The Matzo Ball Heiress (6 page)

I’m done explaining the matzo-making steps by the time we reach the oldest machine in my family’s factory, the oven, which is connected to cutting devices. I love to start tours here because with its many knobs and motors from the turn of the century, the machine looks straight out of a Jules Verne novel.

“Tell us about this one,” Steve asks.

“This is the oven, the most important piece of machinery in our factory. The matzo comes out of the oven in huge prescored squares, which will make eight sheets in a packaged box. Because they are prescored, workers can break them by hand. It’s as easy as tearing perforated pages from a notebook.”

“How come I can never break them evenly by hand?” Jared asks in the background. Steve looks annoyed that his cameraman is asking questions, even rhetorical ones. I would be annoyed too. It’s a big no-no for anyone other than the designated producer to ask away, but the question was not only a cute one, but also quite valid. Even though the matzo you eat at home has lines of dots on it like graph paper, if you try to break a sheet in a straight line along the dots, you end up with jagged pieces. According to my father, it’s one of the great mysteries of Judaism.

“The perforations must run deeper on the megasheets,” I answer in Jared’s direction. “I never even thought about that.” Steve motions for me to look back at him and away from Jared.

Now I’m certain that Jared is Jewish, or
in the tribe,
as Jake likes to say. Not that I factor in religion when I want to hook up with an attractive guy. I’d put available and funny over Jewish any day. I’m agnostic to the bone, but oddly, I do daydream about landing myself a nice Jewish hipster. He’s someone who knows all the latest foreign flicks but who can also guide me through the parts of my religion I don’t have the foggiest idea about. I can never see my fantasy man’s face, but he’s hugging me in public after our first son’s
bris
and we’re feasting on potato salad and corned beef with his parents, who are alternating bites of celebratory deli with beams of approval at their newest “daughter,” and their newly circumcised grandson. Where this embarrassing reverie comes from mystifies me. But I have it a lot, as much as some people fantasize about a thousand bucks on a horse with impossible odds.

Jared isn’t done. “You know that matzo joke about an aerospace engineer who—well, that joke is really long.”

“Stop the camera,” Steve says in exasperation. “Go ahead, Jared, you obviously want to tell it. We’ll pick up after you’re finished.”

“You sure?” Jared asks sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Yes. Tell us,” Steve says.

“It’s long. I shouldn’t have interrupted.”

“Go ahead already.”

“Well, my uncle tells it the best, but I’ll give it a go.”

“Begin the damn matzo joke already, for Christ’s sakes,” Steve demands, although it’s obvious from his face that he’s not really mad, and that these two guys have a friendship outside of work.

“This guy Avrum is a gifted Israeli aeronautical engineer who launches a company in Tel Aviv to build jets. Everything looks terrific on paper, but when he has a pilot test the new jet, disaster strikes. The wings can’t take the strain, and they break clean off the fuselage.”

“So the pilot is dead?” Tonia interrupts. “He’s responsible for his death?”

“No, no, the test pilot parachutes to safety. Avrum is shattered. His company redesigns the jet, but the same thing happens—the wings break off again. Suicidal, the engineer goes to his synagogue to pray. His rabbi asks him what the matter is. After hearing the sob story, the rabbi tells him, ‘Avrum, all you have to do is drill a row of holes directly above and below where the wing meets the fuselage. If you do this, I absolutely guarantee the wings won’t fall off.’ The engineer mumbles thanks to the rabbi for his advice. But the more he thinks about it, the more Avrum realizes he had nothing to lose. Maybe the rabbi had some holy insight. On the next design of the jet, they drill a row of holes directly above and below where the wings meet the fuselage. The next test flight goes great! Avrum tells his rabbi, ‘Rabbi, how did you know that drilling the holes would prevent the wings from falling off?’ The rabbi says, ‘I’m an old man. I’ve lived for many, many years and I’ve celebrated Passover many, many times. And in all those years, not once—
not once
—has matzo broken on the perforation!’”

Steve and I snort in unison. Steve hits an imaginary
boom, boom, cha
drumroll.

“Worth stopping for?” Jared asks.

“No,” Steve says with a smile.

“Oh c’mon, Steve, it’s a classic.”

“When Shecky Green told the joke in the Catskills, it was a classic,” Steve says. “When you tell it, it’s just sad.”

Jared takes the put-down with a good-natured laugh.

“I don’t get it,” Tonia says.

“Oy,”
Jared says with an old-Jewish-man accent. “No matter how you try, matzos never break on the perforations. So the wing could never break off if it has a stippled matzo pattern.”

There’s a touch of confusion still in Tonia’s forehead. “Oh, okay.”

“We ready to continue?” Steve’s tone is impatient.

I smile at Jared and he winks at me.

Since breaking it off with Daniel I have spent the last year in the spinster desert; that is except for one laughable date with a guy whose real face and personality didn’t match his online profile, a sparkling profile that certainly didn’t say anything about his halitosis. After a very long, supposedly ironic hour together at the new Manhattan branch of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, this sad sack decided that he had finally found his soul mate, the one who would love to hear the many, many adventures of his cat named Mama over an “ironic” blue-plate special at the Times Square Howard Johnson’s.

I feel a bit silly getting such a charge from an interview. Flirtation must be all in a day’s work for Steve and Jared. I can only imagine the number of beautiful women these handsome men meet behind the scenes at New York’s trendiest restaurants. Even so, now I have two handsome guys with clean breath winking at me. Both intellectually involved with their careers and charismatic.

“And this monstrosity over here is the packaging machine,” I say quickly. Am I actually blushing? “Working this thing is probably the worst job in the factory because it’s a repetitive hell. Not to mention that the person who oversees the machine has to have
very
fast hands.”

“Does that person know it’s the worst job?” Steve asks.

“Hopefully, Braulio won’t watch the Food Channel special or he may find out it is.”

Braulio, a short Dominican with a considerable beer gut, a constant smile and a never-ending repertoire of Sinatra songs, returns from a bathroom break and gives me a bear hug. I haven’t seen him since last high season. His Yankees shirt smells like a mix of flour and Tide that wasn’t completely rinsed out. “You want to be on TV, Braulio?” I ask.

“We’re from the Food Channel and want to see what you do,” Steve chimes in.

Braulio nods enthusiastically. He flicks a switch and demonstrates how fast the packages move on the conveyor. “Like Lucy, no?”

“Lucy?” Steve says.

This time Tonia knows the reference.
“I Love Lucy,”
she whispers toward Steve. “The chocolate-conveyor episode, when everything got out of control—”

“Oh right!” Steve says.

When we start to move on, Braulio happily sings us off with a bit of Frank Sinatra’s “I Got Plenty of Nothing.”

“See,” I whisper to the camera. “I don’t think he knows it’s the worst job.”

“I’d say the next stop for this baby is the Smithsonian,” Steve says when we’re standing over an aging machine with a queer array of gadgetry. “What is it?”

“I have to admit even I don’t know exactly what this one does. It’s old and it’s been here for eternity. I’ll have to ask my cousin and get back to you on that. But I can tell you that whatever it is, it works. Everything here works because of our in-house mechanic who likes to do things his way. The factory will buy him any tools and parts he wants but he’d rather use what works best. Aesthetics be damned. We couldn’t find the right tubing to match an old machine and he brought in a garden hose that fit perfectly. Our matzo-cooling fan broke and we weren’t going to get a fan for a week from the supply company, so he brought in his house fan. He uses a ski pole to get gears moving again. If he doesn’t want to weld, he uses a clamp. Big on duct tape too.”

Steve is clearly amused. “What’s that machine over there?” he prods.

“That’s our polypropylene machine. It’s our newest machine, from the fifties.”

“What’s it for?”

“To put the plastic wrap over the boxes of matzo. Predates shrink-wrap.”

“Where do you get a polypropylene matzo machine?”

“You don’t. We adapted a basic model for our needs. You could use it to package baseball cards if you set it up right.”

Steve gives me a broad smile as we turn the corner: “Our editor will love you. Adorable. You’re going to get fan mail, mark my words.”

“Especially for those eyes,” Jared says from behind the camera.

I am doing an interview, but now the attention is bordering on embarrassing. It’s not as if I’m wearing some miracle musk guaranteed to draw them in, this is plain old me we’re talking about!

“Your eyes
are
incredible,” Steve says.

I’ll concede that my eyes are my best feature by a mile. “It’s the recessive Greenblotz Blue that shows up once or twice every seventy-five years. Apparently old Izzy had them.”

“Sounds like a new lipstick color,” Jared cracks.

I grin and pan for Jared’s viewfinder: “Greenblotz Blue. New from Max Factor.”

We come upon the huge and weighty silver-colored fire doors. “These doors are required by law.” I grunt and push the one on the right side open. “We’re near the matzo ovens again. This is the most likely place a fire would start, and the heavy fire doors would isolate the flames.”

Antique-looking gears are attached to each door, rusting hardware which I hope the camera doesn’t focus in on. You’re supposed to have regulation weights, but instead, our thrifty mechanic dredged these heavy gears up from the basement.

I curse to myself. I told Jake the last time I saw these doors that
you can’t screw
with the fire department. If someone from the New York Fire Department is watching the Food Channel and sees these rusty gears, we’ll get called on a violation. Jake knows the local hook and ladder isn’t too crazy about our factory to begin with. After September 11 and several Code Orange terrorist scares, they’ve had bigger fish to fry, but now things are returning to normal in New York and we could get closed down on a moment’s notice if the fire department resumes spot-checking Manhattan factories.

“You ever have a fire here?” Steve asks.

“Three years ago a matzo caught fire and the smoke was streaming out the windows. A science-fiction writer who lives in a walk-up across the street called 911, and in a minute ten guys from the fire department burst in wanting to ax open the oven. But Jake knew that if the burning matzo could be kept in the seventy-two-foot oven, it was safe. In an oven that big, a burning sheet of matzo is likely to be contained. He wouldn’t let them hack Izzy’s oven, so he was arrested for obstruction of the fire department.” I have second thoughts about the information I’ve just let loose. “Steve, maybe you better not let that on TV either.”

“You mean about how long the ovens are? Is that a trade secret?”

“No, about Jake’s arrest.”

“I’ll get that edited out if you want. We’ll have more than enough for the Izzy Greenblotz segment. Let’s get the last of it to be sure.”

We continue the tour for another half hour, continuing to the machine that heats wax paper and seals it on the boxes with no glue. I end up showing them some of our collected mementos from the early years of the factory, including Izzy’s penny notebook of ideas.

Steve says, “You’re a wealth of knowledge, chickie.”

“To paraphrase my father, how badly can you screw up flour and water?” Okay, I fucking love how Steve called me chickie so casually. A slick style that’s working on me
big-time.

“Is your father still active in the business?”

“Uh, no, not really.”

“Oh, I forgot to ask. Do you have a slogan?”

“We do.
Buy Greenblotz—Because Family Is Everything
.” I force those words out. How could my visitors know how humiliating that phrase is to say and what a joke it is, given our crumbled family connections.

“Perfect. We’ll put that on air.” He starts undoing his mic. “I’ll say that in a voice-over. Where’s the best place to call you if we have to check our facts?”

“I can give you my regular office number at my production company. And I’ll add my home number in case you can’t get me there.”

“Super.”

I hand him one of my business cards and scrawl my home number on the back.

Steve opens his wallet and hands me his producer’s card from the Food Channel.

“Can I have one too?” Jared says to me. Steve gives Jared an indecipherable look.

“Sure,” I say, and Jared hands me his card that reads
Jared S.—Camera
and only lists his cell-phone number.

Tonia does not ask for one, nor do I give her one. She packs away her equipment. “We’re so near Chinatown,” she says to Steve, loud enough so I can hear her. “Can we stop the van and get my sister some imported pimple tea?”

Steve shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve seen your sister, she doesn’t have pimples.”

Jared whispers in my ear, “That’s because she drinks the pimple tea.”

Steve sees Jared leaning in close to my ear and ups the ante with a slightly lingering peck on my cheek on the way out. “You were awesome. I’ll call you about when this segment will air.”

“Bye!” I call out libidinously. Which one to choose? Bachelor Number One or Bachelor Number Two?

After they’ve packed up and gone, I remember Sukie and the dress I planned to buy at my Good Samaritan discount.

I take the short stroll down the street and try to open the door to Upsy Daisy, but it’s unexpectedly locked. Sukie comes out from a back section cordoned off by a maroon velvet curtain. When she spots me she breaks into a big smile and lets me in.