Interview With a Jewish Vampire (15 page)

Mom woke me up the next morning with her signature pancakes and bacon accompanied by fresh-squeezed orange juice. The smell wafting through the apartment was irresistible. I was happy Sheldon was asleep or it might have made him crazy, either because he was kosher and disapproved of eating trafe or because he still craved real food although he denied it.

“
These are great, Mom,” I raved as I dug in. “I didn’t know you were still cooking. You always tell me how you’re too tired to cook.”

“
For you I make breakfast. Dinner, we go out with the girls. If that’s OK with you.” She looked at me expectantly. She didn’t seem to want to bring up Sheldon but couldn’t resist being curious. “Just don’t eat too much, you don’t want to gain more weight.”

I let that pass although it stung. She was right, I had gained a few pounds and shouldn’t be eating pancakes and bacon. So why did she make them for me? My guess was that she wanted to have it both ways--to fulfill her role as an old-fashioned Jewish mother who admonishes her daughter to “eat, eat,” and as a modern one who says, “Why so fat?”

“
Where is that boyfriend of yours?” she asked me.

“
Sleeping in his coffin in the storage room.”

“
What!!! Someone will notice a coffin in there.”

“
I covered it up with a tarp.”

“
I hope Tessie Levine doesn’t decide to visit her husband’s ashes. She sits in there for hours keeping him company.”

That was alarming. What if Sheldon turned over in his sleep. Did vampires move while they slept, like humans? I’d just have to hope he slept like the dead.

“
I know meeting Sheldon must have been a shock, Mom. He’s not what you had in mind as a boyfriend for me.”

“
That’s an understatement, Rhoda. But if he makes you happy, who am I to judge? Does he make you happy?”

“
Yeah Ma, he does, but that’s not why I brought him to meet you. I never would have subjected you to the shock unless I had a good reason.”

“
Reason? What kind of reason would you need to introduce the man you love to your mother?”

“
A damned good reason, if the man you love is a vampire. It’s hard to explain this, mom. I’m working myself up to it.” I was wracking my brain about how to bring up that I wanted to turn her into a vampire. I didn’t want to freak her out. I was never any good at being subtle or diplomatic so I just blurted it out.

“
Mom, I brought Sheldon down here to turn you into a vampire.”

She stared at me for what must have been an entire minute, long enough to make me really nervous. “Rhoda, that’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” she said, looking really upset.

Then she turned it into a joke. “I don’t want to live forever. Not in this world that’s rapidly going to the dogs—or the Republicans. I don’t want to live to see global warming or overpopulation destroy the planet. And your father is up there somewhere waiting for me. What am I saying, I don’t want to drink blood! Or have fangs! My God, Rhoda, what can you be thinking?”

“
Ma, stop being so political. And you already told me you’re an atheist—you can’t believe Daddy’s in heaven waiting for you if there’s no God. You know that you’re very sick. You won’t agree to another surgery for a valve replacement—which is totally understandable considering what you’ve been through already--and I can’t bear to lose you. So this is the only way out. You’re the only family I’ve got and I love you too much. I don’t want to be an orphan.” I tactfully ignored the blood drinking and fangs protest.

I went over and gave her a big hug. A tear rolled down my cheek, not entirely unbidden.

“
Sweetheart, I’m so sorry you feel this way. I was so happy when you got married because I didn’t want you to be all alone when I was gone. Now I don’t know what to say.” Mom started sobbing. I hugged her some more and we cried together for a while. I was afraid to bring up the vampire thing again.

“
Mom, why don’t you invite the girls over tonight? I’d like you all to hear what Sheldon has to say about it.” I figured with him there we’d think of a way to convince her. And she wouldn’t make a decision without the goils anyway.

“
That sounds ominous. OK, I’ll invite them to dinner.”

I knew dinner at Century was always ridiculously early, hours before the sun went down.

“
Forget dinner. Make it dessert and coffee. The later the better.”

At sundown I tiptoed to the storage room, threw the tarp off Sheldon’s coffin and was relieved to see him inside. Somehow I’d thought the Century Village Coffin Police might have removed him overnight. Maybe Century Village residents had been stashing their loved ones surreptitiously in the storage rooms without notifying anyone to save on burial costs. The funeral home everyone used across Century Boulevard was extravagantly expensive.

Sheldon yawned sleepily when he got up, just like a human. It was cute.

“
Shel, you have a job tonight and it’s not going to be easy. You have to convince Mom to become a vampire. You’ll be answering a lot of awkward questions. Her friends will be there and I have no idea how they’ll react.”

“
You sure are good at giving a guy an unpleasant task before he even wakes up. Let me think about this for a while.”

“
We don’t have a while. Mom is waiting for us.”

He took me by the hand and walked me out to the pool. We sat and looked at the dark blue sky for a while, and smooched a little. “I have an idea,” he said. “I need to make a few calls.”

Sheldon got busy on his cell phone. He’d remembered to plug it in somewhere because it was charged. Maybe his coffin had an outlet.

He finally got the person he wanted and walked off to talk. I overheard him say, “If you do that for me, I will be eternally grateful. I know, I know, eternity is a long time for us, but I mean it.” Then he said, “Yeah, I’ll wait,” didn’t say anything for a long while, then turned to me and asked if I had some paper and pencil. I handed him the notebook I always carried around. He scribbled something and ripped the page out. He said ‘thank you’ again and hung up.

“
OK, Rhoda, you go and socialize with the girls. I’ll meet you at your mom’s apartment in an hour or so.”

“
Where are you going?”

“
I don’t want to get your hopes up in case my plan doesn’t pan out. Just trust me. If it works you’ll be really pleased. If not we’ll just have to spring vampiredom on your mom somehow.”

When I got there, the girls were all seated in Mom’s living room, arranged on her couch and one easy chair, waiting for Sheldon. Mom had served a pie she’d defrosted and cups of decaf. She’d used her good china. The girls loved coffee but no one dared to drink caffeine after noon. They looked nervous when I walked in.

“
What’s this vampire thing all about, Rhoda?” Judy asked in her usual cut-to-the-chase manner, as soon as I sat down with my coffee and pie.

“
I really don’t know, Judy, Or I do know but I’m waiting for Sheldon to get here before I tell you.”

Judy was sitting in the only comfortable chair in the living room, an orange armchair with bentwood arms. She wore a plain cotton skirt and blouse and pulled at her skirt awkwardly. I’d never seen her in pants, unlike most of the women at Century who wore pastel polyester stretch pants for all occasions. Her facial features were severe and so was her short gray hair. Judy, unlike Mom, didn’t bother much with her appearance.. In fact all the girls had let their hair grow gray. Only Mom still had hers colored dark blonde.

“
Is he waiting for the sun to go down?” Judy snickered.

“
Judy, could you please be polite,” Mom said. “Sheldon is Rhoda’s boyfriend and he’s a lovely young man. Well, maybe not young but he looks young.”

“
Oh Fanny,” Judy snorted, “you can’t possibly believe in vampires. You’re an atheist. You don’t believe in God much less supernatural beings.”

“
I believe that he’s the real thing,” Mom said forcefully, loyal to me. “Remember the stories from the old country, about golem, and
dybbuks
? Well there were legends about vampires too—our grandparents believed in those things. Maybe we’re just too rational. We dismiss things Jews believed in for centuries.”

“
They were ignorant back in the old country,” Ellen said emphatically. “Ignorant and superstitious. Now you want to go backwards?” Ellen had gotten dressed up for the occasion in matching gray pants and bolero jacket. She looked quite fashionable.

“
Who says it’s backwards?” Mom protested. “We Jews were just desperate to assimilate—not to seem weird and foreign. Where did that get us? It got us Hitler, that’s where.”

“
And now even Madonna is studying Kabbalah,” I chimed in again, apropos of nothing.

“
Don’t be ridiculous,” Judy sneered. “Who cares what Madonna thinks? How can you take anyone named Madonna seriously in the first place?”

“
What about shamans? Jews were healers,” I said. “The peasants in Russia came to them for remedies. That’s where the whole Jewish doctor thing started.”

“
My son is a doctor, at Mt. Sinai,” Ellen said, “not a shaman. You can’t compare them.”

“
I never said he was a shaman,” I sighed. No matter what you said around Ellen she’d bring up her son the doctor.

The bell rang and Sheldon walked in. I introduced him to the girls and he said, “It’s nice to meet such lovely ladies,” in his most courtly manner, trying to win them over for my sake. I gave him a kitchen chair to sit on, though he rarely had the need to sit. Unlike me, his feet did not get achy.

“
What’s the deal with this vampire thing?” Judy shot at him immediately. “You look like a regular person to me. You could use some color. A few days at the beach and you won’t look so chalky”

“
Judy,” Mom chided, “please be polite. Sheldon is Rhoda’s boyfriend. He may not be the man I had in mind for her, but he’s very sweet.”

Sheldon gave Judy his best smile, carefully hiding his fangs, and she smiled back. Judy was not immune to male charms despite her denial of any interest in the opposite sex . Actually since their husbands died all the girls had sworn off men. They were determined not to be like Gladys, who was once part of the group until she married Harold, the most obnoxious, overbearing, bombastic, single male in Century. He pursued her, she was flattered, he had money, she was poor, so she married him. She pretended to be happy, though how anyone could tolerate Harold was beyond me. He was a non-stop talker who collared me every time I saw him and bragged incessantly about the achievements of his daughters, who he made clear to me were all more accomplished than I was. We all missed Gladys, who’d been a lot of fun.

Sheldon looked uncomfortable. “I’m waiting for a friend to arrive. She should be here any minute.”

I couldn’t imagine who he was talking about, but just then the bell rang and Tessie Levine walked in, the very Tessie who sat with her husband’s ashes in the storage room. She was a short, plump, ordinary-looking elderly lady, wearing the signature Century matching pastel ensemble of lavender jogging pants with a white stripe on the side, a white blouse-style t-shirt with lavender trim and lavender nylon zippered jacket with white trim. Unlike most of the ladies she didn’t wear sneakers, but sported white leather flats. She certainly wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd.

“
Tessie,” Mom said, surprised, but polite as ever. “It’s nice to see you.” The other girls greeted her warmly; they all knew her, though not well.

“
I asked Tessie to come over,” Sheldon said mysteriously. I was as bewildered as Mom and her friends about why she was there. “Tessie is a friend of my friend Zelda.” Now I knew who he was talking to on the phone. I remembered Zelda from the B.A. meeting. “They’re both members of the Golden Grandmas, which started in New York and now has a Century Village branch. There are four Golden Grandmas here, and they’re all vampires.”

You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. I was stunned. The girls were more than stunned, they were stupefied. Judy’s eyes widened and for once, she was speechless.

“
Yes,” Tessie said, “it’s true. That’s what I am. You know the others too.” She named three other women, Hannah, Frances and Letty. The girls nodded in recognition. Everyone knew everyone down here.

“
But Tessie, we play mah-jongg together,” Miriam protested. “And Hannah and I are in the book club. I’ve known Frances for years. How is this possible?”

“
We don’t exactly advertise,” Tessie said, “but you may have noticed that none of us are at the pool during the day, and we never go to the early bird. We’re just like you except we don’t have to spend all our time at the doctor.” Her eyes twinkled. “And we can drive at night, and go dancing at night--all night. We feel like kids. No aches and pains, extra sharp vision and hearing. We play tennis, go running, and night scuba diving. We sometimes zip over to the Bahamas for some gambling—without a plane. We’ve traveled all around the world. It’s a nice afterlife.”

I noticed my mom staring at her with an expression I interpreted as envy. Mom used to be a super athlete when she was young and missed doing all those things.

“
What about drinking blood? Killing people?” Mom asked. “No more bagels and lox? No more bargain matinees. That can’t be fun?”

“
It’s a small price to pay for eternal youth, or eternal old age. You’ll see,” Tess responded reassuringly.