Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan (10 page)

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Authors: Paula Marantz Cohen

BOOK: Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan
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“
W
ho else
IS COMING TO DINNER?” MARGOT LOOKED SUSPICIOUSLY at the extra place setting as she walked into the Goodman dining room one Friday evening several weeks later. “Carla!” Margot spoke her sister's name accusingly.
Margot knew that Carla was determined to find her a “decent” man—decent being someone other than the (usually married) captains of industry or (multiply divorced) Eurotrash that Margot tended to go out with. Margot felt it her duty to be outraged by her sister's matchmaking, though, secretly, she would have been deeply disappointed if Carla ever stopped making the effort.
“I didn't invite this one,” said Carla now. “And it's not about you for a change,” she half-lied. “It's someone Mom met who she seems to think is interesting. We're hoping that maybe he can shed light on her condition.”
“A psychiatrist?” asked Margot.
“Not exactly.”
“Who then?”
At this moment, the doorbell rang and Jessie, looking flushed and excited, poked her head out of the kitchen and waved an oven mitt toward the door. “Would somebody get that? It must be Will—I mean Mr. Pearson.”
Carla went to the door and opened it. Hal Pearson, dressed in a rather shabby suit but with his hair fully combed, was standing in the doorway, holding a bouquet of flowers. “Is this the Kaplan-Goodman residence?” he asked. “Home of the fascinating Jessica Kaplan and her brilliant granddaughter, Stephanie Goodman?”
Carla had to admit that her mother was right: Hal Pearson had some charm. And he wasn't bad-looking, either. She stepped aside so that he was directly facing Margot, who was standing behind her.
Margot looked at Hal. He had a gentle, pleasant face of the kind that she normally wouldn't look at twice. Still, she did look.
Hal, for his part, stood stock-still. The sight of Margot took his breath away.
“I'm Carla Goodman.” Carla proceeded briskly with the introductions. “And this is my sister, Margot Kaplan. Margot, this is Hal Pearson, Stephanie's English teacher.”
Mark now appeared in the doorway behind Hal. Generally, he didn't get home from work until seven or eight P.M., but he had promised Jessie he would leave the office early to be on time for her dinner. He looked surprisingly cheerful given the probable headaches of the day and the fact that the work left behind would have to be completed tomorrow. It had now been almost a month since Yvette had begun to assist him in promoting the practice. Perhaps, Carla thought, seeing Mark in such good spirits, something had come of her efforts.
She gave him a questioning look and he mouthed
tell you later
while stepping forward to shake Hal's hand energetically.
“So you're Jessie's latest find,” he said almost boisterously. “She's been raving about you since Back-to-School Night.”
“She met him at Back-to-School Night?” whispered Margot to her sister. “Next she'll be bringing home stray dogs.”
“Margot!” Carla hissed. “Be nice!”
“Why doesn't everyone sit down in the living room and have a drink,” suggested Mark, embracing the role of host with enthusiasm. Carla hadn't seen him in this mode for several years—and she
was reminded that he had been a fairly gregarious and fun-loving person before the trials of medicine began to wear him down.
“We have wine and beer—or I can mix you something,” he offered.
“Beer would be fine,” said Hal.
“Gin and tonic with a twist of lime,” said Margot archly.
“There's some eggplant dip and crackers in the living room,” said Carla, leading the way. She turned to Hal. “You eat eggplant, I hope? Nightshade vegetable, you know.” Carla's knowledge of food allergies and aversions had increased dramatically since working at the Golden Pond Geriatric Center. Not that her own family were slackers in this area. Just last night, Jessie had prepared a spaghetti dinner in which the pasta had to be carefully partitioned from the meat sauce owing to Stephanie's problem with tomatoes (except, for some reason, when it appeared on pizza).
“I eat everything,” responded Hal, glancing at Margot, as though hoping to gain points for this. He had gotten over being stunned by her appearance, though his eyes continued to be drawn in her direction. “I'm from northeast Philly, Feltonville—we're not picky about what we eat out there. It's a matter of grabbing what's on the table before someone else gets it.”
“You can say that again!” exclaimed Mark. “I hail from the Great Northeast, too. Oxford Circle. Hey, did you used to hang out at the Country Club Diner on Cottman Avenue? I think I remember seeing you there.”
“Sure. I was addicted to their cheesecake.”
“Me too! My dad worked at the Wanamaker's on Cottman and the Boulevard, furniture department.”
“Probably went a hundred times,” said Hal, equally pleased by these connections. “I remember when my folks bought me my desk there. They said they didn't want me doing my homework on the kitchen table like they did. My dad supervised the old Sears warehouse on Roosevelt Boulevard that closed down about ten
years ago. He said Sears was fine for appliances, but for a desk, we had to go to Wanamaker's.”
Both men laughed. “I used to walk by that warehouse all the time,” said Mark gleefully. “Where'd you go to high school?”
“Masterman,” said Hal, referring to one of the city's elite public schools.
“Desk paid off, then. I went to Central!” It was another public school that required a test for admission.
“Two talented and gifted young men,” noted Carla. “Anyway, I'm glad you eat everything, Hal,” she continued, changing the subject. “Jessie's been working on a special meal for you all day. You seem to have made quite an impression on her.”
“And vice versa,” said Hal. “Your mother”—he looked at Carla and then let his gaze linger a moment on Margot—“seems to know a lot about Shakespeare.”
“It's a surprise to all of us,” said Margot rather dryly. “My mother has the heart of an angel and enormous common sense—at least she used to—but she hasn't got a literary bone in her body. I don't think I've seen her read a book in her life, except maybe a cookbook.”
“Perhaps you've underestimated her,” said Hal gently. “Or perhaps she's been doing more reading lately. It's amazing what great literature can do to expand the mind.”
“She
has
been helping Stephanie with her Shakespeare assignments,” noted Mark. Despite his underlying affection for Margot, he enjoyed putting her in the wrong—especially since it was a position she was so unused to occupying.
“So you're of the literature-as-psychedelic-drug school of pedagogy,” said Margot, ignoring Mark's comment and continuing to address herself to Hal.
“I suppose I am,” responded Hal, taking up the idea with a certain relish. “Dostoyevsky, for example, seems to me to be a mind-altering drug. I remember that I actually crawled under my bed to read him in college. It was cramped and dusty, but that seemed the right setting.”
“Hmm,” said Margot, obviously not prepared to be charmed by this anecdote. She too had been an English major in college, but of the pragmatic sort that reduced the literary work to an intellectual formula. She had gone on to transfer this skill to the analysis of legal evidence with great success.
“So you think Mom started reading literature and her eyes were opened?” she said, continuing her interrogation. Something about the understated certainty that Hal brought to the discussion irritated her.
“I wouldn't presume to say what's going on with your mother.” Hal shrugged. “I can only report that she seemed to have a lot to say on the subject of Shakespeare. It wasn't terribly coherent, I grant you, but that only proves that she was wrestling with new ideas and trying to work things out for herself. I have to admit that I find that early stage of discovery—when things don't quite make sense—the most exciting.”
“A lover of incoherence!” declared Margot. “I'm afraid you wouldn't get very far in the legal profession.”
“I don't know,” said Hal, smiling. “Incoherence seems to me a valuable legal strategy, to be employed when all other forms of argument fail.”
“Touché!” exclaimed Mark.
“Perhaps we should let Mom speak for herself,” interrupted Carla, sensing that her sister was getting agitated and wanting to bring things back to the original subject. “You see,” she proceeded, addressing Hal earnestly, “our mother has recently had some odd ideas about Shakespeare and, well, it might be best if she tells you how she—uh—stumbled on them.”
Before she could say more, Jessie came out of the kitchen to greet Hal. “I'm glad you could make it,” she said, touching his arm and smiling. “I can't tell you what it means to have you here.”
“I'm honored to be invited,” said Hal, smiling back.
There was a moment of silence as everyone registered an emotional charge to the encounter and didn't know what to make of it.
“Well, dinner is ready,” Jessie announced finally, breaking the silence. “Tell the children to come down.”
Mark shouted a few times up the stairs. The kids were engaged in their usual evening activities. Jeffrey was watching a rerun of
Seinfeld
(he could recite every episode practically verbatim, and had recently informed Mark's cousin Dolores that her name rhymed with a certain part of the female anatomy). Stephanie was on the computer, doing her homework and instant-messaging her friends. These two activities had become so symbiotically entangled that no parent that Carla knew had figured out the means of disentangling them. Efforts to get Stephanie off the computer inevitably resulted in her screaming that she was doing her homework, even as the little box with her screen name—“hotgirl22”—continually popped up on the book-report-in-progress.
Stephanie had initially been mortified at the prospect of having her English teacher to dinner and announced that she would remain sequestered in her room for the duration of his visit. Jessie, however, could be shrewd when she wanted. She had simply shrugged her shoulders at her granddaughter's Garbo-like pronouncement and said that she would tell Mr. Pearson that Stephanie wasn't feeling well—though he would no doubt be disappointed, since he had spoken so highly of her at Back-to-School Night.
“He did?” Stephanie had responded, eager to know more. “What did he say?”
“Only that you were one of his best students—and with such an ear for poetry! But I'm sure he'll understand if I say you're under the weather.”
“But he might not believe I'm sick and think I was trying to avoid him or something,” Stephanie protested—forgetting that this was precisely what she'd intended. “I guess I can come down for a while.”
Now that the time for her appearance had arrived, however, she seemed unsure of how to greet her teacher in the alien environment
of her home. Fortunately, Hal intuitively took up the line that Jessie had employed.
“How's my brilliant student?” he queried enthusiastically as Stephanie slunk into the room. “I've got to tell you that the essay you turned in today, ‘Why Macbeth Is So Insecure,' is a real eyeopener. I never thought to compare Macbeth to an unpopular kid, or Lady Macbeth to the stereotypical bully. I don't think I'll ever read the play again without taking into account middle-school group dynamics.” He turned to the others with an expression of genuine pleasure. “It's what makes teaching so rewarding—not so much helping the students as having the students help me see things I never saw before. I'm always surprised at what I can learn from fresh minds like this.” He nodded toward Stephanie, who blushed violently with pleasure.
Jeffrey, meanwhile, oblivious to the company, had run ahead down the stairs, sat down at the table, and poured himself a glass of milk. He was now mixing in the Hershey's syrup, rattling the spoon loudly against the glass.
“Jeffrey, would you please mix your chocolate milk more quietly,” said Carla in an angry whisper. “It's very vulgar to stir so loudly.”
“It doesn't get mixed well if I don't stir hard,” complained Jeffrey. “The chocolate stays on the bottom.”
“Well, perhaps you should mix it in the kitchen next time,” suggested Carla in an absurd effort to get the last word, “at least when we have guests.”
Jessie now motioned the rest of the group to the table, making a good deal of fuss arranging the seating. In the end, Hal was placed at her right hand, next to Carla and opposite Margot. It was a felicitous arrangement for Hal, who could look at Margot without any appearance of strain—though with the result that, in the course of the meal, he would sometimes forget to put food in his mouth or, when he did (at Jessie's urging), forget to chew it.
O
nce everyone
WAS SEATED, JESSIE TOOK HER PLACE AT the head of the table but did not sit down. She had placed two candlesticks near her setting. She took a scarf out of her pocket, draped it over her head, and lit the candles. Then she somberly sang the blessing. Everyone was surprised. The Goodmans celebrated the Sabbath on a rather erratic basis and found the seriousness with which Jessie performed the ritual now to be out of character. The whole thing was embarrassing—although even Mark had to admit that it was also strangely beautiful.
“I've never seen you so into it,” said Margot as her mother took the scarf off her head and sat down. “Even when Grandpa was alive you hardly took it seriously.”
“I wasn't thinking so much about it then,” said Jessie. “Lately, I've been more tuned in, what with Stephanie's bat mitzvah coming up—and other things.” She nodded toward Hal. “I wanted Mr. Pearson to have a traditional Shabbos dinner.”
“Actually, I'm not Jewish,” said Hal with amusement, “though family lore has it that my great-grandmother was. It would explain my taste for lox, brisket, and chopped liver. But that might only be a function of growing up in northeast Philly, where most of my friends were either Jewish or Italian—I'm also partial to
manicotti and pasta fazool. But my best friend, Gabe Stern, was an Orthodox Jew, so I've certainly had my share of Shabbos dinners. Gabe now works as a research scientist at the NIH, and I just got an invitation to his son's bar mitzvah. I remember Gabe chanting from the Torah at thirteen, and I'm looking forward to hearing his boy do it now.”
“You're looking forward to the food, too,” noted Mark, who liked to call himself a culinary Jew.
“I confess that I am,” agreed Hal.
“I know, I know.” Jessie waved her hand with a touch of irritation. “You were always crazy for my cooking.”
Carla and Margot looked at each other. “Maybe you should explain to Mr. Pearson what you mean,” said Carla.
The request for an explanation had to wait, however, as Jessie was concentrating on scooping the chopped liver from the large serving bowl and putting it onto the individual plates.
“I hope you still like my chopped liver,” she said as she gave Hal an extra-large portion.
“I like chopped liver, so I'm sure I will.” He smiled, trying to make sense of this comment. Had Stephanie perhaps brought the chopped liver in on Ethnic Foods Day?
Jeffrey had already begun eating. “Grandma's chopped liver is awesome,” he pronounced between mouthfuls.
“Jeffrey likes everything Grandma makes,” explained Stephanie with some scorn. “He even liked her venison stew.”
“My Aunt Ruchel made an excellent chopped liver back then,” said Jessie. “But everyone said mine was better. Even Kit Marlowe liked it. And he was finicky.”
Hal raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, I forgot the garnish!” She rushed back into the kitchen.
Everyone was silent for a moment until Stephanie kicked Jeffrey for putting his elbow on her fork, and a fracas ensued that forced Carla to switch places with him.
“So,” said Hal, turning to Mark when things had settled down. “I hear you're a doctor. A noble profession.”
“Not so noble anymore,” said Mark sadly. “The HMOs have sucked the nobility out of us. They're a blight on the profession.”
“I don't know about that,” said Margot, inspired to take the other side, as she often did, for the sheer sport. “Doctors got away with murder before they came along. Personally, I like to know what I'm paying for and whether I'm getting my money's worth.”
“You're being a fool,” said Mark, growing red in the face. “Medicine can't be reduced to a ledger book. What the hell am I supposed to do with the poor schlub who comes in with hepatitis C and his company's HMO doesn't happen to have a prescription plan? Pay for the Interferon myself? And what about the young woman who takes a cruise to the islands and turns up with some bacterial infection that her insurance doesn't happen to have on its list of treatable maladies? Ship her off to a leper colony?”
“There are bound to be glitches,” said Margot, as though Mark were simply trying to complicate the issue. “They'll get ironed out in time.”
“Meanwhile, let's hope you don't contract a rare parasite,” said Mark, glaring at his sister-in-law, as though the thought of her, at that moment, with such a thing was not altogether displeasing.
“I suppose there needs to be a mutual process of correction,” noted Hal diplomatically, “both sides recognizing room for error and abuse. But I do sense that what we're gaining by reining in the doctors, we're losing through the greed of the HMOs. And the biggest problem is putting a price tag on those incalculable aspects of human life.”
“Well stated!” exclaimed Mark. “Human beings are not just a collection of parts. You can't just go in for a tune-up.”
“I think you're being hypocritical,” said Margot, warming to the argument. “As a specialist you're already treating the body like
it's on an assembly line. But when someone else wants to do it, you complain.”
“Progress requires some specialization,” acknowledged Mark, “but it doesn't mean that we have to ignore the whole for the parts.”
“I agree there,” said Hal, as though this were something to which he'd given some thought. “Our modern bureaucracy—that social assembly line—doesn't know how to link part and whole, form and content, or understand the complex links between private and public life. That's where the poetic sensibility comes into play. It reminds us of these connections and carries the imprint of the soul.”
“Very eloquent,” said Margot. “Sounds like one of the English papers that I wrote in college at two in the morning.”
“I'm sure you got an A,” said Hal. “You seem to be very sharp.”
“But lacking in soul. It's always been my weak point.”
“Remediable,” said Hal. “Nothing that a dose of Shakespeare wouldn't cure.”
“So Shakespeare is your all-purpose remedy? A kind of moral castor oil.”
“Better tasting than that.”
“Maybe you need to have your patients read some Shakespeare when they come to your office,” Margot suggested to Mark. “‘To be or not to be? Whether 'tis better to have a tube placed up the rectum and live a long life, or to forgo that indignity and shuffle off the mortal coil.'”
“Funny,” said Hal.
“Not such a bad idea,” ruminated Mark. “They could read Shakespeare while sitting on the can. The prep's the worst part. It would help take their mind off things.”
Hal nodded. “And Shakespeare has quite a lot of material dealing with that end of the human anatomy. Very big on flatulence—I use that to hook the thirteen-year-old boys in my classes.”
“I'm sure you have those seventh-graders on the edge of their seats,” observed Margot.
“Margot!” whispered Carla, not wanting her to cast aspersions against Hal in front of Stephanie. Stephanie, however, was not listening, but glaring at Jeffrey across the table for hogging the breadsticks.
Jessie now came in from the kitchen with the garnish: parsley and cherry tomatoes that she laid on the side of each plate of chopped liver with great care.
“Lovely,” said Hal, looking appreciatively at his plate.
“Nice presentation,” agreed Mark, whose mood, uncharacteristically good to begin with, seemed to be improving steadily in the presence of an articulate ally. Normally, he was left to battle with Margot on his own, and since arguing was her profession, he inevitably lost.
“Mom,” said Carla, feeling it was time to move past the amenities and broach the subject they had been skirting all evening, “you were going to explain to Mr. Pearson about your, uh, knowledge of Shakespeare. I think this might be a good time.”

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