Diet Sprite
| September 24, 2015Avigdor
T
he shadchan says she’s an amazing girl, from a wonderful family. Mommy says she’s perfect for me. Which probably means I’ll hate her.
But I do what I gotta do. I shave, put on one of my three dating suits, grab a tie, pick up the rental, and head to Brooklyn.
The only thing that gives me hope is that her name is Tali. That can mean one of three things: She has Israeli roots; her family had been a shade more modern and then they flipped; or her parents were the more free-spirited type and weren’t interested in the classic Bais Yaakov names.
I consider the possibilities as I navigate the freeway. Mommy has had the nastiest flu for the past few weeks, so she roped Tatty into checking Tali out. But Tatty’s research hasn’t unearthed any “past” — so the middle option is unlikely. And if her paternal grandparents knew Babby back in Hungary, and her maternal grandparents were from the famous Schreiber family from Romania, when would anyone have had a chance to be infected with sabra sentiments?
Maybe her parents really did just want something a bit different? Could this Tali have grown up in a family that stepped off the assembly line at some point and allowed a bit of individuality to seep in? Unlikely — the rest of her r?sum? is same old, same old. Twelve years in a top high school here, one year in a top seminary in Eretz Yisrael, then back the States to take speech in a frum college. Head of dance. Yearbook editor. Which makes Mommy happy, but means absolutely nothing in real life.
Oh, and Tatty said he’s met the father several times and he’s a wonderful person and very careful to be kovei’a itim. And the family is “into chesed” and has even fostered a bunch of kids over the years. All very nice — I’m sure Hashem is glad they’re into His mitzvos —but that doesn’t say much about this girl.
I swing off the Verrazano, and get myself to Brooklyn in record time. Tali Lewin lives in a large, well-kept red-brick house—not big enough to be termed ostentatious, not unique enough to catch your eye. Figures.
***
“So, how many siblings did you say you had?”
“There are six of us. I’m the third.” She gives me a polite smile. Drinks a bit of her Diet Sprite. She has that delicate sip down pat, so she’s clearly done this a few times, but she’s still nervous enough that I don’t feel like date #86. I must be number 11 or 12. Which makes sense if she’s in the parshah for two years and has a good name and some money, but not loads of it.
She should realize by now that it’s her turn to ask a question. It should be something about my years in Brisk and what I loved most about Eretz Yisrael. (I’ll tell her it was the incredible learning, never mentioning how I loved haunting Meah Shearim and spending every Friday night meal by a different Yerushalmi family. Because no, it wasn’t the “amaaaazing simplicity, and the beauty of their chinuch” that got to me, but that passion, the fire that seemed to burn in every one of them, although in some it was a bright red blaze and in others a steady yellow flame.)
Or she can ask me about Lakewood. That should keep us busy for at least five minutes.
Or what I do during the summer — although Mommy will be grateful if she skips that one; she always tells me I should just say that I’m in a counselor in a camp and try to change the topic. She says people will get nervous if they realize I go to Minnesota and work in a kiruv camp for public school kids. I’m not sure they’ll get nervous, but I’ll cringe if she says “oh, that’s sooooo special” in that high-pitched voice girls use when they’re talking about all things spiritual.
And I would never be able to explain to her how alive I feel when I’m spending time with little Jews who are so utterly clueless but also so thirsty. There’s this feeling that you gotta somehow stuff the real deal of Yiddishkeit into their hearts and minds because you only have three weeks, and then Jared or Tyler or Max will be back in public school, and all that will remain is the feeling — if you managed to give it to them — that being a Jew is something good and special.
But she asks none of this, so instead I pull out the next first-date question. “And what do your older siblings do?”
“My brother is married and living in Lakewood. He has the cutest little girl.” For a moment, her face lights up and I feel a wisp of hope bubble inside me. A minute later the plastic smile is back. “And my sister is a CPA. She works for a firm in Manhattan. Just got married in November. And you’re the oldest?”
Finally, she’s playing conversation ball. “Nope, I’m nearly the youngest. Three married. Then me. Then a sister under me, Suri, who’s going to seminary next year.”
She grasps at this, and asks me where she’s going, and why she picked the seminary she did. I can’t tell her the truth: that Mommy felt it was the perfect middle-of-the-road seminary that wouldn’t tax her academically, but still give her a great shidduch advantage. So instead I say something about her friends and the great teachers there. Which presumably there are. And she tells me her friend went there and loved it. And on we go.
Her name may be Tali, but there’s nothing original here. I glance up my watch. Forty-five minutes before I can drive her home and get on with life.
Tali
H
e’s not exactly rude, this bochur sitting across from me with the perfectly starched white shirt and perfectly pressed black suit and perfectly casual air. But there’s something about him that makes me feel like I’m being judged.
I try to do a quick sweep while keeping up my end of the conversation. My top is demure, my jewelry not bas mitzvah–style delicate but not in-your-face clunky. My skirt is black — you can’t go wrong there. My shoes are low-heeled in case he was short. And my hair — if I tilt my head at the right angle, I can see my reflection in the hotel lobby mirror — still seems to be holding the waves nicely.
If my appearance is okay, maybe it’s me. Am I boring him? Maybe he wants me to talk more? To talk less?
Daddy was thrilled when the shadchan called to suggest Avigdor Waks. He comes from one of those picture-perfect families with yichus back to Moshe Rabbeinu. I’m not sure if they didn’t hear about Aunt Kim and Tzvi or if they heard and just decided to overlook it, but I can’t blow this.
I fish around for some topic of conversation. I try to remember the questions that Avigail and Dina asked on dates, the questions that led to “these incredible conversations where you really get to know him,” but I draw a blank. I’m not good at this. I spend so much time trying to avoid certain topics that it’s hard to really dive into a discussion.
There’s a long silence. A waiter comes by, asks to refill our drinks. Both our glasses are nearly full. We sit there in awkwardness for another long moment.
I’m just about to ask him where he went to camp — that’s a safe question because if he turns it on me I have the right answer — when he speaks.
“If you could be any animal at all, what would you be?” he asks.
“An eagle,” I say before I have a chance to think. “I’d be able to fly, to get away, go anywhere, be free.” And then I’m horrified, because what on earth have I just said? Although what would be the right answer to that question? Who asks their date what animal they’d like to be?! I toss the question back at him.
“A cheetah,” he says without any hesitation. “I love the idea of being able to run that fast and that far.”
“Where would you run to?” I ask.
He gets a faraway look in his eye, but then tells me about the cheetah he saw on a Chol Hamoed trip to the zoo.
I take another sip of Diet Sprite.
Avigdor
M
ommy claims that unless a girl is horribly rude or terribly dumb, there’s no good reason to refuse to a second date. First dates, she says, are just warm-up sessions. Which means I spent a lot of time not just on awful first dates, but on awful second dates.
At some point, I put my foot down and told her I can only go out a second time with a girl I feel I have at least a two percent chance of marrying. She felt that was fair —until I refused a second date with nearly every girl she set me up with.
Tali Lewin should be a no. But she wants to be an eagle. She wants to get away, to be free. Free from what? The question intrigues me enough to tell Mommy that I’ll give it a second shot. She beams.
She just better not find out about the animal question. Last winter, the Lefkowitz girl repeated it to the shadchan, who repeated it to Mommy, and she hit the roof. “You asked a girl what animal she would want to be?! What on earth were you thinking, Avigdor Dovid? What do you want her to say? That she wants to be a monkey? A giraffe? A lion?”
“Any answer would be fine,” I told her, “and it would also tell me a lot about her.”
“Please, Avigdor,” she moaned, “don’t ruin your name. You’re a boy, but I still have Suri to marry off. Just play by the rules.”
I nodded, and kept my shidduch questions really pareve after that. But something about Tali made me feel like I had nothing to lose by risking the question — she seems too scared of her own shadow to tattle.
For the second date, I decide to take her to the aquarium. Mommy sniffed and muttered something about my never being conventional, but I just smiled sweetly and asked her for the car keys. I’m so glad it’s bein hazmanim and at least I’m spared the ride up from Lakewood.
I love the aquarium; there’s something about the thought about this entire universe all tucked away undersea that has me fascinated. We look at the water, and see the smooth surface barely rippling, but underneath there are stingrays and clown fish and octopi, fish that glow in the dark and fish that eject ink — this whole wild world we’d never know about if we didn’t just dive in.
I want to share this thought with Tali, but she’ll probably think I’m nuts. So instead I ask her what exhibit she’d like to visit first. She glances at her map. “Well, they’re feeding the dolphins in ten minutes. Should we go watch that?”
So we go, and see them leaping out the water and doing who knows what to get their measly fish.
“Aren’t you glad we don’t have to do that every time we want a bowl of cereal or a burger?” I ask. She laughs, and opens her mouth like she’s about to share something, but then she seals it shut so fast she looks like one of those fish. I hate when people do that. “What were you going to say?” I ask her. I’m being rude, but I can’t stop myself.
“We don’t have to jump for our cereal, but there are plenty of other hoops we have to jump through every day,” she finally says, speaking so low I can barely hear her. She sounds tired, a touch bitter. But then she points to a baby dolphin leaping beside his mother and says, “Oh, look, a baby. Isn’t he adorable?”
We watch the rest of the show in silence.
Tali
T
here’s something different about this boy. There seems to be substance underneath that “I’m perfect” air.
My friend Dina would say I’m imagining things. That he doesn’t have that air to him — it’s my own insecurities clogging my brain — but she has no idea what it feels like to sit on a date and feel like an impostor.
To know that your aunt is a pilot and hasn’t been religious in years, your brother has special needs but doesn’t look different and though you love him to pieces everyone else just thinks he’s weird, your family sometimes has more foster kids than biological kids living in the house, and your mother was born in Kentucky and named you Talia of all things!
She has no idea what it feels like to be trying to keep the lid on so many things that it’s scary to talk since you never know when a stray comment will slide out and prove to be your undoing. Nope, not Dina. Dina comes from another one of those perfect families, and that’s why she can shmooze normally and most guys want to date her again. Unlike me, who can’t seem to get it right enough to land a second date.
No clue why this Avigdor fellow bothered — things aren’t looking great. If he’s more interested in the dolphins than our conversation, it can’t be a good sign.
The dolphin feeding ends, and we both look at our maps. “Want to check out the nautilus?” he asks me. “They swim using jet propulsion. It’s really cool!”
The nautilus? Whatever happened to sharks and whales? But all I say is “Sure,” trying to sound enthusiastic, but not overly so.
The nautilus is really cool, and so are the squid and cuttlefish right nearby. I never liked fish much; they always seemed so cold and distant and silent, but Avigdor gets so animated that I start to get excited about their vivid colors and the incredible things they can do.
Dina would say it’s weird, but we spend most of that date talking about fish. Does this guy munch on encyclopedias for breakfast? He knows the strangest facts. This is not the type of date I expected to have with Avigdor Waks. But I’m not complaining.
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