“It
is
a big step.”
“I’ve been with Malky an hour already. She’s driving me crazy. You’d think that she’d be the logical one about this — she’s studying to be an accountant, after all.”
“I hope Hindy can help her,” Rachel said.
“She barely knows the guy,” Leah interjected. “I’d cry, too.” She threw her head back and her curls bobbed like a wave. “They’ve only met six times!”
“And she’s going to have to sleep with him tonight,” Rachel noted.
Leah shrugged. “Well, if the gentiles on TV do it after meeting once, it can’t be such a big deal.”
The sound of the bride’s sobs continued to permeate the wedding hall as Rachel and Leah made their way to the smorgasbord of meats, salads, and delicacies. They split up at the tables, each choosing a different path to complete their mission of showing the guests that they too were available for marriage.
Balancing a plate of beef spareribs and broccoli, Rachel headed for a small table to join Leah. She resisted the temptation to kick off her torturous shoes as she sat.
Rachel picked at her food, careful not to smudge her lipstick. “Listening to that hysterical bride is beyond draining.” She wished it didn’t have to be this way — all this pressure. But she also knew that the Holocaust had decimated her community, and that she and every Jewish woman she knew was expected to make up for it in one way: by marrying early and becoming baby making machines.
“Traditions and obligations — ” Rachel looked at her friend. “What about love?”
Leah shrugged again. “Love is for gentiles.”
“Why can’t we have both — the traditions and love?”
“Some girls can dream, Rachel. Others have to work. I got a B on my last computer exam. And I have chemistry and biology midterms coming up. Have to bone up big time or I’ll kill my chances of getting into med school. Ready for dessert?”
Rachel pushed back up to her aching feet and followed her friend to the buffet.
Leah lightly felt her nose and frowned. “I think my pimple is puffing up again. I need to find the ladies’ room.” She left Rachel standing near a mountain of temptations.
Rachel took a dish of chocolate-covered strawberries from the buffet and slapped on a glob of non-dairy cream. As she enjoyed her treat, she scanned the crowd to see who else she might know. The men would be seated apart from the women at the ceremony and dinner, but the smorgasbord before the service was family-style, open to men and women.
And then she saw him.
He looked to be about her height, with an athletic build, as if he played sports. He clearly wasn’t hunched and pale from poring over the Talmud in a yeshiva full-time. Thick, wavy jet-black hair, dark skin, dark eyes, noble nose, defined chin. A bit overdressed, in a tux; most men simply wore black suits and hats. Small hands, maybe her size, though they looked capable. Sculpted yet solid, as if he could build with those hands. Or write poetry. What Rachel liked most, though, was the way he moved. Gently, calmly, with dignity. Who was he? What did he do? Rachel wondered if he was somehow related to the bride — or maybe he was one of the groom’s friends.
He looked up and caught her gaze. Her face flushed a deep red, but she didn’t turn away. She thought she would sink through the floor and be gobbled up by the fires of hell, or maybe turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife, but still she didn’t — she couldn’t — turn her head. He held her gaze without a hint of condescension, without humiliating her for looking, like so many other boys might have done. Instead, he smiled.
She smiled back. And then he started to walk toward her. She didn’t know what to do. Who would introduce them? Could she talk to him in front of everybody? The only boys she knew were family, friends of the family, and boys at school — but that didn’t count.
“Can I take your plate, eh?” he said. Clear voice and enunciation. Certainly not a hoodlum. But not from Brooklyn. What was that “eh”? Canadian?
“My plate?” Rachel had been hoping for a suave romantic opening line.
“Right. Could I have your plate, please? If you’re done, that is.”
“Why do you want my plate?”
“I collect dirty plates. That’s what waiters do, you know.”
“You’re a waiter?”
“Right. I could come back later, though, if you want to hold on to it. No pressure.” He smiled.
Now she really wanted to sink into the ground.
“Thanks,” she said. She intended to hand him the empty dish with as much grace as she could muster, but instead she stumbled on her Enzo heel, and the leftover pool of non-dairy cream splattered his tuxedo like modern art.
“Oh! I am
so
sorry!” She twisted to get a napkin to wipe it off. “Here!” She wanted to wipe his suit for him but didn’t dare. She knew the prohibition against Orthodox Jewish men and women touching. Dabbing at his suit would be a terribly brazen offense. She thrust the stiff white fabric toward him and, feeling guilty, looked around for her parents or other witness.
He good-naturedly took what she’d offered. “It’s all right, happens all the time. Really.”
“Can I pay for the dry cleaning?”
“No, really, it’s fine.” He blotted the stains clean with the napkin.
“I just feel so bad about it. How could I do that to a tux!”
He smiled. “So you like tuxes, eh?”
“Well, they are very handsome.” Rachel blushed. “I mean, not that you aren’t handsome — no, I didn’t say that. Well, I guess I did. I mean, suits are nice. Yes.”
Just shut up,
she told herself, wishing she could just disappear.
The waiter laughed.
“Look, I insist.” She pulled a pen and paper from her evening bag and wrote her name, address, and phone number. “Could you send me the bill?”
He accepted the paper and then looked over her shoulder. “My manager is watching. I’ve got to be off.” He grinned. “More dishes to wipe. I mean clear.”
Smiling back, Rachel watched him go.
“A
waiter,
Rachel?”
Rachel turned to see Suri standing with her arms crossed, drumming her lacquered fingernails. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve barely started dating, and you’re looking at a waiter?”
“No, I just dropped — ”
“Sweetie, I was young once, too. I know how it is. But your mother will be very disappointed with a waiter. And he’s so dark … Who is he?”
Rachel gave a sad sigh. “I don’t know.” She watched, still feeling sadness as the bride was escorted to the dais, held up on both sides by her mother and future mother-in-law. There she sat soberly, her smile frozen and distant. Rachel wondered how they’d gotten her to finally stop crying.
Maybe a sedative?
The musicians played louder, the sounds of their frenetic pace enveloping the wedding hall. The first guest ascended the dais to wish “
mazel tov
” to the bride.
Rachel watched as Malky squeezed her mother’s hand tightly.
One by one, the rest of the guests lined up near the dais to tell the bride how beautiful she looked; and one by one, they wished her well.
Leah Bloom wiped the sweat from her brow as she jogged past the shops on Avenue J, then up Bedford Avenue, by her aunt Suri’s mansion, and back toward the apartment above a hair salon, which she shared with her mother on Nostrand Avenue. It was a cool autumn day, and most people were still sleeping while she jogged at the break of dawn.
Leah enjoyed the quiet stillness of her neighborhood that would grow deafeningly loud as its inhabitants awoke, taking in only the sounds of birds chirping and her sneakers hitting the pavement. She reached her home and ran up the few short steps of the front stoop, letting herself in. After she had something to eat, she had to get to campus and study like a madwoman.
“What are you running around for at this hour — like a thief?” Leah heard her mother’s accusation as she headed to the kitchen.
“I love jogging,” she said.
“Love,” her mother grumbled as she fixed a tight kerchief around her graying hair, “is a word people don’t use right. You eat fish — yet you love it?”
Leah shrugged. “I love fish, too.”
“Hmph,” her mother sighed. “You love yourself, not the fish. Love is giving.”
“I love jogging,” Leah repeated.
Her mother stood in the kitchen dressed in her housecoat, arms crossed, examining her only daughter. “You’re sweating and your hair is a mess. What will people think?”
“They’ll think that Leah Bloom loves jogging?”
“Tsk!” Mrs. Bloom exclaimed. “How does that look for a match?”
“Nobody’s even awake. They don’t see me.”
Mrs. Bloom shook her head. “Still, the way that T-shirt clings to you, you look … loose.”
Leah flinched as if she’d been smacked. “You know I’m not.”
Leah’s mother clenched her jaw. “It’s bad enough they say that. You don’t have to feed into the stories and dress the part.”
Leah wiped her glasses clean with the hem of her skirt. “Will I have to apologize my entire life for a rumor Wolfy Krumeister spread about me in high school?”
Mrs. Bloom swallowed and stared at her daughter. “Yes — until you’re married. How could you go and reject that perfectly good lawyer? A lawyer! Your attitude — along with everyone knowing we can’t support a son-in-law learning in yeshiva — is destroying you.”
Leah shrugged. “That’s not what’s destroying me,” she said.
Her mother shook her head. “Slim pickings, Leah. There isn’t much choice for you anymore. You’ll have to make do, just like I did.”
Leah shook her head. “You can’t force me to marry a yeshiva guy. I’m not signing up for a life of poverty so that my husband can study all day.”
“You have to be willing to sacrifice.”
“Not my whole life.”
“Then a year or two. You have to show everybody that you’re good, that our family is respectable.”
Leah nodded. “How could I forget?”
Her mother eyed Leah’s midriff. “Seems like you forget when you go out jumping around the neighborhood like a — slut.”
Leah gulped down her drink. “You keep telling me I have to maintain my weight — jogging helps.”
“In my day, nobody jogged,” her mother said and sniffed. “Just watch what you eat.”
Leah reached for a cookie from the top shelf in the pantry. Normally she wouldn’t go for something so unhealthy, but she needed some chocolate.
Her mother grabbed it away. “This isn’t for you!”
“Then why do you bring it home?” Leah said. “I’m hungry!” She shook her head. “Just forget it. I have to get ready for school.”
Her mother followed Leah up to her room. “I want you to have more than I’ve had,” she said quietly, sitting on Leah’s bed. “For this you’re angry at me? The only person in the world who loves you?”
Leah faced her mother. “Ma, I don’t need this guilt trip. But I do have an exam coming up that I need to review for. If I want to go to medical school — ”
“You shouldn’t be so into school,” her mother insisted, changing her tone. “You should concentrate more on getting married!”
Leah sighed. “Right.”
Her mother scowled. “In my day, proper young women did
not
go to college.”
“I know that,” Leah agreed. “Which is why you now work part-time in a bakery.”
Mrs. Bloom’s nostrils flared. “You think you’re better than me?”
Leah’s face paled. “I didn’t say that.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not better than me.”
Leah recoiled and ran into the bathroom. She turned on the shower faucet and tried to drown out her mother’s words, but they kept reverberating in her head. She washed herself with vigor, as if the soap could scrub away the morning.
As she thought about it, she realized that she felt sorry for her mother. She did want a better life than her mother had had, but she also wanted to support herself. Help people. She wanted to get married, too. She had to, and that lawyer was cute but … Oh, what was the point? She couldn’t figure this out right now. Leah quickly bound her curls into a bun and donned a long sleeved white shirt and black skirt (which Aunt Suri had bought her, but her mother had insisted was too tight), and then ran to school, avoiding her mother altogether.
Once she entered the campus at Brooklyn College, a quad of green surrounded by stately buildings, she sat outside on the lawn and listened to her iPod. Her mother didn’t let her listen to secular music, so she’d had Rachel buy it for her and hid it like most of her contraband in her school bag — which she knew her mother would be afraid of and never search. Elvis crooned in her ears and she felt herself calming down from the morning’s craziness. Rachel had downloaded Lady Gaga’s album,
Born this Way
, for her, but she didn’t feel like listening to it now. Leah needed Elvis reassuring her “That’s All Right, Mama.”
“I think you dropped this?”
Leah turned her head to see a guy from her class that would start in another few minutes. He wore blue jeans and crouched down low to where she sat on the lawn to pick up a lipstick that had fallen out of her book bag.
“Thanks,” she said and slowly lowered her eyelashes as she stood up. He was dark and cute.
“Sure,” he responded as they walked to their introduction to computer programming class.
As they chatted about programming and the upcoming exam, Leah glanced at her watch and wondered how much time she had to make him fall in love with her and take her away from the misery she called “home.”
• • •
The incessant ringing of the phone woke Rachel. She’d wanted a cell phone for years, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. She moved her hand over the night table to grab the receiver.
“You just got up?” asked Ma.
Rachel looked at her radio alarm clock; it was ten after eight.
“I’ve been up and about for three hours already. What’s with you, Rachel?”
“Sorry. My class today isn’t till ten.”
“But still.”
Rachel rose, shoving her stuffed bear and red coverlet off her bed.
“I’ll be home late tonight, mamale. Make supper and don’t burn the chicken.”
Rachel yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Sure. Everything okay, Ma?”
“They are driving me meshuga at work. It’s no picnic being a stockbroker — pressure from every angle.”