Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

Theresa was waiting for them when she got to the apartment. With the time change, it was four-thirty in the afternoon in New York, and nine-thirty at night for them on London time. Theresa couldn’t believe how beautiful the baby was, and said she looked just like her grandmother. There was something comforting about that too, as though her mother lived on in her daughter.

She handed the baby over to Theresa, and told her when to feed her from the stock of formula she had brought. She dressed quickly to go to Sam’s apartment.

When she got to Sam’s in a plain black wool dress and wool coat and flat shoes, there were about two dozen visitors milling around the apartment, and the family was seated around the dining table, speaking in soft voices, as people came to greet them. They had buried Sam’s father that morning, according to Jewish law.

Coco went to speak to Sam’s mother first, and she hugged Coco, and thanked her for coming.

“She came from London, Mom,” Sam said, suddenly standing next to her, and Coco looked up at him and smiled and hugged him too. Coco noticed immediately that neither of Sam’s sisters was there, and remembered that their mother had forbidden them to come to Chanukah, since both of them were converts to Christianity now. Sam’s brother was wearing a yarmulke and a big black hat, like the one the rabbi was wearing. Sam’s little brother was seventeen now, nearly eighteen.

Coco followed Sam out to the kitchen, where massive amounts of food were being prepared and put on trays, all of it kosher.

“No BLTs?” Coco whispered to him and he laughed.

“Ssshhhh…my mother can hear through stone walls.” As he said it, an attractive blond girl approached them, wearing no makeup and visibly pregnant. Coco knew instantly it was Tamar from the way she looked at Sam, and she thought the young woman’s hair looked stiff and odd, and she realized that she was wearing a wig, like the other Orthodox women. His mother’s was stylish and she had it done by her hairdresser. Tamar’s was unflattering and more obviously a wig, and it shocked her. It made her realize how different Sam’s life was now. He was steeped in Orthodox Judaism, with his mother, brother, and wife all Orthodox, even more so since his sisters had defected. His father had been the least Orthodox of all. She knew Sam had dreamed of being in a Reform synagogue when he was younger, or none at all. He had never been religious. She saw that he was wearing a black velvet yarmulke while they sat shiva for the next week.

He put an arm around Tamar when she came to stand next to him. She looked shyly at Coco in her chic black dress. Coco was as thin as she had been before the baby. Sam introduced them since they had never met before.

“Hello, Tamar, how are you feeling?” she asked, referring to the pregnancy. She felt guilty, knowing how ardently she had tried to dissuade Sam from marrying Tamar, and she didn’t feel any differently seeing her now. She didn’t seem like the right match for him, with her strict Orthodox traditions he didn’t believe in, and the ugly wig, which didn’t look natural. She wondered if Sam’s daughters would have to wear them too, if they had any. And the boys yarmulkes. She was sure they would. According to Sam, Tamar kept a strict home. Like only the most religious Orthodox women, Tamar shaved her head and only took her wig off at night when she went to bed and then covered her head with a scarf. Only Sam was allowed to see her without the wig, for modesty. She wondered if Sam wore a yarmulke all the time now to please his wife, and hadn’t told Coco.

“I feel better now,” Tamar answered Coco in a small voice. “I was pretty sick in the beginning, though.” She was five months pregnant, and was wearing a shapeless black dress that was too long for her. Everything about her seemed so colorless and dull. There was nothing exciting about her, but that was what Sam said he wanted. Stability, someone solid.

On his own, Sam was so much more sophisticated and worldly, and modern, but not with Tamar at his side. All Coco could see now as she looked at him was that he was trapped, stifled by traditions he didn’t like, surrounded by people who wanted to hold him back, and married to a woman who wanted to surround him with children he wasn’t ready for. She wanted to grab Sam by the hand and run out the door with him to freedom. He had given it up to marry Tamar because she was a “nice person.” That didn’t seem like enough. His sacrifice seemed larger than life to Coco, personified by his drab wife.

Coco stayed for two hours, talking quietly to Sam, and then said goodbye to Mrs. Stein. Tamar was sitting next to her. She looked like her daughter as they sat there. There was a small amount of sweet kosher wine being served, and everyone at the table had a glass. She and Sam had gotten drunk on a bottle of Manischewitz once, at fifteen. He stole it after Shabbat, and walked to her house carrying it in his jacket. It tasted like grape juice to Coco, and she drank too much of it and Sam had to sneak her into the apartment without her parents seeing them.

Sam rode down in the elevator with her to get her a cab, and they stood on the sidewalk talking for a few minutes. The memorial at the synagogue was the next morning.

“Does she wear a wig all the time?” Coco asked him, curious, and he nodded.

“Except in bed with me. It’s considered modest. No one is supposed to see her hair except me. She’s very religious so she shaves her head, and she wears a scarf in bed. I’m used to it now.” One could get used to anything, Coco thought, but traditions that made young women look old and dreary seemed so unnecessary. There certainly was no glamour in Sam’s life, and very little beauty. They knew now that they were having a boy, which in some ways was a relief. Everyone was happy for them.

“Maybe our kids will get married someday.” Coco smiled at him as they stood on the sidewalk in the chill November air. He wasn’t wearing a topcoat over his suit.

“It’s going to be strange not seeing my father every day at the office,” Sam said with sadness in his voice. “Who will I fight with at work?” There were tears in his eyes, and they spilled onto his cheeks as she took him into her arms and held him.

“You’ll get used to it. I promise. I felt that way about Mom and Dad at first, and then one day they just feel like they’re part of you, and they’re inside you and not outside.” He nodded, hoping she was right. “What will the service be like tomorrow?”

“Long. The women and men don’t sit together. They sit separately in shul. Men and women didn’t dance together at our wedding. I wanted to, and our families wouldn’t allow it. There was supposed to be a divider, but Tamar’s family insisted on separate rooms for the men and women for dancing.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of all this?” she asked him. “Of everyone making the rules for you?” Her mother’s words were still echoing in her head too.

“All the time, but this is how it has to be. It’s what is expected of me and what I signed on for. It’s familiar to me, Coco. It doesn’t shock me the way it does you.” But it still shocked her, and his family seemed much more strict and religious now than when they’d gone to grade school together, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed. Sam had said that his father occasionally ate non-kosher things too, but never told Sam’s mother. And now he was gone, and the poor woman was going to be alone. At least Sam had Tamar and they would have a family, and a baby to compensate for the loss.

“Has Ian surfaced again?” he asked her. He was impressed that she was dating him, although he was another flash guy who was never going to be there for her and said so.

“He came back a few weeks ago. He was in London the whole time and never called me,” she said wistfully. “He was writing.”