Mameh pretended she hadn’t heard any of that and asked Betty, “Vas iz zaneh nahmin? What’s his name? Where does he work?” As if Aaron hadn’t been talking in Yiddish to Papa since he got there.
Levine said, “Michael Metsky is one of the biggest real estate lawyers in town. Very successful. We’ve had dealings with him.”
Mameh shrugged. “That’s the brother.”
Aaron laughed but I wanted to scream. Wasn’t her whole purpose in life to get me married to someone exactly like him?
I went to the kitchen to make coffee and calm down. When I got back, Aaron was on the floor and playing tiddlywinks with the boys.
Betty said, “Look how good he is with children. He’ll be a wonderful father.”
To no one in particular my mother said, “They all think I’m stupid.”
From as long as I could remember, Mameh talked to herself under her breath. She muttered spells to ward off the evil eye and kvetched about how Betty never made the tea hot enough. But her hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be, so she didn’t whisper anymore and that time you could have heard her from the other room.
“He didn’t eat a thing. What’s the matter with him? Her meat was a little dry, but nobody makes better carrots than me. When you visit someone, you eat.”
Betty tried to shush her, but Mameh didn’t notice. “She turns up her nose at a man who owns a store? This one doesn’t even have a job.”
Eddy said, “Bubbie, why are you talking to the saltshaker?”
That seemed to wake her up. She said. “Come eat your compote.”
Aaron said, “Mrs. Baum, my father owns a hardware store and I worked there when I was growing up. But Pop wanted us to go to college. I think he was hoping for doctors or maybe pharmacists, but he says he’s proud of his lawyers anyway.”
Betty said, “Aaron’s sister is going to law school, too.”
“A lawyer is not a job for a woman,” Mameh snap
ped. Then she pointed at Aaron and said, “Young man, eat the fruit at least.”
I walked Aaron outside and made excuses for the meat—it really was dry—and for my mother. But he thought it all went well.
“Your father was nice to me. Betty and your brother-in-law are in our corner and their boys are terrific. Eight out of nine ain’t bad. And maybe if I clean my plate next time, your mother will come around, too.”
Aaron never gave up on people. Sometimes it drove me crazy, but it’s a good way to live.
—
The next Saturday, we all were invited to Aaron’s family for supper. Betty promised that Mameh would behave. “She was probably nervous about meeting him, and anyway, everyone is more polite in someone else’s house.”
We squeezed into Levine’s car to get to Brookline. You remember that house, don’t you? Around the corner from where JFK was born?
The front yard at the Metskys’ was like nothing else on the street. There was no grass, just flower beds and roses climbing up the porch like the ones at Rockport Lodge.
The flowers were Mildred Metsky’s doing. She was Aaron’s stepmother and the opposite of evil stepmothers in the fairy tales. Murray Metsky married her five years after Aaron’s mother died, and the three kids were as devoted to “Mom” as she was to them.
She opened the door and hugged us like we were long-lost cousins. The Metskys were all big huggers: Aaron, his father, and his sister, Rita. Even his brother, Michael, who was kind of stiff, put his arms around each of us. My mother looked like she was being licked by cats, and she hated cats.
When we sat down to eat dinner, which they didn’t call supper, Mameh asked the name of the kosher butcher where Mildred Metsky had bought the meat. She’d never heard of the place and leaned over to Papa and whispered in a voice that everyone could hear, “It smells funny, no?” Aaron said, “That’s rosemary, Mrs. Baum. Mom grows all kinds of herbs in the backyard.”
Mameh said, “So, herbs and flowers. Me, I grow cabbages and potatoes. Things you can eat.”
Thank God, Mildred didn’t understand a lot of Yiddish.
Rita and Mildred gushed over the boys, which was all Betty ever wanted to hear. Levine and Michael figured out they knew a lot of the same people. Murray and my father went outside and smoked cigars. Aaron and I held hands under the table.
When Mildred put out coffee and cake, Murray stood up and made a speech about how happy they were that Aaron had found me. “When he went off to Washington, I was afraid he’d find a girl from there and never come back. When he went to Minnesota, I worried he’d meet a girl there and she wouldn’t want to leave her family.”