The Matzo Ball Heiress (10 page)

“Jake’s going to have to call Marcy or Rebecca then. He’ll just have to do it, poor soul. I would help you two out, but I have a long-term reservation on an expedition cruise down the Amazon. You understand, don’t you? I am going to study native medicine with a shaman. You don’t want me to cancel that, do you?”

“No snorkeling?” I snarl.

“No, but I just paid for the optional extension to the Inca ruins. I thought I’d get some culture this time—and I have Portia Seidner’s insider shopping addresses for Cuzco. She told me to avoid the alpaca sweaters at Machu Picchu, but says there’s excellent quality to be found in the city. I’ll get you one if you like.”

“Not necessary.”

“I’m going to have to speed this up. I’m at Saks and my shopper just brought over some lightweight pants for the jungle I might like—”

“Yeah, bye.” I nearly slam down the receiver on the near stranger who gave birth to me. September 11 was a definite anomaly. I lay my head on folded arms, paralyzed with self-pity until I hear a key at the door. I raise my head again.

Vondra opens the door clutching a fragrant paper bag that she sets on her tidy desk. “Hysterical thing just happened.”

“What?” I say in a miserable whisper as my R. Crumb screen saver kicks in.

“I’m down in the deli getting my ciggies, and while the counter guy’s reaching for them I see one of the tureens says Chicken Soup and the other Split Pea with Jam. And I’m having a stupid spell, so I ask the deli man about the soup. He looks perplexed and says, ‘Jam very good.’ I have to clear this up, so I say, ‘Jam, like strawberry jam?’ He stares at me like I’m an idiot. ‘No, no, pig jam!’ ‘Pig jam?’ I say, and then we both realize our mix-up at the same time. You know, the way in Spanish
j
and
h
have a similar sound. Anyway, we start laughing and the other customers are looking at us like we’re
both
idiots—”

“That’s pretty funny,” I offer feebly.

KEEP ON TRUCKING! reads my current screen, in psychedelic lettering.

“It gets better. I asked him to explain to me why Jose starts with a
j
and
huevos rancheros
starts with an
h
? And he laughs so hard he gives me the soup for free. By the way, did you notice the deli is all different? Jose says he borrowed a book from the library on feng shui. Can you imagine? What next, the gas station is going to feng shui the minimart?” She pauses and studies my face for a second. “Hey, is there something wrong?”

I burst into tears, the kind that come with gasps for air.

“You’re freaking. You gotta take a breath, start from the beginning.”

I inhale and exhale, and say, “The beginning is I had a date with one of the guys from the matzo shoot, and I let my guard down and got myself in an awful position.”

“Happens to all of us.”

“The middle is I am rich.”

This one takes Vondra off guard and she looks at me funny. “Money ruins everything,” I continue. “It ruined my parents—well, maybe my dad’s sexual confusion helped speed that to a close, but money didn’t help.”

Vondra is silent, wearing a worried expression.

“And I’ve just realized for the ninety-ninth time my mother doesn’t love me.”

“That couldn’t be true,” she says softly.

“If Mom loves me it’s in a small sector of her brain.” I sniff hard. “You know what a seder is, right?”

“Of course, the Passover meal.”

“It’s supposed to be the big family get-together.” I stop again to breathe. “It’s practically written in the Bible that your family has to hang together on Passover. But my family never celebrates it. Maybe they did when I was four or five, but not in years. The biggest feast of the year for Jewish people, and we’re the family that caters it all.”

“Your family does catering? I got it wrong then, I thought—”

“No, I mean, our products are on every Jewish table in America in the spring. And I mean every table. Vondra, my family is very, very rich.”

“You said that already. I thought you were well-off but—”

“Not well-off. Filthy rich. And let me tell you, rich stinks.” I take a second to sniffle. “I’d trade it in a second for the love you get from your family.”

And then I go to pieces altogether.

I never wanted my friends to see me this way. I’m no weepy poster child for The Poor Little Rich Girl Preservation Society, because I wasn’t beaten or raped or orphaned. I was never dragged through a nasty custody battle; my folks waited until I left college before they separated. My parents do care about me, even if it takes a world catastrophe for me to hear it. I have a life most people surveyed would put on the plus column. Not a lot of close friends, but enough. A creative career. No money worries. Vondra leans over and pulls me into her arms.

“Okay, now I’m getting claustrophobic,” I say into her elbow when I really do need some air.

She sets me free and says, “You’re really that wealthy?”

My forced smile straddles misery and relief at finally releasing the truth.

Vondra hands me a folded tissue from her pocket. “You have mucus running out of your nose.”

“Thank you,” I say with a wipe.

She holds my hand as if I just said I have weeks to live. “Is there anything else I can do for you right now? Would you like to take a walk in some fresh New York City polluted streets, maybe?”

“Will you come to my seder?” I ask. “I don’t have much family—”

Vondra strokes my wrist reassuringly. “Baby. Of course. And as far as I’m concerned we are family. You’re like my sister.” She smiles. “My filthy rich white sister.”

“Can you say that on television?”

Vondra looks puzzled. “That you’re filthy rich?”

“No.”

“That you’re white?”

“No, that we’re family.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Where am I going? Go ahead and tell it.”

So I do. About Jared S. and standoffish Tonia, and the scheming Steve Meyers whose help I need to save the family business. And then about adorable Sukie the Tibetan Jew and most importantly, Jake’s proposed masquerade to save the family trademark.

Another deliveryman arrives, this one with our deluxe sushi lunch. She opens the plastic tray and places it between us.

“Come on, take the crab rolls, Heather. You know you want them.”

She’s right. I live for crab rolls. I force a smile and take a nibble of one. There’s yet another knock on the door. Followed by the entrance of a beautiful man impeccably dressed in a black suit and tasteful green tie. It’s Mahmoud Habib, who has taxied down from Le Cirque to say hi to Vondra.

“I’m selfish. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see this gorgeous thing again.” He gives Vondra’s ready hand a suggestive squeeze.

She leads him over to me by the cuff of his jacket. “This is Heather.”

I force a hand out in greeting. “Glad to meet you.”

“The famous Heather,” he says after a shake.

Mahmoud is marquee material, with dark brown skin set off by green eyes and the long lashes that you hardly ever see outside of Disney animated films. His salt-and-pepper hair is styled neatly and expensively. And my God, that lusty voice. Deep. An Arabic variant on the graying leading man who still can get away with starring opposite the latest ingénue. No wonder he’s friends with Omar Sharif. He’s a younger version of him.

Vondra is peacock proud. “How did the French ambassador like Le Cirque? Was he as tough a critic as you’ve heard?”

“He gave the meal twenty-eight out of thirty stars, and the wine twenty-nine out of thirty stars. I said, ‘Thirty stars?
Monsieur
, what kind of system is that?’”

I force a lumpy smile as Vondra chuckles into Mahmoud’s neck. His appreciative laugh in return is throaty and likable.

After a lively conversation about the day that was at the U.N. Security Council, I cough and say, “I have to get home.” Anger and envy is clouding my brain.

Seconds after I shakily unlock my apartment door, Jake rings.

“She said no?” he says incredulously after I spill the gory details.

“Didn’t even consider it. She’s going to the Amazon to study with a medicine man.”

Jake pauses to digest my report. He knows my mother’s dilettantish comings and goings well enough to know that’s the God’s honest truth. “Well, okay, on the brighter side, Greg had a great idea. We should ask Gertie to pose as our grandmother.”

“You’re going to ask her?”

“Already did. Gertie loved the idea! She must have pinched my cheek ten times over the course of the day. I thought she had plenty of family. Turns out she has outlived everyone. All these years Gertie was alone on Passover!”

“That’s good.” I mumble. “But I’m really having second thoughts about this again. I can’t see pulling it off.”

“Heather, I know you can do it for me.” Jake is not above whimpering.

“I have my friend Vondra coming,” I say hesitatingly. “We just need a few more people now, maybe one or two.”

“Maybe we can pass her off as one of those Jews from Ethiopia, the falafels.”

“The Falashas.”

Jake laughs. “How dumb do you think I am?”

“Regardless, there was a woman in my Anthropology 101 class at Brown who was an Ethiopian Jew. I’ve forgotten what the better word is, but she told my study group that Falasha is a very disparaging name to the community. Anyhow, can’t Vondra just be my business partner? Friends come to seders, don’t they? Or is it always families only?”

“You’re asking me? The last time I was at a seder Jimmy Carter was in office.”

“Help me, Lord.”

“Who else? Who else?” Jake mutters to himself on the phone.

“I
guess
I could invite my new friend, Sukie. She’s half-Jewish and says she’s always wanted to go to a seder.”

“What’s the other half?” Jake asks.

“Tibetan.”

“Falashas. Tibetans. We’re in different circles, kiddo. That’s for sure. So tell me again about that mailman. I really think we’re going to need someone who can actually read Hebrew.”

“I’ll see if I can mention it to him,” I say nebulously. “He may be on vacation.” This is madness.

Before I call Bettina, I sneak a look in the makeup mirror in my pencil drawer. My eyes are red and bulging from my constant bouts of crying. I sigh and dial.

“You’re taking the easy way out,” Bettina says sternly.

“Excuse me?” I am thrown for a loop. Begging my mother isn’t trying hard?

“So your mother said no. Invite your father. Track him down in Amsterdam.”

My silence answers her.

“Are you going with my methodology or not? Why are you paying me?”

Why indeed? “I don’t have an address or phone number for him.”

“What about e-mail?”

“He said he’d send me his new e-mail address after he moved to Europe but he never did.”

“You can figure it out. Call the American consulate. Maybe he’s registered with them.”

“People register when they travel in Pakistan. I’ve heard the only thing an American has to fear in Amsterdam is getting fat on beer or Indonesian food.”

“Not true. I spent a month in Amsterdam. I had to register after I had spacecake and got my wallet stolen.”

Spacecake? I can’t imagine Bettina stoned. She’s wacky enough without hunger giggles. What other therapist in New York has a nude painting of herself in the hallway?

“Try the Internet too. There can’t be too many Greenblotzes in the U.S., let alone Holland. You’re a documentary producer. I don’t have to tell you how to find someone.”

I want the woman I’m paying to get on my back off my back. “I’ll think about it, Bettina.”

When Dad abruptly moved to Bali six months after my college graduation, and one month after Mom agreed to a separation, Jake invited me to dinner.

Where was Siobhan, his new Irish girlfriend that went everywhere with him?

Before the waiter could take our order, Jake took a breath and said, “Don’t say anything to your mother, but your father is a bisexual.” Jake may not be hip, but he has two parents who were killed in gory circumstances, and he is not one to mince words. “I’m the only one in the family he’s told. And that’s about all he told me, so don’t bother asking for details. He has also given me the temporary go-ahead to run things until the summer board meeting. He’s giving you his vote.”

I desperately wanted to talk to my father about this bold-type news. I had suspected there were men or a man involved with my parents’ final breakup. Maybe we could finally clear the air. But Dad was either mortified or shackle free: he was simply not returning messages I’d left with some houseboy with a heavy Balinese accent. Indeed, it was my shaken mother who finally returned my call: “I’m not sure why he left. Your father got strange after you left home.”

She had to know what Jake had revealed to me. “Strange?” I prodded, hoping she’d start elaborating on her own before I would have to say “Dad” and “bisexual” in the same sentence.

She burked the unmentionable issue with a laundry list of faults: “There are only so many years you can hear a man say
pit-sa
instead of pizza.” And: “The nose pads on his eyeglasses are always broken.” This was apparently as annoying to her as his obsession with his natural fibers, which got to the point where he wrote SOL GREENBLOTZ on his buckwheat pillows with a black laundry pen, so the maid would stop making up his (separate) bedroom with Mom’s low-allergen polyester-fiber pillows.

“Is that all?” I asked with sheeplike docility, eyes screwed up. “Why the separate bedrooms?” For God’s sake, don’t make me say the obvious.

“I snore. If you ever talk to the idiot, tell him to get his rock collection out of my closet. I’m going to throw them out soon. They’ve been sitting there for twenty years.”

Alone in my bedroom, still mulling over Bettina’s suggestion about tracking Dad down, more memories stir inside my brain.

Dad still has never spoken to me about his marital problems or his typical day abroad. During my PBS research days, I talked out some of my theories about him to an empathetic gay co-worker who had once been married to a nurse and raised two children with her. He told me that Bali, where Dad was living at the time, made perfect sense to him as a hideaway for an American in sexual transition. “Maybe your father is seeking an Eden he can be free in,” my co-worker suggested, passing me Cheez Doodles.