And Henrietta? Once, years ago, at one of the big parties we threw — I am fairly certain Ludvig wasn’t there, because I tried to think back after they got together and I don’t think they ever crossed paths, not in those years at least, and not through us — my husband announced to all our guests that he was going to get rid of his pipe, quit smoking. He was drunk. It’s both the best and worst of us that comes out when we drink, isn’t it? He didn’t want to quit; he wanted to have quit. And I think everyone understood that, saw the moment for what it was — an inebriated man saying Oh how I wish life was something else, something better. But she is not everyone; she is a special woman. Very special. At the end of the night, she handed me seven pipes. I didn’t know my husband had so many. “He’s going to need all the help he can get,” she said. Apparently, her uncle had died of throat cancer. Or it might have been her brother. I didn’t know her well at all then — I don’t think Saul Keningstein and my Saul were even in business yet, I think they had only just met, and we invited him and his wife to the party. So I was a little surprised. “The first step to beating addiction is removing the abused substance from the household,” she said. It was a caring gesture, I suppose. Of course she did sound a bit like she’d memorized a brochure. Who in their right mind would memorize a brochure? I’ve certainly never felt inspired to memorize a brochure, and Lord knows I’ve seen my share of them in my seventy-nine years. And one could argue, I suppose, that she shouldn’t have gone through our belongings looking for pipes; no one asked her to do that. I certainly didn’t ask her, and I was the only one who could, because it was my house. Mine and my Saul’s, of course, but why would he ask her to look for the pipes? He knew where they were, he was the one who put them wherever she found them. And he didn’t want them gone. It would have been quite a perverted little game for the two of them to play. And my husband was never like that. There were times when I wished he’d be a little more like that, in fact. Playful. But it wasn’t his nature. A man’s nature is not something you can change. Women who think otherwise end up divorced.
So my husband certainly didn’t ask her to do it, and I didn’t ask her to do it, and so, yes, you could say, I suppose, that it was presumptuous of her. Nosy. Ill intended. But I didn’t think that at all. I appreciated it, and I thought: What a caring gesture. I thought: Isn’t Saul Keningstein lucky, to have such a lovely woman for a wife. Truly.
* * *
It was towels, when they first got started, Saul Keningstein and my Saul. To be honest, I thought it was nonsense. I never liked Saul Keningstein much — he was a hustler, if you ask me. Every time he opened his mouth it was Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, Yolanda dear. And I always wanted to say Maybe every once in a while you should ask a question, Saul Keningstein. But he knew everything, so why should he ask? I remember I said to my Saul, I said This is nonsense. You are a doctor. What do you need to be selling towels for? But these were special towels, soft and airy like clouds in the sky, something America had never seen. I said Saul, you have been here your whole life almost and still you think like an immigrant. He was always trying to prove that he had the right to be here, that America made the right decision letting his family in when he was seven years old. What can you do? Being a doctor wasn’t enough. He had to do something new, a first in America. Even if it was a towel. So I said, Fine, fine. Just be careful, don’t invest too much. But I didn’t worry; he was responsible, my Saul. So responsible. And what did I know, anyway? Saul Keningstein was right, the towels did very well.
* * *
When I say that for the life of me I couldn’t guess what Ludvig and Henrietta have in common, please understand — I am not saying anything about them as people. I have absolutely nothing against them. They are both lovely. I’m making a statement about their relationship, is how you could put it. Although, well, that’s not right either. What do I know about their relationship? Only what I see. And they seem happy, I suppose, when one looks at them. The issue has to do with compatibility. I think the young generation pays little attention to the concept of compatibility. And that isn’t to say that they are young, Ludvig and Henrietta. They are not young. Ludvig went to medical school with my Saul, which means he’s more or less as old as I am. That is not young. I do not enjoy discussing it, but it is the truth. I refuse to be one of those old ladies who holds a shaking spoon over her soup and says “I am not old” or “I feel young.” Feelings don’t matter, behaviors do. People who don’t understand this simple fact are unemployed or incarcerated.
In plain English, it is a lie; when you hold a spoon over a bowl of soup and your hand is shaking, you do not feel young. You feel old. So I am old, and Ludvig is old, too. Henrietta is a little younger, but that doesn’t make her young. She is old. Henrietta might think she’s young. Her grandchildren come to visit and she tells them stories about the things she used to do when she was younger, but it is all one big exaggeration — she did not “run the union,” and people never “quivered at the sight of her”; she just answered the phone. Or she might have done a little more than answering the phone, and her boss certainly liked her — I will not go into the rumors about her and Mr. Burt, whether or not it was truly for him that she left Saul Keningstein and their children; perhaps it was only coincidence that they both disappeared at the same time — but that does not mean that she “ran the union.” She did not run the union. That is preposterous.
And who does something like that, anyway, leave? I don’t mean to be judgmental — Saul always used to say, Don’t be so judgmental, Yoli — but I never could understand it, to be honest. Leaving a man is one thing, though back then it was quite unheard of. But a mother leaving her own children for a whole year? I am not a judgmental woman, but that’s quite something. And when she came back, it was only to take the children away. Poor Saul Keningstein. He had his money and his ladies, but he was a different man after that, a pale man. If you marry a man, you’re not supposed to do anything that would change the color of his skin. That much I know. I never left Saul — forty-two years we were together, and not all of them easy. Don’t get me wrong — we were the best of friends, but forty-two years is a lifetime, and in any lifetime there’s hardship. But leaving? Never crossed my mind. And if we had children, well, I can only imagine. No doubt leaving would have been even further from my mind.
* * *
So Henrietta is a bit younger, yes, but she is old; they are both old. And people who are old should be wise, because if not that, what is the point? Nothing works like it used to. The body, I mean — it does not operate as it once did. Everything takes a long time — you want to make an omelet, you’d better have a couple of free hours. And the people who used to ask you about your day—How was your day, my sweet Yoli? — and the people you used to invite over when you threw parties, and the people who’d pick up the phone to call you when the Laundromat lost their favorite jacket — they’re all gone. So if you don’t have some wisdom to show, then I honestly don’t understand what the point of it all might be.
I don’t mean to sound suicidal. I am not suicidal. And I certainly do have my wisdom, thank God, even though that’s not a thing one is supposed to say about oneself. But it is true nonetheless; I am a wise woman, and when I have to go to the bathroom four minutes after I went to the bathroom the last time — at least I can tell myself, Yolanda, you are a wise woman, and you are wiser today than ever before thanks to all the years you’ve been on this earth. You know that expression “none the wiser”? That does not apply to me.