She lay still, watching the ceiling, then the snow that blew against the window. She asked him when she could see the baby, and he said he didn’t know. Then she asked where Golda was, and he told her Golda was with Jacob. His voice was soft, and she knew he was trying to sound kind. They didn’t say anymore to each other and she tried to fall asleep. She closed her eyes but couldn’t forget he was there; she even thought of trying to get out of bed, when the door opened and she saw Jacob. He threw his arms wide and shouted so loud nurses came running down the hall.

“It’s a little girl, Rachel. The prettiest baby in the whole world.”

Rachel and Levy learned how to take care of the baby together. Golda showed them how to bathe her and she recommended brands of powder, paper diapers, cotton, baby oil, even though she’d never had a baby herself. She said she’d read a lot, so they listened to her. They called the little girl Leah. She was born with hair, which was thick and black, and curly by the time she was three months old. Her eyes turned hazel, then brown. She didn’t get fat enough to suit Levy, and he worried, even after the doctor said she was fine.

On Fridays, Rachel lit the Sabbath candles according to Jacob’s instructions. She shielded her eyes against the glow the way he taught her, and with him and Leah watching, she held her hand flat and waved it around and between the flames in an odd Eastern gesture, the meaning of which was lost, but Jacob said women did it anyway.

She cooked, kept the house, helped Levy in the store in the afternoons with Leah in her playpen next to the cash register. She played cards on Tuesdays, went to the movies on Saturday with Golda or Barbara Fineman, and thought that it would have been a good year if she could sleep nights.

Getting to sleep was the problem. It was quiet and she was used to noise. In Minnesota, other professors had parties, or played Bach, Mozart, Scriabin until late at night. In Brooklyn, trucks ran all night between fisheries on the bays and the bridges. When she was growing up, people walked under her window from Central Park to Columbus, talking, laughing, yelling until late, and buses ran all night. But in Laurel, it was quiet. She tried to imagine that she could hear the surf on the other side of the Island, or the sea birds, but the quiet defeated her imagination and she stayed awake until she heard Levy leave his room, which he did every night, and go into the baby’s room. Then she’d fall asleep. If she didn’t, she would think about Adam, and that was dreadful because she didn’t remember him alive, diminutive, vibrant, and with the brightest eyes she’d ever seen; she remembered him in his coffin. Levy had warned her not to look. Orthodox Jews never looked at their dead, but she had insisted. He had been too sad to argue, and the mortician, after a few hours of preparation, lifted the simple coffin lid and she looked into her dead husband’s face. Pancake makeup covered dry rubbery-­looking gashes from the knives, and the lids covering the protruding eyeballs looked too thin to keep out the light.