Love for Scale
Twenty-seven-year-old Rachel Stern is in a rut. Despite her mother’s best efforts, she is still single. At two-hundred and forty-two pounds, she still lives at home, the victim of a constantly-cooking Jewish mother whose force-feeding techniques have become legendary.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Rachel’s Friday and Saturday evenings are spent with her parents and her Saturday mornings consist of wedding gown shopping with her also single best friend. She is clearly going nowhere. But at least she’s not alone. Until her best friend snags a boyfriend.
Finally, unable to stand herself and her weight problem anymore, Rachel signs up for Weight Watchers.
Finnegan Schwartz, a young man who has already been successful at the Weight Watchers program, having lost a hundred pounds, champions Rachel and becomes her impromptu weight loss coach and newest friend. Rachel soon learns there’s so much more to this funny and shy guy who she’d overlooked before.
Amid her mother’s overzealous attempts to fix her up, bizarre family dinners and crises that threaten to unravel the entire Stern family, will Rachel be able to find something she’s never thought was hers for the taking: self-acceptance?
Love for Scale
By
Michaela Greene
ISBN-13: 978-1523270231
ISBN-10: 1523270233
LOVE FOR SCALE
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Greene
All rights reserved.
Published by Kibitz Press 2016
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.
Prologue
The bridal shop Sheri had picked for this week’s excursion didn’t carry many sample gowns in plus sizes.
This was not unprecedented; whenever it happened, Sheri automatically got to play the bride.
Rachel tried not to sulk, but she hated being the maid of honor; being maid of honor doesn’t really mean anything.
Only being the bride matters. Being the bride means someone is in love with you and is ready to pledge to spend the rest of their life with you.
Being a maid of honor just means another girl likes you enough to make you wear an expensive dress and shoes to match while you stand beside her, dwarfed in her radiant beauty.
So as Rachel stood and ooohed and ahhed as required at her best friend as she twirled in gown after stunning gown in a perfect sample size eight, she got more and more sad.
Was she destined to only ever be the maid of honor?
Chapter 1
“Wait a minute, Mother. You signed me up for…What?” Rachel’s toast halted halfway to her mouth.
Pearl Stern exhaled loudly and took great care in buttering her toast before answering her daughter. “Speed dating. At the shul tomorrow night. It’s the latest way to meet people.” She said it as though she knew everything that was in vogue.
“I don’t need to meet people,” Rachel said, feeling the blood rush to her face. Her mother had always been something of a typical Jewish mother, always looking to play matchmaker, but this took the cake.
“Everyone needs to meet people. Why shouldn’t you?”
“Ma…” Rachel took a breath. “I’m not going to speed dating at the synagogue.”
Pearl’s smile didn’t falter even a bit. “Yes, you are. We told the rabbi you’d be there and your father already paid for it on his Visa. Nonrefundable. Just think: that handsome rabbi will be there…”
Rachel rolled her eyes at her mother. “I’m not going out with a rabbi.”
“You could do worse.”
Rachel looked down at her plate of bacon and eggs. “Think about it, Ma. I’m not dating a rabbi.”
“Well, Rachel, you need to be dating somebody. You’re almost thirty; you need to start thinking about finding a husband.”
Rachel hardly needed to be reminded that she was approaching thirty, although her drama-loving mother had a tendency to round up.
“Mom, I’m twenty-seven. And I’ll find my own dates, thank you very much.” But in her twenty-seven years on the planet, Rachel had never once won a battle of wills with her mother.
Pearl shook her head. “You are going to speed dating, Rachel Stern.”
And that was that.
Chapter 2
One step away from sheer panic, Rachel reached into her underwear drawer and wrapped her hands around as many items as she could, lifting the mass of fabric out and dumping it onto her bed. Spreading the contents out, she searched for the one item that would complete her outfit: her black spandex bicycle shorts.
After an hour’s contemplation, she had finally decided on her outfit for the speed dating debacle-to-be but there was no way she could go out dressed in a skirt and pantyhose without her bicycle shorts. They were the secret undergarment of the plus-sized girl, ensuring no painful thigh rubbing or chafing.
Long ago, back in high school, she had learned her painful lesson. She had left the ‘Spring Fling’ dance early when her best friend at the time had abandoned her in favor of making out with the school male slut on the dance floor for four straight songs. Rachel had decided to walk home instead of calling her dad to pick her up, hoping that the fresh May air would help her get over her funk. It was only about two miles to her home, but by the time she got halfway there, she knew she had made a terrible mistake. She finally walked in her front door, late for her curfew in tears of pain and humiliation. Despite their anger and threats of grounding, she had never told her parents why she was crying. But later in her room alone behind the closed door, she had carefully peeled off the pantyhose and tended to the sticky, raw, and bleeding flesh that covered much of her inner thighs. Never again had she ventured out in a dress without the secret protection of bicycle shorts.
Where are they? Leaving the pile of underwear on the bed, Rachel pulled open her sock drawer. They weren’t there either.
“Ma?” she hollered.
“Yes, honey?” Pearl yelled back, sounding like she was in the kitchen. Rachel imagined she was probably doing a crossword, sipping at a mug of hot water with lemon: the sure way to clean out any stubborn G.I. tract, or so Rachel was reminded more often than necessary.
“Where are my bike shorts?”
Pearl didn’t respond. Rachel waited, rifling through her second drawer and finally opening her mouth to repeat herself louder when her mother appeared in the doorway, scowling.
“You’re not going bike riding now are you?” She glanced at her watch. “You’re supposed to be at the shul in an hour.”
“No, Ma.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Do you know where they are?”
Pearl glanced at the outfit Rachel had picked which hung on its hanger over the door. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
“That’s what I was planning on wearing. Why? What’s wrong with it?” Rachel asked, not sure she wanted the answer. As if my nerves weren’t already shot?
Pearl cocked her head and squinted at the flowered skirt and black blouse. “I don’t know, it’s a bit dowdy, don’t you think?”
“You don’t have to show off cleavage, just look nice. And young.” Pearl looked at her daughter over the rims of her glasses. “That outfit,” she pointed at it violently with her thumb, “Is not young.”
Between her mother’s lack of help and her already raw nerves, Rachel had had enough. “Ma, look. I don’t have anything else to wear, stop freaking me out, okay? Do you know where my shorts are?”
Pearl shrugged. “There in your drawer with your gym clothes. I figured that’s where they belonged.”
I gotta move out of this house, or at least start doing my own laundry, Rachel thought as she pulled open her bottom dresser drawer to find the bike shorts folded neatly on top. It did make sense that they would be in with her (not used in three years) gym clothes. Not that the cycling shorts had ever made acquaintances with a bicycle.
“Okay, Ma. Thank you, I’m going to get ready now.” Rachel herded her mother out the door but not before Pearl got in her two cents.
“See if you can find something nicer to wear, Rachel.”
Rachel bit her tongue, closing the door behind her mother.
* * *
It was all Rachel could do to keep her car on the road as she drove the short distance from her home to the synagogue. Her parents fussing over her before she left the house had sent her nerves into a frantic rumba. And now as she tried to pay attention to traffic signals, her heart threatened to beat right out of her chest. She tried blasting the radio and singing along to any song she knew (and many she didn’t) to try to calm her nerves. It didn’t work.
She pulled into the synagogue parking lot and was surprised to see that it was almost full with cars: black BMW’s, silver sedans, monolithic SUV’s. Big turnout. No busses from the senior’s center, thankfully. She didn’t think there were that many Jewish single men in town. Well, Jewish singles, she corrected herself. There would be other single women too. There would be plenty of competition, of that she was sure. Comparing it to a shark feeding frenzy would be vastly understating; when it came to snaring a husband, young Jewish urbanite women could be worse than jackals fighting over a fresh carcass. And pity the fresh carcass.
Rachel pulled into the first empty spot she could find on the far end of the lot and took a deep breath as she grabbed her purse from the seat beside her. Looking at the leather bag, she wanted desperately to pull out her cell and call Sheri; Sheri could talk her out of any panic.
But Sheri had fallen off the planet. Rachel had tried to call several times, but there was no answer at her apartment nor was she picking up her cell. Rachel didn’t think she had done anything to make Sheri deliberately ignore her. She chalked her friend’s disappearance up to NBS: new boyfriend syndrome.
Over the years, Sheri had become afflicted with NBS several times, so her behavior was not surprising, but it always seemed to happen when Rachel needed her best friend most. The last time Sheri had come down with the illness, Rachel’s Zaidy had suffered a heart attack and had died over a weekend. Sheri had been nowhere to be found until two days after the funeral (ski weekend with the flavor of the month). She had sent Rachel’s grandmother and mother sympathy cards, but it still didn’t make up for the fact that Rachel didn’t have her best friend around when she was grieving the loss of her grandfather.
Rachel glanced hopefully at the big stone building; maybe she would be suffering from NBS soon herself.
“Yeah, right,” she said out loud as she stuffed her keys into her purse.
She approached the front door of the synagogue, smiling at the man that held the door open for her. She jogged so he wouldn’t have to hold the door too long. Nice looking with a full head of hair, early thirties, wearing a suit and tie and obviously polite. She looked forward to spending the requisite four minutes with him, although he was way out of her league. He was probably a lawyer or an investment banker with a ton of money.
“Thanks,” Rachel smiled again.
“You’re welcome,” four-minute man said.
Marry me, Rachel thought as she walked past, breathing in his cologne.
She walked down the stairs and toward the obvious reception table which was set up in the foyer in front of the basement social hall. Papers, name tags, various colors of markers and a Visa machine covered the table, reminding Rachel of the last book trade show she had gone to on library business, although there, the merchandise was books, not human meat.
Two thirties-ish women, likely blissfully married, sat behind the table smiling and chatting, waiting for their next victim. As one, they stopped talking and turned toward Rachel.
“Hi, I’m here for the speed dating thing,” Rachel said, feeling like the queen of the obvious. What else could you say? Hi, I’m desperate and hoping for love and my mother signed me up for this? You’ll see my name under the fat loser column on your little sheet there.
Blissfully married lady on the left who wore a name tag professing her name to be Bonnie smiled and picked up her sheet. “Great. Did you pre-register?”
Good question. “I’m not sure.” How could she tell the woman her mother had signed her up? “Um…A friend made the arrangements……”
“That’s okay, your name?”
Rachel paused as the man who had held the door for her walked up to the table and stood beside her. “Hi” he said to the other woman behind the table, “I’m Jacob Shapiro.”
Welcome, Jacob Shapiro. Rachel looked over at him and smiled, feeling the blood in her body defy gravity and rise to her face and neck. May as well stay there, she told her feisty platelets, it’s going to be one of those nights.
“Um, your name?” Bonnie repeated.
Rachel shook her head and turned back.
“Uh sorry, it’s Rachel Stern.”
Bonnie looked down her sheet, tracing the names with her highlighter. “Oh, there you are.” She pulled off the highlighter’s cap and dragged the fluorescent pink ink across Rachel’s name. “Have you ever been to speed dating before?”
The question must have been a formality; Rachel was sure she was oozing of newbie. “No, I haven’t.”
Bonnie picked up two narrow pieces of printed cardstock from neat piles on the table. “Okay, so the rules are on this sheet and here’s your scorecard. Each date is four minutes long and you’ll hear the bell after each one is over. You stay seated, the men come to you.”
Men coming to me, there’s a new concept. Rachel nodded, looking down at the scorecard.
“Make sure you read the rules, but in a nutshell, no last names, no asking about jobs and you can’t exchange contact information, that’s what you’ve paid us for. Speaking of payment…how would you like to handle that?”
Rachel watched Jacob Shapiro disappear into the social hall, wondering if all women got to meet all men. She sure hoped so.
“Um, my friend said he paid already,” Rachel said, trying to hide her humiliation.
Bonnie began to flip through a stack of Visa receipts.
“Yup. Here you are. The name on the Visa is Harold Stern.”
“Oh, okay, thanks.” Rachel attempted a smile. She felt like Tzeitel, the daughter in the Fiddler on the Roof; her father having plunked down his Visa card to the modern day yentas in hopes of finding his daughter the perfect match.
She could hear the music in her head, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match…” She grabbed a marker and a name tag, scrawling her first name in big block letters. Taking the label from its backing, she stuck it on her blouse, high enough to discourage lingering eyes on her right breast, but low enough that it might spark some interest. She pitched the backing in the garbage, took a deep breath and walked as tall as she could toward the social hall.
The aromas of coffee and pastries (her left Achilles heel: the right one being anything deep fried) wafted toward Rachel’s nose as soon as she was inside the social hall. She automati
cally turned toward the refreshment table but then stopped to survey the room. Tables were set up around the perimeter. At first glance, she estimated about twenty-five, each having two chairs, facing each other on opposite sides of the table. She swallowed when she realized that she would be planted at one of those tables, talking to each man for precisely four minutes.
Back in high school, a part of the English curriculum was researching, writing and performing four-minute speeches. Although she no longer had braces and wouldn’t be standing in front of thirty jeering teenagers, the premise she was facing was just as nerve-racking. No subject, even the one she had chosen badly in grade ten (female anatomy – what had she been thinking?), could be as torturous as talking about herself for four whole minutes. She feared boring her four-minute dates to death, similar to how she had spoken in grade eleven for four full minutes on Artists of the Renaissance and had lost most of the class and even the teacher to fits of yawning and total distraction. She would never forget when she had looked up from her neatly typed index cards to see Mr. Blundell alternately chewing and inspecting a particularly stubborn hangnail.
Some of the tables already had people sitting at them, looking as nervous as Rachel felt. She hoped she didn’t look as terrified as she was, but was at least comforted by the fact that she was not the only one in the room feeling tense.
Maybe I’ll stake out a claim on a table, she thought. Best to have a good vantage point if I’m going to be here all night. Of the tables she would have liked, her two top picks were already taken: coats over the chairs, marking territory. Rachel headed toward one in the far corner where she would still be able to see the door and was close to the bathroom in case there was a massive rush during breaks. Especially since she had a notoriously nervous bladder.
Putting her coat over the back of the chair, she looked around at the other participants as they milled around. A couple of women, also appearing to be in their twenties, stood at the refreshment table, stirring the non-dairy creamer into their coffees and surveying the herd. They weren’t being too subtle about it either, looking the men up and down as they walked past. Rachel was scared and she wasn’t their prey, just the competition. Another pair of women sat across from one another at one of the dating tables. They too were surveying the men, but much more discreetly. They seemed too calm, as though they were there shopping for pantyhose, not a husband. Neither was anything more than average looking: both were brunettes, one with shoulder-length hair, the other’s was in a short bob. They wore Gap standard issue and looked more comfortable than stylish. Regulars, Rachel gathered. She was glad that there were no supermodels in the room, the closest being a six-foot tall woman in stiletto heels, although, between her big features and heinous use of make-up, she looked like a drag queen. Couldn’t be too much competition there, unless any of the men played for that team.
Love for Scale Page 1