Everything about Nettie proved to be impossible. She was a Gentile married to a Jew like no Jew we had ever known. Alone most of the time and apparently free to live wherever she chose, she had chosen to live among working-class Jews who offered her neither goods nor charity. A woman whose sexy good looks brought her darting glances of envy and curiosity, she seemed to value inordinately the life of every respectable dowd. She praised my mother lavishly for her housewifely skills – her ability to make small wages go far, always have the house smelling nice and the children content to be at home – as though these skills were a treasure, some precious dowry that had been denied her, and symbolised a life from which she had been shut out. My mother – secretly as amazed as everyone else by Nettie’s allure – would look thoughtfully at her when she tried (often vaguely, incoherently) to speak of the differences between them, and would say to her, ‘But you’re a wife now. You’ll learn these things. It’s nothing. There’s nothing to learn.’ Nettie’s face would then flush painfully, and she’d shake her head. My mother didn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain.