The Matzo Ball Heiress

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

  She smiles kindly. “You seem unnerved about this turn of events.”

  “I am.”

  “When I was your age there was a popular expression, ‘The marriage is on its second bottle of Tabasco.’ That meant the marriage has lasted, through better or worse. Marriage is about negotiation and compromise. Whatever gets two people through.”

  “But can I confide in you a little more, Rina?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “My mother doesn’t care about sex. She just wants my father there for the companionship. Now she can also tap his lover for a second opinion on her shopping sprees.”

  Rina laughs. “A need for companionship is a very common scenario. And this is a pansexual moment in history. I know many gay-straight marriages that work.”

  “You do?”

  “This is my business. Trust me.”

  Rina has helped me isolate the reason behind my discomfort—my anxiety that we could be the only family in the world with such a fucked-up structure. To hear that there are other households like this that work—that does sink in. I already feel less animosity toward my parents’ reconciliation. I sigh. “It is their life, not mine. I guess they have to try what works for them.”

  “Love is a hard puzzle to crack.”

  “Yes,” I smile sadly.

  “Ah,” she says, “having some troubles solving your own love puzzle?”

  She’s good. “Yeah. I actually found a puzzle worth solving, but I didn’t like the way it turned out.”

  “I’m not following you,” Rina says.

  “Remember the cameraman you met at the museum? Jared Silver. He’s handsome, kind, funny, smart. In fact, he has every quality I’m looking for in a partner, except for his religious beliefs.”

  “He isn’t Jewish? Isn’t Silver a Jewish name?”

  “Yes. I finally found the Nice Jewish Guy of my dreams, except he’s too Jewish for me. He’s kosher and I’m not. He sees no problem with so many aspects of organized religion that bother me.” I sigh again. “It’s a dead end.”

  “Darling, sometimes you have to get creative. It’s very hard to find love in this world.”

  Rina bids me goodbye with a handshake and a motherly peck.

  Downstairs in her lobby, my cell phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Bettina.”

  “Finally. God, where were you?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about what happened at the seder. What happened to you? I’ve been calling you for almost a week, Bettina.”

  “It went very well, don’t you think?”

  “You crossed some big boundaries. It’s one thing if you push me to make a phone call from your office. But I think it’s completely inappropriate to have lassoed my mother into coming without letting me know. If we hadn’t had Mahmoud there, we could have had a disastrous event on our hands.”

  “I had faith in you.”

  I’m not sure how to respond to that. My first instinct is to say, “You did?”

  “Heather, this is what people hire me for, what can I say? Perhaps it’s time we part from each other.”

  “Wait a second! I’m not firing you! I just want to talk this out. I need to talk to you about my conversations with Jared, about what Rina O—”

  “Jared is the cameraman?”

  “Yes. We talked after the seder. We have a great connection and a deadly disagreement about religion. I just don’t see how it can work, but I feel nauseous about giving him up.”

  “This is where I leave you, love.”

  My stomach tightens. “What do you mean, leave me?”

  “The best thing I can do for you is let you decide what to do.”

  “Hello?” Jared says over an incredible din.

  “Where are you?”

  “Heather?”

  “Yes. I can hardly hear you. Where are you?”

  “We’re filming in Chinatown’s largest dim sum parlor.”

  “Can you meet me? To talk more?”

  Jared is silent for the space of two breaths, and then says, “Can you meet me outside the Chinese restaurant on the southeast corner of East Broadway and Rutgers? I think it’s called Wing Shoon, or Wing Shine, something like that. You can take the F train down there, and get off at East Broadway.”

  “I’ll do that,” I say, although I know I’ll grab a cab instead.

  “I wanted you to see this place,” Jared says after a careful kiss on my cheek outside of Wing Shoon. “This was once the Garden Cafeteria. It’s where Emma Goldman and John Reed used to eat. You know who they were?”

  “I know. I had the hots for an anarchist once.”

  He smiles. “But of course you did.” He coughs uncomfortably. “So. Has it been a week already?”

  “Where can we sit?” I ask. “Do you want to go inside the restaurant and order some hot-and-sour soup?”

  “Not kosher,” he says softly.

  Internally I roll my eyes.

  We cross the street to the steps of Seward Park Library.

  Jared stares back across the road to the tallest building on the block, about ten stories, with a clock on top. There’s a Hebrew word carved over the parapet under the roof.

  “Can you believe that’s the old Forward Building?”

  “What’s that word in Hebrew?” I say, pointing.

  “Yiddish. It says Forward. I took a walking tour once. I cannot believe it’s being turned into condos too.”

  “What was the Forward Building for?”

  “That’s where they published the Yiddish newspaper that first put Isaac Bashevis Singer into print in America. The Forward is still going, but there’s just not that many people reading Yiddish these days. They publish the paper daily in both languages, but most people read the English one. They moved the offices years ago to a nondescript building in midtown. Check out the four carved flaming torches that are symbols of the socialist movement. Those socialists would turn in their grave if they could see what was moving in.”

  “Do the new condos make you that sad?”

  “I’m not sure. Should I even care about such things? No one else seems to.”

  We sit silently for at least a minute.

  “Jared, I know we tried to talk this through. But I’ve thought a lot more about us, if you’re still interested in hearing what I have to say.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  I start: “This kosher thing is a problem, huh?”

  He pauses in thought and says, “In Israel, they wouldn’t even recognize what American Judaism is. You are just a Jew. You keep the kashrut and the shabbos or you don’t at all. There’s no such thing as picking and choosing what works for you from Column A and Column B, like orders of beef with snow peas or chicken with broccoli at an old chop suey restaurant.”

  “You don’t wear a yarmulke, so how much of a stickler are you?’“

  “I told you, I didn’t get film jobs with one,” he says a bit angrily. “Anyhow, there’s no Jewish law about wearing a yarmulke. There’s an old Middle Eastern tradition of covering your head for a king. Jews probably starting wearing them because God was seen as the King of Kings.”

  “That sounds a bit fishy to me.”

  “Maybe I’m finding loopholes but—”

  “So why can’t we find loopholes when it comes to us?’

  He looks at me and picks up one of my hands before he answers. “How so?”

  “Say we tried being together. Let’s even go a step further—say we move in together if all goes well. What if we were kosher inside our home? What I do out of your sight wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  “That’s an interesting possibility—but would you go to synagogue with me?”

  “I’m not sure. I could try it out. Honestly, it’s not something I’d look forward to.”

  “But why? This is your own heritage. Why do you run from it?”

  “The heritage I don’t mind. I love hearing everything
you have to say about the religion, about our traditions. Synagogue is a different story. Lectures from a pulpit have always turned me off.”

  “How would you know if you’ve never gone?”

  “I’m a Jewish girl from New York. I’ve been to bar mitzvahs. I’ve been to weddings.”

  “That’s not the same as seeking it out on your own. I think you’d be surprised how much focus going to synagogue could give you. You’d try it at least once?”

  “Yes. But don’t count on me. I really have a strong sense of what I’d enjoy.”

  “All I want is for you to try it.”

  “Like I said, I will.”

  Jared pulls on the tips of my fingers. “Tell me, what do you expect of me if—we gave it a go?”

  “I just want to be able to feel I’m an autonomous individual who happens to be in a couple. If I want to stay home on a Saturday, I want to be able to. If I want to eat meat and milk, then as long as it’s out of your house, I don’t see why it should worry you. It’s my own moral decision.”

  Jared stares at two Chinese toddlers racing toward the Seward Park kiddie swings.

  “That’s all well and good, but we’re in our thirties now, babe, so there’s no avoiding the big issues. What if we got married? What would we teach our children?”

  “I don’t have the answer, Jared. It’s all so new. All I know is that I think—I like you a lot.”

  Jared breaks into a smile and scoops me into his arms for a hug. “Know when I fell for you? When you told that dumb matzo joke on day one. You have no idea how much sleep I lost this week. I’d go so far as to say I think I’m in love with you.”

  “Love? Jared, we hardly know each other. We’ve had one date, even if it was an all-nighter, and then some. Don’t get me wrong it was a great date—”

  “Heather, why are you here? Why did you call? You must have strong feelings.”

  I burst out crying. “I just want to warn you—it’s hard to understand who I am.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t fully understand. It’s not just feeling alienated from the kosher life. It’s not just being a little neurotic about relationships. Being an heir comes with a lot of responsibilities. Being an heir really fucks you up.”

  “I hear you, it’s a struggle for me too.”

  “What is?”

  “Being an heir.”

  Is he playing with me? I wipe away a tear with my thumb. “To what?”

  “Something that goes with matzo very well. Jewish horseradish.”

  It comes to me with a thump. “You’re the Silver of Silver’s Horseradish?”

  Jared grins sheepishly. “One of them. There are many of us. Actually, I’m a double heir. To horseradish on my dad’s side, and my mother is ball bearings.”

  I donkey-kick him in the shin.

  “Ow! That hurt!”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything? You don’t think being a kosher-food heir isn’t relevant information?” I kick him again.

  “Stop!” Jared says good-naturedly but quite loudly. “Why does an heir not say anything? Would you be talking about your family on camera if it wasn’t to save your finances?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Look, I wanted to be sure you liked me for me.”

  “That’s what you say to a poor person! I’m not after any money—”

  “I was going to surprise you with this info at the seder, but then when Steve revealed a little more than I wanted to know—”

  “I was hoping that whole night Steve and I spent together would never come up.”

  Jared reaches for my hand. “It’s okay. We weren’t an item yet, even if I said we were. It was just a little awkward, that’s all.”

  “Thanks for understanding. But, mister, I’m not done with my shock of your birthright.” Sarah’s cryptic words at Second Avenue Deli come back to me. “Did Sarah know what family you came from?”

  “Yeah. I took her to my parents’ estate once, even though I knew she wasn’t right for me.”

  “Then Steve must know, too?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, he is richer than the two of us combined.”

  I snort. “Where’s his money from, vinegar?”

  “His great-grandfather started a shipping firm. He’s used to keeping mum, so I whispered to him at the first shoot not to tell you my background.” Jared pokes me. “Hey. This isn’t about Steve. This is about us. Do you want to give us a shot?”

  I nod my head enthusiastically.

  FIFTEEN

  That Time of Year (Again)

  After weeks of discussion on striking a balance between fluffy and didactic filmmaking, Vondra and I still haven’t settled on a new project.

  “I think you should stick to women as your milieu, but try a historical angle,” Jared says. “Don’t get typecast, like I’ve been—I love working on indie films but unless there’s food involved I can’t get hired.”

  Jared’s brushing the hair out of my eyes in the main exhibition room of Deitch Projects, one of the few remaining essential galleries in SoHo. We’re halfway into the opening night of Cocky!—Pieter’s first photography exhibit in New York.

  My mother, clinging close to her only daughter and her only daughter’s fiancé in a room packed to the rafters with men men men, overhears Jared’s advice, and surprisingly, has her own strong opinion. “How about women in castles?” she says. “You could do a film on that.”

  “On what exactly, Mom?”

  “A day in the life of a medieval woman. You could show an average day, not a coronation or anything.”

  “That’s pretty clever,” I say appreciatively. It’s not such a far stretch from the BBC idea of a day in the life of a post-9/11 New Yorker. “What got you thinking about that?”

  “I’m reading Mrs. Dalloway.”

  “You’re reading Virginia Woolf these days?” I ask incredulously.

  “Well, Pieter rented The Hours because he loves Nicole Kidman, and then Sol suggested we all read the inspiration. The movie only features women in the twentieth century. Don’t tell your dad, but I’m also reading a castle romance novel at the same time.”

  “It’s the high-low influence.” Jared laughs, but that crack is wasted on my mother. She doesn’t read art magazines.

  I think for another second as I sip my red wine. “It would be a fun project, Mom, but what’s the bite?”

  “You and your obsession with bite,” Jared teases. “You and Vondra will think of a novel feminist slant that has all the critics salivating. How many award nominations do you want? Let’s just get as much travel in before we have kids.”

  I laugh. Jared has a right to spout off. The next film is supposed to be a we decision. Our company has grown: Jared is now our in-house cameraman, his chance to break free from his soufflé segments. We’re changing our name to Two Dames and a Gent to celebrate his arrival.

  “We’ll have to talk it out with Vondra.”

  “If you like that idea, don’t forget Scotland,” Mom says. “They have castles and top-notch yarn.”

  I smirk. “Since when do you care about yarn?”

  “I’m taking a knitting class at the 92nd Street Y,” she says. “A cooking class, too,” she adds with a wink.

  “Try Stirling Castle, the childhood home to Mary Queen of Scots, my favorite queen,” someone says.

  I turn with a start. Where do I know that campy voice from?

  Charity Royall. And her British friend Natasha. In full drag.

  We air-kiss.

  “What are you doing here, girls?” I say.

  “You inspired me to go to New York,” Charity explains. “The way you stormed out to Amsterdam—and did what you had to do to get your father back—made me face what I really wanted to do. Live back in North America.”

  “I came along for a holiday and a look,” Natasha adds. “First we came to see Stonewall and The Great White Way. Tomorrow we’re going to Canada.”

  “The Great Wh
ite North,” Charity quips.

  “But how did you hear about this exhibit?” I say. “It’s bizarre that you’re here.”

  “We missed Cocky! in Amsterdam,” Natasha explains. “It caused quite a sensation there. So when we saw the same exhibit listed here in the Village Voice, we decided to take a look.”

  I lean in close to my friends and whisper, “The photographer is my father’s boyfriend.”

  “Wonderful!” says Charity.

  My mother tugs on my sleeve. “I’ve had enough of the art people. I’m calling Wilson to take me back to the safety of my living room.”

  “Wait, Mom—I want you to meet some friends from my Amsterdam trip. Charity, Natasha, this is my mother, Jocelyn Greenblotz. I met them before I found Dad, so, uh, they know the, uh, back story.”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she says as a hello.

  “Mrs. Greenblotz, the gay community is very tight-lipped,” Natasha assures with a self-contained laugh.

  Charity leans conspiratorially toward my mother, “So, the world wants to know. Which cocks are your husband’s?”

  “It’s been too long,” my mother says with a girlish giggle.

  My father creeps up behind us—dressed by Pieter’s new stylist in a vintage black cowboy shirt, black Levi jeans, and three-hundred-dollar sneakers from Jeffrey, a store in the hipper-than-thou meatpacking district. Dad slips an arm around my mother. “What’s so funny?”

  “Sol, these nice ladies asked me which cocks are yours, and I told them that I can’t remember.”

  “What else have you said to them?” he says with a start.

  “It’s okay, Dad. These are the friends I made in De Amstel Taveerne before I tracked you down. They were very helpful when I was beside myself. Very discreet.”

  “Okay,” he says, not entirely convinced.

  “So what’s the answer?” my mother says.

  “All of them,” Dad says sheepishly.

  We all share a belly laugh.

  “How was Pieter’s show?” Vondra asks the next morning in our office. “I hope you told him I was sorry I missed it.”

  “I told him. It was a little uncomfortable for me, but I didn’t let on.”