“What’s that?”
“That if I lose the weight, Scott will lose interest. He never dated a fat girl before; all his exes are these skinny little picketytwicks, with tiny boobs and long legs, and the kind of arms that cry out for tank tops and perfect fucking clavicles to wear with their strapless dresses. And then he met me, and was like, HELLO! Curves and boobs and butt, oh my! Not getting poked by hipbones. Cuddling that feels like cuddling and not like snuggling up to a bag of kindling. He keeps saying he loves me, whatever size, but that he does want me around as long as possible, so obviously I’m doing this for my health, but there is that little voice in the back of my head that says he might lose interest.”
I take the last swig of my wine. “I wouldn’t worry. Scott sounds like a great guy, and ultimately, Andrew was a shit. We were always so busy with work, most of our conversations were about work and the house and where we wanted to go on vacation. I never noticed until things started going wrong, because the sex was always so good, and it was easy to live together. But really, we didn’t have what I imagined we had. I had no family to speak of, and he hated his family, and we weren’t going to have one of our own. So we just blithely lived our lives like two enormous babies, all id, food and sex and sleep and work and indulgent vacations and a really nice house that we filled with stuff. We never had a wide circle of friends, rarely entertained except as necessary for business, and what few hours a day we had together were spent eating and fucking and sleeping. When I was in it, it felt like the best relationship ever, in part because he was the first man who made me feel totally comfortable with my body, totally sexy and irresistible and powerful. The first guy I dated who brought home chocolates and cupcakes and never once asked if I shouldn’t maybe watch what I was eating or put less butter on my bread or exercise more. And I thought that meant he loved me. But it didn’t. It just meant that his sexual preference was for a larger woman, and once I started getting smaller there wasn’t anything left to keep us together. You and Scott sound great, and he sounds like a real man, and I’m sure that he will love you just as much if there were less of you or more of you, regardless. You’re really lucky.”
I haven’t really articulated this before. I mean, I’ve thought it, in pieces and flashes, touched on it here and there with Carey, as it related to my eating issues, but never so succinctly, never with such resignation. I had a shitty nonmarriage, from the very beginning, and I was too blind to realize it. Or too scared.
“Well, it just means the universe owes you a good one!” Rachel says.
“You’re not kidding!” I laugh, surprised at how much fun I’m having.
Rachel signs the check, and we leave, getting back into her monolithic vehicle. She winds her way back through the gorgeous city, taking the long way around so that I can see the monuments lit up. She pulls up in front of the hotel. “Do you need anything else for Friday? I’ll pick you up here at nine thirty.”
“I think I’m in good shape. I spoke extensively with Sunny at the caterer’s, and she was great. I e-mailed her my recipes, and she made some substitutions based on what is available locally, and it all sounds great. And I think I’m okay with the speech part, although I’m cheating a bit, relying heavily on Q and A to fill half the time!”
“You’ll be great. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Holocaust Museum. I’ve never been, and my dad’s folks both lost a lot of family in the camps.”
“It’s amazing. Give yourself plenty of time; you won’t want to rush it. Call if you need anything, otherwise have a great day tomorrow and I’ll see you bright and early Friday!”
“Good night, Rachel. Thanks so much for a great night and for bringing me out here. I really appreciate it!”
“My pleasure. Us Penn girls have to stick together. See you later!”
She drives off and I head inside, ready to indulge in an in-room movie and blissful sleep.
It is the most amazing museum I have ever been inside of. I thought I would hate it, but it felt like an important thing to do, even for a half-breed nonpracticing semi-Jew like me, but no question, it started as something like an obligation. The place you should go, the place it would be good for you to see, but not exactly something fun to do. I remember sitting with Grandma and Grandpa Hoffman, looking at an ancient photo album, and having them point out the ancestors. This is Zaide and Bubbe Hoffman, they went to Treblinka. This is Aunt Rivka and Uncle Avrom and their four boys, they went to Auschwitz. Strange names, sepia photos with serious faces, picture after picture of relatives who perished, relatives who died in the marches, who went to the ovens.
Grandpa Hoffman had come to Chicago as a baby, his father determined to get out of the ghettos in Poland. Grandma Hoffman had been twelve when her family came from Germany, the slight accent only apparent when she got agitated. Both families lost nearly everyone they left behind, generations of cousins, brothers, and sisters, close family friends, wiped out. The last trip my grandparents took together was to Washington, D.C., for the opening of the museum in 1993. Shortly after they returned, Grandma had a stroke and the two of them moved to an assisted living facility. She continued to have ministrokes almost daily, and passed away within the year. Grandpa was only six months behind her. But they both spoke about the museum as reverently as if it had been a temple, and referred to it as a holy place, right up there with the Wailing Wall, and made me promise to come. So finally being here, even though it is more than fifteen years since I made that promise, feels like a necessary familial pilgrimage.
The one thing that is true of the museum is that you can feel the care that was taken in presenting the complete picture of the war in a way that affects deeply, but does its best not to overwhelm. I have read that when they designed the physical space and the exhibits that they consulted everyone from physiologists to psychiatrists to ensure that a visitor could handle the place physically and emotionally. So as you wander, seeing the artifacts, reading the large panels, just as you think you cannot handle one more horror, there is a room devoted to a successful uprising, or a story about children who got out, or a piece about the heroism of a Gentile who helped Jews escape. Just as your feet start to hurt and your lower back starts to ache, there is a room where you are supposed to sit and watch a film for fifteen to twenty minutes, refreshing you physically. They take you to the brink of what you can stand, and then give you relief, and the ability to go forward.
I move through the exhibits, wanting to absorb everything, to read every word, to watch every minute of footage. I walk through the rail car, touching the walls marred by scratchings, imagining more than a hundred people trapped inside. I walk through the rooms completely filled with eyeglasses, with shoes, with suitcases. I sit and watch survivors tell their stories, the young girl who married the handsome GI who liberated her, the soldier who invited the man he carried out of the camp to come home and live with him and his family, the Jewish GI who rescued a distant cousin. I walk through the room devoted to the non-Jews targeted by the Nazis, the mentally challenged, the Gypsies, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the homosexuals. The stories of the African American soldiers who laid their lives down abroad in a war against oppression and discrimination and racism, only to return home to face those same evils. I look at the replicated wooden sleeping structure, imagining the faces from my grandparents’ photo album packed in three or four to a bunk.
As I exit the main exhibit, I realize that I have been here more than six hours. I cross the wide lobby to the room of remembrance, a circular marble room with large simple monuments to each of the camps, and to the larger death marches. There are candles around the room and an eternal flame. I stand in front of the black granite wall with its simple lettering, AUSCHWITZ, and remember that one of the reasons I am so utterly bereft of family is because of that word. I am more than an orphan. I have lost so much more than just my parents, and the enormity of the experience overwhelms me. I have had moments in the past few hours when I had a lump in my throat or t
ears swam in my eyes, but now, in this simple, silent place, the weeping comes unbidden. The tears are hot on my cheeks, flowing with a volume and speed that surprises me, my whole body shaking.
And suddenly there is a hand in mine. A strong, large hand has taken my hand, and is squeezing. I turn to see who it is, wondering if this place even has docents assigned to comforting people, but my eyes are so filled with tears that all I can make out is that it is a man in a blue shirt, and that he is pulling me into his arms, and without even thinking I am buried in a strong chest that smells of lime and spice, and I am being held tightly, with hands rubbing my back, swaying slightly, and that even as I sob in the embrace of this stranger, he is weeping too, his cheek on my head, his breath ragged.
It might have been a minute, or ten, but eventually our breathing slows, the sorrow is tempered, and I come back into my brain to realize that some strange man is holding me in the middle of a museum, and despite the fact that I haven’t been held in more than a year, and that every fiber of my body craves this contact, nevertheless, it is disconcerting and I pull back.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I say.
He lets me go and I stand under my own power, wiping the wetness from my cheeks.
“I ruined your shirt,” I say, looking at the large wet spot I have made in the middle of his chest.
“Not ruined. It’ll dry. I don’t even think it’s a natural fabric. I think it’s made of old tires or something. My mother would be horrified, probably.”
I laugh. He hands me a handkerchief, and I blow my nose. Then I don’t know what to do with it, since it is bad enough that I have wept all over his shirt, and I’m hard-pressed to hand him a handkerchief full of hot snot.
“I’m Nathan. Nathan Gershowitz.”
“Melanie. Hoffman.”
“Nice to meet you, Melanie. Us Chicagoans have to support each other.” I look into his face and realize suddenly that he is the guy who smiled at me on the plane.
“You’re from the plane,” is all I can say.
“Actually, I’m from Evanston originally, and now I live in the Gold Coast, but I was on the plane.” He smiles again.
“Thank you . . .” I gesture around helplessly, as if that indicates what I am grateful for.
“Thank you. I was okay in the exhibits, but this room really knocked me out, and I just didn’t want to experience it alone, if that makes sense.”
“Completely. I didn’t even know that I felt alone until you . . .”
“Yeah, I mean, I hope you don’t think I go around molesting women in museums. I just . . . well you were crying and I was crying and . . .”
“I know, and I didn’t even think I was . . .”
“Me either. But then I saw you and you were from the plane.”
“From Chicago, but on the plane . . .” I grin. He laughs.
“Right, on the plane, and for some reason I thought, well . . .”
“Well . . .”
“Well. Can I ask you something that may sound really insensitive to our location?” He looks like he is truly afraid to offend me.
“Sure.”
“Are you hungry? Because I’m suddenly starving, and I know a good place near here, they make chicken soup almost as good as my grandmother’s, and if you’re hungry too, I thought maybe you’d like to join me for a late lunch, since right now, as good company as I usually am for myself, I’d sort of rather not be eating alone. Which sounds really needy and a little effeminate, but there it is.”
I look at him, the gentle rejection ready on the tip of my tongue. I can’t imagine going anywhere or doing anything with this guy, and then my stomach growls louder and longer than it has ever growled before, reverberating off the stone walls. I can feel my face flush red, and he laughs.
“Well, that is an answer if I ever heard one!” And before I can utter a sound, he cups my elbow in his hand, and guides me out into the sunlight.
TURKEY TETRAZZINI
The first meal I cooked for Andrew was on our fourth date. On our third date he took me to a movie, held my hand, and then kissed me passionately on my doorstep. Before he left, he made me promise that our next date could be a quiet night in, and the look in his eyes, the tone in his voice, everything about that little phrase told me that what he really meant by a quiet night in was sex, and probably lots of it. It made me melt. He looked at me the way I look at a really nice dessert buffet, as if it all looks too good to even know where to begin, and once you start, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to stop. I dated a reasonable amount for a girl my size, tending toward quiet, bookish types who read me poetry in bed, majored in missionary, and were always both shocked and deeply grateful when I gave them head. But I had never been with someone who targeted me as an object of lust, who wooed me, who looked at me the way most guys look at Pamela Anderson. For that first dinner I made a simple green salad with homemade creamy vinaigrette, a classic turkey Tetrazzini casserole, buttered asparagus, and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting for dessert.
“So then what happened?” Nadia asks, bouncing up and down. She is in her pajamas, sitting on the couch hugging a throw pillow, as I tell her about my weekend. My suitcase is in the middle of the floor, and I haven’t checked my messages or gone through the mail. Nadia tackled me as soon as I came through the door, and frankly, I’m so swept up with telling her about my adventure that I couldn’t care less about anything else. I can’t remember the last time I had a good girlfriend dish session, especially where I was the one with the dish, but even though I feel like a weird episode of Sex and the City, it is elating.
“So we went to this little Jewish deli and ordered big bowls of mishmash chicken soup . . .”
“What is mishmash?”
“Everything in it . . . matzo ball, noodle, rice, kasha, and kreplach.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Exactly. It was soup. It was good. We talked about life and everything under the sun. He’s a documentary filmmaker, based in Chicago, but takes jobs all over the world. He just finished a film on the Maasai tribe, and is working on the editing and postproduction for the next few months while figuring out his next project. He was in D.C. for a cousin’s kid’s bar mitzvah. He has a huge family, very close, grew up in Evanston, lives downtown, never married but lived with a woman for six years. Never wanted kids. Sox fan, since his dad grew up on the South Side.”
“What does he look like?” Nadia’s eyebrows are doing a jig.
“Tall, probably like six two or six three. Broad shoulders. Big guy, but not heavy, just physically very present. Dark hair with a little gray here and there, more wavy than curly, thinning a little on top with a slightly receding hairline, but in a nice way. Olive skin, hazel eyes. Handsome face, but not pretty, lived in, in a good way. Laugh lines. Sort of a younger Jewish Harrison Ford.”
“Nice. So then what happened?”
“He had to leave to go to a family dinner, but asked if he could meet me for a nightcap, and I said yes. I went back to the hotel and took a nap, and then met him in the bar, and we had a bottle of wine and talked some more. He asked if I would consider being his date to the bar mitzvah party, and I said that it would be awkward and uncomfortable, and as lovely as it was for him to invite me, I couldn’t possibly be a last-minute addition to such a major event. So then he asked if he could see me when we were home, and I said yes. And then I went back to my room.”
“You didn’t invite him up?”
“I’m not, to use your vernacular, some skank ho.”
“Skank ho or no, I wouldn’t have let a free room at the Four Seasons go to waste.”
“I couldn’t even think of such a thing. I went up and did some last-minute mental prep for the lunch the next day, and got some sleep. Rachel picked me up, I went over the food with Sunny and she did a great job. Everyone was very nice and appreciative and I think my speech went over well, and a lot of people took Carey’s flier that I brought with me, and promised to send thei
r Chicago friends to the store, so that was good, and then Rachel took me back to the hotel.”
“I’m glad it was good. I would never have been able to concentrate, I would have just been thinking about the guy the whole time.”
I had, in fact, spent most of the day with my thoughts turning back to his laugh, the way his eyes sparkled, the strong forearms resting on the table. “I’m perfectly able to live my life and not obsess about a boy, Nadia. I’m not twelve.”
“Well, you’re a better woman than me.”
“So what happened after your thing?”
“I got back to the hotel and there was a message.”
“From Nathan.” She nods knowingly.
I shake my head. “Nope.”
It had been his mother.
“Ms. Hoffman?” she had said. “This is Ellie Gershowitz, Nathan’s mother. I hope you don’t mind my calling, but when Nathan mentioned that you declined his invitation to our little party, I thought I’d just check in with you to be sure you aren’t available. I know it is very last-minute, but the truth is, my darling son is seated at a table with three other couples, and no date, poor thing! And we’ve had some people cancel last-minute, but the catering is already paid for, so the family would take it as a personal favor if you would come to the party and keep him company, and prevent him from pouting. I’m hoping to meet you; Nathan says you’re a darling girl. His number is 312-555-6732, just give him a call if you can make it.”
Oh. My. God. I had reached for my phone.
“Hello?”
“No fair siccing your mother on me.”
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