Chapter 10
My family wasn’t religious. I set foot in synagogue exactly four times a year if no one had a baby, a bar mitzvah, or a wedding.
Twice for Rosh Hashanah, twice for Yom Kippur.
And we kept what we joked was called “Maryland kosher,” meaning we basically kept kosher in the house, but crabs were the exception.
Because those were eaten off newspaper, not plates, and typically outdoors at a picnic table, they didn’t upset the balance.
At least that’s what we told ourselves.
But every Friday night, we all gathered at my parents’ house for Shabbat dinner.
Me, my sister, her husband, their growing brood, occasionally Uncle Gil, and always my grandmother Sylvia, who lived with us.
She came to America when she was five from some town in Russia whose name seemed to contain the entire alphabet.
It didn’t matter what plans I had—and that included when I was in college—my presence was expected. Demanded. Required. And no, attending Shabbat at Hillel on campus did not qualify as good enough.
So the first week of my employment was no different.
Some of the girls from the office said they were going out for drinks and invited me to join them, but I had to explain that Friday nights were nonnegotiable.
I doubted that would change even if I moved to New York—they would expect me on that train home every Friday afternoon.
“I get it,” Carol said. “If I miss church on Sunday, my parents will disown me.”
“Yeah, but you have a lot to confess to,” Gladys said.
“I’m not Catholic!”
“Maybe you should be—you could use a clean slate.”
We all laughed. But I still left promptly at five, watching as the girls walked in the opposite direction while I went to catch the bus home.
The job wasn’t all I had hoped for—typing all day was tedious and I longed to interview people and collect information, sifting through and slotting it into the inverted pyramid to make sure readers got the most important information first. It drove me crazy when an article buried the lead or put unimportant details too close to the top.
But it wasn’t my place to fix these errors—and unlike with Fields, who wanted feedback, if another reporter traced an overhaul of their work to me, not Editorial, I’d wind up out on my behind pretty quickly.
I did regret losing that single avenue to enjoying my work.
Loath as I was to admit it, reworking Jack’s articles had been a highlight of my week.
But I maintained hope that it would lead to more.
I couldn’t give that up. I had to believe things were going to change—even if not as quickly as I wanted them to—so that I could have a chance to achieve more than a secretarial job as a pit stop on the way to marriage.
I wanted more than that so badly I could taste it.
Yet it was still dangling out of reach, a couple of floors above my head.
I got home, called a quick hello, and ran upstairs to freshen up, change out of Betty’s dress before I got caught, and scrub the typewriter ink off my fingers. If I was smart, I told myself, I would start wearing my own dresses on Fridays, so I wouldn’t risk Betty spotting me in hers.
The house smelled of fresh challah, my mother’s brisket, and the onions that seasoned various potato dishes.
There was no better scent than a Jewish household on a Friday night, and I hurried back downstairs, hungry, tired, and ready to fall into bed after dinner, where I was greeted with my alternative to success.
I stopped short at the sight of a man sitting next to my seat at the table, which had been rearranged to squeeze in the extra spot.
I glanced at my mother, bustling around the dining room, placing dishes of food, and my sister, who was helping her, though she snaked a hand behind herself to rub her lower back frequently.
My mother caught my eye and inclined her head toward my chair, telling me to sit.
I obliged but wasn’t happy. As much as I didn’t want to be serving the food after a week of working, it was infinitely preferable to my family staring at me during an attempted fixup.
“Hello,” I said cautiously.
He looked over at me, and my heart sank.
This was not some dashing stranger who would understand my desire to have a career before a family.
He was at least ten years older than me, not much taller, heavyset, and balding.
He wore glasses, behind which were a pair of mildly crossed brown eyes, over a nose that a girl would have had fixed by now.
If I had children with this man, they would be doomed, even with the obligatory sweet sixteen nose job.
“Hello,” he said around a mouthful of my grandmother’s mock chopped liver.
And he talked with his mouth full. Nope. Absolutely not. I may have been twenty-two, unmarried, and employed—a trifecta of shandas—or shames—according to my family, but I did have standards.
“Judy, meet Gordon Levy. He’s a cantor.” My mother was brimming with pride.
“Shouldn’t a cantor know to wait until we say the motzi to eat?” I clapped a hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and the consequences would be—
“Judith!” My mother was horrified. Uncle Gil’s lips were pursed in dissatisfaction though not surprise.
Betty blinked heavily and shook her head.
Her husband, Reuben, slapped a hand to his forehead.
Only my father and grandmother looked amused, though my father quickly replaced his almost smile with a stern look after a glance at my mother.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long week. I’m overtired. I shouldn’t have—”
“You’re not wrong,” Cantor Levy said amiably. “But I find that deference to elders is more important than blessings, and your grandmother insisted I try her chopped liver.”
“Mock,” I said. “It’s made of lentils.”
“Don’t give away family recipes unless you’re planning to marry him,” my grandmother said. She reached across the table and put a hand on mine. “I don’t think we’re worried about that tonight though.”
“Sylvia!” My mother said.
But I was bolstered by the support.
“Your parents tell me you started a new job this week,” Cantor Levy said. “At a newspaper?”
I nodded. “The Washington Digest.”
“Oh,” he said noncommittally. “I subscribe to The Washington Post.”
So did we, but I didn’t like the way he was shrugging off my new job. Never mind that I didn’t even read The Digest.
“We subscribe to both,” my father said.
“We do?” I asked.
He winked at me. “As of this morning. Delivery starts Monday.”
My heart swelled in my chest. As mad as he should have been that I didn’t bother with Uncle Gil’s interview, he was proud of me.
My mother pulled a matchbook from the credenza, and the table quieted as she lit the candles and then covered her eyes to say the traditional Shabbat prayers. We all said, “Shabbat shalom,” and then she asked if Cantor Levy would like to lead us in the motzi—the prayer said before eating.
Not that we literally ever said it except on Friday nights or as part of the Passover seder.
But Cantor Levy opened his mouth, and his clear tenor rose, far too loud for our dining room, in a voice that was better suited to shul than a family dining table.
I wondered, as he drew the syllables out longer than any human needed to, who was singing to his congregation tonight.
I also wondered how such an ugly man could have such a lovely voice, but I supposed it balanced out.
Dinner was easy enough—largely because I was too exhausted from the week to do much to put this man off. But when the meal was finished, and I stood up to help my mother clear the table, she stopped me.
“You should take Cantor Levy to the living room,” she said. “Get to know him a little.”
The only times I had been allowed to sit on the white sofas in our formal living room were when I was in trouble—big trouble—or when my parents were telling me someone had died.
Betty’s kids weren’t allowed to play on the furniture in there.
And I hadn’t graduated to sitting unless I had crashed the car and needed a stern lecture.
Or—I glanced at my grandmother—no, she was definitely still breathing.
“Mom, I’m awfully tired and—”
“Be polite to our guest,” she hissed at me.
I looked to my dad for help, but he pretended not to notice. He would subscribe to a newspaper for me, but stand up to my mother? That was uncharted territory full of unknown perils.
I was on my own.
“Cantor Levy, would you like to join me in the living room?”
“I’d be delighted,” he said, rising and offering me his arm. I pretended not to notice. It was all of a ten-foot journey after all. Though I did note that I was a smidge taller than him in my three-inch heels. For me, that was quite the feat.
“My parents must like you,” I said wryly as he sat on the sofa. I opted for an armchair. The white sofas gave me the heebie-jeebies after so many years of lectures on them.
“Why’s that?”
“I’m not allowed in this room.”
He chuckled. “How old are you anyway? Nineteen?”
My mouth turned down. My mother had probably knocked a couple of years off my age to lure him here. I was bordering on spinster territory according to her after all.
“Twenty-two. I graduated from the University of Maryland last month.”
“Really?”
“Is that so surprising?”
“To still be unmarried, well—yes.”
Here it was. “Cantor Levy—”
“Gordon,” he said amiably. “We’re not in shul tonight.”
“Yes, well, you should know that I have no interest in getting married anytime soon.”
He looked confused.
“I want to make a name for myself in journalism.”
“Why?” The question was said without disdain but with genuine incredulity.
“Because I love it,” I said. “Why did you become a cantor?”
“Well”—he puffed out his chest, and the resemblance to a bespectacled toad became uncanny—“you’ve heard me sing.”
“Yes, well . . . that’s how I write. Like how you sing.”
“That’s hardly a realistic comparison.”
I wondered what would happen if I yelled for my father and said this man had put his hand up my skirt.
He’d show him the door—unless my mother insisted that was grounds for marriage.
Not worth the risk. Though it had worked when I was seventeen and Uncle Gil had come to dinner with a girlfriend and her creepy son.
But a cantor was a different story altogether.
I was saved by my grandmother wandering into the room and plopping down on the other, unoccupied, sofa. “In my day, an unmarried man and woman needed a chaperone,” she said. Then she belched, closed her eyes, and began to snore.
Loudly.
Too loudly.
In fact, every time Cantor Levy started to speak, the snores got louder, to the point where it was a futile endeavor and he eventually rose to leave. My grandmother opened one eye and grinned at me before resuming her fake snores.
“I suppose I should be going,” he said, standing. “Shabbat services in the morning and all. You should come—Temple Beth Shalom.”
Beth Shalom was an Orthodox congregation a couple of miles away. Men didn’t sit with women, and services there could go five or six hours easy. I would absolutely not be doing that.
“Thank you so much for the offer, but I’m afraid I am otherwise engaged tomorrow morning.”
His brows came together. “On Shabbat?”
“Yes. Orthodox life just isn’t for me.”
He opened his mouth to argue, and my grandmother let out a little sleep shriek that I was sure was actually a disguised laugh.
“I see. Yes, well, if you have plans on Shabbat, I suppose this isn’t going to work anyway.”
“No, Cantor Levy, it is not. Good night.”
“Tell your parents I said thank you for the lovely meal.”
I told him I would, but I remained in the living room while he left. The second the front door closed, my grandmother’s eyes sprang open. I plopped down in the spot next to her on the forbidden sofa and leaned my head on her shoulder. “Thank you.”
She put an arm around me. “You’ll marry a man who behaves—and looks—like that over my dead body.”
“Grandma!”
“What?”
“Don’t say that in here! I’m only allowed on these sofas when I’m in trouble or my parents need to tell me someone died.”
She reached up and pinched my cheek. “It’ll take more than a white sofa to kill me.
Though your mother might come after you for rejecting a cantor.
” She pulled a small wrapped chocolate from her pocket, rubbed it between her hands like she was trying to start a fire, and then opened it.
With a hand on me to steady her, she stood up, went to the other sofa, and smeared the now-melted chocolate on the seat.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panicked. I was going to get blamed for this. I knew it.
“Bubbelah, do you think this is my first time dealing with your mother? We’re going to tell her he stained her good sofa. And I doubt she’ll smell to see that it’s chocolate. He won’t be back.”
I laughed merrily. The rest of my family may have thought I was pure trouble, but if anyone questioned where I came from, they needed to look no further than my grandmother.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me everything about this job. Do you know I had a job when I first came here? I worked as a soda girl, and I loved every minute of it.” I did know that, but I let her reminisce before I told her all about my adventures from the week.
Though I did leave out Patricia’s birth control advice.
We were still on the white sofas after all.