The Replacement Wife (55 page)

Now that they were grown and Angie’s sisters had families of their own, Christmas was a more cumbersome affair. Angie typically spent the morning at Francine’s, then made the rounds to her other sisters’ houses throughout the day, before the entire family gathered for the annual holiday feast at Lou and Loretta’s. Usually, Angie found it enjoyable, if exhausting, but this year her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t stop brooding about Edward. She imagined him reunited with his wife; he and Camille opening presents with their kids on Christmas morning. She wondered if he had any regrets. No, of course not. Why would he? He had everything he could possibly want.

Then, shortly before the first of the year, after making it her New Year’s resolution to give up on men altogether, she met someone. It was at a rehearsal dinner hosted by the groom’s parents, at their Park Avenue penthouse, that she was catering. One of the guests, a tall man around her age, caught her eye, initially because of his height, but at second glance she saw he was also quite attractive, with a lanky build, close-cropped dark hair, and hazel eyes with thick lashes a girl would envy. She’d clearly caught his attention, too, because over the course of the evening, as she and her staff ferried plates back and forth from the kitchen, she noticed him sneaking glances at her. Finally, as the other guests were leaving and she and her staff packing up the leftovers, he approached her.

“David Blum,” he introduced himself, shaking her hand. “I just wanted to say the food was amazing. Best borscht I’ve had since my
bubbe
used to make it. You wouldn’t happen to know her, would you? White hair, brown eyes, about yea high”—he held his hand at mid-chest level—“swears she’d never give out her secret recipe but who’s susceptible to bribes in the form of sweets.”

Angie laughed. “I know a lot of little old ladies. They always have the best recipes.”

They chatted a few more minutes, and then David said as he was leaving, “Why don’t you give me your card? I may have a job for you. Not right away, but . . .” His expression clouded over, and at the questioning look she gave him, he explained, “It’s my dad—he’s dying. You know the saying ‘It’s your funeral’? Well, with Dad it’s not just an expression—he’s got his all planned. The only thing left to do is hire the caterer. He’s interviewed a few, but none were up to his standards. He wants someone who, quote unquote, won’t insult his memory with bad food.”

Angie didn’t offer her sympathies. From David Blum’s matter-of-fact tone, she guessed he’d had his fill of Hallmark-worthy sympathies. She only said, “Your dad sounds like my kind of guy.”

David regarded her a moment, then said, “Thank you.”

“For what? I haven’t done anything yet.”

“The last caterer Dad interviewed got so emotional, after he’d explained the circumstances, he ended up having to console
her
.”

“Not very professional,” Angie agreed. “Though in all fairness, it’s the nature of the job. We’re witness to the most important moments in people’s lives, so it’s hard not to get caught up in it to some degree. I confess to having shed a tear or two at weddings.” She was thinking of one in particular. But the less she dwelled on
that
the better. “That said, if your dad wants to give me a call, I promise I won’t subject him to any emotional outbursts.”

David asked if she had any free time the following week to meet with him and his dad.

Angie, in addition to a packed schedule, was overseeing work on the new space, which was in full-on construction mode and had her shuttling back and forth to the Bowery between gigs, but she replied without hesitation, “Sure. How about Tuesday, at two?” She’d find the time, even if it meant getting up an hour earlier that day. How could she say no to a dying man?

Angie and the old man hit it off at once. Mendel Blum, who suffered from congestive heart disease, looked much older than his seventy-eight years, but his mind was still sharp. He was a violinist of some note, she learned: He’d played with the New York Philharmonic, for thirty-odd years, before he became ill. He was also a highly-educated man who’d read extensively and studied the Talmud in his youth. The three of them—Angie, Mendel, and David—chatted while sipping oolong tea and listening to a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth performed by the Philharmonic. It wasn’t until Angie’s next visit that they even got around to discussing menu options.

Afterward, David took Angie to a wine bar around the corner from Mendel’s Perry Street townhouse. Over a bottle of Pinot Gris, he told her more about his father’s background. Angie learned that Mendel had come to this country as a young boy during World War II, just before the Nazis began rounding up Jews in Europe. When the war was over, he discovered that most of his family had died in the camps. It was a searing experience, and one that made him value his Jewish heritage all the more. His three children, David and his two sisters, had all attended Hebrew school, and their bar and bat mitzvahs had been a big deal, not just an excuse to throw a party.

“I wish I could say I was still observant. But these days, I only go to synagogue on High Holidays,” David confided with a rueful shake of his head. “Dad doesn’t know, so don’t say anything. Oh, and you know those little crab things you served at the rehearsal dinner, the ones I told you I liked? Best not mention those, either.”

“Your father keeps kosher?” This was a surprise to Angie. As far as she knew, only Orthodox Jews kept kosher, and no Orthodox Jew would dream of hiring anyone but a kosher caterer.

“No, we’re Conservative,” he said. “There are just certain things, like pork and shellfish, Dad considers
trayf
.”

“But you don’t?”

David gave a wry grimace. She pictured him as the earnest bar mitzvah boy he’d once been, one who’d had every intention of fulfilling his father’s expectations.
I’ll bet he was a cute kid,
she thought.
Adorable but with moxie, like a child actor in a Neil Simon play.
“My downfall was college,” he explained. “I didn’t want to be different from the other kids, so I ate what they ate. After that, I was a goner. Now I can’t imagine life without lobster rolls and BLTs.”

“And you’ve kept it from your dad all this time?”

“I couldn’t find a way to break it to him. Somehow the time was never right, and now . . .” He trailed off with a shrug.

“I imagine he has bigger concerns right now than whether or not his son has developed a taste for BLTs,” she said gently. “But if it would put your mind at ease, you should tell him.”

“You’re right. In the larger scheme of things, it’s probably not that big a deal.” David smiled at her over the rim of his wineglass as he lifted it to his lips. He sat with his long legs stretched in front of him, his Tod’s brushing her well-worn Weejuns under the table. He wore jeans and an off-white crewneck sweater with the sleeves pushed up over his tanned, muscular forearms. She decided it was a better look for him than the suit and tie he’d worn at the rehearsal dinner. “What about you—do you have any deep, dark secrets you’re keeping from your parents?”

“No, sadly. I’m an open book.” Thoughts of Edward crept in, and she resolutely shut her mind against them. “Though in high school, I did stuff that would’ve had me grounded for life if they’d known.”

His eyes sparkled with amusement. “Ah, so you were one of
those
girls.”

“Hardly. You had Hebrew school, I had catechism—we should compare notes sometime. If the thought of confession doesn’t cut into your Saturday-night action, the threat of going to hell will. Though it was mostly just stupid teenage stuff—you know, drinking and partying, staying out past curfew. And, yeah, I did my share of fooling around.” At David’s raised eyebrow, she added with a laugh, “Not what you’re thinking; it was pretty tame by today’s standards. I was a ‘good girl.’ I was saving myself for marriage. Fortunately, that thinking didn’t last, or right now you’d be talking to one of only ten thirty-nine-year-old virgins residing in the tristate area.”

David chuckled, and refilled her glass. “You never thought about getting married?”

Angie shrugged and picked at a partially healed cut on her thumb, which she’d gotten slicing onions for a
soupe au pistou
. “Not really.” The thought of Edward stole in once more, and once more she shut it out, this time double-bolting the door. “All I ever really wanted was to cook.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded brilliantly at that.” David leaned in to place a hand over hers, a friendly gesture that turned into something more when his hand stayed put, his thumb lightly stroking her knuckles. She felt a rippling sensation in her belly, which might have been pleasure or possibly just a case of nerves. “By the way,” he said, “in case you hadn’t noticed, my dad is pretty smitten with you. He told me as we were leaving tonight that if I didn’t ask you out, he would.”

Angie was flattered by David’s attentions. But she wondered,
Am I ready for this?
It wasn’t that she didn’t find him attractive, but she was still picking her way through the rubble of her previous relationship. Did she want to put herself out there with someone else, risk getting hurt again?
Or hurting someone
. Because there was also the risk, with David, that she would end up breaking his heart. She didn’t get the same fluttery feeling with him that she had with Edward—this was a mere tremor compared to a full-scale earthquake. Which could be a good thing, she reasoned. At least she wouldn’t be entering another potential disaster zone.

“He doesn’t care that I’m not Jewish?” she said.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said. Like her, David was the only one of his siblings who was still single. His two older sisters had each been married more than a decade.

“Gee, you really know how to make a girl feel special,” she deadpanned, at which he broke into a grin. “Seriously, you think your father would have a problem with a BLT if it’s okay for his son to go out with a shiksa? Isn’t that like worrying about a leaky faucet when your house is under two feet of water?”

He chuckled, then his expression turned serious. “It’s not a deal breaker,” he said, “any more than being Jewish is an automatic shoo-in. I was once engaged to a woman who was Jewish—an Israeli Jew, who grew up on a kibbutz and spoke Hebrew—and Dad never took to her.”

He told her about the former fiancée. Her name was Miriam. She and David had lived together for five years before getting engaged. They were in the midst of planning the wedding when Miriam was offered her dream job. The only problem was, the job was in Chicago and David didn’t see himself relocating. So they broke the engagement, and she moved to Chicago without him. He was sad about it for a while, but had since concluded it was the right decision. “If I’d loved her enough, I’d have moved in a heartbeat,” he said. “The fact that I wasn’t willing said something.”

“Has there been anyone since?” Angie kept her voice light.

“No one I was serious about. But when I found out my dad was dying, it was a wakeup call. My parents were married more than fifty years. Even with Mom gone, Dad still has those memories. I want that for myself, to be able to look back one day and know my life amounted to something more than climbing the corporate ladder. I’d like a family of my own. I think I’d make a good dad, though I may need some work as a husband—I’ve gotten kind of set in my ways,” he added with a crooked grin, as if it had just occurred to him he might be coming on too strong.

Nonetheless, he’d made his intentions crystal-clear. And while part of her was flattered that he saw her as a potential wife, it was also cause for concern. Would it be fair to lead him on if she couldn’t give it her all in returning his affections? She freed her hand from his, coughing into her fist so the move wouldn’t seem deliberate. “Yeah, I can picture you sneaking contraband BLTs into your kids’ lunch boxes,” she teased, to lighten the mood. David laughed.

Most women would jump at what he was offering, she knew. He was a prime catch, and as her mom was forever reminding her, she wasn’t getting any younger. She also liked David. Very much. She could grow to love him in time, couldn’t she? So why was she holding back? It wasn’t just because she had reservations about marriage in general. Her heart belonged to someone else.

Fuck that,
she thought. She wasn’t going to let Edward hold her heart hostage. She was taking it back.

The following weekend, David took her to a performance of the Miró Quartet at Carnegie Hall, and to a party at a friend’s house the weekend after that. They fell into the habit of having dinner together at least once a week. She would cook for him at her place, or they would go to a restaurant. She also went to see his father every chance she got. Mendel was growing weaker by the day. A slight man even in his prime—in his den there was a framed 8 x 10 of Mendel posing next to Lennie Bernstein, in which he was dwarfed by the much taller man—he appeared swallowed up by the armchair in which he spent the majority of his waking hours. Only his eyes retained their sharpness; they were the jaunty blue of a flag snapping over a bombed-out building.

Mendel told stories of the famous musicians and composers he’d known—Lennie, Isaac Stern, Vladimir Horowitz, Shostakovich, to name a few—and of the Greenwich Village of his day, back when it was a gathering place for young artists and musicians. Angie always brought him something to tempt his flagging appetite, usually Jewish comfort food: potato or noodle kugel;
cholent,
slow-cooked in the oven overnight;
kasha varnishkes
; chicken soup with matzo balls.

“
Bubeleh,
you are to matzo balls what Lennie Bernstein was to music,” he declared after tasting the soup.

She smiled. “I didn’t know the two were even in the same universe, but thank you.”

Mendel leaned in to whisper, “Now, if only you could get that
goyisher
son of mine to like matzo balls instead of the
trayf
he eats.” The old man, it seemed, had been on to his wayward son for some time.

January slipped over into February, and then it was March. Almost four months since she’d last heard from Edward—he was officially out of her life. So why wasn’t she taking it to the next level with David? Why did she continue to hold a part of herself in reserve? He was perfect for her: attentive without being overbearing; sensitive to her wants and needs. He laughed at her jokes and loved every inch of her in bed.
What’s not to like?
as Mendel would say. And yes, she did
like
him. She just wasn’t sure if she’d call it love. David, for his part, only refrained from using the “L” word, she suspected, because he’d sensed she wasn’t ready to hear it.