Hilda and Pearl

by Alice Mattison

  “I’d like to see it.” Pearl finished putting the shelving paper down and Hilda cleaned the stove, clucking over its condition. “You can see that they think they cleaned it,” she said. “Now this is the sort of thing that would upset Mrs. Levenson.”

  Their mutual mother-in-law—now there was a person who made Pearl nervous. They had all gone to see her a few days after the wedding. Mrs. Levenson was a small woman with dark gray hair, not white or black, who hugged herself as if she was cold, or as if she thought somebody wanted to take away her clothes.

  “It’s open,” she called when they rang the doorbell, and they found her sitting in the kitchen, where Nathan and Mike both bent to kiss her. Hilda kissed her too, and Pearl thought maybe she ought to, but they hadn’t been introduced yet. The four of them stood around the old lady in the tiny kitchen, where there weren’t enough chairs for them. Finally Hilda said, “Mom, come sit in the living room,” and urged Mrs. Levenson along.

  “There’s something to celebrate?” said Mrs. Levenson.

  “You know there is, Mama,” said Nathan quietly. “You know Mike got married. This is Pearl, your new daughter-in-law.”

  “A hard name to say,” said Mrs. Levenson, but then she got up and shuffled once more into the kitchen. She was gone for a long time, but came back with a glass dish of candy and another of dried fruit. “You like prunes?” she said to Pearl.

  “A little,” said Pearl, who didn’t like prunes.

  “Very good for you,” said the old woman. “Take.”

  Pearl thought the prune was like the old lady herself, hard and wrinkled. When they left she turned to Hilda for support, but Hilda was saying that her mother-in-law was looking better than the last time they’d been there. Finally Pearl had reached for Mike and leaned on his shoulder and even wept a bit. Mike patted her back. “You did fine,” he said.

  Now Pearl had decided it would be a good idea to invite Mrs. Levenson for dinner in the new apartment. She was glad Hilda was making the stove acceptable. Sometimes she felt that Hilda was taking her on, the way a weary but conscientious teacher might take on an exasperatingly slow student. Pearl tried to be grateful for Hilda’s steady, honest, unimpressed looks in her direction.

  They moved a few days later, and suddenly she was alone with Mike in someplace large enough to walk around in. He reacted with exaggerated glee, hiding in the bedroom closet to jump out at her, wrestling her onto the new double bed. They’d used their savings to buy it, and it had been delivered by two men who called Pearl ma’am.

  In the new apartment Mike said she could scatter hairpins wherever she liked. At Hilda’s she used to find them in a clean ashtray, all facing the same way. “Wear a magnet on your head,” Mike had whispered. Now he played the saxophone into the night, and after a few days someone knocked on the door and asked him to stop. Mike was angry, though he put the instrument away, but Pearl was embarrassed.

  As soon as they had a table and chairs, Pearl made good on her plan to invite Mrs. Levenson—who had paid for the table. She and Mike had visited her a second time, and it had gone better. “A sweet girl,” Mrs. Levenson said to Mike when they left. She pressed some bills into Pearl’s hand. “A nice table you should buy.” Pearl invited her mother-in-law to dinner, and of course Nathan and Hilda as well. Her guests were coming on Friday night, and Pearl asked Mike whether Mrs. Levenson would be offended that she didn’t light candles for shabbos. They hadn’t done it in Pearl’s house when she was growing up. His mother did, Mike said, but only when she thought the neighbors might come in and notice. He insisted she wouldn’t care. Pearl called up her mother and got directions for making a potato kugel, but in the end she decided it was too much trouble to grate the potatoes, so she made mashed potatoes. She bought a chicken and roasted it in the oven. She boiled carrots and peas. For dessert there was a cake she’d bought at the bakery.

  The dinner was on a cold day in December. Mike went out to wait for his mother at the trolley stop. Pearl set the table with her mother’s old dishes. Then she decided she had time to take down her hair and braid it again. She was already dressed; she’d changed to a fresh blouse when she came home from work. Pearl pulled out her hairpins and let her pale braid fall. She always loved the weight of it hitting her back. She unraveled it with her fingers and ran them through her hair. Her scalp prickled with freedom. She brushed her hair. As she was about to braid it again, the doorbell rang. Pearl went to the door as she was. There were Nathan and Hilda. When they saw her, Nathan blushed a little and Hilda looked away.

  “Mike went to meet his mother. Your mother,” Pearl said. “Come in. I’m sorry about my hair—I was setting the table.”

  “Are you planning to wear it that way?” said Hilda.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Mrs. Levenson would think you were a loose woman,” Hilda said. Now she was smiling a little, but Pearl still felt her disapproval.

  She went into the bedroom and braided her hair and pinned it up. “Take off your coats,” she called. “Pour yourselves a drink.”

  She’d made a pitcher of Tom Collinses, though the book said it was a summer drink. Mike had assured her that his mother would drink seltzer. She and Mike arrived a few minutes later, just as the three of them were starting their drinks. Mike’s cheeks were red from the cold, but his mother was sallow. Sure enough, she said, “Just a glass seltzer,” when Pearl offered her a drink. Nathan walked to the window, went back to his chair, sat down, looked at his watch. “Well, I lost my job,” he said finally.

  Pearl looked up, startled. Of them all, Nathan had seemed the least likely to lose his job.

  “What? When?” said Mrs. Levenson. “You lost your job? How come you should lose your job?”

  “The union can’t afford me, it’s as simple as that,” said Nathan. “I’ve seen it coming.”

  Mrs. Levenson shook her head and rocked back and forth in her chair.

  “I thought you weren’t going to say anything,” said Hilda.

  “It’s on my mind,” Nathan said. When they went into the kitchen for dinner, he seemed to relax a little. “Things aren’t what they were a few years ago,” he said. “There are possibilities now. I might even be able to teach, who knows?”

  Pearl thought the chicken was a little dry, but she had taken white meat. Maybe the dark meat was all right. Mike finished the food on his plate and reached for more without offering the platter to anyone else. Pearl glared at him. “Mrs. Levenson,” she said, “would you like more? Hilda?”

  “I have plenty,” said Hilda. Mrs. Levenson didn’t seem to hear her. Now Pearl nodded to Mike to go ahead, but he was already forking chicken onto his plate. Pearl was glad he liked it, but he seemed to like everything she cooked. He didn’t mind if it was burned or underdone.

  When the bakery cake was served, Mike’s mother spoke for the first time in a while. “Expensive,” she said.

  “It didn’t cost much,” Pearl said, though it did, but she didn’t know how to cook desserts.

  “Mike shouldn’t lose his job, too,” his mother said. “Mike, your job is all right?”

  “It’s fine, Mom,” he said.

  “I said to Nathan, you shouldn’t get married,” Mrs. Levenson said now, and she was speaking to Pearl, of all people.

  “Mom, that’s enough,” Nathan said, but the old woman kept talking.

  “Maybe one day she can’t work. You know what I mean. I say what I think. When Mike goes to get married, he doesn’t tell his mother.”

  Pearl was coming across the room with two cups of coffee. “I’m sorry,” she said, wondering if she was going to drop the cups and saucers. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”

  “He wouldn’t listen to me,” Mrs. Levenson said. “Nathan didn’t listen.”

  Pearl looked around the table. Both men looked stricken, but Hilda looked angry. “Mom,” she said, “stop it. Nathan’ll get another job. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Who said the end of the world?” said Mr
s. Levenson.

  “You know what I mean. Look,” said Hilda, and now her voice was gentle, “you didn’t pick me and you didn’t pick Pearl. Nathan and Mike picked us, and I’m sorry if you think they should have picked different girls. But honestly, there’s nothing wrong with us. We won’t bring disgrace on your family. We won’t make your boys unhappy. We’re nice.” Now her voice was pleading, even a little teary. Pearl was afraid to look at her. She felt happier than she had since her wedding day. She sat down at the table and began eating her cake.

  But Hilda bent her head and began to cry. Pearl had never seen Hilda cry before. Nobody said anything and after a while Hilda stopped crying and drank her coffee and even ate some of the cake. Everyone acted as if it hadn’t happened, but Pearl thought Mrs. Levenson was a little friendlier after that.

  Mike took his mother home on the trolley a short while later, and Hilda and Pearl washed the dishes. Nathan went into the other room, and then they heard the sound of an orchestra playing on the radio.

  Pearl filled the dishpan and began putting cups and saucers into it, and Hilda scraped plates into the garbage. She leaned over the garbage pail, stooping, while her dress, a warm pumpkin color, drooped gracefully to the floor around her. Suddenly she tottered and dropped a plate and it broke. “I’m so clumsy,” she said, and sat back onto the floor. “I’m dizzy.”

  Pearl leaned over to put her hands under Hilda’s elbows. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry. Your plate.”

  “Just Mama’s old ones. Are you sick? Did I poison you with my dinner that I cooked?” She helped Hilda, who felt surprisingly solid, to stand up, and then she pulled a chair forward with her foot and eased her sister-in-law into it.

  “I’m having a baby,” said Hilda, and looked up mischievously, and then they both began to laugh. Pearl knelt in front of her and took Hilda’s hands, and Hilda bent her dark head so it touched Pearl’s.

  “I don’t know what’s so funny,” Hilda said. “The old lady’s right. I guess we’ll starve.”

  Pearl pulled a second chair over. “It’s wonderful. Nathan will get a job.”

  “I nearly died when she said what if I couldn’t work.”

  “When is the baby coming?” said Pearl.

  “August. I feel pretty good, but I won’t be able to show up at the office in a maternity dress.”

  “When did you find out?” said Pearl. “Why didn’t you tell us?” She was jealous of the knowledge, as if Hilda were her best friend.

  “A week ago. I was going to tell everybody tonight, but when Nathan came home unemployed, it didn’t seem like the best time, with his mother coming.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “No. Nathan says she’ll be happy.”

  “Of course she will be,” said Pearl.

  Pearl didn’t let Hilda help any more that night. She washed the dishes, looking over her shoulder to ask questions, marveling that she had a secret with Hilda. “It’s a good thing we moved out,” she said. “You’ll need the room!”

  “I guess so. It’ll be tight in that apartment, even so.”

  “Babies are little.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hilda’s having a baby,” she said, first thing, when Mike came back. Then, to Hilda—and to Nathan, who had come toward them from the living room, “Is it all right to tell him?”

  “Of course,” they both said, and Nathan advanced to receive his brother’s handshake.

  Mike looked astonished. “What do you know?” he kept saying. “How do you like that?” He clapped Hilda on the back. “Anytime you want,” he said, “we’ll help with the baby. I’ll teach him shorthand.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” said Hilda. She looked back as Nathan almost carried her out the door, his arms supporting both of hers, one around her back. “I had no idea how he’d learn shorthand!”

  “Do you want to take the elevator?” Pearl heard Nathan say.

  “I hate that thing,” said Hilda.

  “And the sax!” Mike was calling.

  It was a good winter. Mike made Pearl laugh. She couldn’t remember laughter in her parents’ house, except at something little—a child, or a small dog that belonged to a man in the neighborhood and would sometimes wait for him outside the candy store, gazing at the door, to the amusement of Pearl’s mother. In their apartment, which was still somewhat bare but began to fill up, they laughed at radio programs, at Hilda and Nathan, and at Pearl’s bosses—Mr. Glynnis, who began each request with “suppose” (“Suppose you file these,” he’d say, and Mike explained to Pearl that her predecessor was that well-known file clerk, Suppose Robinson), and Mr. Carmichael, who always sat down when he was asked a question, on his own chair or someone else’s, as if there were a button in his backside that had to be pressed before he could answer. When Pearl’s parents came to dinner, Mike even made them laugh.

  Not everything went well all the time. Nathan was without a job for eight weeks, and he would come to their house, fretting about Hilda and the baby, and then about Spain—the democratic government in Spain was being attacked by rebels he said were supported by Hitler. Pearl was used to hearing President Roosevelt spoken of with near adoration in her parents’ house, but Nathan criticized him for insisting the United States would remain neutral about Spain, whatever happened. “I used to have a lot of quarrels with the Communists,” he said, “but I have to admit they’ve been right on target on this issue.” The Communists, he explained to Pearl, who vowed to start reading the newspaper every day, were outspoken in their support of the Spanish government. When she did read stories about Spain, she too was upset.

  Still, when he was out of work Nathan was friendlier—less austere. He seemed to value her encouragement. Then he found out that he might get work teaching as a substitute in a high school, and then, after some more suspense, the job began. An older teacher had died, and Nathan would have her job for the rest of the year. He was instantly full of stories about the students, the other teachers, the routine, the lunchroom patrol. The students liked him, but he said it helped his cause that their former teacher had been strict and disagreeable. Nathan brought in newspapers and read to them about current events. He found the places on the big maps that were rolled at the sides of the room, which he pulled down. “Clouds of dust billow out when I roll down a map,” he said to Pearl. “And those maps are so out of date—the old lady apparently thought the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still going strong.”

  Hilda felt better as her pregnancy advanced, and Pearl thought she looked lovely when she went into maternity dresses. Hilda stopped working, and Pearl missed her at the office, although she felt freer. Hilda’s birthday came in March, and Pearl made another dinner for her and Nathan and Mrs. Levenson. At the dinner, Hilda said she needed a lightweight maternity dress for spring and summer and Pearl offered to go shopping with her, but Hilda said she liked to shop alone. After the night when Hilda told Pearl she was pregnant, Pearl had thought they were going to be friends at last, but Hilda still pulled back from her at times, and Pearl felt clumsy and stupid when that happened. At other times Hilda was friendlier than before. She had gained a lot of weight, and she said she was ashamed of how big she was.

  “You’re supposed to be big,” said Pearl.

  “I’m too short to look good pregnant,” Hilda said. “You’d look nice. I look like an apple.”

  “I think you look beautiful,” said Pearl.

  Mike got the job he wanted in April, taking shorthand in the district attorney’s office. He worked for the homicide squad, and it frightened Pearl. “The murder’s over by the time we show up,” said Mike. “That’s the whole idea.” The office would call him when someone was going to make a confession, and Mike would take it down. He and Pearl got a telephone, and several times Mike was called out in the middle of the night. Pearl could tell he was fascinated by the policemen and the criminals.

  He came back from his first case at three in the morning, and Pearl got up to
make him some cocoa. Waiting for the milk to heat up, she turned over the pages of his notebook to see the confession the murderer had dictated. “What did he look like?” she said, studying the loops and lines.

  “A sneaky-looking guy,” Mike said. “I wouldn’t have trusted him, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d kill someone.”

  “Did he stab the guy?”

  “Shot him.”

  “What does this part say?”

  He picked up the book and squinted. “‘After McGuire left, I heard the door again,’” he said. “‘It wasn’t locked.’”

  “Is McGuire the man he killed?”

  “No, McGuire was someone else. The guy we took in claims it was self-defense. McGuire and this other guy jumped him.”

  Pearl waited for him to drink his cocoa, rinsed the cup, and pulled the string to turn off the kitchen light. Mike was restless in bed that night, and she too found it hard to sleep.

  In the warm weather there were more homicides. Once there were four in one night, and Mike talked about it for weeks. Now Pearl took the subway herself to Fulton Street and walked to Bobbie’s. She liked her job and often congratulated herself on being out of the candy store. She heard herself sound competent on the phone—pleasant: friendly but not too friendly. If she were calling Bobbie’s, she’d be sure whatever she wanted would work out fine, hearing from a receptionist like her.

  One day in July Mr. Carmichael approached her as she was getting ready to leave work at the end of the day. Nobody else was around and he glanced to one side before he spoke, as if what he was going to say was a secret. “The fact is, Mrs. Lewis,” he said awkwardly, “Jack and I were thinking about hosting a little dinner.” Pearl was confused, but eventually Mr. Carmichael explained that he and Mr. Glynnis, whose first name was Jack, were inviting her to a party. A man he knew had gone into business as a caterer, and because he was starting out and wanted business, he’d given Mr. Carmichael a discount on a dinner for eight. “My wife’s in the country,” he said, “and so is Jack’s. But some lady friends of ours said they would come. We’re doing it at my house. They send a butler and a maid. It will be a treat.” He wanted her to bring Mike and Hilda and Nathan.