Off the Menu (7 page)

“Dumpling is working today.”

“Ah, zho busy, zho hard to be dog een America, have to have job. Pull up by paw straps.” Her eyes twinkle as she teases. She once ran into Barry and Dumpling while she was visiting a sick friend in the hospital, and got to see them in action. She was very proud.

“Everyone has to contribute,” I joke back. “How are you guys doing?”

“Goot, goot. Sasha and Alexei brink all boys over Sunday to watch Bears.” She sighs deeply, shaking her head in disappointment, remembering the spanking our beloved team got. “Like throwing peas against the vall.” She throws her hands up and sucks her front teeth disparagingly. “Tsssk. Monday we go recital for ballet for Natalia’s girls. Lia, she is goot, graceful like Natalia. But leetle Racheleh. Not so goot. Not maybe supposed to do the ballet. The dancing, ees like small elephant putting out fire in own shoes. Like you, remember?”

Of course I remembered. I took ballet for one session when I was six. I spent four months clomping around, spinning the wrong way, endlessly pulling my leotard wedgies out of my little butt, stepping on the teacher’s feet, accidentally kicking the girl in front or back of me, knocking over the portable barres, and, on one memorable occasion, pirouetting with as much force as I could muster and clocking the lithe little princess next to me right in the face. I had never seen a nose expel that much blood in that short a time. They politely said to Mama that they did not think there was a place for me in the next session, and that was the end of my dance career and the beginning of flute lessons. There is no
bloodletting with the flute. Mama continues listing her week of activities. “Tuesday mah-jongg, I win. Today, pelmeni with you. Plehnty busy.”

“Good for you.” I roll small balls of the meat mixture, and cover them with the thin dough, pinching carefully to seal, making sure there are no air bubbles. The first time I made pelmeni with Mom, I was about nine. I was careless with the dough, and when we boiled them, the air pockets I left made the dumplings explode, ejecting their fillings with little muffled pops, like edamame squeezing out of their pods. Mama strained out the mess, winked at me, dumped some tomato sauce over it and called it pasta kerchiefs and meatballs. Ever since that day, I have been very diligent about air bubbles.

“And Patreek? You bring him pelmeni, nu?” My mom is not immune to the charms of Patrick. My dad is more leery, especially since he believes that Patrick is in love with me. Of course, my dad believes that every man I ever meet is in love with me, including Barry. But Mama, she thinks Patrick hung the moon, especially since he praises her rustic cooking and always takes leftovers home when he comes to family events. It should be noted that after the first time I brought Patrick, at his own insistence, to a family Shabbat dinner, which we try to do once every other month with the whole gang, my mother began inviting him directly to most other family occasions. I think my parents are hilariously split in their views on the whole Patrick thing. My mom would like me to marry Patrick, so she invites him to every birthday and Chanukah party, sure that spending time together away from work will push our relationship to the next level. And my dad, who is positive that Patrick is after me romantically, is scared that I will cease to resist the endless advances he
imagines I fend off every day. So when Patrick is at a gathering, my dad works very hard to keep him busy, showing off his tool collection, talking sports, inviting him outside for one of his rank greenish cigars, which take forever to smoke and smell like an ashtray full of manure.

“Yes, Mama. I will bring him pelmeni.” And I will. Because if I don’t, when my mother calls him and asks if he liked them, they will both kick my ass. “He is out of town for the weekend, but we will freeze some and I will give it to him on Monday, I promise.”

Mom, finished with the wrappers, nudges me aside with her hip and we shift, I roll the meat mixture into little balls and hand them off and she swiftly covers them with dough, pinching them perfectly closed, setting them aside on trays.

“You veel come next week, nu? Shabbat dinner?”

“Of course. What should I bring?” It is only in the last few years that my mother has allowed me to bring food to the family dinners. It both thrills and saddens me. I’m delighted that she finally trusts me to make some of the family recipes, and that she genuinely seems to enjoy when I tweak them slightly to make them new while still honoring the flavors we are all used to. But sad, because I know that, in part, her acquiescence means that she gets too worn-out by taking on the whole menu herself. My aunt Rivka, Mom’s younger sister who lives up the block, is a terrible cook, so she is not allowed to make anything. She buys the challah from the bakery near the Russian community center where she volunteers, and brings the wine. But the food is on my mother’s shoulders, and they are beginning to stoop slightly with age. I hate seeing my parents show the signs of getting older.

“Tssk.” My mom sucks her teeth, a habit she has when she is thinking, or annoyed, or very pleased. “Borscht maybe?
And carrot salad?” And then a pause. “And Patreeck, of course.” A little smile plays around the corners of her mouth.

I ignore the last bit, and decide to take a major risk. “How about I do a brisket? Patrick just got a gift shipment from a local farm, and gave me a huge one. It is taking up so much space in my freezer; I would love to cook it so I can make some room.” Mom will never let me do the main dish unless she thinks it is somehow helping me out of a jam.

She tilts her head at me and squints, trying to see if I am implying that she is no longer capable of making the family meat. I keep my face impassive, and a little imploring, and she buys it.

“Well, yes, eef freezer is too much full it no work well. Things go bad, get freezer brunt. You brink brisket. I make kugel.”

Whew. “Thank you, Mama, it will be a huge help.”

“Pish. Is somsink the cats cried out.”

I smile. “Well, it is a big deal to me.” I lean over and kiss her. She grabs my nose between her knuckles and gives a gentle twist.

And we set back to making pelmeni.

By the time we’re finished, my mom asks me to invite Barry to bring Dumpling here for dinner instead of dropping him off at my house. He is thrilled, and promises to bring wine, knowing that as delicious as almost everything is at my folks’ house, they drink wine so awful that it is impossible to choke down. They buy it in large unlabeled gallon jugs. I believe it is Polish in origin, those famous wine-making people, and the grape varietal seems to be a blend of concord and petrol. It is simultaneously horrifically sweet and yet has an astringency that sucks all the saliva out of your mouth.
He arrives with an excited Dumpling, a bottle of Bordeaux, and an endless series of charming stories about his recent stay in Philadelphia.

“So the young man playing Bosie, Oscar’s lover, comes onstage dressed in Victorian underwear and in the back of the house one of the women in the audience says, ‘Damn, baby!’ as loud as anything.”

My mother laughs, and my dad slips pieces of meat filling from his pelmeni to Dumpling, who rests at his feet under the table.

“Right out loud?” my dad says. “So rute.”

“It was pretty funny actually. And better than the night before.” Barry is in his element, telling funny stories to people who think his life is endlessly glamorous.

“Vat happent night before?” my mom asks, rapt.

“Well, there is a very quiet scene when Oscar knows that he is going to jail. Very poignant, very sad. And a gentleman in the front row, well, he just …” Barry looks at me for approval to continue, having already shared the event with me the evening it occurred. I nod.

Barry pauses dramatically. “He passed wind. Very loudly. Twice.”

Both of my parents convulse in laughter, wiping tears. Fart jokes transcend all cultural differences and language barriers. But Barry is not done.

“And a minute later, up on stage, we could
smell
it. And it was
awful
. You could practically
taste
it. And you could just see everyone onstage as the smell would get to them, I mean it was
so obvious
, they would start to walk away, like it was
chasing
them, and then we all started trying not to laugh.”

My dad is smacking the table with his hand, and my
mother is wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. Barry is leaning back in his chair, puffed and proud. Dumpling wanders over to lick my ankle, and I think that whatever else goes on in this crazy life of mine, it is a good life. A very good life indeed.

I’m glad he acknowledged the near month that had passed between my reaching out and his reaching back, and even
gladder to know that he too was not paying EDestiny any money. And he continues to be witty and smart. Baffling. Now I am quite certain that he must be covered in warts and smell of old cabbages. Or is entrenched in a marriage he will never be free of. Probably both.

But that doesn’t prevent me from replying.

I shoot this off trying not to think too hard or edit too much. I’ve finally gotten to an age when it is tiring enough to just be me; trying to be some super-duper-special
uber-desirable version of me to attract a guy is just a game I don’t have the energy for anymore. This is who and what I am, and if you are the guy, you will get that and be fine with it. So I don’t try to be any wittier than I actually am, and instead make a conscious decision to just be completely myself and let the chips fall where they may. I mean, I do spell-check and reread a couple times to be sure I don’t sound like some mouth-breathing idiot. But I don’t overthink or overedit content.

“This is very exciting,” Bennie says when I call her to share the latest on the RJ front. “You are getting your birthday wish, I can feel it.”

“We’ll see. That was a tall-order wish.” Last year, when I turned thirty-nine, I looked at the universe and essentially had a heart-to-heart. I said I was grateful for the blessings in my life of good friends, and loving family, and a mostly great if insane job, and my health, and Dumpling, and a pretty good sex life. And I said that I did have faith that “the guy” was coming, and that I would not spend my life without a real partner. But, if the universe wasn’t too enormously busy, might it be possible for whoever he was to hurry up a bit, because I did not relish the idea of waking up on my fortieth birthday alone.

“That was not a tall order. That was a perfectly reasonable wish. You are entitled to a real guy, and you are entitled to want him to show up in time to usher in a new decade. And who knows, this might be him!”

“This might be a married guy looking to play around. Or one of the endless ‘love to e-mail doesn’t ever pull the trigger on a date’ guys that linger around dating sites. Or we’ll meet and I won’t be attracted to him. Or he won’t be attracted to me. Or we’ll both be attracted and then the sex will be bad …”

“Stop.”

“What.”

Bennie sighs. “Just stop. Why is it so hard to believe that he might just be a great guy who seems to already sense that you are a great girl, and you will meet and be great together?”

“When does
that
happen?” I laugh. My actual dating life over the years hasn’t been that much of an improvement on my online theoretical dating life, and the older I get, the less patient I get and the more jaded and cynical.