The Matzo Ball Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page A

a dour man with a deli belly from eating too many tongue-and-corned-beef-combo sandwiches, who flossed his teeth with his favorite “girls” from a pack of nudie cards. He was sure the marriage would get top coverage in the Sunday Times style section: Jacob Evan Greenblotz of West Orange, matzo heir and Siobhan Moran of Jersey City and Cork, not Jewish, were wed today by Father Seamus O’Flanner…
    “Bad for business!” he croaked at Jake hoarsely. “All the customers in the Northeast, oy would they talk! If a Greenblotz can’t find a Jew to marry, what is the world coming to?” His life is hours from over and my grandfather worries about matzo sales?
    But Grandpa Reuben never delineated between love and money. Just a few years before, as we waited in the rain at my grandmother’s funeral in West Orange, Jake told me Grandpa Reuben’s most shocking offense. Jake had been in the factory earlier, the day Grandma Lainie broke her hip and had her heart attack—she’d slipped on an especially long shoehorn meant to aid her in her battle with arthritis. While one of our bakers called 911 to get an ambulance, Jake tried to resuscitate her with mouth to mouth, but there was never any hope. And here’s the kicker: when the emergency workers covered her up, Grandpa Reuben tried to give Jake a hundred-dollar tip for “his good honest effort.”
    Thirteen years together and no ring is embarrassing for anyone who knows they are a couple. Jake and Siobhan should follow their heart and get hitched. She was there for him after his parents’ deaths. But it’s not just that. Jake adores Siobhan. He’s told me more than once that he loves her meek little voice, adorable elfin ears and quick asides. But Jake is still saddled with guilt about crossing my grandfather’s last wishes.
    Strangely, Siobhan has come to accept Grandpa Reuben’s fascist decree. She even helps out in the store, introducing herself as Jake’s wife, Shoshanna Greenblotz, a name used exclusively in the factory. (Jake’s cockamamy idea, no doubt.) I guess Siobhan’s fiery hair can be mistaken for the redhead tresses that show up in many Jewish families, but doesn’t her slight brogue give it away? Yet Jake happily swears that every once in a while when Siobhan lets out a colleenish “to be sure, to be sure,” most of our customers think she’s Israeli.
    I have to grin. Jake is such a lovable screwball. Lately he has taken to wearing a white coat during the Passover season as if he is a Doctor of Matzo; he claims it doubles sales in the same way cinnamon and other baking scents do when piped through the ventilation system in shopping malls. Customers seem to think the matzo is more kosher when there’s a man in a white coat inspecting the halls.
    But white coat or not, Jake can’t erase the ugly truths about America’s most famous Jewish dynasty.
    I suspect matzo means money and disconnection to everyone in my family. Even to Jake, who puts up the best front. I can’t be the only Greenblotz who stares at a dividend check with ambivalence.

THREE
    Interview with a Matzo Heiress
    T he interview! I can’t just lounge around in reverie. After a quickie shower, I put on my stripy blue-and-green silk blouse that I snapped up at Language during their August sample sale. I’m nearly out the door went it hits me that this is TV and a stripy blouse makes the screen go crazy, so I change into a dark red cashmere sweater I bought the same week at Barneys warehouse sale. During the cab ride downtown I pick off a few red lint balls on the sweater and ponder what new tidbits about Izzy I can give this Steve Meyers of unknown religious persuasion. There are stories amusing to Jake and me, like the time Jake removed the back drawer of his desk to give it a good clean. Along with three dimes so old they had portraits of Mercury on them, he found a set of false teeth. “Whose teeth are they? Izzy’s?” he laughed hysterically into the phone. The thought of the