You or Someone Like You (35 page)

I smile. Yes, I say, I trust him.

“Well,” says Mark, “get him onboard! There, that's your first assignment as coproducer. Terrific screenplay, going to be a terrific movie.”

Oh, hey! (he has timed this idea that has just occurred to him), now here's a thought—perhaps I might want to host a book club or two at West 85th's bungalow on the Warner lot. I am about to respond when Mark says, very casually, that of course Howard will be involved.

I freeze. I register, in milliseconds, my fury, humiliation, and something I'd never thought I would feel: their particular terror; I want to make this movie, but apparently I have to deliver the one variable that is out of my reach. I now realize Howard was one of Mark's targets all along. I hear him say as blithely as can be, Hey! Come to think of it (you can almost hear his fingers snap), Howard might—well, why hadn't Mark thought of this earlier—
Howard
might want to join West 85th Street Films. Leave the studio. Mark Siegal and the husband and wife producing team of Anne and Howard Rosenbaum, after all a guy outgrows that fucking bungalow they've got Howard stuffed in, Jesus. The line statics, and I lose a bit of this. I move off my knees, put down the trowel, and sit down with my spine very straight. I think about my grandmother in her dining
room in Kensington, a tall white Edwardian ceiling, “sit up
straight
, Anne”—so, let's see, Mark is saying, should he just
call
Howard to propose this or maybe I wanted—

I'll do it, I say very quickly.

He seems startled to hear me speak. Oh. OK. And disappointed. He had been angling to make that connection personally. The importance of this particular play is clear from the frustration in his voice. I attempt to recalculate my true worth to him. He knows Howard has left me. Perhaps he's betting it is temporary.

Mark, I say, I had better go.

“Call that screenwriter,” he says, “we're on the pitch.”

 

I call Paul. Steve answers. “Oh, hey, Anne,” he says. I met him briefly a few weeks ago. A very sweet compact drill sergeant. “You wanna talk to Sam?” (“Sam!”) he says. (“It's your mom.”)

(“Oh”) says Sam, and there's some shuffling across a room. “Hi, Mom.” He's happy. “Cut it
out
,” he says to someone. “We've gotta go,” he says to me breathlessly, “we're gonna be late. Cut it out! Jesus.” There's barking. He is talking to the dog. “Oscar!” says Sam, and to me, “Oscar's a girl, by the way.”

That's original, I say.

The phone is passed off, there is muffled loud talking.

Paul comes on. “We're going to some appalling-sounding movie he really wants to see.” He tells me its name. A movie of explosions.

“Howard could get him into a screening for free,” I say. I add hurriedly, “All of you.”

Paul says, “We'll see it like normal people.” He says it nicely.

Well, I owe you one, as they say, it's supposed to be horrendous.

“You do,” he says. “
Sam
. Put Oscar in the bedroom.”

“Well, have a good time,” I say, involuntarily. I don't want to sully Paul and his lovely dreams. But wouldn't he want to know? Is it support or cruelty to say this, given all the uncontrolled variables? I clear my throat and add, “Incidentally, Steven Soderbergh is reading your
script.” There is dead silence. I won't for the moment mention Siegal's current gambit. He should enjoy this, I think. I can hear Sam walking noisily out the front door, and I add hastily, “But you need to go, Paul, I shouldn't have brought it up now.”

“Soderbergh?” says Paul.

Oh, bollocks, I say, smiling at the sound of his fresh excitement. My timing is usually impeccable.

“Ahhhhhh!” he shouts, and I laugh willingly.

“So what next?”

We wait.

“That I can do,” he affirms energetically. “I'm the Olympic champ.”

Yes, I say, this is Los Angeles. The best in the world at waiting wait here.

 

THE PHONE RINGS, AND I
look at the number. It is either Ellie or David. At the last moment I flip it open. “Anne,” she says. We exchange a pleasantry. Her tone is gentle but opaque. “Can you come over?”

I blink. I look down at my watch. I suppose so, I say. Yes.

As I leave the house I run the traffic in my head. I take Mulholland, then south on the 405, which oddly enough is flowing beautifully, the Sunset exit, left to San Vicente, right toward the beach. David's car is gone. I park in their drive.

Ellie and I sit in the living room, the doors thrown open to the deck and the sea breeze. They own an enviable house on Ocean Way with a view of the Pacific. Rachel is out. “Practice,” Ellie explains, not specifying the sport. She has brought me a glass of water, and because she is a practical woman—which is one reason I've always liked her—she sits down directly opposite me and asks, “Do you know what a
shidduch
is?”

No.

Her finger taps her water glass. “It's a setup. An introduction of a man and a woman with an eye toward marriage. I think technically it's something done by a rabbi.”

It takes me a moment. Once I've understood, I have nothing to say.

“Being married is a religious obligation,” she says. “A mitzvah.” At the word, she looks at me questioningly.

That one I know, I say, Howard's parents used it. I add after a second, They said Sam was a mitzvah when he was born.

She gets the point. She stands up, walks behind my chair toward another room. From somewhere behind I hear her saying, “A
ba'al teshuva
, a Jew recently returned to observance after years outside, would have many mitzvot to make up.” She's looking for something. “He would be obligated to get married as soon as possible. It's supposed to cement the thing in place.” I hear her pick up a piece of paper. She comes back into the room. “And have children with her. Jewish children are another mitzvah.” She is administering this inoculation under the theory that the more complete and rapid it is, the less painful it will be. She and I both know it's just a theory, but it's as good as any other, and I respect that. She's going to push me through this fast, applying velocity as an anesthetic.

She hands me the paper.

Beit Yisroel Chabad on 21st Street in Santa Monica. An Orthodox synagogue, it says. Howard is to fill out the form. They've typed his name on the top at the left. I read “Shidduch Profile.” A list of items followed by blank spaces. Name. Hebrew Name. Date of Birth (Month/Day/Year). Telephone: Home, Work. Height, Weight. Gender (circle one): Male Female.

Part 2. Education and Occupation. Please circle your level of secular education.

Marital Information. 5a) If divorced, please give the name and phone number of the Rabbi who facilitated the Get.

Do you have children (circle one)? Yes No.

Are you (circle one) Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Other.

Are you (circle one) Observant from Birth, Ba'al Teshuva (returned to faithfulness), Convert.

If you're a Ba'al Teshuva, how long have you been completely observant (Shabbos, Kashrus, etc.)? How long has it been since you began your Ba'al Teshuva process? (please supply details)

Do you: Go to Movies? Yes Never Sometimes

Do you participate in mixed swimming? Yes No Sometimes

Do you participate in mixed dancing? Yes No Sometimes

Do you: Eat in non-kosher restaurants? Yes Never Sometimes

Women Only: Do you wear pants? Yes Never Sometimes

Women Only: When you are married, will you cover your hair?

Men Only: Would you be comfortable with your wife wearing pants? Yes Never Sometimes

Men Only: When you are married, what are your plans for learning Torah?

Current Synagogue Affiliation. Name and Telephone Number of Rabbi.

Do you smoke? Yes No

Are you willing to date a smoker? Yes No

Men Only: Are you willing to date a woman taller than you?

Would you like the person we introduce you to be (circle all that apply): Observant from Birth, Ba'al Teshuva, Convert

Photo. (Please include a recent photo of yourself.)

References.

Someone will contact you within two weeks after receipt of this application to arrange an interview. Please return to: Young Israel of Los Angeles–Shidduch Committee.

Knesset.

I look up at the wall. Ellie hesitates. She considers coming over to me, then decides to stick to the original plan. Fast and clean. “This is
a copy for you,” she says. “We have it because Howard asked David for a reference. David, not me, since David is a man.” She says this a bit tightly. She adds, “Normally Howard would start divorce proceedings with you before getting too deeply into this. But as far as I can tell he's not thinking with great clarity right now.”

My voice is hollow. I thought, I say, at first that I was imagining it.

“Well,” she says flatly. Her tone means that this doesn't surprise her. “It's the walking time bombs that make the screenplays work,” she says. A professional archetype.

I smile briefly. I'm imagining Ellie pitching Howard in an office on Lankershim.

She tucks a foot precisely underneath her. “After he left home,” she tells me, “Howard stayed with us for a few days.” I look up at her sharply. She holds my gaze, perfectly even. We are poised there. The question is whether I will consider this a betrayal. After a moment I nod. So that's done. She is not too proud to give me a glimpse of it: She's relieved.

She says, “I may not have been quick on the trigger here, but he finally opened his big mouth and told us.”

About Sam and the yeshiva.

“Except that's not the way Howard tells it. He talks about a religious reawakening.”

Of course.

She has to add, for the record, “It was David who was sure the problem was Sam's being gay.”

I nod. That's the way Howard has presented it, I say. Although I don't think it was conscious on his part. I think it was more just the timing. For a little while it gave him something to channel it through, but that's finished.

“I felt like an idiot, of course,” says Ellie. “When you'd said, ‘This is not what it appears,' I thought you were—” She hunts for a description.

Speaking metaphorically.

“Something like that.” She comes to it. “Why didn't you tell me, Anne?”

I think about my answer. I say to her, You keep kosher.

It's what she suspected. “Well.” And then she says, “Things change.” Her eyes are hazel in the late afternoon light. She begins to tell me about conversations she and David tentatively started having a few years ago. A discussion that seemed to present itself to both of them. Rachel was dating a Mexican American boy. She and David adored him. Ellie explains their decision to no longer keep kosher. “The rabbi was very unhappy,” she says, adds, with emphasis, “We also stopped going to temple.”

Ellie speaks, firmly and quietly, about their increasing consciousness of the meticulous separation of human beings into two classes. “And then,” she observes with irony, “we pretend to be surprised when they dislike us.” I realize as she talks that there are relatively few people to whom she can express what she has come, over time and at a cost, to understand. She has experienced isolation, even if self-imposed, perhaps for the first time. She and David have been understandably circumspect, among their friends and inside the industry. But, Oh!, there'd been this one truly great moment. She'd been in a script meeting with Nina Jacobson and had tentatively, and a bit indirectly, brought it up, her evolving thoughts on the problematics of eternally dividing people. The instant Nina had gotten it, she'd simply waved a hand, cutting it off to dispose of it. “So, what?” Nina had demanded. “They're wrong and we're right?” She'd scoffed, her distaste brief and dry and definitive, and they'd returned to the script. Ellie laughs as she tells the story. She loves Nina for this.

She stretches and looks out over the ocean.

Where is he? I ask Ellie.

“I don't know who he's staying with now,” she says. “He's not
really speaking to us anymore.” She has an afterthought. “That's why Howard left, by the way. The rabbi told him our house was unclean.” She smiles to herself.

What strikes me is that as Ellie talks, I cannot tell if this change she and David have experienced, which came from a shift in their views and their perceptions, originated from her or him or both of them equally. I think that my not being able to tell this is a mark of a good marriage. They have come to this new place together. For a moment I can taste my envy.

Ellie turns her gaze from the ocean. “When I wondered, later, why you hadn't told me at the party, why you hadn't simply picked up the phone, I explained to myself that you couldn't have known how I would react. We haven't really talked in a long while.” She laughs at the classic Los Angeles excuse. No time, traffic's terrible, we never see each other. It is a substitute for her real accusation, which is that I had not trusted her.

I haven't trusted anyone, I say.

We both sit back and let the golden light take over. I get up and walk through the doors to stand on the deck, and the breeze goes through my hair. She comes to stand next to me and takes my hand and squeezes. Then she moves to the edge of the deck to glare down at the neighbor's trash cans. “Son of a bitch,” says Ellie.

The ocean is so pretty, I say.

She shrugs. “At least there's that.”

 

He has come back to the house for a moment to get some clothing. He is going through some papers at his desk. It's dark.

Do you wish you'd married a Jewish woman?

He twists away from the question, like an animal looking for an exit from a trap. He has no desire to hurt me. When he replies, his voice is strangled. “Yes,” he says. But he sounds unconvinced.