“I mean, how long has it been since this guy died?” Ya’akov held up his hands, as if they were supported by logic. “Tell me you haven’t considered this.”
“What do you know about loss?” I said.
“Actually, a lot. When I was in Jerusalem I did home visits with my yeshiva to bring a little tikva”—already he and Beth had begun to pepper their sentences with Hebrew, their inside jokes with God—“back into the lives of people who had lost family in the bombings, and—”
“Ya’akov.” Beth shot the fool a look he deserved. “My father knows what he’s doing. He’s a grown man.”
“Thank you, Beth,” I said. “Listen, why don’t you come over tomorrow and spend the day with me and Sveta? Lightning won’t strike if you miss services just this once.”
“I like going.”
“But why?”
“I just do. Why do you care so much?” She suddenly sounded like the old Beth, and I had a glimpse of how she might have been as a lawyer, her delivery so sharp I felt my own voice wobble when I said, “No, really. I mean — what about it do you love?” I honestly wanted to know.
“Something about stepping into that sanctuary where people have been singing the same melodies for hundreds of years. It’s like I finally belong somewhere,” she said, her tone softening, and though I expected her blue eyes to be wild with fervor, they were bright and calm. “All these people in shul, they’re like my safety net,” she said, and I stood there blinking: wasn’t it enough to fall back on me?
“Now that you’re here,” she said, “I wanted to tell you that—”
“We’re pregnant,” Ya’akov said, coming behind her and stroking her flat belly.
He gathered me into a hug, his skinny arms tight and firm, while I stood there, my feet cemented to the floor. I swallowed a pain in my throat, but it came back up again.
“What news!” I said, sliding out of Ya’akov’s hug. “Does Mom know?”
“I haven’t told her yet,” Beth said. “I wanted you to be the first to hear.”
“Well,” Ya’akov said, “after Reb Yandorf and the rebbetzen, you’re the first.”
I kissed her cheek. She even smelled like a mother, of sweat and cooking oil and a dozen oniony dinners. “I’m so happy for you,” I tried. “That’s wonderful.”
“Thanks.” Then she glanced at me with more concern than a daughter should. “You’re really sure Sveta’s making you happy, too?”
That was the understatement of the century. I loved waking up beside Sveta, watching her rub sleep seeds from her large brown eyes. I loved how quickly we slept together, as if neither of us could muster a reason to hold back. And I loved the sex itself, which was undeniably, almost unbelievably, good. I loved watching her face scrunch up and then go slack, and I loved the moment right after, when she would huddle into the nook of my arm and run a hand over my hairy chest, calling me her big bear. I loved that she came to Friday night dinner at Ya’akov and Beth’s and never let her eyes glaze during the blessings, though I’m sure she was bored nearly to sleep. I loved that she was kind to them, and I loved the quiet dignity she maintained when refusing to join in on the prayers — letting them know that growing up, she hadn’t been allowed to learn them — rather than snapping at Ya’akov, as I often did, to hurry up already so we could eat. Those moments at the dinner table, I felt as if Sveta were teaching me something important: that I didn’t need to make every opinion known, didn’t need to be filterless, that sometimes the best thing was to sit quietly and smile and sip my wine. I loved the weekends, when we would take the paper to the park and spend all day lazing around the meadow, watching the neighborhood parade by with its strollers and dogs. I loved kissing her in that meadow, on the street, on the subway platform, just before the train roared into view — as if we were the only ones who existed, as if the entire city were being carried away in a tornado, and we were caught smack in the center of its glorious gray swirl.
Of course there were nights when I heard her slip out of bed after the lights had been off for hours. As my eyes settled into the darkness of the room, I’d see her standing by the window, lifting a book or a paperweight off my shelf. Not really looking at the object, just turning it over in her hands like she’d forgotten its function. Usually I rolled on my side and fell back asleep, knowing at some point she would return to bed — after all, when Gail first left, I’d found myself wandering the rooms of my apartment, opening cupboards or flicking on lights, then forgetting why I had entered the room in the first place.
But one night — it was October, a work night, two weeks after I’d learned Beth was pregnant — I put on my slippers and followed Sveta’s footsteps down the hall. I found her on her knees in the bathroom, face cupped in her hands, weeping. She was in one of my undershirts, so baggy it reached her knees, and the sight of her on my bathroom floor was — well, it just was. The room was dark, but there was enough moon coming in from the window that her skin lit up white. I had no idea what it meant to find her hunched on my tiled floor in tears, and to be honest, I didn’t want to know — who would interrupt a moment like that to ask if she was having, like the fool would suggest, a meltdown? — so I knelt beside her and stroked that soft ambiguous space between her back and her behind. I wiped her damp face with the heel of my hand, and then I asked her, just like that, and she said yes.
WE’D BOTH learned that the big things you plan in life never live up, so we kept it small at a nearby synagogue. I would have preferred to sidestep all the Orthodox malarkey and have the wedding at City Hall, but then Beth wouldn’t have come, and Sveta, maybe because of her secular background, said she couldn’t care less where the ceremony was held. Sveta’s cousin Galina flew in from Chicago and carried flowers down the aisle. She looked older than Sveta, late forties at least, with dark curly hair and delicate wrists that suggested she had once been slender. I hated thinking she had probably been at Sveta’s first wedding, too, wearing that same puffed pastry dress, so I concentrated on the clacking sound my Oxfords made as she scattered roses across the room.
Under the chuppah Sveta looked especially flush-faced and pretty, wearing a silky dress that stopped at her ankles. Saying the vows was much easier the second time around. While the rabbi droned on about the seven blessings and the history of the ketubah, Sveta started to cry: not enough to smear her makeup, but enough for me to notice. For a second, I wondered if she was scared to be going through this again. Or, worse, if she feared the whole thing was all wrong. But then Sveta gave me one of her smiles — just a flash of teeth, and then it was all about that lower lip — and I thought, My God, this woman has tears of joy for me. I raised my foot above the glass and the guests broke into applause.
THE NEXT afternoon, we were off on a honeymoon to Ukraine. Beth and Ya’akov drove us to the airport. The women were quiet in the backseat: Beth nauseated and pale, small hands stroking her stomach; Sveta dozing with her cheek against the window, still tired from the wedding. Sunlight caught her gold band and I twisted my own; when Sveta slipped it on the night before it was as if it had always been there, as if there was never an interim when my finger was bare. We veered onto the Triborough Bridge and the skyline rushed into focus, so miniature and grand. I nudged Sveta to look up, but she was groggy and slow, and by the time she opened her eyes it had disappeared from her view.