Chambermaid

  In love with someone else?

  “God, Heidi, I really am so so sorry. Did he happen to mention who this someone else—”

  “Who are you speaking to?” Matthew asked, confused about why his colleague was whispering into his phone.

  “Um, hey, Matthew. It’s Heidi,” I said meekly, embarrassed that I’d been busted for attempted extraction of information from his mourning ex-girlfriend.

  He took the phone slowly and I made myself scarce by checking on Roy, who immediately started rattling off his grievances about greedy greenhouse-keepers. Roy needed a blog.

  “Hey, Sheila, can I speak to you?” Matthew peered around the corner, beckoning me back into the clerks’ cave.

  My heart was pounding so hard, I was afraid to move. Thankfully Roy opened his mouth to speak again, his breath propelling me from my seat.

  “Yeah, what’s up, Matthew?”

  “Come with me.” He took my hand and led me to the men’s bathroom, locking the door behind us. “Look, Sheila, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about me and Heidi. We have a lot on our plate right now with this shivah and I just wanted to be done with it and—” He took a deep breath and started rolling on his heels. “I just wasn’t sure how you felt about me and I didn’t want to just assume that it was the same as me and I didn’t feel prepared to deal with rejection and—”

  I grabbed him by the tie and pulled him toward me. “I think we’re on the same page, Matthew,” I said, smiling.

  When Matthew kissed me, all thoughts of whitefish salad, hydrangeas, and Cousin Mort disappeared.

  Toilets weren’t just for lunch anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The sandwich theorem, frequently used in calculus and real analysis, states that if a real-valued function (the filling) lies everywhere between two other real-valued functions (the bread) which both converge to the same limit, then the “middle function” also converges to that limit. The ham sandwich theorem can be used to prove mathematically that a single cut can divide two pieces of bread and the filling each exactly in half.

  —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich

  By the time the day of shivah arrived, everyone involved, including the judge, had forgotten it had anything to do with one dead Bob.

  It was bad enough having to go to the torture chamber–cum–shee-vah headquarters on a Saturday. The fact that the day would be more hectic than most presidential inaugurations made it that much worse. After all, “we rilly had so much to do.” Whatever that entailed, I was prepared—at least in terms of fashion. I put on a super cute black dress I’d bought at Saks when I was in New York a few weeks earlier, checking out Puja’s new apartment in the West Village, where James was temporarily crashing.

  James’s judge had suddenly retired, after a tragic (and hush-hush) episode involving his electric scooter and a pedestrian. James had happily broken his lease in Philly and moved back to New York. Ever since the blizzard, James and Puja had been inseparable. My mother was sleeping better at night. So was I.

  Over the past two months, I’d shed ten pounds and returned to my usual size. It was pretty easy actually—I’d laid off the meatballs and started jogging again. The pimples had come around with less frequency and I’d stopped picking my hair. All in all, I had started to look, if not feel, better. Having a sex life again didn’t hurt either.

  Matthew and I shared a cab to the courthouse from my apartment. We went through our checklist of everything necessary for the day, “tending to the judge,” being the first.

  A few days earlier, I’d been given the particularly grim task of accompanying the judge to a nearby department store to select an outfit. Let’s just say that nobody should have to see their boss wearing nothing but their lunch, a girdle, and purple Birkenstocks. After countless black polyester pantsuits, the judge settled on one. It looked just like all the others. But I still told her it was unusually lovely, was perfect for the occasion, that Bob would be smiling down on her from above.

  “Sheera”—she swatted at me from the dimly lit dressing room—“Jews don’t believe in heaven!” At that point, neither did Catholic-Episcopalian-Hindu-Muslim mutts.

  Once we arrived in chambers, Matthew and I dug up clipboards from the supply closet and treated ourselves to two brand-spanking-new mechanical pencils for the occasion. It sort of felt like we were doing PR for a movie premiere. Medieval Roy arrived on the red carpet. I gasped. He was wearing a tuxedo, a full tuxedo. With tails. And a top hat. His mullet was pulled back into a tight ponytail. He smiled. This movie would most likely bomb.

  “Sheila, Matt”—he solemnly nodded—“the tulips have arrived.” He bowed. Next up, Janet. She came wearing a brown taffeta dress with ruffles, curiously resembling a half-peeled potato.

  “Janet, what’s the status on the tongue?” I asked, pencil ready to check off “tongue.”

  “Done.” Check.

  “The liver?” Check.

  “The borscht, the corned beef, pastrami, whitefish salad, cookies?” Check, check, check.

  The phone rang. The judge, who else.

  “Sheera, sheera!!!!” It was way too early for this. “Sheera, you need to get Esther. Get her. Esther, Esther.” Click. Thankfully, she was on speakerphone, so I had three detectives to help me crack that one. Didn’t take long. Janet had an explanation.

  “Oh, Esther is Bob’s sister. The judge hates her.” As opposed to all the other people the judge positively adored? Where exactly were we to collect this Esther? I didn’t recall her name on the list and Matthew confirmed that he hadn’t contacted her. The fifteen messages Esther left on the chambers’ voice mail didn’t shed any light either.

  The first ten were a shrill “It’s ES-TER. ES-TER!” The final five were the same announcement, coupled with “Pick me up for shee-vah. Helga? Helga? You better pick me up!” Oh God. Could it be? She sounded like the judge, only scarier. Now I got it! Bob had married his sister.

  “Ugh,” Roy gurgled, his top hat tilting just a bit. He wasn’t going to survive the day, I just knew it. I also knew we had to find Esther. Four-one-one—no Esther Friedman. White pages—not there either. We didn’t know her married name. According to Janet, Bob had cut off ties with her at the behest of the judge many moons ago. So, Janet had absolutely no record of Esther. Drastic times called for drastic measures. I called the judge at home.

  “Um, Judge, we—”

  “Where are you people? You people are supposed to be here! It’s rilly rilly embarrassing that my people aren’t here. I am a judge, a federal—”

  “Judge, it’s only nine-ten right now. Is anyone even at your house?”

  “Well, er, Sheera, the caterers are here and the flowers and—”

  “Judge, we are trying to locate your sister-in-law, Est—”

  “NO! NO! NO! I do not have time for this. I do not have time for her. Get over here now!” Click. She’d clearly forgotten her request from three minutes earlier. We collectively shrugged our shoulders and hopped a cab to the judge’s.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected of the judge’s home, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this. Stunning prewar brownstone on tree-lined Locust Street. Window plants abounded. Bright red door, gold handle.

  “PEOPLE, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!” There she stood, black pantsuit barely on, zipper undone, buttons halfway through their holes. Most alarming was the apparent confusion of lipstick for eyeshadow. Her perfectly rounded, fresh bun didn’t do much to fix the picture. “People, people, Sheera! This is unacceptable. You cannot come and go as you please!” The four of us stood, staring. Factor in our costumes and it felt like a botched trick-or-treating.

  She dragged us inside. “What’s that? What’s that?” she asked, pointing to Medieval Roy’s head. He petted his goatee, smiling nervously.

  “Yes, Judge.” For once, that particular answer was totally wrong. She furrowed her lipstick-laden eyebrows and jumped up to swat at his top hat. Roy remained as still as a dead church mouse. Once, twice, three
times a charm. It came toppling off his greasy head. Perhaps lobotomies were common at certain medieval functions. The judge kicked the hat. She was wearing new sneaks for the occasion. We proceeded through her immaculate house. It just couldn’t be. Light streamed in through large french windows hitting dark hardwood floors, only partially covered by lavish Oriental rugs. Seeing the judge in such a pleasant environment was rilly rilly rattling.

  The doorbell rang. I answered it. Standing before my eyes was a rival United Nations delegation. The Namibian, the White, and the Mixed. An ignorant outsider would probably mistake them for your basic American family.

  “Hi, you must be Sheila,” Mark said warmly, extending a hand. The judge had told him about me? His wife, Natalie, smiled, clearly exhausted from the baby boy she was holding and the three-year-old girl tugging at her dress.

  “Yes, I’m Sheila and it’s so nice to meet you finally. I’ve heard so much about all of you,” I lied. He gave me a knowing smile, not buying it. “And I am so sorry about your loss,” I added. He smiled again.

  “Thank you. You know, my dad was very old and very sick. I think we’d all been preparing for this for a while. Anyway, I bet my mother is freaking out right now. Is she around?” Was she ever. The judge came tearing around the corner.

  “Maaaaarrrrrkkk! Where have you been?! There’s so much to do!” I didn’t know what she was referring to. As with the other sittings, we were clearly well over a month ahead for this one. She beamed at her granddaughter, Maggie, who squirmed when the judge hugged her. As for Natalie and the baby, nothing. Babies, I remembered, weren’t interesting until two. That little boy still had about eighteen months to enjoy. Mark looked around.

  “Mom, it looks like everything is under control. Why don’t you finish getting ready. I think we’re all set,” he bravely instructed.

  “No! No! No!” These weren’t my noes to deal with, and I fled, joining Matthew, Roy, and Janet in the kitchen.

  “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been here,” Janet said, eyeing the room admiringly. She’d worked for the woman for more than two decades and the judge had never even had her over for a meal. Standing there in that brown dress, hungrily absorbing the walls, the tables, the chairs, Janet broke my heart. Maybe that woman, the judge, would rot in hell, as my mother had commanded on various occasions. Perhaps for no other reason than for her systematic destruction of Janet. While Janet’s behavior toward all of us during the year was anything but stellar, she really seemed to love the judge, like a child loved her mother. And the judge hadn’t even let Janet into her home. Not one time. Disgusting.

  Roy was at the other end of the kitchen fondling the tulips. I motioned for Matthew to run interference. Another five minutes and those tulips would be dead. The doorbell started ringing. I let Mark do the honors. He, after all, was family.

  I quickly placed all the sandwiches on the living room table, alongside the soft drinks and cookies. I felt a tug at my dress. It was Maggie.

  “Play play play!” she screamed. These Friedmans sure were a demanding bunch.

  “Maggie, why don’t you go play with Matthew, you see, that boy over there,” I said, pointing to Matthew, who was sitting in a chair across the room, staring at the clipboard of to-dos. He looked boring. I understood why she shook her head, unhappy with my suggestion. I took her hand and walked with her to Matthew.

  “Matthew, meet Maggie. Maggie, this is Matthew. Why don’t you two play together?” He grimaced. “Or you are more than welcome to man the whitefish salad sandwiches. Whichever you prefer.” He reached for Maggie. “I thought as much,” I said. He smiled at me. Sitting there in the maroon leather chair, in the pretty suit, playing with pigtailed Maggie, Matthew looked like a saint.

  Mark led a group of elderly people into the room, making quick introductions.

  “Sheila, this is Aunt Bertha, Uncle Mort, and Mrs. Worth.” I smiled, reaching for their hands, attempting to register their names. The whole group pushed past me, clearly an unnecessary obstacle to the main attraction—the food. Mark laughed.

  “Hey, Sheila, thanks for helping so much with the day. My mother, I know she can be difficult.” Difficult? Math tests were difficult. “And she really counts on you. So thanks.”

  I nodded. “Sure, no problem.”

  He walked over to play with Maggie and Matthew. I expected a Purple Heart for one year with the judge. I wondered what kind of medal Mark would receive for a lifetime. I moseyed back to the kitchen, in search of Janet and Roy, both of whom were sitting at the table, thumbing through a Pottery Barn catalog. It was clear that they felt inferior even at the judge’s husband’s memorial service.

  “Hey, you two, why don’t you get something to eat and go mingle in there?” I asked, pointing to the living room. They both looked at me like I was a much better person than I actually was and scurried past me, leaving me solo. Not for long. Tap. Tap. Tap. I spun around. And gasped. Standing on the other side of the glass door, separating the kitchen from the back porch, was a woman who was short—really short. As in, two inches separated her from the circus. She, too, had a robust bun and bad makeup, but she had on an even more unsightly suit than the judge. She had a cane and was pounding on the door.

  Esther.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Where were you?! I’ve been waiting. I had to take him!” she screamed, pointing her cane at a scrawny, petrified cabdriver, waiting just outside of striking distance, by the lilies. “Pay him. Pay him!” I walked past Esther, almost tripping on her cane, and produced a twenty from my purse. He was halfway down the street before I could say thank you. I turned.

  “Hi, I’m Sheila and—”

  “You, you, where is everyone?!” she screamed. Maybe Bob really had married his sister. Esther was the spitting image of the judge. Or maybe I was seeing double? “YOU!” OMG—like the judge, she spit when making demands. “I can’t eat wheat. No wheat! Did you hear me? Did you?”

  Everyone in the neighborhood heard her, including the judge, who came speeding into the kitchen. Her bun fidgeted. I looked left. Esther’s bun was also moving.

  I was sandwiched between two fire-breathing octogenarians with dancing buns. What were the chances?

  “Helga,” Esther said. She lifted her cane, greeting the judge.

  “Hello, Esther.”

  This monkey moved from the middle, trying to back my way out of this most undesirable situation.

  No—they each grabbed an arm. Bladder quivered. They pulled.

  “This is my Sheera, let go! Let go!” the judge ordered.

  “She’s supposed to get me lunch. No wheat, I told her.” Esther wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  “NO! NO! NO!”

  “YES! YES! YES!”

  Arms pulled in different directions.

  “Enough!” They let go and we all whipped around. It was Medieval Roy. He was clutching his top hat with one hand, petting his goatee with the other. I wondered if the chocolate chip cookie I’d just eaten had been laced with acid. “Um, what I meant, was, yes, Judge.” He bowed and tripped his way back to the living room. Grateful, I sped after him, leaving the dueling banjos in the kitchen.

  Gazing around the living room, I counted about two dozen people—half judges, half family and friends. Judges Fleck and Haskell were there with their wives. So, too, were about five others I still couldn’t name. Absent was Justice Adams, who’d sent a condolence note and the most expensive fruit basket I’d ever seen. Note was on Supreme Court stationery. Note and basket had gone straight to wastebasket. No sooner had I parked myself in front of the sandwich platter did the mourning widow and sister emerge from the kitchen, arm in arm, giggling. The judge walked over to me.

  “Sheila”—she smiled, revealing a chunk of liver in her bridge—“this is my dear sister-in-law, Esther. Please make sure she’s comfortable.” I had a feeling Esther hadn’t been comfortable since the Roaring Twenties. I smiled at Esther and the judge. It was only
a few more hours. I could do this.

  “Sure, um, Mrs. Esther? Is that what I should call you?”

  “Just Esther. I’m not missus anything. That bastard died years ago.” That settled that. “Is there wheat in that? What about thaaaaat? Is there wheat in thaaaaat?” She had stashed her cane under one arm, in order to fully concentrate on the sandwiches. She went from sandwich to sandwich, asking that same question. Considering the sandwiches were quartered, you can imagine how long this exercise took. I hadn’t had a chance to answer any of her questions—all the same—not just because she didn’t allow me to but, more important, because I didn’t have any answers.

  The corned beef was on rye. The liver on pumpernickel. The pickled fish on some sort of black bread. What had wheat? What didn’t? She had exhausted the platter and was staring at me: “Well? I’m hungry!” Rye? Rock, paper, pumpernickel! “Well!” she demanded, pounding her cane. Spiral, spiral. What was the worst that could happen? It was just wheat, after all.

  “Hey, what’s going on here?” Matthew came over, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Hi, I’m Matthew,” he said, extending a hand to Esther. She smiled, batting her long fake lashes.

  “I am Es-TER,” she carefully enunciated. Bat bat bat.

  “Hi, Esther, nice to meet you. Can I help you?” She smiled at him, then shot me the evil eye.

  “That girl, she doesn’t know anything. I just want to know what doesn’t have wheat!” He nodded, grabbed the pickled mess, placed it on a plate, put some potato chips next to it, led Esther to the couch.

  “Here, this doesn’t have wheat. Enjoy.” And then he returned to me. I looked at him incredulously.

  “How do you know that doesn’t have wheat. I mean, she can die or something, I think.”

  “Sheila, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, now does it? And who is that? She looks like the judge, only slightly less gross.” In a little less than a year, Matthew had gone from a God-fearing Ivy League graduate to a premeditating food poisoner. We gazed at Esther, who was licking pickled herring from her bony fingers. “OK, maybe the same amount of gross,” Matthew corrected himself. I started explaining the who, what, where of Esther, when the judge jumped onto the brick platform in front of the fireplace. She clinked her plastic cup with a plastic fork crusted with mayonnaise. The crowd hushed, but for some loud potato chip chewing. The way everyone was eating, you’d have thought these people had just been bussed in from a refugee camp.