The Goy Next Door (Girl Meets Goy #2)

Chapter 17 The finder’s fee

By the time the doorbell rang, the turkey was stuffed with a matzah meal stuffing and baked for four hours, the brisket was resting in its own gravy, the matzah ball soup was boiling, and the kugel was staying warm under tin foil. Salads were chopped, vegetables were roasted, eggs were hard-boiled and peeled, and crumbly desserts were cooling on the counter.

Leah and Shira were busy setting the seder plate and table with small bowls of salt water and charoset (Leah’s favorite! In fact, she had just finished mixing the grated apples, cinnamon, wine, and raisins around noon and for lunch she slapped a spoonful of the spread on the last remaining slice of bread in the house. “Charoset on bread?” Savannah questioned and shook her head, but there were still several hours until the breadless holiday would start).

Savannah wiped her hands from washing dishes and walked to open the front door. She greeted Asher and his parents with a loud welcome and smile so big, no one would ever guess she was exhausted from cooking since 4:00 am. An hour ago, all the girls had taken a break to shower and put on holiday clothes. The right amount of makeup ensured no one looked the least bit tired, not even Shira who had stepped off the red eye from California that morning with her purple highlights.

Leah put down the last bowl of charoset and walked over to her boyfriend. He looked nice in a blue button-down shirt and tan slacks. He was wearing a gold watch that Leah had never seen before. It looked sophisticated and expensive and she wondered where he’d gotten it.

He pulled her into a hug and kissed her gently on the lips while Savannah welcomed his parents inside.

“How was cooking?” he asked and Leah rolled her eyes with a giggle.

“You’ll tell me once we start eating.”

“There’re hours until then! Give me something to look forward to! Something to daydream about while we go through the seder!”

Leah laughed and told him the charoset was delicious and worth trying to sneak a little in before the seder. And the matzah ball soup! She giggled.

“Believe me, you won’t want to eat that soup you’re always getting as take-out anymore.”

“You’re going to ruin my go-to comfort food for me?” Asher shook his head.

Savannah offered everyone drinks, “Water, lemonade, or wine for anyone brave enough to start drinking before we get to the four glasses!” While everyone laughed, she passed out glasses.

“Nice watch,” Leah commented as she held Asher’s wrist.

“You like it? My dad got it for me yesterday.”

“It’s nice,” she responded. She’d never seen Asher wear anything remotely shiny or expensive like that and she wondered what the occasion was that his father bought him such a nice watch.

The conversations and giggles were so loud that no one flinched when the doorbell rang again. Leah waited a moment, wondering if her mother would open the door for who Leah assumed would be the recent divorcee from the temple that her mother had insisted on inviting. When her mother continued pouring drinks—apparently this group was not afraid of pregaming four glasses of wine with more wine—Leah silently walked to the front door. She opened it to a petite blond woman in a slim black dress carrying a bottle of white wine.

“Hi, welcome,” Leah invited her in. “I’m Leah, you must be…” Leah couldn’t remember her name.

“Cindy,” the woman introduced herself. “Your mom invited me. I hope I’m not intruding.” Cindy looked at the two families mingling. When Leah looked over, she wondered what it looked like to an outsider—one big happy family? Or two families getting to know each other?

“No! No! We’re happy you could come,” Leah assured her. “We’re starting with an extra glass of wine if you’re interested.”

Leah brought Cindy in and when Savannah noticed, she approached to give Cindy a warm hug and traded her bottle of wine for a glass from the opened bottle. “Good, we won’t run out tonight!” Savannah joked and introduced Cindy to everyone.

“Cheers,” Shira said to Leah and the girls clinked their wine glasses together. “A big happy family,” Shira commented while Leah took a sip. “Mom and Dad look really happy.”

Leah nodded. Her parents and Asher’s parents all looked really happy. The dads had moved to one side and were talking animatedly while the moms seemed to be complimenting each other’s jewelry. Cindy stood near Savannah and touched the earrings she was wearing.

Asher had his hand around Leah’s waist and was sipping his own glass of wine. “It’s nice our families get along so great, it’s important, you know.”

Leah knew. It was nice to see everyone enjoying the company. To feel like she and Asher made a good couple that their parents could be proud of and happy with. It wasn’t something to take for granted, she knew.

When the wine glasses were getting low, Savannah motioned everyone to the large table that had been set with a shiny white tablecloth and pristine dishes. The seder plate sat in the middle with its eye-catching lamb shank, a hardboiled egg, horseradish, parsley, charoset, and salt water. Square plates of matzah sat on either end of the table, covered with embroidered sheets.

“Savannah! What a gorgeous table!” Asher’s mother commented while taking a seat next to her husband. Asher sat next to his mom and Leah sat on his other side. Leah’s parents sat across from Asher’s and Shira and Cindy sat in front of the young couple.

They passed out Hagaddahs and began the retelling of the Passover story through the holiday ritual. They started by blessing the wine and then Savannah brought around a bowl and pitcher of water for everyone to symbolically wash their hands. Then they dipped the parsley into the salt water to honor the spring harvest while remembering the tears of the Jewish slaves in Egypt with the salt. Next, they blessed the matzah and Leah’s father broke one piece in half to hide for later.

“Are the kids going to look for the afikomen this year?” He asked and the “kids” laughed. When they were younger, Leah and Shira loved looking for the afikomen, the half piece of matzah that their father would hide somewhere around the house during the seder. According to tradition, the seder cannot be completed until the afikomen was found and everyone tasted it. But to Shira and Leah, it meant a new Barbie or doll or another prize for finding it.

They went around the table taking turns reading the story from the Haggadah of how the Jews were slaves in Egypt. They sang “diyenu” about the miracles God performed and dipped their fingers in the wine to spill ten drops to signify the plagues that God sent to the Egyptians.

When Leah felt her stomach grumble, they tasted the matzah and the bitter herbs which reminded them of what it meant to be slaves. And then everyone made a Hillel sandwich—matzah filled with horseradish and charoset, bitter and sweet—and crunched on that while Savannah passed around hardboiled eggs to symbolize rebirth and renewal of the Jewish people out of slavery.

With two glasses of wine already in her system and just a few bites from the ceremonial tastings, Leah was feeling giddy. She held Asher’s hand under the table and locked eyes with him whenever one of the adults said something that deserved a sarcastic quip and then got up to help her mother pass out bowls of matzah ball soup.

“You and Asher look really happy,” Savannah commented as she handed Leah two bowls to bring to their guests.

Leah thought she was happy. This was everything she had ever wanted, wasn’t it? Asher was her boyfriend and their happy families were enjoying the holiday together without any outbursts or drama.

She and Shira served soup, which Asher agreed was infinitely better than the soup he had been bringing her weekly in New York City. “No more terrible take-out soup,” he promised and Leah thought she could live with that.

Everyone loved the turkey, the brisket, the kugel, the salads, and other side dishes, complimenting Savannah on her cooking. “I can’t believe you did all this!”

“I had help!” Savannah nodded to her daughters and Leah smiled. She was happy. How could anyone celebrating such a perfect holiday not be?

The families reclined once everyone was stuffed and the conversation continued to flow lively. Even Cindy seemed to fit right in, making her own comments and asking questions at the right time to the right people. Savannah then opened the bottle of wine that Cindy had brought and commented that at least half the guests, if not more, had drunk more than their fair share that evening.

Savannah served desserts that all had a faint taste of matzah and crumbled on the plates of the overly stuffed guests.

“All right, what about the afikomen?” Leah’s father asked during a lull in the conversation. “Don’t tell me you’re all too old to look for it!”

Shira, Leah, and Asher all stood up. Like every year, Leah hadn’t even noticed her father hide the piece of matzah. However, every year he had managed to slip it somewhere in the room right under everyone’s noses.

“Finder gets a hundred bucks?” Asher questioned, almost nervously.

“If I find it, I want a car!” Shira blurted and everyone laughed.

“You kids got greedy! You used to be happy with a toy that cost a dollar.” Leah’s father joked. “We’ll see who finds it and then see what the gift is.” He winked at Leah and for some reason that made her nervous. Was she supposed to find it?

“Finder’s fees have gone up!” Leah told her own joke and wondered if anyone had gotten her reference. When she worked at Club Business, she had often written about finder’s fees, expensive payouts to companies that helped other companies find lenders.

Asher and Shira started walking around the house looking around, but they didn’t seem to be looking too hard. They walked next to each other, at the same time looking at all the different places that Leah’s father had hid it over the years—in the bookshelf, behind a framed picture, between couch cushions.

Leah started to look around. She moved a pillow from an armchair, looked at the pile of dishes in the kitchen, and then she saw a corner of the matzah cover behind her high school graduation picture hanging on the wall.

She remembered taking that picture. Her mother had taken her to get her hair and makeup professionally done and she pulled the straps of her tank top down under the black velvet drape that hung from her shoulders. She remembered sending the picture to Asher, who told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

She looked around and noticed that Asher, Shira, her parents, and Asher’s parents were all watching her approach the picture and gently pull the afikomen from behind the frame.

When she held it in her hands, her heart stopped.