Chapter Text
“Everyone gazed, everyone praised, but no one, not a king or nobleman, or even an ordinary citizen, approached as an eager petitioner to marriage.”
Metamorphoses, Apuleius
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“This soup is delicious, Mrs. Jacobs.”
The soup was delicious. Mama’s soup was never not delicious. But if David never again had to sit at a table with a strange girl whose primary conversational attribute was talking about how delicious the damn soup was, it would be too soon.
Mama, however, seemed not to have the same reservations. She nodded across the table at the girl and smiled. “Thank you, Malka. I’ll send you home with the recipe—if you don’t think your mama would mind.”
Malka shook her nut-brown head, glossy curls bouncing against her shoulders. “Oh no. Ima doesn’t—well, cooking isn’t her favorite chore. She much prefers the cleaning up—and the rest of us quite prefer that’s all she does too. Now that I’m old enough, I look after most of the cooking.”
Malka looked hopefully at David; David looked at the carrots disintegrating in the bottom of his soup bowl.
Mama cleared her throat. “Oh, well. Do you hear that, David? A girl what knows her way around the kitchen.”
“Hmm.” David did not look up, but he could certainly feel Mama’s eyes boring into the top of his head. Next to him, Les snickered into his spoon.
“Um—and what’s your favorite dish, David?” Malka asked. David raised his head, just slightly, and he could see that she was trying very hard to smile. Her bottom lip slid between her teeth, and she glanced back at him with nervous brown eyes.
She had a sweet voice, David thought. And she was certainly pretty. But—
These dinners had been going on for months now, and even though David kept waiting for them to get easier, they never did. He would drag himself home from school, and there would be another version of the same girl seated at the table with Mama. Always pretty, always soft-spoken, always someone who David had known of for years, but that he didn’t really know at all. The girls would sip their tea and chat with Mama and watch David with an aggressive kind of hope that made him want to slip under the table and never come back up again—like Malka was watching him now. He ducked his head back down.
It all made David feel like a heel. He could never give them what they wanted. The girls. Mama. Even himself.
“David?”
David shook himself. “What?”
Les, ever helpful, snorted.
“Your favorite thing to eat?” Mama pressed.
David shrugged. “I—oh, I don’t know. Nothing special, I guess.”
“Oh,” Malka said, her voice soft. She set her spoon gently on the table.
“He loves second-day cholent,” Les put in. David kicked him in the ankle.
“Les,” Mama warned, and David knew the smile plastered to her face was dangerous. She looked back to Malka. “He loves fresh rye bread. Don’t you David?”
“Uh, sure.” Love might have been a strong word, but David didn’t think it would do to contradict Mama just then.
Malka’s hands fidgeted in her lap. For a moment, the only sound was Les chomping, loudly, on the bowl of his spoon. David’s stomach coiled into a hard knot, and he tried to look anywhere but at Malka—even though he could practically feel how much she wanted him to.
“Do you, uh, do you bake, Malka?” Mama asked.
“Of course,” Malka said, and David heard the relief in her voice. She smiled, and her cheeks colored in a way that David wished made him feel anything other than slightly nauseous. “Aba says—well, I don’t want to boast, but Aba says my challah is almost too pretty to eat.”
“But you do, right?” David heard himself say.
Malka’s forehead crinkled. “What?”
David didn’t know why, but he looked right at Malka’s pretty pink face and kept talking. “Eat it? You eat the bread. You don’t just sit there and look at it?”
Malka froze. Les’ spoon snapped against his teeth, the handle sticking straight out from between his lips.
“David!” Mama hissed.
“No, it’s fine,” Malka said, her voice wavering the slightest bit. She met David’s eyes and did not let them go. “We eat it. And it’s good too.”
“I’m sure it is,” David replied acidly, but he hoped that no one saw him gulp.
Malka stared at him, and Mama’s eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them. He wondered idly if Les had swallowed his spoon.
Malka slid her chair carefully away from the table. “I’d better—”
“Malka, would you—” Mama began, and then she noticed that Malka was on her feet. “You’re not going? Wouldn’t you like some tea?”
Malka shook her head, her gaze still fixed on David; he felt the blood simmering under his own cheeks. Malka did not want him to look at her anymore, and David wished that she would stop looking at him. He felt like she could see beneath his skin, that she knew how ugly he was inside. He certainly hadn’t given her any reason to doubt it.
“No. No, thank you, Mrs. Jacobs.”
“David, would you walk her—”
“I’m all right, thank you,” Malka interrupted, and David took a shuddering breath as her eyes pulled away from his face. She smiled politely at Mama. “It isn’t far.”
Mama stood. “All right, dear. If you insist.”
“I’m fine. Thank you. Thank you so much for dinner. I’ll, uh, I’ll get that recipe from you another time.” Malka glanced back at David, just for a moment. “I suppose I’ll see you around?” She didn’t sound as though she was looking forward to the prospect, and David was ashamed of his own relief.
“Yes,” he said without looking at her. “See you.”
The door clicked shut. Les leaned over the table and let his spoon drop out of his mouth; it landed with a dull thud. He looked at David, mouth still agape, and David stared back into his soup bowl, waiting.
“David Jacobs.” Mama’s voice was low, not quite a snarl. David shrank down in his chair.
“What?”
She shook her head. “You were so rude to that poor girl.”
“It was hilarious,” Les quipped.
Mama’s eyes flashed; hand to God, they flashed. “Les—”
“I wasn’t rude,” David said, but his voice was weak. He tried to ignore the way his stomach lurched at the lie.
Les laughed. “Does she sit and look at the bread?”
“She said it was too pretty to eat,” David said stupidly.
“And you—” Mama snapped, “—are smart enough to know an expression when you hear one. And to know what is rude and what is not.”
“Is he, though?” Les asked.
Mama shook her head. “Les. To your room.”
“You know I can hear from there?”
“Les!”
“Yes, Mama,” Les said, only slightly chastened. He excused himself, cuffing David on the shoulder as he went. David knew he would be listening from their room.
“And we will certainly discuss your table manners later,” Mama called after Les, mopping her face with her hand. She sank into the chair next to David. “I swear, the two of you are going to be my end.”
David sighed. “I’m—”
“Don’t say that you’re sorry.”
“But I am.”
“I don’t think that is true,” Mama said. “You—I think you wanted to hurt her. You were deliberately cruel.”
David’s breath caught. “Mama, I—”
“I do not like what I just saw, David. That is not who you are.”
David swallowed the words on his tongue, forcing them back down into his roiling gut. It is who I am. I don’t know how to be who I was. Not when they look at me like that.
“You don’t have anything to say?” Mama demanded.
David shrugged. “I didn’t mean to—I just—what’s the point, Mama? All these girls. I—I’m not ready for all of this. Not yet.”
Mama sighed. “You’re not a child anymore, tateleh. From children your age should come other children.”
David blinked back at her.
“Am I wrong?”
“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “More grandchildren? Sarah already has Isaac, and—”
Mama bristled. “This is not about your sister or more grandchildren; this is about you.”
“What about me?”
“You need someone to start a family with. Someone to take care of you.”
David stared down at the lumpy chunks of carrot in his bowl. “I can take care of myself,” he said without conviction.
“I’m not so sure that you can. And you should not have to. Don’t you want someone to grow old with?”
David closed his eyes. Yes. He did want that. More than anything. But he knew he couldn’t have it. Not the way Mama expected him to. Probably not at all.
But he couldn’t tell Mama that. “I have time,” he said.
“Not as much as you think,” Mama said. She reached for his hand, and David let her take it. “You are—Daveleh, you could have your pick, you know? The girls at shul have been losing their heads over you for years. You are handsome, smart—normally kind.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Yes, well, I think it would have been nice for Malka to hear that.”
“She’s the fifth girl this month!” David sputtered, pulling his hand away.
Mama leaned forward. “And why aren’t any of them good enough, huh?”
David shook his head. “Mama, I—”
She sagged backward against her own chair. “I’m sorry. I know—I know you know your own mind. And your will has always been strong—sometimes stronger than I’d like. But tateleh, I worry.”
“About what?”
“You!”
“I’m fine,” David said softly. He scraped his spoon against the bottom of his bowl. A carrot turned over, and he flattened it with the tip of the spoon, watching its orange flesh smash in all directions. “There’s nothing for you to—I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Mama asked.
“What?”
“Are you fine?”
David did not look up. He crushed another carrot. “I just said that I was.”
“Saying and being are not the same.”
“I’m fine, Mama,” he said again.
“I don’t think you are,” Mama said, and she inched closer to him again. David did not flinch away when she put her hand on his shoulder, even though he wanted to. “If you don’t like Malka, that’s fine. I don’t want that you should be with the wrong girl. But you have not been yourself for a long while. You go to work, you come home, you spend hours marking papers. And then you get up and do it again the next day, and the next…”
David shrugged, and he let his spoon go, letting the metal clang against the ceramic lip of the bowl. “That’s what work is, Mama.”
“Yes, but work is only part of life, David. It is necessary, not something that feeds the soul.”
“I—do other things.”
“What are these other things?”
“I read. I pray. I spend time with—with Jack—” David cleared his throat, trying to ignore the jolt in his stomach at the name; Mama didn’t seem to notice. “—and the other guys,” he finished lamely.
Mama rolled her eyes. “Yes, and when you do that, you drink and play cards. This is not what I mean.”
“Mama—”
“You’re nearly twenty-three, David.”
“So?” He shoved his soup bowl away.
“So. It’s time to start your life.”
“I have,” David insisted. “I have a job, I—”
Mama reached for his bowl and stacked it neatly in Les’. She did not look at David as she fished Les’ spoon off the tablecloth and dropped it into the nest of bowls. It clanked against David’s, and the sound made him jump. Mama saw. She always saw.
“You sleep in the same room that you’ve slept in since you were eleven-years-old. Don’t you want a place of your own? A family?”
“You’re my family.” And David knew they would have to be enough; that he would stay in the same little room as long as he could, letting his parents love and worry over him, and pretending that he couldn’t possibly want anything more. Because he shouldn’t.
Mama smiled sadly. “You know what I mean, tateleh.”
“I—I don’t know,” David replied.
He fumbled across the table for Mama’s bowl and handed it back to her. She balanced it on top of the stack and excused herself from the table so that she could start the dishes. But David could feel that she wasn’t done speaking. He heard the rattle of the sink pump behind him, and Mama sighed.
“What are you so afraid of?” she asked, her voice soft under the rush of water from the pump.
The water slapped against the bottom of the kettle. A match snapped as she moved to light the stove. David’s breath was ragged and just a little too quick. He did not turn to look at Mama. Instead, he folded his hands together on the table top, knuckles white and nails digging into the backs of his hands.
“I’m not afraid.”
But he was. David knew that the feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he sat at the table with one of these girls was some version of fear. It was stupid. Pretty Malka with her brandy brown eyes and soft curls wasn’t scary, not really. But she was everything that David had always known he was expected to want. And he didn’t. He couldn’t make himself want her or any of the others. And that was why he was afraid. Because if they knew what David wanted, who David wanted, he wouldn’t have a family at all.
At least, he thought he wouldn’t. And it wasn’t as if he could just ask.
Could he?
David turned, slouching his arm against the back of his chair. Mama’s back was to him, her thin shoulders tight as she lifted the heavy kettle and carefully poured the steaming water back into the basin.
“I—” he said to Mama’s back, “I don’t—I—I guess I just want to make my own choice.”
“We’re not trying to make your decisions, David,” Mama said. She set the kettle back on the range and rolled up her sleeves. She grabbed up the soap and plunged her hands into the scalding water as though it were nothing, and she did not look back at David. “Papa and I—we’ve been arranging these dinners because we weren’t sure if you felt comfortable—”
“I—well, I—” David began, but he could not finish.
Mama grabbed for the soup bowls and dropped them in the basin. David watched the graceful, practiced motion of her hands; Mama never faltered.
“You should feel confident, tateleh. Pride is a complicated thing, I know, but you must know that any girl would be truly lucky to have you.”
“Thank you,” David said, but his voice was barely a whisper.
He heard the soap plop under the water, and this time, Mama spun around to face him. “It’s true, tateleh. Is it that you don’t believe what everyone else sees?”
“Everyone else? Mama—”
“Five girls in a month, David, and plenty more where that came from. For now,” Mama said with a sigh. “Soon, there won’t be five girls to have by in a month. People will start to talk.”
David swallowed, hard. “People talk about what they don’t know all the time. Why should it bother me?”
“I guess it shouldn’t,” Mama said. She wrapped one hand around the lip of the sink. “What do they know, right? Just—” she trailed off and met David’s eyes with another not-quite happy smile.
“You’re worried they’re right? That there’s something—different? About me?” The words tumbled out before David could stop them.
“I know there is, tateleh.”
David’s stomach coiled tighter against itself.
“You’ve always been different. Special.”
“Mama—”
“Maybe—” Mama moved back to him and put her hands on his red cheeks; her touch was wet, almost clammy from the dishwater. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Maybe it is hard to find someone who matches your light.”
David closed his eyes. “Maybe it—it isn’t so hard.”
“So, there’s someone you have in mind then?” Mama said, brushing her thumb across the freckled surface of David’s cheekbone. He tried not to pull away, to look at the hope in her eyes and believe that she would be happy. If he could just tell her, maybe—
But the apartment door was suddenly flung open, and there was Papa, and he was sweaty from the heat and the long trudge up the stairs, and Mama let David go so that she could go and take Papa’s jacket. Papa leaned in to kiss Mama, and when he pulled away, he looked over the crown of her head and saw David, alone, at the table. Papa’s brow furrowed.
“I just saw Malka Miller on the street—I thought she was going to have supper with you tonight?”
And just like that, the words retreated from David’s tongue. He was supposed to want Malka Miller, and he didn’t, and Mama was right: people would talk.
Mama shook her head, and this time, the smile on her face was real. She bounced up to kiss Papa’s cheek. “Mayer, David was just saying—”
“I’m tired,” David said suddenly. He pushed back from the table and stood, maybe too quickly; he felt a little dizzy.
“David—” Mama started toward him, but he shook his head.
“I think I’ll—I just, I have some papers to look over.”
Mama’s face fell as he headed toward the bedroom. “You’ll think about what I said?” she asked.
“Yes, Mama. Good night. Good night, Papa.”
“What was that about?” he heard his father ask. “It’s only seven o’clock. What happened this time?”
Not for the first time, David wished there was something more solid than an old curtain separating the bedroom he shared with Les from the rest of the apartment. He didn’t want to hear. Papa would ask questions, Mama would try to answer, and they would both sigh and whisper about what was to be done about David.
And, because, judging by the way Les scurried to hide behind a book he had almost certainly not been reading, his little brother had heard every word.
At least they had their own beds now. Because Sarah had done what she was supposed to and married someone acceptable. She wore her hair pinned up, prayed over the candles of her own sabbath table, and carried Isaac on her hip with a self-assured grace that David envied.
Sarah was a grown-up. And David was lost. He had been, for a long while.
“Mama’s right, you know,” Les said, not looking up from the book that he wasn’t reading.
David groaned in time with his mattress springs as he flopped onto his bed. “Not you too.”
“Well, what’s the point of eavesdropping if—”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” David snapped.
“Not at the moment,” Les said with a grin. He clapped the book shut and sat up. “I bet you’re thinkin’ that Mama had a point about still sleeping in this room right about now.”
David rolled to face the wall. “When you’re asleep, you’re not as obnoxious.”
Les snorted. “I’ll treasure that compliment forever. But seriously, David—Mama’s right.”
“About what?” David mumbled.
“Aren’t you going to be embarrassed when I get married before you do?”
“No. Then I’ll have the room to myself.”
Les’ bedsprings creaked. “Malka’s pretty,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
“Smart too.”
“Sure.”
“And you were pretty rude to her,” Les said. “I mean, not that it wasn’t funny, but—"
David rolled over. Les was perched at the end of his own bed, staring at David. “Les—”
“Why? Why do you do that every time?”
David pulled his knees up to his chest. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do,” Les said. He leaned forward.
David thought he might be sick. He didn’t know. And if he didn’t know, Les couldn’t either. No one could know. “Les—”
“David,” Les mimicked. “You should just tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“Come on. You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” David insisted. He forced himself to uncurl, to try to look casual. He propped himself up on one elbow and attempted a smile. “There’s nothing to tell. Malka is—fine, she’s just not for me.”
Les nodded. “Sure. And neither was Rebecca. Or Lena. Or Henny. Or—”
David’s face darkened. “They’re just—I know what I’m looking for, okay?”
“Jack.”
And there it was again. That jolt in his stomach.
No one could know.
“W-what?”
Les looked at the curtain in the doorway and pitched his voice low. “You’re not looking for anything, because you’ve already found Jack.”
David squeezed his eyes shut. “Les—”
“Look, don’t waste your time pretending like it’s not true. I know you, David. Have my whole life,” Les snapped—but David didn’t see Les’ face soften when he saw the way David crumpled in on himself. Les sighed. “Does he know?”
“No,” David said immediately, his voice hoarse. He opened his eyes. “I can’t—it wouldn’t be right for me to—”
“Why not?” Les asked gently.
David wanted to laugh. It couldn’t have been a serious question. Les couldn’t have been so stupid.
“You know why not.”
David could lose his job, for one. Schoolteachers were subject to rigorous codes of moral behavior, particularly when they were upstart immigrant Jews that the principal made it clear had only been hired because of an inexplicable recommendation from one Joseph Pulitzer. They would tear up his contract, have him blackballed from every school in the city, claim that he was too deviant to be around children.
He could lose Mama and Papa. Sarah. The years he’d spent hiding would become years he’d spent lying, and they would not be able to forgive him. They would not be able to forgive him for replacing who they thought he would be with who he was. Papa would turn his back, and Mama would cry; Sarah’s husband wouldn’t allow her to see David anymore. He would be left alone.
He could lose his freedom. He’d seen in the paper about the men who had been arrested in a bathhouse raid a few years before. Not that David went to those places. He was too afraid. But some of the men had been sent away for twenty years—for doing with another man what people expected David to do with girls like Malka. For doing what David had always wanted to do with Jack.
And he could lose Jack.
If Jack knew, he would rethink the casual touches, how close David sat to him during the poker nights in Jack’s shabby rented room, the way David couldn’t help but smile whenever Jack caught his eye. Jack would feel betrayed and disgusted by him, David was certain.
And if he lost Jack, David would lose himself—and David’s hold on himself was tenuous enough, thank you very much.
Les sighed. “So you’d have to be careful. You can do that.”
“It’s not that simple, Les.” David rolled onto his back.
“It is,” Les insisted.
David laughed hollowly. “Okay. Sure. Fine. Except for the fact that Jack doesn’t feel that way about me.”
Another snort. “Seriously? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I am smart,” David said to the ceiling. “And I know Jack. He doesn’t—he can’t—if I told him, he wouldn’t—” he shook his head. “It would ruin everything.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Les asked, his tone careful.
David looked over at his brother. “Lay off. Please.”
“No, just listen. If you—”
David flung himself upright, chest heaving. “Les. I can’t. I have—” He hung his head. “I have papers to grade.”
Les hopped off his bed and moved so that he was in front of David, his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Hang your papers. Davey—”
“No. This conversation is over.” David shrugged Les away and pushed over to the desk they’d shoehorned beneath their window. The late evening light was stale as it slipped through the warped pane of glass. David cracked open his school valise and fumbled blindly for the papers he knew he hadn’t brought home.
“David—” Les tried.
David slapped the desk with the flat of his hand. “No. We’re done here.”
Silence hung between them for a moment, and even though he wouldn’t look at Les, David felt Les’ eyes on his back.
He heard the bed creak as Les moved, the friction of the bureau drawer against its frame. “Fine. Whatever,” Les said. He slammed the drawer shut again. “I have a date anyway.”
“Of course you do,” David said, and even though he intended the remark to be cutting, his voice faltered. He looked back at Les, who was studying David with hard eyes as he buttoned his shirt.
“We can’t all commit to being miserable the way you have,” Les said.
David forced himself to look at his empty desktop. He laid his hands carefully on either side of the blotter, flattening them against the scuffed wood. “Don’t keep her waiting,” he said.
Les made a sound deep in his throat. “No. That’s what you would do.”
Then, Les pushed through the curtain and was gone. David was alone.