The Shiksa Syndrome: A Novel (9 page)

“Well, Hannah,” begins Josh, squatting down to the five-year-old’s height, using a talking-to-kids voice. “Not
everybody
’s Jewish. And that’s really okay. Just look at your aunt Aimee.”

I grind my knuckles into my sister’s back, giving her one more noogie just to make sure.

“Owww!” Daphne shouts, and in the same moment quickly picks up Hannah. She fusses with the chocolate ice cream left on Hannah’s mouth.
Owww
appears to only reference a messy daughter. Fussing with her chocolate mouth helps keep Hannah quiet.

Josh stands up and puts his arm around me, pulling me closer to protect me from the small-minded Jewish people. Stacy and Adam look at their new neighbor with understanding. They feel simpatico, certain she didn’t intend to make some slur. Poor Daphne, unsure whether she’s coming or going, a good guy or a bad, finally composes herself, takes Hannah’s hand, and is ready to mosey on home.

“Oh. Aimee. By the way.” Daphne stops right after she has said her good-byes. “This may sound weird after all this time, but I just never can remember.”

“Excuse me?”

There is a glint in my sister’s eye. She is setting me up for something.

“Of course you’re not Jewish,” says Daphne, and I know I am the only one able to see her tongue stuck in her cheek. “But I always forget your denomination. Just what exactly are you?”

“Protestant,” I say without any hesitation. “But middle-of-the-road kind of Protestant. Congregational.” This PR girl did her homework. “Plymouth Congregational Church. That’s us.”

“Interesting,” says Daphne.

“
Very
interesting,” says Stacy.

“Cool,” says Josh. Adam nods in agreement.

“Aimee,” says Stacy, catching up to me after we walk away. “I can’t believe she just asked you that.”

“Why?” In this moment I am nothing but totally grateful to Krista. “She didn’t hurt my feelings.”

“Well, of course she didn’t,” says Stacy. “It’s just like, no offense, but who even thinks about that? Daphne seems nice, but really. So you’re not Jewish. End of story. Isn’t that enough?”

I turn and face Stacy. Appalled. Does this girl even know how to censor anything?

“Oh, sorry,” she says. “You’d have to be Jewish to get it.”

O
f
M
eat and
M
en

W
HAT’S WITH YOU
? You’re so nervous.”

I’m usually quick to counter, but my mother is right, so I refrain.

“We haven’t seen you in a month, Aimee. And I can see you’re very tense. You haven’t even put back any of the weight. Sid, don’t you think she’s a little too thin?”

Too thin
, two words not in my father’s vocabulary, he ignores my mother.

“I’m just busy at work,” I jump in. “I told you, we have the KISS launch coming up. And the budget’s bad for a good celebrity. And it’s doubly tough because it’s better if they live in New York than Los Angeles.”

“Why’s it better to live in Los Angeles?” asks the voice behind the paper.

My mother grabs the
Times
out from under my father and hands it to me to put on the empty chair next to mine.

“It’s not polite,” she says. “We’re not home. We’re in a steakhouse.”

I laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I barely think of Fairway as a restaurant, Ma, let alone a steakhouse.”

“Well, it sure is,” defends Sid, showing me the front of the menu that reads Fairway Café and Steakhouse. “It’s just one of the city’s best-kept secrets.”

Sawdust sprinkled all over its big selling floor, Fairway is a gourmet food market that has everything you could ever want. Especially in the world of fresh produce. There are rows of fruits and vegetables outside the store on Broadway, and even more inside. But keep track of where you buy what. When you send that bag of apples down the conveyor belt, it’ll be up to you to holler “inside” or “outside” to the checkout person. The prices are different. So if you don’t catch on right away, I guarantee you will learn.

With such popularity, Fairway opened a café upstairs. It started with bagels and coffee. Now it’s progressed to steak.

“Let’s get a couple of the specials,” says my dad.

“I’d like the strip steak,” says Maddie. “Who wants to share with me? Aimee?”

“The portions are huge,” confirms Sid. “And let’s get a rib eye. If there’s leftover we’ll take it home.”

“No you won’t.”

I look up and see my brother, kissing my parents hello before removing the newspaper to slip into the window seat next to me.

“You made it,” says my dad. “I knew you’d be done in time for dinner. Good.”

“I thought I could get Daphne and Hannah up here, but they ran back to New Jersey,” says Jon, opening and closing the menu, agreeing to share the rib eye with my dad.

“Daphne and Hannah?” I ask. “Where’d you see
Daphne and Hannah
?”

“She says to say hi,” he says.

Is it my imagination, or is there some deeper meaning to that hi?

“And?”
I practically demand.

“And what? She said to say hi. Boy, A, what are you so nervous about?”

“That’s what I said, but your father doesn’t listen to me. So where’d you see Daph?”

“We’re doing a shoot for Lacoste and need a few kids. Holdenn’s too young, but I had her bring Hannah to the casting.”

“Can’t you just give her the job?” asks Maddie. “You’re the photographer. She’s so adorable.”

“Maddie, you know the client has final say,” informs my father. “But she is adorable, all right. And precocious.”

“
I’ll
say,” and I sure do.

Everyone turns to look at me. Or rather turns to turn on me. Protective of our Hannah. What unadorable precocious thing could little Hannah ever do? The question looms through their glares. And though I am with my own
mishpacha
, I have now learned a new way to answer. I smile.

“Well, I’m putting her on my list of recommendations,” says Jon.

After that encounter with Daphne and Hannah in New Jersey, I was too afraid to speak with my sister. Besides which, when we got back to the city I was just a little preoccupied. Josh, still feeling like my protector, said and did all the right things. He dropped off Adam and Stacy, then drove to my building, where, conveniently, there was a parking spot right on my block. He finally came up to my apartment.

In my frantic rush, I had left the shopping bag Krista gave me half unpacked in the front entry hall. We tripped on it coming in, Christmas cards and wrap spilling out.

“Glad to see you’re normal,” Josh said of the small mess all over the floor, in the hall and beyond. “I like stuff hanging around. My ex was so compulsively neat, it always drove me crazy.”

The de-Jewifying left my apartment in a less-than-finished state. Books on the coffee table, newspapers and magazines on the carpet. I was mortified to leave it like that, but the doorman announced Josh downstairs and I was just glad I made it back in time to not be late. I put Krista’s white bread and a stick of butter on the kitchen counter and was out the door in a flash. And wouldn’t you know? That was another of the things Josh noticed after we came in.

“Hey, E . . .” He came up behind me kissing my neck after he’d gone into the kitchen to get some water. “I thought you were into LoveLoaves?”

I turned and faced him, beet red.

“No big deal. I’m going to get you into the good stuff. Next time I’ll bring you some kick-ass bread. But I don’t know about putting that melted goop on it.” He made a face to show that although undesirable, it was, indeed, adorable. “Would you keep a thing of Breakstone’s whipped in the fridge for me?”

“Of course,” I said. Relieved.

After buying the sticks, I gave away my brand-new unopened container of Breakstone’s whipped butter to Tova. I wondered if Josh meant the regular or the—

“Salted,” he added, unbeknownst to him the perfect answer to my unspoken question.

And talk about perfect. After he weans me off the goop, I can get my refrigerated butter back. Bagels aside, I will also have a legitimate reason to keep away from the more fat, more calories, less fiber, and less desirable white bread.

When Josh went into the bathroom, I muted the volume on the answering machine, shut the ringer on my landline, and powered down my cell. Momentarily safe from being called on my escapade. With the technology turned off, I thought I could get turned on.

We were on my couch. Me rushing in, recoiling back. It felt so good, until I thought about what I was doing to Josh. Then I felt so bad.

“Princess.” His hands were under my shirt. “So sweet,” he murmured, searching front and then back to open my bra.

“Josh!” I called out when I felt him locate the hook, hardly a call of the wild.

It’s not that I wasn’t desirous. Quite the opposite. I hadn’t been intimate since Christmas. My body was willing. As was my heart. But my brain. So
fermished
was this shiksa, I knew the night would hardly feel intimate if I chose to go that way.

Josh’s fingers fished around the back strap, figuring how it unhooked. I felt so free when the bra fell open. I lunged. Then quickly stopped. If only I could. I lunged again. I felt tempted to just do it anyway, but my body language must have read differently.

“I’m sorry,” said Josh, reaching around to rehook the bra before sitting up on the couch. He pulled me toward him, resting my head in his lap. “It’s okay, eMay,” he said. “I get it.”

My heart skipped a few beats. He gets it? Oh, no.
He got it.
Just from making out with me!
Omygod.
But how? It must be my passionate Jewish blood. Jewish women are known to be great in bed.

“I know all about you Waspy girls,” he seductively whispered into my ear, nuzzling his nose up against it. “Not to get into it, but you’re not my first.”

Incredulous, I looked at Josh.

“Oh, don’t worry, my little ice princess.” He lifted my chin and gave me a tender kiss. “I’ll thaw you out.”

He’ll
thaw
me
out? Just who does he think he’s talking to? Oh. Well, yeah. I guess there is that.

“Oh, Josh,” I cooed in character. “You’re just
so
sensitive. But are we really that different from Jewish girls?”

Josh cleared his throat and used a Catskills comic voice. “How do you know when a Jewish wife reaches orgasm?”

I just shook my head; and not because I didn’t know the punchline.

“She drops her emery board!”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I wanted to slug him, but as my brother would say, “You started it.”

With everything going on, plus work, it took a while for me to return Daphne’s calls: ten messages on my home phone and six on my cell, not to mention how many deleted e-mails. Finally she sent a text.

r u crazy?

To which I replied:

pls keep secret! call soon. shiksa sis xx

I look at my family seated around this table. So far so good. So I think. Daphne and I have since caught up. And while she constantly threatens, as far as I know she’s remained mum. I haven’t told my parents I’m even dating. Each day is for me and for Josh. And I’m trying to make sure each one’s not our last.

“So you kept the hair,” says my brother, I think with approval. “I’ll have to tell Jackie. You like?”

“Changed my life.”

“I like it,” says my dad. His eyes shine bright, and it makes me feel good.

“It’s a nice change if you’re in the mood for one,” says my mother. “But I like you better with your real hair. That’s my Aimee. This is pretty, though. Makes you look like a shiksa.”

I practically spit out my water, but their reactions confirm everything. There’s something about shiksas Jewish men find exotic, but for a woman—even if she’s my mom—I always sense some potential threat. I don’t quite understand it, but for my purposes in my current circumstance, I am totally pleased.

“I told Krista to meet us here,” I say, changing the subject. “She’s going shopping downstairs.”

“What’s with her since she broke up with the Rhode Island boy?” asks my mother.

“We’re always talking about boys,” says my father. “Tell me about this product launch,” he says, and I see he has hurt my mother’s feelings. But I will gratefully discuss the launch to avoid talking about boys.

Out of all the configurations of our nuclear family, I think this one, my father, Jon, and I—Albert Media—is my mother’s worst. When I see her puttering in the kitchen with Daphne, kids underfoot, she glows in her rightful matriarchal status. For selfish reasons, I don’t come to her aid as often as I should, so when I see her like that I always feel especially good.

“So it’s the launch of KISS’s newest, greatest, best ever yet color copier.”

“Wow,” says Jon. Unimpressed.

I give him a look. “At the event we’re going to have a kissing contest. And I’m pretty sure that Ramy, that great cosmetics company, will be a corporate sponsor.”

“Haven’t you shot with them?” Sid asks Jon.

He nods in agreement. There is a momentary silence, but only to start our appetizers.

“So. You get it?” I ask.

“I don’t see the
tie-in
,” says my mother, digging into her Caesar salad and into my father, letting him know she is a part of this loop.

“Go on,” says my dad, chomping on his salad. Oblivious.

“People will donate a dollar a kiss—the proceeds will go to CancerCare, okay—and plant the kiss on a blank piece of paper. We’ll color-copy them and post all the kisses on a big board or something. Then the other half of the couple will have to choose whose lips belong to their partner.”

“And they can do that because . . . ?” half-asks Jon.

“See, the idea is the digital imaging is so authentic, so exact, how could anyone not recognize the lips of the one they love?”

I take a sip of water and pull a long strand of cheese out of my French onion soup. It feels so good to not have to think first, and just be able to eat and talk.

“Let’s say fifty couples guess right,” says Jon. “How does a couple win?”

“KISS has budgeted for a celebrity judge. All the couples that are close will have to have a real kiss. And the judge will pick who wins. And they’ll get a prize. They’ll win a fabulous prize.”

“Like an office-sized color copier that won’t fit in their apartment?”

“Very funny. And I almost have a great celebrity lined up.”

“Who?” asks Maddie. “I love celebrities.”

“Laura Bell Bundy!”

“Who?”

“Who’s Laura Blue Buns?”

“Never heard of her.”

Oy. This only confirms what I fear. KISS will feel the same way. But what can the company expect for such a small amount of money?

“Well, she’s fantastic,” I say, and this is true. “She’s the star of that Broadway musical
Legally Blonde.
And there’s talk of a Tony Award.”

“Why do they keep turning movies into musicals?” asks my mother. “Why can’t anyone write for the theater anymore?”

“KISS thinks she’s high enough profile?” asks my dad, done with his salad and anxiously awaiting the steak.

“How’s she going to attract the attention of the press?” asks Jon. “And what does anything about her or her show have to do with kisses?”

All right. She’s all wrong. “It doesn’t matter,” I lie, already dreading our staff meeting in the morning.

“Wait a sec.” Rather than look at me, Jon puts down his knife and fork and peers into his prosciutto and melon. “What if a gay couple enters? A male gay couple?”

“Your point?”

“One of the guys has to wear lipstick.”

My parents laugh. But I can’t say the same for me. My brother continues to look for a glitch to get into. The food is on the table, and I prefer to get into that.

“It’s just to do the picture,” I diffuse, and put a big helping of creamed spinach on my plate. “That’s all.” I take the piece of steak my mother’s cut off for me. “What, Jon?” I can see he’s not done. And I don’t mean with the meal.

“It’s just that the initiatives your firm tends to do are all so white-bread,” he taunts, before he munches away.

White-bread?
White-bread!
He knows. Jon definitely knows. Daphne has told him. Yes, and he is trying to get my goat. He sure as heck got my dander.

“This from a guy who spends his day airbrushing away any ounce of character that could possibly appear in his work,” I attack back.

“That was uncalled for, Aimee,” says Sid.