Every Other Saturday (3 page)

He pushed back the swivel chair from the computer, cracked his knuckles, and paced around the basement of his townhome. He’d written the script after the PTA meeting, spent half the afternoon revising and memorizing. It was pretty damn good, he thought, and if it had been any other topic, he would have recorded and posted it to his blog an hour ago.

He’d been blogging
Tales from the Man Cave
for more than a decade, starting as a hobby when he was a statistician for one of the big sports networks. Now it was his day job, and he had published a book with the same title. He put out three blogs a week, sold advertising, and did appearances at local events, including a weekly gig on SportsZone radio. Those guys had taken to calling him “Dave from the Cave,” and so had everyone else. As the blog gained followers, it expanded to include all guy-related topics, from where to get the best shave to his favorite local breweries, or decorating a bachelor pad on a budget.

It seldom made him nervous anymore. Except when he talked about his personal life, especially when it involved Lyric.

His followers had known her in a general way, especially when she was a baby. One of his best viral videos was the one where baby Lyric made his Super Bowl pick. He had covered the floor of his office in white paper with a line of duct tape down the middle: Steelers on one side, Packers on the other. He had removed baby Lyric’s diaper and waited for her to relieve herself on the team of her choice. She’d correctly picked the Packers and scored Dave thousands of new followers. Debbie never went away for a weekend with the girls again after that one.

Baby pee was one thing. Now Lyric was older, a real person. He hesitated to make her too much a part of his online life. It felt exploitive. Still, their conversation at the Varsity the day before had been innocuous enough. And when he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of Aaron and Debbie, it had dominated his thoughts. What was the harm in sharing?

He sighed and finished the beer he’d been nursing, and set up the camera to record.

“Tales from the Man Cave, Episode 348. Dating and Deal-breakers.

“Unless you live under a rock or you’re new to the Man Cave, you know that my wife and I divorced two years ago, and we have a little girl who is almost five. Yesterday, my daughter told me I need to go on J-Date—a Jewish dating site—because she wants me to get back out there. Well, she wants to be a flower girl anyway.”

He picked up a stray baseball from the couch and began tossing it conversationally back and forth between his hands. “And…I don’t know. Two years is a long time to be single and not dating, but I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never been a huge
dater
. I like to meet someone and hang out, at work or a party or whatever, and just see where it goes.

“I love this job, and it brings me in contact with LOADS of women. Journalists, athletes, hot girls in the liquor company t-shirts—which reminds me, I want to thank the good people at Captain Morgan for sponsoring the website this week.”

He put down the ball and held up a bottle of Captain Morgan Rum, grinning at the camera. This part had always been the hardest for him: he felt a little smarmy promoting his sponsors. But he pictured Aaron and Max standing behind the camera, laughing with him. Pretending his best guy friends were in the room made the videos feel authentic, just guys hanging out.

“Anyway. I adore those women, and they are fun to be around. But women I work with are mostly either married, lesbians, or—no offense, ladies—too young to know their asses from a hole in the ground. I always say that sports are all about the fundamentals, and dating is no different. Before you can think about chemistry and love, the basics have to be there.”

“So let’s talk fundamentals.” Dave picked up his portable whiteboard and drew circles to create a Venn diagram. “Here’s smart, here’s pretty, and here’s available.” There was a decent overlap of these three circles in the middle, to which he added two more solid circles.

“Take away lesbians and batshit crazy, and you’re left with this area here. Add a circle here because they have to be okay with my divorce and love my kid.”
Not to mention,
he thought,
anyone I date would eventually have to deal with Debbie
.

He waved the marker over the tiny white space in the middle of the circles. “From this already exceptional number, I have to find someone Jewish—and yeah, sorry, that’s a deal-breaker for me. I know not everyone will understand, but it is.

“We Jews make up like one and a half percent of the population, so…” He made a show of squinting at the tiny space in the middle of the whiteboard. “The chances of meeting someone by happenstance who meets all these criteria, I won’t burden you with equations, but it’s a freaking small number.”

He put down the whiteboard, resting it against his legs off-camera. “I can’t be alone in this. Come on guys, is it me? Or is dating really, really hard in your thirties? Are there other Jewish guys having this same challenge? Do you change your standards, let your mom set you up, do speed dating at the temple? I’d love to hear from people of other faiths if you struggle with this, too. Is it hard to date if you’re...I don’t know, Mormon? Or Sikh?”

He hesitated, and then added, “What do you think, should I follow my daughter’s advice and try J-Date? I’m going to be honest: the whole online dating thing scares the crap out of me. I’ve heard those sites can be one big can of crazy.”

He picked up the ball again, tossing it lightly. “I’d love to hear success stories, too, if they’re out there. I’m
not
looking to get remarried, not by any stretch of the imagination. I just want to meet some nice women with potential.”

Dave signed off, stopped the camera and retrieved a second beer from the mini-fridge. He rolled the word “deal-breaker” around in his mind as he transferred the video to the computer for posting. Strange though it might seem to his fans and readers, who could easily have missed the one or two mentions per year of his Judaism, it was such an integral part of his identity that he couldn’t imagine dating anyone who wasn’t Jewish.

Part of it was his family: Dave’s younger brother Andrew had made the mistake of bringing a sweet little Presbyterian girl home for Thanksgiving in college, and their parents still talked about it as though he’d brought home a prostitute in a pink cardigan.

Now Dave had to think about more than himself or his parents. He was raising a Jewish daughter—her religious upbringing was one of the few things he and Debbie consistently agreed on. A non-Jewish girlfriend (or hypothetical stepmother) was impossible to consider. Even if Dave were not personally opposed to it, the poor woman would be set up to fail with everyone in his life from the start.

A few quick edits and he posted the video, titled “Dave from the Cave on J-Date?” He was curious to see whether it would generate any conversation on his blog. But by the time he trudged upstairs, Dave was no longer thinking about his own dating situation.

The question of Debbie and Aaron had resurfaced in his mind, and he found himself wondering instead whether Debbie would see the blog, and what her reaction would be. It couldn’t hurt for her to realize she wasn’t the only one moving on.

All the way to Debbie’s house the next morning, Dave tried to talk himself out of going. It was wrong. It was creepy. It was not even dawn. He should turn his truck around and head straight to the radio station.

The pink and purple LeapPad and headphones in the passenger seat made for a flimsy excuse, especially at five in the morning. But the closer he got, the more his truck seemed to navigate the familiar streets on autopilot.

He told himself he was doing the right thing: making sure Lyric had her games to keep her occupied today. It was the last day of summer and Debbie was taking her to work, which meant their daughter would probably spend long, bored hours in the zebra-print chair in Debbie’s office. She couldn’t have crayons in an office full of silk fabric swatches and “no-sit” furniture. Debbie wasn’t going to hand her a $2500 MacBook and a juice box.

Dave let out a breath and turned off the headlights as he pulled into the driveway, relieved that Aaron’s Jeep was not there. He was going crazy. On the word of his four-year-old, he’d been up half the night thinking about the man he had known since Mrs. Roth’s fifth grade Hebrew class.

And his wife. Ex-wife.

As stealthily as he could, Dave climbed the stone steps to the front door and knocked lightly. The windows were still dark; he could hear nothing within. He knocked again and counted to a hundred in silence before fishing out his old key. He hesitated, key poised in front of the lock. This wasn’t his house anymore. He could leave the LeapPad on the porch.

A series of rationalizations bubbled to his aid: what if they missed the LeapPad on the way out, and it got wet, stepped on, or taken by the neighborhood kids? Dave had come this far out of his way, and he needed to get to the radio station. He wasn’t robbing the house or rifling through Debbie’s underwear drawer.

This was co-parenting. It was the reason they still had each other’s keys. He made a mental note to give Debbie a key to the townhouse the first chance he got.

Dave unlocked the door, cringing at the click of the deadbolt and squeak of the hinges. He would bring her some WD-40, too. He closed the door softly and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Debbie still kept the light on over the stove; there was a slant of pinkish yellow across the hardwoods near the kitchen.

He slid toward the light, one hand clutching Lyric’s LeapPad and headphones, the other held out in front of him in case any new furniture had been added. Debbie was constantly changing things around. In the kitchen, he put Lyric’s game on the center island. It was clean as always, counters neat and dishes put away.

Except for two wine glasses next to the sink.

Both still had the purple dregs of wine drying at the bottom. He opened the door to the mudroom and peeked into the recycling bin at the bottle. Poncho Villa Vineyards Cabernet. Aaron’s favorite. He always bought it, Dave knew, because he liked the label.

“Fuck
,” he hissed.

“Can I help you, Dave?” Debbie’s voice was icy and clear behind him. Dave jumped, dropped the wine bottle, and managed to catch it just as it bounced against the side of the plastic recycling bin. He set it down the last few inches, awkwardly, before turning to face her.

Debbie wore a white camisole and thin bra over her tanned shoulders, with a navy suit skirt and bare feet. Half of her frizzy brown hair had been tamed with the flat iron, the other stuck out in wild waves. Some sort of terrifying white cream streaked her forehead and surrounded her mouth and eyes. She had a hand on one hip and hot anger in her eyes. If there had been a tunnel out of the mudroom, Dave would have taken it.

“There are full bottles in the wine cabinet if you want some,” she said coldly.

“Sorry,” he managed. “I was just bringing by Lyric’s LeapPad.”

“You put it in the recycling bin?”

Dave shook his head stupidly and nodded at the island behind her. “I thought you would need it. Today. At work.” It was meant as an explanation but he knew it didn’t sound like one.

She glared at him, unmoving, looking like an escapee from a fire at a beauty college. They stood there, silently defying each other, the tension from every fight they’d had in the past fifteen years electric and volatile between them. His fists clenched and unclenched nervously by his sides. The half-formed accusations and anger that had run through his sleepless brain all night began working their way to his lips. Five words: Was Aaron here last night? He just had to say them, and he’d be out of his misery.

Courage, man,
Dave thought.
Take your medicine.

And then something entirely new happened. Debbie broke. She glanced behind Dave at the recycling bin and lowered her eyes with a sigh. “It’s okay.” She fluttered a dismissive hand.

Never in the history of the world, as far as Dave knew, had Debbie Blank Bernstein backed down from a fight. Not with her father, not with her brothers, and sure as hell not with him. And she had him. She’d caught him breaking in and snooping around her house—never mind that he was still paying most of the mortgage—with the world’s lamest excuse.

When they’d been married, this would have meant a two-hour discussion about boundaries and respect. Now she was looking down, wiping furiously at an imaginary spot of something on her skirt. My G-d, was she blushing?

This was bad, Dave decided. Very, very bad.

# # #

Half an hour later, Dave entered the radio station building, Starbucks in hand, for his usual Friday spot on SportsZone’s
Morning Breath with Sherm and Phil
. The wiry little producer, Kenneth, accosted him as soon as the elevator doors opened.

“Oh, good. You’re early. He grinned and shuffled Dave along with his ever-present black clipboard. He walked quickly for a small man, forcing Dave to match his pace with a rivulet of coffee dripping down his wrist.

“How’s it going? Good? You’re okay? Quite a response! You know what they say, all publicity is good publicity.”

“You saw it?” The video had been up less than twelve hours. Dave hadn’t even looked to see whether there were comments yet.

“Of course I saw it,” Kenneth said. “I always check your blog on Thursday night. Great stuff, man. Very heartfelt. Takes balls.”

“Thanks,” Dave said uncertainly.

“We’ll get you on early today and maybe take some calls about the dating thing, if that’s okay? You didn’t have anything else planned, did you?”

“College football is coming up—”

“That can wait. They want to talk about you today.”

Dave felt a thrill of excitement, accompanied by embarrassment. Why hadn’t he checked the responses to the video? “Do you have a computer I can borrow?”

“Sure. But we need to get you in there soon.”

With Kenneth twitching and pacing behind him, Dave logged in to his blog and went straight to the J-Date entry. He let out a breath that was half-whistle, half-sigh. Three hundred and forty-seven comments on the video so far. He scanned the first screenful, aware of the producer’s restless fidgeting behind him.

He recognized a few familiar avatars: the tiny pictures that represented his usual supporters and detractors, the ones who came to applaud and jeer everything he wrote.

Another great one from the Man Cave. This is so spot-on!

COMPLETELY off-topic. We don’t need to know whether you’re getting laid or not, Bernstein. Back to stuff that your fans care about.

And “Fred,” the anti-Semitic lurker who only seemed to comment on the rare occasions when Dave mentioned his faith:
Quit talking about how your Jewish and hate Christmas. No one cares if you want to roast in hell.

“You’re missing an apostrophe, asshole,” Dave muttered.
One
blog,
eight
years ago, about the challenges of being a non-Christian during the glittery pine-scented consumerism of Christmas. He still couldn’t shake the label of being a Christmas-hating Jew among a few very persistent non-fans.

The surprise came as Dave scanned hurriedly down past the usual stuff. Scores of comments from guys—some Jewish, many not—commiserating with him on the challenges of meeting women. Guys with kids, guys with exes, guys caring for elderly parents, or who had been unemployed. And women. He would later count that there were over a hundred and fifty comments from women: encouraging him to go on J-Date, cooing over the sweetness of Lyric (he could hardly argue with that), and even a few—this was unreal—asking him out.

He was halfway through a particularly vivid description of what someone named Leah wanted to do to him with her tongue piercing when Kenneth cleared his throat, making Dave jump.

“Wow.” Dave turned around in the office chair, still stunned.

“Exactly.” Kenneth grinned. “You see why the guys want to talk about this.”

“Uh-huh,” Dave said. Not him. He didn’t want to talk about this on air, today or ever.

He followed Kenneth to the sound booth, where the producer held the heavy glass door for him. “We’re on commercial for another ninety seconds.” He returned to his spot beyond the huge wall of windows. Sherman Harris,
Morning Breath
’s primary host, was behind the console, leaning back in his chair and talking amiably to Phil Lundgren, who sat nearest Dave, facing away from the door. Both had coffee mugs in hand and headphones draped around their necks.

“Hey Bernstein,” Sherm said. “Thanks for coming on early. Loved the podcast, man.” He leaned forward to examine the monitor in front of him, head tilted back to give him the best view through his reading glasses. Like Dave, he had been a college athlete—basketball at Morehouse College in Sherm’s case, baseball at Georgia for Dave—better suited to analyzing sports than playing professionally.

With the thick glasses, a slightly messy cross between an afro and a high-top, and a faded denim jacket over his slim shoulders, Sherm looked the way Dave imagined him back in his Morehouse days. Only on close inspection in better lighting did the man look even most of his forty-five years.

“It was a vlog,” Phil said. “And it was pretty awesome, Bernie.”

A 240-pound former NFL linebacker, co-host Phil Lundgren was the only person on the planet who could get away with calling Dave “Bernie.” He pushed out the rolling chair next to him with a tattoo-sleeved arm the size of a small tree. Dave took the offered seat and pulled on the guest headphones that hung from his microphone.

“Blog, vlog, podcast, whatever,” Sherm was saying.
“It spoke to me.”

“Thanks,” Dave said again.

“Well, not me
personally
.” Sherm held up his left hand and wiggled his long fingers to highlight the dull gold band. “But you know what I mean. We’re on in five…”

Dave took a deep breath to steady himself, summoning his Man Cave persona, while Phil elbowed him helpfully in the ribs.

“We’re back, Atlanta,” Sherm said smoothly. “And we’ve got regular contributor Dave from the Cave with us. If you haven’t seen his
Tales from the Man Cave
post from last night, apparently our little Dave Bernstein is out and about, looking for a woman to drag back into the cave with him.”

“Someone’s gotta tend those cooking fires, right?” Phil said. “At what point in evolution did cavemen discover bagels and lox?”

“Around the same time as the first primitive CPA exam,” Dave chimed in. “Of course, the first cavewoman thought the lox was just a
bissel
too salty.” He imitated his grandfather Saul on that last sentence, hoping the impression would translate to the radio. Sherm and Phil laughed, at least.

“But seriously,” Sherm said. “That actually is the crux of the video you posted last night. How hard it is to find nice, appropriate Jewish women to date, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “I know they’re out there, but to be honest, I haven’t made a huge effort to look for them.”

“Natalie Portman is Jewish,” Phil said. “And she’s
hot
.”

“Oh, thanks Phil,” Dave countered. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll just call up Natalie Portman. Problem solved.”

“And that’s where the J-Date thing comes in, right?” Sherm said. “So I know we have quite a few Jewish listeners, but for those of you who don’t know, J-Date is basically, what? Like Match.com for Jewish people?”

“Pretty much,” Dave said. “Like I said in the video, my four-year-old daughter thinks I should try it.”

Phil turned his computer monitor toward Dave. “I’ve pulled it up right here. Nice site, happy young couple on the splash page.
Matzo Ball Recipes Don’t Survive on Their Own.
”

Dave laughed. “Only a Jewish dating site would hit you in the face with the guilt, right off the bat. They hired my mother to create that page.”

“You’re not alone there,” Phil said. “If my mom had a website, it would be ‘where are you hiding my grandchildren dot com.’”

Sherm drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the console. “Phil, did you ever do online dating? eHarmony or something?”

Phil grimaced. “Between wife two and three. Let’s just say it wasn’t for me. There’s a lotta crazy women here in Atlanta.
Y’all
.” He put awkward, nasal emphasis on the last word. A longtime Green Bay Packer, Phil had retired with a bad knee after only two years with the Falcons. He’d stayed in Atlanta for the radio job and the climate, but it had done nothing to diminish his Midwestern accent.