hair except me. She’s very religious so she shaves her head, and she wears a scarf in bed. I’m used to it now.” One could get used to anything, Coco thought, but traditions that made young women look old and dreary seemed so unnecessary. There certainly was no glamour in Sam’s life, and very little beauty. They knew now that they were having a boy, which in some ways was a relief. Everyone was happy for them.
“Maybe our kids will get married someday.” Coco smiled at him as they stood on the sidewalk in the chill November air. He wasn’t wearing a topcoat over his suit.
“It’s going to be strange not seeing my father every day at the office,” Sam said with sadness in his voice. “Who will I fight with at work?” There were tears in his eyes, and they spilled onto his cheeks as she took him into her arms and held him.
“You’ll get used to it. I promise. I felt that way about Mom and Dad at first, and then one day they just feel like they’re part of you, and they’re inside you and not outside.” He nodded, hoping she was right. “What will the service be like tomorrow?”
“Long. The women and men don’t sit together. They sit separately in shul. Men and women didn’t dance together at our wedding. I wanted to, and our families wouldn’t allow it. There was supposed to be a divider, but Tamar’s family insisted on separate rooms for the men and women for dancing.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of all this?” she asked him. “Of everyone making the rules for you?” Her mother’s words were still echoing in her head too.
“All the time, but this is how it has to be. It’s what is expected of me and what I signed on for. It’s familiar to me, Coco. It doesn’t shock me the way it does you.” But it still shocked her, and his family seemed much more strict and religious now than when they’d gone to grade school together, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed. Sam had said that his father occasionally ate non-kosher things too, but never told Sam’s mother. And now he was gone, and the poor woman was going to be alone. At least Sam had Tamar and they would have a family, and a baby to compensate for the loss.
“Has Ian surfaced again?” he asked her. He was impressed that she was dating him, although he was another flash guy who was never going to be there for her and said so.
“He came back a few weeks ago. He was in London the whole time and never called me,” she said wistfully. “He was writing.”
“He’s never going to be what you want, Coco. Be careful that he doesn’t take up space and keep you from meeting anyone real who might be there full-time. Relationships like that are dangerous. They feed you enough to keep you satisfied and closed off to other people, when they’re not really there in the way you want them to be. They take up real estate without being candidates for a life together.”
“That describes it perfectly. But I don’t want anyone else right now anyway.”
“You never will if you create a world specially designed for him, tailor-made.”
“He’s brilliant, Sam.”
“I know he is, but he’s not eligible for real life. He doesn’t want that.” She nodded. Ian said it himself, but his mind was so intoxicating and addictive to be around. She was hooked, and she didn’t care how little of him she got. It was always enough, and so much better and more interesting than what she’d have gotten from anyone else.
He hailed a cab for her then, to cross the park to her parents’ apartment. She and Sam used to try to signal each other with mirrors catching the sunlight, but it had never worked, they were too far apart on opposite sides of the park. She had always been afraid that they’d burn Central Park down if the mirrors had worked.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, as she got into the cab and looked back at him with a smile. “Thank you for coming from London.”
“I’d come from the moon if you needed me,” she reminded him. She wondered on the way home what their life would have been like if they had wound up together. Silly and fun, and crazy and smart. But it never could have happened. His mother would have killed her. No Christian girl