The Altruists

  “She wants everyone to be as miserable as she was.”

  “Francine.”

  “I’m telling you, she doesn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t like anyone,” he said.

  “Including you!”

  “Including me.”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “Ridiculous,” he said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Call your mother. See what she says.”

  “All right,” she said, shaking her head. “I will.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Francine’s mother was happy to pay. For everything. Absolutely, no problem—provided the wedding was in Dayton. Francine said she’d think about it.

  “What is there to think about?” Arthur paced their bedroom, massaging his temples. “She’s offering to pay for it!”

  “I don’t want to go back there. This day is supposed to be about us, and she’s going to make it about herself. Trust me. She’s never done anything that wasn’t in her own self-interest.”

  “Francine . . .”

  “You watch. She’s going to overtake this thing. She’ll plan it all herself. Half of Dayton will be there.”

  “Who cares who shows up? Or where it is? She’s offering to pay for and plan the wedding!”

  “But it’s supposed to be our day.”

  “Is it? Every day thereafter will be our day. No, no. This isn’t about us. It’s about getting through the day without anyone from your family inflicting bodily harm on me and mine. And vice versa. Consider it. Consider leaving it all to your mother.”

  The relief of delegating the planning had not entirely occurred to her before. Francine was mired in her thesis on the foundations of Merleau-Ponty’s ethical theory. She didn’t have time to orchestrate a wedding, especially on short notice. The mock engagement, and the real one, had happened in quick succession, and there was an undeniable momentum propelling them forward. She felt that if she didn’t capitalize on it, the momentum would dissipate, and Arthur would drag his feet forever. Still, she harbored hope for a tasteful ceremony, a relaxing party, and at its end, a painless escape into a life that would be, at last, hers.

  She looked at Arthur. Sweat gathered at his temples.

  Sometimes she thought he was two different people. One was desperate, and petty, unable to hide his desperation or his pettiness because it was written on his face, apparent in his sweat, obvious in the quantity and stink of it. And one man, the other man, was generous and thoughtful, a man who’d gone away to do some good, a man who’d visited the cockpit during a recent flight back from vacation in San Francisco, and asked to be notified by secret code when the plane was roughly over Ohio. When the stewardess came by some time later to ask (strangely, Francine had thought) if Arthur wanted anything to eat (even though the food service hadn’t started), and winked, he nodded knowingly, unbuckled his belt, and took a knee right there in the aisle, thousands of feet above her birthplace, to ask Francine to marry him. The gesture paid tribute to her origins without actually touching them. It acknowledged where she’d come from without making her go back. The plane’s trajectory, flying over Ohio and toward Boston, seemed to nod at the past while pointing, with aerodynamic efficiency, toward the future. I know who you are, he seemed to suggest, and I know who you want to be. She’d said yes almost instantly.

  Where was that man now?

  She called her sister for a second opinion.

  Bex said, “Mom’s not to be trusted.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Then again,” she said, “if your hands are tied, your hands are tied.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Mrs. Klein was all too thrilled to organize the wedding. She invited first, second, and third cousins, hordes of her group and association women. In order to accommodate this cast of hundreds, the reception venue was set at the Marriott in Midtown Dayton, which shared a parking lot with the headquarters of the National Cash Register Company and a red-sauce Italian restaurant. She drew up Victorian-style invitations in mauve and turquoise, Francine’s least favorite colors. Francine couldn’t tell whether it was an act of aggression or a demonstration of her mother’s poor taste.

  “Here’s something fun,” she said over the phone. “What if you and Arthur were at separate tables?”

  “What? Separate tables? Why?”

  “I’m sure Arthur wants to spend time with his family.”

  “He doesn’t. Besides, hardly anyone from his side is coming.”

  “And you’ll want to spend time with yours!”

  “It’s our wedding. We have to sit together.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Is that a promise?” Francine asked.

  “A promise to what?”

  “A promise to seat my husband and me at the same table at our wedding.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “I want you to say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you’ll seat us together.”

  “Fine.”

  “I don’t want a ‘fine,’ or an ‘okay,’ or an ‘all right.’ I want you to say you’ll put us at the same table. My god.”

  “It’s whatever you want.”

  Francine slammed the phone down in anger.

  She flew out exactly once to help make some key decisions. Home wasn’t all that different from how she remembered it. Her father was gone, true, but he’d spent most of Francine’s life in his room. The absence was nothing new. The real pain came from seeing the For Sale sign outside Grandma Ruth’s house next door. “I can’t sell the place,” Mrs. Klein complained. “And the city says I can’t turn it into an addition either.” She shook her head. “That woman,” she said, “finds ways to undermine me even now.”

  Francine went with her mother to see the caterer. A blue University of Dayton pennant was tacked to the wall behind his desk. “We have grilled salmon, salad, asparagus, and a bread basket for each table.” He looked up at the Klein women. “Sound okay?”

  “We need a side dish,” Francine said. “People will be hungry.”

  “I don’t think so.” Her mother shook her head. “We have the bread.”

  “Bread is not a side dish.”

  “Bread is a starch. It’s filling.”

  “Maybe a rice pilaf?”

  “Fran, rice and bread are the same—they’re in the same category. I don’t want two of the same thing. I’m not paying extra for another starchy, filling food.”

  “I hardly think a rice pilaf is going to run you over budget.”

  “Don’t shout at me! Not here!”

  “I’m not shouting!”

  “Yes you are! You are now!”

  “Jesus fucking Christ . . .”

  “Don’t curse!”

  “This is my wedding. I don’t want hungry guests at my wedding.”

  “It is absolutely not your wedding! Check the receipts, Francine! Look whose name is there! Look whose name!”

  “Do you need a minute?” the caterer asked.

  Francine was mortified, but her mother wouldn’t budge. It seemed the only say she would have over her wedding was the groom.

  The next morning, Mrs. Klein asked Francine when she wanted to go to the Bridal Boutique.

  “No,” Francine said. “I’m not getting my dress there.”

  “What’s wrong with the Bridal Boutique? Debbie Simchowitz got her dress there. You remember Debbie.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “She plays in the Cincinnati Symphony. Second violin. She was always talented.”

  “Good for Debbie.”

  “Though her father is a major donor to the arts, so who knows. Anyway, what’s wrong with the Bridal Boutique?”

  “It’s
tacky.”

  “Do you think Debbie Simchowitz is tacky?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Klein gasped.

  “Look, Mom,” Francine said. “I already have a dress.”

  “You do?”

  She didn’t. “Yeah. Back east. I have a . . . I have a fitting later this week.”

  “Fine,” her mother huffed. “Have it your way.”

  The day after she landed in Boston, Francine scheduled an appointment at a family-run bridal shop on the garden level of a Victorian brownstone in the Back Bay. The shop was a mess, a basement jammed with hanging gowns and raw fabrics stacked in piles. A tri-paneled mirror faced her from across the room.

  A woman with a thick bundle of graying hair teetered out from behind a rack of gowns. “Here for a dress?”

  Francine nodded.

  “Where’s the rest of you?”

  “The rest of me?”

  “Yeah. Your mother, your sister, your friend, whatever.”

  “Oh.” Francine folded her arms and pat herself down, like she might have someone tucked inside a jacket pocket. “No,” she said a moment later. “It’s just me.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “You came alone? Well. All right. Might as well get started, then.”

  Francine settled on a modest but fashionable dress with puffy, Princess Di sleeves that gathered at the elbows, a long train that buttoned into a bustle in back, and a plunging neckline to which she requested some extra lace be sewn so as not to scandalize the midwestern guests. She chose a bodice with seed pearls and a long veil that hung over the V-shaped dip the dress took in back. Francine returned for two fittings before finally getting it right.

  “I can wrap it up, unless you want to wear it out of the store,” the woman said. “Ha-ha.”

  “No,” said Francine, “that’s all right. I’d like it shipped to Dayton. Dayton, Ohio, please.”

  * * *

  • • •

  There was no rehearsal dinner. In retrospect this seemed like a mistake, though Francine wondered whether it was even possible to rehearse a catastrophe, to practice chaos with an eye toward refining it. Either way, it took a great deal of convincing to get Arthur’s mother out to the Midwest in the first place. She was certainly not going to help pay for a dinner designed to feed numerous Kleins and hardly any Alters.

  It was probably for the best. There were enough complications already. The dress arrived without a slip, and when Francine called the shop in Boston to complain, the woman said, “You brides are hysterical.” She rushed with her mother to Elder-Beerman and bought one just before it closed.

  The night before the ceremony, Mrs. Klein approached her daughter. “How would you feel,” she said, her lipstick curling into a clownish smile, “about a limousine?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How would you like a limousine to escort you and Arthur from the synagogue to the hotel?”

  “What? Absolutely not.”

  “I thought it could be nice.”

  “I thought we didn’t have a budget for pilaf.”

  “This would be my wedding gift to you. A limousine!”

  “No.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because if you knew me, Mom, if you knew me at all, you would know that I hate being the center of attention. A limo is not ‘me.’ It’s not me at all.”

  “Fine,” she hissed. “Have it your way. Good luck tomorrow.” And she left Francine alone in her childhood bedroom.

  Bex knocked on her door a few minutes later.

  “Everything okay?”

  Francine blew her nose. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing.”

  “The right thing?”

  “Tell me I’m marrying the right person.”

  Bex crossed her arms and nodded, her lips pursed. She had recently been dumped in spectacular fashion by a fabulously wealthy art dealer and avowed sex addict, with whom she was still infatuated. “I don’t think there are ‘right people.’”

  Francine sobbed.

  “Okay, okay! Yes. You’re doing the right thing. Arthur’s a smart guy, right? Someone that smart would know better than to treat you badly.”

  They were married on a Sunday morning in March. After they signed the ketubah, their guests assembled in the sanctuary. At 10:31 a.m., with the minute hand on its optimistic upswing, Arthur’s mother huffed down the aisle to take her seat. She was followed by Arthur, who ascended the bima, digging a nervous fingernail into his thigh. Mrs. Klein walked chin-first past the many people she’d assembled by the sheer virtue of her connectedness. Rick Pietsch, an old roommate of Arthur’s now in the pharmaceutical business, walked beside Bex, the two of them comprising the wedding party.

  And then there was Francine. She wore a pearl necklace and pearl earrings with tiny diamond accents. On her arm, in place of her father, was Uncle Ron, her mother’s brother. She hardly noticed he was there and, in later years, would recall walking down the aisle alone.

  Beside Arthur stood Reverend Kaplan. The battle over Kaplan had played out months earlier. Kaplan was a certified rabbi, but he didn’t preside over ceremonies or deliver sermons. He was Beth Abraham’s religious director. Years earlier he’d taught Francine her bat mitzvah portion. His house smelled like warm bread, and indeed at every lesson Kaplan’s wife served Francine a small plate of crunchy Mandelbrot and a cup of tea. Kaplan talked to her in kind, pure tones, as if he’d never heard a critical word spoken in his life—as if he didn’t know voices could do that. But he wasn’t naive. Kaplan was a man of deep, profound experience. His son, Len, had cerebral palsy and was largely confined to a hospital bed right off the kitchen. Len was mentally all there but his body was thin and crooked like a bare tree branch. At the end of Francine’s lessons, Kaplan would say, “Wonderful job today. Would you like to visit Len? He’s looking forward to seeing you.” This, from day one. On her first lesson: “Len’s looking forward to meeting you.” She felt important. Like she could make a difference for the boy. And Kaplan’s face was all sincerity. In Francine went, through the kitchen to the white bed with brown end panels, where Len, lying with his arms splayed and his neck bent at an angle, would smile at her and nod his head up and down, with purpose. “He’s so happy to see you,” Reverend Kaplan translated. In his house, Francine mattered.

  When she learned that Beth Abraham had recently ousted its senior rabbi for being “too intellectual,” and in his place installed someone more “relatable”—one Rabbi Krantz, who sported a dyed-black comb-over and possessed the cognitive abilities of a fish—she lobbied for Kaplan in his place. It had been a long, drawn-out argument over telephone wires stretching halfway across the country. Francine wanted someone she knew to perform the ceremony, someone who wasn’t reputed to be a moron. Her mother argued that Kaplan didn’t perform weddings, it just wasn’t done, and she didn’t want talk about the weird role reversal jangling around the tight-knit Jewish community in Dayton. Ultimately, Francine prevailed. “As long as Krantz is on the bima,” her mother said. “I don’t want to rile the congregants. Besides. As you know, I like Krantz quite a bit. But Kaplan, too, is very good.”

  The service itself was swift and personal. Kaplan shared some words about Francine, and said that any man to marry her should count himself among the most fortunate on earth. (For a moment she wondered why she wasn’t marrying Kaplan.) They exchanged rings. Arthur’s hands were soaking wet. The sweat lubricated his fingers, and the ring slipped right on.

  All Arthur had to say now was the one sentence of Hebrew he’d been asked to memorize from a transliteration. Harei at m’kudeshet li b’tabaat zo k’dat Moshe v’yisrael. One sentence. By this ring you are consecrated to me as my wife, in accordance with the laws of Moses and the people of Israel. A handful of syllables. A pail of consonants and vowels. She looked at him expectantly.

  “Ha . . .�
� He cleared his throat. “Ha—har . . .”

  Kaplan tried to get him started. “Harei at m’kudeshet . . .”

  “Ha . . .”

  “Harei at . . .”

  “Harei . . . Har . . .”

  Arthur looked up, helpless. He shook his head at Francine. She stared at the floor, mortified. Then she made the mistake of looking out at the sanctuary, where she saw one of her mother’s eyebrows raised high above the other.

  “Harei at m’kudeshet li b’tabaat zo k’dat Moshe v’Yisrael,” Kaplan whispered. Arthur muttered something close enough.

  “Harei atah m’kudash li b’tabaat zo k’dat Moshe v’Yisrael,” Francine said in turn.

  And with that, in the mosh of mangled Hebrew, they were married. When the new couple stepped out of the synagogue, past throngs of strangers, Francine was stunned to find, parked at the curb of the temple, a white limousine. Beside it, her mother stood laughing.

  * * *

  • • •

  The hotel was a blocky, Soviet-looking complex. The ballroom was packed with people Francine had never met and was sure she would never see again. Mrs. Klein commandeered the newlyweds and dragged them around the hall, introducing them to her friends and relations.

  Lunch was served. (There was an indignity in this, the meal and the hour, lunch instead of dinner, naked daylight and not magic, permissive dark.) The food wasn’t particularly good, but Francine busied herself with eating, stuffing her mouth to keep from lashing out at her mother, who was ruining the most important day of her life, and her husband—the husband she had defended a literal seat at the table for—who was presently munching a stalk of asparagus with a terrified look on his face.

  Then, all at once, Arthur’s mother was standing with a half-empty glass of water in one hand, a soupspoon in the other. Chatter thinned. People stopped eating, their forks suspended in the space between plate and mouth. Francine’s cheeks went hot. What are you doing? She tried to compel his mother to sit down with her mind. Sit, she thought. SIT!