Free The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb Page A

first woman.”
    “Adam learned from Eve.”
    “Yes, my chavrusa. And Jacob and his two wives. Leah was given to him first so she could teach him how to satisfy Rachel.”
    “You make it sound like a daisy chain of lovemaking.”
    Walter laughs. “The infinite, single story of a man and a woman.”
    “How on earth,” she asks, “will I ever let you go?”
    Ida Wachs carries three dresses under her arm and follows Rosalie into a dressing room. Ida tells her the first dress is too revealing; a sleeveless flapper is unfit for a rebbetzin. The second dress doesn’t flatter Rosalie’s tiny waist, she adds. “A bride should be modest, yet give a hint of what lies ahead.” When Rosalie tries on a traditional wedding gown, her mother rubs her palms together and beams. “You look like the kind of bride I was, only more elegant, more American, a regular movie star! You have made me so happy.”
    Rosalie thinks of her father’s question: Are you in love?
    “What about Tateh?” asks Rosalie. “Do you think he would have approved of this wedding?”
    “Don’t question what we both wanted for you.”
    Rosalie convulses in tears and Ida kisses her hair.
    “A typical bride,” says Ida. “I was the same.”
    As her mother walks out with the gown, Rosalie imagines the filmstrip of her unfolding life: making love with Sol in the light of the Shabbat candles, the welcoming of the babies, the fresh leather of the childrens’ holiday shoes, her hands rubbing fresh thyme on the brisket, the rolling of the rugelach dough just as her mother taught—roll once, twice, three times for the flakiest pastry. More rolling, more specialness, more holiness. A sequence of kitchen sanctity spun out by rebbetzin Kerem, soon-to-be household goddess and patron saint of whatever synagogue would offer her husband his first job.
    She’elah: What does one do with the unsolvable question?
    Teshuvah: The bride will live her question, mold it under her hands, just like rolling out pastry dough on a table.
    Rosalie returns to the spot in the grass where she laid her body after she and Walter made love in the upper geniza for the first time. The grass is slightly wet but she doesn’t care about ruining her dress. She lies down and thinks of this patch of earth as her holy spot, a place on this planet that holds something of her heart. Something so beautiful cannot be a mistake . She flips onto her belly and rests her face on her forearms. It is possible, she thinks. Possible to tell Sol she cannot marry him. Possible to say I’m sorry but. At first he would doubt his hearing and touch his bad ear and then he would realize that he’d heard her correctly. I cannot . Sol’s face would contort and he would let out a whimper. She would look at him and turn away because it would be unbearable to watch. And then she would run to the attic and find Walter. I told him , shewould say. And she would contort her face as Sol had contorted his and Walter would shake his head slowly. No. No. This is not my way. How could you have misunderstood me? Rosalie would burst into tears because she would have shredded her future for that gesture, that question, that definitive refusal.
    Her lover is a homeless man, caught between worlds. He wears the wrong clothes in the wrong seasons. She wants to live in a house, a real house with two tables: one in the kitchen and one in the dining room. One table adorned with a crystal vase of long roses, the other table offering a wooden bowl of fresh peaches. She wants bedrooms filled with children, their toys and books scattered about the floor, evidence of their joy. She wants to build a family, create a link in the chain of generations. And she wants to do this with Sol, who is learned and sincere and who will teach her Talmud early in the morning before the children wake up. And late at night she will lie beside him and teach him how she wants to be touched. What she learned with Walter. She will translate what is possible. It