by Wendy Wax
The comments and ideas began coming fast and furious. Shelley plucked the receipt out of Ross’s fingers and handed him his falafel plate in exchange. “Not a problem,” she said with a saccharine sweet smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a brainstorming session to conduct.”
By the end of the day, Shelley’s stomach was full of falafels, she’d reached seventy-five percent of her client list, and her head was spinning with ideas. Her little run-in with Ross notwithstanding, she felt energized enough to run a marathon, or swim the English Channel.
Unfortunately, she was scheduled to meet Tommy Horowitz for drinks, presumably as a precursor to attending a dinner for an important client. Not even her enhanced energy level and unaccustomed sense of well-being could whip up any enthusiasm for that.
Two days ago she might have dwelled on this negative, but today her brain was quick to identify a specific course of action. Picking up the phone, she dialed Nina’s cell phone and caught her on her way home from work.
It only took a minute to lay out her plan.
Nina was already seated at a prime table in the front window of Epiphany when Shelley arrived. Her blond hair shimmered in the sunlight that filtered through the plate glass. Nina was Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn and Debbie and Doris, without even trying. Her white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant nose was buried in a shiny new copy of The Jewish Book of Why.
“Did you know that some Jewish men avoid marrying a woman whose first name is identical to that of their mother?” Nina’s tone was full of wonder.
“No, I didn’t.” But then, that wasn’t surprising. Since being confirmed at the age of sixteen, Shelley only set foot in temple for the High Holidays and family bar mitzvahs and weddings. For the Schwartzes, Friday night dinners were as much about getting together with family as they were an observation of the Sabbath.
“I hate to spoil this for you, Nina, but there’s really no reason to convert. You’re already everything every Jewish man secretly covets: the exact opposite of his mother.” Shelley took a sip of her martini. “And lots of Jewish men already marry non-Jewish women. Just ask my mother; I’m pretty sure she’s keeping statistics on the ones who got away.”
Nina looked up from the book, which she was holding almost reverently. “I don’t know, Shel. It looks so interesting, and so . . . welcoming. I’m really getting excited about the idea.”
“Nina, you’ve watched too many episodes of Sex and the City. Most of the Jewish men I know are not like the one Charlotte married.”
“And I think you’re the one who’s not seeing things the way they really are. I’ve envied how close-knit your family is, and how everyone looks out for each other, since we were children.”
Shelley finished her martini and ordered another. “That’s not close-knit, that’s a stranglehold.”
Nina shrugged and smiled prettily, and then turned her attention to the man approaching their table. He had a thatch of carrot-red hair, matching freckles that paraded across his nose, and a shy smile on his lips. “I’m Tom Horowitz,” he said to the table in general, even though his eyes were already fixed on Nina.
“It’s so good to meet you, Tom,” Shelley said as she signaled the waiter to cancel her second martini. When she looked at Tommy Horowitz she saw “nice Jewish boy” and nothing else, but Nina was looking at him as if he were a rare and wonderful gift.
He said something inane about feeling like cream cheese between two beautiful bagels, and Nina giggled as if he’d just said something . . . funny. Shelley was more than happy to help Nina achieve her goals, but she didn’t think she had the stomach to sit around and watch.
“So,” she said as she stood and prepared to leave, “I hate to have to rush off, Tom, but I know you’ll understand. This is my friend Nina Olson. Maybe you can give her some advice; she’s thinking about becoming Jewish.”
chapter 9
Shelley was sitting at her desk eyeing her rapidly cooling coffee the next morning when her cell phone rang. She didn’t have to look at the caller ID to guess who was calling at 9:05 on Tuesday morning.
“So?” Miriam Schwartz’s voice was tentatively optimistic. “What was he like?”
“Mother?” Shelley asked, stalling for time.
“Of course, me. What was he like?”
There was no point pretending she didn’t know who her mother was referring to. Her mother had most likely lain awake last night planning the engagement party.
“Um, he was fine.”
“Fine, fine? Or fine, fine!”
“Um, just fine. You know, OK.”
“No, I don’t know. Why don’t we go out for breakfast so you can explain it to me.”
“I can’t, Mom. I’m at work.”
“And?”
“And, I’m actually working.” Being gainfully employed had some benefits she hadn’t anticipated.
“Well, you have to eat. Let’s do lunch and then run into Bloomies after. You’ll need something new for that client dinner.”
“Well, actually—”
“How about Maggiano’s at eleven-thirty, so we can beat the crowd?” She didn’t wait for a response. “For now just tell me the important things. Does he like his firm? Have plans to advance? What does he look like? I keep picturing him with Thelma’s coloring but without all those freckles.”
Her mother was bubbling over with happiness at the thought that Thelma Horowitz might have delivered “the one” right into their arms.
For the first time, Shelley felt a small twinge of guilt at raining on her mother’s parade.
Apparently noting her silence, her mother paused. “He was short, wasn’t he? Thelma’s practically a dwarf. But you know, sometimes good things come in small packages.” Her mother paused again, this time for emphasis. “Like diamond rings, for instance.”
“Yes, well, the thing is,” Shelley said, “he, um, asked someone else to the dinner.”
Her mother gasped in horror. “Someone else? But how could that have happened? Last night was just supposed to be a formality. What is this, The Bachelor TV program? Who did he ask?”
Shelley considered lying, but it would only delay the inevitable. Her mother was not going to drop the subject until she knew who had supplanted her daughter.
“He asked Nina.”
There was a loud whap as her mother evidently banged the receiver on the table. Shelley’s ear was still ringing when her mother spoke again. “Something must be wrong with my phone.” She tapped it a few more times. “I could have sworn you said—”
“He asked Nina.”
“Nina, Nina? Tall, beautiful, blond shiksa Nina? Nina-who-doesn’t-need-a-Jewish-husband-like-you-do Nina?”
Shelley winced. It had seemed like such a good plan at the time, a win-win for everyone concerned. Except, of course, her mother.
“They just really hit it off, Mom. And he wasn’t my type at all. I gave them my blessings.”
“Shelley Rachel Schwartz. What have you done?”
“It’s no big deal, Mother. Let’s not turn it into one.”
“No big deal?” Her mother drew a sharp breath and Shelley could practically feel her indignation leap across the phone line. “This is not cute or funny anymore. You’re thirty-three years old.” She might have been saying sixty, for all the horror in her voice. “You have never been married. And you’re giving an eligible man away?”
“Mother, really. It’s not as if he’s the only—”
“I hope they invite you over for an occasional Friday night dinner. Maybe they’ll let you baby-sit their children every now and then.”
“Aw, Mom. You have to stop getting your hopes up every time someone tries to fix me up.”
“And you need to stop treating the finding of a husband like a joke. You need one. AND you need children, too, or you’re going to end up like your great-aunt Sonya. Old and alone without daughters to take care of you.”
“I’m not going to start worrying about my golden years now. Besides, I can
always move in with Judy and let her sons take care of me.”
“Sons. Ha! With daughter-in-laws, Judy’ll be lucky if she gets invited for latkes on the first night of Chanukah. And that’s assuming they don’t end up with Ninas. Choosing someone to spend your life with is no joking matter.”
“And neither is being forced out on a blind date every time some unattached male with a drop of Jewish blood in his veins and a graduate degree on his wall passes through town.”
There was a silence, but Shelley knew her mother well enough to know that it wasn’t because she was actually considering what her daughter had said.
When she finally spoke, her mother’s voice reeked of injured dignity and unspoken hurt. Shelley felt the stab of guilt, just as she was intended to. “Speaking of Aunt Sonya,” Miriam Schwartz said, “don’t forget you and Judy are going to take her to dinner tonight. She really likes that Italian restaurant over on Abernathy. And I think they’re having bingo afterward at the Towers.”
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
“So yell ‘Bingo’ already and put us all out of our misery,” Great-aunt Sonya said to her friend Elaine with a roll of her eyes.
“BINGO!”
“Mazel tov.” Aunt Sonya turned from an ecstatic Elaine and whispered to Shelley, “I hope she really has it. It’s so embarrassing when she tries to cheat.”
Shelley and Judy sat with Great-aunt Sonya and her friend in the auditorium of Summitt Towers with the rest of the white- and blue-haired women. Walkers were parked around the room and many of the occupants sat in wheelchairs, but there was nothing tame about this predominantly female crowd.
“Elaine, are you sure about that card?” The emcee, a tall egretlike man—one of the few males in the room—asked. “I don’t want to make you walk all the way up here for nothing.”
Shelley hid a grin. The last winner had taken almost twenty minutes to reach the stage area to claim her prize. Elaine could probably make it in less than fifteen, but evidently nobody wanted to commit that much time for a false claim. When you were in what Aunt Sonya referred to as God’s Waiting Room, every minute counted.
Elaine stood, grabbed up her cane in one hand, then picked up the bingo card in her other and began hobbling very carefully toward the stage, although Shelley suspected it was her fear of dislodging the markers rather than her fear of falling that caused the extra caution.
“You’d think there was something at stake besides a free cone in the ice cream shop,” Sonya muttered as they all watched Elaine make her way to the front of the room. “Last time I won, all I got was a plastic comb and brush set. It wasn’t worth the trip.”
Shelley and Judy exchanged glances. As Elaine triumphantly accepted her prize and worked her way back to their table, Shelley’s thoughts tumbled forward forty years. Would she and Judy still be playing their designated roles when their parents were no longer there to play them for? Judy had come first and gotten to choose her part; Shelley had been second and forced to take what was left. Growing up she would have traded too-tall-rebel-princess for petite-daughter-who-does-no-wrong in a heartbeat. Even now, playing bingo, she had to fight back the urge to do the opposite of whatever her sister did.
Their six-year age difference had left room for comparison but not much opportunity for closeness. She’d been eleven when her sister left for college; an annoying child in the eyes of the older sister who already considered herself an adult. Their sisterhood had been in name mostly, and Shelley would have felt like an only child through middle and high school, except for her parents’ constant reminders of how well Judy had done at whatever Shelley happened to be mucking up at the time.
And now? She studied Judy as they helped Aunt Sonya and Elaine to the ice cream shop, where Elaine gleefully ordered her free cone. Rationally, Shelley knew it wasn’t her sister’s fault that she felt like the Jolly Green Giant—physically and emotionally—next to her, but it didn’t exactly make her want to hang around waiting for everyone else to notice, either.
Judy was staring forty in the face, yet she was in perfect shape, flawlessly dressed and made-up, and if she’d ever had a gray hair, Shelley had never seen it.
She, on the other hand, was crumpled and wrinkled after a long day at work, could actually feel the shine on her nose and a blemish forming on her chin, and she’d eaten so much manicotti at dinner she’d had to loosen her belt a notch.
“What do you want, Aunt Sonya?” Shelley asked when the waitress appeared.
“I’ve had a craving for hot fudge since first thing this morning. I’ll have a sundae,” she told the waitress. “And make sure there’s plenty of whipped cream and a cherry on the top. Last time they forgot the cherry.”
Elaine ordered her free cone and proudly presented the coupon she’d won.
The waitress turned to Judy.
“No, thanks.” Of course Judy would be watching her figure. As much as her sister liked baking, she wasn’t much in the eating department.
“I’m going to throw all caution to the wind and have a . . . Diet Coke,” Shelley said when it was her turn. She’d be damned if she’d chow down in front of everyone when Judy was going to be sipping on a glass of ice water. Shelley leaned toward her sister. “What do you do with all those desserts you make?”
“Hmm?”
“Well, what’s the point of baking if you never eat any of it?”
“It’s relaxing. And if I ate half of what I’ve been making lately I’d be . . .”
“Big as a house. Yes, that was what Mom always told me. And then she’d get that funny look on her face whenever somebody heavy walked by eating something, and say—”
“No wonder she looks like that,” Judy finished.
“Where is that girl’s pride?” Shelley added.
You didn’t have to be a Howard Mellnick to know what those kinds of comments did to a young girl.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Great-aunt Sonya said. “Both of you girls are way too thin; a stiff breeze would blow you over. A man likes some padding to sink into, if you know what I mean.” She waved the waitress back to their table. “These two will have sundaes like mine. And no skimping on those cherries.”
“Aunt Sonya, I don’t think that’s—” Judy began.
“Oh, hush. I won’t tell your mother,” their great-aunt said as the waitress left to place their orders. “Both of you are old enough to think for yourselves, but in my opinion a life without ice-cream sundaes is barely worth living.”
Elaine bit her lip, but whether it was to stifle her laughter or in anticipation of her ice cream was unclear.
Judy turned to Shelley, her look speculative. “Do you ever eat high-calorie items in front of other people?”
Shelley shook her head. “No. I go to expensive restaurants on dates or with people I don’t know that well and barely eat. I can leave Maggiano’s and still be hungry.”
Judy laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I only eat fattening things when no one’s around. And I eat them standing up so I can hide the evidence if someone comes in.”
“We are too pathetic for words,” Shelley said. Still, it was somewhat cheering to know that Mrs. Perfect wasn’t.
When their ice cream arrived it was buried beneath hot fudge, whipped cream, and extra cherries. Aunt Sonya dug right into hers while Elaine licked a complete circle around the tall ball of vanilla ice cream perched atop her cone.
Shelley and Judy considered their sundaes guiltily.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” Shelley said.
Judy picked up her spoon and poked at the whipped cream. “I think that’s real whipped cream. I’ve spent my whole adult life scraping it off or giving it away.”
“Yeah. And look at all that fudge.”
They looked each other in the eye. And there was a silence.
“I will if you will,” Judy finally whispered.
Shelley licked her lips and studied her older sister. “Age before beauty,” she teased, even th
ough she was already dipping her spoon into the gooey concoction, making sure to get whipped cream, fudge, and ice cream on it. She held her spoonful up, admiring it. “One small spoonful for the Schwartz sisters, a giant leap for womankind,” she said before shoveling it into her mouth.
Aunt Sonya and Elaine applauded quietly.
“Oh, my God,” Shelley groaned as the cool richness flooded the inside of her mouth. “Oh . . . my . . . God!”
Judy popped a cherry into her mouth and bit down with a satisfied smile.
“I could die now and be completely happy.” Shelley picked up one of her cherries by its stem and offered it to her sister, who popped it into her mouth and smiled her thanks. She offered the second to Aunt Sonya.
Then Shelley and Judy began to eat in earnest while Elaine and Aunt Sonya looked on with approval. They ate fully, completely, and without reservation. Together. No competition. No comparisons. Just ice cream and hot fudge and whipped cream.
The way it was meant to be.
chapter 10
By the end of the week, Shelley understood why the phrase “Thank God It’s Friday” had been coined.
She’d spent the entire week working her list and had managed to schedule three appointments for next week, and a tentative four for the week after that. They were just meetings, of course; she still had to find a way to convert them into signed business, but she’d worked long and hard to fill her calendar. Though she was tired from the concentrated days of effort, she was also savoring her success, and already anticipating the challenges ahead. Right now, though, she was headed for her standing appointment with Howard Mellnick and then going to meet Trey for drinks at the Ritz, where she fully intended to put Schwartz and Associates completely out of her mind.
At the light knock on her door, Shelley looked up from the briefcase she was packing and waved in Ross Morgan’s secretary.
“I, uh, e-mailed you earlier on Mr. Morgan’s behalf about your appointment schedule for next week,” Mia Holmes said, “but I didn’t get a reply.”
“That’s because I couldn’t come up with one that didn’t have four-letter words in it.”
