She didn’t need this language class, she explained. She had lived in this country for eight years now, a proud citizen for the past three. Her English was fair, she admitted, but required more polish if she were to succeed in the family business, where she dealt with the public daily. Almost immediately upon coming to the United States, her father had taken a huge portion of the family’s savings and invested it in the one thing that had stability, certain he would reap a profit in real estate. His first purchase was a twenty-room boardinghouse for the steady influx of immigrants from Europe who were looking to establish a foothold in Manhattan. Her mother’s primary job was as a homemaker, caring for Esther and her two younger brothers, and since the woman feared any discourse with these strange Yankees, it fell to Esther, the eldest, to run the office, rent rooms at the boardinghouse on the Lower East Side, then the two new high-rises on the West Side, where her father presided as landlord. She also dealt with the utility companies, prospective salesmen, painters, plumbers, and carpenters, rental fees, even the taxes. She was more than her father’s daughter. She was the face of EMI (Esther, Menashe, Isadore) Realty. Her English could not just be passable; it had to be impeccable.
Jacob listened, his eyes never leaving Esther’s face. He was mesmerized by her success story, a story he had little hope of accomplishing himself, not living in that small apartment with his elderly aunt and uncle, not bottling tasteless seltzer, but he also heard other things, things that were unsaid. Esther did not have a suitor. With the business and school, when would she have the time?
As the lesson resumed and he refilled his fountain pen from the inkwell and began an exercise on adjective comparisons and superlatives—good, better, best—Jacob felt relieved. The ten-minute break had run out before the beautiful twenty-two-year-old immigrant (he had soon learned her age) could ask his story. What would he say? How much could he tell without frightening her off? He had an extra day to think about it, though, for soon enough the class was dismissed and she was hurrying into the shiny black Oldsmobile.
After many more chats between Jacob and Esther during the class breaks and a few after class, Jacob slowly began to tell her about himself. How he had been born into a poor family in Raczki, how he had remained hidden for weeks and months in Frau Blanc’s hayloft, how he had escaped from under the Nazis’ watchful eyes moments before he heard the gunshots, smelled the dust in the air, as the rest were dumped into a mass grave. How when he had returned to the home where he grew up, there was nothing to keep him there. Perhaps one day he would tell her the whole story, even though the prospect scared him. Not even his aunt and uncle knew the full story, not even his dear friend Zalman, who always had known better than to ask. But this girl—well, if he could speak the words to anyone on this earth, it would be to Esther, whose face, whose body, he knew had already become home.
After a matter of only weeks, their classmates realized there was something special between the tall young man with the narrow face and the pretty girl with the coral lips and the flip in her brown hair. Jacob and Esther always occupied seats next to each other now, exchanging comments and giddy smiles each time Mr. Rutherford turned his back. And even as Mr. Polansky or Miss Jenick read their essays, Jacob would find his eye wandering toward Esther’s soft white hands, which remained firmly clasped atop the wooden desk. Jacob soon realized that their blossoming romance was already gossip for the students as they conversed during breaks. Sometimes as the couple whispered, heads bent together, they caught Mr. Rutherford, at his desk grading their papers, chuckling to himself.
One evening, as the two walked side by side down the staircase, just before they said goodbye, he readying himself for the four-block walk to the subway, she heading for the car across the street, Esther took his arm and pulled him close.
“Would you like to come to my parents’ apartment next Monday before the next assignment is due? I think, being that it’s a bit confusing, I might now need your help.” Jacob hoped she didn’t notice the blush that he felt spreading across his cheeks and, restraining himself from sweeping her up in his arms, simply nodded.
“Of course. I am available next Monday. Yes, that would be fine.”
She tore a page out of her notebook and quickly scribbled the address before running out the school doors. As he watched her open the passenger side of the car and settle in, Jacob wondered what it would be like to sit next to her in the front seat of a car, to walk down the street arm in arm, to come home to a house that was their own.