3

PEARL SUTTER TOOK A SUMMER JOB AT A DILAPIDATED HOTEL in the Adirondacks where a cousin used to work. Her cousin said she’d have to answer the phone and take reservations. Pearl was also supposed to keep track of the band that played on weekends and communicate with the cab service that brought guests from the bus station. Pearl knew nothing of the hotel business. Twice she forgot to arrange for guests to be picked up, but it didn’t matter. It was 1935 and there were few guests at all. She knew she was incompetent, and she didn’t complain when the manager, red-faced, told her that business was so poor he’d have to cut her pay.

Pearl didn’t mind the hotel, which was simple and quiet, on the edge of a lake in pine woods. Her cousin and the cousin’s new husband had driven her there in June and she didn’t know where she was. She liked being on her own. Up to now she’d lived at home and worked in her father’s candy store, part-time when she was a girl, full-time after she dropped out of Hunter College in her sophomore year. Now her younger brother was working in the store, and he’d taken to it as Pearl never had, rearranging the candy counter and ordering more magazines. Her father didn’t need her, and Pearl, who tried not to think about the end of the summer, preferred being incompetent in the hotel to being incompetent in the store. Other than not knowing what she’d do in September, her main problem was hairpins. She’d forgotten to bring any.

Pearl was a blonde, and she hadn’t bobbed her hair but wore it in a thick braid which she twisted into a crown at the back of her head. It had given her a certain distinction in college, where everyone else was determined to be modern. Pearl liked feeling queenly, though she knew it put people off. Here at the hotel, she didn’t make friends with the girls who cleaned the rooms and waited on tables, though they were about her age and her sort. She didn’t think she was better than they were, but she knew she looked as if she thought that.

It took twenty gold-colored hairpins to secure the braid properly, and Pearl had learned to do it swiftly—her left hand supporting the braid while her right hand poked pins around it at even intervals—generally working by feel because she couldn’t see the back of her head unless she had two mirrors. Of course, occasionally a hairpin fell out and got lost. At home she had a good supply, but when she’d come to the hotel, she’d forgotten her little tin box, and had only the twenty hairpins she wore the day of the trip. One must have been lost in her cousin’s car: even the next morning, there were only nineteen. She’d written to her mother, but no hairpins had arrived.

Now, after three and a half weeks, having taken meticulous care, Pearl had fifteen hairpins. She didn’t see how she could get through the summer this way. She had Thursday afternoons off, and she could have bought more, but she had no way to get to town. Sometimes the chambermaids got rides with friends, but she didn’t know any of them well and hated to ask. One afternoon she walked to a store at a crossroads, but couldn’t find hairpins in the small stock, mostly bread and milk.

Now she was at the hotel desk on a hot Wednesday afternoon when nobody was likely to come through and need anything. She was reading aloud from a newspaper that was several days old to Mike Lewis, the saxophonist in the band. She was reading an account of a baseball game and Mike was taking down what she said in shorthand, writing rapidly in a notebook. He said he needed all the practice he could get because he was hoping to qualify for a job as a shorthand reporter for the Manhattan district attorney’s office. At present he worked in a music store when he wasn’t here and wasn’t taking college courses at night.

“What made you take up shorthand?” Pearl asked.

“I can’t make a living playing the saxophone, can I?” said Mike. The band was now playing for room and board. They were students at City College, glad to be out of the city for the summer. Mike’s father was dead and he lived with his mother, and Pearl thought maybe he didn’t get along with her.

“You’re good at shorthand,” she said, looking at his notes, which were unintelligible to her but looked impressive.

“No, I’m not good yet.”

The small lobby with its knotty pine walls was hot, and Pearl went out from behind the desk to open the door. She propped it open with a rock that was kept just outside for this purpose. She could smell the pine trees when the door was open.

“You dropped something,” said Mike.

Pearl felt herself blush and looked where he pointed. Of course it was a hairpin. She bent down for it, wiped it on a scrap of paper, and stuck it back into her hair. The trouble was that fifteen hairpins weren’t enough to hold the weight of the braid, and as it pulled away from her head, it loosened them.

“They must not pay you much,” said Mike, “if you have to scrape those things off the floor.”

“They don’t pay me much,” said Pearl. She thought that was rude of him, although she didn’t mind. But of course she could afford hairpins. “There’s no place to buy them,” she said.

“I thought girls were born with a lifetime supply.”

“At home I have an oak chest with forty thousand,” said Pearl, “but I forgot it. I could buy some, but I never get to town.”

“I go to town,” said Mike. “Come with me. When’s your day off?”

“Tomorrow,” said Pearl. She thought she’d like to go to town with Mike. He was good-looking—young, slouchy, always with a cigarette in his fingers or something else: his pencil for taking down shorthand, a leaf, a twig. His hair fell into his eyes and he had a habit of blowing hard upward, as if he thought that would be the same as combing it. She’d been aware of him. He looked like the least friendly of the band members, but he was the only one who talked to her. He was abrupt, that was all. The other two stood if she entered a room—Mike didn’t—but they had nothing to say. “I didn’t know you had a car,” she said.

“I don’t. We’ll hitchhike.” She was a little alarmed but tried to act nonchalant, and then one of the guests came in wanting the canoe paddles, which were kept behind the desk. Mike stood to the side while she handed them over, and she found herself glancing to see if he noticed when she ran her hand over her hair, checking, after she bent down. He was looking at her, not smiling, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

The next afternoon Mike said it would be easier to get a ride if the drivers didn’t know he was there. “A girl alone,” he said. He waited behind a bush, and with some embarrassment she stuck her thumb out. The first car slowed for her, and Mike jumped out from behind the bush and got into the back seat. “Well, I didn’t see you, young man,” said the driver, an older man, but Pearl thought he’d probably have stopped no matter who was waiting. He talked all the way into town. He was the owner of a dry goods store in Glens Falls. “Now, that’s a nice piece of goods, that skirt you’re wearing,” he said to Pearl. “I can see quality.” It was a narrow gored skirt in dark green and Pearl wondered whether Mike had noticed it.

The man dropped them off at a drugstore in town (“My girl has to pick up some hairpins,” said Mike), but it carried hairpins only in black. “They’d look like ants in my hair, going around my braid,” Pearl said. Mike laughed at her but accompanied her down Main Street until they found a second drugstore, and there hairpins came in gold as well as black. “Fourteen carat,” said Mike. “No doubt about it.”

She liked being teased. “I’ll buy you an ice cream cone,” he said then, and they walked back to the first drugstore, which had a fountain. He paid for the cones and then, without talking about whether they were going to do it, they walked all the way back to the hotel, scuffing their feet in the brown pine needles at the edge of the road, or walking on the road itself when the brush came right down to it. A few cars passed them, but they didn’t try to flag them down. After his cone was gone, Mike smoked, or he broke off a twig and peeled it as he walked.

That night Pearl had a blister and her feet ached. She soaked them in Epsom salts, which she found in the bathroom she shared with the manager and his wife and the chambermaids. She sat on her bed with her feet in an enamel basin, looking out the window and watching the light sift away from the trees and from the lake, which she could just glimpse from her room. She took down her hair, putting her hairpins one by one into an ashtray on her dresser—still careful, though now she had plenty, as though the hairpins were small souvenirs of the day.

Mike liked to take walks, and he began to show up when Pearl was just ready to leave the desk at night. They’d walk partway to town, slapping at mosquitoes. As the summer progressed it began to be dark by the time they’d gone a little way, but they walked a bit anyway, facing traffic, turning their faces away from the headlights when, every once in a while, a car came along. Or they went down to the lake. He stood with his arm around her, not saying much. Then he walked her to the main building of the hotel, where she lived. The band lived in a cottage on the grounds. He walked her home three times before he ever kissed her, but once he began, he kissed her every night.

On weekends she’d sit alone at a table in the lounge, listening to the band. She’d never paid attention to jazz before and at first she didn’t like it. It seemed disreputable: it made her sad in a way that scared her. Mike said he didn’t know what she meant, jazz was beautiful, and after a while she began to pick out songs she liked, at first those that seemed most like what she called “just plain songs.” Gradually she began to like others, the songs with low, wailing notes. It surprised her when Mike played these songs. It was like hearing him speak in a foreign language, and sometimes she imagined that if she could read his shorthand notes, they would also sound like great cries and strange muted calls.

At the end of the summer Mike said they should get married. “What else will you do?” he asked bluntly, when she claimed to be astonished, although she’d had the same idea herself.

“I could go home and look for a job,” she said. “We can’t afford to get married.”

“You don’t want to go home.”

“No.” Her father would make her work in the candy store, and make her brother, who belonged there, look for a job. Pearl thrust her feet out in front of her and noticed how the sun made patterns on her open-toed shoes. She and Mike were sitting on the wooden steps of the cottage where he’d been living all summer with the other musicians. They’d been talking in low voices because the other two men were asleep.

“You’ll be fine in September, whatever we do,” said Pearl. The owner of the music store had said he might give Mike a full-time job in September. And maybe he’d get the stenography job. As she spoke she heard one of the other musicians walking around, and then the pianist came out, carrying a towel. He was on his way to the showers, which were in a small wooden building closer to the main house.

“Somebody else is going to grab you,” Mike said gruffly. It was the nearest he’d come to a declaration of love. “Some guy will come along.” As she watched the pianist, whose name was Moe, walk up the hill to the showers, Pearl wondered if Mike had expected her to have other admirers, and she wondered whether Moe, who was stiffly polite with her, liked her at all. Once she’d been identified as Mike’s girl, other people at the hotel had pulled back even more noticeably. The chambermaids were a tiny bit friendlier, and Pearl thought maybe they were afraid of Mike and admired her for being comfortable with him.

“Where would we live?” she said.

“We’d live with my brother and his wife until we found an apartment. You could look for a job, but meanwhile we’d have what I make.”

“Your brother wouldn’t mind?”

“He won’t mind. We’ll give him some money. You’ll like his wife. You’ll get along with her.”

Pearl thought of the candy store. It had just one light bulb. The windows were crowded with signs sent by companies that sold syrup and malted mix. When Pearl stood at the marble counter of the soda fountain, near the cash register, she couldn’t see out into the street; a large cutout blocked her way. From behind, it was just gray cardboard; in front it was the fading picture of a smiling girl and boy drinking with two straws out of the same soda. She remembered how much it irritated her that she couldn’t see out the window.

“All right,” she said.

On the Thursday before Labor Day, they borrowed a car and drove to New York for a marriage license. They drove all day, and then, going back, all night, because Mike had to play on Friday. The car broke down. Mike played without sleep Friday night. Labor Day weekend was the busiest time at the hotel all summer, and Pearl took it in confusedly, through tiredness and excitement. They told no one but the band members that they were going to be married. The day after Labor Day, they took the bus to New York, and then Pearl told her family. She’d mentioned Mike in her letters, but she hadn’t said much. Her mother cried and tried to talk her out of it.

Pearl stayed with her family that night and the next, and they were married on Thursday, in a rabbi’s study, with her parents and brother and Mike’s brother and sister-in-law in attendance. Mike said it would be better to tell his mother about it after it was a done thing. Pearl’s mother, though she had cried, bought food from a delicatessen and invited everyone to their apartment over the candy store after the wedding. Mike’s brother, Nathan, and his wife came along, and Pearl kept her eyes on Hilda, who seemed to be looking everything over, gazing with composure at Pearl’s mother and father, her brother, and the small living room with its heavy mahogany furniture.

Pearl thought it would be a privilege to live with Hilda, even for just a few weeks. Hilda was wearing a gray dress and hat, quite plain. Her hair was short, and it was arranged in dark curls around her face. She moved her head slowly, calmly, when she talked to one member of the family or another. She and Nathan were still there when Pearl and Mike left—in the rain—on their honeymoon.

They took the subway to New York and spent two nights in a hotel. Pearl was a virgin, and she was surprised by sex. She’d imagined something more headlong: a moist, yielding sort of dissolution. This ritual felt a little violent and a little silly, both drier and, somehow, wetter than she had expected. But she liked sleeping in bed with her new husband. She woke in the night and kissed his shoulder and arm gently, careful not to waken him. She kissed him over and over again. Asleep, curled away from her, he looked like a boy.

The next day Mike took Pearl to the Central Park Zoo, even though it was still raining. There was a hurricane in Florida, and everyone was talking about how much it had rained. Later they went to the movies, to see Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo, and to a jazz club.

“Did you change your name?” Pearl asked Mike, on the way to Hilda and Nathan’s Saturday morning. It fascinated her that her last name was now Lewis, but she’d noticed that Hilda and Nathan’s name was Levenson.

“I’m not hiding the fact that I’m Jewish,” Mike said. “I’ll tell anybody I’m Jewish. But I don’t see why I have to advertise it.” So her name might have been Levenson. She wasn’t sure which she liked better.

Hilda and Nathan lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Bedford Avenue in Flatbush. They had a couch in the living room that was really a single bed, and Hilda had said that if Mike and Pearl could get hold of another single bed, they could push the two together and have a double bed to sleep on. Pearl’s parents said they could take the bed from Pearl’s room.

As soon as Pearl and Mike arrived at the Levensons’ after their two-night honeymoon, Mike and Nathan took the trolley to the Sutters’ apartment and got the bed, which they brought back on the roof of a taxi. Meanwhile Hilda made Pearl a cup of coffee and Pearl sat in the kitchen drinking it, while Hilda cleared away the breakfast things. Pearl offered to help, but Hilda shook her head. Still wearing her jacket and hat, Pearl watched her new sister-in-law. Her suitcase was in the hall, and there was a box of clothes at her parents’ apartment that she had to bring sooner or later. Hilda and Nathan’s apartment was small.

“You must be sorry you said we could do this,” she said.

“Why should I be sorry?” said Hilda firmly.

“You’re crowded already.”

“I like having people around,” said Hilda. “Sometimes Nathan’s quiet.”

“I’m not quiet,” said Pearl. “I’m warning you.”

“Well, neither am I,” Hilda said. “I’ll say when I’m sick of you.”

“That’s fine.” Pearl even tossed her chin, as if she were bouncing a ball off it toward Hilda at the sink, as if she was sure Hilda was joking. “I’m helpful,” she said. “I’ll clean the bathroom. I’m not a good cook, but I’ll try.”

“We can clean the bathroom together,” said Hilda. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down opposite Pearl to drink it.

“You don’t take milk?” said Pearl.

“No, I like it black.”

“No sugar either?”

“No.”

“Oh—” said Pearl, and she laid her hands flat on the table, palms up, open. “You know what?” she said, before she knew what she was going to say, but wanting it to be pretty spectacular. “I always wanted a friend who drank black coffee. I never knew people like that. In high school, I wanted to know the girls like that.”

Hilda looked annoyed, as if she didn’t know what Pearl meant and didn’t want to know, but Pearl said, “Don’t worry, I’m nice, even if I talk funny.” She was scared, despite this brave speech, because Hilda looked irritated. But Hilda didn’t say anything and now Pearl thought that maybe she wasn’t angry. Hilda was looking at her with her eyes wide and interested, very black. She was shorter than Pearl but several years older, and Pearl felt childish near her, maybe because Hilda’s clothes and gestures were so simple.

“It’s a nice apartment,” said Pearl.

“Thank you.” They stood up and toured it, and figured out where there was room for a new chest of drawers. Pearl and Mike could afford one piece of furniture. If they bought it now, they’d have something when they found their new place. It could go in an alcove in the living room—a room Pearl liked, with a dark maroon rug and checked drapes in maroon and tan. There were two easy chairs and between them was a radio. Pearl looked out the window, but the view was just the courtyard in the center of the building.

“The quiet side of the building,” she said, though she was disappointed. She’d have preferred to look out at the street.

When Nathan and Mike arrived, carrying the mattress and then the box spring, Hilda and Pearl made the two beds in the living room with one sheet over them, but that night Pearl’s bed moved whenever Mike turned over. Mike wanted to make love, but she was afraid Hilda and Nathan could hear them from their bedroom.

“We’re married,” Mike whispered.

She was sore after the two nights in the hotel. “Tomorrow,” she whispered back. Mike tried to take her in his arms, just to hold her, but his bed shifted and the crack between the beds opened into an abyss with the sheet stretched over it. He got out and pushed the beds back together, but then he came around to her side. She giggled and claimed she was going to fall into the space, but he just said, “Well, hold on tighter, then.” It was a long time before she fell asleep.

The next afternoon Nathan asked her if she liked to listen to music. He had a record collection and a good record player, and he played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for her. Pearl was surprised when a voice began to sing, and then a whole chorus, after Nathan had stood up many times to change the record.

“What does it mean?” she said, and thought of Mike’s shorthand.

Nathan shrugged, turning the record over carefully, holding it by its edges. “This is the real Germany,” he said. “Better to listen to Beethoven than the bandits in charge now.” He had told her he was preparing to become a teacher and he talked like one already. He seemed much older than Mike. He was comfortable with his arms and legs. Like his wife, he could sit still. Mike never could, and was always moving his hands: fiddling with something, ripping something up, lighting a cigarette. Hilda scolded him now for tearing an envelope, ripping it studiously back and forth so it turned into one long crooked strip. “Stop it, Michael,” she said. “You’re like a little kid.” Pearl was fascinated.

Mike laughed at Hilda. “I thought you socialists were liberated from bourgeois notions about neatness. I thought you had higher things to think about.”

“Not me,” said Hilda. “Maybe your brother. I’m just a housewife.”

Nathan frowned at them for talking during the music—now it was a different symphony—and quietly swept Mike’s trash into his hands and carried it off. “There,” he said, when the music paused. “Plenty of room for socialism, a clean carpet, and Beethoven too.”

Pearl liked the way he talked and she liked the music and the living room. It was starting to get dark outside, but the lamps had been on all afternoon. She felt safe in her big chair. Nathan had brought in a wooden kitchen chair for himself, and Hilda was sitting on the bed, which now took up most of the room. The warm lamplight was on Pearl’s arm. She and Hilda had conferred about dinner, and Hilda had started a pot roast. Soon they’d peel the potatoes. Pearl wished she could stay home and keep house for the four of them, but she knew she had to look for a job, and then that they’d have to find an apartment. Her brother-in-law leaned over the stack of records, putting the ones he’d played back into their brown sleeves. They came in a big album that was dark red like so much else in this room.

After Pearl and Mike had been living with Hilda and Nathan for a little more than a week, Hilda said there might be a job in her office for Pearl. Pearl had been reading the want ads in the paper every morning, but she couldn’t find anything that looked right. She didn’t want to work in a factory, but she thought she might have to. Hilda was the bookkeeper for a small company that made women’s blouses, and she said they needed a receptionist. Pearl would have to type a little, too. Pearl had taken an academic course in high school, not a commercial course, but she’d taken one year of typing as an elective. She explained to Hilda what she’d done at the hotel, and realized that she had learned something over the summer. She had learned to write things down in order and keep pieces of paper having to do with the same thing in one place. At the candy store, her father wrote on scraps of paper that he stuck under the corner of the cash register and never saw again. He didn’t know how much money he had or what he ordered each time the salesmen came through. Partway through the summer, after the hotel manager had spoken sharply to Pearl for not writing something down, she had suddenly realized that it was possible to keep track of things. She had decided that must be what people learned in the commercial course, and maybe now she knew it. She was sure she could work in Hilda’s office.

“There are two bosses,” Hilda said. “Mr. Glynnis and Mr. Carmichael. Mr. Glynnis seems nice but I like Mr. Carmichael better, even though he seems strict.”

Pearl listened eagerly. “Is Mr. Carmichael older?”

“I guess they’re about the same age. Mr. Carmichael might be a few years older.” She arranged for Pearl to have an interview.

Pearl had to take the subway alone to Hilda’s office in downtown Manhattan because Hilda left for work early in the morning, but the bosses had said Pearl should come in at about eleven. Pearl was nervous. She was home alone for an hour when the others had gone to work. The last person she saw was Nathan, who left a little later than Hilda and Mike. He had worked in a printing plant, he’d told her, but he’d become active in the union, and now he was a full-time union organizer.

“Do you like it?” Pearl said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want a strike,” said Nathan. “I’m afraid of a strike.” He wanted to quit and be a teacher, and he had passed his exam and was waiting to be called from the list.

“Do you go around and make speeches?” Pearl said that morning, to keep Nathan a moment.

“No, I leave that to other people,” Nathan said. “I write, and I organize meetings. Today I have to make sure the door will be open and the lights will be on for a meeting tonight. Very exciting.”

“I think it’s exciting,” said Pearl loyally.

“Maybe it is,” said Nathan, and he sighed and looked sorrowful, but she’d noticed that he often looked that way. “Maybe it’s a great moment in history.”

Pearl followed Hilda’s directions and reached the right building twenty minutes early. It was on Nassau Street. She walked two blocks away and back and it was still ten minutes early. Then she crossed the street and counted the items in the window of a stationery store. When she reached one hundred, she shrugged and went across the street and into the building, whether it was early or not. The blouse company, called Bobbie’s, was on the second floor, and when she’d climbed the stairs she found herself in a large room where women were sorting and folding blouses. Hilda had explained that the blouses were not made on the premises, but at a factory in Brooklyn. Here, however, they were labeled, folded, and readied for shipment to stores. “In the big season, we all have to pack,” she said. “I don’t mind. It’s fun. Mr. Carmichael brings in delicatessen and we’re there late.”

At one side of the room were the offices, separated by glass partitions from the floor. The room was noisy. Pearl stood in the door-way of the first office until she was noticed. She didn’t see Hilda. Finally someone told her where to go, and she found Hilda, too, in an anteroom to Mr. Glynnis’s and Mr. Carmichael’s offices at the back of the big room. Hilda looked her over and took her in to see Mr. Carmichael. Pearl thought Hilda didn’t like something about what she was wearing—or maybe she was sorry she’d suggested the interview.

“Now, can you handle yourself on the phone is the main thing?” said Mr. Carmichael, even before asking her to sit down. “Do you have a Brooklyn accent?” He didn’t give Pearl a chance to answer. “Let’s say I’m an impatient customer and I call up. What do you say? Ring!”

“Hello?” said Pearl, giggling and putting an imaginary receiver to her face. It was like a game.

“No. Wrong. You say, ‘Bobbie’s, can I help you?’”

“Bobbie’s, can I help you?” said Pearl.

“Much better,” said Mr. Glynnis, who had come in behind her. They had only a few more questions. They seemed pleased that she was Hilda’s sister-in-law. She got the job. Riding home on the subway, she worried about whether Hilda had disapproved of her dress or her hat—whether Hilda would be ashamed of her.

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” Mike said that night, although Pearl wasn’t a baby and she knew she was lucky, that jobs were almost impossible to find.

Pearl started to work at Bobbie’s, and she and Hilda rode there together every day and rode back home at night. Hilda introduced her to the other women in the office, and one of them showed Pearl what she was supposed to do. Pearl liked being a receptionist. She had some trouble with the switchboard but gradually she caught on. She spent much of her time filing, which wasn’t hard, and sometimes she typed letters. Mike taught her a little shorthand, and she learned to take dictation, although she was faking it, and she hid her notes—a combination of shorthand, abbreviations of her own, spelled-out words, and blanks where she’d have to remember or invent when she typed. Luckily, the letters Mr. Glynnis and Mr. Carmichael dictated were short.

Pearl had more problems at home than at work. Mike said it would be a good idea to stay with the Levensons for a few more weeks and save up some money, and he insisted that he and Nathan had talked it over and Nathan had said it was fine. They needed extra money for furniture, he pointed out. But Pearl wanted to find an apartment and move out. She thought more about not displeasing Hilda than she did about her new husband. They contributed money for food, but Pearl worried that Hilda thought they ate too much. Mike was always looking for snacks, and she thought he ate more than the rest of them put together. And Hilda wouldn’t let Pearl cook. “I don’t cook,” she insisted. “I just put something on the stove. I don’t fuss.”

It was true that their meals were simple—baked potatoes, canned vegetables, some kind of meat. Sometimes Hilda made a meat loaf. One day she said she’d make beef stew, and then she went out of the room for a little while. She had a headache, she said; she’d just lie down. They’d come home from work a few minutes earlier and Pearl was tired, but she thought she ought to start the beef stew, and she began browning the meat. Hilda came into the kitchen in her bathrobe, her dark eyes flashing. “I told you I’d do it,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t I do it?”

“Look, I’m trying to rest. I have to get rid of this headache. Here I am jumping up because I can smell the meat browning. Why can’t you just leave it alone?”

Pearl was bewildered. “But I don’t understand,” she said, fighting tears. “Did I use the wrong pan?”

“No, you didn’t use the wrong pan,” Hilda said, and returned to her bedroom. Pearl turned off the light under the meat and went into the bathroom, where she laid her face on her towel and sobbed. She stayed there as long as she dared—there was no place else in the apartment where she could be alone—and when she came out, pushing the hair that had come loose off her face and trying to get her mussed braid back into place, Hilda, still in her robe, was making the beef stew.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl said.

“It’s all right,” said Hilda. Pearl peeled potatoes and carrots and set the table. That night, in whispers, she tried to explain what had happened.

“She was just tired,” Mike said.

“She doesn’t like me.”

“Why shouldn’t she like you?”

“She hates me,” Pearl insisted.

Mike was impatient with her, but she thought he was also interested. He wasn’t used to people who hated each other. It was like something out of the movies. He said they could start trying to find an apartment, and from then on, they spent their weekends looking. It helped. Hilda seemed friendlier when they came back, even if they hadn’t seen anything that would do at all.

Pearl didn’t find out whether Hilda disliked the dress or hat she had worn to her job interview, but after a while she didn’t think it was her clothes. Hilda couldn’t help backing away from her at times the way some people couldn’t help from shrinking if a cat brushed against them. “I’m a ninny,” Pearl told herself, excusing Hilda. One night the four of them put on jazz records and danced, and when Pearl got excited, and danced fast with Mike until he stumbled away, then danced on her own with an imaginary partner, she caught Hilda looking at her and her look was not hateful or friendly either but eager, as if she wanted to become Pearl. Yet that night, too, Hilda grew bitter and tired. “I suppose you know enough to turn the lights out when you go to bed?” she said, going to her bedroom while Pearl was still dancing.

When they found an apartment it was only two blocks from Nathan and Hilda’s place. Pearl was afraid they’d mind, but Nathan borrowed a car from a friend to help them move, and Hilda said she’d help Pearl put shelving paper in the kitchen cabinets. The apartment was on the second floor of a building with an elevator. Pearl liked the dim hallway with its armorial ornaments, and liked pushing the large round buttons to make the elevator come. The elevator didn’t work until you had closed first the heavy outer door, which had a long handle, and then the inner door, made of metal strips in an accordion pattern that threatened to pinch Pearl’s fingers. The first time she took Hilda there, she had to struggle to make it work. Hilda was impatient. “We could take the stairs,” she said.

They took the elevator and Pearl showed Hilda the apartment, and then they put on aprons and began cleaning the kitchen cabinets. Hilda stood on the sink to clean them. She insisted it was necessary, though the apartment had just been painted. Pearl cut shelving paper. Hilda didn’t look quite as formidable, perched on Pearl’s new sink.

“I won’t have much to put into the cupboards,” Pearl said. Her mother had given her some pots and pans, and she’d received a few wedding presents. She did have some things.

“You’ll put food up here, won’t you?” said Hilda. “I think pots and pans below.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Of course that was right. She’d have to make a shopping list. She’d never bought food herself before, except under her mother’s direction—she’d never thought about what was needed.

“You’re going to cook a lot,” Hilda said. “Mike eats so much.”

Pearl laughed and nodded. “They’re so different, even though they’re brothers.”

“Very different.”

Pearl was a little afraid of Nathan. He was older than Mike, who was older than she was, and he seemed older yet. He never lost his temper. He knew about music and kept track of world events. He listened to everything Pearl said as if he expected her to be interesting, even though she knew she wasn’t. She’d asked him shyly why he was a socialist, and he’d said with a sigh that he couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t, that it was only fair. “Go talk to the people in the shantytowns,” he said. “Ask them how much good capitalism has done them.”

Pearl said she agreed with him, that socialism was much better. Only later did she remember that her father owned a business—he was a capitalist, she supposed. But when she asked Nathan he said no, not really, Mr. Sutter was not the problem. Nathan was starting to get bald, and he combed his hair back so his bare scalp showed. When he stared at Pearl she felt extremely looked at.

Now she watched Hilda competently cleaning cupboards. Like Nathan, she looked as if she knew how things would turn out and had agreed to them. But Pearl still thought Hilda didn’t like her.

“Nathan’s wise,” she said. “I never knew anybody before who was wise.”

“No, he’s not,” Hilda said. “He’s just pretending. He can be as dumb as anybody else.”

“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 Mrs. 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.

He was younger than she had thought, Pearl realized. Because he was the boss, and older than Mr. Glynnis, she had thought of him as someone her father’s age, but he was not more than thirty-five, she decided now. Pearl took time, putting the cover on her typewriter and straightening her papers for the next day. She would love to go to a dinner. She could wear the dress she’d bought almost a year ago for her wedding, a gray silk. She and her mother had hurried into New York and bought it the very day before she was married, her mother grumbling and predicting the worst all the way, though she was mollified by the dress itself, and grew almost sentimental on the subway ride home. Pearl would look beautiful in the dress at the dinner. In her mind, Hilda, Nathan, and Mike stood in front of her typewriter arguing with her, while Mr. Carmichael stood on the other side of it waiting for her to speak.

Hilda would say her maternity dresses weren’t fancy enough. Mike hated to dress up and meet strangers. Nathan might not mind, but he’d be on his way to some rally on behalf of the Spanish Loyalists, and if he didn’t get there the war would go the wrong way.

“We’d love to come,” said Pearl primly. “Thank you for inviting us.”

“Next Wednesday, then,” said Mr. Carmichael. “I’ll tell Jack. I’ll give you my address.”

Pearl persuaded Nathan that her job might even depend on their showing up for the dinner. “I don’t want them to think we’re not grateful.” That made Nathan agree to go, but he looked at her sadly. “You’d be better off forming a union, if you want to protect your job,” he said.

Hilda was glad to go. “I haven’t been out of the apartment in months,” she said, “except for dinner at Mrs. Levenson’s, and everything she puts in front of me, she says, ‘This you shouldn’t eat.’ I don’t know what pregnant women did eat in her day.”

She didn’t care about her dress. “I have that black dress,” she said. “Black is always dressy. Besides, they’re going to throw me out because I’m not dressed up?” She’d wear the pearls she’d inherited from her mother, she said. That would make it fancy.

Mike was baffled, but he agreed. “If you want to go,” he said, looking mystified but amused.

The night of the dinner was a warm evening in the middle of July. Nathan and Mike wore suits and white shirts and ties. They took their jackets off on the subway and both shook them out and folded them over their arms. Sitting next to Hilda, Pearl watched them. The men hadn’t found seats and were holding the pole in the middle of the car—Nathan’s hand on top, as befitted the older brother. She hadn’t ever noticed that they looked alike. Mike looked so young, with that hair swept over his forehead, and Nathan so much older, with his forehead bare, now gleaming under the yellow subway light. And Mike’s eyes were blue while Nathan’s were brown. But their noses and mouths looked the same. She wondered if Hilda had ever noticed. Mrs. Levenson had, of course, and had probably been waiting for the two inadequate brides to mention it for months. Years, in Hilda’s case.

The men put on their jackets outside Mr. Carmichael’s house, a brownstone in the East Thirties. Pearl watched the windows to make sure they weren’t being observed. They were admitted by a maid, and there was Mr. Glynnis, smiling and blushing, and two women, both smoking, drinking iced drinks in tall glasses. “This is Jean,” Mr. Carmichael said, pointing to the nearer one, who was wearing light blue, “and this is Smokie.” He introduced the four of them. “Would you like to freshen up?”

He pointed Hilda and Pearl into the bedroom, which was more lavish than Pearl had expected, with long lace curtains. “Look, that’s his wife,” she said to Hilda. On the bureau was a photograph of a dark-haired young woman with a round, cheerful face pressed in on each side by a child, a smiling boy with neatly trimmed hair and a baby with her finger in her mouth and her eyes fixed on the camera. Pearl took off her hat and ran her comb through her hair—being careful not to disturb the braid—so it would have a little softness. She checked the hairpins.

“Pretty swanky,” said Hilda, tilting her head toward the door. “The one called Jean—did you see her necklace?”

“What, is it real diamonds or something?” Pearl was leaning over to look in the mirror. She didn’t think she should sit down in Mrs. Carmichael’s vanity chair.

“I don’t know,” said Hilda absently, as if she’d now lost interest. “I guess their wives are away....” She patted her hair and waited for Pearl, and the two of them went back to the living room. “Are you having scotch?” asked the woman called Smokie as soon as she saw them. “Have scotch and soda.”

Pearl asked for a Tom Collins because she had drunk it before. Nathan and Mike had whiskey and Hilda had sherry. “Have you lived here long?” Hilda said to Mr. Carmichael. Pearl knew she did that because Mr. Carmichael was standing, and a question always made him sit down. She wanted to show Nathan and Mike. Sure enough, he seated himself and picked up his glass before he said he’d been there for five years.

The maid offered canapés. Pearl said no, because she was afraid she’d drop something on her dress, but then she was sorry and took something right away when the maid came back. There was something on the tray Pearl thought might be pate, but you had to spread it yourself on a cracker and she was sure she’d make a mess of it, so she took one of the light brown puffs near it—almost like cream puffs, but with something unusual inside. “Is it caviar?” she whispered to Jean.

“No, honey,” said Jean, louder than Pearl would have liked. “You wouldn’t put caviar into something like this.”

“I hate caviar,” said Smokie. “I don’t like to put things into my body that look like caviar. I prefer to be kind to my body. Don’t you?”

Everyone murmured that they liked being kind to their bodies. “I use enemas occasionally,” Smokie said.

Jean turned to Hilda. “I couldn’t help noticing that you’re expecting,” she said. “When is your baby due?”

Mike laughed and stopped himself. Hilda was eight months pregnant and perfectly enormous. “Next month,” she said.

“A Leo!” said Smokie. She had lots of reddish brown hair. “Oh, Lord.”

“That’s superstition,” said Mr. Glynnis.

“Oh, really?” Smokie said, shaking her hair. “I can guess your sign of the zodiac just by the way you act.”

“Go ahead,” said Mr. Glynnis.

Smokie looked him up and down and said he was probably a Virgo. “A virgin! You think I’m a virgin?” said Mr. Glynnis—Jack, he had told them to say.

“No, silly—it’s just your sign of the zodiac. Or maybe Scorpio.”

“Well, my birthday is September twenty-sixth,” he said.

“Twenty-sixth? You’re sure? I’m just certain you’re a Virgo, but the end of September is generally considered Libra. You don’t seem like a Libra to me.”

Mr. Carmichael—Lester—said he was sure Smokie had many interesting ideas on this subject, but Smokie was asking Hilda what she was going to name the baby, and Hilda was saying that if it was a boy it would be Samuel, after Nathan’s father. If it was a girl, she’d be called Rachel. Her mother had been named Rachel.

“You could vary it,” said Smokie. “You could name her Rochelle. A friend of mine has that name. Isn’t it nice?”

“I think Rachel,” said Hilda.

Pearl had never heard the name Rochelle, or heard anyone talk about signs of the zodiac before. She didn’t know what her sign of the zodiac was. When they stood to go into dinner, she saw that Smokie’s and Jean’s dresses were tight. Their behinds were outlined.

At dinner, a different servant—a man—poured wine in their glasses. Pearl knew she’d be dizzy if she drank it but she was having a good time. Nathan and Mike had hardly spoken in the living room, but now Mr. Glynnis asked them where they had grown up and tried to remember whether or not he had a friend in their neighborhood in Brooklyn. Pearl thought he probably didn’t. They talked about subway stops.

The food was served in a new way. The waiter carried a platter around and tilted it next to Pearl, and she was supposed to take some food onto her plate from the platter. Pearl was afraid she’d take too much or too little, and that she’d handle the utensils wrong. Hilda seemed to have no trouble, and looked as if she had always eaten her dinner in this maddening fashion. Jean said it was a pleasure to see a meal served properly, it hardly ever happened nowadays, and Smokie said they should be careful not to eat foods that disagreed with them.

“It isn’t worth it,” she said with bitter cheer. “It just isn’t worth it. Now this potato dish looks delicious,” she said, “but I’m sure it would be bad for me. No, thank you.”

There was a fish course followed by lamb. Pearl liked the food very much, although she thought the lamb had too much seasoning. “Now a nice piece of lamb, simply prepared,” Smokie was saying. “There’s no harm there.”

Nathan looked at her. “You’d get along with my mother,” he said.

“Does she like lamb?”

“I’m not sure. But she likes to—well, she’s careful about food.” Pearl saw that Mike was trying not to laugh again.

Smokie ate the dessert, Pearl noticed, even though she was careful and it was quite rich—a pastry filled with custard and candied fruit. And she seemed to have noticed Nathan for the first time. “Did I hear you’re a teacher?” she said.

“History.” Nathan had received a permanent appointment for the coming year.

“History!” she said. “You probably know all about world affairs. Now what do you think about Mussolini? Should we be so worried about him? Or is this just something a few nervous Jews are trying to make us worry about?”

Nathan looked at her quietly, then looked sideways at Mike. “I think Mussolini is extremely worrisome,” he said.

Mr. Glynnis was talking at the same time. “World affairs, yes, they certainly are getting complicated,” he said. “Suppose—”

They didn’t find out what Mr. Glynnis was supposing. The waiter began serving coffee, and Nathan, holding out his cup toward the silver coffeepot with its curved spout, must have moved the cup at the wrong moment and with too much force, while he said, “Look, if you think Mussolini’s some sort of joke—” and the coffee arced gracefully onto his pants. He started and the waiter saw what was happening and tilted the pot up, but everyone had noticed.

“Are you scalded?” Smokie asked, jumping up. Hilda ran into the kitchen and returned with a wet cloth. Nathan said he was all right, he was sorry if it had gone on the rug, it was entirely his fault. The waiter apologized, and Nathan clasped him on the shoulder, refusing his apology, insisting he was fine. In the end the waiter led him out to the kitchen. When Nathan came back, Mike stood up. “We have to call it a night,” he said. “Awfully nice of you folks.” Hilda and Pearl found their handbags and hats and they all thanked Mr. Glynnis and Mr. Carmichael and soon found themselves out on the sidewalk, where, to their surprise, it was almost midnight. A light breeze was blowing; it was cool, and the men took off their jackets and put them around the women’s shoulders. Without discussion, they walked past their subway stop and toward the next one. Pearl was pleased—she wanted to keep the evening going.

“You did that on purpose,” Hilda said to Nathan then.

“Did what?”

“Spilled the coffee.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know—to change the subject, I guess. So they wouldn’t talk about Mussolini.”

“Change the subject!” Nathan said, and he sounded more excited than usual. “I wanted to talk about Mussolini—I wanted to talk about Mussolini a great deal.”

“But that would have been worse,” Hilda said. “What if they took it out on Pearl?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t matter!” Pearl put in quickly.

“Don’t be so sure!” said Hilda.

Pearl was startled. She’d thought it was a party—that it didn’t matter what they did.

“Nathan was careless with your bosses—with your job,” Hilda was saying angrily.

Now Nathan sounded angry as well. “I hope you don’t feel that way, Pearl,” he said, and his quiet, low voice made her cold. “I don’t have much respect for those two, and I don’t care to hide my opinions from people like that. That waiter—when I got him in the kitchen I asked him some questions. He’s been unemployed for two years. They’re paying him almost nothing tonight.”

They were still walking. The night was quiet and chilly, and Pearl felt accused, pulling Mike’s jacket closer to her body.

“And those women!” said Hilda, but now she sounded amused, not angry after all. “Those women. They were call girls. That’s what they were—it’s that simple.”

“Do you think so?” Pearl hadn’t been sure.

“Of course! Didn’t you see their jewelry? And their dresses?”

“They had nice backsides,” said Mike.

“You could certainly discover that without trouble,” Hilda said.

“Their poor wives,” said Pearl, thinking of the round-faced woman in the picture on the dresser. “Do you think they suspect?”

“Women can sense that kind of thing,” said Hilda.

“How do they bear it?”

“Maybe it’s different for people like that,” said Hilda. “People with money.” When they came to the next subway station, they went down. They got home late, not talking on the walk to their houses, and just waved good night when they separated. “I’m going to take off my shoes,” Hilda called, “and stick my feet in a pail of cold water.”

Hilda gave birth to a daughter, Rachel, on August seventeenth, after a long labor preceded by a four-day hot spell that made her jumpy and uncomfortable. Pearl had brought a couple of meals over and Hilda had barely been civil. She insisted it was too hot to eat anyway. She didn’t know why Nathan persisted in eating. It nauseated her to watch him.

The day Hilda gave birth was a little cooler. Pearl walked home from the subway station feeling a slight breeze ruffle her dress, enjoying the air after the subway’s stuffiness. When she passed Hilda’s building, she hesitated. Then she saw Nathan hurry out. He told her he’d just come back for a shower and a nap. He’d brought Hilda to the hospital in a taxi at midnight and she’d had the baby at eleven in the morning. “It was hard,” he said. “They didn’t let me stay with her. She was in pain.” He paused. “I thought it would be different.”

But Pearl could hardly listen. She felt her face breaking into a grin. “What does she look like?” she said. “Does she have hair?”

“The baby?” said Nathan. “I had to look through a window. I didn’t realize what it would be like. She’s cute—she’s skinny, though. She was wrapped up, but she looked skinny. I think she has brown hair.” He looked at her tiredly. “Maybe later I can see her better.”

“What does she weigh?”

“I think about six pounds.”

“I guess that’s pretty little.” Pearl stood up on her toes to give him a kiss on his cheek. His cheek felt like Mike’s but a little different. She could feel the stubble on his face and it seemed a little softer than Mike’s. He had his own smell. She was embarrassed, as if she might have done something wrong. “Can we visit her?”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” Nathan said. “Hilda’s pretty knocked out.”

“Okay, tomorrow,” said Pearl. “Congratulations, Daddy.” Nathan grinned at her as she continued walking. She was oddly self-conscious, thinking of him watching her, watching the way the wind picked up the hem of her dress, a lightweight blue-and-white print, and jumbled it around her legs. But when she glanced over her shoulder he was gone.