The Outside World by Tova Mirvis

Author:Tova Mirvis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429124
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

IN BED, with the lights off, Tzippy whispered into the phone. It still felt shocking that a boy was allowed to call her. Even more astonishing was that she was allowed to talk to him. Though he was her fiancé, what thrilled her most was the idea of a boyfriend.

“How would you like to go far away?” Baruch asked.

“How far?”

“Very far.”

“Even better. So tell me where you’re taking me,” she said.

“Memphis, Tennessee.”

She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about bringing people closer to God. About forging my own path. About starting something from scratch. ”

“You sound like my father,” Tzippy said.

“It’s your father’s idea. He wants to open a kosher department in a grocery store in Memphis, and he asked me if I want to run it. I’d oversee everything and do all the kosher supervision. And I’d have time to learn.”

At first she thought he was joking. Even when they worried about how they would support themselves, the possibility of doing something other than yeshiva had never come up. This was the model for marriage she had been taught to believe in. It was reinforced in the marriage books she was reading, the sequels to the dating books she had once read. Dear Bride, The Secret of Jewish Women, How to Build a Jewish Home, How to Be a Woman of Valor—their covers were invariably pink and had fancy lettering with pictures of lace tablecloths and bouquets of roses. They advised the new bride to speak kindly and ask how her husband’s day went. She should have makeup on when he came home and have dinner waiting. She was told not to complain, not to contradict, not to argue. These books expanded upon the blessings that would result when marriage was conducted according to the Torah. It was a recipe for happiness, and all the young brides needed to do was follow it exactly.

“What do you think?” Baruch asked.

“I don’t know. I’m surprised.”

“I know,” he said. “But I can’t stay in yeshiva forever. What else are we going to do? This at least seems like a good way to work and still have time to learn.”

“I like the idea of going far away,” Tzippy said.

“Me too,” he said.

“But is this what you want to do?”

“Maybe. Will you at least think about it?” he asked.

She did, all night. She thought about her friends from high school who lived in nearby apartment buildings. Before she was engaged, she had visited them, and her envy was so strong that it was hard to sit in their living rooms. In their married apartments, their lives matched the fantasies they had sketched out for themselves when they were high school girls sitting on one another’s beds. They looked like the same women they had once imitated in their endless games of dress-up. Only now they never had to take off their mothers’ sheitels. They never had to go back to being girls who were waiting for their lives to begin.

Now Tzippy would finally have what they had.

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