“A what?”
“A movie star.”
“She looks to me like a shiksa,” her grandmother said.
“She is.”
“So this is what you want to look like? A shiksa?”
“Grandma, I didn’t say I wanted to look like her. I only asked if you thought I looked like her.”
“By me, that’s the same thing.”
“Oh, boy, you’re impossible,” Nora said. “Never mind, I’ll ask Daddy when he gets home.”
“Sure,” her grandmother said. “Go ask him if you look like a Hollywood shiksa. That’s a nice thing you should ask a man when he gets home from work, to give him a heart attack.”
When she asked her father that night, he kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her and said, “Sweetheart, you look like Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner all rolled into one.” His voice lowered. “You also look very much like your dear mother,” he said, “may she rest in peace.”
The next day was Friday which was always a very busy day at Mergenthaler and Harris, not because Mr. Harris always left very early on Friday to go to his beach club in New Ro-chelle, but only because Friday was the day new lots of dresses always were shipped out, though God knew why on a Friday, the last day of the week. This Friday was just like every other Friday at Mergenthaler and Harris, except that it rained which meant Mr. Harris didn’t go to his beach club in New Rochelle, but instead was underfoot and in everybody’s way, especially with a lot of sixteen hundred dresses coming off the factory floor at three o’clock in the afternoon, and everyone anxious to get them sorted and packed and out before quitting time. Mr. Harris was a great help with his foul-smelling cigar, snapping orders at floor boys and packers and even some cutters who had nothing at all to do with the packing and shipping operation. Also on this Friday which was raining and hectic, Marvin Krantz asked Nora if she would like to go to dinner and a movie with him after work. She accepted and then called her grandmother to tell her she wouldn’t be home for dinner.
“Do you know this is the Sabbath?” her grandmother asked.
“Yes, grandma.”
“So where are you going on the Sabbath?”
“To dinner and a movie.”
“To see a Hollywood shiksa?”
“Grandma, there are a lot of Jewish people in Hollywood,” Nora said.
“Yes, I see them,” her grandmother answered, “on all the covers of the magazines.”
“Grandma, as a matter of fact, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood is Jewish.”
“Yes, who?”
“Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Sure,” her grandmother said, and hung up.
All during dinner, Marvin kept saying that he was taking Nora to “a very special movie” tonight, being very mysterious about the whole thing, but not mystifying her at all. She knew pretty well what he had planned, and wasn’t at all surprised when they approached a marquee with the name KIM NOVAK across it in big black letters
“Here we are,” Marvin said. “Now I prove my point.”
“What point, Marvin?”
“That you’re beautiful.”
“But I’m not.”
“You admit that Kim Novak is beautiful, don’t you?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Okay. If I can prove you look like her, then maybe you’ll realize just how beautiful you really are.”
“You make me feel silly,” Nora said.
“Why?”
“Well, first because I don’t look like Kim Novak. And also... well, because you keep telling me I’m beautiful.”
“You are.”
“I wish you’d stop, Marvin.”
“Why?”
“Well, you sound so serious.”
“Suppose I am?”
“I’m only twenty-one years old,” Nora said.
“Old enough to have dozens of babies,” Marvin said.
“Well, thank you, but I don’t want dozens of babies.”
“What do you want, Nora?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Everything. I want everything, Marvin.”
“Well,” Martin said, very seriously, “I can’t give you everything, Nora.”
“Then why don’t we just go see the movie?” she said, and they went inside.
A strange thing began happening to her as she watched the picture. She knew what Kim Novak looked like, of course, but she had never really watched her before, or at least never studied her the way she was studying her now. What she was trying to do was to sort of superimpose a picture of herself up there on the screen beside the picture of Kim Novak, to see if they really did look at all alike. She finally decided that both Jerry Schneider and Marvin Krantz were out of their minds. Side by side, the images of Nora Feldman and Kim Novak bore no resemblance to each other whatever. To begin with, Nora was much shorter than Kim Novak. Nora’s hair was brown whereas hers was a pale blonde. Nora’s bust was nowhere as full. Nora’s legs were certainly not as good. Nor did her eyes, nose, or mouth look at all like the eyes, nose or mouth of Kim Novak. She didn’t even sound like her. She was about to tell Marvin how crazy she thought he was when the strange thing began happening.
As the picture got close to the end, Kim Novak was running along the cliff chasing an old lady in a wheelchair. It was pretty exciting and pretty funny at the same time, and Nora was laughing along with everyone else m the theater and of course was excited, but suddenly her heart began to pound so hard she thought it would push itself right out of her chest.
“Hey, easy,” Marvin said, and she realized she was squeezing his hand very tightly, so she dropped it and instead clasped both her hands together and discovered they were covered with sweat. It was then that Nora began to believe it. It was then that she felt it was she who was chasing that old lady in the wheelchair, and not Kim Novak. Why, it’s true, she thought. We do look alike.
She was suddenly very scared and also son of pleased. She kept looking at the screen with a strange smile on her face. She’d always thought of herself as only herself, but now, well... now she realized that she did look very much like Kim Novak, who was a movie star. Little Nora Feldman from Knox Place looked like a movie star.
She shrugged.
Boy, she thought.
“Well, what do you think now?” Marvin asked as the house lights went up.
“I don’t know,” Nora said.
That night, when Marvin took her home, she bleached her hair a pale blond.
If there was any remaining doubt in her own mind concerning her resemblance to Kim Novak, the bleaching of her hair settled it at once. On Saturday morning, when she went down to the candy store on Gun Hill Road to buy the Daily News, the owner of the store — whose name was Gregory but whom everyone called Gus — said to her, “You know something, Nora?”
“What, Gus?”
“With your hair this way, you look just like Kim Novak.”
“Thank you,” Nora said.
“It’s amazing,” Gus said. “You could be her twin sister.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, and walked home with her newspaper. At eleven o’clock, she went down for a walk in the park and was stopped five times by people she knew who told her that with her hair this way she looked just like Kim Novak. By Sunday, everyone in her neighborhood, which was bounded by Mosholu Parkway and Gun Hill Road, had grown used to the blond hair and the idea that she looked like Kim Novak, so no one else mentioned it to her. But on Monday morning, the man in the change booth of the Mosholu Parkway elevated station said to her, “Miss, you’re a dead ringer for Kim Novak,” and Nora thanked him and accepted her token, smiling. When she reached the office, Mr. Mergenthaler buzzed her and told her to come in at once with her pad, and she ran into his office and listened while he reeled off a list of things he wanted done in a hurry and then he looked up abruptly and said, “What the hell did you do to your hair?”