Til the Real Thing Comes Along (5 page)

“By the way, Robert has a guy for you,” Dinah said. Robert was Dinah’s sometime boyfriend the endodontist. Or, as Dinah liked
to describe him, “on again off again.” Then she’d always laugh and say to R.J.: “And
you’re
the one who’s the comedy writer.”

“Not interested in being fixed up anymore, Di. Thanks anyway,” R.J. said, turning Jeffie’s hamburger on the griddle with her
right hand, putting the bun in the toaster oven with her left hand, and holding her head uncomfortably to
the side to secure the telephone receiver between her ear and her shoulder.

“His office is in the same building as Robert’s. R.J., don’t say no so fast. He’s a gorgeous, brilliant, Jewish psychiatrist.
Thirty-nine. Never married.”

There was a long silence.

“What are you thinking?” Dinah asked.

“I’m thinking: I wonder which one of those qualifications you just named is going to be the one that hangs him up the most.”

“You’re so cynical.”

“No shit, my Mend.”

“If you sit at home brooding do you know what you’re doing?” Dinah shouted into the phone.

“Yeah,” R.J. answered, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the ketchup and relish bottles. “I’m sitting at home brooding.”

“You’re giving that little no-talent mayor of the Munchkins—who calls his mother every time he takes a leak—power over you
and your feelings.”

“Dinah, don’t try to shrink me. Please. I don’t want to go out with the gorgeous brilliant psychiatrist from Robert’s building
because I’m not interested in looking for, or meeting or getting involved with, any man. Maybe it’s just for right now. Or
maybe it’s because I just don’t believe I want to go out into the dating world, since I frankly don’t think there’s anyone
out there. And you don’t have to worry. Michael Rappaport isn’t even in my mind. He doesn’t have one drop of power over me
at all.”

“I’m starvin’ to death,” Jeffie hollered down from upstairs.

“It’s ready,” R.J. shouted back. “Gotta go, Di,” she said, and hung up the phone, which rang again so immediately it made
her jump. “‘Lo?”

“Hi,” said the man’s voice. Then nothing. R.J. hated that. Arthur, practical no-nonsense Arthur, had once told her after she’d
received a slew of obscene phone calls one month, that if the caller didn’t identify himself immediately she should hang up.
“If it’s someone who needs to reach you, he’ll call back,” Arthur had cautioned her.

“Hi,” she said. The voice was familiar, but the question in her own voice told the caller she had no idea who it was.

“It’s Michael,” he said. Michael? Michael! Michael
Rappaport, her former fiancé. Ah, yes.
That
Michael. Hah! She hadn’t even recognized his voice. Michael. See, Dinah? He doesn’t have power over me one bit. Then why
was her heart pounding and why were her palms sweating and, Christ, why was her son’s hamburger burning on the grill?

“Ma,” Jeffie shouted.

“Michael?” R.J. asked, praying her voice wasn’t betraying her shakiness. “Uhh, can I… I mean… where are you? I mean are you
at home? Can I call you back? I’m fixing… I mean I’m in the middle of…” It was six weeks since she’d heard his voice. That
familiar voice. And now there he was. But she couldn’t do this to Jeffie. She had rules, and one of them was that Jeffie’s
needs came first.

“I understand,” Michael said sweetly. Sweetly. Not whining, the way she remembered he could sound so often. “Buzz me back,
hon. Soon as you can. Okay? I’ll be home all evening.”

“Great.” R.J. hung up the phone, flipped the burger into the air with the spatula, and watched as it landed perfectly on Jeffie’s
plate, pulled the bun out of the toaster oven without a mitt, and her fingers didn’t feel a thing.

“Come on, sweetie,” she called out to Jeffie, then did a little dance step as she pulled a container of yogurt out of the
fridge for herself. “Hon,” Michael had called her. I’ll be home all evening, he’d said very clearly. Not on a date. Home all
evening. Probably brooding over her. Probably realizing what a colossal error he’d made by ending it with her, hurting her,
letting a woman like her go.

He had, after all, been the one who was so madly in love. Insisted, even though they weren’t kids anymore, that they have
a huge engagement party. What a party it was too. At their favorite Italian restaurant on a Monday night when the place was
closed to the public, with every friend either of them had in attendance. An evening filled with romantic surprises, her favorite
flowers on every table, a five-piece band that played only old love songs. And the ring.

“Hey, Mahh,” Jeffie said, biting into his burger. “Any chips?”

R.J. put the yogurt down and went to the pantry for the chips. The ring that had belonged to Michael’s late grandmother. His
mother’s beloved mother who had left it to Michael’s mother, Sadie, who had kept it in a little
jewelry box on the top shelf of her closet. The ring Sadie Rappaport had promised Michael from the time he was a little boy,
the ring she would give to him for his fiancée when he grew up and fell in love.

“Regular or taco?”

“Taco,” Jeffie said. R.J. brought the whole bag to the table.

Just after everyone had finished the perfect Italian feast, Michael had made a toast to the woman who had made him the happiest
luckiest man in the world, “my beautiful R.J.,” and Dinah had cried and R.J. remembered being a little weepy, too, with relief,
and Michael’s older sister Sarah, who everyone said practically raised him, was dabbing at her eyes too. Everyone was surprised
when the mother of the about-to-be groom, Sadie Rappaport, stood and tapped on her wineglass with her knife. She was so tiny
that some of the people who were sitting at tables in the back couldn’t even see her as she began her speech.

“I’m sixty-four years old,” she began, then added with a twinkle in her eye, “although I’m sure I look much younger.” Everyone
applauded, and someone yelled, “Hear, Hear.”

“So far I’ve had a terrific life. My Harold, may he rest in peace, was a good provider. And even though I lost him too soon,
I managed to live a nice life anyhow, and have mostly anything that I want. But one thing I’ve never had was a daughter-in-law.”
Everyone laughed. Sadie paused for the laugh just long enough, and R.J. remembered thinking that her future mother-in-law’s
timing was better than Patsy’s.

“Because,” Sadie went on, loving her own performance, “my son was too picky. Now, thank God, he decided enough was enough
and he’ll break down and marry R.J.” Everyone laughed again. “So, Mikie, honey,” she said—and now she sounded like Ralph Edwards
telling the guest on
This Is Your Life
which person from his past was about to emerge from behind the screen—“here is the surprise your mother has promised you
all your life.” And at that, Sadie pulled a ring box out of the purse that was standing next to her plate on the table.

“Ahhhs” went up from everywhere. Everyone, especially the women, craned their necks to see what the surprise was. Sadie turned
to Michael and looked deep into her
son’s eyes. “With
my
love for
your
love,” she said. Michael stood and hugged her, and the man and his mother remained locked in a tearful embrace that was applauded
by everyone, especially R.J., who at that moment remembered being told: “You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats
his mother.” But Sadie had been sitting between R.J. and Michael at the round table, and now when she opened the box and showed
the ring to Michael and he oohed and ahhed and she wept and neither one of them even looked at R.J., R.J. felt a little awkward.

Michael held the box up and showed the ring to the gathered group, and everyone said “oooh,” but R.J. still couldn’t see it
because Sadie was still standing and blocking her view. She just smiled to cover her discomfort. Then Sadie took the box back
from Michael and, after what seemed a very long time, handed it to R.J., who stood, trying to ignore the fleeting thought
that the three of them probably looked like “the puppet family.”

Then R.J. looked at the ring, looked at Sadie, and could get out only the words
thank you
because she had to put her face into her hands to cover her reaction, which was so overwhelming that it embarrassed her.
Everyone thought she was crying. Thank heaven they thought that, because really what she was doing was laughing like a lunatic.
She had never seen anything so appallingly gaudy in her life.

After the party, when Michael took her home, the two of them laughed in the car until the tears came. About the ring. The
cocktail ring from Grandma, with clusters of tiny diamonds set in platinum, arrayed in some strange disorder that made it
look, as Michael described it, like a chandelier in a Miami Beach condominium.

“Michael,” she said, “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. Your mother was so sweet, and she meant so well… but what do I do?” R.J.
opened and closed the ring box, hoping each time that maybe when she opened it next, the ring would have changed.

“You take it to a jeweler and have the stones taken out,” Michael said. “Then he puts them into a plain band, and we get me
a gold band the same width, and we’re all set.” They had pulled up in the driveway of her house and he stopped the car. Now
he moved toward her, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

“Did you have a wonderful time at our engagement party?” he asked, kissing her all over her face.

“I did,” she answered. “Thank you so much, Michael. It was so romantic and wonderful. Are you sure it will be all right?”
she asked again.

“What?”

“Changing the ring. Taking the stones out and starting again. Are you sure?”

He had laughed. “Of course I’m sure.”

The next day on her lunch hour she had gone to a jeweler named Jay Marden, who was highly recommended by Dinah. The jeweler
shook his head when he opened the box and saw Sadie Rappaport’s mother’s ring.

“They don’t make ’em like
this
anymore.” Then he looked at R.J.. and said, “No offense.”

He liked the plan of using the diamonds to make a plain wedding band, even made R.J. a little drawing of how it would look,
and told her he would use the platinum from the existing ring to make the band for the new one. R.J. signed a paper saying
she had left her diamonds there, gave him a deposit on the work, and went back to the office. Ten days later when she got
the call saying that the ring was ready, she was ecstatic.

Mr. Marden stayed open a little later than usual so R.J. could pick up the ring after work. She decided to sneak out of the
office a few minutes early, feeling so guilty that when she passed Harry Elfand in the hall she coughed a fake cough just
in case he was about to ask her where she was going.

“Feel better,” Harry mumbled.

“Thanks,” she said.

The new ring was perfect. So beautiful it made R.J. melt when she saw it. Married. She was going to be married again. Be a
part of a family again. And Jeffie would have a father. Maybe eventually she’d even have another child.

“Want to try it on?” Mr. Marden had asked her.

“Oh, no.” R.J. was too superstitious to put the wedding ring on before the wedding. If she did, the wedding could come to
some bad end. Bad end. After Michael’s smoky announcement to her that day at the school fair, R.J. had taken the wedding list
and she had telephoned everyone on it one by one to tell them that the plans had been canceled. Somehow she managed to get
through all the
calls without crying. “Better to find out now,” she heard herself saying to them. And fifty out of sixty people actually said,
“It’s really for the best,” back to her.

“Hey, thanks for dinner, Ma,” Jeffie said, wiping some ketchup from the side of his mouth. “C’n I be excused?”

“Sure, baby,” she said, picking up his dish and her empty yogurt container and carrying them to the sink.

Michael. Why had he called her? She was afraid to think what she was hoping. That he missed her. Wanted to apologize. He would
have to apologize. Profoundly. He had hurt her so much. Hurt Jeffie too. And left R.J. alone to give once again the news of
another loss to her little boy.

“Jeffie,” she had said that day when he’d returned from the school fair. She had watched as Harriet Wallace’s car pulled up
in the driveway and the back door flew open and Jeffie, laughing heartily at something Matt Wallace had obviously just said
to him, leaped from the car and ran to the front door. The odor of Michael’s cigarettes still hung in the living room air,
although immediately after he’d left, R.J., on some automatic nice-Jewish-girl instinct, had emptied the ashtray and washed
it with hot soapy water, dried it, and put it away.

“Honey, sit down,” she had said to Jeffie.

“Uh-oh,” was his reply. He recognized bad news on her face. He sat on the living room sofa with the same look he wore in the
orthodontist’s waiting room.

“Michael and I aren’t getting married,” she had blurted out, certain afterward that there were probably dozens of better ways
of telling him. Maybe she should have started out by saying: “This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” or “This isn’t your
fault,” the way some parents did when they informed their children of their impending divorce.

“Okay,” Jeffie said. The lack of expression on his face was eerie.

“I’m sorry,” R.J. offered. “He told me today that he just can’t do it. I’m sorry,” she said again.

There was a moment when neither of them spoke or moved; then Jeffie asked, “Can I be excused?”

No, R.J. thought. Don’t run away from this. Or from me. Let’s talk about it. You need to and God knows
I
do.

“Yes,” she said. “Yon can be excused.”

He stood and without looking at her walked out of the living room into the hallway.

I have to be strong, have to be strong, R.J. said to herself. Dinah was right. I was going to marry him for all the wrong
reasons—it wouldn’t have been right. Better to find out now instead of…

“Ma,” she heard a little voice say. When she turned and saw the look on her baby’s face, all her resolve vanished. He was
running toward her, his arms extended, and when he got to the sofa he collapsed on her lap, his arms around her neck.