A thump of her heart wakes Rachel to the present. She finds herself in the rear of a taxi with Aaron, pulling up in front of Gluckstern’s on Delancey Street for dinner with the Weinstocks. The Barry Sisters sing the jingle over the radio: Let’s all sing! Let our voices ring! It’s East Side Gluckstern’s Restaurant and Caterers!
It’s just past twilight, when the city takes on the darkness from the ground up. Aaron puffs out his cheeks and straightens his tie as the cab pulls over to the curb. “Okay, so here we are,” he tells Rachel grimly. “Let’s get this fucking ordeal over with.” He had a few beers while they were getting ready. A few beers that nudged him into a surliness that he barely pretends to hide. Frowning, he leans his head forward to the cabbie. “So, buddy?” he asks, yanking out his wallet. “What’s this gonna set me back?”
Inside, the place is full and loud. An undercurrent of thunder thrums through the air as they’re seated at a four-top, the two couples—the Perlmans, Rachel and Aaron, and the Weinstocks, Cousin Ezra and wife, Daniela. Like many of the old kosher eateries, the place has a reputation for prickly service, as well as its corned beef and cabbage. There’s an old joke about a waiter circling through the tables of some neighborhood kosher restaurant asking, “Who wanted the clean glass?” But tonight, their waiter is a middle-aged mensch who seems cheerful, even delighted to have them seated in his section. “H’boy,” Aaron grumbles. “Smiley the waiter. He must have us sized up for big tippers” is her husband’s explanation.
“So thank you for putting up with the menu here,” Daniela says. Daniela Weinstock is the mother of a brood of little Weinstocks and seems to Rachel to have spent the last several years vershtuft. Pregnant. Though vershtuft is not a very nice way to describe it. Blocked! You would think of someone constipated! How many times has Daniela been pregnant since Rachel’s known her? But Rachel never offers congratulations. That would invite misfortune. Umglik! Better to say b’sha’ah tovah. At a good hour. All should proceed at the right time: the pregnancy should be smooth, the baby should be healthy, and the birth should be without complication. All that comes at a good hour—wishes for the future rather than blessings for the past.
Daniella is as sweet as can be. A good Jewish girl from Queens. Always patient with her little Weinstocks, never a harsh word, she is always ready to help out or lend a listening ear. And if she’s not exactly anybody’s idea of an intellectual, then so what? She has a talent for calming stormy waters. And she has wonderful hands. Competent and unhurried in her movements. Rachel is calmed just watching her fold laundry. She is currently pregnant with their fourth Weinstock child, and there is something so captivatingly, even biblically voluptuous about Daniela that Rachel often has to remind herself not to stare. Eyes like dark wine. The sensual nose. Her belly is round and low, and in her eighth month, her breasts are swollen tight. Just the sight of her makes Rachel feel underfed, flat, and empty. “I know you two don’t exactly keep kosher,” Daniela says with a soft smile.
“Hey, no problem at all,” Aaron replies. “How can you not love stuffed cow spleen, really?”
Daniela maintains her smile. “Well, if you’re tired of spleen, I think I can recommend the schmaltz herring.” And now everybody else is smiling too at the joke. But Rachel can see that underneath, Aaron is not really smiling at all. He is preparing to join battle in his never-ending duel with Ezra. Who did more in the war? Who is the better Jew? Who is living the better life?
“You know, I love Gluckstern’s,” Aaron declares and then sings a verse of the radio jingle while glaring at the menu. Come on, Jews! Choose satisfaction, because it’s good, good, good! “Uncle Al use to take us here when Naomi and I were kids,” he says. “Pack us into the tiny back seat of his old Studebaker.”
“And which was Uncle Al?” Rachel must ask. “I get them confused.”
“Uncle Al. Chief garment cutter for D. L. Horowitz, twenty-six years,” Aaron says. “Never married, but once a month, he’d bring us kids here for a meal.”
Daniela sounds pleasantly surprised. “Really? He was observant, Uncle Al?”
Aaron shrugs. “Well, nothing much got past him, if that’s what you mean.”
Another joke. But Ezra snorts disdainfully.
And here it comes. “You got a problem there, cuz?” Aaron wonders aloud.
Ezra Weinstock. The goodnik, or maybe a too-goodnik as far as Aaron is concerned. “The Fucknik” works better for her husband, as in, “God, but do I have to spend another evening listening to the Fucknik lecture?” Always carping on the responsibilities of the Jew, as if Aaron doesn’t have enough to deal with already! A large, physically imposing man, with thinning hair and cloudless eyes, Ezra is given to wearing socks with sandals. In the war, he was awarded a medal for driving a Sherman tank in North Africa. “The holy Bronze Star,” Aaron calls it, as if it was some kind of big, combustive Magen David bulging through the firmament above Ezra’s head. And maybe it is. While Aaron was in charge of the logistics for the U.S.O. camp shows, busy pissing off Hollywood caterers in California, Sergeant Ezra Weinstock was chewing up Nazis in his tank treads.
“Problem? No.” Ezra shrugs back. “Who could have a problem with Uncle Al? Everybody’s pal, Uncle Al.”
Daniela offers a quiet correction by speaking her husband’s name. “Ezra.”
Aaron frowns at the menu. “Nothing wrong with the man as far as the Perlman household was ever concerned. He always did good by us.”
“That’s ’cause he knew your pop was an easy tap,” Ezra tells him.
And now the anger shows. “Hey, genius. My pop was a generous man. Fault him for that if you want, but at least he didn’t burn down his own goddamn business for the insurance.”
Rachel spits out a not-so-quiet correction. “Aaron.”
Their waiter returns. “You folks ready to order?” he wonders pleasantly.
Aaron jumps in, obviously making an ugly joke. “Uh, yes, how does the chef prepare the jellied calf’s feet?”
Rachel says, “He’ll have the Romanian cutlet with a fruit cup.”
Aaron says, “And she’ll have the lungen and milz stew with the chopped herring.”
Rachel goes about collecting everyone’s menus. “Don’t listen to him,” she tells the waiter, handing over the menu stack. “I’ll have the kasha varnishkes, please. Thank you.”
“And you, Mrs. Weinstock?” asks the waiter.
“The usual for us, Mr. Katz.”
“Wonderful. And how are we doing on the Almonetta?”
“I think we’re fine, Oskar,” Ezra decides, but Aaron is past accepting anything his cousin has to say about anything.
“Hey, hey, speak for yourself, Sarge,” he says as he empties the bottle into his glass. “Some of us have a taste for fine wine. Let’s uncork another bottle of ‘Man-oh-Man-ischewitz.’”
The waiter gives him a suspect glance, but what’s he supposed to do? Argue?
“Sure. If that’s what you want, I’ll have the steward bring it out,” he says and leaves silence in his wake.
Leaning over to her husband, Rachel asks, “What are you doing?”
Aaron frowns to himself. “Nothing, nothing.” Then he turns to Ezra. “Look, I apologize, okay? That was a lousy thing to say about your old man.”
“No, no. You’re right,” Ezra admits. “Everybody knows my pop had the place torched. He practically admitted to it himself. But he was desperate. Ma, thank God for her recovery, was still in the sanatorium with the T.B., he had three kids to feed, and his business was in the toilet. It was wrong, no question. But maybe at least a little forgivable.”