“Vhere’s my vallet?” Mendelbaum barks.
“What are you talking about?”
“My vallet. Did you steal it the last time you came? Thief!”
“Mendelbaum, how could I have stolen your wallet, when I’ve never even met you? But listen, tell me more about Vilna. I found this book at Barnes and Noble and it’s fascinating, I—”
“Gonoff!” he screams. “I’m calling the authorities.” The phone slams down, startling Renny with its force. She’s heard enough Yiddish from her mother to know that Mendelbaum has just called her “a thief.” She puts the phone down and it rings again.
“I didn’t steal your wallet.” Renny says, shoving a heaping spoonful of Chubby Hubby into her mouth.
“I didn’t think you did,” Georgie answers.
Renny quickly swallows, causing her to choke on a chunk of pretzel. She coughs heavily into the phone.
“If you’re choking, throw yourself into a chair. It’s the same as the Heimlich,” Georgie instructs.
“Hang on,” Renny squeaks, dropping the phone. She grabs her soda and gulps. The coughing stops, but a huge belch erupts before she can cover her mouth. Lovely, she thinks, picking the phone up. “Hi,” she says in a small voice.
“I’ve gotten a variety of reactions when I call women, but choking and burping, well that’s a first,” he teases.
Renny can tell her face is turning a deep shade of red. “Yeah, well, I like to be original.”
“What are you doing home on a Saturday night?”
Renny’s eyes rake over the advice book, the Lifetime movie and her almost empty pint of ice cream. “I just got in. I was out with a bunch of friends and we decided to make it an early night.”
“Feel like some company?”
Her mind shouts no, play hard to get. Make him ask you out on a proper date, something that involves advanced planning and a public outing. But she ignores the mental heeding. “What do you have in mind?”
“It’s much better demonstrated than told.”
Public outings are way overrated, she tells herself. “I’ll be waiting.”
Chapter Twenty
The morning light trickles through the blinds in Renny’s bedroom, gently rousing her. Rubbing her eyes, she rolls toward where Georgie lay asleep beside her with his sandy hair rumpled against the pillow. She gingerly places her head next to his and kisses his cheek, scratching her lips on his stubble.
“Hey,” he croaks warmly, throwing an arm over her and pulling her in like a little boy remembering to cuddle with his teddy bear. His embrace fills her with glee. Last night he arrived with a bottle of wine and a hankering for conversation. They’d sat on the couch drinking and talking, until two hours later when he led her into the bedroom. And now he is asleep in her bed on a Sunday morning. An idea tickles her mind—the only thing that could make this better is breakfast and the Sunday Times. Renny kisses him gently and slips out of bed, as he rolls over still fast asleep.
Renny throws on a pair of maroon Adidas athletic shorts and her favorite white zip-up hoodie, showing off just the right amount of cleavage. She jots a note to leave on her pillow.
Georgie,
I went out to get us breakfast. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Keep my spot warm!
Her hand hesitates at the salutation debating whether to end with love Renny or just Renny. Love may scare him off, so she opts for just Renny.
***
Twenty minutes later, Renny is leaving Zabar’s with a shopping bag containing regular and veggie cream cheese, a slab of brie, one large tomato, a tin of rugelah and two pounds of Nova lox at $30 per pound. She crosses 80th and heads for the door of H&H Bagels, where she finds the line fifteen deep. Damn, she thinks, I should have just bought bread at Zabar’s. She checks her watch and fidgets her weight back and forth from one leg to the other. I haven’t been gone that long, she thinks. He’s probably still sleeping.
Renny watches as people place their orders, wondering how many of them are like her, out hunting and foraging for food to bring back to their lovers. After fifteen minutes, she finds herself at the front of the line. “What’s hot?” she asks the man at the counter.
“Your lookin’ at it?” His crooked smile exposes a chipped front tooth.
Renny shoots him a “please get on with it” look.
“Onion, poppy and everything,” he tells her.
“Okay. I’ll have three onion, two everything—”
He cuts her off. “How many are we talking total?”
“Oh sorry. A dozen.”
With a flick of his wrist, he snaps a big-brown bag open and deposits her order inside. “Ga’ head.”
“Three poppy. How many is that?”
“Eight,” he says, his hand propped to finish.
“Umm, two raisin and two plain.” Renny will eat the plain, no onion breath or poppies in her teeth.
He hands her the big bag of bagels, their heat radiating through the brown paper, warming her chest and side. Outside, Renny stuffs the bagels in the Zabar’s shopping bag and grabs a newspaper from the corner vendor. She rounds the corner of 80th and West End with dreams of licking cream cheese off Georgie’s mouth. A taxi stops in front of her building and before it can register Georgie’s head dips inside. The cab does a U-turn, heading off in the opposite direction.
***
Renny races into her apartment and drops the bag and newspaper on the dining table. She jumps, noticing that she is not alone. Her brother Ira is standing near the sofa. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?”
“Mom and Dad asked me to bring your laundry to you.” He nods toward the bag leaning against the television cabinet. “I figure, you can manage to put it away yourself. I met your ‘friend’ before he left.” Ira’s sarcastic reference to Georgie makes Renny feel like she’s standing there topless. She crosses her arms in response. “He left you a note —in there.” Ira tilts his head toward the bedroom as if trying to ignore the naked romp that rumpled her sheets.
Renny rolls her eyes and breezes past him, sad that she no longer has to navigate around Georgie’s discarded clothes. On the bed she finds the note she left him, only turned over with a new message.
Renny,
I had a great time last night. I have a racquetball game this morning so I had to run. I’ll be in touch.
Georgie
He left off the love too. Walking back to the living room, Renny’s hand twists the note as if trying to wring out something more from the apparent kiss off. “Hey!” She calls out, finding Ira dipping half a bagel in the tub of vegetable cream cheese she just bought.
Ira picks up a piece of lox and slurps it into his mouth. “Well there’s no one else here. Are you going to eat this all yourself?”
Renny hates seeing Georgie’s departure through her brother’s eyes. Turning away from his judgemental view, Renny heads to the kitchen. “At least wait until I get the plates.”
“How much did you pay for the lox?” Ira calls out.
“Who are you, Mom?” Renny asks. Her mother always had to know the price she paid for groceries. Every time her parents come into the city, her mother undoubtedly pulled something from the fridge or cupboard and demanded to know how much it cost, be it a can of soda or a bag of pretzels. Upon hearing the price, she usually rolled her eyes and said, “They really get you in the city. I can buy three of those for same price at the Shop-Rite. I’ll bring you some the next time we come.”
Only the new product was always the generic brand purchased “on special” instead of the premium brand Renny preferred.
“So how much was it?” Ira calls back.
Renny slams the utensil drawer shut as it occurs to her that their mother doesn’t even find her competent at buying groceries. “Thirty dollars a pound,” Renny says.
“Oh my god,” Ira says, “they really get you in the city.”
She plops plates, napkins, and utensils on the table.
Ira unpacks the Zabar’s bag. “You nev
er called me back the other day.”
“Work is really busy,” she says, readjusting her Sunday morning vision from naked dining with her lover, to choking on a lecture from her “know-it-all” brother. “Besides, I know why you called and I’ve had enough of it. I told Mom I’m not going to go out with that Marty guy. You’re not going to change my mind.”
Ira sits down with a heavy sigh and Renny glimpses the gray hairs that have sprouted at his temples. She smirks. Three years ago Renny found a gray hair too. In a panic, she’d plucked it out with tweezers. Every few months another one sprouts its wiry self to remind her that the clock is ticking, as if it weren’t enough that every women’s magazine on the newsstand isn’t screaming the same damn theme.
“Are you ever going to grow up and stop thinking of yourself?” Ira asks.
“Excuse me?”
“If you’d shut up and listen, you’d find out that I’m not talking about you.”
Renny hacks open a bagel with a bread knife, waiting for the much anticipated lecture. “I’m all ears.”
“Mom told you about the tests.”
Renny stops smearing cream cheese. “She said they weren’t a big deal.”
“That’s what they’re both telling themselves, but it is big deal. She had to have a bronchoscopy and a CT guided needle biopsy.” Ira quotes medical jargon as if he were a doctor instead of an insurance salesman.
“I don’t know what those are.”
Ira launches into a long clinical explanation and Renny tries her best to digest it, but the words tubes, needles and biopsy land with a leaden thud in her brain. Ira ends with, “it might be lung cancer.”
The ache begins in the pit of her stomach and rises through her chest as if a steel wall is being pressed against her body. She chokes out, “Cancer?”
Ira takes a bite from his bagel. “I said it could be. It’s not definite. The x-ray showed a mass on her right lung. They’ll have the results of the biopsy at the end of week. Mom has an appointment with an oncologist Friday at two-fifteen. I think it would better for her if we were both there.”
“I…” The acrid breath of doom gusts toward her and Renny reaches for something positive, “it could be nothing, right?”
“Well, not nothing, but it might not be the worst. She’s been coughing up blood lately.”
“I saw that when I was there for dinner.” Renny sucks in a deep breath before telling him, “I don’t know if I can be at that appointment.”
“Excuse me?” Ira drops his bagel on the plate.
“I have a really important meeting Friday. My promotion is riding on it. Besides, you said yourself it may not be cancer.”
“Listen, little sister, I work as hard as anyone. But when it comes down to it, there’s nothing more important than your family and being there when they need you.”
“I’m there for her.”
“Yeah, as long as it’s convenient and there’s a free meal involved.” Ira shoves his chair back. “If there’s time in your schedule you might want to call them tonight.” Before standing, he picks up his unfinished bagel and coffee. “I’m going home.”
“I was going to call now.”
Ira yells from the foyer, “They drove down the shore for the day. Dad thought it might lift her spirits.” The door slams on his last word.
***
Renny sets the wine glass down on the window sill and stares down at the city streets, still packed, even though it’s after ten at night.
What if my mother dies? The thought causes Renny’s eyes to well up, distorting the distant headlights and taillights into star shapes. For dinner, she had ordered a pizza and opened a bottle of wine, only to find the liquid went down easier than the food, her argument with Ira still gnawing at her. She is as grown up as he is. The laundry bag slumping against the television cabinet taunts her. Big deal, so my mother does my laundry from time to time. Does that make me a baby? Kicking the laundry bag, her clean folded clothes spill out on to the floor.
The phone rings.
“We just got home and got your message. What’s wrong?” Her mother asks after Renny picks up.
“What do you think is wrong? Ira told me about your tests. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You forgot the word cancer.”
“And if I had said it, what would you do? Are you going to move home and take care of me?”
Renny knows the right answer only it doesn’t come out. Nothing does. “I could,” she finally says. She wishes her reluctance weren’t so blatant.
Her mother snorts, “I hope I never live to see the day that I need you to come take care of me. You can barely take care of yourself.”
Renny punts a pair of balled up socks across the room.
“Why do you have to treat me like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m feeble.”
“I love you. I just want what’s best for you. Don’t you want a family, a daughter of your own?”
“So I can torture her the way you torture me?”
“I’m not torturing you, we’re discussing things.” Then, after a thoughtful beat, “Are you coming to my appointment on Friday?”
“I want to, it’s just…” Renny stops, hoping her mother will chime in tell her it isn’t necessary for all of them to be there. Only she is silent, forcing Renny to continue, “It’s a work thing, Ma. I don’t know if I can.”
Her mother blows out a long sigh.
“Ma?”
“I don’t need you there anyway,” her mother says. “Ira’s coming.”
Once again Ira is the star of the family, only this time Renny refuses to be cast as a bit player in her mother’s current drama. “Fine, I’ll be there too.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m coming!”
“So come.” Satisfaction is laced through her mother’s words.
Her mother’s acceptance opens the door to a new dilemma. Renny doesn’t see how she can present to Cedar Foods and make it to the oncologist’s appointment in time. Maybe shit chips is the right name for the product, because that’s exactly what Renny is buried in.
“It’s almost midnight. You stay up way to late,” her mother chastises. “Your Aunt Myrna used to stay up late. Now she looks like shit. Go to bed.” The click of the phone marks her mother’s departure.
Renny didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. That’s typical. Spiking the last word over the line is her mother’s favorite way to end their conversations.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Let me make sure that I understand you correctly.” Val has spent the last ten minutes stone faced, while Renny presented her case for moving the time of the Cedar Foods presentation to an hour earlier. As Val leans forward, Renny leans back, feeling like a mouse that is about to be caught up in a cat’s jaw. “You are being given a huge opportunity, one that four other analysts are salivating over. I have been approached by each one of them—promising me their firstborns—just to have the chance that you and Lance are being given.”
Renny interrupts, “I know and I am so appreciative, it is just…” she searches her mind for fresh words to stack on top of the stuttering explanation she already gave about her mother’s health. “I’m sure you understand. It is my mother after all.”
Val momentarily taps a pencil on the desk. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?” Renny asks.
“Purposely shooting yourself in the foot. I’ve never seen anything like it. You seem truly dedicated to self sabotage.”
The observation, added with the curious way Val is staring at her, reminds Renny of her mother. Funny, how they both have a way of reducing my entire life to a recipe for inadequacy. With her mother, Renny usually has a retort ready, but with Val she is mute.
“I really am miffed,” Val continues. “You said yourself that your mother may have nothing more than a bad cough. And even if I wanted to accommodate your request, what makes you think the Cedars would be a
vailable at ten? They set the meeting for eleven, not us. Do you expect our company to blow this account, because your mother has a doctor’s appointment? Is the absurdity of that lost on you? I might as well tell them the dog ate our presentation.”
“But Val, it’s my family and that’s important.’
“Let me tell you about my own experience. Years ago, my father needed bypass surgery. Only it was scheduled at the same time I was supposed to pitch to Glaxo for that new digestive drug. What do you think I did? Did I fly to Minneapolis to sit in a waiting room, useless? Or, did I give a career altering pitch?
“You pitched.”
“Damn right I did. It’s all about sacrifice. Those are the choices we make. And you know what? My father’s surgery added twenty years to his life. Sometimes it’s better to just follow the course that you’re on.” Finality marks Val’s last line, as if she and Renny had arrived at a mutual decision. “So, do I need to reassign your presentation?” Val asks.
“No.” Renny rifles through her mind for something to say that would change Val’s decision.
“Good.” Val shifts her focus to her paper’s looking up a moment later to see Renny still in her chair. “Was there something else?”
Renny takes that as her cue to leave.
***
Renny is back in her office mere seconds when Lucy appears at her door. “So?” she asks eagerly.
“So what?” Renny lays her papers across her desk.
“Did you see HIM this weekend?”
“Saturday night.”
“Did he stay over?”
“Yup!”
“Lounging on Sunday with your man. How are you so lucky? I can’t even get Mr. Giggles to smile at me,” Lucy laments. “Tell all. What’d you make him for breakfast?”
Renny can still see Georgie’s head dipping into that cab, her arms full with groceries. But instead she goes along with Lucy’s assumption, offering her own wishful embellishment and erasing her fight with Ira and the prospect of her mother’s illness. “We feasted in bed of course. While he was sleeping, I picked up a whole spread at Zabars and H&H.” Well that last part of it is true, Renny tells herself. “I just had the worst meeting with Val.”
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