As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (15 page)

But that afternoon, once Bec and Tyler had arrived at the shop, Bec understood that she’d been wrong about Mrs. Coventry. The woman, anxious about the upcoming fiftieth-anniversary party she was planning for her husband, wasn’t taking anything for granted. She’d invited the whole world, Mrs. Coventry complained upon entering the store. “What was I thinking?” she asked.

Rising to greet her, Bec gave Mrs. Coventry—dear in a way that Bec didn’t recall from two months back, and a little rounded in the shoulders—a quick squeeze. Her white hair curled around her weathered face. She wore pearl earrings and a necklace with a large stone attached that Bec didn’t recognize. “Garnet,” Mrs. Coventry explained. “Native to Connecticut.” She seemed tired, her voice dragging, and Bec offered her a chair. The woman dropped into it, sighing.

“Remind me never to throw another party,” she told Bec, shaking her head and pulling a hanky from her purse, which she used to dab her brow. “I’m too old for this. That’s what I’ve found out. That this was a very silly idea.”

“Not silly. It’s exciting, and very generous of you,” Bec insisted. Something about the women’s vulnerability, her fatigue, touched Bec. “Also very loving,” she added.

“Very, very,” Mrs. Coventry answered, waving the white hanky as if in surrender. “Oh, I guess you’re right.” She laughed, her spirits lifted, apparently, by Bec’s remarks. “Now I have to see if I can get this old bag of a body into the dress.” She stopped laughing. “I invited everyone,” she added sadly.

Bec nodded.

“Foolish,” Mrs. Coventry quipped. “Very, very.”

As the women talked, Tyler approached them carrying the dress, which was the same color as Mrs. Coventry’s garnet. Despite her hesitations in the planning process, especially about that belted waist, at the sight of the finished dress Mrs. Coventry quickly smiled. Her back straightened. It seemed to Bec she was holding in her already dainty tummy.

“Come on, let’s get you into this,” Bec urged. “Would you like me to stay?” she asked once they were in the fitting room, and the woman nodded, almost frantically.

“Someone to lean on,” Mrs. Coventry said.

“Bec,” Tyler called minutes later. “How’s it going in there?”

She turned to Mrs. Coventry, who had yet to speak. “Well?” Bec asked. When designing the dress she’d worried that the style was too young for the woman, but she’d gone ahead with it anyway, as Mrs. Coventry had a trim figure that could in fact withstand the belted waist, and upon meeting her she’d noticed there was such energy and lightness in her spirit. She seemed youthful at heart, despite her years. Bec had spent considerable time the day of their initial appointment getting to know Mrs. Coventry, discussing style options while taking her measurements. Bec had spoken her usual “Trust me” at the end of the meeting, to which Mrs. Coventry had answered, “But I do. I do. That’s why I’m here.” The woman had touched Bec’s cheek then, such a gentle, loving gesture that when Bec recalled it as she sat watching Mrs. Coventry stare at herself in the mirror, waiting for her response, she wanted to reach out and soothe the woman’s worries in the same way.

“I don’t know what to say,” Mrs. Coventry blurted, finally turning to face Bec.

With Mrs. Coventry’s assent, Bec pulled the curtain aside. Tyler’s eyes widened instantly. From behind him, Irene, their junior seamstress, gave a loud and pleased gasp.

“Goodness,” Tyler whispered to Mrs. Coventry, “but you look amazing.”

“Mrs. Coventry?” Bec asked in almost the same hushed tone as Tyler’s. “You haven’t said anything. Do you like it at all?”

The woman took a step back. “Do I like it?” she repeated, fluffing the skirt of the dress, lifting it up then letting it fall. “Truth is, I never expected something like this. It makes me remember how it used to be. That’s it. That’s why I’m nearly speechless.” She lifted the skirt once again then dropped it. “I adore this dress. I do!”

Bec clapped in delight. That Mrs. Coventry’s words were so much like Ada’s was as surprising as how much the woman had taken to the dress. Irene insisted on dashing out for some champagne.

When Irene returned, the four sat in the chairs at the rear of the store, sipping and chatting. Bec had the dress draped over her lap as she hemmed its sleeves—a touch too long—then rose for a quick pressing. Soon enough she’d finished, and Tyler wrapped and boxed the dress, then placed it at Mrs. Coventry’s feet. When she was ready to leave, Mrs. Coventry turned to Bec.

“You may not understand this, but I see a lot of myself in you,” she said, pulling Bec close. “I can’t sew like you, of course, but I rather like making things. Like this damn party,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice. “It’s quite the concoction. You see what I’m saying?” Mrs. Coventry tilted her champagne flute for a final sip. “I’d like you to come to the party,” she said next with near urgency. “I really would. You and Tyler and Irene. I consider you friends. I’d be so honored.”

Bec walked the woman to the door. Tyler was a step behind, carrying the box with the dress in it. “That’s generous,” Bec acknowledged. “But we can’t. Not our place. You just come back and tell us all about it. Won’t you?”

“I will. I’ll tell you all about it,” agreed Mrs. Coventry, raising her head to kiss both Bec and Tyler. “But I wish you’d reconsider. It
is
your place. Because it’s
my
place,” she said with an earnestness that made Bec think of the very store they stood in, a place she thought of by then as his and hers, not exactly a home, but something close to it, and wasn’t that all right? The accommodation?

That same Friday afternoon in Middletown, after Mort and Leo had left for Woodmont, a new shipment of men’s shirts arrived at Leibritsky’s Department Store, short-sleeved, for summer. As Nelson pulled them from their box he was reminded suddenly of another box in the store’s basement containing almost the same shirts. He’d forgotten about them, had never gotten them to the sales floor last year. Why the hell did the summer shirts always manage to arrive so late in the season? he wondered, frustrated. And given last year’s blunder, why’d he go and order them again? He shrugged. He knew the answer well enough. He was lousy at business. The simple fact was undeniable. Nelson was glad then that Leibritsky’s Department Store came with such a spacious basement, a place he often visited to take a moment to himself, a place large enough to hide his many mistakes in.

In certain respects he’d moved in down there, staking out a corner for himself and furnishing it with a rocking chair, along with a lamp and a two-drawer desk. The desk was covered by a phonograph and stacks of records—worn 78s for the most part, though over the past weeks he’d added a few 33
⅓
s, able to play for a whole forty minutes, a technology just out that summer. Benny Goodman was what he turned to when he needed a workday lift, the instantaneous rapture of “Sing, Sing, Sing” the tune he could count on to get his blood pumping as dramatically as the song’s insistent drums. But that Friday, arriving at his basement nook, the one place in the universe of Leibritsky’s where he was at home, where his breathing, despite the basement’s dampness, came easy, he decided against “Sing, Sing, Sing” or anything else by Goodman. Instead he chose silence. He rocked in his chair for a time, ate one and then another penny Tootsie Roll, then turned toward the desk, opened its top drawer, and pulled from it an old framed photograph.

He wiped the glass over the picture. The face he looked at, female, was smiling and young as ever. Just twenty-one. Nelson was now forty-two. He’d been thinking about that smiling face since his lunch with Howard two weeks back. “It can be hard to be a son,” he’d told Howard then, which was an indirect reference to his long-ago love affair with the girl in the photo, Mimmie Klein. His loss of her love was not unrelated to something his father, Howard’s grandfather, had said. That day at lunch with Howard, had Nelson not stuffed his face with fruit cocktail, he might very well have talked about Mimmie, the girl of a thousand years ago and yet of only yesterday.

Two weeks later, and he still couldn’t get her off his mind. He ate another Tootsie Roll. He didn’t speak her name for fear that it would un-dam a grief he wouldn’t be able to stop. “Lousy at love,” he said to no one. “Lousy at summer shirts.”

While Nelson sat in the basement staring at the photograph, and while Bec said good-bye for a second time to Mrs. Coventry, hugging her even more warmly, Mort and Leo stood at Jimmies hot dog stand at Savin Rock amusement park in West Haven having their weekly pre-Shabbos snack: two dogs and a Coca-Cola for each of them. They’d listened to a ball game the whole ride up, the New York Giants versus the Dodgers, who were hot this season with that “blackie Jackie,” as Mort called the Negro, Jackie Robinson. For some reason, Mort couldn’t stop with it. “Blackie Jackie,” he said again as he waited for his hot dog.

Leo raised his eyebrows.

“Ah, hell. Didn’t mean anything by that,” Mort said. “I’m not Ada, you know.”

Leo only nodded.

At the same time my mother and Vivie were still at the beach, sitting in their folding chairs, wearing old housedresses over even older bathing suits, their feet soaking in the waters of the Long Island Sound, their hair in the same braids they’d worn to bed the night before. They hadn’t picked up the house yet. Nor had they begun to marinate the chicken for dinner. The dining table had yet to be set, too.

Vivie yawned. Ada sighed.

“It’s Friday, you know,” Vivie reminded her sister.

Ada sighed again, but this time with just a hint of frustration. “For crying out loud, let’s take ten more minutes,” she urged. “What’s the rush? You know?”

So the cottage was a little messy when the men arrived later that afternoon, the dining table not yet set, the women still in their flowery housedresses, Davy, in bathing trunks, not yet showered. Mort, inspecting the place, inspecting the women, inspecting his youngest son, seemed momentarily alarmed. But the chicken was in the oven, along with baking potatoes, and the smells from the food were reassuring. There would be a Shabbos meal like every other Shabbos meal.

And there was, except for Bec’s surprising absence. By the time we sat down at the table and readied ourselves for the pre-dinner blessings, Bec still hadn’t returned from the fitting in New Haven for Mrs. Coventry. The sun was sinking, the breezes off the Sound had stilled, and Mort sat at the head of the table, his yarmulke in his hands, his prayer book opened, waiting. Gradually, we gathered around him and waited too.

“Where’s Bec?” Mort finally asked after a long and cold silence. He was drumming a forefinger on the table’s edge. Outside, over the ocean, the sun had dropped beneath the line of the horizon. My empty stomach was growling and I suspected other bellies were too. Davy hungrily eyed the mound of challah loaves.

No one answered. Ada turned to Vivie, a questioning look in her eyes, but Vivie only shrugged. “You know,” Vivie then began, her voice quiet but earnest, “it can be uncomfortable for her on the weekends. I don’t think she feels about Shabbos the way we feel.” I assumed Vivie was speaking about Bec’s Friday claustrophobia, her weekly need to take off in preparation for the weekend. “Let’s just give her a bit more time,” Vivie added.

Mort glanced toward the darkening sky with a disapproving eye. He checked his wristwatch. He sighed. “All right,” he finally said.

But a moment later he nodded impatiently Ada’s way, which was her cue to rise and light the Sabbath candles, then to circle her hands over the flames, as if conjuring the sacred light, cajoling it into being.

The Sabbath had begun, too, for Bec, though in a different way. The fitting over, the champagne drunk, the dress shop locked for the weekend, Bec and Tyler had said good-bye to Irene (Tyler crooning that old song “Goodnight Irene, goodnight, Irene, goodnight”) and they’d headed back to the Buick Roadmaster. They were driving out of New Haven, toward West Haven and Woodmont, when, waiting at a stoplight, Tyler slapped his hands on the steering wheel in obvious frustration.

“Come on, stay with me longer,” he said, turning Bec’s way. “Let’s have dinner somewhere. Bec, please.”

His words surprised her. He’d never interfered with her family life before. And that was just it: as long as she kept her worlds separate—the independent and private life in New Haven, the family life in Woodmont—then she could have them both. But she couldn’t bring them together; she knew that as well as she knew anything. She’d tried to visualize it many times, inviting Tyler to the cottage, not as her employer but as her love, the two of them sitting side by side at the Friday Shabbos meal. That was the image that shattered her heart. A stranger at Shabbos. A married Catholic man sitting at the sisters’ beautifully laid table, not knowing what in the world was going on as they lit the candles, blessed the wine and bread, chanted the ancient Hebrew prayers. There was a sanctity to their ritual that an outside presence would simply violate. And Mort! Just thinking of Mort sharing a Shabbos table with Tyler made Bec shudder. She’d be destroying his Shabbos, which was their Shabbos, their world. A stranger at Shabbos and the family might as well be eating regular rather than challah bread. A gentile at the table and everyone would know the difference in an instant, would feel the dilution, the diminution of everything they valued. Indeed, what she was doing with Tyler was so far outside the bounds of acceptability that no one even suspected it, not even after all these years. Yes, to have everything she wanted with Tyler was to lose everything she had with her sisters. In this way Tyler’s asking her to come with him to New York was really his asking her to make a choice that for all these years she’d been more than content to avoid.

“Bec, please,” Tyler said again. The light changed and he drove forward then pulled the car to the curb. He looked at her, reached for her, and she said, in words she couldn’t quite believe, “Okay, yes.”