Interview With a Jewish Vampire (6 page)

I was lost in dreams of travel to exotic places with Sheldon when the plane bounced on the ground. My ears felt OK this time. I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and check my cell. My heart sank when I saw there were no messages.

I saw Mom waving frantically from the behind the barrier they set up to keep potential terrorists away from the planes. Most of the greeters were over eighty and unlikely to be stashing bombs under their brightly colored attire, but security these days seemed to involve torturing little old ladies. Mom looked smaller than she had the last time I saw her six months ago. She’d been plump her whole life, which suited her, but now she looked thin and frail. I hugged her and felt her bones under the pretty Indian flowered dress she put on for the occasion.

“
Aw Mom, are you OK? You don’t look so good. You lost a lot of weight.”

“
I think I look great. It’s the first time I’ve been a size ten since I was in high school.”

She tactfully avoided mentioning my weight, which involved one more X in the plus size department. I’d trained her years ago to shut up about it by threatening never to speak to her again if she told me one more time that I needed to go on a diet. She now knew her place. I was feeling good about my weight this visit because Sheldon was so enamored of my size. But what if he didn’t call? Would I have to find another refugee from the nineteenth century to be accepted the way I was?

My favorite part of the trip was leaving the airport and taking my first breath of tropical air. The airport looked like it could have been in any city anywhere, but even though Fort Lauderdale looked like a wasteland of gas stations, big box stores and condo complexes, the air smelled better and the sky looked bluer than it ever did in New York City. No one wore black or rushed anywhere. At least not among the retirees. When you got closer to the ocean the landscape actually started looking tropical. I guess they had to preserve some part of nature to bring in business. I felt sad because if Sheldon and I got serious I’d never be able to go snorkeling with him—my favorite sport. Maybe we could go night diving—or to those lagoons where you could see the phosphorescent fish at night. Actually, I hadn’t asked Sheldon what he did during the day. For all I knew he wouldn’t burst into flames during daylight, like they do in tacky vampire movies. Maybe he’d just sparkle like the vamps in
Twilight
. In Florida no one would notice sparkling. All the girls, and boys dressed as girls, wore glitter. I wished I could call him and find out.

Mom lived in Century Village in Deerfield Beach, north of Fort Lauderdale. She and my dad had moved there from Jersey when he got Alzheimer’s so if he wandered someone would find him and send him home. There were some advantages to gated communities—outsiders couldn’t get in, but also the demented couldn’t get out. Century was one of the oldest condos in Florida, which didn’t give it any old world charm. It just looked more like an Army base than a setting for gracious living. The houses were condo complexes, low, gray concrete buildings with balconies. Trees and bushes had grown since Mom and my dad had moved in, so at least it didn’t look like a settlement on the moon anymore. After being there for a while I forgot how ugly it was, and appreciated being able to swim in a pool outside my door and sit on a patio overlooking a faux lagoon—which was actually a repository for water runoff. Alligators were rumored to live in the lagoons, so you weren’t supposed to get too close to them, but I suspected the alligator rumors were exaggerated. No one had actually seen one but everyone had heard of a little boy who got his arm chomped off. I wasn’t taking chances. I kept away from the lagoons.

Even though Mom’s apartment in Century was spacious, it felt cramped because she followed me around hectoring me about my sloppy ways. I had never been in an apartment in Century that wasn’t immaculate. Most of them were furnished with white, squishy upholstered furniture and thick beige rugs. Mom’s apartment, however, was a spectacular exception to the standard décor. My father had been an architect and they were both obsessed with modern furniture and design. They collected classic pieces and took them to Florida, including a huge white pedestal table, bentwood chairs and a graceful glass kidney-shaped coffee table that my father had designed. The couches were long, low-slung slabs of covered foam on spare wood frames. They were elegant but incredibly hard and uncomfortable. The entire room was stunning but it was mostly for show; there was no place to curl up and read a book. I couldn’t imagine bringing Sheldon here to meet my mother; I saw him more in a
shtetl
with mud huts just like in
Fiddler
. He’d had 150 years to adjust to modern décor, but vampires and Bauhaus just didn’t compute. I wasn’t fond of 1950s modern myself. I much preferred country casual, with comfy couches you could sink into.

Mom was a neat freak, while I was constitutionally incapable of neatness. If I left a dish in the sink overnight I heard about it.

“
Rhoda, if you leave anything out we’ll have ants,” she chided me the morning after I arrived. “No orange peels on the counter please.”

“
Jeez, Mom, I left the orange peels in the sink.”

“
Why didn’t you turn on the garbage disposal?”

“
That thing is too goddamned noisy.”

We could have kept on bickering but the phone rang. The phone rang constantly at Mom’s. She was a regular social butterfly, one of the most popular girls, or “goils” as they called themselves in Century. She had three close friends and many aspirants for the position of one of the goils. The gang consisted of Mom, Judy, an acerbic heavyset pushy type who did not censor her sarcastic opinions, Ellen, a sweet former social worker who listened to everyone’s problems, and Miriam, my favorite, an oddball closet intellectual who often expressed her irreverent opinions in a deceptively soft, genteel tone of voice. Judy was on the other end of the phone this time. I could only hear Mom’s side of the conversation.

“
She’s fine. She’s very happy. She’s madly in love.” Long pause. “With a vampire,” Mom said with an embarrassed laugh. Another long pause.

“
No, I don’t think she’s lost her mind,” she said into the phone, sounding defensive. “Maybe she’s just desperate. There aren’t a lot of available single men in New York for fortyish women.”

“
Well, she’s my daughter and I’ll stick by her even if she’s a little delusional. We can’t all be as sensible as you,” she said sarcastically.

My poor mom was stuck defending my love affair with a vampire. That was harder than defending my marriage to a philanderer.

“
Yes, I’ll pick you up at five. How about the China Palace?”

The girls ate out together every night and Mom always drove. She was the only one who could still drive at night. They liked to dress for dinner as well. My mother was the most fashionable of the girls. Her walk-in closet was the envy of Century Village; unlike her friends who wore mostly pastel or beige polyester, Mom loved natural fabrics and interesting patterns. Her Indian cotton dresses and silk blouses were organized by color and type. If she was wearing purple pants, guaranteed she would have a blouse with purple in it, and a scarf and sweater to match. Her feet were still a size six and she could still wear high heels, which I never could tolerate because of my big flat feet. It was sad that her beautiful clothes were now too big for her. Most of them were size fourteen’s. It was even sadder that they didn’t fit me because I was in the XX’s.

My visits were a big deal to the ‘goils’, who looked forward to hanging out with me. They were in their eighties and at forty-one, I was the voice of “young people” to them, even though in New York, where the happening crowd was in their twenties, I was already a dinosaur. Women my age lived in the ‘burbs or Park Slope with their first husbands and kids. My first husband didn’t stick around for the kids. But I liked being treated like a kid again by Mom’s friends--being fussed over and catered to.

I suppose most New York women my age would have dreaded keeping company with a bunch of eighty-year-olds in a Florida condo, but I loved spending time with the girls. They were funny, irreverent, and had a great time doing just about anything. Mostly we went out to lunch somewhere nice, since lunches were cheap, then to a museum, or shopping, then home for a nap, then to dinner before six, never missing the early bird. After dinner we’d take a stroll on the beach. Deerfield was famous for its scenic non-commercialized beach, and long pier that stretched out into the Atlantic. Mom and I had scattered my dad’s ashes off that pier. I said Kaddish and we cried and cried. Then we went for ice cream, Mom’s favorite indulgence. Hanging out with the girls was easier than being with my own fellow journalists, who made me feel inadequate because I didn’t work on a TV show or at the
New York Times
. They also made me feel fat and frumpy, since they worked out obsessively and dressed in the latest boho fashions. There were no expectations with Mom’s friends except that I be sociable and amusing, which was easy.

At the China Palace they started grilling me about Sheldon. Judy had wasted no time in spreading the word about my latest exploits.

“
Rhoda, I hear you’re keeping company with a new guy these days?” Ellen asked politely. Unlike Judy she was always polite.

“
He’s new to me all right,” I replied. “But he’s been around for a while, 150 years or so but that’s young for a vampire.”

“
C’mon, Rhoda,” Judy chided. “You can’t kid a kidder. What’s the deal with him? Vampires, shmampires, what does he do for a living?”

“
He’s not exactly living, but he was a rabbi once upon a time. He lives as a Hasid and works as a diamond cutter, a night job.” I hadn’t told my mom yet about Sheldon’s job since it was a trade, not a profession. Even though she was a Socialist, she was still a snob. Only the Orthodox worked in the diamond district and they were as foreign to Mom and her friends as vampires. She was an atheist who disapproved of rabbis, priests, and other true believers.

“
Noooo,” Miriam said in disbelief. “You’re not the kind of girl to get involved with a rabbi. Much less a Hasidic Jew. I thought you were an atheist.”

Miriam was humoring me, and so were the rest of the girls. She just ignored the whole vampire thing, which was her way. She was very polite and wouldn’t have wanted to make fun of or contradict me.
The girls were obviously not going to believe my story about Sheldon. I don’t know why I’d told them the truth—I guess because I wanted to make it easier on Mom, so she wouldn’t have to lie to them as well. I couldn’t lie to her—I’d never been able to lie to her.

“
That’s my mom you’re thinking of, Miriam. She hasn’t been in a synagogue since she was a kid, even though you’d never know it considering how she carries on about me marrying a Jew. Rabbis are supposed to be married and have kids. Vampires are supposed to be solitary creatures of the night. Poor guy has got to be dealing with a severe identity crisis. I’m pretty confused myself.”

The Chinese food arrived, smelling garlicky and delicious. I put my napkin around my neck and dug into the lobster with black bean sauce, a specialty of the China Palace. What would it be like to never eat lobster with black bean sauce again, or anything edible again? It didn’t seem to bother Sheldon when we were at the Carnegie Deli, but he was slim and probably never had an eating problem even when he ate real food. I supposed it would be reassuring to know you couldn’t ever gain weight. I decided that if I was ever going to become a vampire I’d have to lose at least fifty pounds first. I could not imagine spending eternity in plus-size clothing.

After dinner, we drove to the beach to take our usual two-mile walk. Mom made it a few blocks before she suggested we sit and look at the ocean. She pretended she wasn’t tired but I could see that she literally couldn’t take another step. She was gasping for breath. I sat with my arm around her protectively. The girls walked on without us. After they got back, Judy suggested she and I walk to the ice cream stand at the end of the pier and get ice cream for everyone. Mom said she’d wait till we got back, looking grateful that she didn’t have to get up.

“
Rhoda, your mom isn’t doing so good, I guess you can see that,” Judy said. “She may need another surgery. You’re going to have to take her up North with you, or get her help down here. She can’t manage alone much longer.”

“
She’s already had a quadruple bypass,” I said. “She doesn’t have any blood vessels left to bypass. She’s very independent. I don’t think she’d accept help—except mine, and I don’t want to move to Florida. I have no space for her—I live in a tiny studio.”

I didn’t think I could bear to lose Mom. She was all I had in the relatives department, I’d tried to have kids with my ex—but not very hard. We were both too busy with our careers and his career included the
shiksa
in the next cubicle. My mom waited till she was in her forties to have me, and was grateful not to have any more kids because she said that taking care of my dad and me was enough, but I think she just wasn’t the nurturing type. In another era she would have been a CEO. She liked running things, which didn’t make her the easiest mom to get along with when I was a kid. But she was fiercely loyal and was always there when I needed her. Now it was my turn to be there for her. She was dependent on me and I had to save her life. I didn’t care that she was in her eighties, I couldn’t let her die.

I got home after a week in Florida, even more frantic that I hadn’t heard from Sheldon. While I was in Florida I’d obsessively checked my cell phone and called my home phone for messages from Sheldon. Nothing. I couldn’t understand it. We’d gotten so close that night when we saw
Fiddler on the Roof
. He’d opened up to me, showed me his tortured Jewish inner child. Then again, what could I have been thinking? The guy was a vampire, or he said he was a vampire. The real question was what was wrong with me? Was I so desperate for a man who treated me decently that I’d buy any story I was told? Betrayal by my ex had undermined any trust I’d ever had in men—which wasn’t a lot to begin with. Right now I wasn’t sure of anything. Maybe Sheldon really had been putting me on. What proof did I have of his real identity—phony fangs, a trick mirror that didn’t fog up, a low body temperature? What was wrong with me? Why did I believe him in the first place? Maybe he was just another player trying to get laid. But last time he didn’t want sex. What was that about? Men—alive or dead—had always been a mystery to me—they still were.