But what choice did she have? As a woman, a married woman, she had no business running a real estate office. She’d be the object of gossip among the tenants and other building owners, but Jacob, her husband, would have suffered the worst of it. What kind of a man allows his wife to handle business dealings, leaving the house at dawn, and returning home with an empty thermos and tired feet? No, Esther had made her decision long ago that she could never allow her Jacob to endure such humiliation. And so, with not a little convincing from her mother, she had gone to Boris one evening as he sat in his favorite armchair by the large window. She’d kneeled next to him, placing her head on his knee. As Esther lay awake late into the night, she would replay their conversation in her head.
Using her pet name for him, she had convinced her papou to make Jacob a part of the business. At first, he had been surprised by her request. Boris was not like most men, who believed that their daughters should forever remain cooking soups and darning old socks.
“But my dear, you of all my children have a talent for it! You even convinced me to send you to school to learn English so that you could better speak with the tenants and businessmen. Why would you want to give all that up?”
Esther opened her blue eyes wide and looked up at her father, the way she had often done as a child, portraying the picture of innocence.
“Oh, Papou, I’ll soon be a married woman with household obligations to take up my time, and maybe a family one day. It’s Jacob who needs a step up now. He’ll catch on quick, I can assure you. Jacob is too smart to be a bottle stacker for the rest of his life. And besides, I’m getting somewhat tired of dealing with people’s complaints night and day, tallying numbers when I’d much rather be home baking a challah for Friday nights.”
She had lied, and it had taken all her strength that evening not to turn away, to hold back the tears that were straining at the corners of her eyes. As usual, Boris had relented to his daughter’s wishes, making Jacob an offer as promised on their wedding day. But the deed to their home had been his idea and a surprise to the daughter who had deceived them all.
As Esther slowly loosened her control over the business, letting Jacob take over first one project, then another, as she immersed herself into shopping and decorating the apartment and then a home, the regret would subside. And then, after Gary was born, there were even days when she truly gave the missed opportunities little thought. But now, with Jacob away at work most of the time, and Gary attending public school, she had begun to feel the yearning once again, more than she had before. She wondered what it would be like to fill the void in her heart with a job, if not in real estate, then maybe as a music teacher. Or maybe something else. Maybe another baby.
When he walked through the door, Jacob had not even bothered to remove the jacket of his new three-piece Louis Cardin suit or place his attaché case in the closet. Instead, dragging his feet across the floor, he plopped down on the couch next to his wife, who was watching an I Dream of Jeannie rerun, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. In that moment, she assessed Jacob’s face, which had assumed the dull gray color of the TV cabinet. And yet, with the bright-green eyes and the dimple in his chin, after nearly sixteen years, he was still the handsomest man she had ever known.
“You work too hard,” she said, returning her gaze to the TV screen. It was a phrase she had uttered nearly each evening since the death of her father over two years earlier. Jacob ignored her, his eyes scanning the room.
“Where’s Gary? Doing homework?”
She turned again to look at him and placed one hand on his knee.
“Gary’s been asleep for nearly two hours, dear. It’s almost ten o’clock.”
He lifted his wrist as if to look at his watch, then let his arm fall.
“I hadn’t realized. It’s been a tough day.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, standing. “I’ve got meatballs and spaghetti I can warm up on the stove.” He raised an arm to stop her.
“Don’t bother. I’m not very hungry anyway. I’ll just boil myself a hot dog. I’m sure we’ve got a package of Hebrew National in the fridge.”
Esther settled back on the sofa pillow and listened as the refrigerator door creaked open, then shut, and the pans rattled as Jacob removed a pot from a shelf. She couldn’t pay much attention to the show now. When she entered the kitchen, Jacob was taking his first bite of a frank, tasteless without mustard or sauerkraut, but he seemed fairly pleased with it anyway. She put on the apron, which was hanging over a chair, and began washing the dinner dishes that she had been too tired to tackle earlier.