For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories Read online

  Shlomi comes into the room and makes an attempt at quiet. At the first noise, the jiggling of keys being removed from a pocket, Ruchama sighs and throws down her blanket as if waking.

  She tries hard to be enticing. Shlomi is not having it. When he gets into his bed she reaches over and strokes the inside of his arm. He takes her hand, squeezes it. “Good night,” he says, and switches off the light.

  That he’s not interested is fine.

  That she’s not interested is what she is burning to tell him. She’d rather pull the man who delivers groceries upstairs, all muscular and sweaty in his hard-work way. She’d rather have sex with him and scream out loud instead of worrying with every breath that she’ll wake the children along the hall.

  She turns to her side. She puts a hand between her thighs and presses the one hand with the other, squeezing her thighs together and rocking herself. The half of her thoughts connected to Shlomi and anger and the skirt in her closet she forgets, focusing on the grocery-boy and the cabdriver models and fingers in her hair. She is alone with her thoughts, rocking.

  Shlomi switches his light on. He shakes her shoulder, speeding up her rhythm, interrupting.

  “Ruchie, you promised.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Either way, it must stop. It’s an abomination.”

  “Where is it written? For a man, yes. For a woman—seedless as a supermarket grape—it’s fine. Go ask your rebbe. He’ll tell you. Tell him what your wife does and ask if it’s allowed.”

  “Ask him? God forbid.”

  “You should have been Christian,” she says. “An expert at avoiding earthly pleasures.”

  “God forbid. How you talk!” She turns to see that he has clasped his hands to his ears like a child. She clasps her hands deeper into her crotch. All of his passion trapped between those ears, she thinks, and rocks and rocks and rocks herself to sleep.

  “You have zero choice in the matter. She’s out there waiting. She’s talking about four wigs by Pesach. We’re talking about twenty thousand dollars.”

  “I can’t do it, Tzippy.” Ruchama is sitting at her desk, going over some accounting. “I can’t face Nava now. I’m too weak for her compliments. She’ll praise me into the grave today. I’m telling you.”

  “I told her you were on the phone to Israel.”

  “Tell her I went to the city. I’ll go for real. I have errands.”

  “You were just in the city yesterday.”

  “So? It’s so out of the ordinary? People don’t go in every morning? The subway driver doesn’t cross the river ten times in a day?”

  Nava is in the deep chair by the window. She is wearing an Armani suit tailored to the knee. Too short, by far. She has new boots on and a new bag rests on the floor. Ruchama keeps her eyes moving, doesn’t lag over a single item to avoid giving Nava satisfaction.

  “I was telling Tzippy—” Nava says, pauses. “Any news from Israel?”

  “No,” Ruchama says. “Raining in Jerusalem,” she says.

  Nava shifts, moves the new bag onto her lap. Ruchama looks out the window.

  “I was telling Tzippy, Kendo is an absolute genius. Part hair designer, part philosopher. ‘Tell me about the best hair,’ he said. ‘Talk.’ And you know what I told him, Ruchama? I told him about your wedding day. I told him how you were the first to marry and how you had the most perfect hair, how it made you who you were, a girl and a woman, religious and wild. And then I told him how you cut it off for your wedding. I cried mixed tears at your bedekken. Here was the miracle of marriage and the sadness of your lost hair. You were so beautiful before. A perfect-looking thing.”

  “Thank you,” Ruchama says. She moves to the chair next to Nava’s and drops deep into the seat.

  “So we follow this trail,” Nava says, leaning forward. “We go off in search of the ideal me. And we find her. And she has long hair. That is where the true me lies. Of course, I can’t just appear with long hair. It’s immodest enough to start with. But to shock people on top of it is inconceivable. ‘Not a problem,’ he says. A genius. ‘Four wigs,’ he says. ‘The same hair, the same color. Only different lengths. We will mock the natural process of growth. Wig by wig.’ That’s his plan. ‘Slowly,’ he says, ‘naturally. Wig by wig, reclaiming freedom.’ ”

  Nava leaves. Ruchama is still splayed in the chair. Melted.

  “I’m sorry,” Tzippy says. “Go to the city now. I’ll finish the list for today.”

  “That’s OK.”

  “You go,” Tzippy says. “It’ll do you good.”

  The streets fill up with evening traffic. Jamal exits the kiosk and puts on a surplus pea coat. Ruchama is at the corner flipping through the magazines.

  “Night guy’s here,” Jamal says. He buttons his coat. “Have a good one.”

  “You too,” Ruchama says.

  “New issues come tomorrow. Next day at the latest.”

  “I’ll make an effort,” she says. Their conversation is split by the rattle and clatter of a dolly as it fails and then manages to make its way onto the curb. There is a potted tree on the dolly, and the tree seems to lunge at one and then the other of them, directed by a reckless driver and undirected by a clattery and wandering wheel. “Fucking tree,” the driver says as he passes. Ruchama follows him, takes a step and then two. She is mesmerized.

  He has, unconditionally, the most beautiful hair she’s ever seen. Completely tamed, completely full. He has a mane of curls the color of toasted bamboo that runs down to the middle of his back and ends in a deep, blunt ridge. The curls are singular, full and moist, and they stack well. A head of hair with personality. She is obsessed, she knows. But the obsession is not what makes his hair beautiful; it is the obsession that makes her take notice of hair when she has nearly been bowled over by an amuck and wayward tree.

  “That’s the kind of hair,” Ruchama says to Jamal, pointing.

  “Damn nice,” Jamal says. “Make a hell of a wig, I’d bet.”

  “It would make a half dozen,” Ruchama says. She keeps an eye on the tree as it darts back and forth above the crowd. “I have a room where clients wait. Two big chairs in front of two tall windows. No views.” She hands the magazines to Jamal. “A tree might look nice in between.”

  Ruchama follows him to a jungle on Twenty-eighth Street, where the tree disappears into a storefront thick with tropical foliage. There is a path down the middle. Ruchama steps in, and a pair of birds start from a bush and fly toward an empty cage. The man works the tree off the dolly with a thud.

  “Nice tree.”

  “Return,” he says. “Designer lady wanted an orange tree for the lobby. Says I didn’t tell her it won’t have oranges until summer.” The man wears a metal stud through his chin. It moves up and down when he speaks, freezes when he doesn’t—like permanent punctuation. A stainless-steel period under his lip. “No such thing as a used tree,” he says, “but I’ll give you a deal on it if you want.”

  “Are you here in the morning?”

  “Every morning.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow with cash.”

  A homeless man begs a dollar as Ruchama climbs out of the subway on Twenty-third. She usually gives, always gives, but she has all her deposits with her, including Louise’s envelope with four thousand dollars in cash. Morning rush hour has barely started; it’s not the time to open her purse in the street. She clutches her bag, moving on toward the newsstand. “That’s OK,” the homeless man yells after her. “I forgive you because you pregnant.”

  The magazines are up against the stand, tied in bales. Jamal pushes a box cutter toward her, and she pushes a crumpled twenty-dollar bill his way.

  “You do the honors,” he says. Ruchama rubs a hand to her face; she still has sleep in her eyes.

  It’s unseasonably warm and cloudless. Ruchama sits on the sidewalk like the homeless man and leans her back against the newsstand. She is looking for her advertisement. She crosses her ankles, turns her face to the sun. It’s bee
n ten years, twenty, since she’s sat on the ground.

  The shampoo girl is there right after the contents page. She has been bobbing for apples at the state fair. She has failed to snatch an apple with her delicate mouth. She is pulling her head from the barrel, and her drenched hair follows, caught in an arc above. A rainbow streaks the glimmering hair and the splash of water that will rain on the gathered crowd. Everyone is smiling. The carny in the booth is handing the woman a teddy bear anyhow. All the other carnies in the surrounding booths are also reaching out with prizes. They are all white men, handsome, with a slight scruff. One, she remembers, was driving a cab.

  Ruchama looks off down Sixth Avenue and loses herself in the traffic moving toward her. It is the coming Passover and she has the long hair of her childhood. Everyone is out in front of shul, talking, making lunch plans on the front stoop. Nava is there in a gaudy creation; she is wearing the first of her new wigs. A car will race by, souped up like a gangster’s, and the young handsome man in the passenger seat, a strong arm hanging out the window, will whistle in a lewd manner. Ruchama, startled, will blush and spin, her hair opening up in the turn like a peacock’s fan.

  “I sell plants and bushes and trees. I sell peat and mineral-enriched soils. For one hundred dollars you can have a dozen calathea. I will do you a deal on orchids.”

  “You have your earrings and your tattoos,” Ruchama tells the plant man. “You have nice features and are tall and slim. You have plenty to make them look. You don’t need the hair.”

  “I’ve had it forever,” he says. “It’s defining.”

  “Of course it is. Do you think I do this every day? From Eastern Europe; from Poland; that’s where I get my hair. Never from the street. If not for one hundred dollars, how much is not-for-sale hair worth?”

  “You know,” he says, “I’m thinking you’re a freak.”

  “Yes,” Ruchama says, “we are both freaks, you and I. It is only that we are different in different ways. So tell me. Two hundred dollars, five hundred dollars?”

  “One thousand dollars, two thousand dollars. It doesn’t matter. I’m not selling.”

  “I have four thousand dollars here,” she says. “In cash. You can have it all.”

  And then, with finesse, with Louise in her mind’s eye, she pulls the envelope out of her purse and sticks it in his hand. “I have brought my own scissors, you only need to sit down.”

  “Damn,” he says, counting. “Why don’t I just keep it? Why don’t I just pretend I never saw you and keep the money and the hair?”

  “Because it’s America,” Ruchama says. “You will sell me your hair, you will deliver the tree, and if you keep the money I will bring the police and you will give it back. That is the wonder of this country. Jews have rights; women have rights. Maybe you will keep the money anyway, as a challenge. And maybe when the police come, I will tell them you took five thousand, not four. And they will believe me because I have no hole in my lip and because five is a more logical number.”

  Ruchama pulls out the scissors like a threat. He looks at her and pockets the envelope. Ruchama searches the jungle for a chair.

  When the tree arrives, Ruchama locks the door of the workroom with Tzippy out on the other side. She told Tzippy about the tree, an extravagant and spontaneous purchase. She lied to her about the bank deposit and is not sure from where the money to replace it will come.

  Tzippy bangs on the door.

  “He wants to know where to put it.”

  Ruchama screams through, “He knows, and you know: between the two chairs.” Ruchama is dizzy. She told Tzippy that she is locking the door because of a spate of robberies, deliverymen scouting out the businesses they deliver to and stealing everything inside. She told Tzippy that she met a lady photographer at the supply store who had her whole studio cleaned out by the bike messenger who picked up the film. She had let him linger and drink water from the cooler.

  “He wants an extra two hundred dollars, Ruchama.” Tzippy is knocking again. “He says you promised him an extra two hundred dollars for delivering the tree.”

  “No such thing was promised.”

  “Ruchama, you open this door.”

  “Give him a hundred and tell him to go away.”

  “Open this door.”

  “Give him the hundred and then he will go.”

  How she has come to love the nights. The minute the last child sleeps, she is down in the basement. The nights used to be so long, and now she sees they are as short as the days.

  Without Tzippy there gossiping she gets real work done. She takes over the separating table, laying out the hair, curl by curl. She knots like a demon. It has been aeons since Ruchama made herself a wig. Lately she’s been going around in the irregulars with their bald spots and cowlicks, sporting the flawed models they cannot sell.

  The year is crowded with holidays. Passover is already bearing down. This keeps her from napping, from wasting time with sleep. When she cut his hair, she secured and then numbered each of the curls separately, like the bricks of a museum-bound temple. This way she could reconstruct them just so. To be perfect, hair must sit just right around the head.

  They have nothing to show Nava. They have fallen behind. Ruchama is half mortified and half happy. She would like to fall further behind, leave Nava wigless, forced to show up at shul on the holidays with a bathing cap stretched over her head.

  Ruchama moves out front. Tzippy follows with a tray of cookies and tea. Nava is fiddling with the leaves of the orange tree, careful of her nails. She snaps off a leaf.

  “It does wonders,” she says. “I never told you, but this room was always so depressing. Still. If it’s an orange tree, where are the oranges?”

  “Not until summer,” Ruchama says. “Tricky indoors.”

  “Shouldn’t there be little green marbles or something? With an orange tree you sort of expect—”

  “Yes,” Ruchama says, “you do. About expecting, I owe you an apology. The hair is late. There is nothing yet to show.”

  “Ruchie, it’s been weeks.” Nava bends the leaf in half, snaps a crisp seam down the center.

  “We’ve been crazy,” Ruchama says. “We’re overwhelmed.” Tzippy dips a cookie into her tea.

  “I’ve a right to be mad,” Nava says. She faces Ruchama, reaches out, and rests a hand on Ruchama’s hip. “But—and you know I only have compliments for you, only compliments—but it shows on your face, Ruchie. You look terrible. You’re running yourself into the ground, and I don’t want to be the reason. It’s not too late to take my order elsewhere if you’d feel better about it. Kendo Keller has a man.”

  Ruchama would feel better about it. “Maybe you should,” she says.

  “Ruchama!” Tzippy bursts out only with her name. Ruchama understands. There is their reputation. There is the money. And, open wide before her, is all that freed-up time.

  “Maybe you should,” Ruchama says. “You’ve always been so understanding.”

  Tzippy has taken to watching from a distance. She no longer stands at Ruchama’s desk with her tea or leans over her shoulder at her worktable. She holds her mug with two hands now and sips from it—watching. She steals glances, averts her eyes. She does not correct Ruchama when she makes mistakes, does not fix them either, but leaves them out in places where Ruchama will find them. It annoys Ruchama to come upon the hair she was supposed to use for the Berger wig coiled neatly on the edge of a shelf, to find the caps she sized wrong placed in the wicker basket under her desk.

  Tzippy has even taken to putting things down when she means to pass them. She places the pincushion next to Ruchama instead of handing it to her. The phone rings for Ruchama, and Tzippy does it again. She carries over the cordless and puts the phone down at Ruchama’s side.

  “Why must you do that?” Ruchama says. She covers the mouthpiece, wants to know who’s on the line.

  “The messenger.”

  Ruchama looks at the receiver and shuts it off. “I told you never to give
me that man,” she says. The telephone rings again.

  “Answer it,” Tzippy says. “He calls ten times a day. You answer it and talk to him and then to me. I want to know why the deliveryman is so concerned about an orange tree with no oranges.”

  Ruchama answers the phone.

  “Hello,” she says. “No,” she says. She walks to the back corner of the work space, the unused corner with the old storage closet where her wig is hidden. “Leave me alone,” she says. “Not another cent,” she says. She hangs up again, then raises her voice. “Not another penny more for that damn tree.”

  It is like facing her mother when she discovered Ruchama’s lipstick, like sitting in the living room with both her parents after she was caught on the date Tzippy had arranged—spotted by her own father while walking down King Street and talking to a boy. Ruchama figures she is ruined and will have to tell all.

  Tzippy has dragged her out to the front room and put her in a chair. She sits in the other one and talks to Ruchama around the narrow tree trunk.

  “I haven’t said a word, not to another soul.” Tzippy is enjoying this, Ruchama thinks. She has always resented working for Ruchama and here is her chance to take control. “You doze during the day. You forget. Anything you touch has to be redone. You chased off our best client and an old friend. You chased off a woman with tons of money and a big mouth. You haven’t paid the bills—don’t think I didn’t notice. Tell me, Ruchama, before you destroy the business that supports both our families. Open up before you destroy a friendship spanning thirty years.”

  Ruchama can’t face her; she turns to the standing mirror and turns again to the wall of photos.

  “If I must,” Ruchama says, and she looks one second into the future, and then she is at the state fair bobbing for apples. And she does not, cannot, ruin the surprise. “I kissed the tree man,” she says. Something so unbelievable, it’s believable. Something to appeal to Tzippy’s mischievous side. “He kissed me and I let him. Not once, but twice. Twice when I went to the city for supplies.”