“Josef, we’re at a wedding,” I sigh. “I’m in the nicest dress I’ve worn in years, and I’m wearing it to wash dishes in the kitchen. Now hurry up and let’s finish so I can take this apron off and you can tell me I look beautiful in my dress.” The words coming out of my mouth are fueled a bit by alcohol, no doubt, but not so much that I couldn’t control them if I really wanted to.
“And that, by the way, is what a person in a new dress wants to hear when she walks in a room,” I continue. “‘You look beautiful.’ Not, ‘We’re out of dishes.’”
I’ve shocked Josef into letting go of the wet plate. It reels back against the front of the dress I’ve just finished bragging about. My grip seems tight enough at first, but the plate slips through my hands—and then through Josef’s as he, too, tries to grab it as it falls—and finally it crashes onto the floor, shattering into pieces.
“Oh,” I say uselessly as the shards settle around my feet.
“I’ll get a broom,” he says.
Damnit.
We sweep up the pieces, big ones in a trash bin, smaller ones wrapped in a cloth, and the only words exchanged—Do you see that piece under the sink—are practical ones.
I’ve ruined the moment, if there ever was one. On my hands and knees, I skim the floor with a wet towel to mop up the tiniest fragments. My dress is now damp and dusty at the hem, and my underarms are slick with perspiration. On my feet again, I wipe my forehead with the back of my arm. Josef sweeps methodically, head down, broom bristles scraping the floor.
“I think that’s the last of it,” I say. “Do you think we try to save this towel with the fragments, or can we just throw the whole thing away? Josef?”
He stops sweeping and raises his eyes to mine. “You look beautiful in your dress.”
I startle. “You don’t have to say it now.”
“You were beautiful in your dress at the wedding, and sweeping up broken dishes in your apron you’re even more beautiful. You have to know that.”
He extends his hand, and my face flushes until I realize he’s beckoning not for my hand but for the glass-filled towel, tossing it in the trash bin. “We’ll throw it away.”
“Josef.”
“I’ll finish the rest of the cleanup on my own.” He plunges his hands back into the soapy water.
“No.”
“It’s fine.”
“No,” I say, making a decision. “Let’s go dance.” He starts to protest again, but I’m already untying my apron. “Enough, Josef. Enough.”
I’m saying enough with washing the dishes, but I’m also saying enough with your pulling back. Enough with your deciding when we’re done talking and when you want to tell me you prefer to keep to yourself and when you want to tell me I’m beautiful. Enough with that. I won’t put up with it anymore. I hold out my hand, firmly. “This is your last chance to come and dance. If I put my hand down, I’m not asking again. Ever. I’m not asking anything of you ever again.”
He has to think about it; I see him calculating the price of either move. Only when I’ve let my hand drop a centimeter does he take his from the sink, soapy and dripping, and accept my outstretched palm.
The water trickles from his hand down onto my own knuckles, past my wrist, but I don’t think it’s the drip that makes me shiver.
Back in the main room, the musicians have put away their instruments, and someone’s turned on a phonograph instead. It’s not traditional wedding music anymore, but band music, bright and bubbly with the sound of brass horns. I don’t know how to dance to it, but neither, it seems, do a lot of people. Two of the Canadian workers are giving a demonstration in the middle of the room, and then others clumsily follow their lead as best they can. Josef looks relieved; he’ll be far from the only beginner on this dance floor.
He puts one arm around my waist as the Canadians are doing. It makes my skin jolt, but it’s also awkward, trying to figure out how our bodies should fit together amid a sea of people while music blasts in the background. Josef, it becomes clear after a few minutes of dancing, has terrible rhythm. The steps are simple, but he can’t seem to start on the right beat. I’m trying not to laugh at him, but then I can’t help it. And instead of being annoyed, he’s laughing, too, throwing his hands in the air and exaggerating every clumsy step.
Is this what a date would be like? Is this what it would have been like if I’d met Josef at school or a social club? Is this what it could still be like if we could have a relationship that wasn’t colored by my pain or his?
“Come over here.” I pull him to the corner of the room, behind a rack where people have hung jackets, where we won’t bother anyone else. “Watch my feet,” I say. “The third and fourth steps are quicker. It goes slow, slow, quick-quick.”
He nods his head down to watch my feet, and then I nod my head down to offer more guidance, and then our foreheads bump together.
And suddenly we are kissing.
AS SOON AS OUR LIPS MEET, MY HEART JOLTS; MY HEAD FEELS dizzy.
And then Josef abruptly pulls his head back. For a moment I wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. Does he not want this? But then I feel his heartbeat, heavy against my chest, and realize it’s just that he felt the jolt, too, and we’re both overwhelmed. When he leans in again, it’s with intention. He cups his hands behind my head and strokes my cheek with his thumb, and I lean forward. Our lips meet more softly this time, less clumsily, and so slowly time has stopped.
I’ve kissed someone before. The first time was at a birthday party when I was thirteen, when a boy named Lev and I were dared to go behind a dining room curtain. Lev and I spent the next two months occasionally sneaking off, him waiting for me after school with wilted bouquets of picked flowers. But this is different. It doesn’t feel like kissing Lev did, like a pantomime or a rehearsal for the real thing. I can feel this kiss rushing through my entire body.
“Oops!” The coatrack moves—a man searching for his hat—and we both jump apart. “Oops!” the man exclaims again, cheerfully drunk. “Everyone is having fun tonight!”
The drunk man paws through the rack, giving me enough time to sober up and think about what I’m doing. Now is when I should suggest going back to the dance floor or getting a drink of water. Josef is looking at me, waiting for me to suggest that; he knows it’s what should happen, too.
“Do you want to leave?” I ask instead. “Find another room where it’s not so loud?”
He hesitates only a second. “Yes.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where do you want to go, Zofia?”
“Let’s go to your cottage.”
This sentence carries a lot of things. I could have said, Let’s go see the new library room in the administration building. I could have even said, Let’s go to my cottage, where Abek will return at some point tonight, and Esther, too, shoes in her hand, tipsy from wine. But I know that Josef shares a room only with Chaim and that this afternoon Chaim did what Breine did: moved her belongings into a marital room they’ll live in together. Josef’s room will be empty all night.