Chapter 21 The driest shower
There were other caterers with five-star ratings, but Leah held off on scheduling to meet any. At first, it was because she and Gabe both had colds after their second soaking. Gabe called in sick from work and the two of them stayed in bed together for a week watching terrible shows on Netflix and ordering soup that neither of them really had an appetite for. It would have been romantic if their noses weren’t completely blocked and there weren’t piles of tissues all over the bed that they would clean up once they were feeling a little better.
Leah was a little disappointed when Gabe eventually went back to work. “But you’re still coughing a little,” she said, hoping that would convince him to stay another day. But he kissed her on the forehead and promised to come home soon.
She too had gotten over her cold and had no more excuses to stay in bed. After making herself coffee and cleaning up the dirty tissues and the rest of the apartment, she started looking for new jobs to apply for. She sent her resume to a few more listings and wondered why applying for a job was so hard. Why had no one called her back? Why had no one offered her a position? What was it about her that made her so unattractive to potential employers?
Her phone rang when she was finishing up one more application. She clicked send and then answered. “Hey, Mom.”
“Leah, I am here with Shira,” Savannah said. “I was thinking, we need to plan a shower for you and Shira. What if we plan one shower? A joint bridal and baby shower. It could be fun! I bet no one has ever done that before. Shira is on board. Are you?”
“Only because I don’t want a shower,” Shira said on the phone. “It will be your shower, but Mom will feel like she planned a shower for me too.”
“It will be for both of you,” Savannah insisted. “I will plan it, OK? Leah, can you confirm this is OK with you? It’s just simpler, we don’t have to plan two or invite everyone to two different events at the same time.”
Leah wondered if her mother came up with this idea to try to mask the two unappetizing reasons for the showers—Leah’s interfaith marriage and Shira’s accidental pregnancy. With only one event instead of two, there would be less time for gossip, fewer reminders of Savannah’s failures as a mother, and fewer events for her to have to pretend that everything was going well with her daughters. Anyway, Leah didn’t feel she had much choice, especially since Shira was due in a month and probably wouldn’t have time to plan Leah’s bridal shower, so she agreed that Savannah could plan a joint shower for them.
“Great, because I already booked the Bonsai Tea House for the event,” Savannah said. The Bonsai Tea House was a quaint restaurant that hosted mother daughter tea parties that Savannah had taken the girls to when they were younger. “I will send out the invites. You just tell me if there is anyone you want to invite.”
Two weeks later, after Leah’s cold had completely gone away, she was on the train with Maya upstate to the Bonsai Tea House for the shower. Leah was wearing a long-sleeved white cotton dress that went to her knees. She had her hair and makeup done in the city that morning and was hoping that this shower wouldn’t include the kind of showers that had accompanied her other wedding planning activities.
She hadn’t told Shira about what happened with the caterer. In fact, she hadn’t spoken to Shira much since their brunch after dress shopping. She was afraid that if she told Shira, Shira would convince her that it truly was a bad omen or a sign or something else telling her that the universe was trying to break up her wedding.
Maya reacted differently when Leah told her. She didn’t use the words “omen” or “sign,” she simply commented on what a pyromaniac that Gary guy was and how people like that should not have man buns or torches.
“I wish your mom would have included me in planning the shower,” Maya said on the train ride. “I have lots of bridal shower games that would have been fun to play.”
“I think the shower is more for her than for me or Shira,” Leah responded. But that wasn’t a bad thing, maybe if the shower was more for Savannah, that meant she was getting on board with the wedding and with becoming a grandmother. And maybe that was better than having a shower planned specifically for her with games that she and her friends would enjoy.
Leah spent the rest of the train ride telling Maya about her other friends her mother invited. There were girls from her old Jewish youth group and from college. All nice Jewish girls who either had or were expected to end up with nice Jewish boys.
Leah’s best friend from high school picked them up at the train station. Sarah and Leah had been friends forever, since they both started pre-school at their temple. They were in the same b’nai mitzvah class and both were active members of Echad, their BBYO chapter in high school. Sarah studied at Syracuse University and then moved back to their hometown after college and moved in with her high school sweetheart, who was also active in BBYO, leading Echad’s brother chapter. Everyone—including Sarah—expected they would be the first couple from their group to get married. Back in high school, Sarah and Leah had daydreamed of wedding planning together, especially since Sarah’s boyfriend and Leah’s were such good friends. Funny how things turned out.
“Oh my god, do you remember the last time we were at Bonsai?” Sarah asked once they were in her car and on the way to the shower. Leah did remember. It was right before they graduated high school. Their BBYO chapter had planned a mother daughter teatime. Leah and Savannah sat next to Sarah and her mother and the mothers had joked about planning a joint bridal shower there. “The egg salad sandwich was so good! I’ve been thinking about that sandwich for like eight years now!”
“Really?” Leah responded. “I actually remember the scones more. And the tea. I remember they had that tea they mixed with warm champagne that our mothers drank and we tasted. It was yummy!” Leah wondered if Sarah also remembered their mothers’ conversation, or if she really did just think about the egg salad sandwich.
“All the Echad girls were so excited to see the invite,” Sarah continued. Sarah had been much better at staying in touch with their high school group. It was probably because she had moved back to their hometown. “Maya, were you in BBYO? Or USY?” USY was another Jewish youth group, one that no BBYO participant would get near.
“Neither,” Maya responded. “I was literally, like, the only Jew in our area.”
“What? That’s crazy, you didn’t have Jewish friends?” Sarah asked.
“Nope,” Maya said. “We drove two hours to go to temple once a year on Yom Kippur. That was the only time I saw other Jews. The rest of the year, I was the token Jew at school.”
Leah knew this about Maya. Maybe it was why she didn’t think the interfaith marriage thing was such a big deal.
“Wow, I can’t even imagine,” Sarah responded. “Like, I didn’t even know Jews were a minority in the world until I went to college. Our public school was closed on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana!”
“I always missed school on Yom Kippur,” Maya said. “I remember my teachers didn’t really understand why I wasn’t coming to school that day.”
“And Leah went to Brandeis!” Sarah commented. “Non-Jews are the minority there! How crazy how things turn out!”
“Crazy,” Leah repeated, unsure exactly what was so crazy. That after surrounding herself with Jews her entire life she was engaged to someone who wasn’t? Was that actually so crazy?
Sarah parked in front of the Bonsai Tea House. The parking lot was mostly full and Leah wondered if it was because of the shower. She hoped her mother hadn’t gone overboard with invitations. The girls got out of the car and walked into the restaurant, where they were directed to a private room in the back that Leah had been to for plenty of events before.
The room was packed with women standing around in nice floral clothing and drinking champagne mixed with tea in champagne flutes. Everyone looked at the door when Leah arrived.
“Congratulations!” the women said to her one after another. Savannah came to the doorway with Shira by her side and after greeting Sarah and Maya, asked to steal her daughter to make rounds around the room.
“Say hi to Marci!” Savannah said, bringing them to one of the members of their temple’s sisterhood. The girls said “hi” and Marci said congratulations and before anything else could be said, Savannah moved them to another guest and another, repeating the same interaction over and over. Shira and Leah looked at each other and shrugged, but didn’t say anything to each other between greetings.
Soon waitresses came and started placing three-tiered serving plates on the tables that were set with fancy antique-like plates and teacups. Everyone sat down and ate the finger foods. Leah took a scone and an egg salad sandwich to see if it really was as good as Sarah had remembered it.
Leah sat with Maya and her old friends from high school. She hadn’t kept in great contact with most of them, but it appeared she was the only one who had lost touch, because after the girls gushed about her ring and asked questions about the wedding—to which Leah kept responding that they “didn’t know yet”—their conversation turned to each other on topics that conveyed that they were in constant contact. They asked how was the restaurant Becky had gone to last week, or the date Elana had with that guy she was talking to online. Did Sarah move in yet to the new apartment she and her boyfriend had seen the other week? Leah and Maya listened quietly and Leah wondered how she felt like an outsider at her own shower. Well, it wasn’t her own shower, was it?
She looked over where Shira was sitting with some of her old friends that their mother had invited. The girls were mostly on their phones or talking politely to whoever was next to them, but they seemed more like strangers than girls who had been best friends less than a decade before. Shira stood up and walked to the bathroom and Leah then excused herself to follow.
“Weird shower, huh?” Shira said when Leah walked in behind her. Leah nodded. “My friends don’t know what to say about my situation.” Shira pointed to her stomach.
“Mine don’t either,” Leah commiserated. “I’m sorry I was angry with you.”
“I’m sorry I called the pipe burst a bad omen,” Shira responded. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”
The girls hugged and Leah thought better than to tell her sister about the fire at the catering company. Two coincidences might not be a coincidence. Just then Savannah popped her head into the bathroom.
“There you two are!” she said. “We’re just about to open presents! Come on! We can’t do this without you!”
The girls smiled and followed their mother to the tables where they took turns unwrapping onesies and lingerie. When that finished, Savannah handed out party favors filled with fancy soaps and bath bombs and told everyone they had to be out of the room because they had only booked it until a specific hour. Everyone left before Leah or Shira could be questioned about their reason for having this shower in the first place.
“That went well,” Savannah said with a sigh of relief. Leah nodded. It was the driest shower she could have expected after her two previous ones at the venue and caterer.
Savannah then drove Leah and Maya back to the train station to go back to the city. It had all felt like a strange dream to Leah. A glimpse into a warped version of what her life was supposed to have been. What it could have been had she stayed with Asher and married him. For a moment, she mourned that life that she could have had, but the moment passed when the train crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.
If only Leah had known then how impactful the end of that train ride would be. As she and Maya talked about how different their upbringings were, Maya gave her an idea. “You should talk about this on social media,” she suggested. Leah thought it was a silly idea at best, but also she was unemployed and plenty of unemployed people were making good money online. They brainstormed together and just as the train pulled into Grand Central, they had it: Leah’s handle on social media would be GirlMeetsGoy.
“I bet you’ll find a lot of people will connect with your story,” Maya said. Leah wasn’t sure if that was true, but she decided to do her best. She’d post daily about her wedding planning and the challenges she and Gabe faced.