Hilda and Pearl by Alice Mattison Page A

slow student. Pearl tried to be grateful for Hilda’s steady, honest, unimpressed looks in her direction.
    They moved a few days later, and suddenly she was alone with Mike in someplace large enough to walk around in. He reacted with exaggerated glee, hiding in the bedroom closet to jump out at her, wrestling her onto the new double bed. They’d used their savings to buy it, and it had been delivered by two men who called Pearl ma’am.
    In the new apartment Mike said she could scatter hairpins wherever she liked. At Hilda’s she used to find them in a clean ashtray, all facing the same way. “Wear a magnet on your head,” Mike had whispered. Now he played the saxophone into the night, and after a few days someone knocked on the door and asked him to stop. Mike was angry, though he put the instrument away, but Pearl was embarrassed.
    As soon as they had a table and chairs, Pearl made good on her plan to invite Mrs. Levenson—who had paid for the table. She and Mike had visited her a second time, and it had gone better. “A sweet girl,” Mrs. Levenson said to Mike when they left. She pressed some bills into Pearl’s hand. “A nice table you should buy.” Pearl invited her mother-in-law to dinner, and of course Nathan and Hilda as well. Her guests were coming on Friday night, and Pearl asked Mike whether Mrs. Levenson would be offended that she didn’t light candles for shabbos . They hadn’t done it in Pearl’s house when she was growing up. His mother did, Mike said, but only when she thought the neighbors might come in and notice. He insisted she wouldn’t care. Pearl called up her mother and got directions for making a potato kugel, but in the end she decided it was too much trouble to grate the potatoes, so she made mashed potatoes. She bought a chicken and roasted it in the oven. She boiled carrots and peas. For dessert there was a cake she’d bought at the bakery.
    The dinner was on a cold day in December. Mike went out to wait for his mother at the trolley stop. Pearl set the table with her mother’s old dishes. Then she decided she had time to take down her hair and braid it again. She was already dressed; she’d changed to a fresh blouse when she came home from work. Pearl pulled out her hairpins and let her pale braid fall. She always loved the weight of it hitting her back. She unraveled it with her fingers and ran them through her hair. Her scalp prickled with freedom. She brushed her hair. As she was about to braid it again, the doorbell rang. Pearl went to the door as she was. There were Nathan and Hilda. When they saw her, Nathan blushed a little and Hilda looked away.
    â€œMike went to meet his mother. Your mother,” Pearl said. “Come in. I’m sorry about my hair—I was setting the table.”
    â€œAre you planning to wear it that way?” said Hilda.
    â€œOh, no.”
    â€œMrs. Levenson would think you were a loose woman,” Hilda said. Now she was smiling a little, but Pearl still felt her disapproval.
    She went into the bedroom and braided her hair and pinned it up. “Take off your coats,” she called. “Pour yourselves a drink.”
    She’d made a pitcher of Tom Collinses, though the book said it was a summer drink. Mike had assured her that his mother would drink seltzer. She and Mike arrived a few minutes later, just as the three of them were starting their drinks. Mike’s cheeks were red from the cold, but his mother was sallow. Sure enough, she said, “Just a glass seltzer,” when Pearl offered her a drink. Nathan walked to the window, went back to his chair, sat down, looked at his watch. “Well, I lost my job,” he said finally.
    Pearl looked up, startled. Of them all, Nathan had seemed the least likely to lose his job.
    â€œWhat? When?” said Mrs. Levenson. “You lost your job? How come you should lose your job?”
    â€œThe union can’t