Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  Chapter Nine

  “No!” said STEPHANIE, GLANCING DISMISSIVELY AT THE dress her mother was holding up for her inspection. They were standing in the junior department of Bloomingdale’s in the King of Prussia Mall. The hour was growing late.

  For weeks now, mother and daughter had traipsed through the department stores and boutiques of South Jersey and Philadelphia, searching for that elusive garment: the bat mitzvah dress. Only last week there had been an exhausting outing to Franklin Mills, a carnivalesque sprawl of department store outlets, as large as a small city, where drastically reduced designer merchandise was thrown into large, unsifted heaps. Mother and daughter had spent hours digging in bins and pushing through racks without striking pay dirt.

  There had already been two previous forays to the King of Prussia Mall, numerous jaunts to the nearby Cherry Hill Mall, and even pilgrimages to celebrated malls in northern New Jersey. To Carla, each mall appeared to contain more or less the same stores and the same merchandise, but Stephanie and her friends, attuned to the fine points of mall ecology, could discern subtle differences among them in the way a trained wine connoisseur could discern the differing qualities of a flight of chablis.

  The King of Prussia Mall was the elite megamall of the region. Not to find a dress there was to arrive, more or less, at the fashion terminus, with nowhere left to go.

  “Honey, you didn’t really look,” Carla protested now, holding the dress above the rack like a bullfighter trying to entice a bull, in this case a recalcitrant twelve-year-old. It seemed to be exactly what her daughter was looking for: black, cut on the bias, scooped neck, no ruffles.

  “Puffed sleeves,” Stephanie noted succinctly.

  Carla’s heart sank. They had seen countless dresses over the past few weeks, some quite lovely, but each with a fatal flaw that disqualified it—in this case, puffed sleeves.

  With the bat mitzvah only a few months away, one might have expected Stephanie Goodman to be home, studying her Torah and haftorah portions so as to perform them flawlessly for the family and friends who would be gathered at great price to witness her induction into the religion of her forebears.

  But to expect this would be naive. Only a handful of relatives, most of them deaf, had enough knowledge of Hebrew to critique Stephanie’s performance of the scripture, while everyone, down to her six-year-old cousin from East Brunswick, could pass judgment on the dress.

  Still, there had to be a point when you said enough already!

  “Stephanie,” said Carla, trying to take a casual, enticing tone, “why don’t you try the dress on? I have a feeling that the sleeves will flatten out when you wear it.”

  Stephanie shot her mother an angry glance. “No!” she said, her voice growing shrill, “I won’t wear puffed sleeves. I’m not a Disney character.”

  There was no arguing with this. Stephanie was at an awkward age when her body seemed to have been assembled by a dyslexic creator. Her feet were too big, her shoulders too narrow, her face too childish for the makeup she insisted on applying with a trowel every morning. The entire effect, though appealing in an ungainly sort of way (at least to a mother), was in no sense Disney-esque.

  Carla sighed and hung the rejected garment back on the rack. They would simply have to try again tomorrow. The trick now was to get out of the store without a scene.

  “I’ll never find it!” Stephanie’s voice had become a plaintive whine as they walked past the makeup counters where young women proffered spritzes of perfume like barkers at a carnival. “I’ll never find one half as nice as Lisa’s!” Lisa’s, discovered in the backroom of Loehmann’s (akin to finding gold in the backyard), stood as the benchmark for the bat mitzvah dress among seventh-grade girls at the Cherry Hill middle school.

  “You will, honey, you will,” said Carla reassuringly.

  Yet to be honest about it, she had her doubts. They had inspected every dress in the numerous shopping emporiums of the Delaware Valley and would now have to retrace their steps in the hope of new inventory. This prospect made Carla want to sit down in the middle of the King of Prussia Mall and weep.

  After hearing Dr. Samuels at the bookstore, she had proceeded to make an appointment. As he had warned, his schedule was heavily booked, and the first opening was four weeks from the day she called. Fortunately, that date was rapidly approaching, and she was relieved to think that on Thursday evening she would finally be reaping the benefits of Samuels’s much-touted sagacity. Perhaps he would have some ideas about how to handle her daughter’s exacting taste in a bat mitzvah dress—or, better yet, some tips on where they might find it.

  Chapter Ten

  When Carla AND STEPHANIE RETURNED HOME FROM the mall, Jessie was preparing dinner and humming.

  “What’s that song?” asked Carla, struck by the strange intricacy of the melody.

  “‘Now I See Thy Looks Were Feigned,’” said Jessie cheerfully.

  “It’s a rondeau.”

  The odd allusions had not abated.

  Carla decided to ignore Jessie’s answer but made a mental note to look up rondeau in the dictionary later. The Webster’s in the hall had gotten a lot of use lately, though occasionally it failed to serve and Carla had to resort to the library to consult the more capacious Oxford English Dictionary.

  At this point, Mark came in the door, looking disheveled. “I’m bushed,” he announced, throwing himself down onto a chair. A clamor that had been gradually escalating in the other room as Stephanie and Jeffrey wrestled over a CD that neither one really wanted was suddenly accompanied by shrill screams. “Would someone tell those goddamn kids to shut up?” he snapped crankily.

  Jessie brought Mark two Tylenol with a scotch and then went into the other room to speak to the children. In no time, the racket had died down. Jeffrey and Stephanie came into the kitchen looking puzzled, and Stephanie motioned with her eyes for her mother to follow her into the living room.

  “What’s wrong with Grandma?” asked Stephanie when they had retreated together. “She’s acting really weird.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She came in while Jeffrey and I were fighting and told us”—Stephanie paused, obviously intent on recalling the exact phrase—“not to sully ‘the family’s cousin’—something like that.”

  “The family escutcheon?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Yes, Carla thought, it was weird. Where had the words come from that her mother was using with such alarming frequency? Margot’s theory about her picking them up from old movies did not hold water. There were too many and the contexts too varied. Perhaps, Carla thought, she’d been listening to the vocabulary tapes they had bought for Jeffrey at the Teacher’s Store. He was supposed to listen while sleeping and have the words creep into his brain through osmosis. The technique had not worked on him, but perhaps Jessie had borrowed the tapes and her brain was more conducive. But since when were rondeau and escutcheon fifth-grade vocabulary words?

  “Dinner’s ready,” Jessie called from the kitchen. “Make haste.”

  “Make haste?” said Stephanie. “Weird!”

  Once everyone was seated, Jessie began putting pieces of a strange-looking food onto their plates.

  “What’s this?” asked Jeffrey, inserting a large forkful into his mouth without waiting for an answer.

  “Shepherd’s pie,” replied Jessie, “my most acclaimed recipe.”

  “I don’t remember you ever making shepherd’s pie,” said Carla suspiciously. She had had the dish in a London pub during her junior summer abroad—but not, to her knowledge, before or since.

  “It’s pretty good,” said Jeffrey, shoveling the shepherd’s pie into his mouth with gusto and washing it down with large gulps of chocolate milk. “Is there any venison in it?” Jeffrey had liked the alleged venison stew that Jessie had made the month before. At the question, Stephanie put down her fork and waited anxiously for her grandmother’s reply.

  “I don’t use venison in my shepherd’s pie,
” said Jessie huffily. “Dame Quigly did. Couldn’t abide it.”

  “Dame Quigly?” Mark looked up curiously. “Odd name. Is that a friend from the JCC senior group?”

  At this point, however, the phone rang, interrupting the flow of conversation. It was Jeffrey’s guidance counselor, calling to discuss his behavior issues. Carla went into the other room for privacy and then called Mark in to relay the conversation.

  “She says his behavior suggests Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity,” sighed Carla. “She recommends we consider putting him on Ritalin. I really don’t like having him take medicine on a regular basis at his age.”

  Mark began thumbing through the PDR looking for the side-effects of Ritalin. “I can’t say it’s something I know much about,” he said. “We probably need to consult Finkel.” (Finkel was their pediatrician.)

  “But Finkel only knows about colic,” said Carla doubtfully, “and not much about that.” Her confidence in Finkel had been undermined when he appeared on 60 Minutes and told Mike Wallace that he didn’t really know what colic was, even though he was presumed to be a national expert on the subject—an example of intellectual humility, fine for a classical philosopher, but not exactly what one wanted from a pediatrician.

  “Try a psychiatrist, then,” suggested Mark. “It’s really more up their alley.”

  So here was something else to consult Dr. Samuels about, thought Carla. She was going to have a lot to discuss at her Thursday evening appointment.

  Chapter Eleven

  Carla had BEEN MEANING TO SPEAK TO HER MOTHER about her behavior for the past several weeks, but each time she considered broaching the subject, something came up to prevent her. Deep down, she knew she was stalling, hoping that Jessie would return to her rational self and no talk would be necessary.

  But the behavior had gotten worse. The odd references had become more plentiful and more frequent, and Carla felt she could delay no longer. If she intended to consult Dr. Samuels on the subject tomorrow evening, she needed to talk to her mother today to get a better handle on what was going on.

  It wasn’t until after dinner, when the plates had been rinsed and the dishwasher loaded, that she finally had a chance to be alone with Jessie. The kids had gone upstairs, presumably to do their homework, though really to converse with fifty of their closest friends on Instant Messenger. Like the size of portions in restaurants, the number of friends kids had seemed to have increased geometrically over the past generation. In Carla’s day, it was maybe three or four; now it was more like forty or fifty. Stephanie dealt with these numbers by sending out mass e-mails addressed, “Hi Everybody.” Unfortunately, the responses tended to come in one by one and had to be handled individually, a task that took up most of the evening.

  Mark had gone off to his pottery class. He had signed up for the Introduction to Pottery Workshop at the Y, at Carla’s urging, and it had become a source of refuge from the trials of medicine. “Clay is messy,” he acknowledged, “but it doesn’t have the noxious odor of fecal matter. And the vase doesn’t sue you if it turns out wrong.”

  This left Carla alone with her mother.

  “Are you feeling okay, Mom?” She embarked on the topic now, sitting down next to her on the sofa and speaking in a serious tone.

  Jessie was watching Entertainment Tonight, as she always did after dinner. She glanced up at Carla over her glasses, then back to the screen, where Julia Roberts was smiling toothily at the Entertainment Tonight reporter. “Never felt better,” she said brightly. “Pretty girl, that Julia Roberts. Rather on the large side, I’d say, but they’ve been growing them bigger for the past centuries.”

  Carla took a breath, then continued: “You’ve been saying some peculiar things lately, Mom. I wonder if you might be, well, a bit confused.”

  Jessie looked up sharply at this. “I should think I am,” she said. “It’s hardly surprising.”

  Carla hadn’t expected such a frank admission. “I suppose so, given your age, but still, you were always so clear-headed.”

  “Well, I hope I still am,” said Jessie irritably. “I should like to see how well you’d do if it all suddenly came back.”

  “Came back?”

  “For goodness’ sake, Carla, can’t we talk about this later? Look, there’s Winona Ryder; they say her name was Horowitz. Poor girl! The stress of the public stage. It takes its toll, you know. Will used to complain of it all the time. Though at least then you could ride a few miles out of town and escape the hue and cry. It’s why he kept the Stratford house, though why it couldn’t have been a nice place near Poppa in Venice was beyond me. Why would he want to plop down right where that woman could get her claws into him? But he was always soft that way. Couldn’t bring himself to cut her off—which is what caused us the trouble.”

  Carla grabbed the remote and snapped off the television. “Mother! What are you talking about: ‘Will,’ ‘Stratford,’ ‘the public stage’! Have you gone totally out of your mind?”

  “Calm down, dear. I’m sorry to be rattling on like that, but lately, it’s hard to keep things straight.”

  “What’s hard to keep straight?” asked Carla, beginning to feel frightened.

  “Oh, then and now.” Jessie shrugged.

  “Then?”

  “Venice, London,” Jessie said dreamily.

  “Mother, you were born in Vineland, New Jersey. You went to Vineland High School. You married Daddy and worked in the bakery. You are currently living with your daughter and son-in-law in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.”

  “Honestly, Carla, you don’t think I know that?”

  “Then what’s this about Venice and London?”

  “Oh, that was before. It has nothing to do with you, dear.” Jessie waved her hand in what Carla thought was a rather condescending gesture. “It’s been coming back in dribs and drabs for the last month or so, and lately, it’s become more—how shall I say?—present …” Jessie trailed off; then, turning away, switched the television back on as Britney Spears appeared in a skimpy outfit of denim and fringe. “Perhaps next time, I’ll come back as something like that,” she mused.

  Carla moved closer to her mother on the sofa and placed her hands on her shoulders. “Mom, would you try for a moment to be rational? I must say it’s very disturbing listening to you.”

  Jessie turned down the volume on the remote and addressed her daughter in a serious tone: “Well, dear, I can certainly understand how you feel. I thought that Shirley MacLaine was off her rocker too, and I still think she made the half of it up—it doesn’t ring right. But sometimes life surprises you. What was it Will used to say: ‘There’s more going on, Horatio, than you dreamed up in that philosophy of yours’? Can’t recall who Horatio was, though.”

  “Isn’t that from Hamlet?”

  “Who knows? I could never keep the plays straight; he wrote so many.”

  “Mother, are you saying, are you implying—some sort of delusional relationship—with William Shakespeare?”

  Jessie sighed. “I’ll grant you, it wasn’t the expected thing, especially for that time. An Englishman, and a gentile on top of it. He said he had Jewish blood on his mother’s side, but then, they always say that if they think it will help. He came to Venice to see that friend of his, Kit Marlowe, who everyone thought was dead but was really hanging out with the cross-dressers on the Rialto. That’s how I met him.”

  “Mother! I want you to stop this at once. Since when do you know anything about William Shakespeare?”

  “It’s true. I was never a literary person.”

  “So where did you get this—information—you’re spouting?”

  “Where did I get it? From him, where else? He was smitten the first that he saw me, as he liked to say. I was taking a platter of kugel over to the rebbe’s house across the campo and he stopped me and said that my eyes had bewitched him.”

  “Mother—William Shakespeare’s been dead four hundred years.”

  “Don’t I know that? What do you thi
nk—I was born yesterday?”

  “So what is all this about Venice and London, and knowing Shakespeare?”

  “I’m just saying that that Shirley MacLaine wasn’t wrong, though I still think she embroidered. It’s come back to me lately as clear as the bakery in Vineland. Clearer. Will was a more colorful character than your father. Not that Milt didn’t have his points. He could bake a good rye bread, but he couldn’t write a poem to save his life, and the thought of him in breeches—well!”

  “Mother, I want you to see a doctor. They probably have medication for this kind of thing.”

  “I don’t want medication. It’s nice to remember. If you don’t want me to talk about it, I’ll be more careful. I can’t promise that something won’t slip out now and then, but I’ll make an effort. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling a little tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “So you’re SAYING THAT MOM THINKS SHE’S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?” said Margot distractedly, twirling a piece of lettuce on her fork and glancing around the restaurant, a fashionable bistro on Rittenhouse Square near Margot’s apartment.

  The restaurant had changed ownership recently and, with it, décor. Carla, who had eaten here when it had featured leather armchairs and heavy drapes, thought at first she was in the wrong place when she saw the spindly wrought-iron tables and Japanese lanterns. But then, all the restaurants on Rittenhouse Square were continually changing ownership and décor, rather in the way their patrons were continually changing boyfriends and wardrobes.

  As usual, Margot had begun to draw attention. The waiter had already sent over a bottle of wine, courtesy of two businessmen at the next table, and a man in an ascot at the bar had been eyeing her since they came in.

  “Margot!” Carla addressed her sister sharply in the tone she used when Stephanie got out of hand: “Mom doesn’t think she’s William Shakespeare; she thinks she had a relationship with William Shakespeare. Stop looking around please and listen!”