The Saturday Wife (39 page)

“Viktor, are you looking for something?” Chaim asked.

“Vodka! Ve make toast!”

Delilah ran to get the bottle out of the liquor cabinet, together with the shot glasses.

“Varm vodka?” Viktor bellowed. “In Russia, vodka cold, like Kremlin in vinter!” He filled his shot glass and raised it aloft. “Ten years ago I go to Moscow on buziness. Vladimir vent, also Yuri.” He turned to his wife. “You remember Yuri? The vun vit daughter Galina, who haff trouble vit kidneys from eating bad pork, vun vit small face, vun who married police captain? . . . In Russia, very important to have relative police captain, very khelpful to many buzinesses; also bear buziness, also oil buziness. Ve did veil, so ve vent into restaurant to celebrate. They don’t know how to fix kebab, but bread and soup and pirochki vas excellent. Ve make big buziness. Ve sign big contract. Ve become very, very rich. And ve move here, to America. I find vife in America. I have my beautiful daughter Natasha in America. Ve build house in America. In America, you can be Jew. I bring my son to live in America. I vant Bar Mitzva. I don’t know khow to make Bar Mitzva. And now I meet Rabbi Chaim, and khe vill khelp me make Bar Mitzva for my son. And all you my friends, my American friends, you vill come to my son’s Bar Mitzva. I velcome you to my khome, as you velcome me to your khome in America. I raise glass to Rabbi Chaim.” He poured everyone a drink. Then he threw back his head and downed it, wiping his lips across his sleeves. “And now, raise glasses, drink to Svallo Lake, to friendship!” He poured another round.

Delilah signaled to the serving girl to start clearing off the table and to bring the next course. Her head was already swimming from the pure alcohol now coursing through her veins. She walked into the kitchen to supervise.

And then she spied something. It was a little container. She lifted it.
CRéME FRAÎCHE
, it said. “Hello? Where did this come from?” she asked the chef.

“I bring it
avec moi
from Paris, Madame.” He gave her a superior and knowing smile.
“C’est impossible
to find decent crème fraîche in America.”

“You were told specifically not to bring in any food!” Her head swam. “What’s in it?”

His lips thinned with insult. He looked down his nose. “Just ze cultured cream. It make ze sauces very smooth, very
riche”

“Cream? Cream! In all the sauces? Don’t tell me you put this in the
duck salad sauce, and the sauce that went over the squab, and into the profiteroles!”

He drained his glass of wine and poured himself another, finishing off the bottle. “But of course!” His brow wrinkled in displeasure. “In France, zis is well known.” He shrugged, that go-to-hell French shrug of nasty waiters and impatient shopowners.

She clenched her fists. “But none of the recipes you showed me even called for cream!”

“Recipes!” he mocked. “Who writes zis? Ze little cook, ze
New York Times.
Ze great chef? We do not read zeez silly instructions.”

“You nincompoop! I told you, I’m a rabbi’s wife! We are Orthodox Jews! All our guests are Orthodox Jews, you French nitwit. We don’t mix meat and milk. I told you that!”

His whole body stiffened with offense. He bowed. His hand waved over the kitchen dramatically. “Pardon, madame, but I do not see ze meat here. Only ze duck and ze chicken!”

“I’m going to kill you!” She lunged at him. He picked up the carving knife and moved back, waving it at her. Delilah grabbed the hired girl and hid behind her. He started swearing very rapidly under his breath in French, the word
Juifs
appearing again and again, in what was apparently not a paen of praise to David Ben-Gurion or Moses. Then he threw down his apron and walked out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him.

She leaned against the wall, trembling.

She thought of the religious men and women sitting around her table, the synagogue-owned table in the house of the community’s spiritual leader, its rabbi. And she was his helpmate, the person who sat by his side, who was supposed to help the congregants keep God’s commandments.

She had, it seemed to her, a clear choice. She could go in and tell them what had happened, insulting Joie and Viktor, whose chef, after all, had managed to screw up, sending everyone home early with nothing to eat. Chaim would make her throw out all her dishes, after he berated her with a million
I told you sos.
Solange and Mariette would arch their brows and nod at each other at the debacle. And who knew what the decision would be, the next time the board took a vote?

Or, she could…

She looked at the delectable squab already arranged on the plates, covered in sauce. She searched the pans to find a piece that had not yet
been plated and doused. There was only one left. She took out a clean plate and placed the squab on it, adding the vegetables. “I’ll take in this one. You take in the rest,” she told the girl.

Then she reached for the almost empty container of crème fraîche, opened the garbage can, and buried it deep inside, covering it with debris. She picked up the plate and carried it into the dining room, placing it in front of her husband.

“Ah, I get special service. A true woman of valor!” Chaim said, kissing her hand.

“You see, little voman, this is vay vife treat husband,” Viktor boomed, squeezing Joie’s knee.

Delilah smiled at him and sat down, looking down into her own plate. Slowly, she scraped the sauce off the squab with her knife, eating tiny, relatively sauceless pieces as best she could.

“Umm, this is just scrumptious!” Solange exclaimed, putting a sauce-drenched morsel on her tongue.

“Yes, divine. The sauce is so creamy and rich. I’ve never tasted anything like it,” Mariette said, savoring each piece. “You must get us the recipe, Delilah.”

Delilah nodded silently, not looking up.

“Come. Ve toast some more!” Viktor called out.

Chaim downed his fourth glass. He staggered to his feet, shakily holding up his shot glass. “Now—now it’s my turn. Shhhh, shaa.” He waved at everyone. “Sit down! To all my wonderful friends in Swallow Lake, who have entrusted me with their spiritual growth and who have allowed me to become a part of their lives and the lives of their families, so that we might be true to our heritage and our holy Torah, fulfilling all the commandments of our God.”

My God, were those tears in his eyes? Delilah thought, horrified.

“And to my wonderful wife who has made this fabulous evening possible, bringing together old friends and new, nourishing us with a gourmet kosher”—Delilah started to cough—”meal.” She coughed louder and louder.

“She’s choking!”

“Somebody do a Heimlich maneuver!”

“I vill do it!” Viktor sprang up.

“No, I’m fine—don’t,” Delilah protested, terrified as she watched Viktor
Shammanov lumbering drunkenly toward her, getting ready to squeeze her in half. “I’m fine. Something must have just gone down the wrong pipe, that’s all.” She smiled, wiping her eyes. “See?”

Viktor smiled and sat down. “Finish toast!”

“Ah, yes.” Chaim nodded. “To my wonderful wife, who has been a true helpmate, like Sarah to Abraham, like Rivkah to Isaac, like Rachel to

Jacob… .”

Like Eve to Adam, Delilah thought.

“May God bless her! It’s not easy to be a rabbi… so many things I’d like to do, and it’s impossible… to please everyone… and some people are jerks, you can never please them, and some are just drunks, like the kiddush Club members, and the ones who tell me they go for lap dances because it helps them fulfill their God-given duty to pleasure their wives…”

Felice turned sharply to her husband, Ari, who stared down at a fork he was digging into the tablecloth. Joseph Rolland cleared his throat.

“Chaim!” Delilah said sharply, pulling him back down into his seat.

“Er… I think maybe it’s time for dessert?” Arthur pointed out.

“What did you say, time to desert?” Stuart Grodin laughed.

“Is that a true story?” Mariette turned to Delilah. “About the lap—”

“Wait, wait, I’m not finished,” Chaim muttered, struggling back up to his feet. “And to the women who want to know if they should tell their husbands one of the kids isn’t theirs or if it would be a mitzva to keep the information to themselves…”

“Oh, ho!” Viktor roared.

“And of course, to my beautiful, difficult wife…”

She elbowed him. “You already did me!” she hissed.

“Sit down!”

He ignored her. “. . . whom I love, and who makes my life miser—”

“Chaim!”

“To Delilah. I raise my glass to her and to all of you!”

“To Delilah!” The men roared, while the women studiously avoided looking at each other.

Delilah drank another shot of vodka. The room was swimming in front of her. Solange looked suddenly fat. And Mariette looked like she was wearing devil’s horns. Or maybe that wasn’t Mariette; maybe it was just her own reflection in the glass of the china closet.

TWENTY-FOUR

P
eople remember what they want to remember. And while everyone had had a great time at the rabbi’s house meeting Viktor and Joie Shammanov, they soon forgot the circumstances of their initial meeting, remembering only that they were now dear friends of the fabulous Shammanovs. In fact, soon it felt as if they had known them forever.

Joie made an effort to invite the women over to her home at least once a week, preparing fabulous meals. After some coaching from Delilah, she got rid of her French chef and hired one who had once worked in the Catskills at a kosher hotel. She had Chaim over to supervise making her kitchen kosher. And even when he went a bit mad with a blowtorch, effectively ruining the inside of their $6,000 Gaggenau oven, she told him not to worry about it, and just replaced it. The silverware and glasses could all be made kosher by plunging one into boiling water and by just soaking the other. The dishes, of course, were a bit of a problem; there is no way to make porcelain dishes kosher if they have held milk and meat or pork or
shellfish. But even Joie, caught up as she was in fitting into her new community, balked at throwing out an entire set of $200-a-plate Hermes Toucans dinnerware, with its $1,500 soup tureen. What they did was order additional plates to use when the synagogue came over.

Sightings of Viktor Shammanov in earnest conference with the board members and others from among the most prominent citizens of Swallow Lake became more and more frequent. Meanwhile, the women of the synagogue board had taken it upon themselves to advise Joie Shammanov on how to make a Bar Mitzva.

“I once went to a Bar Mitzva where they turned the entire synagogue into a circus tent, and the Bar Mitzva boy greeted the guests on an elephant… . They had flame eaters, clowns, and jugglers,” Amber told her excitedly.

“And I was at one where they turned the place into an African jungle, with grass floors and tribal dancers flown in from South Africa. All the food was African too. It was something to remember,” Solange remarked.

“That’s nothing. I was at one where they flew everyone to a safari game park in Kenya. But we wound up waiting on line for hours to get in. It turned out there were two other Bar Mitzvas in front of us,” said Felice.

“You don’t want to go to Africa,” Mariette counseled authoritatively. “Joseph and I were there once, for some conference. The minute we finished breakfast, the monkeys descended on the tables and ate all the packets of sugar! They were all over the place! It was disgusting. And that’s not the worst of it.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I was reading their local fashion magazine, and they had a full-page advertisement for
rape insurance?.
They promised to bring you AIDS medication first thing the next morning,” she whispered, shuddering.

Joie’s eyes widened.

“Then again,” Solange said brightly, breaking the stunned silence, “you could always rent a fabulous place right here. Like Radio City Music Hall. Or Madison Square Garden. Then you could put the name of the family up on the marquee. It’s great fun!”

“Been done.” Felice shook her head. “They even hired the Rockettes to dance with the Bar Mitzva boy. The police had to rope off half of Manhattan.”