The Shiksa Syndrome: A Novel (2 page)

“You want to look in Brooklyn?” he asks.

A queen bed just fits into the L, converting my big high-rise studio into a small one-bedroom that’s larger than Peter’s Hell’s Kitchen one-bedroom walk-up. But ultimately it’s still a studio, and still too small for two people. Plus there is the dog.

“More space,” he says. “It’s still the city.”

“To you it’s the city because you’re from Minnesota. But it’s one of the outer boroughs to me.” Everyone’s all about Brooklyn these days. My goal is to someday buy in Manhattan, not rent in Brooklyn. “Besides, it’s too far to ever walk or take the bus. You’d have to spend your life on the subway.”

“In Brooklyn we could probably afford parking. We could get a car.”

“Peter—”

“You’re the only adult I know who doesn’t drive.”

“I can’t,” I say. Well, I sort of can, but I can’t because I don’t have a license. Living in Manhattan, I don’t need one.

“I always offer to rent a car and take you out driving, but you never go. It’s limiting, Aimee.” He pauses. “You should drive.”

“You know why I don’t,” I say. Superstition and terror closely related, my automatic reflex has me spit twice between my two forefingers. Making sure I don’t give myself a
kaynahorah.
Fearful of the evil eye. “And what if I did? What difference would that make?”

“Well,” says Peter, quietly. Too familiar with this subject, he treads on thin ice. “If you drove, we could live in L.A.”

“L.A.?”
Now and again Peter will talk about the
other
coast and his desire to check it out. “You don’t want to live in L.A.”

“
You
don’t want to live in L.A. I don’t know what I want ’cause I never tried it.”

“Are you saying you want to?” I ask. “Or . . . ? I mean, I know you just had that talk with your dad . . . you don’t think?”

“No, Aimee. I don’t think I want to open the New York branch of St. Paul’s Happy Home Insurance. I have to pursue this comedy. Maybe a few more years. I think my forties can be lucky,” says Peter, who hit the decade in August. “Okay?”

“Yes. Of course. Of course you should follow your dreams.” Peter looks relieved. So relieved, his face relaxes. “Only . . . what about mine?”

“You’ve got a great job,” he says. “You’re set.”

“What?” I can’t believe he can be so lame. “I want a family, Peter. And I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m running out of time,” I say, hoping the admission has not set off an alarm that will recall my biological clock.

“And one day I hope to give you what you want.” He comes over and kneels next to me. “So can you hang in there? Can you?”

Surprisingly, I don’t even think. “I’m sorry, P, but I can’t,” I have the guts to declare. When I finally got together with Peter, I felt great. I never thought I’d see it. I actually got my life back, except . . .

“I’m a woman. I come with an expiration date on having a family.”

Though we never really discussed it, I always assumed Peter and I were on the same track. It looked different than the one I ran with Sam, but I was okay with that. “So just tell me now, because if you don’t think it can be a Je . . .”

I catch myself. Stop. Well. I
thought
I was okay with that. But averting Peter’s eyes, I see the elephant in the room. And he’s wearing a yarmulke.

“Don’t think it can be a what?”

“Forget it.”

“Aimee, just say it, okay? Whatever it is, just spill.”

I breathe deep before I do. “Would you raise children Jewish?” I pause. “Could you ever . . . ? Would you ever consider”—I pause longer—“giving this up?”

Peter looks about the room to see what
this
is.

“Christmas,” I answer, sure to make Ebenezer proud.

Look, I’m not against Christmas. But the season, itself, is festive enough. By the time you get to the actual day, it seems like a lot of work for a holiday that just doesn’t resonate emotionally with me. Christmas doesn’t evoke childhood memories; it has no real significance for me, spiritual or religious.

“Man.” Peter looks straight into my eyes. “I’m not”—he hesitates to say it, but he does—“I’m not up to any of this, Aimee.”

“Which part aren’t you up to? The Jewish part? The giving up Christmas? The kids?”

Talking about this with Peter, whom I love, not only feels horribly awkward but is really difficult to explain because when it comes right down to it, I’m not what you’d call religious. But I have a very strong Jewish identity.
Yiddishkeit
is my blood. I love the traditions and the culture. I want a Jewish home, to pass that on to my children. And I need a man who will share that vision as ours.

“Funny you bring this up,” Peter says, stroking Baxter’s belly, all of us under this tree a very unmerry threesome. “Because I was just thinking today how you never ask me anything about my religion.”

My forehead gets hot; beads of embarrassment trickle down my face.

Peter rolls up a piece of discarded wrapping paper and talks into it like a microphone. “Seriously, folks, does his girlfriend really know how he feels about being Presbyterian?”

“Okay. I know it’s totally unfair,” I say, “but I guess I always feel that my holidays are . . . well, dominant,” I finish, kind of ashamed of how I feel. “It’s probably because everything’s here. My family. Synagogue. New York. For me it’s all the same things like always. Only it’s better because now you’re here too. Though—”

“What?”

“I wonder. Are you ever homesick?” I went home with Peter only once. A weekend. His cousin’s engagement party. No more than a glimpse into his life, unlike his up-close-and-personal view of mine. “Do you ever want your stuff back?”

“Sometimes. I know I’ll never move back, but sometimes I really miss Minnesota. The snowstorms.
My
family. Sunday dinners. All of us going to church. I never told you this, but I sang in the choir as a kid.”

I always picture Peter not Jewish, but I never actually picture him going to church.

“But it never really did it for me,” he says. “When I first got to New York, I tried a few places. Felt like I was missing something. But all that changed when I met you. I really enjoy your family. I can totally get into all your traditions.”

Liking what I hear, I breathe again, which only shows me how tightly I hold on to what’s mine. Too tight? I wonder.

“Committing to you feels like having to commit to your world. Not just New York, also about how you’re Jewish.” He pauses. “I mean your Jewish identity.”

I never realized Peter gave this so much thought, but I feel assured knowing he has. Because I see he gets it. He gets me. Now that we’re actually talking, we can figure this out. We can deal with each issue and make each one work. We can—

“But, Aim, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

What?

“I can’t even think about it until I’m in a different place with work. Till I’m earning real money. And I’m . . .”

Uh-oh. My whole body tenses. Where’d this come from? Oh no. This is not good. Please, Peter, stop. Stop talking. God, why did I even start?

“. . . just not ready . . . not yet . . . ,” he says. “I can’t make
any
of these decisions now. And I won’t make any promises. I still want to be with you, but it has to stay like this until . . .”

“Until when?” My body jerks when I suddenly stand, and my head knocks up against a branch. An angel ornament breaks a wing; pieces of tinsel fall on my head. But pieces of me are already missing. I feel them spilling out, slipping away. I fall to my knees to find them, to fix them, but they are nowhere to be found.
“When?”

“I feel like I’m just too young—”

“To what? Grow up? I don’t get as many choices, Peter. I’m a woman. Turning
thirty-nine.
” Said aloud, the number is like a villain, its sharp edges cutting into my options. “A guy in his forties these days is like twenty-five. I don’t get the same free pass. And if, ultimately, we won’t be compatible with . . . with . . . a religion . . .”

It had been the pea under the mattress. Although it was always there, our frolicking, our laughter and love were so much weightier, we’d sleep like babies through the night. But the pea was never removed. And now it will keep us awake.

“You know”—Peter leans over and tilts his head in—“it’s not like I’m a Republican.”

“There is that,” I say. Quite seriously.

“Look, I’m so not close to being there. But you are,” he says, running his fingers gently down my cheek, using them to wipe the silent flood of tears. “You’re ready. So maybe it’s best. I don’t want to be wasting your time. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I say, because I do.

It’s so quiet and undramatic, I can’t believe it’s real. I only pushed because I never thought anything bad would happen. We love each other. But it does not conquer much; who says it conquers all? I want to rewind, but suddenly everything’s moving fast and forward. I don’t move, as if to make it stop. I wait for Peter to tell me something that will make things change. He doesn’t. He just leans in to kiss me. So I kiss him back.

Peter carries me to his bed. His window faces front. A streetlight shines through the blinds, and we hear the sound of a siren. The panic of the sound fuels our passion.

I kiss. Touch. The emotion drives me. Rolling into a release that sets me ablaze, rocking my world, and wishing it could set it straight. Peter stays close. When it’s over, we both cry. It feels like make-up sex. Except this time we both know it’s breakup sex.

G
oing
D
own

A
HHHHHH
!” I
SCREAM
. So excited, I accidentally knock off my glasses and hit myself in the nose. I put them back on and reread. Is there a better way to start the New Year? Given my hellish holidays, the answer is yes. But, as always, the Work Gods smile down on me. And from my corner office on the thirty-second floor, I’m already close to heaven.

I dial Jay’s extension to cash in on the kudos. When the senior VP has you spearhead a major initiative on a new product launch, it’s no small thing. And the KISS launch is big.

“. . . and will return from vacation on Monday, January eighth . . .” His outgoing message reminds me Jay’s on a white, sandy beach in Cancún with his new lover. I imagine Enzo rubbing sunblock into Jay’s pale skin while he sips a frozen daiquiri out of a coconut.

“Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh!”

What the? Okay, I’m still excited, but those screams are not from me. Yet I hear another and another and—ohmygod. A terrorist attack! Oh,
no.
Not today. Not on the day I get Ramy.

I race down the hall, following the noise. The terror leads to the kitchen; the entire consumer marketing practice is crammed together. Instantly, I’m swept inside the frenzy, latched onto the giant clump. Seventeen women and three gay men move as one.

“Ahhhhhh!”
Cut off, suddenly, I detach. I free-fall forward into a blaze of light so bright it’s blinding. No. Oh no. I scream again, fearful to open my eyes. When slowly I do, I discover the brilliant blaze, in fact, comes from Heather Thomson’s big, beautiful rock of a ring. It knocks me backward.

“Terrorist attack . . . or engagement?” Both Krista and her conspiratorial comment serve as a cushion. I turn and see my best friend and colleague feeding money into the vending machine. Exchanging quarters for salvation.

“It’s a little early in the day for that, Ms. Dowd.” Her usually modelesque blonde mane hangs like hat hair, and the dark circles under her teal eyes indicate a definite lack of sleep. But believe me, I’m not one to talk.

“Used to be funny, but it’s getting kind of old,” she says, ripping into a green Gummi bear as well as our running joke. It’s what we say whenever someone from PR With A Point gets engaged, which seems to be every other week.

You’d think it a good thing that
Newsweek
retracted its twenty-year-old prediction that a single, forty-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married. Granted,
Newsweek
only meant to be glib. And who could have ever predicted 9/11? But using the words
Doomed Spinsters Marrying
in the new headline did nothing to make you feel safer. Especially if, like Krista, you were turning forty-one.

“Have a nosh on Nancy!”

Swinging her head so her silky black hair flips to the side, Nancy Cheng circulates with a big heart-shaped tray. We each take a few celebratory hors d’oeuvres: red caviar piled onto bite-size matzo crackers. Nancy has obviously been influenced by her new relationship with Heather’s fiancé’s newly divorced brother.

“So things are going well?” asks Krista, while I jealously hope they’re not. Though far from over Peter, I’m already worried about who (if anyone) is next. If this is any indication, there’s hardly a ton of available Jewish guys.

“Oh, my Jordan is such a manch.”

“He’s a mensch,” I correct.

“Of course he is,” agrees Nancy. “He’s Jewish.”

We hush now to hear. In a southern accent saccharine sweet, Heather tells the story of her New Year’s Eve proposal. “. . . and she tucked it in her bra and never let those mean Nazis get it,” she drawls of the heirloom passed down from Danny’s Grandma Gussie.

“That ring is so big, she should have used it as a weapon,” Krista whispers under her breath. Meanwhile, behind us with the gay men—two Jewish and one Italian—we overhear Nikka Pearlstein, Lianne Levinson, and Jamie Birnbaum complain of the dates they meet on JDate.

“Well, since the site’s gone gay,
I’ve
been doing great,” brags Sean Borrelli, who tried unsuccessfully for years to get into Jay’s pants.

With that, Krista gives me the signal to exit the kitchen. “Do you see what I see?” she asks once we’re safely down the corridor.

“That office romance is limiting to a straight single woman in PR?”

“That Jewish men are the ticket,” says Krista, just back from Providence and fresh off a bad breakup. Reunited two years ago at a high-school reunion, Krista was forced to have a long-distance relationship with Tommy as he was tied to Rhode Island because of his son.

“But his son was
not
the one texting him all New Year’s,” she commiserated over the phone when I told her about Peter. “Tommy’s cell was faceup on the table while he was at the bar. When it went off, I looked over, expecting to see the name Tim. Instead I saw Pam.”

Tommy confirmed the affair, providing the additional bad news that it was going on,
ahem
, almost nine months.

“And you don’t think a Jewish guy would ever do that?” I ask. We are stopped at the fax machine for Krista to check on one. Both at the same level, we started at PR With A Point at the exact same time.

“No, I don’t,” she says. “And now that it’s over with Tommy, I’m choosing one of the Chosen. I’ve actually been thinking about it for a pretty long time.”

“You’re kidding? Really?” I want to be supportive of Krista, but something about all these shiksas with my potential Jewish men feels slightly unkosher. Thinking back on that yuletide talk with my mom doesn’t help. I wonder now if Stefani will convert. For all I know, my brother already found a
mikvah
on a ski slope for the model in Milan.

“Yes,” Krista answers with brevity as we switch into back-to-work mode. Picking up our stride, we hurry down the hall. “I’ve already checked it out, and this Saturday night there’s a fabulous Jewish singles event,” she says, parked outside her office door.

“I hate to break it to you, Kris, but there’s no such thing as a fabulous Jewish singles event.”

“And you’re coming with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. You want to date a great Jewish guy. Stay right here. I know just where to find one.”

I march through reception, out the doors, and past the elevator bank to Layton Real Estate, the firm that moved into the empty office on our floor eight months ago. Andrew Zeman, commercial real-estate developer, and I met in the elevator right after Thanksgiving. He’d just broken up with the “JAPped out Lindsay Kasow” and had sworn off Jewish women. “Never again!” he said. He might be perfect for Krista.

Approaching the wide glass door, I see him turn the bend into reception with some blonde. I guess a client. Smiling, Andrew practically glows. He looks tanned. He doesn’t look like he spent his holidays pining over Lindsay. In fact, he looks pretty good. Pretty, pretty good!

He’s tall, like Krista, successful, Jewish, and funny; she will definitely like him. Andrew’s a catch, I think, placing my hand on the steel hardware to open the door.

Wait a second. Successful, Jewish, and funny Andrew is a catch. Forget Krista.
I
like him. And now that I’m available, he might like me. I may be Jewish, but I sure ain’t no JAP.

I dart off to the side to fix myself up. My boots bring me up two and a half inches; that’s good. I pull the scrunchie out of my hair before pulling the bottom of my purple turtleneck down to cover my tummy. Happily it seems a little flatter than usual. Usually I’m busting out of these pants, a six, but come to think of it, they did feel a little roomy this morning.

“Hey, you,” I shout when I enter, Andrew and the client walking toward the door. “How was your New Year’s?”

“Cool. Hey, glad you popped in. Aimee, meet Selina. She just moved in with me. Wild, huh? Happened so fast,” he says, winking at the goddess. “She dropped by the office because she misplaced her keys.”

“Wow. That’s uh . . . mazing,” I manage to say. “How’d you meet?”

“JDate,” says Selina, flashing Andrew a white, toothy smile.

“I know what you’re thinking,” says Andrew, reading my mind. “But there’s an option in the ‘how religious are you’ category, and Selina checked—”

“Willing to convert,” she says, finishing the sentence and closing the deal.

Huh? I daresay that’s got me a little
fermished.
JDate, the biggest in online Jewish networking, actually encourages Jewish men to do that search? Man, there are plenty of online dating sites that are secular. Jewish people supposedly join JDate in order to meet other
Jewish
people. It feels a wee bit competitive to be up against non-Jewish women on the Jewish Web site. Of course, it also enables a Jewish woman to search out a gentile man who is willing to convert. It’s just that I have yet to meet one.

“Lots of SHIZkas go on that site looking for great Jewish guys,” Selina explains. “Aimee, maybe you should try it.”

“Me?”

Andrew cracks up. “Aimee’s practically a walking Yentl.”

“You like to gossip?” Selina asks, to Andrew’s delight.

“She knows
yenta
!” He kisses the top of her head like a puppy he is training. “Where’d you learn that, honey?”

“Oh come on, Andrew. I doubt she grew up under a rock—”

“Denver,” says Selina. “You’re a smart yenta,” she tells me. “I learned it when I was in a community theater production of
Fiddler on the Roof.
”

“She wrote that into her profile,” says Andrew.

“Well, that’s nice, but he didn’t say
yenta
; he said
Yentl
,” I point out. “It was a movie where Barbra Streisand plays a Jewish girl who poses as a boy so she can be allowed to study Torah.”

“Why can’t she study as a girl?”

“See, in Judaism men are considered superior,” Andrew says proudly, no doubt setting up the dynamic for this relationship.

“In Judaism,” I tell Selina, “women and men have different responsibilities; with more religious people, women are separate but still equal. Things are different, though, with modern Jews.” I look at Andrew. “Maybe not.”

“Well, on the
one
hand . . .” Andrew says, imitating Tevye, the pious milkman in the ever popular
Fiddler.
“And on the
other
hand . . .” Selina practically guffaws. Tickled pink, she matches her angora scarf.

“Hey,
I
played one of Tevye’s daughters once at some talent show when I was at camp. Maybe I should write that into
my
profile,” Krista tells me Saturday night while the two of us, freezing, wait on line to get into the fabulous Jewish singles event. Finally our turn, she hands me thirty dollars so I can buy her ticket.

“You think they ask to check your purse and your lineage at the door?”

I should have known when she told me the club’s in the meatpacking district. It’s wall-to-wall people and music so loud it’s lodged itself in the hollow cavity of my chest. Each thump fuels my uneasiness, for when I look around DOWN I get its conception. Along the perimeter of the huge room are big down pillows, big wide chairs, and enormously big
beds.
I’m sure I’d be much happier being miserable at a mixer in the Temple Shalom basement than down here amid these fabulous beds.

“Ready to roll?” shouts Krista. Her vodka tonic clinks against my merlot.

Not exactly a wallflower, I confess I’m better one-on-one. But my friend’s in her element, and far be it from me to hold her back. However, she’s already taken off. Alone at the bar, I try to check out the room, but without my contacts I can’t see. I fish inside my purse and find my glasses, when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“So d’ya have a happy?” I turn and face a guy my height with a hairline that’s receded; a satin flower fastened to his lapel. He pulls down on a little red string so the words
Happy New Year
are revealed. Reaching into his left pocket, he produces two cardboard party blowers. NewYearsGuy positions the gold one in his mouth, handing the silver one over to me.

“Ya ready? Okay. Blow.”

I don’t.

“What’s the matter? Never mind, forget it,” he answers himself, his hands deep into his pants pockets before making two fists. “Pick one.”

NewYearsGuy’s hooked nose bobs over his fists to indicate that I choose. I take my party blower and tap his right hand, but it’s empty. Like a magic wand, he waves his party blower over his left, slowly opening his hand to reveal three silver Hershey’s chocolates in his palm. “How about a kiss?”

“Thanks, but I’m allergic.” I’m quick to take my drink and my cue to walk away.

I drift in and out of unwelcoming hubs; conversations zip through the air like bullets. My eyes bounce about the eight hundred people, hoping to run into someone nice. Unaware of where I’m walking, I bump up against the stomach of a mustached man who looks like the Jolly Jew Giant.

“Call me SixFour,” he hollers down, hovering exactly a foot above me. “That’s my username. Want to dance?”

I can never say no to a dance. Four years of my childhood were spent doing the five positions in a West Side ballet studio with six-foot-tall windows. In third grade I got to be in
The Nutcracker Suite
at Lincoln Center. A Russian doll, I got carried off-stage by mice. SixFour gyrates up and down, with each of his jerks forward I do a pirouette and spin away.

The song now ended, so has the dance. “You’re nice,” says Six-Four, pulling me off the floor. “I’m visiting. I’m in sales. I live in Miami. You want to lie down?” He points to a free spot on a bed.