“Okay, so—dictionary or not, you speak pretty great English. How’d you learn?”
“Languages were important to my mother,” she says. “So she hired different tutors for my education. One for the English, one for the French, even the student from the Hildesheimer Akademie für das hebräisch. Though my Hebrew is very light.”
“Wow,” says the boy. “Wow. I hear this and I’m like… Holy mackerel.”
Rachel does not know what this means, of course, but can tell from his expression that she is drawing him in, just like the sweet taste of the egg cream from the straw.
“I mean, I had some Spanish in high school. Erasmus Hall High on Flatbush Av’—so public school kid all the way here. I can still maybe remember how to ask where the bathroom is, I think. Dónde es? Dónde está el bañoá? Or something like that.” He shrugs and chuckles. “But Hebrew? Hebrew and I pretty well parted company after my bar mitzvah.” Saying this, he chomps into his sandwich. The Reuben with extra Russian. Chewing and swallowing in a hurry, so he can ask, “How’s your knish?”
“Oh, it is good,” she says, nodding. “So big.” She cuts off another small forkful and slips it into her mouth. Many times with strangers, she cannot eat in front of them. But she finds that with this boy, she has an appetite.
“Yeah, ya can’t beat Katz’s.” He nods sagely. “That’s all I gotta say.” When he leaves a spot of dressing on the corner of his lips, she reaches over and wipes it away with her thumb. His eyes widen at the touch, and he confesses the truth. “I gotta tell you. I am just—what? Gobsmacked. That’s it. That’s what I am. I am just absolutely gobsmacked by you, Rachel Morgenstern.”
Incomprehensible. “This is good?” she asks with hope.
“You can’t get better than gobsmacked, my friend. It’s the top of the line.”
Top of the line? Also incomprehensible. But she smiles at his beaming expression.
“So,” he says and hunches forward. “Are you a skater?”
She blinks. “Skater?”
“Ya know. On the ice. An ice-skater.”
“Oh. Yes,” she answers. “Ha! Very long ago. There was the Rousseau-Insel—uh, which is the island in the Tiergarten. I would go there with friends to skate on Sundays in the wintertime. But”—she expels a breath—“then the Nazis came, and Jews were no longer permitted.”
Immediately, she feels the conversation wobble. Immediately, she tastes regret. Is she stupid? Why did she speak so?
“Ah,” says the boy in response. His face grows dim, and she can feel him recede from her. She thinks he has a strong male face, and she finds that she has a desire to weave her fingers through his mop of impossibly curly hair. But the space has clouded between them. She has opened up a divide. It’s only that she has lived so long under the laws against this or against that, they became rather commonplace to her. Words slip out because she forgets that not everyone’s daily existence was stamped by the Nürnberger Laws.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel tells him. “I shouldn’t be speaking of this. It is not so polite, I think.”
“No, no,” he answers quickly, his voice gaining a higher pitch. “It’s fine. It’s fine,” he repeats. But is it? She cannot tell. He catches a breath but seems somewhat bewildered over how to proceed. So it’s Rachel who decides to lean forward this time. If she has opened a divide, then she must find a way for them to leap it. Elbows folded on the tabletop under her breasts, she bends her shoulders toward him, closing the gap. “May I have a taste of your pickle?” she asks and watches him blush.
The first time the boy meets with her for a rendezvous, it is called “a date.” They go to the ice-skating rink in Radio City. She does not own a pair of skates, and the ones available for rent hurt her feet. Such high arches, her mother always said. She grimaces as she stands on the skate blades and wobbles.
“Whatssa matter?” the boy wants to know. And when she tells him, he knows immediately what the problem is. The problem is that they aren’t laced properly. “Sit,” he says. “I’ll do it for you.”
And to her surprise, he is right. “Can you feel your toes?” he asks after he yanks the laces taut.
Is this a test? What is the correct answer? “No,” she says. “I cannot.”
“Good. That means they’re nice and tight.”
She is relieved. She has given the correct answer! She can also tell that he is not wrong. Even while she’s sitting there on the bench, the skates feel comfortably snug instead of painful. The fact that this boy knows better how to lace her skates than her? Does it also irritate her slightly? A bit perhaps. She does not like to be bested at anything, even the art of skate lacing. But at the same time, he is so very competent. She realizes she wants to touch him. She holds on to his shoulder as she stands to test her balance, even though she does not need to do so.
“How’s it feel?” he asks.
“Good,” says she, then pushes up on the blades and kisses him on the lips. Just a small kiss. A peck, not much more. Just a Küsschen. But when he smiles at her in surprise, she is surprised that she is smiling back.
“Well. Thanks,” he says in a pleasantly awkward way.
“You are welcomed,” Rachel replies.
The boy blinks. Swallows. Then suddenly bends forward and returns the kiss she’d given him.
“That was nice,” he informs her with a certain profundity weighting his voice as their lips part. “That was a nice kiss.”
Out in the rink, music is playing over the loudspeaker. Calliope music. Carousel music, with a gusty melody that turns its own circles. Rachel is happy to feel her muscles moving as she pushes off onto the ice, holding on to Aaron’s arm. Happy to feel the fresh chill on her face, and soon enough, she feels the swift balance of her body as they whoosh around the inner lane, letting the momentum carry them. The boy grips her hand in his, and they let themselves float into the long straightaway.
***
That night, on the Lower East Side as Rachel tries to sleep, she feels a strange energy vibrating through her body. As if her body is waking up. Returning to life. Returning to something she feared was lost. Her desire to create. The next day, she introduces something new into the flat she shares with her uncle. A piece of Masonite board. Not very large. Nowhere near the size for big ideas or a giant talent. But big enough to receive paint. Odd shapes emerge. Ghostly fumes. Nothing living, but the colors—blues, purples, thin grays—rise up like chimney smoke. When her uncle sees what she is doing, he frowns thoughtfully. “Is this a painting?” he asks. She, however, is not prepared to answer that question.
Three weeks later—or was it only two?—Aaron takes her to a theater on Broadway. There’s singing and laughter in the play. The audience laughs, Aaron laughs, so Rachel laughs too, timing her laughter to match his, even though she doesn’t really follow what’s happening onstage. Still, the laughter makes her feel light.
Later, they go to a homey, all-night doughnut shop on the corner of 14th Street and Seventh. The coffee is overheated and bitter, and the doughnuts are greasy with sugar. But it’s a busy concern even after midnight, and Rachel and Aaron share the counter with other night owls. Aaron is taking the opportunity to instruct Rachel on the proper dunking technique, using a plain brown old-fashioned.
“See,” he instructs, dunking the doughnut into his coffee cup, “now this is a regulation dunking. Grasp the doughnut with two fingers positioned on the forward area, and the third finger to the rear in a support role. Then lower the doughnut at a steady but moderate pace into the coffee. And here’s the essential part,” he stresses. “Two dunks, no more, for maximum exposure to the coffee flavorfulness without endangering the all-important doughnut integrity. Remove doughnut from coffee, followed by one single lightly applied tap on the rim of the cup to prevent dripping, then raise doughnut to mouth and…” He demonstrates by biting firmly into the doughnut and chewing with gusto. “Mmmmm” is what he has to say about this sort of perfection. “The result? Doughnut paradise.”