The intimacy of her news feels like a bond with Ma. Perela looks at Ma, smiles a half smile

Perela presses her fingers to her forehead. Her back still aches from yesterday’s photo shoot. Ma’s eyes are on the road, and she’s quiet for the moment.

Perela balances her computer on her lap, but the vibrations of the car make her dizzy and unsettled. Although the worst of her morning sickness is gone, it’s quick to rear its head again. She latches her eyes onto the mountains and sky, mounds of green and shades of blue in the distance.

Ma notices her distraction, interprets it as an invitation, and says, “It’s not the bangs. It’s the white of your shirt. You shouldn’t wear white.”

“I like white,” Perela says, her words clipped.

“White doesn’t like you,” Ma says, strong and certain. “It washes you out.”

Ma’s wearing a blue caftan with a pink and white hibiscus print. It’s shot through with metallic threads that glint in the sunshine. Perela chews her bare lips, glances down at her white button-down and black pleated skirt. She’d debated over her bangs that morning, sweeping them to the side and then forward again. As soon as Ma had entered her car, she’d reached over and swept Perela’s bangs to the side as she took the keys from her hand.

Perela usually prefers to drive her own car, but she doesn’t mind Ma taking over today. She’d used the time to work, editing the images, until her queasiness stepped in.

Now, Ma smiles at Perela, her lips lacquered with Chanel Carmen, which she’s been wearing as long as Perela can recall.

Perela averts her eyes, focuses on the road. The NYS Thruway is the most beautiful of ugly highways, she thinks. She looks at it with a critical eye. The road has been forced open by dynamite blasts, but the rough rocks that line its sides, unnaturally chiseled and angled, have an otherworldly beauty. Here and there, anemic bushes have forced their way through the rock to scraggily existence. This frames a distant expanse of rolling mountains kissing the blue sky.

The travelers of I87 are less bucolic, she thinks. Trucks spit fumes into the air, and cars aggressively take advantage of the 65 mph speed limit. They leech any joy this highway has to offer.

The GPS says they’re 45 minutes away from the auction house.

“Come with me,” Ma had said yesterday when she dropped by with a bag full of new sweaters for Perela. “I won a painting in an online auction, and I’m driving to Saugerties tomorrow to pick it up.”

“I don’t want new sweaters,” Perela had said. She’d been vacuuming the living room before Ma showed up, and she winded the cord as Ma looked at her. Then Perela took the bag from Ma’s hand, walked it to the front door, and left it there.

“Give them to Toby,” she said as she walked back to the living room. “And I can’t go with you. Take Toby or Yossi.”

Ma leaned against the bookcase filled with Moishe’s seforim. She took out her lipstick and a small mirror, touched up her lips, dropped the compact and lipstick back into her bag.

“You’re tired,” she said.

“I had a long day,” said Perela. She hadn’t told Ma her news yet. She dragged the vacuum cleaner to the corner of the room.

“A break would do you good. And you know Toby and Yossi can’t come. Toby’s busy with the kids, and Yossi can’t leave work.”

“Neither can I,” said Perela. “I’m working tomorrow.”

“You can work anywhere,” Ma said. “Work in the car. Besides, I need your car. It’s the only one big enough. The painting’s huge.”

It felt easier to comply than to argue.