Modern Girls (9 page)

Ben placed his hands on either side of my face. I looked at my husband, who at forty already had the countenance of a much older man. The years had treated him well financially, but physically, they’d taken a toll. His hair, which had been a lush brown, was now mostly a wiry gray. Sprouts of hair graced the edges of his ears. His eyebrows were bushy and threatened to take over his entire face. But his eyes were still a mahogany brown and his smile was bright. Every night, Ben brushed his teeth with baking soda, insisting the rest of the family do the same, and unlike many of our friends, he hadn’t lost a single tooth.

“A baby,” Ben said. His voice was gentle. “A baby is wonderful.” He put a finger to my mouth to shush me before I could protest. “I hope it’s a girl. A girl just like you.”

Ben leaned into me. He smelled of oil and gas from the garage, but it was a clean smell, a manly smell that over the years had come to mean comfort and safety. I had never been in a car myself, but I relished the scent for all it represented. Ben kissed me, intensely, on the lips. The passion between us was unmistakable, and while my heart didn’t beat as it once had for Shmuel, my love for Ben was sturdy, durable.

When he pulled away, I glanced at the clock. The smell of the stew wafted from the kitchen. “Where are those boys?” I asked. “Dinner will be ruined.” I stood and brushed my dress into place. “I need to get the food on the table.”

Ben smiled at me. “I’ll go downstairs and call them in.”

I returned to the kitchen as he headed out the door. My love for Ben had sustained us through the years. It would sustain me through another child.

Sunday, August 18

SUNDAY night, I sat at the café on Second Avenue with my friends, trying to focus on their conversation. It was a struggle. I longed to ditch them so I could confide in Zelda, but there was no point because Zelda’s in-laws always came for dinner on Sunday.

When Edith lit a cigarette, I asked for one. I figured if I had something to do with my hands, then perhaps I’d be less fidgety.

“You smoke now?” Linda asked.

“Don’t you think I’ll look swell with a cigarette in my hand?” Maybe a cigarette would settle a queasy belly. The beer I was sipping didn’t.

Linda shrugged.

Edith passed the pack my way. I pulled one out, and Edith flicked her lighter and held it toward me. I lit the cigarette, inhaled, and then gave a good cough. Edith blew out three perfect smoke rings. “Takes a bit of practice, you know.”

The entire East Side seemed to be out that night, the evening glowing with the bright faces of girls competing to outshine one another, with hats tilted just so, a dash of powder on their cheeks, and coy smiles tossed to boys, who eagerly caught them. I was not immune. I knew I looked good, as the snugness of my dress, which made my waist so constrained and uncomfortable, also emphasized my blossoming bosom. I sat rather primly at the table in a wood-backed chair, my posture stick straight, my ankles crossed,
toes tapping to the song on the jukebox. The café was our go-to place, serving as a dance hall, saloon, and political arena.

Edith and Linda were two of my closest friends. We’d been to the Yiddish theater and seen a series of one-act plays that I’d already forgotten, but Edith and Linda were debating which was their favorite.

I tried again with the cigarette, with a bit of success, covering a gag with a hard swallow. “Not so difficult,” I lied. A fan that Edith had wrangled from the corner and aimed at our table blew the smoke back in my face.
Does the cigarette make me look sophisticated?
I wondered. More important,
Does it make me look normal?

Taking another drag, which went down with less tickle, I glanced around the room and spotted a group of young men at a nearby table. My eyes danced from boy to boy, and I exhaled slowly as the fan’s oscillating head turned away. This time the smoke floated sexily above me and I was feeling pleased with myself—until I spotted Willie Klein.

And he was looking right at me.

The aloof demeanor I’d tried so hard to maintain broke completely. I was so upset to see him that I mindlessly crushed the cigarette into the ashtray, crumpling it more forcefully than I meant, tobacco spilling out the sides. I regretted my actions immediately. What was I going to do with my hands?

“That was a waste of a cigarette,” Edith said.

“Turns out it’s not my thing.” I looked back toward the table. Willie winked and tipped his hat at me. I was surprised to see him; Willie hadn’t been to the café in months. In fact, I hadn’t seen him since . . . My stomach flopped as I recalled the last time I’d seen him back in May. Rumor had it he was working on a story that kept him to the uptown clubs, but here he was now. I could feel my eyebrows begin to furrow, but I couldn’t give myself away. Willie smiling at me was nothing more than Willie smiling at me, as far as my friends were concerned. Willie and I always teased each other. At least, we used to.

“You look flushed,” Linda said to me. “What are you thinking?”

“Yeah, you’re unusually quiet,” Edith said.

Placing my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t shred the napkin under my beer to bits, I said, “It’s hot in here.”

“It’s hot everywhere,” Edith said. “Although it seems to be particularly hot at that table.” She nudged her chin toward the boys.

Linda and I both glanced up, only to see Willie staring at us.

“What is that Willie Klein up to now?” Edith asked wearily. She thought Willie was always poking his nose into things for the sake of a good story, and Edith preferred to lead a private life.

Willie Klein was not a topic I cared to discuss. “Who cares what he’s up to?” I said. I didn’t feel as if I could say his name out loud without quivering. Normally Willie was well worth a conversation; the man was a pip who led the most debonair life, his writing always taking him to the snazziest of places. But not that day. I tried changing the subject. “I saw Zelda the other night. Her ma has a union meeting tomorrow and can’t watch the baby, so Zelda won’t make it to our gin rummy game.”

My friends and I spoke English with one another, even though at home we all spoke Yiddish. We’d worked hard to eradicate the telltale lilt so many of our Jewish peers retained when they spoke English. As children, we’d corrected one another, so we wouldn’t be mistaken for immigrants. Even now, though, through a rise in inflection, a slip of a word, our heritage occasionally announced itself loud and clear.

“Zelda never makes it out anymore. That baby of hers is a real pain in the
tuchus
, don’tcha know?” Edith said. She sprawled in her seat, as if dropped in from above,
splat
. Her pantsuit was fashionable, yet daring for this part of town where the greenhorns wore head scarves with their floor-dusting skirts. The way Edith crossed her legs, ankle splayed over thigh, displayed a brazen confidence that I envied.

“Oh, Edith, you’re terrible,” Linda said. “Little Shirley is adorable and no more of a nuisance than any other baby.” The petite
Linda appeared so comically small next to Edith that when the two were alone, they looked like a vaudeville act on the loose. I evened them out, making the three of us look more of a matched set.

“And you’ve made my point,” Edith said.

“Aw, what do you have against babies?” Linda asked. Linda had been with her boyfriend, Ralph, for as long as any of us could remember. She was waiting for him to find a job so they could marry.

“Have a baby and say good-bye to all of this,” Edith said, opening her arms wide to indicate the room around us.

This was almost as bad as the Willie Klein conversation. The room pulsated from the heat, from the couples who pushed back tables to dance the Lindy, from the way my head was starting to spin. The air was palpable, suffocating me with its closeness.

The chitchat swam around me, and I became detached, observing, participating without feeling like I belonged. All around us was the patter of conversation as young men and women gossiped and flirted, discussed movies and politics. I was there but not there.

“I would trade this in a heartbeat for a husband and babies,” said Linda. She was sweet and simple and being with her was easy. We could talk boyfriends and trousseaux and the latest dreamy movie stars.

“Oy,”
Edith said. “Babies. Think of all that could be done by the women of this world if they weren’t saddled with a clamoring brood.” Edith was a more complicated friend, fiercely political but endlessly loyal. She was exceedingly modern about certain things—just look at how she dressed—and her love life was not a topic that was ever broached. Edith, Linda, and I had known one another since toddlerhood, and that bond alone would hold us together through anything. Or so I’d always thought. Had I done the one thing that could tear us apart?

Linda turned to me. “You’re oddly quiet on the topic.”

My eyes were pulled toward the boys’ table, where Willie was now deep in conversation, his hands gesticulating wildly. How I longed to confide in my friends. But as much as I dearly loved
them, I couldn’t trust them not to be horrified. Even progressive Edith might not think she should associate with, well, with someone like me. I shrugged and said, “I guess I don’t feel that strongly either way.”

“Liar,” Edith said, with a shrieking laugh. “You’ve been
pining
for Abe to propose. You mollycoddle Zelda’s little imp. You moon over your younger brother. Since when don’t you feel strongly?”

Since it became a possibility. Since my chest ached and my stomach rebelled and my head felt light and I found myself trapped, trapped, trapped with the upcoming weekend as my only hope. Things with Abe at Camp Eden had to be perfect. Or else . . . What was my
or else
? There was nothing. Me. Alone. With a child.

But of course I said none of that. I merely said, “Why covet something out of reach? I don’t see a ring on my finger.” My naked finger declared my disgrace. “He says we don’t have enough to afford a nice place of our own.”

“Don’tcha think you have something to do with that?” Edith said. “Stash some cash, Miss Spendthrift. If you weren’t always buying the ‘newest,’ the ‘mostest,’ you’d be able to afford a Park Avenue mansion.”

I plastered on an insincere grin and raised my voice an octave. “I try, I try! But can a girl help it when a swell new hat calls her name from a department store window? I swear Mr. Gimbel creates those displays to taunt me.”

“You and every other girl with a paycheck,” Edith said.

“Edith, I think you’re jealous,” Linda said.

“Of your beaus?” Edith snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, come on,” Linda said. “Even you will settle down one of these days.”

“Who are you, my
bubbe
? I don’t intend to marry. It’s indentured servitude, is what it is. Marriage. Children. What a passé concept.”

“Passé? What? Has
Vogue
decreed marriage gone with the flappers?” Linda asked.

“As if I’ve ever opened a
Vogue
in my life,” Edith said.

“Clearly,” I said. I shot an exaggerated, mocking glance from Edith’s clunky oxford shoes up to her bare head. Edith laughed her throaty guffaw.

“Arguing about the holy state of matrimony, are we?” a male voice said from above.

A whiff of bay rum drew my eyes up with alarm to find Willie Klein standing by the table. The aroma was dizzying, too feminine for my taste, but the scent brought memories fleetingly to mind, memories I’d worked so hard to force out, memories that brought nothing but shame. I refused to acknowledge the heat the memories also brought. The simmering, brewing fire that infused . . .
No!
I chided myself.
That didn’t happen. That never happened.
I stubbornly avoided making eye contact with him and forced my gaze back to my friends.

“And what do you make of it, Mr. Klein?” Edith asked.

“Why, I think it’s a respectable institution for respectable people,” Willie said.

My hands made their way to the table, where I toyed with my beer glass, twirling it in tiny circles. I wished Willie away. I wished this night over. I would have gotten up and left if I weren’t sure he’d follow me—if I weren’t worried how that would appear.

“So in other words,” Edith said, “it’s not for you.”

With a laugh, Willie said, “Oh, someday. Mother won’t be happy until she has grandchildren to spoil.” The lump in my stomach rose to my throat.

“The word on the street says that won’t be long,” another male voice said from behind. “I’ve heard rumors about you, my good man.”

Don’t heave now!
I ordered myself. My eyes flitted to Willie’s friend, but his glance wasn’t at me; it wasn’t a jab my way. From my peripheral vision I could see Willie looking at me, but I kept my eyes on the other boys, on my friends, on the fan in the corner, on anything
but
him. I forced myself not to be sick, a disingenuous
expression on my face.
Just be pretty and vapid. Not a serious thought in your head,
I told myself. Fresh air. I was desperate for fresh air.

“Lies, I tell you,” Willie said. I couldn’t help myself; my eyes were drawn back to him. Why did he have to be so handsome?

“Oh, Willie,” Edith said. “We’ve all heard about your pretty little number at that club in Chinatown.”

How was it no one noticed how I was suffering? Was I that good of an actress? I must have been, because Edith was smirking at me, enjoying the repartee.

Willie grinned. “She’s definitely
one
of my pretty numbers.”

“Speaking of lies, Willie,” Edith said, “who ghostwrote that
Atlantic
article with your name on it?”

“What?” he asked, tilting his head.

“That piece on the Friends of New Germany? It was well researched and well written, so naturally I assumed someone wrote it for you.”

Willie let out a laugh that threatened to swallow me whole. “I hate to disappoint you, Edie, but the words all came from my pen.”

“Who knew? There is an intelligent thought or two rattling around in that empty head of yours.”

With a side glance to me, Willie said to Edith, “Oh, I’ve got plenty of thoughts in this head of mine.” This time he looked directly at me and added, “If anyone would care to find out.”

If I didn’t get out fast, I would faint. And wouldn’t
that
bring on questions. My friends expected me to flirt back—it was what Willie and I always did—but I didn’t trust myself to banter.

Fortunately, the front door of the café opened, bringing a blast of even hotter air. Abe. It was Abe. For a moment, I was able to breathe.

“Sweetie,” I said, a touch too loudly. Now it was Willie’s turn to be uncomfortable, and he stared at something on the opposite side of the room.

Abe made his way to our table. “A seat for me?” he asked.