S

hira loves Plum. She chatters to me on the way to work, still in awe at her own good fortune. “Like, my mother would never let me buy anything at Plum when I was a kid,” she says, as though she isn’t a kid now, 23 and with just two years of marriage under her belt. “She said it was wasted on a growing girl. The best days of the year were when you would drop off extras at the end of the season. And now I’m there every day! I get to spend all my time at the only store worth shopping at! It’s a dream come true.”

“There are plenty of other nice stores in the neighborhood,” I point out, steering around a garbage truck to the Main Street intersection.

“They don’t come close to Plum,” Shira says with confidence. “Even when I was younger, everyone knew Plum sets the tone for the season. If Plum isn’t carrying a style, then it’s not worth wearing.”

She has that bright-eyed enthusiasm about everything Plum, and it’s impossible not to be charmed by her. My actual nieces are distracted and bored around me, finding excuses to rush off to talk to someone else. Shira is a dream.

“I’m sure even Plum isn’t perfect,” I say gamely.

Shira scoffs. “It’s close. I mean, there are some things I would change, but nothing that matters.”

I want to ask her what she’d change, but I’m distracted by a car that cuts me off and then immediately slows to five below the speed limit. “That’s chutzpah.”

“That’s Marcia,” Shira comments, and I blink. It is Marcia’s car, now that I’m looking. I don’t remember her being such a reckless driver.

Maybe it comes with age. Marcia’s in her eighties now, and her moods swing from cheery and welcoming to grouchy. At least she likes Shira. Not every saleswoman at Plum has been so fortunate, especially lately.

Today, Marcia is all smiles. “Good morning, Talya. Shira! Just the girl I’ve been looking for,” she says brightly. “Your tablets are here.”

Tablets?

Shira fills me in on the way home that evening. “So it’s basically just inventory, but a little more sophisticated,” she explains. “I was thinking about how the best thing about online shopping is how you can filter everything. Color, sleeve length, neckline, style. So I thought we could log everything in the store, sort it, then let customers use the tablets to find what they need. And it can make suggestions based on your profile — on dresses you’ve already liked or bought. We’ll program in profiles as we get a sense of the customer.”

“Sounds cool.” It sounds incomprehensible to me, but I don’t want to seem too out of touch.

“Right! I knew you’d be willing to do it. You’re Plum’s number one cheerleader. And this is the way that we keep up with the newer boutiques.”

Do what? I wonder. I’m not even sure what I’m agreeing to.

IT

turns out that I’m agreeing to an exhausting, tedious task that I’m not up to at all. “What do you mean, program in a customer’s attributes? What attributes?”

“You only have to do it once per customer. And it’s simple. See? You do tone here, body type here—” Shira’s fingers move too quickly across the screen, moving from tab to tab at a dizzying pace. “It’ll make recommendations for the customer based on those, too. It’s cutting-edge technology, and it’s already in Gila’s and The Wardrobe.”

I laugh. I don’t mean for it to be unkind, but it’s a little sharper than I intended. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what looks good.”

“Of course you do.” Shira licks her lips. “It’s just… Marcia thought this was a good idea, too. It makes it more efficient, you know? Because it accesses everything in the store at once—”

“I know what’s in stock,” I remind her. “But I’m sure that this tablet will be a huge help for the others.”

I stride off, my head high, and go to the back office to find Marcia. There’s no way she’s buying this idea.

But Marcia just shrugs. “There are some things that are always going to be out of our reach,” she says, leaning heavily against her desk. “All this new technology… it’s the domain of the young. Shira is our ace here, the next generation of Plum.”

“I know. But we’ve managed without tablets for three decades.”

“And I used to go to restaurants and get a piece of paper with the entrees on it. Times are changing, Talya.” Marcia hacks out a cough. “We’re getting old.”

And then, everything changes in a single instant. “I’m thinking about hiring a manager. A real one, not just Aleeza filling in for me.” Marcia steeples her fingers. “She has a job. And we need someone here who can be a little more hands-on than I am.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but I hear it — the unsaid, sitting between us.

There’s never been any room for advancement at Plum. The boutique is small by design, expanding only to the second floor of the building Marcia had first purchased years ago. There’s only ever been one manager — Marcia.

I’ve never minded. I love my job, and I’ve gotten raises over the years. But manager….

“Well,” I say, struggling to maintain a casual tone. “I’ll throw my hat in the ring for it.”

Marcia smiles at me. “I’ll keep you posted,” she says. “I’d rather someone from inside the Plum family, I think. And you’ll always be the most important person here.”

It’s all I can think about all day, managing Plum. Being the one in charge, the natural final step to my 30 years of hard work. I even talk to Shira about it at the end of the day, when we’re heading home.

“Marcia might go with someone else,” I say, tapping my thumb against the steering wheel. “Dalia’s been around for a while, too, and she’s much better with computers than I am. No hard feelings toward either of them if she does go with Dalia,” I add hastily. But I don’t think that Dalia has that same affinity for fashion that I do.

“You’re the natural pick,” Shira agrees, and for the first time, I hear hesitation in her voice.

I twist to look at her. Does she think I’m not the natural pick? Who else would…?

Who else, except for the bright, young face of Plum right now, the girl shaking things up here, the girl everyone adores?

I

shop at other boutiques sometimes. It’s research, mostly, and the occasional reminder that Plum is a strain on my wallet even with an employee discount. But this Wednesday, I don’t really intend to buy anything.

Instead, I’m looking at managers.

I know some of them already. We’re all colleagues across Main Street. But I go from store to store, mentally cataloguing each manager.

They’re dressed in the latest styles. They’re vibrant and welcoming.

They’re all very, very young. In their thirties, at most.

I feel it like a pit in my stomach, a certainty that embeds itself beneath my skin, so deep that I would have to tear through bone and muscle to tear it out. I can’t even look at Shira at work for a day, can barely respond to her on our drives. We sit in stilted silence, and Shira says once, “Are you feeling all right?”

“Just a headache,” I say, though it’s more of a constant throb against my skull, threatening nausea.

“Do you want me to drive?” Shira offers, and I shake my head.

“I can drive. I’m not that old.” Again, my joke sounds harsh, too rigid and prickly to be unbothered.

Shira bites her lip. “Okay,” she says. Then, a pause and, “I heard Marcia is making a decision on the new manager in a few weeks.”

“Did you?” I know she’s been interviewing people, showing them around Plum and shooting me dubious looks with each new face. I’m still the front-runner, I think. Unless… “Have you been keeping tabs on the interviewees?”

“Not really.” Shira shrugs, glancing down at her phone. “None of them hold a candle to you, anyway.”

When she says it that simply, it feels like she means it. Like she isn’t a threat, just genuinely rooting for me. And I feel so ridiculous for my paranoia, for my sudden certainty that Shira is my competition. After all, she’s only been working at Plum for a few months.

In a few months, she’s become everyone’s favorite employee, but that’s because she’s earnest and willing to learn new things. She isn’t an upstart, trying to jump in and take someone else’s place. She’s been nothing but supportive.

I let myself drift back into conversation, enjoying the easy flow of our back-and-forth, the simplicity of spending time with someone I like. To think I’d almost lost it.

I

’m still shaking my head at my suspicions the next morning, when I meet with Rochel for brunch on my day off. It’s a relief that I’d worked that out about Shira beforehand, because I don’t know how I would have made it through brunch with Rochel without blurting out some absurd accusations about her daughter if I was still worried she was angling for my job. Instead, I can gush. “Shira’s been a wonder at the shop lately,” I tell her. “She’s a born saleswoman.”

“Isn’t she? She found me a dress last week that actually looks slimming. On me!” Rochel says, pinching her cheek for emphasis. “And I wasn’t even there! I didn’t believe her until I saw myself in the mirror.”

“She has an eye for it. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone that good before.”

“Not since your younger days,” Rochel says cheerfully, and I laugh with her and ignore the sting as it prods its barbed point into me. “Meanwhile, I can barely even figure out if I’m supposed to be wearing nude stockings during Sefirah.”

“It’s really variable. You can’t use Pesach as a true benchmark anymore, now that the spring’s gotten so cold.” I launch into an explanation of color theory until I see Rochel’s eyes glaze over. I switch topics to grandchildren, an excuse to pull out our phones and show off the latest pictures.

“Oh, look at Bracha’s littlest. Do you see those glasses?” Rochel sighs. “There’s nothing cuter than a baby in glasses.”

I show her a picture of my oldest granddaughter in her tutu, which launches us into a new competition about gymnastics or ballet. “Look at this cartwheel,” Rochel commands, scrolling to show me a video. “Look what Avigayil can do. A five-year-old!”

I take her phone obligingly as she heads to the front to pay for a muffin from the counter, watching the video of her granddaughter doing a cartwheel in her backyard. But just as Avigayil’s little feet hit the top of the screen, a notification obscures them.

It’s from Shira. I don’t mean to look, but it’s right there, written across the top of the screen. I don’t mean to press it, but my thumb slips, and the screen moves to the messages app without my consent.

How’d the interview go? Rochel had asked just before I walked into the café, and my eyes widen at the knowledge. Is Shira interviewing somewhere else? After all the work she’s put into Plum, she can’t possibly be leaving already! My heart lurches with disbelief.

Then I read the response, the message that had just popped up. Really good. Marcia kept calling me “the new talent.” I think I was bright red by the end of it. But she liked my ideas.

Can you be punched in the gut by a text message?

I

text Shira that night, a quick, curt message. Won’t be able to give you a ride tomorrow. I can’t bear to sit in the car beside her, monitoring every word. Containing the betrayal that swims through me, the resentment that feels like it might burst out and flood the car until we’re neck-deep in it.

I still drive in, but I park a block away from Plum, unwilling to let Shira see my car in the lot.

She brightens when she sees me walk in. “Oh, good. I was worried you might be sick.” She puts a dress back on a hanger. “I wound up driving Yaakov to kollel so I could take the car again, but I missed our chats. Two days of driving without you and I’m in withdrawal.” She grins at me like nothing has changed.

“I’m not sick,” is all I can say. I feel sick.

Shira doesn’t notice at first, going on about one of the dresses that have just come in. Her enthusiasm is as infectious as always, and she’s already sold two of them by lunch. She’s a star, in that way that stars can shine so brightly right before they go supernova, in that way that supernovae can create black holes that swallow up everything else around them.

In that way that my dream job is about to get consumed by a girl a third of my age who’s pretending to root for me.

I work mechanically, lingering on the upper level so I’m a safe distance from Shira. The clothing up here is more practical, less exciting. The women who come up here are my age. Past their prime, choosing dull dresses that will be outshone by the girls shopping downstairs.

Plum usually energizes me, but I’m exhausted at the end of the day, worn out by a throbbing grief over something that hasn’t even happened yet. You’ve been happy here for 30 years, I remind myself. Nothing will change if Shira is the manager.

But it will. If Shira is manager, Shira will always be manager. Shira will bring Plum to new heights, will modernize it and compete with all the new boutiques, will keep it speeding past me until I’m left far behind. If Shira is manager, then I will never have another shot at the job.

She’ll outlast me. It’s what the next generation does.

I run through inventory and put away dresses upstairs, taking my time until I’m confident that I’m the last one around. Then I head downstairs to lock up and leave.

But I’m wrong. Again. Shira is still here, working on one of her tablets on the couch by the dressing rooms, and her eyes light up when she sees me. “I’ve barely seen you all day. I was starting to think you were avoiding me,” she says jokingly, and I let out a weak laugh.

“Just moving slowly. You know how it is with us old ladies.”

“You’re not old,” Shira says. “That would mean my mother is old, and I refuse to accept that.” She grins, but I can’t bring myself to smile.

The lights are dimmed in the store, only the row of bulbs by the dressing rooms still lit, and Shira’s face is cast in shadows. “Mrs. Schwartz?” she says tentatively. “Did I… have I done something to upset you?”

It’s so conniving, the way she can sound so innocent, so uncertain. The way she can pretend she hadn’t betrayed me yesterday. I can’t play this game anymore. “I know,” I say, my voice tight.

Shira’s brow furrows. “You know what?” But she doesn’t sound as confused as she wants to, and I know that she knows what I’m talking about.

“I know you applied for the manager job, too.”

“Oh.” Shira straightens. “Well, I mean, I just wanted to try for it. I do have a lot of ideas for how we can update, and I….” She looks small and defiant suddenly, like the child she is. “I thought I might make a good manager.”

“And you had to do it now?” I demand. “You couldn’t wait your turn—”

Shira cuts me off. “It’s not about turns. It’s about the best man for the job. Woman. And I think you’re amazing, I do, you’ve built this shop from the ground up, but there’s something to new ideas, don’t you think? Like, sometimes it takes a new perspective, and I really do believe that I have that.”

I can only gape at her. “You’ve been working at Plum for three months!”

“And I’m good at it!” Shira stands up, haloed against the light of the dressing rooms. It casts shadows across her face, leaving her with jagged triangles of darkness below her eyes. “So why shouldn’t I try, too? Why shouldn’t Marcia consider me, too? I don’t want to be stuck. I can’t be a saleswoman for the rest of my life, like… like….”

She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to. “Like me,” I say flatly, and I walk out of the store, into the damp humidity of late spring, the cool darkness of defeat.

I

don’t text Shira to cancel her ride the next day. But she isn’t expecting me, not that day and not the next. I refuse to hide on the second floor every day, and we work in chilly silence, speaking only when absolutely necessary.

I can’t believe I once thought of Shira as a beloved niece, someone I could trust. I don’t know what possessed me to ever bring her to my sanctuary, to tell Marcia to hire her.

I don’t say anything to Rochel about her daughter, of course. We still have brunch scheduled for my next day off, and I can’t bear to lose her, too. It’s hard enough to drive to work in silence every day and return again in a still, empty car. I’ve grown too accustomed to conversation, to a young friend, and now, the silence is lonely and painful.

But I don’t reach out to Shira, and she doesn’t apologize. It’s not like either of us really owes the other an apology, I think dully as I drive home one evening. Why should Shira apologize for ambition? Why should I apologize for believing that I have a right to a position I’ve worked so hard for?

Even the other employees must sense the coolness between Shira and me, because the entire boutique is subdued over the next two weeks, and people speak to me carefully, like they think I might break. Marcia is barely in, thankfully, and she has finally stopped interviewing prospects.

“It’s not an easy decision,” she tells me on Tuesday. “You’ll be here on Thursday, right?”

I nod stiffly. I don’t come in on Wednesdays, a perk of seniority, and I wonder if it’s a mark against me. If Marcia is going to come in on Thursday and make a final announcement about the new manager that will end everything for me.

If it’s Shira, I decide, I’ll turn in my notice. It’ll be a sign that I’ve been here for too long, have overstayed my welcome, that it’s time for me to go out to the pasture where the bygones disappear. It’s that simple.

I can feel my shoulders sagging, my spine bending, my heart hurting. No decision has been made, but I already feel the defeat.

And I feel eyes on me, boring into me from behind, but I don’t turn to look at them.

“You look terrible,” Rochel says frankly when I sit down at the cafe.

“That’s nice. Always great to have friends who really make you feel good about yourself.” I tap listlessly at the tablet in front of me, making it to a list of brightly photographed salads.

“Those are boring. Better to have a friend who tells you the truth.” Rochel peers at me. “It’s not your liver, is it? Cholesterol? It’s always my cholesterol. I need to cut down.” She presses the order button next to a cheese panini.

I can’t help but smile. “Sure you do.”

We jump straight to the grandchildren photos from there, followed by a vigorous debate about a study on the effects of rainwater on wrinkles. We really are getting old, and the realization makes my shoulders drop even more.

“Old?” Rochel says when I point it out. “Are you kidding? I bet I can still run a marathon.”

“You’ve never run a marathon.”

“But I’ve always believed I could. I’m fifty-three. That’s not even halfway to a hundred twenty. I’m not due for a midlife crisis yet.” Rochel looks at me disapprovingly. “These are the best years of our lives. We get adorable toddlers without the stress of raising them, we can eat at kiddushim without feeling self-conscious, and we’re still young enough that we can get on the train without someone jumping up to give us their seats.”

“Is that one a perk?” I wonder.

“Who knows? The point is, you’re much too cool to be old. You’re one step away from managing the trendiest boutique in town.”

I jerk up. Rochel’s eyes are knowing. “That’s… I’m not…” I sputter. “How did you…?”

“Come on. A manager position open at Plum? I know that’s a dream come true for you.”

“And for your daughter,” I counter.

Rochel sighs. “And for my daughter,” she agrees somberly. She sees right through us both effortlessly, knows it all without being told. That’s Rochel. “Lately, she’s been so… deflated, you know. She misses you. But she’s….”

A waitress comes and sets down Rochel’s panini and my salad. Rochel goes to wash, and I pick at the kale, wishing I’d gone with romaine.

Rochel sits back down, makes a brachah, takes a bite. “You and I,” she says, “We were taught to be cautious. To be grateful for opportunities, to never push so hard. That’s how it was when we were girls. The girls today are so bold. So confident, so sure they can do anything.”

“Yes.” I want to be resentful, but I think for a moment of my own daughters, bright-eyed and eager and strong. Beneath Shira’s mother’s gaze, I can’t hate her for it.

“I think it’s a good thing. And I think it’s a good thing, too, to sometimes find that even though you think you’re invincible, there are limits.” Rochel eats placidly, her eyes fixed on me. “I don’t know what Marcia will decide. That woman has never been predictable. But I do know that my daughter used to come over happy, and that you used to sit a lot taller.”

“Which reminds me,” she says, “I tried a chiropractor for my back pain,” and she’s off on a tangent again, leaving me steeped in regrets.

I

’m back in front of Shira’s apartment the next morning. I don’t beep or text her, don’t know what to say, but I come early enough that she hasn’t left yet.

She emerges a few minutes later, taking one step toward her car and then stopping. Her gaze falls on my car, on my expressionless face. She walks tentatively toward my window.

I roll it down. “I’m not going to run you over if you walk around to the passenger side,” I promise her, and she smiles, bright and a little wet, and hurries back inside to tell her husband that the car is his for the day.

We talk about light things, simple things. The weather, our Shabbos menus, the new shipment of florals at Plum. Shira is like a sunbeam in the car, lighting up all 16 minutes with her verve, and I can’t help but feel the affection creep back in, the fondness toward a girl who is so utterly lovable.

When we get to Plum, Shira says, “Thank you for the ride,” and it’s imbued with a strange relief, a reassured air that makes me think I might not have been the only one who was considering quitting with the wrong manager in charge. That we both might have been terrified, clutching on to something that we love and abandoning something equally important in return. “And listen… whatever happens today….”

“Whatever happens today,” I say firmly, “I’ll see you back in this car at the end of it.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 946)