Esther’s eyes remained steady on the woman with the long legs and athletic build who had barged her way into Esther’s home. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a smile come to her face. She did not mind the neighbor’s nosy questions, her presumptuous statements and bossy manner. And now, looking at the round curves of her cheeks, her soft hazel eyes, she realized something about Florrie reminded her of her old friend Sophie, who had moved to Baldwin, Long Island, just before Esther married, and since then Esther hadn’t heard a peep from her. Not even a letter.
Florrie was standing by the kitchen counter examining a bowl of McIntosh apples.
“Where’d you buy these? In a supermarket? You should try Weiman’s. I know the owner’s son. They have the best produce. Get it straight from the orchard in New Jersey. I’ll take you there sometime.”
Without waiting for a response, Florrie glanced at the gold Bulova watch on her wrist, exclaiming, “Holy cow! It’s nearly five o’clock! I’ve got to get my beef stew on the fire for Sid. He likes all the juices from the meat and carrots cooked in just so. I’ll give you the recipe sometime!”
Then, without another word, she went to the front door, which Esther hadn’t bothered to lock, put her finger to her lips, touched the new mezuzah, which Esther’s parents had purchased for her in Israel, and left. Esther remained seated, staring at the closed door for some minutes. When she stood up to finish the vacuuming, she realized that the smile she had greeted her new neighbor with was still on her.
Sometimes when Jacob was asleep at night, Esther would slip out of bed, move carefully down the hall to the bathroom, and switch on the light. Then she would turn to the mirror, which reflected the pink and white tiles on the walls, and examine the image in front of her. Brown hair almost, but not quite, to her shoulders, longer than she had ever had it since she was a kid. Naturally wavy, there was that bob, the little wave suspended above her eyebrow. No sign of gray yet, but when there was, she knew she would color it first thing, not at all like Florrie, who didn’t seem to be bothered by her streaks. Her lips, unpainted now, were fuller than she would have liked, her nose a little too pert. But it was her eyes, she knew, that were her outstanding feature. Blue like the sky on a sunny day, her father used to say when she was little. They were framed by eyebrows that were like her mother’s, who was darker by nature, and needed plucking only occasionally, and lashes that waved upward. Her features were set in a cloud of ivory, unobstructed yet by worry lines or wrinkles.
Esther would lean forward like this, elbows on the bathroom counter, nose almost touching the reflection, and think. A “pretty girl,” as her father would say; “my beauty” is how Jacob put it. She knew they were right, well, almost. She was pretty enough, and she didn’t need more than that. Often, on these nights with the moon still high in the sky, its light peeking between the edges of the white horizontal blinds, she would imagine herself a very old lady. The idea didn’t frighten her; on the contrary, the thought of growing old was a source of comfort. She and Jacob sitting on rockers on the front porch in the way of old people, waiting patiently for the grandchildren to arrive. And there would always be visitors at the home, sometimes one of their own children, six in all, followed by the grandkids, boys climbing up on Jacob’s lap until, after some coaxing, he got up shakily to have a game of catch in the yard. Meanwhile, she would walk back into the house with a couple of the girls and teach them the notes of the piano or how to cook a vegetable-filled chicken soup the way her mother had taught her when she was a girl. Often Zalman would walk over, joined by his own wife and family, and then they would all reminisce about the days when he lived in the extra bedroom before owning his own house, with its peaked roof and a large picture window. Nevertheless, he would always be there, sitting on the porch or at the kitchen table where all the important gatherings would take place. All under the roof that the three of them had constructed only a few months earlier.
And they would see the seasons right there at her own front door, something she was never able to do in her old apartment. In the fall, when the leaves dropped slowly off the grand oak at the curb in abundant carpets of golds and reds, she would often stand at the front door, where she would peek through the screen and drink in the brisk air. And then, when icy winds began to swirl around the house and shake the timbers in a threatening way, she would wrap Jacob’s woolen blanket around her shoulders and sip the tomato soup she had cooked earlier that day and sit by the sliders and look out at the backyard as drifts of snow fell in crystal piles until the bare-limbed trees looked like winter angels waiting for the sun of an incipient spring. And then it would begin all over again: the tiny white buds timidly arising from the branches of the willows, the yellow green blades of grass she would pick, holding them close to her nose, like feathers against the skin as she inhaled the intoxicating scent of spring. From then on they would spend their days outdoors, waving to the passersby who were always on their way somewhere. Jacob and Esther would mark the time by the seasons and the years passed, but the memories stayed, solid and good. These images flew through Esther’s mind as she stared for minutes into the mirror, looking at her reflection and the dreams she had for them both in Jacob’s house.