Adjusting his tie in the mirror, Jacob approached her, concerned.
“Are you ill, my dear? Is that why you’re still in bed?”
Esther opened one eye from beneath the covers.
“Not ill,” she mumbled, her mind still saturated by sleep. Jacob walked over to the side of the bed.
“Then what’s wrong?”
Rubbing her eyes now, she pushed off the yellow-and-gray blanket Jacob had brought from home and sat up. Jacob relaxed when he saw the familiar broad smile come to her face.
“Nothing is wrong, my love. Nothing at all. It’s just that it’s time for me to stop working, that’s all. Your time to take on the business, to be my father’s right-hand man. After all, my brothers will be leaving within a year’s time, and Papou will need you.”
“And what about you? I never meant to take your place.” He knitted his eyebrows together, stared into her eyes.
Esther’s face softened.
“Me? There is nothing I want more than to be your wife, to make you a home one day, to raise our children. Besides, I never much liked the business, anyway. Now come give me a kiss goodbye.”
Jacob hesitated for only a second, searching her eyes before leaning in. He had a feeling that his wife wasn’t being entirely truthful. She had never shown any sign that she was growing weary of the business; in fact, she was proud of the way she dealt with clients, enjoyed teaching him the ins and outs of real estate. But he had no time to deliberate the issue. He had a 9:00 a.m. meeting and he couldn’t be late. He would have to accept her words for what they were. He preferred to think of himself as a lucky man to have such a wife. A lucky man, indeed.
Life, like the ticking of a clock, settled into an orderly beat. After the couple had lived together for nearly a year, the apartment down the hall became available, and the two happily began to set up a place they could finally call their own. Jacob’s pride prevented him from accepting Boris’s offer of living rent-free, and he used his now-substantial earnings to finance the two-bedroom habitat. Most days, Esther and her mother spent their time perusing the wholesale warehouses for furniture. Although Esther had never fancied herself much of a shopper, her mother’s ardor for the task proved infectious, and the two set out on these missions with a glee and abandon Jacob had never before witnessed, nor could comprehend. One day, the two purchased a new round table with a Formica top for the kitchen; the following week, the small white refrigerator had been replaced by a larger-size appliance that defrosted automatically; and the week after that, Jacob came home to find Esther seated on a new turquoise silk couch that ran across the length of the wall, watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on a new thirty-six-inch Magnavox. Esther had also insisted that her beloved piano be handled by professional piano movers. At first, Jacob could not quite understand the need for such an extra expense. People whose job it was to move musical instruments?
One evening Jacob, looking slightly weathered from a long day’s work, came home to find Esther pinning the last fabric panel over the small window in the kitchen, which overlooked the alley down below. She turned slightly, gazing over her shoulder as he walked in. Jacob was trying to balance his black leather attaché case, rolled newspaper, metal thermos, and, nestled in the crook of his arm, a stack of mail he had picked up from the locked mailbox in the lobby. He threw his burden onto the new kitchen table, then tried to make a one-handed catch of the thermos as it rolled to the edge. He was not in time, and before Esther could react, the vessel had fallen off the table, sending a mocha-color stream across Esther’s shiny white linoleum.
“Whoops!” was all Jacob could manage as he stopped to grab the now-empty thermos while Esther rushed off the stool and began searching for a rag in the cabinet beneath the sink.
After removing his bowler and cotton jacket and hanging them up in the hall closet, Jacob returned to the kitchen and, as he encircled his wife’s waist, he felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. Was this a memory or just a long-buried dream? The feeling passed, and he sprinkled her slender neck with tiny kisses.
“What would I do without you, my star?”
Esther stifled a laugh at his use of a new nickname he had adopted for her. She seemed to rather like this shortened, though mangled, version of her name, which he claimed was a metaphor for her blue eyes, “just like shining stars.”
“You’d probably be an old and lonely bachelor, I bet,” she said, pushing him away as she rinsed out the soggy remnant of a sheet that had been repurposed. Jacob went into the bedroom and changed into his tan short-sleeve shirt and a pair of beige khakis. When he returned, Esther was already ladling a large helping of steaming carrots to accompany the slices of meat loaf and boiled potatoes on his plate. He guessed there would be a refreshing dessert after the meal, a Jell-O and fruit mold left over from the night before, a recipe his wife had picked up from one of her housekeeping magazines. Jacob could not help but wonder what he would be eating if he had never met her. Maybe another salami sandwich, as he often had for dinner after a long day at the seltzer-bottling company. Along with a bag of potato chips. Esther was right. He would have been an old and lonely bachelor without her.