Could, would Artie even consider a relationship with a girl who, when you got down to it, was not religious at all? Hard to believe, but stranger things had happened. This was the 1960s, this new generation was making all sorts of choices, many of them terrible, behaving in ways that Annie would never have believed possible. She’d begun to hear stories of college students smoking illegal drugs with innocuous names like “grass.” And look at what Abie had said about kids running off to California, leaving their parents in bereaved shock.

Yes, it was time for Artie to find a wife, a nice, frum Jewish girl, a girl who shared his background and his values. Before the unthinkable happened.

Chas v’shalom, no matter what, Annie would never lie to make a shidduch; she was her father’s daughter, after all. But maybe, she could call some carefully selected friends, neighbors, even mere acquaintances, chat with them, and casually mention that her Artie was interested in finding a wife — even if she knew he wasn’t.

Machiavellian? Maybe. Scheming? Possibly.

But necessary. Absolutely necessary.

It took days of pleasant (often boring)conversations and endless hours of playing Jewish Geography. And, amazingly… now it seemed to have worked.

“Y

es, Mrs. Schwartzman. You’re absolutely right, it’s a fine idea. She sounds like a wonderful girl. Of course, I’ll speak to him and call you back.”

Annie put the phone down, her expression thoughtful, her eyes hinting at a dawning of hope.

Mrs. Schwartzman was a casual acquaintance, a woman Annie had chosen to call because she knew everybody and was related to most of them. It turned out that her niece, Temmy Markowitz, lived right across the street from the Levines. Annie had seen Temmy years before, a little girl jumping rope with friends on the sidewalk, playing stoop ball with her older brother.  As the years passed, Annie would occasionally meet her walking home, laughing with her friends. They were nice neighbors, the Markowitzes, European Jews who’d fled their homes right before the Holocaust, and who’d rebuilt their lives and prospered, with Chatzkel Markowitz now a successful building developer.  Temmy, their oldest, was 21, graduating Brooklyn College with a major in social work.

A social worker: good sign. It showed caring, selflessness. Temmy was a pretty girl with good middos. She always said “Good Shabbos” when she passed Annie, and once, when Annie was heavily pregnant with the twins, she’d stood up and given her a seat on the bus.

And now… Frieda Schwartzman had called. She’d spoken to Temmy’s mother, who remembered how Artie had once shoveled the snow off their steps during the two terrible snowstorms of 1960, and how he’d absolutely refused their offer of payment. And how, as a teen, he’d always take in the groceries if he happened to pass while Mrs. Markowitz was unloading the car. “’He’s a nice boy, such fine middos,” Mrs. Markowitz had said to Frieda. “The Levines are a lovely family. It’s worth a date.”

A few more phone calls, some questions raised and answered, and it was done: Temmy Markowitz was interested in meeting Artie.

A mother-in-law who would appreciate Artie’s generous and loving disposition. A father-in-law in the construction business, who could offer him a respectable position in his company. And a lovely young wife.

Yes, there was hope.

But first, she had to speak with Artie.

F

our years.

For four long years Mutty Levine had been following the same route: From the West End Line to the Culver, Culver Line to the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue. For four years he’d passed beneath the turgid waters of the East River, the exotic streets of Chinatown, the Lower East Side with its Jewish stores and low-income projects, traveling 50 feet below street level, safely ensconced in the crowded, stuffy, and uncaring environment of a New York subway car.

Today, though, Dad’s Cadillac was taking him much more comfortably to the Ivy League charm of Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus. Dad had insisted: “It’s a big day for you, Mutty, the beginning of your career. Start it right.”

His brown leather briefcase lay on the passenger seat next to him, stuffed with sandwiches and cookies to get him through the day-long ordeal. It was heavy with something else as well, Mutty realized, while waiting for the light to change at Amsterdam Avenue: weighed down with the hopes and ambitions of his family, particularly his father.

He glanced at it and some kind of strange, unrecognizable emotion passed through him. The light turned green and he hit the gas, the feeling forgotten or, rather, simply overpowered by a flash of pre-test anxiety.

At least I’m on familiar ground, he thought, as he walked toward the testing location on campus, where over 100 ambitious pre-med students were gathering to take the MCATs, the medical school boards that would likely determine their future professions; indeed, their very lives. Many of the students came from colleges all over the city, and would have to find their way through the large and rather overwhelming campus.

Mutty settled in on a hard-backed chair, his palms slightly clammy as he clutched a sharpened pencil. Here and there he recognized a familiar face from one of his Columbia classes and gave a brief nod. No real friends, though: he’d kept to himself, an outsider with a yarmulke tucked carefully under a baseball cap.

The proctor nodded: the test had begun. Biology, chemistry, physics. Verbal reasoning, analysis, essays. Every multiple choice circle penciled in, every word carefully chosen, represented hours of study and memorization and endless mental toil.

The hours passed, the clock on the wall ticking in what seemed to be a slow and mocking cadence. And then, finally, it was over. The young men (and a few women!) poured into the hallway, their voices flooding it like 100 dams finally breaking under relentless pressure.

Evan Collins, who’d worked with Mutty in the Organic Chem labs, punched him on the arm. “So how’d you do, Levine?”

“It was really tough,” Mutty answered. Not quite the truth: He didn’t want to seem like he was bragging, but after all the endless MCAT prep tests he’d taken, the real thing had proven to be not half as difficult and frightening as he’d expected. As a matter of fact, he thought — no, he knew — he’d done well.

Which was why, as he sped down toward the Prospect Expressway, he couldn’t figure out why he felt so very depressed.

“B

ut why would she want to go out with me?”

Artie did not ask the question in a plaintive whine; it was actually his completely matter-of-fact tone that drilled its way into Annie’s heart.

Annie searched for, prayed for, the right words. “Aharon-chik, the woman who will be blessed with you as a husband will be the luckiest woman in the world. She will be marrying a mensch, a caring and responsible man. She’s a nice girl, Artie. And if”—here she hesitated, carefully walking through the graveyard where so many dashed hopes in grade after grade were buried—“you had a tough time in school, well, tests and marks and PTA meetings have nothing to do with happiness in marriage, nothing at all.”

Artie laughed. The sparkle in his eyes, dimmed by years of failure, appeared again, at least for a few seconds.

“If flunking classes makes for a good husband, I’ll be the best. Okay, Mama, you win. I’ll go out with the girl.”

O

nce again, like always, Mama was right: She was a nice girl.

As Temmy and Artie traveled to Manhattan early one Sunday evening, conversation flowed as smoothly as the Caddy that Dad had lent him. It helped that they had grown up across the street from each other, knew each other’s families. And that Temmy didn’t seem self-conscious at all: a girl who liked to talk, who liked to laugh. She’d be graduating college in a few months, hoped to continue her studies toward a Master’s in Social Work.

“And what are you majoring in?” she asked brightly.

“I’ve left college for now. Working in construction.”

“Oh, cool. My father is in real estate. And I know what your father does,” she added with a giggle. “He was my pediatrician. He was nice, and I forgive him for the aching muscles from the polio shot and DPT. You know, I’ve always kind’ve envied your family,” she continued, as they left the parking lot and headed toward the lounge where Artie’s friends all took their dates. “My parents baruch Hashem missed the War, but they were refugees. They managed to get out of Germany, but they had nothing, they left everything behind. Pretty intense. Your family, your mother and father, always seemed so relaxed to me, real Americans who’d missed out on all the suffering.”

Artie hesitated, stopped for a moment, then abruptly changed the subject. Sitting at a small table drinking overpriced Coca- Cola, Temmy spoke more about her dream of being a social worker. “I want to work with children, especially kids who need foster care. I feel like I have a beautiful, solid home, with loving parents, and I want to help children who don’t. It would be so horrible, don’t you think, to be raised by strangers?”

A beautiful, solid home. Loving parents. Yes, I had that. Foster care. Raised by strangers. I guess I had that, too.

Should I say something to her? Talk to her about it?

He looked at Temmy’s face, a happy face, a face that liked to smile and laugh. A girl with such a happy face, could she ever understand him? A girl whose every movement reflected success, in school, at home, in life. Would she even get it?

Better not to say anything.

“Yeah. Horrible.”

They walked on, Temmy chatting amiably about her camp experiences, her morning seminary classes, her choir and dance experiences in high school, with Artie interjecting questions and the occasional joke, but mostly listening. The pleasant chit-chat continued all through the ride home.

And when Artie had parked the car and opened the door for her, they said a cordial goodbye.

Neither mentioned when they would see each other again.

T

he family was eating dinner when Artie walked into the house, so Annie had to wait until the children had gone to bed before speaking with him.

“So, how did it go?” she said expectantly.

“She’s a really nice girl, Mama,” Artie answered. “But I don’t see it as a shidduch.” He sighed. “She needs a really nice boy.”

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 863)