Playing With Matches

by Suri Rosen

  I finally bolted up the stairs, slammed the door shut, and opened my phone.

  Hi Matchmaven,

  I wish I could talk to you in person. I have so many thoughts about Jake and I’d love to hash it out with you. Let’s be in touch tomorrow. Thanks for your incredible help!

  Leah

  I kicked the mattress beneath me. What was she talking about? How did it go? Why couldn’t I just run down the hall and talk? Like I used to when she was first dating Ben. We’d dissect each date for two hours.

  And then the next day we’d do it all over again.

  Dahlia and I claimed a table at the back of the school’s cafeteria so she could spread out her chemistry notes. A microwave on the shelf behind us blasted out rays of fishitude, reminding me that Mira’s dinner was only hours away. I nibbled a baby carrot while pulling out my cell phone.

  “I’d put that thing away, if I were you,” Dahlia said, as she turned a page in her textbook.

  “I have to know how Leah’s date went.” I opened Matchmaven and placed the cell on my knee.

  “Mrs. Levine is lurking,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. Sure enough Leah was there.

  Leah: Jake is good-looking, smart, and personable. I’d like to see him again.

  Matchmaven: Excellent! Any concerns?

  Leah: I was slightly uncomfortable that he brought up his ex-fiancée twice.

  Matchmaven: Hmmm. They broke up six months ago?

  Leah: A year.

  Matchmaven: Red flag.

  Leah: But he’s so good-looking.

  Matchmaven: BRIGHT red flag.

  Leah: I like him.

  Matchmaven: Okay, go out again, but be cautious.

  Leah: You’re so wise. I wish I could meet you.

  Me too.

  Matchmaven: You’d be disappointed.

  Leah: No, really, can we meet? I have no one to tell anyway!

  Matchmaven: If I was exposed I wouldn’t be able to help you anymore.

  Leah: That’s no good. I don’t want to lose you — you’re my only friend in Toronto.

  Matchmaven: That’s not true. You have family.

  Leah: It’s not the same as friends.

  Matchmaven: Maybe it’s time to repair that friendship with your sister.

  Leah: Maybe. She can be so kind — like lending me clothes for my date and she visits this old professor.

  Matchmaven: So what’s the problem? You could have a built-in friend right at your aunt’s house!

  Leah: It’s just that I don’t quite trust her. She was mean and insulting about my makeup before my date with Daniel. What’s more worrisome is that I feel like she’s up to something. She just disappeared one night. She eventually showed up at midnight claiming she was on a school project but I’m pretty sure I saw her hanging out at the park. And when we were at an engagement party she literally spied on me in the bathroom all evening.

  I blanched.

  This was so much worse than I thought. I squeezed my eyes shut and the din of the cafeteria faded. I needed to focus my mind and figure out a way to salvage this situation.

  But of course I could — I was being given a chance to defend myself! And defend I did.

  Matchmaven: First of all, never ever assume you know all sides to a story. Second, I think you have to ask yourself if you care about her or not. And if you do, then you need to reach out so that if she is in trouble, you can help her. And third? Consider that even though you’re upset about being on the dating market again, maybe you really weren’t meant to marry Ben.

  Leah: Can you be my wise woman?

  Matchmaven: Letting go can be very liberating.

  Leah: I gotta say: I like you. ☺

  Matchmaven: I like you too. ☺

  I closed my eyes again and images of a future with my sister flooded in. A weekend at the Saunders bar mitzvah in New York together: shopping, eating out, and visiting friends. And, of course, Leah finding true love.

  Dahlia elbowed me but it was too late.

  “Your phone.”

  Mrs. Levine was towering over me. I let out a tiny gasp.

  “You know the rules,” she said. “You signed a form indicating that you read the student handbook.”

  Three girls at the next table turned around to check out the action. My shoulders slumped. “I won’t do it again,” I mumbled. “I forgot.”

  “It’s rather unfortunate that you gave yourself permission to break school rules in such a brazen way.”

  Silence rippled like waves around Mrs. Levine and rolled across the cafeteria. I gulped. “I’ll close it,” I said, as I quickly exited Matchmaven. “I’m really sorry.”

  “If it happens again, I’ll confiscate it. For a month.”

  She resumed her patrol of the cafeteria.

  Dahlia was annoyed. “Everyone has phones. Why is she picking on you?”

  “Now I can’t get anything done until after school.”

  “No problem. You’ll come home with me and I’ll help you.”

  chapter 22

  A State of Esther

  We set up camp on the Persian rug in Dahlia’s family room, surrounded by Nibs, Oreos, and ketchup chips, completely strung out on trans fats. Tonight Matchmaven had only one new message. It was from Esther, who’d become a bit of a pen pal. I know this sounds awful, but I found myself strangely compelled by the sadness of her life. It was like corresponding with a character in a tragic film. Her name on the email address was very cryptic, “Esther LLLevad.” She probably didn’t want anyone to know that she was doing this.

  Dear Matchmaven,

  I gather from your comments that you might be much younger than me? I never did, but I really do believe in second chances now. Life seemed so full of promise when I married — Lev was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1945. His parents survived the Holocaust and moved to North America in 1948. They were extremely protective of him. After they objected to us moving to Minnesota, where Asher was offered an academic position, I vented to him. Unfortunately, his parents heard. They became so concerned about breaking up our marriage that they stopped visiting us, no matter how much we reassured them. His father had a tumour diagnosed six weeks after that. The family was devastated, and a month later Lev had the aneurysm.

  I tried apologizing to his mother but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me anymore. I should never have given up. That’s the great regret of my life. I should have done everything in my power to make amends while I still had the opportunity.

  All I have left of Lev are photographs, memories, and a beautiful necklace that he had designed especially for me: three rubies on a gold pendant in the shape of an elephant with my Hebrew name “Esther” engraved. The ancient Hebrew word for elephant, “Peel” comes from “pelah”: wonder. Finding each other filled us both with wonder.

  Anyway, I’ve been doing all the talking. I know you don’t like to divulge any information about yourself, but I’d love to hear a bit about you.

  Esther

  It wasn’t just the tragedy in her letters, it was the regret. Knowing that all it takes is a few hours — even a few minutes. And then you’ve got decades of grief.

  Esther had been alone almost her entire life and that sorrow came out in every sentence of her letters. I mean, I thought of my clients and the longing in their emails. It was probably a safe assumption that almost every one of those individuals had an image in their mind that kept them up at night, and drove them to continue dating, even after their hearts were broken by rejection, humiliation, and despair. And that image was ending up alone and lonely for the rest of their lives.

  I’m pretty sure that image was Esther. Or maybe it was another image and this wasn’t the first time I’d encountered it, but it was possibly the fir
st time I understood it. I cringed at the thought of the teacher that had wandered the halls of my old school, Maimonides, like a ghost. Mr. Sacks’s wife had died the year before I started Maimonides. When he taught my ninth grade chemistry class, he muttered, and had no energy. He shuffled across the halls like his soul was gone but his body still lingered. And his memory lapses were pretty bad. I cringed at how amusing we found them at the time. People had said Mr. Sacks hadn’t really survived his wife’s death.

  Not every single person existed in a state of Esther. But Mr. Sacks did.

  Esther desperately needed a partner and the answer to her loneliness came to me like a bolt of lightning.

  Clearly I had to set her up with Mr. Sacks.

  This was going to be a bit tricky. Just thinking about him made me queasy. How could I possibly approach the man? I had humiliated him.

  He hated me.

  And then there was Esther with her regret of a lifetime.

  I had to fix them up.

  Which was ridiculous. He hated me.

  I cringed at the thought of how disgusted with me he must have been. I’d never even personally apologized to him. Those stupid, stupid emails I’d sent had resulted in the most humiliating expulsion from Maimonides and the final straw for my ex-future-brother-in-law. Maybe Ben had a point in wanting to have nothing to do with our family anymore. I’d gotten kicked out of school, but still my family had protected me, tried to shield me from the consequences of my choices. And when they did that for me, I’d shamed them even worse.

  “Are you okay?” Dahlia dropped to the carpet and offered me hearts of palms — straight from the can.

  I shook my head. “I just need to finish an email.”

  “You sure?” Dahlia watched me as I read Esther’s letter again. In some ways I was a recovering Esther too, after all those school moves with only a sister as my friend. It had created an insatiable social appetite in me by the time I got to high school. In ninth grade I transformed myself from “out” girl to “it” girl. I went from being a decent student to a pretty awful one. Maybe that was the reason I couldn’t stand Mr. Sacks. Every day, he’d radiated the loneliness that I’d been running away from in the years before high school.

  Was it worth it to go through life regretting not fixing things like Esther?

  Forget matches. Setting up Mr. Sacks was nowhere near my place. There was something far more important that I needed to do.

  “Dahlia, I really, really hurt my teacher in New York.”

  “It’s bothering you now, because … ?”

  “He’s old and I think frail.”

  “Can you email him?”

  “No. No. I can’t.”

  “Okay, just wait here a minute.”

  “She climbed to her feet and pattered out of the family room, returning a minute later carrying a stationery box. She placed it in front of me and dropped a pen next to it. I opened the box and lifted up a piece of baby blue stationery and started to write.

  Dear Mr. Sacks …

  Apologies are complicated things.

  If you apologize immediately after you’ve hurt someone then you’re probably trying to make them feel better. You feel bad because they feel bad.

  But what if you wait and only apologize after weeks of remorse? Or months? Maybe you’re just doing it to unburden yourself of uncomfortable feelings like guilt or embarrassment. In other words, you’re not doing it so much to make your ­victim feel better. You’re doing it to make yourself feel better.

  It had been almost half a year since I sat down in the computer lab and discovered that Mr. Sacks — old, boring, and burnt-out — hadn’t logged off his computer. The principal, Rabbi Singer, might not have reacted so harshly if I’d been a better student. A better person. But the truth was that, after traipsing from city to city, arriving at Maimonides was an all-you-can-eat buffet of cell phone minutes, sleepovers, and shopping outings with friends.

  What could I do? New York called to me. I always had a friend to sneak off with to ball games, to shop, or to explore Manhattan. I had essentially become a part-time student. But even that wouldn’t have been enough to warrant an expulsion. It was those dead-on imitations of Mr. Sacks that won me more friends, but appalled the school. Especially when Mr. Sacks caught me doing it.

  By the time I got into Mr. Sacks’s email account last June, the school was more than happy to get rid of me.

  I was probably like Bubby at the Shalom Gardens — not exactly an asset at that point. Given the amount of time that had passed, this apology was probably a tainted one. The Sacks family already had months for their shock to gel into a solid mould of disgust.

  But the image of Esther chafed. What are you supposed to do with your regrets when you’re old and it’s too late to do anything about it? How come I didn’t write him right away? Why hadn’t I begged him for forgiveness immediately?

  What was I thinking?

  Dahlia rolled over on the carpet and watched me write out a letter in longhand.

  “He must be really old, if you’re writing a letter by hand,” she said as she peered over my shoulder.

  “He is, but I kind of messed with his email account so I don’t want to apologize that way.” I pointed up at her computer. “Can you look up his address? Mordechai Sacks.”

  She sauntered to the computer and typed in U.S. White Pages. When we were done, she drove me to the post office and I mailed off my letter to Mr. Sacks by Priority post. I figured that it would take at least a week until I heard back from him.

  If I heard back.

  chapter 23

  A Beagle Named Chaucer

  The scent of freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies teased the insides of Leah’s Saturn as we motored through a thick haze of snowflakes toward Professor K.’s house. Between three additional dates with Jake and Matchmaven’s encouragement, things were finally defrosting between us. Happy new Leah had even suggested this visit and baked for the occasion.

  I’m still not sure I trusted Jake, but I’d learned my lesson. This time I was going to keep my mouth shut. And maybe I was the problem because nobody was good enough for Leah.

  “What do you talk to the professor about?” Leah adjusted the rear-view mirror.

  “Literature.”

  She grinned. “Really?”

  “Honestly, he should be teaching at Moriah,” I said. “He’s so interesting.”

  She shook her head.

  “Leah,” I leaned back on the headrest. “Can I ask how it’s going with that boy you’re dating?”

  “It’s good.” She pressed her lips together to hold back a smile.

  “That’s great! Did you —?”

  “Rain, I need my privacy this time,” she said with a slight edge. “So let’s just allow me to handle my dating life.”

  I fell silent. She reached out and squeezed my knee. “Okay?”

  I nodded, waiting for the pit in my stomach to disappear.

  When we arrived at Professor K.’s, he wasted no time ushering Leah directly to the juicer. I half suspected he was going to puree the cookies too but he stuck with purple cabbage. I slipped into a bathroom that looked suspiciously like a time capsule from Jonathan Sandler’s toddlerhood. The toilet and sink were burgundy and the wall tiles were shiny, pink, and cracked. I turned on my phone to check my email. There was only one short message from Leah, raving about Jake.

  When I sauntered back to the living room, I found Leah on the plastic couch sipping her cabbage. She was describing her work at the hospice to Professor K., who really was an excellent listener. I dropped onto the couch next to her.

  When she finished, Professor K. rose from his easy chair. “Would you like to see some pictures?” he said.

  “I’d love to,” she said, her face crinkling with a smile. Professor K. wandered to a bookshelf and rummaged through th
e bottom shelf.

  “He’s so charming,” she whispered. I nodded in agreement. The guy was definitely a find.

  Professor K. soon returned to his easy chair and flipped through pages of black-and-white photos in an ancient album.

  “That’s my Rose,” Professor K. said, pointing to a photograph of a short woman with a dog standing on the sidewalk in front of Maple Leaf Gardens. “She also was an avid reader.”

  Rose wore large black spectacles, like an accidental 1950s hipster.

  “And what a cute dog,” Leah said.

  “A sweet little beagle named Chaucer,” he said. Leah leafed through the pages of the album while Professor K. provided running commentary on Chaucer, his late wife, his children, and grandchildren. When it was done, she handed the album back to him.

  “You have quite a book collection,” Leah said, pointing to the shelves.

  “We loved reading together. Newspapers too,” he said. “We started getting delivery of the New York Times from the year we were married. My Rose did the Sunday crossword puzzle in pen in no time.”

  The New York Times? Esther had mentioned that also.

  I surveyed his living room. The room shouted books! Reading! Education! Why had it taken me this long to think of this?

  “I don’t believe it,” I muttered. My heart raced with excitement. Professor K. wasn’t that much older than Esther. My priority with Mr. Sacks was the apology.

  For Professor K. it was going to be love!

  I unsuctioned my hand from the plastic couch and edged over to the computer desk. Yes, it was risky with both of them sitting right there, but excitement defeated caution. I grabbed my purse and excavated until I found Professor K.’s business card, complete with email address, sitting under weeks of clutter.

  Dear Professor Kellman,

  I don’t know if you’ve heard of me, but I’ve heard wonderful things about you. I’ve made some pretty interesting matches over the last few months. I have a lovely client whom I think you’d really like. She’s an educated, intelligent, and insightful woman. She’s kind and elegant. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to arrange a match.