, although inside she was seized by a terrible fear that Michelle knew exactly who she was and what she had been doing. The flowers were wrapped; Michelle handed them across to her. The bouquet felt heavier in Esther's hand now than before. Consumed with anxiety and guilt, she looked at the flower arrangement. The pink and white blossoms were scattered artfully together.
