The Sisters Weiss (17 page)

“Rivka!” His kind eyes widened. “Where is your respect for your mother! I’m surprised at you,” he said softly, clicking his tongue.

She shrank from his gentle rebuke, her bravado gone. “I’m sorry, Tateh. But this is the style now! All the girls are dressing like this! You don’t want me to look like some old bubbee, do you?”

He smiled, smoothing down her bright, golden hair with an indulgent caress. “Mameh, leave her be. Everything is covered.”

Pearl wrinkled her noise in disgust. “It’s got … the smell of the street…”

But Rivka had prepared for that. “I bought it at Elzee on Thirteenth Avenue in Borough Park,” she said triumphantly, waving a bag from the well-known clothing store like a victory banner. “The saleslady there said Rebbitzin Klein’s daughter Mirelle just bought the exact same dress also with a shirt to go underneath.”

Could this possibly be true? Pearl thought, taking the bag and examining it as if it held the answer. Elzee was the go-to dress shop for the most fastidious, pious, and well-to-do ultra-Orthodox girls and women in Borough Park—wives and daughters of Hassidic rabbis and wealthy Haredi businessmen. Could such an outfit really be considered acceptable?

“I can’t believe it,” Pearl said firmly, despite the unmistakable splash of doubt already corroding her iron resolve.

“All right already. So I’ll take it back. Anyway, I don’t want to go.”

“Not go? To your cousin Bluma’s chasseneh?” He was shocked.

“For what should I want to go, Tateh? All the relatives will stare at me like I’m the red heifer. They’ll pinch my cheeks and say: ‘God willing, God willing, God willing by you…’ like I was thirty, not seventeen! And then the Kleinmans will look me over like I’m a melon in the market…”

“You should be so lucky they should not only look you over, but pick you!” Pearl told her, exasperated. “He’s the finest Talmud scholar in the yeshiva. Everyone says so!” she said, turning to her husband for support. “If she says no now, she’ll lose him to another girl, a richer girl whose parents can afford to support him for many years. Right now, he only wants her.”

Her father stroked her bright, smooth cheek, smiling. “He has eyes in his head.”

Bluma, his brother’s daughter, had gotten engaged at sixteen and would be barely seventeen when she married with both her parents’ and the Haredi community’s joyous consent. A tiny pain pierced his heart at the thought that his youngest, his baby, would also soon be leaving him for another.

Rivka. She had always been such a pretty child, with her mother Pearl’s big blue eyes and golden hair, hair so beautiful it was painful to cut. Her tight braid reached down now almost to the backs of her knees.

The matchmakers had noticed. They had been calling now for a year. At first, he had put them off with one excuse after another, happy his youngest daughter was in no rush. But finally, he began listening to what they had to say, agreeing to a match. He had no choice. The Kleinman boy was special, a wonderful person from a generous and well-respected family. Pearl was right. He was in great demand. If Rivka made him wait much longer, the matchmakers would get discouraged and tell him to forget about Rivka for a more willing young lady from a family with much more to offer than a simple, pious bus driver like himself. She—and they—would have to settle for what was left. As her father, he couldn’t allow that to happen.

“In my day, you met once, twice and decided. Now, the girls and boys are choosy, particular. It’s not enough for them that the parents want. They also have to want.”

Rivka set her jaw stubbornly.

“Leave her be, Pearl. She is a good and pious girl, our Rivkaleh. She will make the right decision, about the dress, and God willing, about her choson.”

Rivka sat on the edge of her bed, pasting a charmingly girlish smile on her face, her legs crossed modestly as she casually swung her foot up and down.

It was then Pearl noticed the shoes—such high heels! In such an eye-catching sparkly silver shade…!

“Those shoes!”

“They match the dress, Mameh!”

Shoes the store wouldn’t take back. Not in Borough Park. Pearl’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Was Rivka telling the truth? Were all the girls of marriageable age dressing like this now? It was, after all, the one time in a woman’s life she was encouraged to look as attractive and stylish as she could. What did she know? Unlike some of the richer rabbis’ wives, who bought their clothes in Manhattan and on trips to Europe, she was no fashion expert, buying her clothes from the inexpensive local shops whose styles never changed.

“Take it off,” she told her daughter, sighing.

Rivka froze.

“So you won’t have to iron it again before you wear it to the chasseneh.” Pearl knew a lost battle when she saw one.

“Yes, Mameh,” Rivka said, her long eyelashes sweeping her cheeks, her face demure. “Thank you, Mameh, Tateh.”

As soon as her parents had gone, she swiftly locked the door behind them.

Kicking off the shoes, which were already killing her feet, she pulled off the outfit, flinging it on a chair. She wasn’t even that crazy about it anymore with that stupid shirt underneath! She’d found it on sale in Filene’s Basement in Manhattan, a designer dress with the label cut out. Without the shirt, though, it looked stunning.

Exhausted, she lay down in bed, her arm flung across her eyes. She was so tired of these constant battles. And it was only going to get worse. As soon as her cousin’s wedding was over, the yenta matchmakers would be calling day and night trying to arrange the vort.

Honestly, she didn’t have anything against the Kleinman boy. From the one time they’d met, she’d found him pleasant, interesting, handsome even. And if she’d wanted her mother’s life, she’d have said yes in a minute. But she had other plans. Big plans.

She smiled to herself, thinking of the secret letter in the white envelope already making its way through the world to the destination that would change her life. What if it got lost? What if the postman dropped it, or left it lying in the bottom of the postbox? Or the rain ruined the address, or the address was wrong to begin with? She shuddered, picking up her cell phone.

“Malca? They’re letting me wear it. Thanks for the Elzee bag. It saved me! So tell me, what’s new with the Sephardi?”

That’s what they called him, the tall, handsome, dark-skinned Israeli who worked behind the counter at the kosher pizza place they went to. He wore a knitted skullcap, not a black homburg, and had a charming, jokey way about him that made you laugh and blush at the same time. Malca, who for months had been riding around and around on the matchmaking carousel, had been the first to notice his potential.

“He’s very different from the boys I’m getting fixed up with. Either they don’t have a word to say, or they never shut up. But even the ones who like to talk don’t talk to me. Most of them don’t even look at me. It’s like I’m in shul in the women’s section behind the mechitzah. Everything is so, so … holy!” she’d complained.

“Oy,” Rivka commiserated.

Then, Malca dropped a bombshell. “He’s asked me out.”

“NO!” Rikva shouted, stunned. Meeting a boy accidentally was one thing. But deliberately arranging to meet him again behind your parents’ backs was only slightly less sinful than a married woman committing adultery. In both cases, the consequences were unthinkable. Still, how thrilling to have a boy actually pick you out all by himself instead of having some money-grubbing matchmaker talking him into it.

“The chutzpah! Of course, you can’t go,” Rivka sighed.

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t … couldn’t!”

“What could be so bad? No one has to know.”

“It’s meshuga! You know what could happen to you…!”

“So, what can they do to me that’s worse than what they’re already doing?”

She had a point, Rivka thought, changing the subject. “Can you get away this week?”

“To go where?”

“I was thinking the Museum of Modern Art.”

“Rivka! We went there two months ago, remember?”

“I know, but I have a special reason … I don’t want to tell you. I want it should be a surprise.”

And was Malca ever going to be surprised, she thought, hanging up. You see those photos hanging on the wall? she’d say. Well, guess who took them? My aunt Rose!

Malca would plotz.

Imagine, having a close relative who had her photos hanging in a museum! Her mother’s own older sister! Afterward, maybe she’d tell Malca about her own plans, her secret, dazzling, equally wild plans. Or maybe not. When the time came, Malca would be the first person they’d contact. She was her best friend, but she was no hero. She’d talk. In the meantime, Rivka lay back, closed her eyes, and dreamed.

17

Murray Hill, Manhattan, September 2007

Hannah Weiss Gordon leaned back on the black sofa, trying to find a comfortable position. But it was a mission impossible. Either some former tenant had stained and disposed of the bottom pillows, leaving behind barely covered springs, or the Chinese-immigrant slumlord who squeezed rent out of naive and desperate college students like herself had found it in a junk pile like that, hauling it up the five flights anyway just so he could advertise the place as “semifurnished.”

She slid to the hardwood floors, from which, at least, one knew what to expect. Just as she’d adjusted her earphones and got her computer settled in the perfect center of her lap, the phone rang. She ignored it. But it rang and rang and rang, until finally she heard her landlord’s antediluvian answering machine pick it up.

“Hi, honey, it’s me. Got a minute?”

She wasn’t expecting that. She lunged for the phone.

“Mom? When did you get back from London?”

“Oh, hi, sweetie. Late last night, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

“How is everybody?”

She heard her mother sigh. “‘Grandma Rose,’ the kids told me, ‘our parents aren’t divorcing us, just each other.’ So I guess the message has been delivered consistently and often. Actually, there isn’t much anger that I can see. Your brother Jonathan and his wife are like polite distant cousins at a family reunion that can’t wait to leave.… Let’s hope that attitude will be enough to get them and the kids through this without anyone falling apart. And since it is Jonathan, I suppose we’ll all have to trust he’s doing the right thing for everyone.”

Jonathan, unlike her, had followed their mother’s footsteps into the creative arts, and he enjoyed a growing reputation as a set designer. This gave him, as far as their mother was concerned, creative license with his life as well. Had it been she getting rid of a perfectly good spouse, there would have been hell to pay, she thought resentfully.

“Tell me the truth. How do the kids look?”

“Sad. She bought them a dog.”

“What?”

“You heard me. A black-and-white mongrel from the pound.”

“So their father moves out and a dog moves in. I’m glad I’m taking women’s history and not psychology. Grandma and Great-grandma’s generation had quite a different take on splitting up families.”

“Which is why I moved out of Williamsburg forty years ago and never went back,” Rose snapped at her daughter.

“Something you never let us forget,” Hannah murmured, barely audibly. She took her mother’s abhorrence of anything remotely bourgeois personally, considering herself a staid and sensible member of that much-maligned class, her hopes pinned on a tenured college professorship with a steady income. With a father who was a legend, and a mother who was also famous, her goal was a calm, normal life out of the spotlight. For that reason alone, her mother’s family interested her. Although they couldn’t be considered “normal,” they were certainly more down-to-earth than either of her parents. “I never understood why I could never even meet your family.”

“Oh, that again … Trust me, it was the best thing I could have done for you.”

“I’d like to discuss it with you anyway. Can we meet soon?”

“Well, that’s odd! What brought all this up just now? Besides, I have nothing to add to what I’ve already said over the years. I saved you from the Taliban, believe me.”

Her mother was prone to exaggeration for effect. Hannah had learned not to take her literally. “It’s hard, Mom. I’m a women’s history major, after all. That’s what I do all day, research the way different women lived their lives. I think it would be interesting to meet them.”

“You are assuming, aren’t you, that one of them wants to meet you?”

“Well, actually, I’ve gotten a letter…”

“From one of them?”

“It’s your sister Pearl’s daughter, Rivka.”

“What does she want, your kidney?” she joked, trying to hide her confusion. Pearl’s daughter! It had been so many, many years. She felt overwhelmed with conflicting emotions.

“That’s low!”

“Okay, okay. I give up. What?”

“I’ll show you the letter when we meet.” She hesitated. “Mom, in all these years, your family never once called you? Never once wanted to meet your children?”

Rose wondered how much of the shocking, heartbreaking aftermath of her escape from home to share with her inquisitive and demanding daughter. For now, at least, nothing seemed the perfect answer. “When do you want to do this?” she asked reluctantly.

“Tomorrow? Lunch?”

“Oh, I don’t know … I’ve got all these new negatives to work on … What about early next week?”

“This can’t wait a week.”

“Why not? It’s waited over forty years…”

“This isn’t about them; it’s about me, your daughter! Why am I always the last one on your list of priorities? After work, self-fulfillment, friendships, fame, travel…”

Not for the first time, Rose heard the pain in her daughter’s voice. Some of it, she knew, was justified. She was not going to win Mother of the Year. But she had done the best she could under the circumstances, she comforted herself. As Hannah’s father always said: everyone had the right to screw up their children in their own way.

“Okay, okay! Tomorrow it is.”

“Thanks, Mom. I appreciate you taking some time off from your busy schedule…”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, not at all.… I really do appreciate … So meet me at NYU at Chik-fil-A in Weinstein Hall.”