“I really wish I could take that back—”
I check my watch. Almost eleven. “No problem, trust me, but I got to fly. I’m taking over a media tour today for my cousin. I help him out when there’s too much going on. Don’t think twice about what you said. My cousin is brusque if he doesn’t know you. And I’ll be back for that dress after my meeting is over.”
“I’ll put it aside,” she says, the last word an octave higher than the rest of her sentence. She decides on a spur-of-the-moment hug.
I gear myself up for the task ahead and open the front door of the factory, a sprawling five-story building with eye-straining industrial light. There’s not an iMac or track-lighting rod to be found—we’re one of the last Age of Manufacturing holdouts in downtown Manhattan. If a developer could ever talk my family into breaking the no-sell wills that are kept in the factory strongbox, he or she would be hard-pressed to remove the musty scent of ninety years of flour caked into the walls and floor.
There’s a chorus of “howsits” from the staff as I walk toward the back area where Jake’s office is. The majority of the thirty or so workers have known me since I was a tot. The newer employees are Dominican and they call out Shalom! with a heavy Hispanic accent. I wave back. The din of machines, and the pulsating, rhythmic Latino music on the soundspeaker makes it hard to hold a conversation. This time of the year everyone and everything is in overdrive, as ninety percent of our annual business will transpire in the next month and a half.
The small factory store adjacent to Jake’s office is a mecca for Jewish tourists, both observant and those simply nostalgic for the Lower East Side in its Jewish heyday. It brings in minuscule profits, but we keep it open because its raison d’être is the same as those tony Fifth Avenue boutiques that give cachet to mall spin-offs in mid-America. (Our true big business is in the supermarket chains, like Florida’s Publix and New York’s D’ Agostino’s.)
Greenblotz has employed Gertie, the elderly sweetheart who runs the store, since the forties. Gertie is bent with arthritis and has such a gaunt bloodless face that I always think she might pass out any second. She refuses to sit, even though she is thin and frail, and may be eighty, even ninety. No one dares to ask her exact age, because she will work here as long as she wants to. Gertie is as much of a lure for the tourists as the specialty macaroons.
She lights up when she sees me and beckons me in with a crooked finger.
“Ess, kindele.” She says: “Eat well, my child” in Yiddish.
The smattering of Yiddish I know includes the words and phrases I picked up from Gertie talking with customers, and the expressions I’ve gleaned by listening to New Yorkers talk in supermarkets and department stores. This includes schtickel, which means a piece, as in: Give me a schtickel of pickle. My favorite Yiddish word is the one that pretty much sums up my life, farblungett, which roughly means lost without a damn clue how to remedy the situation.
Gertie hands me an open tin of chocolate-chip macaroons and I poke my fingers in, grabbing the two top ones. Three or more and my Lotte Berk trainer would kill me. It took nearly a year to rein in the bulging tummy and thunder thighs I was gifted with after my scary bout with depression.
I give Gertie a kiss on her rawhide cheek and tell her I have an interview and can’t talk until afterward. I enter the office that has been Matzo Central for almost a century, where Izzy Greenblotz would sit, and then his sons, and then his grandchildren, Uncle Nathan before the car crash, and then my dad and Aunt Shara who hated each other so much they installed a wall to divide the space.
When Jake got ahold of the reins, he took down the “Berlin Wall” and put in a new couch and an Ansel Adams print. I would have gone with a contemporary Jewish artist to reflect the newly hip Lower East Side; maybe I’d frame a Ben Katchor cartoon original or perhaps I would shell out serious bucks for a painting by Eric Fischl. But Jake is the man in charge and he “loves mountains,” even if the same mountain print graces half the insurance firms of the United States.
I’m a snob, true, but a private one. I never tear into anyone publicly about taste. I’m exceedingly well mannered to both him and Siobhan, because despite the misgivings my other relatives have about her—mainly to do with her religion, and a misguided view that she’s a gold digger—I think Siobhan has a great heart, genuinely loves Jake, and for heaven’s sake, she puts up with our bag-of-nuts family. Jake’s made it a point to thank me for not ostracizing Siobhan the way Aunt Shara’s daughters have. They have hardly ever met her, yet they claim to hate her. God knows what those two witches think of me. The last time Siobhan and I saw my female cousins in the flesh was at Grandpa Reuben’s funeral. Marcy, the nastier and eldest, was glaring at me most of the service—perhaps because Siobhan was out of her view, sandwiched between Jake and myself for protection.
I give Moses a scratch behind his black ears, and then eye the factory-office walls. The framed letters to my forbearers from former NYC Mayor LaGuardia and President Eisenhower would be choice archives. But for what? The right corner of my mouth turns up in amusement. A treatise on dysfunction? My mind wanders back to the impending interview. I call in the matzo foreman to ask him to change the salsa tape to our Jewish folk-song tape. Jake’s purchase—he pulls out all the stops for media.
In the middle of “Zum Gali Gali” there is a knock on the door, from an extremely good-looking man with wavy dirty-blond hair. My interest is immediately piqued. I am jonesing for a boyfriend lately, and making a film about older women isn’t too good for on-the-job prospects.
“I’m here for an interview with Jake Greenblotz,” the man says with a confident manner that gets my pulse going.
“Are you Steve Meyers from the Food Channel?” I ask hopefully. He nods. At closer range he’s even better-looking. He’s tall, about thirty-five, with cat-green eyes that sear.
“I’m Heather Greenblotz. My cousin Jake asked me to take you around.”
“Do you know enough about matzo?” Steve Meyers sizes me up with a critical squint.
“Beyond expert,” I assure him.
“Okay then. We’re up against the clock. You mind if I get my crew stationed in here? There’s three of us. I double as producer and host. I’m rather excited about today. I don’t usually go on camera, but every once in a while, for a special program, I get the chance.”
“Not a problem. You can rest some cases on the couch if you like.”
Steve returns with a strapping cameraman in faded Wrangler’s who sports a neat brown beard, big brown eyes and an attractive aquiline nose. He’s holding a very expensive and huge Beta camera under his arm. Vondra and I are all for the husky cameraman when we organize a shoot. I’m a proud feminist most of the time, but bottom line, men are much more willing to carry their equipment than women DPs—directors of photography—who divvy up the backbreaking camera packs like they’re handing out squares of fudge at a pajama party.
The soundman turns out to be a soundwoman, who’s also a gaffer, i.e., the lighting expert. She’s Britney-blond with a perfectly symmetrical face and light brown eyes, and is painfully thin. I instantly assume the worst, that Steve and Skinny Minnie are hot and heavy.
“This is Jared and Tonia,” Steve says with a wave to his crew.
Husky Jared is cleaning his lens with a cloth. He stops and extends a hand. “Nice to meet you.” Jared’s grip is tight and warm, like the assured squeeze my favorite manicurist gives me after finishing with my last cuticle.
Tonia gives me a small harried smile.
“While they unpack I can get us started,” Steve says. “Your cousin probably told you that we’re doing a one-off special on American Food Pioneers and we’d like to include a ten-minute segment on Israel Greenblotz.”
“Change that to Izzy Greenblotz. Everyone called him Izzy.”
“You’d like to use that name for broadcast?” Steve checks.
“Definitely. Who have you already covered?”
“Well, Ray Kroc from McDonald’s
of course.”
I nod. “Of course. Frank Perdue?”
“Frank Perdue,” he says with a nod. “And Clarence Birdseye.”
“Izzy Greenblotz in that company? Wow. Those are the really big boys.”
“We thought your product history might add a little old-world flavor. One of our interns clipped an article from the Daily News about your family’s factory. She was intrigued that your Izzy invented machine-made matzo.”
“To be fair, he perfected matzo machines, not invented them. I don’t want to misrepresent Izzy. I have to watch what goes into the media, or vitriolic letters can fly from the Streit and Manischewitz families.”
“Who are they?” Tonia asks. As Jake says of non-Jewish blondes, including his own girlfriend: Shiksa-city. If you have to ask who these families are, you’re not a Jew.
“Rival matzo companies,” I explain to her. “Here’s the plan,” I say in Steve’s direction. “I’ll tour you through the factory and then we can come back here and I can answer anything else.”
“Terrific,” Steve says.
“I’m going to have to mic you,” Tonia pipes up. “The way it works is—”
“Actually I’m in the business myself,” I interrupt, a shameless attention-seeking ploy for Steve’s benefit. “I’ll save you the hassle.”
Tonia shrugs.
“You’re in the business?” Steve asks. “Our business?”
“I don’t usually work here except to help out with the seasonal interviews. My cousin runs things but sometimes he gets overloaded. The rest of the time, I’m a documentary filmmaker.”
Steve seeks out the ballpoint pen behind his ear. “Anything I’ve heard of?”
“I do cable specials mostly.” I slide the wireless mic under my red sweater, facing Steve just enough to give him a little peek at the top of my black lace bra. “For the past few years, I’ve codirected and coproduced with my business partner, Vondra Adams. The biggest doc we did was an insider’s look at the women’s prison at Riker’s Island—we followed the story of four women who were incarcerated there.”
Jared sets his camera down. “I saw that on HBO. I thought it was going to be bleak viewing, but you really captured the humor in their lives.”
“Thank you,” I say. “They need to laugh to survive.”
“Wasn’t that narrated by Susan Sarandon?” Steve says.
“Isn’t everything?” Jared calls out.
“It could have been Glenn Close,” Tonia says with a smile back to Steve.
Dorky documentary humor. I smile too. “No, it was Susan who did it.” As soon as I say that, I realize how pretentious it sounds.
“And how is Susan?” Jared teases. “Is Susan difficult?”
Despite my extreme wariness of beards, Jared’s looks are growing on me. Those big brown eyes are teddy-bearish, and they crinkle in nice places when he smiles. But I’d like to see his lips without any facial hair above them to complete the picture. Lips are a big turn-on for me. I like them dark and puckering like a 1960s London rock star. My answer lags a bit as I mentally shave his beard. “Susan was very nice, actually. In and out of the studio with a big warm smile. Very professional.”
“You won an Emmy for that, didn’t you?” Jared says. “A friend of mine was up against you.”
“Yes, two,” I say a bit too quickly. “But not alone,” I quickly add to tone that big brag down. “Of course I shared them with my business partner.”
“What categories?”
I pretend to think. (Ha, like I don’t remember.) “The News and Documentary awards, for, um, Best Investigative Special and for Best Directing.”
“Impressive,” Jared says.
Tonia, inches away, slips a wireless through Steve’s blue oxford shirt.
“Well, the most coveted awards are televised while the documentary awards are presented at a special ceremony. You know when they say, ‘Earlier in the evening, Regis Philbin presented the following awards…’ One of those was ours.”
Mic in place, Steve talks for his audio check. “Check, two, two, check.” Then he faces me again. “Don’t diminish your achievements. Barbara Walters, watch out. Although you’re a hell of a lot cuter than Barbara Walters.”
“Can you say something?” Tonia asks me rigidly. Is she miffed at the attention Steve and Jared are giving me? “Just keep talking until I say stop.”
“Two. Two. Two. My name is Heather Greenblotz.”
Tonia rolls her hand to indicate: Keep going.
I nod and say, “For the past year I’ve called the same restaurant for lunch delivery at least three times a week. I want a Greek salad with no salad dressing. The same person answers every time and says, like she’s shocked, ‘No salad dressing?!’”
Jared chortles a bit. When Tonia gives me the okay, I say to Steve, “I have a matzo joke if you’d like to hear it.” Jake always tells a matzo joke to loosen his guests up, and I try to do the same thing when I’m giving important tours.
“Yeah?” says Steve.
“The one about the man who eats his matzo in the park.”
“I don’t know that one,” Steve says.
“I’m going to have the camera on you,” Jared forewarns. “No tripod, handheld.”
Jared’s filming this joke? “It’s dumb. You probably don’t want to broadcast it.”
“Go on,” Steve insists. “We can make sure Jared’s camera is working properly. He just got it back from our repair department.”
I look toward Jared’s camera. “A man sits down on a bench and begins eating a sheet of Greenblotz matzo in the park. A little while later a blind man sits next to him. Feeling like a Good Samaritan, the Jewish man passes half the sheet of matzo to the blind man who holds it for a few minutes, looks puzzled and finally says, ‘Who wrote this garbage?’”
“Funny,” Steve says without a laugh. Maybe he doesn’t get that matzo is covered with pinprick-size airholes so the matzo doesn’t leaven while baking—holes that look and feel like braille—or his Food Channel editor doesn’t like him to laugh while they’re taping so it’s easier in the editing room to cut and paste voice snippets. Or maybe he thinks I’m dopey.
I can just make out that Jared is grinning behind the camera, though. “Camera’s hunky-dory,” he says.
I tug a loose piece of thread inside my skirt pocket. “I hope you three have comfortable walking shoes on, because this place is huge. We have five floors here. The factory is actually four conjoined buildings.”
“How many square feet?” Steve prods, as we start walking out of the office and into the factory.
“Well, each building is twenty-five by a thousand. There’s four of them. So that’s five hundred thousand square feet because it’s twenty-five thousand times five floors times four—”
“Five floors? Why do you need so many floors?”
“Izzy figured out that the easiest way to set up a matzo factory was to have it gravity fed. The flour is dumped from the top and moves on down, the way they pour concrete in a foundry. It’s one of the reasons we could never move. We’d have to figure out our business from scratch, we wouldn’t have a clue how to do what we do in a one-story building.”
“So interesting,” Steve says with an on-camera, very enthusiastic nod.
I start walking and talking: “Long before the Jewish people fled Egypt, Passover was an ancient springtime ceremony of renewal. There was a pagan early-harvest feast and a pagan feast of unleavened bread. Somehow both got swallowed up into Judaic tradition.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but, wait, can I start again? You shouldn’t put that last bit on air. Jews get worked up if you tell them a version of this holiday existed way before Moses.”
Jared laughs loudly behind his viewfinder.
“Tell us again, without the pagan stuff,” Steve says neutrally.
“Long ago, matzo was very thick, and each piece was baked by three women—one to knead, one to roll and one to bake. It had to be made fresh dail
y. During the Middle Ages, the thickness of matzo was limited to the width of one finger, and it became thinner and crisper as time went on. Thin, crisp matzo could be prepared in advance for the entire Passover celebration. Then, a little over a hundred years ago, matzo machinery was invented.” When I talk about matzo I can sound as if I went to an orthodox Jewish day school. But ask me about anything else in Judaism, like why there’s a huge party when boys get circumcised, or why a Jewish groom stomps on a glass at a Jewish wedding, and I’d just be making it up.
“Tell us more about the matzo machines,” Steve says.
“There isn’t a magical do-it-all machine like the one in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that will produce a chewing gum that tastes like a five-course dinner. We need nine machines to make our matzos, because there are nine steps to production, ten if you count shipment.”
“Walk me through them, one step at a time,” Steve says.
Dad taught me the ten steps before I knew how to read. I take a theatrical breath: “Well, in step one, we start with flour, two we add water, three we mix, four flatten, five stipple, six cut to size, seven goes on conveyors for eight, the cooking. Then, eight, bake in the oven at 910 degrees for fifteen minutes and twenty seconds. Nine, package it and ten we ship it out to the world.”
I’m done explaining the matzo-making steps by the time we reach the oldest machine in my family’s factory, the oven, which is connected to cutting devices. I love to start tours here because with its many knobs and motors from the turn of the century, the machine looks straight out of a Jules Verne novel.
“Tell us about this one,” Steve asks.
“This is the oven, the most important piece of machinery in our factory. The matzo comes out of the oven in huge prescored squares, which will make eight sheets in a packaged box. Because they are prescored, workers can break them by hand. It’s as easy as tearing perforated pages from a notebook.”
“How come I can never break them evenly by hand?” Jared asks in the background. Steve looks annoyed that his cameraman is asking questions, even rhetorical ones. I would be annoyed too. It’s a big no-no for anyone other than the designated producer to ask away, but the question was not only a cute one, but also quite valid. Even though the matzo you eat at home has lines of dots on it like graph paper, if you try to break a sheet in a straight line along the dots, you end up with jagged pieces. According to my father, it’s one of the great mysteries of Judaism.
The Matzo Ball Heiress Page 4
