The Matzo Ball Heiress

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

  “Any luck?”

  “Well, all they can tell me is that he seems to take it out of the ABM-Amro branch in The Jordache.”

  “The Jordaan. It’s not a jean, it’s a neighborhood.”

  “Listen, Miss Condescending, I’m trying to help you.”

  “No address?”

  “None.”

  “So what am I supposed to do—wait in that branch for him to show up?”

  “Well, if you keep to the area, don’t forget about the supermarket there.”

  I yawn again. “Yes, the Quacken guy.”

  “You’re making me sleepy just listening to you.”

  “Let me go then.”

  Jake quacks like a duck before he hangs up.

  After I find Vondra’s stroopwafels in the biscuits aisle, I seek out the foreign and specialty food section to ascertain the damage brought on by the change in owners by our biggest Dutch distributor. It’s odd to see American staples like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Betty Crocker brownie mix classified as exotics, mixed in with cans of Chinese water chestnuts. I spot a jar of Manishewitz gefilte fish. And Manishewitz matzo meal. Oh boy. Every kosher item inside Albert Vroom Supermarkets is from our biggest competitor.

  I ask a shop assistant unloading a case of Swiss-fondue fuel, “Do you know where I can find Jan Quacken?”

  The assistant points to a metal door near the massive cheese section.

  I knock, and a towering man with military-short hair answers the door.

  “Hello, are you Mr. Quacken?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, I’m Heather Greenblotz.”

  “From the matzo?” says Quacken. A harp’s string of drool steadies between his lips when he says the letter o. It breaks as he continues, “We’re going with Manischewitz, cheaper to get from America. Bulk deal.”

  “I’ve heard you dropped our line, but this isn’t an official business call. I’m on vacation, and I thought I’d drop in to say hello since you are such a valued buyer.”

  “Were.”

  “Yes, well, I can say this since I’m on our board—we’re willing to match the price and give you an ad spread wherever you want. My cousin who heads our factory heard there’s a Jewish paper here—”

  “Yes, I’m Jewish. Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad.”

  I’m no Jewish scholar, but I’ve heard of Kahns and Rosens and Levines. And Portnoys and Rothschilds and Grossmans and Lipschitzes and Schecters. All in the tribe. But Quacken?

  “Was your name shortened from Quackenberg?” A little quip, so sue me.

  “No,” he says, drooling again, without a trace of a smile. So much for the Religion of Humor. He checks the hour on the promotional-cheese wall clock, and I’m escorted out in record time.

  Earth is a hep place these days, home to two men who can kiss each other in a Dutch toothbrush store without fear of comment from the other customers: me and two Australian punk rockers (the kind with credit cards) deciding between Lucy and Charlie Brown brushes or ones shaped like a naked man and woman.

  It takes a minute for the tree to fall on my toe. One of those nuzzling gay men is my father, Solomon David Greenblotz. Having spent the evening with Charity and her gang, I was now convinced Dad must also have a radical alter ego who loads on the mascara and sports a beehive wig and falsies. But other than his wavy hair succumbing to gray, Dad is dressed exactly as he would dress in Manhattan. Slobby. Unhip ethnic shirt, probably from Bali. Back home, my mother was constantly on my father’s case to update his stuck-in-the sixties fashion sense. She once told me that when she was at Ithaca College, where rich kids go to party in Cornell’s shadow, Ivy League Dad was well liked by her lively crowd, but apparently he was the standout in need of a wardrobe intervention.

  The major physical difference I spot off the bat is that he’s lost the glasses and also heaps of weight since his last very brief trip to the United States three years ago. (We saw Rent together, and had a rushed latte at the Starbucks closest to the theater.)

  In time to the backbeat of a dreadful Euro-pop song, I inch closer. Do I have enough iron in my soul?

  “Daddy?”

  Dad reels in my direction with a look another father might make if you caught him stuffing dollars in some stripper’s cleavage in a tittie bar.

  Face paling, breath short, he says, “Heather, what are you doing here?”

  “Buying a toothbrush.”

  I’m surprised how natural Dad looks as a skinny man. He’s always seemed to me as if he should be as big as he was, that was just his luck of the bone-size draw, but a smaller frame has emerged. His whole torso is thinner, even his skull seems thinner. He should get some clothes that fit though. Now his cotton pants and appalling natural-fiber sweater just hang off his frame like the dingy clothes former tribal hunters wear when they’re doled out from a nearby missionary.

  On the other hand, the object of my father’s affection is painfully groomed. Are those eyebrows plucked? I hate that look on men, gay or straight. Dad’s new love is also dressed head to toe in skintight rubbery dark purple leather that, stretched over his slender build and considerable height, makes him look like one of those long, hot dog–shaped balloons that hired clowns twist into flowers and giraffes at a children’s party. Dad’s lover is sizing me up too, I can tell. With arm on hip, a fey purple knight reaching for a sword in anvil, he stares at me as though I’m covered in some medieval pox. “And this is?” Leather Boy demands.

  “My daughter, Heather, from New York.”

  Dad’s lover hesitates, but offers a hand. I shake it politely as I give him an even more thorough once-over in return. This grape is who my father has chosen over his matzo career, Mom, me and fifty-four years of New York City living.

  “Heather, this is Pieter Eicken.”

  Pieter’s face is a definite ellipse, and his quick thin brush stroke of a mouth makes it that much more comic.

  “Darling, you look terrific,” Dad says shakily. “A skinny malink. You always looked good, but you know, I think you could model now.”

  “Hardly,” I say after a small smile. “I’ve been trying to finally check off some of my resolutions.” Flattery is all he has to offer me after three years? I should model?

  “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other,” Dad says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You’ve lost a lot of weight too. You got contacts?”

  “Yes.”

  The Euro-pop CD is over, and silence fills the toothbrush store.

  “Would you like to come over to my place?” Dad finally tacks on.

  “I think so.”

  “Would you like me to leave you some time with your daughter?” Pieter says. I’ve heard enough clipped English words from him now to pick up that he is Dutch, and not one of Amsterdam’s many expatriates.

  “That would probably be best,” Dad says. My father glances at me and I can see him struggling with a decision. He leans over to give Pieter another peck. “About an hour would be good.”

  “Very well.”

  As Dad and I walk to his place in The Jordaan, a block from Prisengracht Canal, we confine our conversation to inoffensive comments like how picturesque the canals are and how bumpy my flight was.

  “It’s not large,” Dad says after endless steps up the centuries-old building toward their loft. “But then nothing in Amsterdam is. The government used to charge taxes by the inch.”

  The interior of his place looks like a trendy spread ripped from Wallpaper magazine. Chrome and black leather everywhere. Not at all what I expect from the home of the man, who in one of his rare e-mails from Bali, wrote that he was learning to design his own ikat, Indonesian textiles. The furnishing in this new home is not too dissimilar from my mother’s hypermodern taste Dad and I always made fun of back in New York City. Perhaps it’s even a bit edgier. There wasn’t an ounce of Dad’s style in our Park Avenue residence—and there isn’t here, either.

  Like Mom, Pieter must also be on top, so to speak, when it comes
to decorating. Eeesh. Would my father sexually be a bottom or a top? This disturbing thought catches me by surprise, and I immediately will it out of my mind.

  “Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?” he asks.

  “Coffee would be great.”

  “It looks like you’ve been dieting, but I have a package of stroopwafels too, they’re Dutch—”

  “Cookies, I know. I guess I should try one. My business partner loves them. I have a package of them in my bag from the Albert Vroom Supermarket.”

  “That’s funny. That’s the chain that stocks our products.”

  “Not so coincidental. Jake knew I was coming here and asked me to drop in. All the shelf space has gone to Manischewitz. I tried to make a pitch for our brand. The manager wouldn’t hear a word I had to say.”

  “That’s kind of surprising. Who did you talk to? Quacken?”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. Sort of. I’ll talk to him. He’s…how do I put this?”

  “Mean? Jewish?”

  “No, um—gay. He used to be involved with Pieter. But I was talking to him for years when I ran the factory. I didn’t think he’d go that far. He dropped the whole line?”

  “The whole line.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Do you think he’ll out you to the matzo world?”

  “Jan Quacken? Not a chance.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He is happily married and has three kids.”

  “So, Dad, you know from my math grades that I’ve never been too good at pattern recognition, but is every Jewish man living in Amsterdam gay?”

  Dad laughs. “The ones I know.”

  “Is Pieter Jewish?”

  “No. His parents are very active in their church.”

  “Does Pieter have a Jewish fetish?”

  Dad laughs. “I never thought of that before. I guess he does.” As Dad puts the kettle up, I go to get a better look at the framed erotic photos on the wall. I can handle this, I sell myself. Sold too fast. On one half of the first photo I examine is my father’s face, eyes shut in what appears to be ecstasy. A black man’s erection frames the other side like a tree branch. Dad comes out of the kitchen with a coffeepot and a plate of crisscrossed sugary stroopwafels.

  “Pieter’s photographs. He’s quite respected in the Dutch gallery circuit. Nudity is no big deal in Europe.” I’ve heard that preemptive voice before. Dad used it when I came home from school in third grade and the budgie my parents had given me (in lieu of a sibling) had escaped her cage and flown out the window.

  Still I try to be nonchalant. “Just checking them out.” It gets harder: the next jaw-dropper I spot is an enormous close-up of an asshole over the fireplace. “Is that yours?” I ask for lack of anything more appropriate to say.

  “No,” Dad says quickly. “That’s Pieter’s—he used a timer.”

  “Oh,” I say in a teeny voice, mildly relieved.

  “Mine’s in the kitchen.”

  “I think I need to sit,” I say.

  “You’ve got the right house,” Dad says dryly to my extended silence. “This is who I am now.”

  “It’s just that, well, I kind of thought you were a newbie to this. You know, bi-curious, like you see in the personals.” Averting my gaze now to the only clothed artwork I see, a sculpture of a Roman warrior with a prominent codpiece, I add, “I thought you have to creep before you walk.”

  Dad speaks with a solid gaze. “I’ve been walking for a while, Heather.”

  This time I say nothing.

  Dad sighs and jerks the welcome mat: “What do you want me to say? You spring in like a character in a pop-up book.”

  “You just abandon New York—”

  “I was miserable there. I was living a lie.”

  “So why couldn’t you talk to me about it? To Mom?”

  “She’s in denial. I adore your mother, believe it or not. At first I fell in love with an image. You had to see your mother strolling around Ithaca with her pretty face and smart dresses. She was curvy and sexy, but never too overtly. She’s got a real style and a certain personality—I’m not sure what to call it—”

  “A cold personality?”

  Dad offers a scrambled smile. “That’s not fair. She connects very well to the smart set. She went out with the head of the debate club at Cornell before she met me. Jocelyn knows a lot more than you’re giving her credit for.”

  “Maybe once, but these days could she be any less involved with the world outside of expedition cruising? She never even reads the paper, but she’s got plenty to say about the latest sale at Bloomie’s.”

  “You’re not too shabby in the shopping arena.”

  “Yes, but I read more than two books a year. And I know what’s going on in the world.”

  “Listen, I adore her. Go easy on her.”

  “This is my mother you’re talking about? The woman you left for a one-way ticket out of America?”

  “Your mother and I have always been more friends than lovers. Opposites attract, and for a while it was working. I kept denying my inner voice because we enjoyed each other so much.”

  “Does she know you’re officially gay now?”

  “Before we separated she said I abandoned her emotionally, not just sexually. She won’t really listen to what I have to say about my sexual past, or my sexual present for that matter.”

  “Tell me you at least used a condom with Mom.”

  “Honey, we haven’t slept together since you were born.”

  “Um, wow.” I’m fascinated. But I feel a bit like Chelsea Clinton being dialed in by her father on the long-standing family arrangement. Did I really want to know this?

  “Abstinence is not so uncommon on Park Avenue, let me assure you. There are plenty of bankers covering up their true lifestyle. How is your mother, anyway?”

  “She’s leaving for a trip soon. To the Amazon.”

  “Good for her.”

  “This traveling the world as one big shopping mall business started when you left. The shopping I get. It’s the snorkeling that throws me.”

  “Your mother snorkels?” Dad laughs, then adds, “Again, good for her. What do you want her to do? Sit and mope?”

  “Oh, by the way, she once said that if I ever spoke to you I should tell you that you never got your rock collection out of the apartment. She said she was going to put it in the trash if you don’t take care of it soon.”

  “God, I hope not. Tell her those rocks are from Franklin, New Jersey. Please tell her not to throw them out. They are fluorescent. They glow under black light. I picked them myself from a quarry in New Jersey when I was in high school. Franklinite, tourmaline, natrolite, calcite. Can you hold those bags for me, honey?”

  “Dad, they’re three duffel bags full of grime and dirt. Mom has a point. Show up and claim them or they deserve to end up in the Dumpster. And she said it so long ago that the rocks may be history already. I forgot to tell you the last time you came to New York.”

  “I couldn’t take them with me to Bali of course, but I held on to them so I could eventually donate them to Cornell. Each bag is worth thousands of dollars. I’ll give Jocelyn a call. Same old number?”

  “Same.”

  “Can you believe I can’t remember it anymore?”

  I reach in my bag and write it down for him.

  He smiles dolefully at the digits. “You know, Jocelyn and I always entertained each other. But entertainment is not enough. I needed to leave my world behind to figure that out.”

  “But you left me behind too.”

  Silence as he stared at my knees. Has that really never occurred to him?

  “Heather, I love you very much, you know that.”

  I can hardly say my next sentence: “No, I don’t know that.”

  “Well, you’re the most important person in my life. But I thought you’d be shocked and appalled if you saw how I live now.”

  “I’m a documentary maker, Dad. What couldn’t
I handle?”

  “You’re not at all shocked?”

  I swallow some air, and try to answer honestly. “To some extent I am. But I’ll get through it.”

  “I was just protecting you.”

  “Were you? Usually the most important person in one’s life rates more than one e-mail a year. And not just when a catastrophe occurs. I feel like such a failure without you to talk to.” I can’t hold back the emotion building inside me. Sobs burst out of me as Dad puts his arm around me. “I’m sad without my daddy to talk to,” I get out.

  “A failure? You are shockingly successful! I kvell with pride over you! You’re the big success of our family. You have to know that. I’m the one who has let everyone down.”

  I’m silent again. What can I say to that?

  “Do you know what it’s like to have so much expectation ahead of you? My brother was running the factory and I was thrilled with that. But after the accident—” The memory of the car crash and God knows what else is too hard for Dad to continue. Have I ever seen my father cry before? “I wanted our family to work,” he manages to say.

  My tears end. I find it nearly impossible for two people to cry at the same moment. I grasp his hand. “Well, right now we need our family to work. There’s an emergency.”

  His forehead furrows as he speaks through near sobs. “Is your mother okay? Is Jake okay? Tell me.”

  “I’m not here by accident. I was looking for you, Dad. I took a plane to find you. The Food Channel is airing our seder.” As my words tumble out, I realize I’m close to babbling.

  Dad is visibly confused. “What seder?”

  “We’ve been pulling together a fake family. The business isn’t competing against all the kosher-food merges. All the other companies are owned by megacorporations now. They have much more muscle.”

  “You’re still not making sense to me.” He sniffs away the last of his tears. “What does the Food Channel have to do with this? Who’s this fake family?”

  “There’s a producer who wanted to air our seder live, and then run it as a perennial. I didn’t want to do it, but Jake’s convinced me that our market share is about to fall. Jake’s orchestrating the night. Greg’s going to fly up. He’s the only one who is real. Siobhan’s going to be Shoshanna Greenblotz. Gertie’s going to pose as our grandmother. Or is it our grandmother’s sister? I need to get this story straight.”