The Goy Next Door (Girl Meets Goy #2)

Chapter 16 A Rosenberg record

Leah’s room hadn’t changed a bit since she left for college. The creaky bed was still covered in the sheets she had picked out in ninth grade and the walls were covered in magazine clippings (many from Teen Club), pictures of her friends, and paraphernalia from her high school youth group.

What’s Echad? Leah remembered Gabe asking when he had come home with her for Thanksgiving. She had nonchalantly explained that it was the name of her B’nai Brith Girls chapter and that it meant ‘one’ in Hebrew. But the explanation fell flat on Gabe, he nodded but he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand the tears that she had shed for Echad because of the love and sisterhood it entailed.

Asher understood. He had the same feelings for his youth group chapter, Galilee, named after the northern region of Israel, although he’d never admit the crying part.

In high school, she would have said that understanding was paramount in any relationship. All her girlfriends had the same feelings because they were in it too. Acquaintances from school never developed into friends because they couldn’t understand Leah’s dedication. She had always felt she couldn’t connect with someone who didn’t understand that part of her and that had always kept her and Asher connected.

Was that understanding still so important? She remembered when Gabe was there and she had felt silly, almost embarrassed, to talk about her passion for her youth group. Was that a sign that she had grown out of it? Or a sign of her and Gabe’s incompatibility?

She had been pondering this when she restlessly fell asleep that night, listening to the creak of her bed as she tossed and turned.

Thanks to the clanging of pots and pans being pulled from their drawers and shelves and the gentle thud of cabinet doors closing, Leah was awake at 6:00. She tried to will herself to sleep, but when the clanging and thudding didn’t stop, she pulled herself out of bed.

She didn’t need to open her eyes to navigate to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. She’d barely opened her eyes to walk downstairs to where her mother was standing in the kitchen pulling the food processor from the pantry.

“Oh! Good morning! You’re up early! I hope I didn’t wake you, I was trying to be quiet!” Savannah said with a smile. If Leah had opened her eyes all the way, she might have wondered if it was a snarky smile or if Savannah really had thought she was being quiet in the kitchen.

Savannah quickly put her daughter to work peeling potatoes which would wind up in the food processor for shredding and then get tossed into a bowl with eggs, oil (lots of oil), matza meal, salt, and pepper, and baked into a delicious potato kugel. Leah opened her eyes fully when the peeler was placed in her hands. No kugel was delicious enough to lose a finger over.

“So you and Asher?” Savannah yelled over the roar of the food processor processing the potatoes as Leah finished peeling each one. “You know, I was a little surprised you got back together.”

“Really? Why, Mom?” Leah asked keeping her eyes on the potato. She wasn’t skilled enough in the kitchen to peel while looking away. “You love Asher.” Leah thought back to the first time she had introduced him to her parents. They had bought bagels and rugalach from their favorite bakery and flung questions that Asher answered monosyllabically. Asher was a junior in high school and she was a sophomore and when her parents asked about his college plans, he said he hadn’t thought about it yet. Hadn’t thought about it yet .

When he left, her mom gushed about how wonderful Asher was. How cute! How sweet! And Leah realized her mom cared only about his religion. At the time she wondered how her parents would have reacted had he slapped her across the face during the meeting. What a nice Jewish boy! Leah imagined her mom saying despite the slap, even though Leah was sure—hoped—that was a gross exaggeration. Surely being Jewish wasn’t the only important thing.

“Well I don’t know,” Savannah said, her voice still loud when the food processor stopped and she dumped the contents into the bowl while Leah readied more potatoes. “It’s just, he was your high school boyfriend, I thought you might grow out of him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s wonderful! He’s just darling, we do love Asher! I just…” Savannah paused. “Whatever makes you happy, Dear.”

“Whatever makes me happy?” Leah repeated sarcastically. “That’s not what you said during Thanksgiving. Or New Year’s Eve at Rebecca’s wedding!”

At those events, ‘whatever makes you happy’ had clearly come with an asterisk that he must be Jewish.

“Oh please!” Savannah huffed and Leah wondered if this was a record for the Rosenberg family. Every holiday, every single one that Leah could remember included her mother having some sort of outburst or breakdown. There was that time in high school she was watching TV with her friends on Rosh Hashanah and her mom stormed into the living room with a knife in her hand and screamed at them to be quiet. There was also a party on the last night of Hannukah when her mom cried and threw a Sufganiah, also known as a jelly donut, on the wall because her pants didn’t close and her arm hurt from grating hundreds of potatoes. (That was right before Leah’s dad bought her the food processor.)

And how could she forget Thanksgiving, fresh on her mind, when Gabe asked if she had buttered the turkey, which was a ridiculous question in a Jewish household because butter on turkey was not kosher. While the Rosenberg’s were hardly strict, Torah-observing Jews, they did follow many of the important traditions, like not smearing a cud in its mother’s milk, even when the turkey wasn’t a cud and the butter didn’t come from the turkey’s mother. Gabe’s question led to the realization that he wasn’t Jewish, and didn’t even have a basic understanding of what being Jewish meant. This fueled Savannah’s holiday tradition of having an emotional outburst, which exploded into screaming about how her family did not appreciate her, did not value her, and did not grow up and do what she had dreamed for her children, which did not include bringing home a goy for Thanksgiving.

Leah’s mother was always extra emotional on holidays, maybe because of the early mornings and long days of cooking. Or maybe because it was one of the few opportunities to have an outburst with the entire family present.

But this, before 8:00 am, was a record. Savannah’s emotional outbursts had never happened so early before and Leah braced herself for what was coming next.

“I’ve always wanted what is best for you! And believe me, that includes marrying a nice Jewish boy! And you’re dating Asher, so I don’t understand why you’re bringing up that goy again!”

“Gabe,” Leah reminded her mother of his name. He wasn’t just some goy, as though they all were the same.

Tears started to stream down Savannah’s face as a gasp escaped her lips. Leah fought the urge to roll her eyes at her crazy mother and, instead, she put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, Mom? Why, why does every holiday do this to you?”

“The holidays are supposed to be special! Supposed to be important! Holidays are supposed to be meaningful! I want them to be that for you and for Shira! I want you girls to love the holidays the way I did when I was a kid!”

“We do, Mom,” Leah assured her, conscious of her hand on her mother’s shoulder. It was a strange feeling to be comforting her, instead of being on the receiving end of comfort. “But you’re so stressed out. You’re so anxious every time we’re all together!”

“I just…” Savannah wiped her eyes with her hand. “Never mind, it’s fine, everything is fine.”

“What?” Leah watched her mother’s face. There was something there. Something her mother wasn’t telling her about the holidays. Was her mother hiding something?

Before Leah could press the issue more, she heard the front door screech open with a loud, “HEEEEEELLLLLLLOOOOOO! I’m home!”

Shira. Leah patted her mother’s shoulder one more time before rushing from the kitchen to the front door to greet her big sister who was standing there with a large duffel bag and purple highlights in her wavy brown hair.

“Oh my God!” Leah exclaimed as she threw her arms around her sister. “What did you do?”

“Oh, it’s just for fun!” Shira giggled. “You east coast girls are so uptight!”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Just don’t tell mom you’ve become one of those Los Angeles gluten-free vegans!”

“Please! The last thing you’d want to do in LA is become a gluten-free vegan! There are so many restaurants and bakeries there! What a waste!” Shira had been living in Los Angeles since she graduated college with a film degree. She was one of the few people who used such a degree in life, but she wasn’t getting paid for that. She funded her passion for making indie films with a day job at a call center—another piece of evidence that Savannah listed during Thanksgiving to support her claim that her daughters didn’t appreciate her.

“Good, because you’re just in time to help with the matzah ball soup,” Savannah said standing out in the hallway. “I’ll get another peeler, and you can start on the carrots.”

“Lucky me,” Shira whispered to Leah and the girls giggled as they headed into the kitchen for the rest of the cooking. As they rolled matzah balls, cut salads, and baked kosher-for-Passover cakes, all Leah could think about was her mother and what on earth she was thinking about on this holiday.