Jane Austen in Boca (15 page)

The accent had come out in force tonight with the appearance of Norman Grafstein. As she presented her hand gingerly, her long nails arched forward like a friendly cougar proffering a paw, she cast a glance down at Norman’s left hand to note the appearance of the wedding ring. The continued wearing of the ring during widowhood was seen by most Boca Raton women as a sign of sensitivity, and men earned extra points for it—assuming, that is, that the old ring could eventually be pried off and replaced by a new one.

Last widowed three years ago, Roz was between boyfriends at the moment and was what Flo liked to call “on the prowl.” Though she was talked about for her predatory style, Roz was also much envied among the widows of Boca, who never ceased to wonder at her ability to land men. That she had been left a fortune by her first husband, the laudromat king, was discreetly ignored in discussions of her romantic success. She had been married twice and engaged again, a sudden fatal illness canceling the third wedding even as the caterer had begun to draw up the menu. No doubt she would soon find another prospect, though she liked to say she was in no rush and could afford to be picky: “I want a tall man, and I like a full head of hair,” she was known to announce, even in the presence of her son (who was five-three and as bald as a cue ball).

In the Boca Festa locker room, after her tennis and before her massage, Roz was in the habit of expounding on her romantic conquests to anyone interested in hearing (and there were women who got out of the sauna to listen):

“First, I’m not shy,” she explained. “It’s a plus to be outgoing, especially since most men are shy and need you to draw them
out. Second, I laugh at their jokes. Some aren’t so funny, but I laugh anyway. I learned this from my mother. She said, ‘Laughter is the best aphrodisiac’—and she was right. Third, I have a good nose.” She pointed to the rather amorphous appendage at the center of her face. “A Jewish girl must never underestimate the importance of a good nose. As I told my daughter-in-law on the subject of my granddaughter, if you’re not born with one, I don’t care what it costs—get one.” The women in the locker room nodded at this advice. It seemed to make sense.

But Norman showed no particular inclination to get on better terms with Roz’s nose. Instead, he turned his attention to May, who was sitting demurely, asking Stan about his plans for a garden this year. Stan’s interest in the subject gave his face an uncharacteristically gentle appearance.

“I wouldn’t recommend irises; there’s been too much rain,” counseled May. “I was testing the soil the other day and it seemed a little too acidic for the delicate plants.” Gardening was one area where May, usually tentative, showed conviction and authority. It amused Flo and Lila to accompany her to the Boca nursery, where she would scrutinize seedlings and minutely question the manager about watering schedules and feeding regimens. Stan was one of the few people she knew who shared her passion, and the two had developed a tendency to confer on the subject whenever they could. Had Flo not been so thoroughly put off by Stan Jacobs in other respects, she might have been charmed by the sight of these tête-à-têtes. May, for her part, was not to be shaken in her belief that a man with such a feel for flowers and shrubs must have a good heart.

“I would advise that you plant more pansies and impatiens,” she counseled him now. “If I had a garden,” she added wistfully, “it’s what I’d do.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Stan. “I don’t want to go overboard, but I think doubling the impatiens would be a good gamble this year, especially if it continues to be so wet.”

Norman interrupted. “Enough with weather and flowers. I didn’t come here to talk topsoil. Let’s let the nonexperts into the conversation.” He gave May his good-natured smile. “You, my dear,” he said, “are a vision
of
loveliness. Jennifer Jones in
Love Letters.
” May blushed. “And you, Flo, look like Rosalind Russell in
His Girl Friday,
smart and sophisticated. Don’t you think, Stan, that there’s something of Rosalind Russell about her?”

“I can’t say I see it,” said Stan. “I don’t think she looks quite like anyone.”

“A high compliment from my friend,” exclaimed Norman. “He only likes originals. He scorns the paintings on the walls of Broken Arrow for being reproductions of old masters.”

“Well, better reproductions of great art than original bad art,” noted Flo, glad to divert the subject from herself, especially as she sensed that Stan might not have meant his response in the complimentary way that Norman suggested. Following her gaze now, Stan looked at the large canvas near the bar and said nothing. It was an abstract piece in pink and yellow with a turquoise border, not unlike the one that Carol had commandeered for May’s living room.

Their foray into art criticism was cut short, however, by the announcement that it was time to move into the main dining room. Flo noticed that Stan had been looking around, obviously preparing himself to meet Mel, and she finally decided to put his mind at rest.

“Mel’s not coming, by the way,” she said as the group stood together near the door, waiting to be shown to their table. “He’s indisposed, I’m afraid.”

“Ah!” said Stan, then shut his mouth, as though determined not to say anything further on the subject. The curtness of his response piqued Flo, and she secretly decided to make him speak about her friend later in the evening.

T
HERE WAS A GENERAL BUZZ AND A MURMUR OF OOHS AND AAHS
as people appraised the room and the food. A small band, one of Peter Duchin’s stock of middle-aged men in shiny tuxedos and comb-overs, was playing “Funny Valentine” in one corner. The chandelier and pink hearts were throwing off strobelike pink and red lights, and a phalanx of buffet tables, each groaning under the weight of ingenious food combinations, scattered the room. At the center table was a massive ice sculpture of two naked cupids entwined around a heart. The sculpture was the brainchild of Ellen Rabinowitz. No one had ever seen anything like it.

In best Boca tradition, the meal was a combination buffet and sit-down dinner. A black-tie affair could not, in good conscience, be an all-out buffet: It wasn’t done. But no one wanted to bypass the luxury of display and sampling that a buffet afforded, and so (again, under Morris Kornfeld’s clever directive) appetizers and desserts were buffet, while the main course was served by waiters, fitted for the occasion in red shirts and pink vests.

As expected, the buffet spread was spectacular. One table was entirely salads, many of the garnishes dyed red and pink. There was lettuce of every variety, from the standard iceberg to the more refined arugula, bibb, and endive mix, as well as cold salads of fish, shrimp, calamari, and sliced beef; potato salads (at least three varieties); cucumber salads (two); tomatoes (with, respectively, mozzarella, avocado, and Vidalia onion); eggs (deviled);
carrots; celery; artichokes (hearts, stuffed, whole); and so on—and this was just the salads. There were two other tables with appetizers, and a Viennese table of desserts along the back wall that defied any attempt to do it justice in words.

The main course options included beef Wellington, lobster thermidor, Chilean sea bass, and veal française. A small card at the center of each table listed the choices in elegant gold script and was the object of intense scrutiny for the first ten minutes of seating—the women invariably torn between the veal and the sea bass, and the men between the beef and the lobster (with the beef, in line with Morris Kornfeld’s preference, winning out two to one).

As the guests settled themselves noisily and debated such decisions, Rudy took the microphone. In his capacity as impresario he bore a striking resemblance to Joel Grey in
Cabaret,
except that he might well have been the original upon which Grey’s role was based. He welcomed everyone to the Tenth Annual Valentine’s Day Dinner-Dance, recalled Morris Kornfeld’s untimely passing on the tennis courts two years ago, and read Phyllis Dickstein Kornfeld’s message from her North Jersey nursing home. He reminded everyone that formal testimonials were scheduled to begin at ten P.M., after the main course, but that the Viennese table—the best display of desserts he’d seen since his son’s bar mitzvah at Leonard’s of Great Neck forty years ago—wouldn’t be open until after the testimonials were complete. “So be sure to leave room for dessert. And ladies,” Rudy counseled winkingly, “this is no time to watch the waistline; you can start the diet tomorrow.”

There was a general convergence on the food. The women tended to take only a smidgen of this and that with the result that their plates looked like petri dishes decorated with bacterial samples. The idea was to avoid unnecessary calories without losing the chance to taste everything. Ultimately, of course, a large accumulation of smidgens is likely to approximate a fairly large-sized
portion. The men were less circumspect in filling their plates and sometimes two plates at once. When the main entrees were served, there was much in-depth discussion as to the relative merit of the lobster versus the beef Forkfuls were passed back and forth for tasting. At one table a great deal of time was spent speculating on how much lemon had been used in the veal francaise. At another, an argument broke out as to the propriety of serving shellfish.

“It’s not right,” said Maurie Gluckman, who prided himself on being a man of principle. “This is a Jewish establishment. It sends the wrong message.”

“It’s not a Jewish establishment,” insisted Sadie Litman. “We’re most of us Jews, I’ll grant you, but it’s not a Jewish establishment.”

“Well, I say that if you get enough Jews together, you have a Jewish establishment. And looking at shellfish makes me sick,” responded Maurie.

“Then don’t look at it,” said Dorothy Meltzer, who happened to like lobster and thought that Maurie was trying to spoil her fun.

Rudy, who was making the rounds with his violin, intervened diplomatically to suggest that maybe next year they could keep the lobster and shrimp in the card room, and only those interested would need to face the shellfish directly The debate eventually died a natural death as the band struck up and dancing began.

The band kept assiduously to popular selections from the thirties and forties, and was complimented for its choice of music and, more important, for not playing too loudly. Not playing too loudly was a primary prerequisite for bands at West Boca affairs. Horror stories abounded of being stuck at functions in which the band made such a racket you couldn’t hear yourself think. Roz Fliegler said that the noise had been so bad at her granddaughter’s bat mitzvah that she had to stay in the ladies’
room the whole time. Pixie Solomon, possessed of the gift of conferring to memory long exchanges of dialogue verbatim and bringing them forth as needed to illustrate her points, told an assembled throng, “My daughter says, ‘The kids like it loud,’ so I say, ‘That’s why they’re kids. You need to put your foot down.’ And she says, ‘Mother, you don’t understand.’ And I say, ‘I understand only too well… .’ “—and so on. Pixie’s account of her conversation with her daughter had the quality of a very long tennis rally performed by a single player.

With the rumbas, cha-chas, and merengues, only the serious couples—those with years of Arthur Murray dance lessons under their belts—took to the floor. Dorothy and Herb Meltzer were well known at Boca Festa for their talent in this area. Whenever the notes of a rumba, their specialty, struck up, Herb would give Dorothy the nod and the two would sashay onto the floor, their well-packed posteriors moving purposefully to the Latin beat. Herb held Dorothy’s large, undulating hip very low and turned his own body left and right with military precision, maintaining the implacable facial expression favored by the serious dancer.

When the standard waltzes and fox-trots were played, more people got up. Many of the women, being without partners, made up a loose chorus line, snapping their fingers and swaying as though they were backups in an elderly Jewish girl group.

Norman asked May to dance. She said she could do nothing but a slow waltz, though under his competent lead did well in a fast fox-trot and even held up in a swing dance as the music segued into big band. Joining them on the floor were Hy and Lila. Hy was a surprisingly good swing dancer with an antic, simian agility, while Lila, who had always loved to dance (only Mort had never taken her anywhere), looked beatific as she swung under and around Hy’s prancing body, her red dress whipping around her short figure, the gold necklace on her ample bosom catching the pink light of the chandeliers. Watching
her, Flo thought that perhaps the match was not quite as bad as she had imagined. If Hy could dance, at least that was something, and the faster dancing had the further advantage of making it impossible for him to talk while doing it.

F
LO WAS LEFT AT THE TABLE WITH
S
TAN
J
ACOBS.
H
E HAD SEEMED
morose on first entering the club, brightening only during the gardening conversation with May. After they settled in the dining room, she had decided to break the silence between them by asking his opinion of
American Pastoral,
the Roth novel she had just finished.

“The book’s uneven,” Stan pronounced tersely, “but with some fine passages that, in my view, compensate for its flaws.” He spoke as though giving the last word on the subject, but Flo, who had looked forward to a discussion, countered energetically:

“I don’t see it. I’ll grant he did a good job describing old Newark, a subject I know something about, but the rest was a heavy-handed bore.”

“Heavy-handed is not a word I’d apply to Roth,” responded Stan in what Flo took to be a dismissive tone. “He’s a stylist of enormous subtlety and skill.”

“When did Roth become such a great stylist?” she demanded. “I remember when people were throwing him out with the trash.”

“Well, he grew up and became a great stylist.”

“That’s the problem, then. It’s a book by someone who doesn’t like being a grown-up—I know the type, my son suffers from the same disease. Roth wants to shock the way he did when he was young, only now he gets invited to Hadassah luncheons and discussed at B’nai B’rith book clubs instead. He
attacks the 1960s because that’s when he could have had a family—but God forbid he should have been so middle-class! The daughter in the book, Merry, is every parent’s worst nightmare and Roth’s way of announcing he was right not to have children. It’s pure sour grapes, as I see it, and, style or no style, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”