The Matzo Ball Heiress (3 page)

I met him at a work-related party I forced myself to attend. During a group conversation about disturbing baby trends, Daniel held the floor with his description of a baby girl he’d seen at an adult Halloween party. The infant had been dressed as a sexy cat; she had on lipstick, furry ears and baby fishnets.

Later I was feeling tipsy on an empty stomach and searched out the Pringles. Daniel had the same idea. My confidence boosted by two vodka sours, I told him about how every time I see someone with great curls I think of one of my favorite kid’s books,
Ramona the Pest
.

“I don’t think I remember that one,” he said after a munch.

“A girlie book. Ramona Quimby got in big trouble from her kindergarten teacher for pulling a classmate’s perfect curl.”

Daniel smiled seductively, bobbed his head toward me and said, “Go ahead and pull it.”

Daniel was thrilled that he was dating a Greenblotz—his grandmother would be ecstatic! He pushed me to get together with him as often as possible. On the fifth date in two weeks he handed me a syrupy poem (written in scarily robotic handwriting) comparing the seder family tradition to a garden of orchids, each vibrant bloom representing a cherished family member. I was so grateful to have someone in my life during the month of March that I let the bad poetry go and tried to follow Daniel’s tortured analogy. “My family would be more like a garden of moss,” I said, and then went out on a limb and admitted that there is little love in my clan. When I added that the Greenblotz family has not held a seder since I was a small child, he chose not to believe me.

“You’re so deadpan,” he laughed.

It was as if I said the House of Windsor doesn’t really drink tea. He laughed harder when I repeated my confession. I held his elbow hard and said, “Daniel, please take this seriously. This is so hard for me to tell anyone.”

During our awkward foreplay that night, Daniel maneuvered over my body with the subtlety of a moon rover. I had mentally broken up with him even before the condom tip made an accidental, ludicrous shadow puppet on his wall. It looked like a mini court jester was about to enter me.

“It’s over,” I said the next morning from a bright yellow wooden stool in his blinding-white kitchen. Of course it dawned on me that I would be alone on Passover, which started the very next night, while one of New York’s very available single ladies would undoubtedly snap him up in a flash. I don’t think this “catch” had ever been broken up with. His lips opened, and then shut with considerable effort. He grinned awkwardly and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

The bonehead called a week later to see if I had calmed down. “I know what started this. Was it because I didn’t want you to wear my 501’s so you wouldn’t get lady smells in my crotch? I wasn’t singling you out. Every girl I’ve ever dated has stunk up my crotch.”

Yes, I am dateless this year, not that Passover is my Valentine’s Day. But it would be nice to have someone special in my life to get me through this awkward month. I’ve never made it past six months with anyone though. If I don’t get dumped, I usually do the dumping just before the
seder
season. I can’t trust just anyone else to understand my fractured family. I’d rather be alone than with a man who thinks I’m being histrionic.

At least I have my documentary producing in full gear to distract me. I don’t work because I have to, I work because I need to or I’d go crazy like Aunt Shara or my grandmothers. Idle money breeds dementia; look at history. Has there ever been a well-adjusted prince? It’s hard to be normal when your first jar of Gerber apple sauce is served off priceless porcelain. Documentary-making forces me to leave my world of privilege and squeeze myself into someone else’s Payless shoes.

The new film I’m working on, a biographical look at pioneer women in the sex field, is the lucky recipient of a $30,000 Guggenheim fellowship as well as major HBO funding.

My producing partner and closest friend, Vondra Adams, is a grant application genius. She was the one who wanted us to team up after we separately produced a number of segments that got considerable attention from the top of the PBS ladder. Vondra was convinced that, cynical as it sounds, a production company helmed by two women, one black, one Jewish, would be magnets for funding. I was worried that they would look at my personal finances. If so, we wouldn’t have qualified. But they didn’t, and she was right on the money: we’ve received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Women Make Movies, Sisters in Film and B’nai Brith.

Since our entire production company is an office of two, we’re lucky our sense of humor is almost identical. Our only roadblock so far was the initial tension we had on who gets first billing on our films. From Vondra’s tone of voice, it was going to get ugly. Because of my hatred of family bickering, I’ve never really been able to stomach conflict. So before it could turn into any kind of meaningful fight, I bit the bullet and suggested listing ourselves alphabetically, so I always come last. The deal was sealed in the Parthenon Coffee Shop, still our favorite Flatiron-district coffee shop. (Nikos and Mike, two of the twelve waiters from last year’s
Neo-Gods of Greek Diners
calendar, work there.) In a buoyant mood after the credit order was settled, Vondra insisted that we flip our names every other film if our newly christened company, Two Dames Productions, took off. That hasn’t happened. She’s obviously forgotten or regrets her promise. I don’t want any ugliness to reemerge, so I’ve let it slide. Just as well. Since that salvaged afternoon in the Parthenon, we’ve only had one other fight: who first came up with our running joke imagining tofu “haggis” showing up in natural-food stores next to textured “chicken” and “pork.” Why would this be so important to her? Yet Vondra went ballistic when I said that was my idea. I have a great memory and was able to pinpoint the exact moment I first made the crack, but she wouldn’t let it go at that. I finally said “Fine. Let’s agree to disagree.” (But it really was my joke.)

On the whole, though, I admire and adore Vondra, even if at times I’m jealous of her magnetism to pretty much the entire male population, and even more resentful of her fantastic relationship with her family. I’m grateful we have gone into a most productive partnership. My career is the one thing that’s right in my life. Another three shoots on our current documentary and I’d say we’re ready to edit. Then, it should be an easy trot to the production finish line, as
The Grand Ladies of Sex
is already prebought by Cecelia Neville, vice president for documentaries over at HBO. Cecelia is the most important person in the nonfiction-film industry. She knows her demographic: once she’s contracted enough films about environmental treachery, triumph over disease and inspiring disadvantaged youth for her award quota, she’ll buy anything with the word
sex
in it, even if it’s about a bunch of elegant old women saying the words
gonorrhea
and
erectile difficulty
.

Despite our solid working relationship and close friendship, I haven’t let on to Vondra what I’m worth. I’m amazed that Vondra has no idea what I’m worth. After all, there’s a lot of media coverage of the factory, and Vondra’s not dumb. But she thinks my family factory houses a nice-size cottage industry, and I prefer it that way. What Izzy Greenblotz didn’t count on while visualizing an affluent future for his descendants is that no one really likes anyone with serious dough. So I just never mention my finances to anyone except my accountant.

Vondra’s family, Southern Baptist Alabamans, branched out to the predominantly black neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. And as Grandma Lainie used to say, “How is she supposed to know from matzo?”

I would love to have scheduled a Passover shoot to speed up our documentary, but I have to be available to keep up appearances for the media on the matzo beat. For the next two weeks, my surname comes first, and I must put in time at the factory store. Jake’s request, of course, because this gets lots of media coverage for the company. A prominent story on CNN or MSNBC about the family still baking and selling the matzo is worth more than a year’s worth of advertising. I cab it down to the Lower East Side Greenblotz factory every other day and will get behind the counter and
sell sell sell
with the cameras clicking; or I will lead curious folk on a factory tour, the way my father did before he’d had enough. Some families come back year after year with their children and grandchildren. The veteran shoppers pinch my cheek like I’m a favorite niece.

What staggers me about our current family power structure is that my cousin Jake treats running our factory as a gift not a burden.

I’m not completely guilty about my conspicuous absence from daily operations. There’s some help, in addition to my meager once-a-year contributions. Jake’s brother oversees Florida. The Sunshine State is our second-biggest market. Despite my misgivings about Greg’s fun-comes-first nature, he does do a decent job despite his minimal effort. After the 2000 election, Jake kept joking with me that Greg is our Jeb Bush. “He delivers Florida for us.” I’ve rarely seen Greg in the past decade, at board meetings mostly, and when I have, he’s sunbaked and talks nonstop about game fishing. Jake is amused by his “playboy” (I’d say “misogynist”) brother who’s had six girlfriends in three years. I heard Jake talking about him to a Midwest distributor who brought his vacationing family on a factory tour: “My brother is a real character, a real ladies’ man. Tell me, how many Jews you see game fish?”

Although Jake is only thirty-four, three years older than I am, he has the kibitzing voice of the shuffleboard players on retirement cruises. That manner and his rapidly receding hairline often get him mistaken for a middle-aged manufacturing maven.

Beyond our joking, Jake and I have little in common, but I thank the heavens for his existence. He’s more family to me than my parents are. After his parents were killed in the car crash, Jake had a few wild years, living off his large dividends. He spent many weekdays whittling money away at Belmont Track, and through even seedier locales, like the jai alai arena and dog track, both in the blue-collar areas of Connecticut. Now he pays the big dues in our lot, but he genuinely gets a kick out of running the factory. Appropriately enough, Jake has the lion’s share of the press. He’s a focused man. Focused on matzo. Focused, but I’m betting never truly happy, as he still won’t marry Siobhan. You bet this is an issue that hovers over their bliss like a circling vulture.

Siobhan and Jake have been shacking up together for ten years, since he was twenty-four. They first met in Jake’s senior year at SUNY Buffalo, when Siobhan was an exchange student. Jake’s good-natured mother was still alive then. Elsa Greenblotz was the one who pushed a school for her son where how much money he had was less important than how likable and smart he was. Jake wore ripped Levi’s and kept a run-down car on campus to disguise his true financial worth. Then he brought Siobhan around to his parents’ gargantuan house with three floors and a pinto bean–shaped pool, a block away from my grandparents’ own minimansion. Jake once told me that until Siobhan saw how big his home was, she thought he was just another adorable American attending a state university. He said she was never after his money, she was after his accent. As a preteen in Ireland, she’d plastered her walls with magazine posters of young American TV stars like Scott Baio and Michael J. Fox. She wanted an American, and any good-looking one would do. Jake was much cuter than he is now because he had a full head of curly, light brown hair. As fate had it, Jake was the first American man to point out to Siobhan where the main shopping street on campus was. He chatted a bit with the pretty Irish exchange student, and then he walked her to a good spot for Buffalo wings, his treat. No one ever expected their relationship to last so long, least of all Jake.

On his deathbed our grandfather extracted a promise from his favorite grandchild: if Jake moved in with Siobhan, he would do it discreetly, and would never marry her. Grandpa Reuben was a dour man with a deli belly from eating too many tongue-and-corned-beef-combo sandwiches, who flossed his teeth with his favorite “girls” from a pack of nudie cards. He was sure the marriage would get top coverage in the Sunday
Times
style section:
Jacob Evan Greenblotz of West Orange, matzo heir and Siobhan Moran of Jersey City and Cork, not Jewish, were wed today by Father Seamus O’Flanner…

“Bad for business!” he croaked at Jake hoarsely. “All the customers in the Northeast,
oy
would they talk! If a Greenblotz can’t find a Jew to marry, what is the world coming to?” His life is hours from over and my grandfather worries about matzo sales?

But Grandpa Reuben never delineated between love and money. Just a few years before, as we waited in the rain at my grandmother’s funeral in West Orange, Jake told me Grandpa Reuben’s most shocking offense. Jake had been in the factory earlier, the day Grandma Lainie broke her hip and had her heart attack—she’d slipped on an especially long shoehorn meant to aid her in her battle with arthritis. While one of our bakers called 911 to get an ambulance, Jake tried to resuscitate her with mouth to mouth, but there was never any hope. And here’s the kicker: when the emergency workers covered her up, Grandpa Reuben tried to give Jake a hundred-dollar tip for “his good honest effort.”

Thirteen years together and no ring is embarrassing for anyone who knows they are a couple. Jake and Siobhan should follow their heart and get hitched. She was there for him after his parents’ deaths. But it’s not just that. Jake
adores
Siobhan. He’s told me more than once that he loves her meek little voice, adorable elfin ears and quick asides. But Jake is still saddled with guilt about crossing my grandfather’s last wishes.

Strangely, Siobhan has come to accept Grandpa Reuben’s fascist decree. She even helps out in the store, introducing herself as Jake’s wife, Shoshanna Greenblotz, a name used exclusively in the factory. (Jake’s cockamamy idea, no doubt.) I guess Siobhan’s fiery hair can be mistaken for the redhead tresses that show up in many Jewish families, but doesn’t her slight brogue give it away? Yet Jake happily swears that every once in a while when Siobhan lets out a colleenish “to be sure, to be sure,” most of our customers think she’s Israeli.