New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

by Shelly Oria

  Wednesday

  On Wednesdays, Sophia was a volunteer. Every few weeks she would choose a new organization, because the thing about Sophia is, she gets bored easily. One sure way to make Sophia smile is find a not-for-profit she hasn’t heard of, because what happens when you volunteer Sophia-style is that you run out of causes.

  Here’s why I said if Sophia doesn’t want to discuss something she won’t: the day Anna left was a Wednesday, and I woke Sophia up two hours after we’d gone to bed because she was supposed to be at Cooper Union, selling tickets for a PEN festival event. Sophia said, I’m not going. I looked at her and didn’t know what to say; Sophia was usually very strict about her weekly routine. She said, I’m totally hungover, I need to rest, and the PEN people will be fine without me; it’s not a shelter for homeless children with AIDS, you know, so don’t look at me like that. She must have read my surprise as criticism, which couldn’t have been further from the truth; the rigidity of her schedule always made me feel superfluous somehow, and now I was thinking maybe change is possible, maybe from now on Wednesdays will be something new, maybe Anna’s visit is actually a story with a happy ending. I called in sick to the gallery—which I had never done before, because I believed excelling at that job was my best shot at becoming a real New Yorker—and said to Sophia, Maybe we can spend the morning together. I put all the stuff in the blender to make our special hangover juice, and she made a face but drank it all, which made me hopeful, as if this somehow meant I was wrong to be worried about Anna. In a moment I will ask Sophia, and she’ll laugh and say, Anna? Really? Oh, Booney-Boo, you’re sweet when you’re insecure, and our happy ending will begin.

  The thing about Sophia, you can’t show her jealousy or she’ll remember why she hates commitment and explain it to you until you lock yourself in the bathroom to make her stop. The truth is, in any relationship someone at some point is locked in a bathroom. It isn’t the end of the world. But it is better to be smart, and with Sophia a way to be smart is, when you ask about other people, pretend you’re asking something else. Say, Anna reminds me of someone but I can’t figure out who, or, How come Anna isn’t over more often? You two seem really good friends. For it to work, Sophia needs to pretend right along with you, though, and that Wednesday the hangover made her too tired for acting; I shouldn’t have brought it up just then, but there was something like an itch in my neck where I feel urgency, and it was not the kind that would go away if I went to the gallery and tried to focus on work.

  Sophia said, Boon, I love a lot of people, I share my life with a lot of people, I told you this the very first night. She was being honest, and it scared me, but you don’t start a talk like that and then change your mind. I said, This is different, though, with Anna, right? I spoke very quietly but it still sounded loud in my head. And childish. Sophia said, Anna is from another life, another time. I nodded. We have a history together, she said, the kind that makes you dependent. Sophia didn’t usually say things like that. She seemed exhausted, and for a minute I thought maybe we were together inside her dream. Then she closed her eyes, and I knew that when she woke up she would wonder, at least for a moment, if this conversation truly happened.

  Thursday

  Thursday mornings Sophia and I went grocery shopping, and on the Thursdays when we hosted a party at night, grocery shopping was a thing that took its time. When Sophia first got me the job at the gallery, she said, But you can never work Thursday mornings—that’s when we get food for the week. She was talking to me as a roommate; I’d just moved in. I said But maybe if I work the morning shift we can go in the afternoon, and she said, Tell them you can never work mornings on Thursdays, and don’t say why; it will only make them appreciate you.

  Thursday was Sophia’s favorite Party Night, and we usually went out dancing or invited a bunch of people over, who brought music and amplifiers and drugs and called Sophia Gorgeous and Goddess and Sophia Loren. Hey, Sophia Loren, awesome party. At these parties, people often had sex at different locations in our apartment, using things like kitchen supplies as props.

  A good time to talk about the sex: we had a lot of it, except at the end, and it was always good, except when it wasn’t. This is when it wasn’t good: on Thursdays, when other people were in on it, and especially when Sophia assumed I had my own interests for the night. I did not, because that’s the thing about Sophia: she gives you the kind of freedom you don’t want.

  Before I met Sophia, I never thought of myself as a woman who could be with women this way, and maybe I’m not, maybe it’s only with Sophia. But my sense is, it’s the kind of thing that once you let it in, it is going to play itself out.

  When I called Lydia to let her know I was all settled in, as we’d agreed I’d do, she said, Well, has she fucked you yet, and I said, What do you mean, you said she’s a nice and generous person. As I said before, I knew but I did not yet want to know. Lydia said, I’m talking about sex—have you had sex yet, and she sounded tired like I was an assignment she had to complete. I said, No … I’m not gay, Lydia, and Lydia said, Right, right. Then she said, Do you know what a rollercoaster is? And I knew she didn’t mean the regular kind so I said no and she said, Why don’t you ask Sophia about that.

  I did. I asked Sophia, and she laughed her Lydia laughter, like that first day in the hallway: head tilted all the way back like she was trying to reach the floor, and something liberating like relief emanating from her lungs. We touched each other for the first time that night until the outside looked purple and small butterflies were flapping their wings against some inner wall I never knew I had. We lay in bed after, me facing the window, where Sophia had the strangest-looking plant; its leaves had a redness to them that made the whole thing look plastic, and I had the urge to touch it and see whether or not it was real, but I couldn’t reach it. I sat up, wings still fluttering in me, and said to Sophia, I’m not a lesbian, though, and Sophia smiled a new smile and said, Sweet Booney.

  Friday

  For the first few months, every Friday was City Lessons Day. Before I moved in, Friday was something else, but I never found out what. So Fridays we would take out a map of Manhattan, a subway map, and sometimes maps of other boroughs too. I also had a blue spiral notebook for tips that seemed important. Sophia started this tradition because, one day in the Village, walking east, I asked how much farther we had to walk to hit Central Park. She looked at me then like maybe I’d just turned out to be a mistake. This look had a sting and I thought, when someone looks at you this way you’ll never get to go with them to their dark places, and all I ever wanted, since that first moment in the hallway, was to be the person Sophia reached for when she cried. I said, I don’t even know how long I’ll live here, so I just don’t bother with the city. Sophia nodded, and I knew I’d said the right thing. I was just starting to learn then how to be a woman who intrigued her. Then she said, But will you let me teach you, Boon? I mean, you do live here for now. I said Maybe. She liked that answer. Then, the following Friday: the maps, the spiral notebook, and Sophia saying, Tip number one, in New York City, if you reach Chinatown you’ve gone too far.

  Saturday

  Saturdays we’d have brunch at Curly’s, and, more than any other place and more than any other time, I felt envied at Curly’s, because I was Sophia’s Saturday-morning person, and everyone knows that’s something you can’t beat.

  Once, the waitress was rude to me—the same waitress who was always asking Sophia out. Being rude by way of hitting on the woman you’re with when you’re peeing is different from being rude to your face, from saying, No you didn’t say provolone, I’d remember. Sophia said, If you don’t like it here anymore we’ll find somewhere else, Boon, and I knew then that something was different.

  * * *

  Saturdays at Curly’s we put salt on our curly fries like powder. Every time Sophia would say, It’s not good, we’re dehydrated as it is, but she said it like you say I know, I know when a friend says something true you don’t want to hear. Bec
ause Saturdays at Curly’s we didn’t want to hear that salt is bad for you, that alcohol dries you up, that other women can come on to your woman when you’re looking away, that in love sometimes you blink and when you open your eyes there’s change.

  Saturdays at Curly’s it was warm, then cold and then snowing, and always people were waiting outside or by the radiator, and always we didn’t have to wait, because the thing about Sophia is, she doesn’t like to wait in lines, and mostly the world agrees she shouldn’t have to.

  Saturdays at Curly’s we always stayed for hours—long after we were too full, long after we stopped feeling the pain of stretch in our stomachs—and played checkers or drew on white paper mats with crayons. Saturdays at Curly’s I would look at the people crouched over the radiator, being pushed against the small door every time someone entered to add her name to the list, to ask about the wait. Saturdays at Curly’s I felt privileged, and guilty, and sometimes I would look at Sophia and see that she felt neither.

  Saturdays at Curly’s, looking at the people outside, sometimes this is what I wanted: to be one of them. Saturdays at Curly’s, when Sophia was suddenly flexible about where we brunched, she looked like she was trying on a new dress that didn’t fit her, and it made me sad, like reaching the end of a good novel. The thing about Sophia is, you love someone like her, it’s for good, it becomes part of your body, an organ. But Saturdays at Curly’s sometimes I would think, maybe I can take this organ and leave, go to a place where I can wait with the rest of the world by the radiator, feeling the chill of icy wind every time the door opens, because maybe that’s what life is about: waiting your turn.

  NONE THE WISER

  I’m sure they have things in common, yes. But not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. I’m sure they have things in common, Ludvig and Henrietta, but I’m not sure what these things might be. To be quite honest, if someone asked me to guess—just venture a guess as to what these two people could possibly have in common, what it is that got them to suddenly “fall in love” at such a late point in life—I would have to say, “I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea.” And then maybe the person would say, “Of course you have no idea, that’s why they call it a guess” and I would say, “I’m truly sorry, sir”—or madam; perhaps it would be a woman saying these things to me—“but I couldn’t even guess.” It brings to mind that expression “to save my life”; as in “I couldn’t guess to save my life.” That’s how I feel about them. Or not about them, really, just about their relationship; they are very nice people, kind people, both of them. Especially him.

  He used to collect seashells. Years ago, I am talking about years ago. Back when they were both married to other people and didn’t even know each other, back when my Saul was alive, that’s when Ludvig collected those seashells. He would show me, every time we had one of our gatherings. Look at this special one, Yolanda, he’d always say, and always away from the gang, waiting for me outside the kitchen or by the big window in the hallway. Look at this special one. I used to wonder back then if he ever showed them to his Judith, and I had a feeling he didn’t. Certain things you only share with certain people—nothing wrong with that. And why me, I also wondered sometimes. Because he knew I understood, was my answer. And I really did, I understood. It’s only a man with a soul who does something like that—collect seashells. And what a rare thing that is, a man with a soul.

  And Henrietta? Once, years ago, at one of the big parties we threw—I am fairly certain Ludvig wasn’t there, because I tried to think back after they got together and I don’t think they ever crossed paths, not in those years at least, and not through us—my husband announced to all our guests that he was going to get rid of his pipe, quit smoking. He was drunk. It’s both the best and worst of us that comes out when we drink, isn’t it? He didn’t want to quit; he wanted to have quit. And I think everyone understood that, saw the moment for what it was—an inebriated man saying Oh how I wish life was something else, something better. But she is not everyone; she is a special woman. Very special. At the end of the night, she handed me seven pipes. I didn’t know my husband had so many. “He’s going to need all the help he can get,” she said. Apparently, her uncle had died of throat cancer. Or it might have been her brother. I didn’t know her well at all then—I don’t think Saul Keningstein and my Saul were even in business yet, I think they had only just met, and we invited him and his wife to the party. So I was a little surprised. “The first step to beating addiction is removing the abused substance from the household,” she said. It was a caring gesture, I suppose. Of course she did sound a bit like she’d memorized a brochure. Who in their right mind would memorize a brochure? I’ve certainly never felt inspired to memorize a brochure, and Lord knows I’ve seen my share of them in my seventy-nine years. And one could argue, I suppose, that she shouldn’t have gone through our belongings looking for pipes; no one asked her to do that. I certainly didn’t ask her, and I was the only one who could, because it was my house. Mine and my Saul’s, of course, but why would he ask her to look for the pipes? He knew where they were, he was the one who put them wherever she found them. And he didn’t want them gone. It would have been quite a perverted little game for the two of them to play. And my husband was never like that. There were times when I wished he’d be a little more like that, in fact. Playful. But it wasn’t his nature. A man’s nature is not something you can change. Women who think otherwise end up divorced.

  So my husband certainly didn’t ask her to do it, and I didn’t ask her to do it, and so, yes, you could say, I suppose, that it was presumptuous of her. Nosy. Ill intended. But I didn’t think that at all. I appreciated it, and I thought: What a caring gesture. I thought: Isn’t Saul Keningstein lucky, to have such a lovely woman for a wife. Truly.

  * * *

  It was towels, when they first got started, Saul Keningstein and my Saul. To be honest, I thought it was nonsense. I never liked Saul Keningstein much—he was a hustler, if you ask me. Every time he opened his mouth it was Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, Yolanda dear. And I always wanted to say Maybe every once in a while you should ask a question, Saul Keningstein. But he knew everything, so why should he ask? I remember I said to my Saul, I said This is nonsense. You are a doctor. What do you need to be selling towels for? But these were special towels, soft and airy like clouds in the sky, something America had never seen. I said Saul, you have been here your whole life almost and still you think like an immigrant. He was always trying to prove that he had the right to be here, that America made the right decision letting his family in when he was seven years old. What can you do? Being a doctor wasn’t enough. He had to do something new, a first in America. Even if it was a towel. So I said, Fine, fine. Just be careful, don’t invest too much. But I didn’t worry; he was responsible, my Saul. So responsible. And what did I know, anyway? Saul Keningstein was right, the towels did very well.

  * * *

  When I say that for the life of me I couldn’t guess what Ludvig and Henrietta have in common, please understand—I am not saying anything about them as people. I have absolutely nothing against them. They are both lovely. I’m making a statement about their relationship, is how you could put it. Although, well, that’s not right either. What do I know about their relationship? Only what I see. And they seem happy, I suppose, when one looks at them. The issue has to do with compatibility. I think the young generation pays little attention to the concept of compatibility. And that isn’t to say that they are young, Ludvig and Henrietta. They are not young. Ludvig went to medical school with my Saul, which means he’s more or less as old as I am. That is not young. I do not enjoy discussing it, but it is the truth. I refuse to be one of those old ladies who holds a shaking spoon over her soup and says “I am not old” or “I feel young.” Feelings don’t matter, behaviors do. People who don’t understand this simple fact are unemployed or incarcerated.

  In plain English, it is a lie; when you hold a spoon over a bowl of soup and your hand
is shaking, you do not feel young. You feel old. So I am old, and Ludvig is old, too. Henrietta is a little younger, but that doesn’t make her young. She is old. Henrietta might think she’s young. Her grandchildren come to visit and she tells them stories about the things she used to do when she was younger, but it is all one big exaggeration—she did not “run the union,” and people never “quivered at the sight of her”; she just answered the phone. Or she might have done a little more than answering the phone, and her boss certainly liked her—I will not go into the rumors about her and Mr. Burt, whether or not it was truly for him that she left Saul Keningstein and their children; perhaps it was only coincidence that they both disappeared at the same time—but that does not mean that she “ran the union.” She did not run the union. That is preposterous.

  And who does something like that, anyway, leave? I don’t mean to be judgmental—Saul always used to say, Don’t be so judgmental, Yoli—but I never could understand it, to be honest. Leaving a man is one thing, though back then it was quite unheard of. But a mother leaving her own children for a whole year? I am not a judgmental woman, but that’s quite something. And when she came back, it was only to take the children away. Poor Saul Keningstein. He had his money and his ladies, but he was a different man after that, a pale man. If you marry a man, you’re not supposed to do anything that would change the color of his skin. That much I know. I never left Saul—forty-two years we were together, and not all of them easy. Don’t get me wrong—we were the best of friends, but forty-two years is a lifetime, and in any lifetime there’s hardship. But leaving? Never crossed my mind. And if we had children, well, I can only imagine. No doubt leaving would have been even further from my mind.