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To all the Nevins, Gurneys, Moores, and Panitches with whom I shared so many wonderful Saturday afternoons at Zaide’s.
CHAPTER ONE
AS FAR AS FAMILY INHERITANCES go, I got a bad deal. Like, my friend Julie’s family has this beautiful ring that was originally her great-grandmother’s and got passed down through the generations to the oldest daughter in each one. When she turns eighteen, she’ll get to wear the ring, which, by the way, has an actual giant diamond in it.
Me? I got a nose.
Not, like, a nose cut off my great-grandmother’s face and passed down in a box. I’d throw that straight in the garbage, thank you very much. I mean the nose on my face. Everybody on my mom’s side of the family, as far back as pictures go, has the exact same nose. Long, with a bump in the middle and a little hook at the end. And really, really big.
I was staring straight at a mirror version of that nose right now over the chessboard. Just the nose, though, not the rest of the face. Not unless I’d aged eighty years and turned into a man in the last few minutes, which was unlikely. I think I would’ve felt that.
“Leah Roslyn?” Zaide asked. He’d just made his move, pushing his pawn forward a square, so it was my turn.
“I’m thinking,” I said, which was true, even if it wasn’t about the game.
Zaide shifted back in his seat. “Take all the time you need.” He was missing most of his teeth, and he refused to wear dentures, so all his words came out with a lisp. Combined with the Yiddish accent he’d brought with him from Poland a million years ago, he could be hard to understand. But I was used to it. I could understand whatever he said.
Zaide is the Yiddish word for grandfather, but my zaide is actually my great-grandfather—aka my mom’s grandfather. It’s pronounced like ZAY-dee, which you wouldn’t expect from its spelling. My family and I spent every Saturday afternoon at Zaide’s house and had for as long as I could remember. Now we spent other days here, too, since we’d moved here to live closer to him. Like, much closer to him. As in down the street.
About a million years ago, my zaide bought an old telephone company building because it was a lot cheaper than a real house, and then he redid the inside all by himself, so that it had rugs and wallpaper and actual separate rooms. The walls were brick three feet thick, he said, and there were only two windows, one in the front of the house and one in the back. Half of the house consisted of the giant garage, which was musty and dark and still full of old, rusty phone company equipment. I could see it out the window from where I sat on the couch.
“Leah Roslyn?” Zaide prompted again.
“Still thinking,” I said, though now I stared at the board. The pieces blurred before me. I was probably going to lose anyway. Zaide won at least 80 percent of our games. I would never let you win, he told me once. That would be an insult to you. Which made it way more exciting the first time I beat him, since I knew it was for real.
“Do you need a hint?” he asked. Just because he didn’t let me win didn’t mean he didn’t help me. He had over eighty years of life experience on me, after all. So it was only fair.
I’d never gotten made fun of for our nose before we moved here. The other day, I was at chorus rehearsal, and Emma Paglino, who is tiny and adorable with a pert nose like a pug’s, stood in front of me and looked hard at my face. She said, “Oh! So it’s true that Jewish people all have noses shaped like sixes.”
It’s probably important to note that, at my new school, I’m the only Jewish kid in all the sixth grade. This was not the case at my old school, which was a Jewish school, which meant we were all Jewish. And no, Emma Paglino, we did not all have noses shaped like sixes. I didn’t say that, though. My cheeks just got really hot, and I pretended not to hear her, and then the teacher called my row, so I got to run away to the stage.
“Zaide,” I said. “If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?”
Zaide tilted his head, considering. That was another thing I liked about Zaide: He always took me seriously. Sometimes I asked my parents questions like this, and they just rolled their eyes, all like, We have far more important things to do than listen to our one and only child, like muttering at our phones and complaining that our coffees are cold. “I don’t think I would change anything,” he said. “Yes, I have had a hard life sometimes, but look at where it took me.”
By that, he meant me and my family and my cousins, all here at his house. That was heartfelt and all, but it didn’t answer my real question. “What about how you look?” I prompted.
He didn’t stop to think this time, only smiled. It wasn’t the prettiest smile, considering that there were barely any teeth and the ones that were left were all yellow, but it was pretty to me. “What would I change? This beautiful smile?”
I couldn’t help but giggle. Only a little, though.
“This glowing skin?” Zaide ran a hand over one of his many deep, deep wrinkles. “This strong back?” He stretched a little to show off his hunch. “This glorious head of hair?” The light shone off his bald head.
Okay, this time I giggled kind of a lot.
I glanced down at the board, avoiding his eyes. I wanted a hint now, but I didn’t really want to ask for one and make it obvious how much I didn’t know. So I moved my queen across the board, snagging one of his knights.
“Leah, what are you talking about?” My cousin Matty looked up from her phone. I’d thought she wasn’t paying attention to me, but apparently, she’d been listening this whole time from over where she sat on the cozy armchair. “Zaide doesn’t need to change anything about himself.”
I bristled at her know-it-all tone. She was only a year older than me, but she thought that one measly year made her, like, an entire adult. “I didn’t say he did. Anyway, I’m focusing on the game.”
I turned back to the board just in time for Zaide to nab my queen with his bishop. “Checkmate.”
Argh. I searched the board, but he was right. My king was trapped, nowhere he could go to escape or, at least, hide from all the other chess pieces making comments about his nose.
Maybe that was me projecting a little.
“Good game,” Zaide said, reaching over the board to shake my hand. I shook and said it back. He stood slowly, looking toward the kitchen. “I’m going to see what your parents are doing.” His eyes traveled over to Jed, Matty’s brother and my other cousin. “Jedidiah David.”
Jed sat up from where he was lying on the floor. Yes, he was just lying on the floor for no reason. He was the oldest of us, but he still did things like that. “What?”
“We’ll work on your math later,” Zaide said. “No more Cs.”
Jed’s sticky-out ears flushed red. “Okay.”
Zaide headed back to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Matty and Jed. As soon as Zaide disappeared into the other room, Matty set her phone down on the table and turned her eyes
on me. “Leah, what were you getting at earlier? Do you want to change something about yourself?”
I bristled again, this time because I hated how right she was and because she was going to make me say it. “Seriously? You have to ask me that?”
Jed said, his ears still pink, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, either.”
With a grand flourish, I pointed right at my nose.
Jed blinked. Matty blinked.
“My nose,” I said.
Matty rolled her eyes. “Your nose is fine.”
My nose is not fine. It’s a villain’s nose, which makes it not-fine by definition. Every time you see a character with a nose like mine—big and bumpy, with a hook at the end—they’re evil. The Wicked Witch of the West. Professor Snape in Harry Potter. Jafar, Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, Mother Gothel, and basically every other Disney villain. All of the princesses and heroines have sweet little button noses or baby ski slopes.
But Matty and Jed wouldn’t understand. They don’t exactly have small noses, but they’re not big, either, and they certainly don’t have the hook at the end. Somehow they managed to avoid the terrible inheritance, though their dad has the nose. “When I turn eighteen, I’m going to get a nose job,” I told them. I’d told my mom the same thing, but she hadn’t taken me seriously. It used to be that nose jobs were a big thing among Jewish girls, but not anymore, she’d said. Appreciate your differences! Have pride in them!
But how was I supposed to appreciate and be proud when it was clearly a bad thing to have a nose like mine?
“You don’t need a nose job, Leah,” Matty said.
I would totally have answered her if Jed hadn’t butted in. “I’m going to get a nose job, too,” he said. “Except I’m going to have them make it bigger. And fatter.”
“That’s stupid,” I said.
“You know what else is stupid?” he asked.
We said together, “Your face.” It was a joke, but in this case it was actually true. My face was stupid, all because of my nose.
Then I got serious. “But really, it makes it so that I don’t fit in, Matty.”
She wrinkled her whole face at me. “Matilda.” She’d started going by her full name a couple of months ago. She said that Matty made her feel like a little kid. Like Matilda was so much more grown-up.
A crinkle came from the direction of the kitchen. Matty shot bolt upright. She had a superpower: She could tell what any food was based on how the wrapper sounded coming off. “Chocolate-covered caramels,” she said breathlessly, jumping to her feet. “Hurry, before my dad stuffs them all in his face!”
She and Jed dashed off, feet loud on the carpet-covered concrete. I followed more slowly, plodding along, because Jed would make sure to save me some candy no matter what. This was what Saturday afternoons at Zaide’s were made of: hanging out with Zaide and my cousins, playing some chess (usually losing), and eating lots of candy (to make me feel better after losing). I paused for a moment in the kitchen doorway, my nose forgotten, smiling at the sight of everybody shoveling caramels in their mouths. I never wanted it to end.
But if the universe listened to what we wanted, I’d have a small, cute, Disney-princess nose.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, I WAS all revved up for a chess rematch with Zaide—I was definitely going to win this time, I was at least 20 percent sure—and some more chocolate-covered caramels. I didn’t even wait for Mom and Dad to get ready with the food for lunch. I just ran outside and down the block.
Zaide’s beat-up black sedan, which Dad always said looked like the car an FBI agent would drive, was the only car in the driveway, which meant Matty and Jed weren’t here yet. Good, because they had no patience for chess. I didn’t knock on the door or ring the doorbell. I didn’t have to. The door was always unlocked.
Inside, Zaide’s house smelled like steamed whitefish and chicken soup, mostly because that’s what he ate when we didn’t bring him other things. As usual, the chessboard was set up and waiting: the knights with their lances in hand, the queens gazing imperiously over their territories. But nobody was in the living room, unless you counted the knights and queens as people. I continued on across the dining room toward the office, where Zaide kept a rolly chair and a desk stacked with papers. We were NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH either one.
Zaide was standing beside the desk with the telephone receiver in his hand—he still had one of those super-old-fashioned ones with a curly cord and everything. It was clamped against his chest with one arm. The arm was shaking.
That was weird. “Hi, Zaide. Ready for a rematch?” I moved closer to him automatically, ready to give him our usual cheek kiss …
… only he lurched away, his backside hitting the desk and sending a stack of papers sliding to the floor. He extended the arm that wasn’t holding the phone and pointed at me. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?” he demanded. His accent sounded thicker, his words harder to understand than usual.
He had to be joking. Only this wasn’t a very funny joke.
I let out a brittle laugh. “It’s me, Leah,” I said. “Leah Roslyn. Your great-granddaughter.” He just kept staring at me. “Come on, Zaide. This isn’t funny.”
The door creaked behind me, but I didn’t turn around to see who’d come in. The four sets of footsteps stomping over the cement floor told me perfectly well who it was. Also, I didn’t want to take my eyes off Zaide.
Matty and Jed stepped up beside me, flanking me on either side. “What’s going on?” Matty whispered down at me.
Uncle Marvin approached Zaide cautiously. “Zaide, is everything okay?”
“He’s joking around, and it’s getting weird,” I said. Everybody looked at me, probably because my voice had come out too loud. “Stop it, Zaide.”
He blinked at me. I waited for the silent howl of his face to relax into its usual hollowed cheeks and maze of wrinkles. I waited.
I kept waiting.
“Zaide…,” Uncle Marvin said, but Zaide interrupted him, demanding, “Where is Ruthie? What did you people do with Ruthie?”
Ruthie? Oh. Ruthie had to be Ruth, aka Ruth Sarah Nevins, aka my great-grandmother, aka Zaide’s wife. Bubbe Ruth had died when I was five. I didn’t remember much of her besides a soft, warm lap and a kind laugh.
So why would he be asking for her?
“This isn’t funny,” I said again, weakly. Because I didn’t really think he was joking, but I wasn’t sure what else could be going on. Maybe there was something wrong with his eyesight? His hearing had been going for the past few years, meaning I had to talk louder and louder every time I saw him, so if he couldn’t see or hear me, he might not know who I was.
But that didn’t explain the Ruthie thing. It was a pretty big deal to forget that your wife was dead.
The door creaked open again behind us. That would be my parents. I wanted to turn to watch them as they hurried over, but I still didn’t want to take my eyes off Zaide.
“What’s going on?” I heard Mom say. She stopped short as she saw all of us. “Oh, Zaide.” She said it as a sigh. “Kids, take this food and go into the kitchen.”
I didn’t want to go, but my insides were all shivery, and they wouldn’t let me protest. As if moving on their own, my feet followed Matty and Jed into the kitchen. They didn’t take a seat, just huddled in the corner near the candy basket, so I didn’t sit, either. I set the food down on the table and joined them. None of us took any of the candy, even though that was usually the first place in the kitchen we beelined to.
“Hey, you guys,” I said. “What do you—”
“Jed won his baseball game yesterday.” Matty’s voice came out sharp. She may have been talking about baseball, but what she was really saying was, I don’t want to talk about Zaide.
Okay. That was fine. To be honest, I didn’t want to talk about him, either. It was just that I didn’t know how else to make the gut-punch feeling go away. “Mazel tov,” I said to Jed.
> Jed nudged Matty in the side with his elbow. They were both so much taller than me that if he tried the exact same gesture with me, he’d get my shoulder. “And guess who won her soccer tournament?”
Matty, I assumed. Otherwise that would be a pretty mean thing for Jed to do, and he was the exact opposite of mean. He was a giant marshmallow turned human. “Mazel tov,” I said again. Matty and Jed played basically every sport that existed and probably some that didn’t. (I was still convinced they’d made up squash.) They were on school teams and travel teams and would probably be on outer space teams if that ever became a thing.
Matty sniffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. It was long and dark like mine, but hers fell in a straight sheet of shimmering silk. Even struggling for an hour with my straightener didn’t make mine look like that. “I’m missing practice to be here today. And I’m the captain. The captain shouldn’t be missing practices.”
That was the thing about Saturday afternoons at Zaide’s: They were mandatory. It was like going to school, where the only reason you couldn’t go was if you were on the verge of death (at least, that was the case with my parents). I’d missed classmates’ birthday parties and playdates all my life for our Saturday afternoons, but I didn’t mind. Not usually, anyway. I’d almost always rather hang out with Matty and Jed.
“I’m sure your team will be fine without you,” I told Matty, patting her on the shoulder, but that didn’t seem to make her feel any better. “Do you guys want to go outside? We could throw rocks over the fence.”
A buzzing sound. Matty fished her phone out of her pocket. Peeking at the screen over her shoulder, I saw her friends laughing as they kicked a soccer ball back and forth, bags of gear slung on their backs. They must have been heading to practice. Matty sighed down at her screen and let her thumbs fly.
I leaned my head in toward Jed. “How did your math test go?” I asked quietly.
Jed’s face brightened. “Good! I got a B-plus.” I let him fist-bump me as I told him congratulations. But then his face fell. I didn’t know why he would look so sad after a good fist bump until he said, “It was all Zaide’s help.” He shook his head fast, like he was a dog coming in out of the rain, and when he finished, he looked a lot less sad. “I’m going to have some candy.”
The Trouble with Good Ideas Page 1