About the Night (16 page)

“He’ll manage,” Lila said. “And do you know why?”

“No,” answered Betty, worried.

“Because he has you,” said Lila, the expert on relationships in times of war.

Lila spread some Anuga hand cream and rubbed Betty’s healthy hands, hands that were strong and determined. Lila knew a lot about her clients from looking at their hands. The texture of the skin, how thick or thin they were, smooth or rough, spotted or ruddy, the color, the touch, the build of the nail. She knew sweaty palms, calloused palms, hands that were dry or that trembled. Nails that cracked or split, that were deficient in calcium or refused to grow, the hands of smokers or cold, distant women—all these together formed a picture by which she could sketch a woman’s personality, physical strength, and emotional state. Betty, who had helped her mother, a laundress, as she washed and whitened and wrung dry customers’ clothing, now looked after her hands devotedly as if to compensate them for having been subjected to poverty and exploitation.

Lila pressed the fleshy pad between the thumb and the joint, bringing pain and then release, then soaked Betty’s hand in water and dried it and finally began applying pink nail polish. That stage demanded concentration to ensure the exact amount of polish was removed from the bottle for the nail to be covered in its entirety. Next, she would spread the polish from the center outward to the tip and around the edges, evening it all out in the end. If there were lumps, bubbles, or inconsistencies in the color, she would remove the polish with acetone and start again.

“With you, everything has to be perfect,” Betty said, scolding her.

Lila could guess what was coming next: Betty would soften her up about someone she wanted to fix her up with. “Don’t move,” Lila said, deep in concentration on Betty’s polish.

“There is no such thing as perfect in life,” Betty said. “Everything’s a compromise, and I have news for you: there are no such things as perfect grooms, either.”

“You only need one groom to get married,” Lila said, “and the deluxe variety is preferable.”

“What are you talking about?” Betty snarled. “Deluxe? You need someone to support you, care about you, and look after you when you’re sick. Even you, with all your beauty,” she said, waving the hand Lila had finished to dry it, “it’ll pass. One day it disappears, and what’s left? Only the dreams of a deluxe husband.”

“Sorry, my stomach is growling,” Lila said. “I’m famished.”

“It’s not good to be alone,” Betty said, still intent on making her point. “There’s something wrong with people who get used to it. We both remember the crazy lady from the neighborhood who thought she was Scarlett O’Hara and how she ran around at age sixty in a torn bathrobe and slippers that the dog had chewed. The only things at her bedside when she died were her cigarettes, her dog, and her fleas. Is that what you want? To be a nutty old spinster without family?” Betty knew Lila’s weak spots. “A Sabbath table without the blessings, without a white tablecloth?”

Lila prayed for the pretzel man to show up.

“I know about someone,” Betty said, putting out feelers. “Seventh generation in the country. Hardworking and nice. He owns a shoe factory.”

“A shoe factory?” Lila said with excitement. “You know I love shoes!”

Betty very nearly applauded.

“Don’t do anything until the polish dries,” Lila warned her. “For shoes, I’m willing to get married.”

“Really?” Betty asked, amazed.

“Sure,” said Lila with a laugh. “When you’re in a good pair of shoes, nothing else matters. Are they high heels or orthopedic shoes for waitresses?”

“It’s his parents’ factory,” Betty said. “And they make the leather.”

“Can we set the date?” Lila asked.

“Be serious,” Betty said. “Are you willing to meet him?”

“No,” Lila said, pleasant and decisive. She waved to Ezra, the janitor, who had come for his wages. He worked every morning and left the place clean and orderly before the employees and the clients arrived. Winter and summer, he wore a checkered flannel shirt and a sweater his wife had knitted for him. He had a small mustache and the modest cheerfulness of a diligent worker. Ezra called Lila his Western Wall because he could tell her what was in his heart, and she would never share the information with anyone. Monsieur Hubert lorded it over him, treating him with scorn and scolding him at every opportunity for flaws in the cleaning of his realm.

“Look who I brought with me,” Ezra said with a smile, gesturing to the pretzel man right behind him. “You’re probably hungry, no?”

“You’re priceless,” Lila said, as though he himself had brought about the miracle.

Lila bought pretzels for Betty and herself, and fizzy flavored soda water as well. “This is the best soda water in town,” Lila said. “I’d marry him, too. And Bogart, from the suitcase store, because you never know when we’ll need to stuff everything in our homes into a suitcase and run away from here. And you know who else I’d marry?” she asked. “The guy who screens the movies over at the Edison, because I’d like to see the films on the very first day.”

Lila broke off pieces of the fresh pretzel for them.

“All right, all right,” Betty said, cutting her off. “I get it. I can’t force you.” Her face suddenly took on an inquisitive look. She asked, “Have you got someone?”

“You know what?” Lila said. “I’d marry the pretzel maker, too. Sometimes I get to the bakery just as they’re braiding them. A work of art.”

She thought about her first meal with Elias. “What do you most like to eat?” he had asked.

“Bread,” she’d told him.

“And what do you most like to smell?”

“Bread,” she’d said.

“And what food couldn’t you do without?” he asked.

She smiled, and a broad smile spread across his face as well.

“I think that would have to be bread,” he’d said.

Betty was about to leave. She showed off her hands and said, “Now I feel like a movie star!”

Lila walked her out to the street. “We haven’t even discussed the man I’m going to have to marry before it’s too late.” She laughed.

“He’s a good man,” Betty concluded, “the kind who’ll save you from all the bad ones. Think about it.”

A shiny green Ford pulled up to Salon Hubert and from it emerged a woman with a full head of hair cut in a pageboy.

“Welcome, madam,” Lila said. She opened the door of the salon for her to enter.

Monsieur Hubert raised his eyes from his account books and pulled out from his collection of smiles the one he saved for customers that Rita coined “fresh meat.” “Would Madame like to have her nails done,” he asked smarmily, “as well as her hair?”

Lila supposed he had noticed the woman’s driver, since Monsieur Hubert had already managed to slip her in without an appointment and was chasing after her money. He accompanied the woman to Lila’s station as if escorting a prima ballerina to center stage.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Lila said, extending her hand.

“Helga Westfried,” said the woman as she offered Lila a cold, firm handshake. According to her accent, there was no mistaking her country of origin as Germany.

Lila spread small white towels on her workspace, and she already knew exactly what look the woman would request when she said, “Clear polish. I don’t wish for my nails to look fussed over.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lila said. She saw strength and a preserved beauty in the woman’s face, though not the youthful kind that people clung to. Lila figured she must be around fifty years old.

“I’m an old lady already,” Helga Westfried said, noticing Lila’s face as she made her estimates. “But I wouldn’t like to be young again. It’s wonderful growing older. And smarter.”

“It’s nice,” Lila said with a smile, “that you see it that way.”

“Anyone who runs away from his age is running away from himself,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” Lila said. “What matters is how you live.”

“Unusual to hear something like that from a woman as young as you,” said Helga Westfried. She was sitting quite erect but leaned forward as if about to share a secret. “I only started to live once I was widowed.”

Lila felt that the woman sitting across from her was eager to chat. With rhythmic movements, she continued with her clippers.

Helga Westfried looked down at Lila’s hands, a look Lila was familiar with—the search for a ring. “You’re not married,” she said.

Lila blushed at her directness. “No,” she said, then for some reason added, “not yet.”

“Women here are in such a hurry to marry,” Helga Westfried said. “What’s the rush? They marry so young that it’s simply awful, and with the first young man who shows up with a ring. The main thing is not to be a spinster. Your tradition seems to require it, and then by the age of twenty, those same women are pushing prams in the street. It is not that way in Europe.”

Beneath the dryers sat women in spiky curlers. Two of them would be getting married that very evening. When Lila told this to Helga Westfried, she snorted. “Every day in this salon,” she said, her voice full of scorn, “you see young women whose lives are about to split in two. They will become housewives who bake cakes and fry meat patties and live in the shadow of a man, with no purpose or goals. How many of them will go to study or, like you, have a profession, with the desire to make something of themselves on their own?”

It was the first time Lila had ever heard such a speech against the institution of marriage.

“Even when people fall in love,” Helga Westfried continued, further working herself up, “well, so what. They fall in love. Does that mean they have to rush to marry? Why? Can’t they simply be together for a few years? The sad truth is that people marry so they can have a bedroom. But how long does the excitement last before it disappears? I was married for thirty years. It was no great pleasure, I can tell you. My husband was a pharmacist, and his whole world was those bottles and jars. When I was young, I wanted to be a test tube since he took such good care of his test tubes.”

Lila pulled Helga Westfried’s left hand from a dish of soapy water and began removing cuticles.

“You’re a different type of girl,” Helga Westfried said. “It’s obvious. An individualist. You know what the problem is? Most women are too inexperienced to make a proper choice. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime choice. How rare that it’s a perfect choice.”

“And when it does happen?” Lila asked.

“When it does happen,” Helga Westfried said, seeking out Lila’s eyes as they looked up from her hands, “then you know it. But only one in a million wins the lottery.”

“My colleagues,” she said, nodding in the direction of the other women, “want to belong to someone.”

“And you?”

“I won’t marry just to marry,” Lila said.

“A girl after my own heart,” Helga Westfried proclaimed, beaming. “As for all the others, the suckers, well, let them sit in their prison.”

He sat on a wooden bench outside the Cardiology ward, his hands pressed together in front of his lips as though uttering an Indian greeting. His eyes were focused on the photograph of a tenderhearted nurse in a white cap holding up a finger to ask for quiet. A stretcher was rushed in bearing a young woman who appeared to be unconscious, her bare leg sticking out from under a blanket. A medic was saying that she had collapsed in the street, and a car had nearly run her over; no relatives had been located. The stretcher disappeared behind a door that closed. A frightening silence filled the corridor, and Elias rose from his chair and began pacing. The thought that his Lila could wind up on just such a stretcher, carried to safety but completely alone, caused a rush of anxiety to flow through him, capped by the shivers. Who would be contacted if she collapsed? Who would be at her side when she awakened? Who would speak with the doctors?

Elias told himself that he had to refrain from thinking such thoughts. After all, wasn’t he the one who always told her that thinking like that invited fears? He had been waiting for Lila for two hours, with no sign of her, when there was a change of shift. The nurse in charge asked if she could help him.

“I’m waiting to hear how the young woman is, the one who was brought in,” he lied.

“Are you a relative?” the nurse asked.