The Matzo Ball Heiress

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

I look away. A Japanese couple in matching “I Took a Bite out of the Big Apple” T-shirts is watching us intently. Maybe it’s all the water imagery, but they remind me of dolphins swimming close to a ship for amusement.

  “You should get to your shoot,” I say.

  “I’ll see you, then,” he says softly. “After Amsterdam.”

  My stomach is tight and my breath is fast. I rush to the nearest bathroom, lock the door and sit on a closed toilet lid. How did I get mired into this mess?

  The sneezing woman in the neighboring stall gets a phone call. “I’m glad you’re better and I hate to say it, but I’m not shocked you got food poisoning. Nobody orders clams casino at a Chinese restaurant.”

  She sneezes and flushes, and I raise my knees to my chest in dread.

  EIGHT

  Amsterdam

  Two rows ahead of me on my early-morning KLM flight to Amsterdam is a cliquey group of couples on vacation together, mapping out what coffeehouses they’re going to buy their hash from. Couples who travel together are their own countries, and serve as their own government. What’s the point of travel if you are going to hang around the same people you did before you got on a plane? Adding to my annoyance is a lousy movie, starring one of the interchangeable recent graduates of Saturday Night Live. I’m not sure who he is, and I’m too willfully disinterested to even catch his name. Somehow I thought the Dutch would have better taste in cinema. On the plus side, the in-flight meal is quite decent, and dietary diligence be damned, I eat the two Drostë chocolate truffles tucked into the tray beside the chicken with lemon cream sauce. A bored thrill. Food is high entertainment at forty thousand feet, especially when you’ve struggled to get a pen out of your knapsack in the overhead compartment only to find someone already filled in the crossword puzzle in the in-flight magazine. That same previous passenger has X’d all the places he or she has been and blocked out most of the airline stops in coastal Europe. Was he some weary old salesman or maybe a catch I missed by one flight, a handsome and lively Sotheby’s expert chasing fine examples of scrimshaw?

  I stare at the pen, the one I borrowed from Jared in the natural history museum and never gave back. Another one of those cheery promotional pens from the Tumor Society, with Jared Silver printed all over it in different colors and sizes. Silver. Would nice Jewish boy Jared Silver like to travel in Europe, or is he a backpack type of guy with his heart set on Patagonia?

  But fate has delivered another type of man to me today: Groot, my five-year-old blond seatmate. His hair is sleekly parted on the side like a mini-Hitler, and he has considerable snot hanging out of his tiny Netherlander nose. Groot worships this Saturday Night Live comedian, whoever he is. Groot’s mother, Barbara, the lady with a matching button nose two seats over from me, keeps trying to wipe her son’s nostrils, but her interruptions to his beloved movie causes much flailing of his arms and a noise a young pterodactyl might elicit if prodded away from some engaging but poisonous Jurassic plant by its doting mother. The snot stays.

  When the movie is over, Groot immediately buzzes the airline attendant, who is waved away by his mother. As soon as she’s halfway down the aisle, the fat-cheeked tyke flashes the light button on and off again seven times. After an earful from Mummy, Groot promises to be good and then glowers in silence. He flips through his easy-reader picture book on spaceships that Barbara produces from her nylon carry-on. All good. Until her son starts to mimic the rotor noise of a helicopter.

  Loudly.

  “If only I could fax Groot to my husband,” Barbara says to me with a grimacing smile.

  Barbara earlier told me (in her perfect English) that she’s originally from a watery province called Zeeland, but her family now lives in an Amsterdam neighborhood called The Jordaan. I would love to ask if she has any suggestions where to go to find my almost definitely gay dad, but with her live-wire kid and airline-enforced lack of cigarettes, I’m sure this line of questioning would do her in.

  When at last Groot succumbs to the sandman, Barbara also closes her eyes for a breather. I sheepishly open my knapsack, slide in Judaism for Dummies and slide out Fodor’s Gay Guide to Amsterdam. Another passing female flight attendant, tall and also dirty blond, is carrying a tray of plastic glasses filled with water. She gives me an inviting look.

  On the buffet line at the American Hotel on Leidesplein, a Dutch businessman asks if I’ve tried this country’s superlative Gouda and Edam. “That’s why we’re the tallest nation,” he says to me in the elevator ride down. “Dairy. Do you notice the Chinese are getting taller? All those basketball players? It’s dairy. They’re slowly turning into the Dutch.”

  I pile mostly fruit and a sampling of cheese onto my plate. I pick a window seat in the restaurant. The cheese is superlative—I may never touch New York supermarket cheese again. I open my guidebook and checkmark the bars that have gay-dad potential.

  The most recent photo I have of my father is the one he e-mailed of himself in front of his Balinese villa with a pink sun behind him on the beach. Armed with a color printout, I am set to scour Amsterdam’s drag bars, leather bars and gay dance clubs. I plan to grill homosexual men of every fetish with “Have you seen my daddy?”

  At 9:00 p.m. I take a cab to the infamous red-light district, where I’m sure some of the gay bars will be easy to spot. But all I see is half-naked women in neon-illuminated windows.

  “You want men?” says the bearded man behind a late-night newsstand stocked with European porno mags. “You’re not in the right neighborhood. This is for the boys who like, how you say in English—”

  “Pussy,” says a hooded customer behind me who purchases a magazine featuring an obese naked cover girl with enormous nipples, round as saucers.

  By the wee hours I’ve poked my head into seven bars. I am convinced that finding my father flirting with a man in an Amsterdam bar is about as likely as my finding the sultan of Brunei on line at the corner store buying a Lotto ticket. I dread going back to Bettina and Jake with a sob story, so I try the last bar on my list, De Amstel Taveerne, touted in the Fodor’s Gay Guide as the first gay bar in Amsterdam. The Fodor’s writer loves the bar’s campy Dutch sing-alongs.

  I stand outside for a minute watching gay men stream from the door. Most of the newly coupled guys sport the thick mustaches heterosexual men cling to in the American Midwest as proof of their virility. Inside, the crowd is lively as promised. The tail end of Liza Minnelli’s “Losing My Mind” booms on the sound system, followed by her gay ex-husband Peter Allen’s “Bicoastal” as an ironic chaser. I seat myself in the corner, crestfallen, thirsty and hungry.

  A burly drag queen says something quickly to me in Dutch.

  “I only speak English,” I say, miserable and not feeling particularly chatty.

  “You’re in luck, honey. Are you a Canuck like me?”

  “New Yorker,” I say.

  He points to a fat drag queen tottering near a bar. “Did you see those heels she’s wearing? Doesn’t suit her legs at all. If Carlotta doesn’t buy a pair of flats, we’re going to see an elephant slip. Did you ever see an elephant slip? An unforgettable sight.”

  “When does an elephant ever slip? Elephants don’t slip.”

  “Not true, darling. I saw a nature documentary last night about elephants. They had one tragic shot of a dead elephant carcass, and the narrator explained that it wasn’t poached—it had fallen to its death.”

  “He must have gone after a particularly tasty frond, and misplaced his footing.”

  “Frond. Great word,” the queen says to me. “Are you a writer?”

  “A filmmaker. Here from New York.”

  “I’m Charity Royall, and I’m going to sit down and cheer you up. You look like you need it, and I want to know all about New York. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been.”

  I force a smile. “Charity Royall. Isn’t that an Edith Wharton character?”

  “A gold star if you can tell me which novel.”

  I concentrate until it com
es: “Summer. Required reading for my Women in Eighteenth-Century Literature course. Charity Royall had a sexual awakening.”

  “You may be a sad little bird, but you’re a well-read one.”

  Before we can continue our not-unpleasant repartee, there are brilliant flashes of light hitting my eyes from an unknown source. It’s emanating from a friend of Charity’s, who sits down at the table with us as if we’ve been expecting him. He, (or she, as I guess drag queens prefer to be called), is at least fifty, maybe sixty, but it’s hard to tell under the Pan-Cake makeup and heavy Dame Edna glitter dress.

  “Natasha, how was the cataract operation?” Charity asks.

  “It was nothing,” says Natasha in a British accent.

  “An operation on your eye is nothing?”

  “It was the early stage of the cataract, and I think, right, this needle is entering my skin for four seconds of my life. I could live with that. When it comes to pain, it’s mind over matter.”

  Charity twists her pink-lipsticked lips. “If someone jams a red-hot poker up your arse for four seconds, you’re fine with that?”

  My hands unclench as I laugh loudly. I didn’t expect to laugh at all tonight.

  Charity’s bony buddy turns to me: “I must compliment you. You look so much like a woman. It’s just wonderful.”

  “I am a woman.”

  Charity lets loose a gut-busting guffaw.

  Natasha makes a wry face. “Teasing you, love. We get plenty a mixed crowd in this bar. Nothing and no one is new to us. I only tease the ones who look like they can take it. So what’s a nice real woman doing at a place like this? Here to check out the barside show?”

  “A lot of straight tourists tiptoe inside just to see us,” adds Charity. “We’re as much of a draw as the music.”

  “Sorry. I’m just looking for my father.”

  “Wrong establishment.” Charity smiles knowingly.

  “Maybe not. I think he’s gay. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “In that case, what’s his name?”

  “Charity knows everybody.”

  “Can you be discreet?” I ask in a choked voice.

  “Of course!” Charity nods vigorously.

  “Sol Greenblotz from New York—would you happen to know him?”

  “Is he a queen?” Charity asks.

  “I’m not sure.” I pull out the picture I printed on my computer and they shake their wigged heads no.

  “Greenblotz like the matzo?” says Natasha.

  “Yes. That’s my family. I’m the youngest generation.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Natasha says. She smiles broadly at Charity before turning back to me. “My birth name is Jacob Weiner. My father was in the London schmata trade before he retired.”

  “Oy veis meir! I’m Larry Moskowitz,” Charity says to me. “My father was in furniture export.”

  We fall about ourselves laughing, until Natasha manages to say, “I’ve been eating your family matzo since I was knee-high. Has anyone else ever been this excited?”

  “Most people—well, most Jews—get excited,” I say. I tell them about Oleg, my hyperfriendly Russian mailman who I’d assured Jake was not a choice guest to drag to the fake family seder—even though Oleg practically whirled in joy when he first realized who I am. Oleg was a research scientist in Minsk a decade ago. The day he asked about my last name was the day I had registered mail from my trust fund, and the day after he’d bought his family their first box of matzo. Buying Jewish foods is a big deal for a Russian used to tucking away religion. Now Oleg considers me a star resident of the building along with the two All My Children ingenues that share penthouse B. “An autograph from The Matzo Ball Heiress!” he singsongs when I sign for my quarterly checks.

  Charity orders us on-tap Budweisers, not the watery kind from America, but the really nice lager from the Czech Republic. Charity and Natasha may dress like women, but they knock beer back like a couple of lumberjacks.

  Charity leans over with a woozy smile. “So tell me, Miss Matzo Ball Heiress, why are you really looking for your gay father in Amsterdam?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him in months, but this is the last place I heard from him. I think he’s still living here.”

  “Would make sense. That’s why we’re here. Everyone is so open here. It’s a better life. The way the world should be. Open.”

  “If he wants to live overseas, that’s his right. But this year, Dad needs to come home for our family seder. The Greenblotz seder is being broadcast on American TV and he’s desperately needed. No one else can read Hebrew.”

  Glutted with Brazil nuts, Charity gets up heavily in his seat and stands on top of the bar with all of his considerable girth and projects: “Does anyone know Sol Greenblotz from New York?” And then just as loudly in Dutch: “Kennen jullie Sol Greenblotz?”

  I’m too tired and drunk to get angry.

  Natasha tsks for me. “Discreet as they come.”

  A few stares transpire before a ruddy man with jug ears and severe acne calls back loudly in an Australian accent, “Everyone thinks they’re a movie star and if you’re Tom Cruise then okay, but otherwise sit the fuck down.”

  “Well,” Charity says in a huff to anyone in the vicinity who will listen. “That’s rich coming from a man with a dried-up head like something you’d find on the bottom of a boat—a barnacle head.”

  Natasha gives me an amused look.

  Charity sighs out loud and smiles at me: “I tried, darling.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Natasha produces a red compact from her silver clutch bag. As she checks her mascara, she says, “Funny we’re talking about fathers. My old man calls today and puts me on hold. Why? Because he wants to look up a bird copulating on his windowsill in his bird book. Lunacy. He lives in Primrose Hill. I told him, ‘Father, you don’t need the bird book. I tell you what it is. It’s a pigeon. It’s always a bloody pigeon.’” When Charity and I laugh loudly, Natasha continues with an almost proud glint in her eye, “Then my mother gets on to say she’s won another Tidy Town award. She’s eighty and still so neat that she would scrub germs if she could. She folds and color-codes their dirty laundry.”

  “She sounds obsessive-compulsive,” I say. “Maybe she should get help.”

  “Too late for the world’s foremost mopper, love. I barely even sweep, and that fills her with horror.” Natasha exhales noisily. “My parents are real characters.”

  This from a six-foot man named Natasha dressed in a purple evening gown and kitten heels.

  Another drag queen friend of Charity’s minces over to our table. A black “gal” named Simone who is beyond thrilled to chat up a visitor from New York. Simone’s fake nails are so long they spiral. She talks as fast as a ticker spitter in a thick French accent, and her fingertips make a faint clacking sound as they inadvertently tap on our table. “I hear Manhattan has zee wonderful natural energy. I read zis in a holistic magazine. Apparently zee souls of zee original box turtles and beavers are zill hovering.”

  Back in the Big Apple I would roll my eyes at the ridiculous carryings-on of these ex-pat queens, and their wacky stories and theories, but here near the Amstel River I am free from the shackles of New York cynicism. Believing in protective animal spirits floating over my hardened twenty-first-century city is a very comforting thought.

  I expand my confidence: I am looking for my father. I love him. I need him. His homosexuality is not a problem; I’m hip with it. The immediate problem is not having anyone at my seder who speaks Hebrew. But my long-term goal is to get to know my father again as a friend.

  “What a wonderful daughter you are,” Charity née Larry says woozily with a pat of his fat, furry hand.

  I sniffle.

  Natasha, née Jacob, takes my other hand and gives it a small squeeze. “Listen, darling. My test for relationships is the same test I use for pure fibers. You burn a tiny bit. If the fiber turns to ash, it’s silk. If it isn’t, and it goes beady, it wasn’
t worth pence to begin with.”

  “Huh?” says Charity. “If her father burns and turns to ash, that’s good?”

  Natasha shoos Charity out of her space with her free arm. She squeezes my hand harder. “Heather, find your father, and push him to his limit. He’ll be angry, but if he cares, he’ll take action.”

  Alcohol has always given me funny dreams. Tonight, sometime after I pass out with my clothes on, I’m a hen. A hen who lays an egg that Hitler bursts out of, laughing manically and saying: “Jew hens to the left.” I wake up like a newbie soldier in sweaty sheets, and grope in the bathroom for my hotel glass to fill with water. Nude on the toilet seat, I sweat fear in a wet isolation. Eventually I brave it back to the bed, and pull a notebook out of my suitcase and a pen from the Bible drawer and begin to draw: snails, elephants, a whole zoo of animals until I’m groggy enough to fall back to sleep. Even then I stare at the ceiling for twenty minutes, my tongue sticking out like I’m an overheated dog.

  I start to finally drift off to sleep, when the room phone rings.

  “What time is it there?” Jake says when I pick it up and answer after a clumsy delay.

  “It’s 4:00 a.m.”

  “Oh, I thought it was 4:00 p.m.”

  “It’s okay, I was having nightmares anyhow.”

  “About what?”

  “Chickens and Hitler.”

  “You know what I dreamed about last night?”

  I yawn. “Let me guess, Britney Spears doing the breaststroke in your swimming pool?”

  “Ooh. So close. Christina Aguilera gave me a lap dance.”

  “Jake, is there a reason you’re calling? I’m dead tired.”

  “Just seeing if you had any luck finding Uncle Sol.”

  “None.” I yawn again. “But I’ve found out the reason the Dutch are so tall. It’s the dairy.”

  “Then how come the Jews aren’t taller? Look how short Grandpa Reuben was. I’d say he ate a vat of sour cream a year.”

  “He also ate stuffed intestine.”

  “That will set you back,” Jake concurs. “Look, I had an idea about how to find Uncle Sol. I called the bank to see where his ATM withdrawals come from in Amsterdam. We deposit his money in his New York City account, but he has to take the cash out somewhere in Amsterdam.”