Free An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirshenbaum Page A

the mannequin in the white satin gown, tears rolling down their faces and singing, like an a cappella girl group from the fifties, “Sun-rise, sun-set.”
    “So tell me, ladies,” he said. “Tell me, how can I make your dreams come true?”

Six
    T he sun set and Valentine lit the candles to commemorate the second night of Hanukkah. The glow from the flames framed her face, the yellow light fluttering and then growing strong as it had done more than two thousand years before when the faithful trusted that God would provide oil for eight days of light. Neither Valentine nor her mother nor her grandparents recited the blessing— Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who performed miracles for our ancestors in ancient times and in our days —because who knew from that anymore? Tradition may have outlasted its original function to keep the faith, but then it got other functions such as keeping up with the Christians.
    Valentine was too old to play dreidl , but she wasn’t too old to get Hanukkah gelt along with her gifts. Grandpa Kessler slipped her a fifty-dollar bill and told her, “You buy yourself something pretty, sweetheart.”
    Valentine kissed her grandfather on his cheek, a small gesture of affection which set his heart to flood.
    Grandma Kessler gave her one and only grandchild—her granddaughter, the light of her life with a face like you wouldn’t believe, so beautiful and sweet as honey—a small black velvet box. “Wear them in good health,” she said.
    Valentine opened the box to reveal a pair of diamond earrings. “Oh,” she gasped, and the diamonds winked.
    Miriam leaned over her daughter’s shoulder and her eyes bugged at the size of the stones. “Rose,” she admonished her mother-in-law. “She’s a kid. When you said diamond earrings, I thought you were talking chips. These are like the Rocks of Gibraltar. What does a kid want from diamonds like that?”
    “So she’ll have them for later. When she’s older.” Rose Kessler wasn’t going to buy her only grandchild little pitseleh nothings.
    While her mother and grandmother were having it out, Valentine put the earrings on and went to the mirror. Ice-blue light flickered and danced from the diamonds to her eyes and back again, light even more ethereal than that from the candles. Ever since anyone could remember, Valentine had an open affection for things that glittered and shone. The earrings were no exception. “Ma, look,” she gasped. “Look how beautiful.”
    Valentine’s face, so radiant, coupled with the fact that her daughter’s reaction to the diamonds was a normal one, as opposed to something mental like eschewing material goods, this caused Miriam to melt. “You’re crazy,” she said to Rose, “but they do look gorgeous on her. Thank you.”
    The previous night, the first night of Hanukkah, Miriam gave Valentine the pink ski jacket, which fit her like a glove. On thisnight, the second night, Miriam handed her the box from Kleinman’s Bridal Shop, wrapped in blue paper and tied with white ribbon. Even though the two shawls exactly fit Valentine’s expressed desire—they were geniuses over there at Kleinman’s, they got the shade of blue neither more nor less, but flawlessly precise—diamond earrings were a tough act to follow. Valentine opened the box, and then looked at her mother with tears in her eyes, which Miriam could not decipher. Tears of gratitude? Tears from disappointment? “That is what you wanted? No?” Miriam asked.
    “Yes. Thank you, Ma,” Valentine said.
    “Try them on,” Miriam urged. “The blue goes nicely with the sweater you’re wearing.”
    But Valentine wouldn’t try them on. She wouldn’t so much as lift the shawls from the box; rather she left them folded just so between layers of tissue paper. “They’re perfect,” she said. “I don’t want to mess them up.”
    Later that night Valentine would put the fifty-dollar bill between the pages of Jonathan Livingston