Love You a Latke

Chapter 4

4

Of course, that slightly lighter feeling only lasted until the end of the day. As I closed up shop, my lips thinned as I counted the day’s receipts. The numbers were even worse than yesterday’s. If things didn’t look up soon, I’d have to…I didn’t even know what I’d have to do. I couldn’t just close down, considering my home and my business were one and the same. I’d have to move. And where? I liked it here. I liked the cold fresh air in the morning, the idea that everybody knew and could depend on one another so that nothing felt too overwhelming, the feeling of isolation from the larger world and all the things it could do to you.

It reminded me of what I’d felt like growing up. Sure, the suburbs of New York City were nothing like small-town Vermont: I didn’t know anywhere close to all my neighbors, and I certainly didn’t stop and chat with them at the store.

I was thinking more of my community. Of the Jewish youth group I’d grown up in, of the people at my family’s synagogue, of the way people showed up with food whenever a relative died or sang to me at my bat mitzvah even though I barely knew them or swooped in with offers of help anytime someone lost a job or hit hard times. It had been like sitting by a warm fire all my life, protecting me from the cold.

And then, well. When I got turned out into the cold, I didn’t even have a coat.

It was the Hanukkah festival bringing up all these memories, I decided as I brushed a dusting of snow from the windshield of my car and got behind the wheel. It wasn’t even five yet, but the sun was already setting, giving the tree-covered mountains in the distance a fiery glow. I just had to get this over with, and then I could go back to not thinking about the past.

Surely, it wouldn’t be too long—I was, after all, on my way to meet with one of Lorna’s vendors. I’d already spoken with the logistics guy, who was in charge of making sure the area where the festival would be held—the town’s central green square—wouldn’t be lit on fire by electrical cords snaking everywhere and that we’d have proper restroom and EMT access as required by law. He’d been fine. Hopefully, the other vendors would be, too.

First up was the scenery guy, who was responsible for decorating and sourcing all the physical booths we’d need along with the little extra things to make the ambiance extra festive. I was meeting him at an early Christmas festival he was setting up in a nearby town. Gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled into the parking area, noting the abundance of trucks and trailers surrounding me.

Funnily enough, the guy actually looked a little like Santa Claus, big and burly with a cropped white beard and round red nose. “Evening,” he said. The sun had set fully now, but it almost didn’t feel that way with the blazing lights surrounding us. “You must be Abby?”

“I am. And you must be Fred?” We shook hands. I tried to match him, but it was hard when it felt like he was trying to crush my finger bones to dust. Not very Santa-like. “Lorna spoke very highly of your work. And of course I’ve seen it at the Willingboro Christmas Festival.”

He smiled, revealing a gap between his two front teeth. “Thank you kindly. I have to say, I was immediately intrigued when Lorna told me she was planning a Hanukkah festival. That’s something new around here. Should be fun, though.”

I hadn’t realized I was tense until my body relaxed. There was always something about meeting a new person in an area where there weren’t a lot of Jews, or even where there were a lot of Jews, actually. People could get weird about Jews in the direction of really hating us or professing to love us so much it got creepy. And I don’t even want to mention the frequency with which somebody would casually bring up Jesus and wouldn’t I be happier if I found him.

“Awesome,” I said. “So, looking at what the Christmas festivals all seem to have and what seem to be successful at drawing people in, I think it would be fun to have some kind of ‘here’s the story of Hanukkah’ display, and—”

“What is the story of Hanukkah?” Fred interrupted. He paused before a massive Christmas tree sparkling with multicolored lights. I blinked at it, dazzled for a moment, before turning back to him.

You’d think he would have googled the basics before meeting with me. But whatever. It was fine. “Basically, Hanukkah is about a Jewish revolt against non-Jewish oppressors. In the land of ancient Israel, Jewish territory was conquered by this asshole of a king Antiochus who decided to outlaw Judaism. He made all sorts of jerk moves like putting up an altar to false gods in the sacred Temple and ordering pigs, which are not kosher, to be sacrificed on it. Anyway, this group of guys called the Maccabees revolted against the king and fought against his army and the Jews who’d gone along with their edicts.”

“Sounds bloody,” Fred said.

I chose not to respond to that. “The Maccabees won and defeated the king and the army, but the problem was that the Temple was still defiled. They cleaned up and everything, but the oil that was supposed to keep the eternal light lit, well, eternally, was defiled, too. They only had enough suitable oil left to keep the lamp lit for one more day, even though it would take them eight days to make more. But, miracle!” I did jazz hands, which immediately made me feel like an idiot. But letting them fall would only make me feel like more of an idiot, so I kept those things shimmering and shimmying for the whole next sentence. “That one day of oil lasted eight days instead, so by the time it would have gone out, the new batch was ready! So Hanukkah doesn’t just commemorate the successful revolt, but the miracle of the oil. That’s why we eat foods fried in oil and light the menorah for eight days.”

Fred did not seem super impressed, not even by my jazz hands. “That’s not what I expected,” he said.

“Well, what did you expect?”

He shrugged. The lights blinked on and off behind him. “Something less bloody, without as much war or as many dead pigs? Something more heartwarming, I guess? Like Christmas.”

I supposed it was hard to get more heartwarming than the birth of a magical miracle baby with stars twinkling in the sky and cuddly (live) farm animals all around. “Well, Hanukkah is technically a minor holiday. It only gets so much attention in Western culture because it’s right around Christmas.” He squinted at me. I continued, “Besides, most of our holidays aren’t really the heartwarming sort. Mostly, they commemorate times different groups have tried to kill us and failed. Or trees; we as a people really like trees. Great food, though.” He squinted at me even harder. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to go on. “Except for the holidays that involve fasting. But even they have good food at the end of them, usually.”

“All righty, then,” Fred said, with the tone of a doctor telling a patient that the ache in their ankle didn’t mean they had cancer. “Well, we work with what we have. This festival demonstrates our inventory pretty well, I think.” He gestured at the tree behind me. “We have all sorts of lights. Hanukkah colors are blue and white, right? We can deck your tree out in blue and white lights.”

Now it was my turn to squint. “What tree?”

“There’s always a tree at these festivals,” he said. “And it shouldn’t be hard to put one of those Jewish stars at the top instead of a golden angel or a regular star. What do you think?”

What did I think? I thought that he was totally missing the point. “Decorated trees aren’t really a Hanukkah thing,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll want one for a Hanukkah festival.”

He sighed heavily. “All right. Let’s take a walk around, then.”

As he led me around the ghostly grounds, all set up yet empty of people, I wondered why I cared so much. The easy thing to do would be to just nod and agree with whatever he told me. It wasn’t like I was the one paying after all. Tourists would still come, curious at the novelty of a Hanukkah festival if they weren’t Jewish or, if they were, thrilled by the crumbs thrown their way. I still remembered being a kid when Hallmark’s one Hanukkah movie aired every year in the middle of their Christmas marathon. No matter how terrible the movie was, no matter how inaccurate it felt to our experiences or pandering it felt to the general non-Jewish audience, it was still so exciting to feel like someone was speaking to us.

Fred stopped before the Nativity scene, whose life-size plastic figures glowed in pale blues and pinks and whites. “I have a bunch of sets of these guys. I don’t think it would be too hard to set them up differently to show the Hanukkah story,” he said, waving his arm over them. “Would a sheep work in place of the pig? And we could put those little hats on the Three Wise Men and make them into your rebels.”

I exhaled deeply through my nose. “No, a sheep wouldn’t work in place of the pig. The whole point is that pigs aren’t kosher, so sacrificing a pig in the Temple was profane in a way a sheep was not. And no, we can’t just put yarmulkes on the Three Wise Men and turn them into Maccabees.”

He threw his hands in the air. “I didn’t even get to my idea of using a Frosty the Snowman as the evil king! You know, it’s symbolic. A cold heart and all that.”

The rest of the tour didn’t go much better. He tried to sell me on garlands of holly as a generic wintertime decoration and on using light-up reindeer noses for a menorah (“There are eight of them! It’s perfect!”) and did not take kindly to my telling him there were actually nine candles on a hanukkiah, counting the shammash that lit the other candles. By the end, I was shaking my head before he could finish telling me his idea for repurposing his rental Santa outfit into a jelly doughnut costume (don’t ask).

The food guy, who was supposed to coordinate vendors for the food booths and source ingredients, was just as unhelpful on the phone the next day. “Kosher?” he said. “What’s that?”

At least for once, Seth didn’t make it worse. As soon as I’d seen him walking past the window toward the door, I’d started preparing his pumpkin spice latte. That way I’d have it ready by the time he made it to the counter, meaning minimal time for talking. Though of course he tried anyway. “Is there any coffee in there under all that whipped cream?” he asked, picking up the cup, his glancing smile telling me he was joking. “How much did you charge me for this?”

Had he not even looked at the screen before blithely swiping his card? He was lucky I wasn’t a scammer. I always carefully examined any receipts before paying for anything to make sure nobody was trying to take advantage of me. “It’s free,” I said. “In appreciation for changing my lightbulb yesterday.”

I expected him to crack another joke or smile and say thank you, but his response surprised me in its seriousness. “You don’t have to give me anything for it. Knowing I helped you out is enough.”

Ugh. His sincerity made me want to empty the whole container of whipped cream into a pretty white tower on his head. “Whatever,” I grumbled. But he didn’t push it. He just took a sip, gave a happy sigh from underneath his whipped cream mustache, and walked away with a spring in his step.

Given my difficulties with the vendors, when Lorna’s name popped up on my buzzing phone, I was not all that eager to pick it up. And not even because I’d just closed the café and plopped down on my secondhand cracked leather couch upstairs to take a much-needed break. “Abby,” she said without preamble. The force of her voice practically shook the leaves of the half-dead plants Connor had left behind on the windowsills due to his mom’s allergies. “I hear you didn’t hire the decorator or the food vendor I sent you to.”

I slipped off my Crocs—ugly, but nothing else kept my feet from throbbing after a long day the way they did—and tucked my legs under me. “Neither of them knew what they were doing.”

Lorna sucked in a deep breath. I braced myself for her to yell, but the quiet, deadly voice that came out was somehow even scarier. “Of course they know what they’re doing. They run all the Christmas festivals in the area. If they don’t know what they’re doing, then nobody up here knows what they’re doing.”

I focused on the crack that ran from the ceiling to the floor right next to where my living space turned into the tiny kitchen. My apartment hadn’t fallen apart yet, so I hadn’t bothered to call the landlord about it. Something that had always bothered Connor, but then why hadn’t he just called the landlord himself? “I’m sure they run amazing Christmas festivals. But Hanukkah festivals are different. We need different things, different foods, different setups. You can’t just put blue and white lights and a Star of David on a Christmas tree and say it’s for Hanukkah.”

“Why not?” asked Lorna. I almost laughed before I realized she wasn’t joking.

A chilly wind blew in through my window, making me shiver. The window was closed. That was probably a problem. Maybe I should call the landlord. “If we’re not going to do it right, why bother holding a Hanukkah festival at all?”

“For the tourism dollars,” Lorna said bluntly. “That we need to keep this town alive. That, need I remind you, you need to keep your café alive.”

She let the words hang there in the air between our phones. I focused harder on the crack in the wall. Maybe, if I was really lucky, the ceiling would fall in and entomb me. Like, not enough to kill me, but enough to land me in the hospital for a little while. I’d be out my deductible, which might lead me to financial ruin, but at least I wouldn’t be expected to put together this festival from my sickbed.

Lorna sighed. “You know, it’s okay if you want to bow out. I can take over, or give it to someone else.”

Someone else who would go back to the vendors and say that, sure, telling the story of the Maccabees with the Nativity figures seemed cool, and sure, who needed a giant menorah when we could have a big tree, was what she meant. Despite literally thinking moments before that I’d rather put myself in the hospital than do this, the thought of her doing it wrong felt even worse.

It was already bad enough that the Hanukkah festival couldn’t be held on actual Hanukkah. I could just imagine the Jewish tourists traveling up from New York City and Boston, so excited by their little scrap of representation, only to find a Christmas festival colored blue and white.

I hated the thought. I hated that I cared so much when I felt like I no longer belonged among those very same people I was trying to impress. It wasn’t like I could fill the hole that they left in me by putting on an incredible festival. And yet. “No,” I told her. “I can do it. Give me a few days to find other people.”

Just the thought of dedicating more of my vanishingly rare free time to hunting down appropriate vendors threatened to bring on a Category 4. Lorna asked, “Where are you going to find them?”

“I’ll ask the local Jewish community,” I said, trying to sound as confident as I could.

A confidence I was pretty sure was misplaced, which I confirmed as soon as I hung up and googled it. There was no local Jewish community. Vermont only had a few thousand of us in the first place, and those of us who were here were scattered all over the state. There were some congregations in the bigger cities, like Burlington. I could theoretically make the long drive there and ask around.

But what if they could just look at me and know how much I felt like a fraud? How much I felt like I no longer belonged? I hadn’t been to a synagogue in years. I hadn’t celebrated any holidays, or exercised my rusty Hebrew, or observed the rest day of Shabbat, since I left home. What if they took one glance at me and told me I wasn’t one of them?

Just the thought made my long, low exhale shake.

Maybe I could find somebody nearby who wasn’t a fraud, who knew things I didn’t or could ask around in my place. I mean, there were Jews in places like Nepal and Tanzania. There had to be at least a few of us within fifty miles in this country with the second-highest Jewish population in the world. But how to find them? If only there was an app for that.

Wait. There was an app for that. Wasn’t there? For dating? Like Tinder, but for Jews. I wasn’t looking to date, but as long as I made that clear on my profile, nobody could fault me for trying to connect. Right?

Before I could convince myself it was a terrible idea, I’d opened up the app store and begun the download. Only a few seconds and, with a ping, it was prompting me to set up my profile. I had to look like someone nice and friendly who probably wouldn’t try to murder a potential partner, so I took a few minutes to scroll through pictures on my phone. There weren’t a lot of great options: I wasn’t one for selfies, and…was it sad to say I didn’t get out and do much worth taking pictures of? It wasn’t like I could populate my profile with photos of my lunch specials and seasonal coffee offerings.

Sad or not, the thought was making me feel some kind of way, so I hurriedly picked a few that weren’t terrible—one the local paper had taken of me at work at the café; two of me and Connor together where I had to crop him out—and made my profile go live. Heart pattering with anticipation, I went to start swiping. And I swiped.

Once. Because there was apparently only one other Jew—or at least only one other Jew on the app—within fifty miles of me. I stared at my empty screen, blinking not so much with shock but with maybe a little surprise. I’d been so amped to go that I hadn’t even looked at the profile of that one person, assuming I’d have at least a few more to go.

My phone buzzed. Match! Could it be bashert?

I rolled my eyes. No, we were probably not soulmates.

A fact that became even more obvious when I saw the profile photo. That cheerful grin not even slightly impeded by the dark beard surrounding it. That stupid name I didn’t even bother scrawling on the coffee cup anymore.

Seth.

I didn’t like to think much about my parents, but my mom popped into my head right now anyway. She was short, like me, and just as pale, her dark hair cropped into a pixie and her lips always pursed. Or at least they had been the last time I’d seen her, over five years ago—it was an undeniable fact that I’d gotten my resting bitch face from her, though she was a lot better at covering it up with genuine-looking smiles. She’d always claimed to “just know” if someone she met, or an actor on a show she was watching, was Jewish. It’s all our shared trauma as a people , she said once, tone grandiose. It reaches out to the other. Forms an immediate connection knowing that we’ve survived all the same things.

Apparently, my own Jewdar was broken, because I’d never felt anything like that from Seth. Just grating annoyance and the overwhelming desire for him to leave my presence immediately.

I had to unmatch him. Whether it killed the festival or not, there was no way—no way—I could let him see my face on this app or let him think that I’d purposefully swiped right on him. Ugh. The Hanukkah festival could burn like the First Temple. Just the idea of him thinking there might be more than a business relationship between us made me want the ceiling to collapse on me again—this time leaving no survivors.

But just as my thumb reached for the bright red button, my phone buzzed. With a message. And considering I’d only swiped right on one person, there was only one person it could be from.

Ugh.

Well, what was done was done. I might as well read it. Hey! Is this the Abby from Good Coffee?

I briefly fantasized about saying no, then letting him think I just had a look-alike in the area with the same name. But that was not plausible, given how few people there were around here. Yup.

His response came immediately. I see! I wasn’t sure. I thought there might be another Abby in the area who smiled every so often.

I raised my eyebrow at the gall. I was smiling a lot more in my pictures than I did around him, but there was a reason for that. Maybe I smile all the time when you’re not around.

No response came immediately that time. I sighed. God help me, I was actually feeling a little twinge of…bad. So I added, grudgingly, By the way, thanks again for changing that lightbulb. That was a nice thing to do. It really helped me out.

Those three little bubbles indicating typing appeared, then disappeared. To distract myself from what he might be struggling to say—not like I cared—I clicked over to his photos.

His profile pic was a full-body shot from far enough away where you could barely see his face, a posed shot of him standing triumphantly atop the summit of a—hey, I knew that mountain. Back when I had days off instead of “days off,” I used to drive an hour east toward the New Hampshire border and do this exact same hike. I’d had to hike a lot of mountains to find this perfect one: a steep enough slope where I sweated and panted going up but that wasn’t so steep where I felt like I might fall off or had to clamber my stumpy legs up too many menacingly smooth rocks; long enough where I got a good workout but short enough where I didn’t have to stress about being stuck there overnight if I twisted my ankle; a stunning view of rolling trees and sky and tiny dollhouses to reward me for making it to the top.

Maybe I’d even hiked by him at some point. Nodded at him in the universal greeting of hikers.

So that I didn’t have to think too much about how there might have been a time when I didn’t find him extremely annoying, I swiped to the next one. This one was a close-up of him mid–giant smile, eyes half-closed as the pudgiest corgi I’d ever seen licked his face.

I was not immune to the power of an adorable corgi. It took me a few seconds to swipe past it, and I had to make myself scowl to erase the tiny smile playing on my lips.

The rest of his pictures were standard dating profile flair: him with a group of carefully less-good-looking friends; him smiling with a young child to show how unthreatening he was; even one of him in a suit wearing a kippah, a nice pander to the more observant users of the app. No photos of him with a fish he’d caught or with a tiger, which I’d learned over many years of swiping were often warning signs of bro-dom.

My phone buzzed with a message. You’re welcome. So. Want to meet up and talk about something other than coffee?

That corgi flitted through my mind. Maybe if he brought his dog, spending time with him wouldn’t be quite so insufferable, because I could ignore him and play with the dog.

No. Down, Abby. You’re here for a reason, and you need to be up front about it. Which was a good thing, actually, because it would immediately take whatever expectations Seth might have from me off the table. Just FYI, I’m not on here looking for an actual date. I’ve been drafted into planning a Hanukkah festival and am looking for help from whatever local Jew I can find. Could you maybe help with that?

I stopped. Wondered why he might offer to help me without anything in return—there was only so far this sunny “all I want is to know I helped you out” attitude could take me, surely. So I added, Free pumpkin spice lattes all winter if you can . I stared at the screen grudgingly for a moment. With extra whipped cream.

Those three little typing bubbles popped up, then disappeared. Popped up again, disappeared again. Sweat prickled on the back of my neck. What if he blew me off? Took a look at what I’d asked for and what I’d offered, and figured it wasn’t worth it?

The typing bubbles appeared again. This time words came after them . I am susceptible to bribery , he wrote. But I just had a better idea. Maybe we can help each other.

What do you mean?

Let’s talk in person.

I hated myself for thinking it, but, well: I was intrigued. I suggested meeting at the café to make things easy. He said that would be fine if that’s what worked best for me, but he’d really been wanting to check out this holiday pop-up bar a couple towns over. Maybe it could inspire your festival.

It was an interesting idea. And honestly, I wanted to get out of my café for a bit. So even though it meant an extra half hour of driving and the associated gas money, I agreed.

It couldn’t be that bad, right? What were the odds I could convince him to bring the dog?