by Naomi Ragen
13
This was the routine. Faigie Klein would call her after she’d spoken to the prospective date and gotten his approval. She’d preface her remarks by saying, “He’s a good-natured person who is very anxious to get married. He wants to meet you.”
The first time, Leah was filled with hope, happy and grateful to the matchmaker. It was like being in seventh grade again and having one of your friends be the go-between when you got a crush on a cute boy, doing all the difficult, embarrassing work. He was going to pick her up at eight, then drive her to a hotel lobby in Manhattan, Faigie Klein explained over the phone. “Dress nice,” the matchmaker exhorted her.
Leah dressed carefully in a new, expensive dress with a cinched waist, wearing the perfectly fitted bra that had cost her close to a hundred dollars in Lord & Taylor. She had lost a little weight but was far from feeling thin. Once a runner stopped running, the weight was impossible to dislodge, she thought.
The intercom rang and she answered it, buzzing him in.
When she opened the door, she felt herself go suddenly breathless. She tried not to gasp as she took in the person who stood before her: 250 pounds on a five-foot-seven frame, with a stomach so enormous he struggled to carry it, touching the walls as he walked. He was gray-haired with glasses, his eyes sunk so deeply inside rolls of fat you needed to be an archaeologist to find them, she thought, horrified. He was wheezing as he spoke, even though it was an elevator building and she was only on the second floor.
Am I really going to have to go out in public with this creature? she asked herself, mortified. But to reject him outright would be both unkind and insulting. Certainly the matchmaker would see it that way. Steeling herself by imagining all the ways she was going to murder Faigie Klein, she put on her coat and waited by the elevator. There was hardly room for both of them, she realized. “I’m going to walk down,” she announced with a smile. He didn’t protest.
Sitting in the car, his seat pushed back to the limit to make room for his stomach, his short arms barely reaching the wheel, he tried to make conversation. He told her about his wine-importing business, and the nice house he had, a two-family he’d converted into a one-family that even had a driveway. No one in Boro Park, he told her, had a driveway. Every so often, he took out an asthma inhaler, spraying some mist into his lungs.
Was she put off by his weight? he finally asked.
What could she say? “A bit,” she admitted.
He nodded understandingly. His plan, he told her, was to have his stomach stapled. Then the weight would just melt away, he’d been told. He’d be thin in no time. His problem was willpower. He had none at all when it came to the good things in life, all of which he could afford in abundance, he assured her. “Sirloin steaks, prime ribs, mashed potatoes, French pastries…” His eyes lit up, and he smacked his lips.
“You know, if you have your stomach stapled, you can’t eat those things anymore. The staples will burst, and you’ll be very ill,” she pointed out, trying to be helpful.
He seemed astonished to hear this. “You mean, after the operation, there will still be a diet?” He pronounced it like a curse word, his tone one of outrage. “Then what’s the point?”
From then on, his mood shifted from cheerful self-promotion to morose discontent. When the traffic into the city turned bumper to bumper, he shifted in his seat and turned to her. “Would you mind,” he asked abruptly, “if we called it a night? I’m not feeling very well.”
Silently, she said a prayer of thanksgiving. She didn’t have to politely urge him not to see her to her door. He had no intention of even loosening his seat belt. “I wish you every happiness!” she shouted through the closed window on the driver’s side. He grunted, driving off.
The conversation with Faigie Klein the next day should have been recorded as a comedy routine, she thought.
“So how did it go?”
“Mrs. Klein, why would you send me an old man who is so obese he can hardly breathe?”
“He’s getting his stomach stapled! And he owns a house in Boro Park with a driveway! Besides, you’re not exactly a size four yourself.”
Fury took her breath away, and tears came to her eyes. But before she could tell the woman off, Faigie Klein changed her tune.
“Perhaps you are right. He is a personal friend of my family, and he seemed so anxious to meet you. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I let the men’s dreams sway me. So we’ll try again. Luckily, I have another prospect for you. Someone tall and slender with a full head of hair. A professor of mathematics.”
Leah was wary. “How old is he?”
“He’s forty-two.”
“Is he single, divorced, widowed?”
“Single, from a very respectable religious family in Flatbush. He teaches at Brooklyn College. Some kind of genius. And he smiled when he saw your photo. That doesn’t happen very often.”
Leah, who was going to tell Mrs. Klein she hoped she’d burn in hell, softened. Perhaps the first one had been a fluke, an honest mistake. Perhaps the woman really did have her best interests at heart.
“Well, okay. And thank you.”
“Don’t thank me now. Thank me at the engagement ceremony.” She didn’t hang up.
“Yes?”
“Well, this date is going to be a little different. Tuvia—that’s his name—doesn’t like to make dates on the phone. He wants you to send him all the possible dates and locations and times you can meet him through email. I’ll send you his address.”
“Isn’t that a bit odd?”
“A bit. But you know. Professors can be absentminded.”
She hung up, trying to think positively. She sent the email and got back one that said: “When you say ‘go out,’ does that mean leaving the premises? Does it mean walking, or taking a car, or a train or bus? Could you be more specific?”
Well, at least he has a sense of humor, she thought hopefully.
“Whatever you decide is fine with me,” she texted back.
“I will come to your house at 7:22 on Sunday evening, and I will bring a car so we can go out.”
At 7:21 and twenty-two seconds, he rang the bell.
“I’m a little early,” he said.
She smiled. “I don’t think so. I think you are exactly on time.”
He didn’t smile back. He seemed confused, checking his watch. He shook his head. “No, I have another forty seconds to go.”
Was he for real? She looked him over. He was nice looking—kind of cute, actually—with thick, curly, sandy-brown hair that had been left a bit long, which was not usually the custom among haredi Jewish men. His eyes were a wide, innocent blue. On his head, he wore a black velvet skullcap, and he was dressed immaculately in a yeshiva boy’s black suit.
“Well, since you are ‘a little early,’ why don’t you come in for a few minutes? I’m almost ready.”
He stood there uncertainly. “But we said at 7:22 we’d go out. If I come in, it will be 7:23 or 7:24 until we go out.”
“Maybe even 7:30.” She smiled, trying to keep positive.
“And that would be all right?” he asked.
She was beginning to wonder if this was a joke. If it was, it was wearing thin.
“You know what? I’ll get my coat.”
He drove a nice, midnight-blue Toyota that was so clean it shone.
“You take great care of your car,” she complimented him. “I wish my house was as clean.”
“It isn’t,” he told her matter-of-factly, with no trace of irony or embarrassment. “I wash my car every day. Do you wash your floors every day?”
“No,” she admitted. “Usually just on Fridays, before Shabbos.”
“You aren’t as clean as me,” he said humorlessly, snapping in his seat belt.
Mortified, she sank down silently into the spotless seat.
“Are you insulted?” he asked after they’d been driving close to twenty minutes without a word being said. He didn’t seem upset by the idea, just curious. “I find
it hard to tell when people are upset with me. When I am upset, I usually make a sad face, like this.” He turned to her, the corners of his mouth stretching down in an exaggerated mime of sadness. “And when I am happy, I do this.” He broke into a clown-like smile that stretched across his face.
She stared at her hands, horrified.
He parked the car and very politely opened the door for her. The lobby was packed with conventioneers.
“Would you mind if I held your arm so you don’t get lost in this crowd?” he asked.
“I don’t mind,” she told him, pleased at his consideration.
He pinched her arm between his thumb and forefinger.
“Ouch!” she pulled away.
“Was that too hard?” he asked. “I can pinch you softer, but then we wouldn’t be connected as well and could lose each other.”
She rubbed her arm. “Why don’t we just sit down and talk for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“What about twenty-two minutes and forty-three seconds?” she answered.
He glanced at his watch.
“So, why did you want to go out with me, Tuvia?”
“My shadchan told me that you were a pretty, kind girl who was religious now but not before.”
“So, what about that made you interested in me? That I was pretty, or kind, or religious?”
“I am not interested in you.”
She bit her lip. “Then why are we on this date?” In twenty-three and a half seconds, she thought, I’m going to sock him.
“The rabbis are interested. The halacha is that a man must have children. Two boys and two girls. My mother is interested in you. Also my father. You can’t have children without a wife. How many children should we have?” he asked her.
“Why would you want to have children with someone you aren’t even interested in?”
“Biologically, a male and female don’t have to be interested in one another to reproduce. They only have to get close enough to copulate. Would you like to order from the menu?”
“Thank you, but there isn’t enough time. We only have twenty-one minutes and forty seconds left.”
He seemed to find that perfectly reasonable. “Maybe the next time we go out, or after we are married and have copulated a number of times.” He got up, ready to usher her out.
“Don’t touch me!” she warned him. He seemed surprised. “Sit down and wait here; I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
“When will you be back?”
“When my feet are on the floor in front of you,” she replied, pointing down to the ground. She could see that far from being insulted, he was relieved.
He sat down.
She stood in front of the mirror in the ladies’ room, her elbows digging firmly into the marble countertop to keep her entire body from trembling.
“Is yours going as well as mine?”
She looked up. A pretty brunette with a model’s slim figure dressed in the impeccably modest style of the Boro Park kallah moide flashed a sympathetic smile at her.
“Only if yours is autistic,” she replied.
“Mine is partially deaf. My shadchan said he was forty-two. But when he opened his wallet to pay the bill, I saw his driver’s license. He’s fifty-four. I’m thirty-five.”
They stared at each other, then erupted in laughter that made their stomachs shake and formed tears in their eyes. They couldn’t stop. Finally, they wiped their eyes and adjusted their makeup.
“I’m Shoshana Glaser,” the woman said, holding out her hand.
“I’m Leah Howard.” She shook the proffered hand gratefully. “I’m a BT, and that doesn’t mean bacon and tomato! I’m also too old, too fat, and have a tattoo.”
“Really? Let me see.”
Leah held out her wrist.
“Cool,” Shoshana said.
“The shadchan wants it removed pronto.”
“And if you agree, she’ll turn all the mice into horses and the big, fat pumpkins into coaches?”
“All I want is for the prince not to turn out to be a frog all the time. Is that too much to ask? What is wrong with me that I am getting fixed up with the biggest misfits and losers on the planet?”
“I don’t know, but after you get them, I’ll get them. Or vice versa. I can tell you what’s wrong with me: I’m a doctor. You’d think that would be a plus, but in our world, it’s a badge of shame. Like I went off the derech. The men have to have the upper hand in our world, and my being a doctor makes that hard for them. So to punish me, they set me up with these losers. I only give in to keep my parents happy. They aren’t well, and this is their heart’s desire, to dance at my wedding.”
“You are so beautiful and slim. How do you do it with all that Shabbos food?”
“I Rollerblade,” Shoshana said. “You should come with me. There’s a group of us. A swimming instructor, a rabbi’s wife, and a librarian. We have a blast. Monday nights at the Aviator Sports and Events Center on Flatbush Avenue. Seven o’clock. Well, I guess I should get back and put him out of his delusional misery. It was so nice meeting you, Leah. Hey, don’t give up. I know my bashert is out there. So is yours.”
“You can’t imagine how much this night has been ransomed from despair by meeting you.”
“Monday, seven o’clock. And bring skates.”
When she went back to Tuvia, she saw that he was staring intently at the floor at the spot she had indicated. She moved her shoes into his line of vision. The moment that happened, he looked up, giving her his widest, most clownish smile. A perfect end to a perfect evening.
“He said it went very well,” Faigie Klein insisted the next day.
“He’s certifiable!”
“That’s unkind! I admit, he’s on the spectrum, but he functions at a very high level,” Faigie Klein pleaded. “The right woman could make gold out of him.”
“Yes, in a hundred years, four hours, and thirty-five seconds.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Obviously, I’m not the right woman.”
“All right, all right. Look, I first wanted to try to get you local people from very respectable families, but if you are willing to go out with a convert, that will open the possibilities.”
Why would you trust this woman again? she berated herself silently. But what other choice did she have? “But this time, tell me everything, and I mean everything.”
“He’s forty-four. He has a very successful store selling African art in Manhattan. He’s a convert. He really wants a serious relationship and marriage. In fact, he’s a bit desperate.”
“Any mental problems or physical illnesses or handicaps?”
“I swear on my life that he is perfectly healthy in all ways.”
“Is he a midget, seven feet tall, obese, ugly, bald, deformed?”
“No, not at all! A handsome man in his way. Totally normal looking.”
“Then what’s the catch?” she asked.
“Why does there have to be a catch?” the woman replied innocently.
The truth was that from the moment Faigie Klein had called her back with a date and time, she was filled with dread. She tried to talk herself out of it. It couldn’t be that Faigie Klein didn’t have a single, normal man in her Rolodex. It was like going to a real estate agent, she told herself. Every new client got shown the worst, most unsaleable properties—the decrepit old houses with the dingy, small rooms on the dangerous side streets, the ones that were overpriced and in terrible repair—before the agent showed them the newer, more desirable properties. That was just business. But perhaps now, after she’d made it clear that she wasn’t buying, Mrs. Klein would finally send her a reasonable prospect.
She put on the new bra, again. She put on the new dress, again. She even put a Band-Aid over her tattoo. If it didn’t work out, she wanted to be blameless.
The buzzer sounded, and she once again opened her front door to possibilities. But this time it was no use; her mouth fell open in astonishment s
he could not hide. The one thing she hadn’t thought to ask, and of course Klein hadn’t volunteered the information.
She did not answer her phone the next day. Instead, she had the number changed and spent the morning sending the new number to all her clients. When she was done, she went out and bought a pair of the most beautiful, expensive Rollerblades ever manufactured. At seven o’clock on Monday, she waited inside Aviator Sports and Events Center on Flatbush Avenue.
Dr. Shoshana Glaser was right on time and delighted to see her, introducing her to three other friends who all looked like typical Boro Park matrons, except that instead of being overweight, they were athletic and slim. She pulled the laces tightly, then rolled onto the ramp inside the arena. In no time at all she was whizzing around, laughing. While she never got up to Shoshana or her friends’ speed, she only fell twice.
“So, what’s the latest on the shidduch battlefield?” Shoshana asked her as they sat side by side changing back into their shoes.
“He was a convert from Nigeria; an African with sidecurls, a black suit, and a black Borsalino.”
“Did the shadchan mention … I mean, she should have prepared you—”
“No, not a word. Because it was the one thing I forgot to ask her!”
“What happened?”
“After I closed my mouth, I invited him in. ‘Would you mind if we didn’t go out just yet?’ he said, closing the door behind him. I didn’t mind at all. My feet were shaking. So, I offered him coffee, but he said he preferred bottled water. I tried to explain that New York city tap water was perfectly safe to drink, but he waved that idea away. He told me that only Africans were aware of what was in water. That we Americans were naïve. ‘Do you have tea, or orange juice? I love orange juice,’ he said. So I brought him orange juice. He sat over that drink for half an hour, inching his way closer to me on the couch. I got up and opened the front door. I explained that according to Jewish law, a man and a woman couldn’t be in an enclosed space together if they weren’t married or close relatives. He said he’d learned all about that, but that it was one of the things he found very hard to get used to. Africans were very warm and friendly people. He patted the seat next to him on the couch. I stood up and kept standing. ‘You’ve had an amazing journey,’ I said to him, trying to be nice. He agreed, explaining that he’d been a Christian, but after learning the Bible, he had come to understand that really, he must be a Jew; one of the members of the ‘lost tribes’ that had wandered off across the River Sambatyon. ‘As soon as I realized that,’ he told me, ‘I knew I had to convert. But my wife—’”