by Sue Margolis
Grace went ahead to catch up with Scarlett. I found myself next to Mum.
“You look beautiful, Tallulah. Really beautiful.”
“Thanks, Mum. I’m glad you approve.”
“I suppose you could have gone for something a bit more off the wall …”
“Mum, just for once, do me a favor and quit while you’re ahead.”
She laughed and took my arm. “Sorry. Me and my big mouth.” She paused and looked at me. “Be happy, darling.”
“I will. Promise. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said, giving me a kiss.
The elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened. As we processed through reception in our finery, a few of the hotel guests waved and shouted good luck.
Outside, the limos were waiting with uniformed drivers in attendance.
“Now then, will you just look at this weather?” Nana said, gazing heavenwards. “The forecast was right after all. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
Chapter 6
The limo drew up alongside the synagogue’s white marble steps. “We’re five minutes late,” Nana said, looking at the gold dress watch that Grandpa Joe had bought her just before he went broke. “Perfect. A bride should always be fashionably late.” The driver got out, opened my door and offered me his hand. I took it and eased myself and my petticoats out of the car.
I wasn’t entirely comfortable with Josh and me getting married in synagogue. Since neither of us was even vaguely observant, it seemed pretty hypocritical.
We thought of ourselves as Jew-ish—amphibious Jews, half in, half out of the water. In other words, we knew the difference between a kneidl and a knish but put bacon on our bagels and went to synagogue only for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Along with other Jew-ish people, we enjoyed poking fun at our culture—how many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? Don’t worry, I’ll sit in the dark—but at the same time we couldn’t ignore its pull or imagine not being part of it. Hypocritical or not, then, marrying in synagogue felt just about right, on balance. Plus, the one time Josh and I raised the possibility of a civil ceremony, Nana Ida and Josh’s mum practically had the vapors.
“But what about the photographs?” Judy Eisner had said. “Registry offices are so soulless and municipal. You’ll be lucky if you get one photograph without a fire extinguisher or emergency exit sign in the background.”
We didn’t take much persuading, bearing in mind that the Queensway Synagogue in Bayswater, which Nana suggested, was all Gothic arches, marble columns and stained-glass windows. “It’s just like the Sacré-Coeur,” Nana had said when she was trying to sell us the idea. “But obviously it’s not a church. It’s a fraction of the size of the Sacré-Coeur and it’s not in Paris.”
Scarlett and Grace had arrived a couple of minutes earlier and were waiting for us on the steps. Scarlett came up to me and started smoothing my skirt. “How you doing?” she said.
“Bit nervous.” The stage fright I’d been feeling earlier had cranked up several notches.
“Don’t worry. Once you’re standing next to Josh under the canopy, you’ll be fine.”
There were no guests hovering outside. I presumed that by now they were all in their seats. The only person there to greet us was the wedding photographer: cheap suit, two Nikons slung round his neck, a camera bag over one shoulder. He started snapping. “OK, if the bride and her grandma could just look this way … lovely … Now then, mother of the bride … nice smile … that’s it.” Grace had offered to take the wedding photographs, but Josh and I wouldn’t hear of it. She was a guest. I refused to have her working on my wedding day.
“Right, now just a quick one of the bride and the bridesmaids. Then we’ll have a group shot on the steps.”
In the end we had to tell him that we were running late and that we needed to get inside.
The wood-paneled foyer, though empty of people, was filled with music. The choir was singing something I remembered from the few times Scarlett and I had been to Saturday morning services as children—usually for a cousin’s bar mitzvah. Mum and Dad would never have taken us otherwise. Mum thought of herself as “spiritual” but had no interest in organized religion. Dad brought us up to believe that religious observance was superstitious nonsense, akin to stepping over cracks in paving stones or waving at magpies.
The double doors leading into the main body of the synagogue were open. Scarlett and I peeked inside. The place was packed. There were faces I knew. Loads I didn’t. I could see Rosie sitting near the front looking slim and gorgeous in something strappy and emerald, her long hair piled high in a mass of curls.
I swallowed. “OK, suddenly I’m very nervous.” I turned to Mum. “Shall we hold hands or link arms as we walk down the aisle?” Mum said she didn’t know. Nana, who was due to be part of the procession, along with Judy Eisner—taking their place after Mum and me but before the bridesmaids—said we should link arms. “Or hold hands.”
I found myself wondering where Judy Eisner was. It also occurred to me that somebody from the synagogue should have been there to meet us. On cue, Rabbi Feldman appeared, all billowing black robes and tall hat. I liked Rabbi Feldman. His face always looked as if it were about to break into a smile. He was forty, with a reputation for being particularly laid-back and liberal. He had no problems marrying Josh and me, despite us being not so much lapsed as collapsed Jews. “Look,” he’d said when we went for our prewedding interview, “you get married in synagogue and there’s always a chance you get a taste for the religion and return to the fold. If you do, that’s brilliant because it will have been down to me and I get to feel good about myself. You don’t—I still get my fee, and so does the synagogue. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a win-win situation.”
I noticed that Rabbi Feldman was holding a cell phone. For once, his face seemed troubled. There was no greeting, just: “I don’t suppose you have any idea what’s happened to the groom and the best man?”
“Josh and Andy aren’t here?” I said. “But we’re already late. They should have been here ages ago.”
“I know. I’m sure they’ve just got caught up in traffic. As you know, with all the roadworks, navigating around town on a Sunday can be tricky. I’ve tried Josh’s cell several times, but he’s not picking up.”
“Do you mind if I try?” I said.
He handed me the phone. I hit the keys. Straight to voice mail.
As I returned the rabbi’s phone, I was aware that my heart had started to race. “I can’t understand why he’s not picking up.”
“Omigod, something’s happened.” Nana’s hand was clamped to her chest. “There’s been an accident. It’s the Nazi money. I should never have used it. I knew something like this would happen.”
“Something like what?” Mum said. “Nothing’s happened yet.”
“That we know of,” Nana came back. “This is all my fault.”
“Mum, please! Enough with the dramatics.”
“Andy is bringing Josh in his car,” I said. “Maybe they’ve broken down.”
The rabbi asked me if by any chance I knew Andy’s number. I didn’t.
“I’ll go outside and keep a lookout,” I said, realizing I needed something to occupy me.
Mum said it was getting hot outside and that I would sweat and ruin my hair, but I couldn’t stand around doing nothing.
The air smelled warm, with a hint of tar. In the square opposite, people were stretched out on the grass. It really was the perfect day for a wedding. Each time a black cab slowed down, I held my breath. I expected Josh to leap out, shove a wad of notes into the cabbie’s hand and come charging towards me looking stressed, a bit disheveled and ever so sexy in his gray top hat and tails. He would tell me some long, involved story about how Andy’s crankshaft had gone and that the police had refused to let them abandon the car and how, finally, once he’d convinced the officers it was his wedding day, they had relented, after which Josh and Andy couldn�
�t find a cab.
Five minutes turned into ten and then fifteen. I looked at Scarlett, who had followed me outside. Her face looked pinched. I knew what she was thinking. Suddenly I felt sick and a bit light-headed.
“I need to sit down,” I said. With Scarlett a few paces behind me, I went back into the foyer and sat on one of the wooden benches. As I took a few deep breaths, I realized that I was starting to shake. Josh wasn’t caught up in traffic. There hadn’t been a breakdown or an accident. He had left me. I reached out and took Scarlett’s hand.
“He’s not coming,” I said.
“Hey, you don’t know that. Anything could have happened.”
“With Josh’s track record? Do you really believe that? He walks away from relationships. There are three that I know about.”
“But he’s worked so hard at sorting himself out,” Scarlett said.
“Clearly not hard enough. I should have made him go to counseling.” I thought I might throw up. Grace, Mum and Nana had joined us now. Grace made me put my head between my knees.
“What’s Josh playing at?” Mum said. “Even if he’d broken down or had an accident, surely he would have the sense to call?”
I lifted my head and felt it start to spin again. “I don’t think Josh is coming.”
“What do you mean, not coming? Of course he’s coming.”
“I think he’s jilted me.”
“What? Don’t be so ridiculous,” Mum said. “Of course he hasn’t jilted you. He loves you. Why on earth would he jilt you?”
“I agree with your mother,” Nana said. “And anyway, a Jewish bride never gets jilted.”
She was right. It was practically written in the Torah that leaving one’s future spouse at the altar was a sin. Not so much because it caused the dumpee untold misery and social embarrassment, but because it constituted a failure to honor thy father and thy mother who had taken out a second mortgage to pay for the reception—or in my case thy nana Ida, who had made a significant hole in her Nazi money.
The rule was that if one or the other of the couple got cold feet, they went through with the wedding, allowed a reasonable interval to pass—say twenty-five years—and then started divorce proceedings. Some went the whole hog and hung on until the children died.
“There’s something about Josh that you and Nana don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t up to explaining, so I asked Scarlett to fill Mum and Nana in about Josh’s commitment phobia.
Mum was shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t understand,” she said when Scarlett had finished. “Why didn’t you come to me and tell me about this?”
“You already had issues with Josh. I wasn’t about to make things worse.”
Mum didn’t say anything. She and Nana Ida came and sat down next to me on the bench. Mum put her arm around me.
“You know, Grace could be right,” Nana said. “Maybe we are overreacting.”
“God, I hope so,” Mum said.
Rabbi Feldman, who had been hovering by the main entrance, looking at his watch, was coming towards us. I asked him if he knew where Judy Eisner was. He said that she was in his office along with Josh’s brother and sister. “Mrs. Eisner must have called Josh’s cell a dozen times. She’s beside herself that he’s not picking up.”
As far as I was aware, Josh’s mother knew nothing about his commitment problem. On the other hand, maybe she knew everything and suspected that he had done a runner. That would explain why the Eisners hadn’t come to join us in the foyer. After all, they had to know we were here. It occurred to me that Judy feared Josh had abandoned me and was too embarrassed to face us.
Rabbi Feldman said he ought to go and check on Judy. “Josh may have called by now.”
After he’d gone, nobody spoke. Grace offered to fetch everybody tea from the café over the road, but nobody could manage it. Plus Nana said that she would look ridiculous walking into a greasy spoon in her bridesmaid’s dress. A minute must have gone by before Nana piped up. “It says on the plaque that this bench was presented to the synagogue in memory of Sid and Ada Greenspan. That’s nice.”
“So you knew the Greenspans?” Grace said.
“No. I never heard of them.”
We fell into silence again. Then Mum noticed somebody heading towards us.
“It’s Josh’s cousin Napoleon,” I said. “He’s a shrink. Really lovely chap.”
“What a fabulous name,” Nana said. “His parents must have named him after The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
Napoleon looked ashen—which as a redhead was hard to pull off.
He greeted us with a nervous nod. “Hello, Tally. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Napoleon. We met a few months ago, at Friday-night dinner at my aunty Judy’s. I was there with my partner, Ed—we’d just tied the knot, if you remember.”
“Hi, Napoleon. Of course I remember.” I kept the introductions brief. I could see he had something serious on his mind.
“Tally, can we speak privately?”
“Why? Have you heard from Josh?” Napoleon and Josh weren’t particularly close, but if he was backing out of the marriage, it made sense that he would confide in his cousin the psychotherapist.
“There’s an upstairs room the rabbi said we could use.”
“Napoleon. Please tell me what you know.”
“I really do think we should speak privately.”
Mum motioned for me to go. I watched her exchange glances with Nana and the others. We all knew that our fears were about to be confirmed.
Napoleon and I headed towards the stairs, me still pleading for information.
I recognized the office at once. It was where Josh and I had come for our prewedding interview with Rabbi Feldman. There was a coffee table and three armchairs arranged in a triangle. Napoleon invited me to sit down.
“I don’t want to sit down. I just want to know what’s going on. Has Josh called you?”
“Yes … Tally, I really do think you should sit down.”
I sat. Napoleon took the chair opposite mine and leaned in towards me. “Josh just phoned me from Heathrow. Andy drove him.”
“From Heathrow? What’s he doing at Heathrow?”
Stupid question. He wasn’t there plane spotting—that was for sure.
“He’s waiting to catch a flight to Edinburgh.” Napoleon attempted to put a comforting hand on mine but I batted it away.
“Please … don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back.
“Edinburgh? Did he say why there particularly?”
Napoleon shook his head. “He just said he needed to get away.”
I was fighting back tears. The lump in my throat really hurt. “OK … I … um … I need to be absolutely clear here. Is Josh saying that it’s over, that we’re finished—or is this just him panicking about getting married?”
Napoleon shifted in his seat. “He told me to tell you that it was over. He said he was starting to feel suffocated.”
“Second question: Is there another woman?”
“He says not and I believe him.”
That was some small relief. So it was over. Josh and I were done. Just like that. I was starting to feel sick again. I couldn’t speak. Napoleon offered to get me some water. I shook my head. I wasn’t sure that I could keep it down.
I felt the tears start to fall. “He never told me that he felt suffocated,” I said. “Why didn’t he say something? We could have got counseling.”
“I don’t know if you are aware of Josh’s history—that he has unresolved issues about being abandoned by his father.”
“Yes, I’m aware. But please don’t start making excuses for him. I’m not sure I can take that right now.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”
“Anyway,” I said, “he promised me that he had worked through all his issues.”
“I’m afraid that’s not true.”
“Oh, you think?”
Napoleon removed his rimless
specs and began wiping them with a crumpled handkerchief. “I hear that you’re angry,” he said in that annoying shrink voice Mum used with her “clients.”
“Of course I’m angry.” I was sobbing now. “My husband-to-be has just abandoned me on our wedding day. I thought my future—our future—was taken care of. Wouldn’t you be angry?”
“Yes, I would.”
Napoleon put his glasses back on. I wiped the snot from my nose.
“So did he give you any details? I mean, had he been planning this for a long time?”
“No. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. He said that he woke up this morning and realized that he couldn’t commit to your relationship.”
“So he panicked.”
“By the sound of it.”
“But last night he phoned to say he loved me and couldn’t wait to be married. So was our entire relationship based on a lie?”
“I’m not sure he was lying as such. It was more wishful thinking. He wanted to think that he could commit to you.”
“Do you think he ever loved me?”
“At some level, I think he did.”
“At some level? Well, it’s reassuring to know that my fiancé—sorry, ex-fiancé—loved me at some level.”
“Tally, I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”
I wiped my nose again. “So did he tell you what his plans were?”
“He’s talking about giving up his job and taking a sabbatical abroad—the US maybe.”
“Well, bully for him.”
“Tally, the next few months are going to be hard for you. There are some excellent books on the grieving process. I could recommend a couple if you’d like …”
“I’ve just been dumped at the altar and you’re offering me books?”
“I just thought—”
“I don’t want bloody books. I want Josh. I want Josh.” I was sobbing into my bouquet of antique pink roses, which for some reason I was still holding. Napoleon stood up and put an arm across my shoulders. “Make him come back. Please make him come back. I love him so much.”