by Laurie Graff
“Karrie!” my aunt shouted the following night when we rang the bell. “Sy,” she yelled into the house. “They’re here. Where’s your mother and Charlie?” she asked as I pointed to a nearby patch of grass where Charlie had dragged her so he could sniff and do his stuff.
It felt good to be with my family. Without any plans at home I thought I’d stay on through New Year’s. Tonight, the development, Kensington South, was having a Hanukkah party in the clubhouse that would be starting soon, leaving us very little time to digest before we’d be eating again.
I was stuffed to the gills after two helpings of my aunt’s legendary stuffed cabbage. My mom and I had driven the three cul-de-sacs over here for dinner, and would drive two back to the clubhouse after dessert. I’d really have to bump up my running time if I was serious about staying on longer, I thought, reaching across the table for another of Uncle Sy’s puggies, the sourdough cookies he had baked just for me. The dishes had been done, and now just us women were dawdling over some decaf.
“Okay, Aunt Cook, tell me now,” I said, like a kid, to my aunt who had promised during dessert she would tell me the rest of the story I never tired of hearing. I pictured everything like I was watching a play; the set, the costumes, the characters, the plot. “So then what happened?”
“You could use these for hockey pucks,” said Mille picking up a puggie like it was one.
“They’re good,” I said to be nice. Though not actually disagreeing with my mom, I dipped the puggie cookie into the coffee to soften it up enough to be able to take a bite.
“It was your Grandma Rose’s recipe. But when my mother baked you wanted to eat,” Millie said, getting up from the table. “Excuse me for a minute.”
“Karrie, you want to hear the story or want to talk about cookies? Now that night came around,” my aunt began, somewhat theatrically. “I was already engaged to your uncle, and—”
“Wait. What made you decide in three weeks he was the one?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Cookie, taking a moment to go back in time. “First, he was very nice when we met at the Lakeview. Well dressed. Very complimentary, he made me laugh. And he gave me a ride back to the city.”
On occasion I’ve been accused of being picky, but I would seriously consider anyone who offered me a ride.
“In the car I was talking about my dog, Buster. Sy said he liked dogs.”
So far I completely understood my aunt’s decision-making process.
“He talked well about his family. Sy had a good job. And he made a date with me when he dropped me off at my house. A few days later he took me to Ben Marden’s Riviera on the Palisades, in Jersey. Now that was a very, very fancy nightclub. That was the limit! If you really wanted to impress someone—that was the date.”
So Uncle Sy made plans on the spot and in advance. I was quite certain that how a man made plans was in direct correlation to his availability.
“We had a very nice time, and he asked me to get together again during the week. When he came to pick me up I was crying. Buster was sick and had to go to the vet. My sister and I were very worried. The vet was far away, we didn’t have a car and neither of my parents drove, so your uncle volunteered to take Buster. When he asked me to marry him I figured anyone who would go out of his way like that for me couldn’t be all bad.”
I made a mental checklist of the things that had first attracted my aunt:
•Good looks
•Good dresser
•Good job
•Funny
•Family-oriented
•Complimentary
•Owned car
•Generous
•Liked pets
•Planned special date, and in advance!
•Did favor and went out of his way
•Drove her home to front door (instead of depositing on street corner to fend for herself, but let’s not get into that right now)
“Okay, so what happened that night?” I asked.
“So the night came, I was already engaged to your uncle—”
“Oh that story?” interrupted Millie, who had just returned to the table. “I try to forget all those stories, and this one only wants to hear them over and over. It wasn’t so blissful, Karrie, believe me,” she said, as she sat back down.
My mother had taken quite the detour when she married my father. Mel appeared to possess qualities similar to Sy, except for the well-concealed fact that Mel was somewhat of a con.
He didn’t know it. It wasn’t intentional. His image was a mirage. The Mel Mirage literally disappeared before my very eyes when I turned four, never to see him again until the bizarre chance meeting six years ago in L.A. I had always remembered my father as a hero who had saved us before running away to the circus to become a clown. Six years ago I stumbled on to a man posing as a butcher in a studio storefront on a Hollywood lot. It turned out to be Mel. That meeting ended the Mel Mirage. After that, it became clear that Mel’s future whereabouts would, to me, remain unknown.
Men like Mel somehow managed to get by. For them it worked out okay. What they didn’t realize was how it affected others. The other people standing on the dirt road would be blinded by the cloud of dust that appeared when a Mel would saddle up his horse and ride away. They rode off to places unknown, leaving you alone on the road, the dust clouding your eyes.
A few clouds could help camouflage some hurt of a failed relationship, until you were ready to see through clearer eyes. But it could also distort how you saw others riding by. Nothing and no one was flawless. The acquaintanceship of each other’s flaws was the beginning of an authentic relationship. I felt Edward’s phobia to deal with any of his or any of mine was more than a flaw, it was a defect. He taught me that a defect in a legal document could render it invalid. And that’s what we had created, a relationship null and void. Without working through our combined flaws our relationship ultimately amounted to nothing more than a passing storm, a blast of wind. And while that may have cleared the dust from the road, it left it empty.
For my mom the dust had settled when she met Henry a few years after Mel had left. Millie had a good marriage with him. A happy one. Marriage to Henry Eisenberg had filled her with pride, and a sense of feeling complete. Henry was a good man. How strange he passed on just months after my finding and, once again, losing Mel. It was a double loss, Henry’s absence still missed, it all still hard to believe.
Listening to my aunt, I was trying to find my way back because even an empty road led somewhere, and there was always an opportunity for someone new to ride through.
“Let me finish the story already, Mil,” said Cookie, passing the platter to my mother. “Here. Eat. Make your brother happy.”
Millie obligingly took a puggie from the plate, putting it directly into her coffee before putting it into her mouth.
“So,” I said.
“So,” repeated Cookie. “Sy brings me over to meet his family and to pick out which diamond would be for the ring. We had dinner out, and later we went over to the house on Wyona Street. Now we walk in, and it’s a Tuesday...I’ll never forget that because it was the night Milton Berle had his show. And your grandparents had a seven-inch Philco television. It was a big deal in those days to have that, no one had a TV. So we walk in and the whole neighborhood is there. Everyone came over to watch the show. Mind you, I hadn’t even met anyone in the family yet, and now I had to pick out the stone in front of everybody.”
“My brother,” my mother said, shaking her head back and forth.
“You were there, Ma?”
“Of course I was there. Where else would I be?”
Seymour led his girl into the house and into the living room. Rose was on pins and needles. Relieved from having to make dinner, she spent the whole day baking her coffee cake with the raisins, and baked enough for the army of people who had come over.
“She’s so pretty,” Rose said to her husband. “I’m so impressed Sy could get a girl like that. Aren’t you, Lou?”
Lou shook the new fiancée’s hand and brought her around the room to meet Millie, his sister, Raizy, her daughters, Mina and Molly, and all the neighbors from game night. They went around and he introduced. Chair to chair, sofa to sofa, mazel-tov to mazel-tov until they got to the Silvers. Frieda Silver stood up.
“Cookie Cohen?” she screamed, then she sank back into the sofa as if she was going to faint.
“Mrs. Silver, what are you doing here? The Silvers are my neighbors,” the newly engaged girl explained to the crowd that was watching to see if Frieda was okay.
“It must be quite festive in your house,” said Frieda, when she recovered, “what with Evelyn just getting engaged and now you!” She reached into the large pockets on her housedress and pulled out a white lace handkerchief to wipe her brow. “I passed your mother in the street today she didn’t say a word.”
“You know my mother’s not much of a talker.”
“Oy,” Frieda said, finally catching her breath, sucking it up and finally letting it all sink in. “Let’s get it straight. You’re engaged to Seymour. That’s the boy I told you I wanted I should make the introduction. But it happened on its own. So it’s better. It must be truly bashert!”
“What?” Rose stepped into the conversation. “This is the girl?” she said pointing to her future daughter-in-law. “Well, Frieda, maybe I won’t doubt you so much next time. Maybe you can look for Millie.”
Charlotte popped up from somewhere behind the TV and into the conversation. “So if Cookie’s taken, then who’s going to be for my nephew?”
All eyes turned to look at Millie, a young working girl and not yet hitched.
“I never knew this part,” I said to my mother. “So did you go out with her nephew?”
“You know this story,” Millie said. As she distastefully remembered the date, a look came across her face reminiscent to some I’ve seen on my own.
“Who was he? What happened?”
“You know,” Millie said. “The one we called The Professor. He knew I was deathly afraid of mice, and he hid a white mouse in his jacket pocket and he told me to reach inside because he had a surprise, and I did and I pulled it out and then I had a mouse in my hand. I was mortified, I was screaming. Don’t ask what went on. I ran away and I never talked to him again.”
It made me wonder if somehow this all had been passed to me through the genes.
“Let me finish, already,” said Cookie. “We have to go to the clubhouse soon. So Cousin Molly worked as an accountant in the jewelry center and she was able to bring over three diamonds,” she said. “She brings them over to the dining room table for me to see. Now everyone leaves the living room and comes around the table, and I have dozens of eyes on me while I have to decide. And I just met these people!”
Molly pointed to each of the stones like she was the owner of a store. She had done her homework, brushing up on the value of each of the diamonds in order to present them in their best light.
But for the TV in the background there wasn’t a peep out of anyone as they oohed and aahed, watching Molly carefully unwrap the stones. She removed the crinkly tissue paper to reveal each diamond.
“Oh, they’re all so beautiful,” said Cookie, lightly rolling her hand over each of the stones.
“You can pick whatever you want,” said Sy.
He had already gone over the pricing with Molly, and narrowed it down. Within the range of these three diamonds, Cookie could have whatever she’d want. Cookie made a quick decision, pointing to the big one in the middle.
“But that’s not a gem,” said Molly. “This one’s a perfect diamond,” she said about the smallest stone.
“I don’t want a perfect diamond. I don’t want a gem,” said Cookie. “I just want the bigger stone!”
“And that’s it?” I asked, touching my aunt’s left hand. “That’s the same stone?” I looked at her ring. It was so pretty. The big round stone still shone, it had a baget on either side, and it was set in platinum.
Early in the year I had gone out on a date with a divorced divorce lawyer. Somehow the topic of engagement rings came up, and he told me he had never bought one for his ex. He said he’d never spend that kind of money on a gift. He was far from broke, and at the time of their engagement he’d been working in a big firm. But the romantic decision to marry came the day his lease expired, and he realized that his girlfriend’s Morton Street apartment was a lot nicer than his.
“I love my ring,” said Millie, extending her left arm and admiring the huge rock that Henry had bought back when. “Henry had great taste,” she said of my step-dad, now having a jewelry box full of beautiful baubles.
“I want a ring,” I said, feeling left out.
“Okay,” said Millie. “Go get one. No argument from me.”
“Me, either,” said Cookie.
“Me, too,” said Sy, who snuck up on us and was standing in the doorway. “What are we talking about? Whatever it is, count me in.”
“Sy, why are you wearing your pajamas?” asked Cookie. “We’re getting ready to leave soon.”
“You girls go without me. I’m not feeling well,” said Sy.
A quiet came over the table. This was far from the first time that Sy had to beg off because of his sagging health. In the past year his diabetes had been acting up, causing numerous problems with his eyes and his heart that, thankfully, had been regulated and fixed. Now there was trouble with his feet. Sy had neuropathy, and I knew the short trek out from the bedroom into the kitchen had not been easy.
I looked across the table. Nothing had happened, but we all felt scared. My mother’s eyes looked down, and my aunt’s looked somber. As we got older, it all became increasingly fragile. In the story my aunt just told my grandparents were about my age. The chain of life continued, but at some point people stopped.
Did it help to have children? To know you had contributed to the continuation of the chain? Evelyn’s sons were the ones Cookie and Sy considered to be like their own. And they were the ones I considered to be my cousins. But Cookie and Sy had never had kids. They couldn’t, so they didn’t.
I looked at my uncle and tried to picture him more years ago than I am old now, driving his Pontiac into the Lakeview, a swagger in his walk as he approached Cookie for the very first time. Not knowing what she would say, or that a month from that day they’d be taking a hall. Not knowing what lay ahead but feeling fearless, knowing it was safe not to know. It was so important to enjoy the now, and to be able to enjoy it one step at a time. Literally.
“We’re going through your puggies like hotcakes, Uncle Sy. So before you go back to bed, sit down here and give me the recipe.”
He seemed to like that idea. Settling into the chair, he took a puggie from the plate.
“This is your Grandma Rose’s recipe,” he told me, biting directly into the cookie without softening the blow. “Pretty good, I think,” he said, chewing the cookie that brought back sweet memories.
I wanted to be able to bite into a memory one day. The memory of tonight and the memory of the story I had been told. I got up from my chair, opened a drawer and took out a pad and a pen. Bringing it to the kitchen table I told my uncle, “I want the puggie recipe. You dictate and I’ll write.”
Sy gave the instructions and I wrote them down. He had substituted yogurt for sour cream. Maybe I, too, would modify the recipe. One day when I baked maybe I would make a change. But at the very least, I knew that in my own way I would continue the chain.
Twelve
Having a keen sense of smell, the stronger the odor, the greater the frog’s excitement.
The phone rang as we were getting ready to walk out the door. It was my aunt’s next door neighbor, Gladys.
“No problem, we’re just leaving now,” I heard Cookie say as I finished loading the dessert plates into the dishwasher. “Meet us outside in five minutes.”
We went out into the cool Florida night. I zipped up my denim jacket, but it was still quite mild
for December. Especially for the snowbirds that had moved down south to escape the winter storms of the north. We waved to Gladys as we walked the short distance down the narrow path to Millie’s cream-colored Toyota Camry. With the exception of the license plates, it looked exactly like the five other cream Camrys in the lot.
“You know my sister-in-law, Millie, and this is her daughter. My niece, Karrie,” said Cookie, climbing in the front passenger seat next to my mom.
“Hi,” I said smiling, climbing next to Gladys in the back.
“Oh, she’s lovely,” Gladys announced. “I have a son, Karrie, he’s divorced, but he’s seeing someone now. I love him to death, but I wouldn’t even think to fix you up with him the next time he’s between, as he likes to call it. You wouldn’t need the headache. Where’s Sy tonight?” she asked, as we rode to the clubhouse.
“Lying down,” said Cookie. “What can I tell you?”
“Lester’s lying down, too,” said Gladys. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He just doesn’t want to go to the party. He says it’s boring.”
“It is!” said Millie, pulling into an empty spot in the lot.
I still couldn’t understand why we never walked. Not only was it good exercise, it took more time to get in and out of the car—what with the waiting for everyone and the production of the seat belts—than it did to do the whole ride.
A three-foot dreidel made of colored oak tag greeted us, as it hung on the front door of the clubhouse. The dreidel, a symbol of Hanukkah, was a four-sided spinning top. A Hebrew letter on each side signified how much you won or lost when you played the holiday gambling game. The letter facing out was a nun. Translated into English it meant nothing. I didn’t take that to be a very good sign.