The Middlesteins(44)
“Yes, please,” said Emily.
Her grandmother squeezed her daughter’s hands and released them. She closed both folders and laid them on the seat next to her, nodding to herself. “I promise you I will read all this tonight,” she said.
“I’m going to call you tomorrow,” said Robin. “First thing.”
“Good,” said her mother. “It is always a pleasure to hear from you.” She finally wiped at her eyes with her napkin, then turned to Emily and said, “Have you ever seen a real restaurant kitchen before? Come on, come meet the chef.”
The two of them walked back to the double kitchen doors, her grandmother knocking on one and then poking her head inside. “Yoo-hoo,” she said. “Can we come in?” Emily stuck her head in, too, and Anna huddled in the corner of the gleaming white kitchen with an older Chinese man, wrinkled, tall, stooped, and worried-looking.
“Of course you can,” said the man. “Of course, of course.” He waved them in. “You are okay?” he asked her grandmother.
“Yes, we’re just a bunch of emotional gals,” she said. “It runs in the family.”
“Three peas in a pod,” Anna said.
“Three weepy peas,” said her grandmother. “Emily, meet Anna’s dad, Kenneth. This is his place. He’s the chef.”
The man, this stranger, though maybe not a strange man, but definitely not her grandfather, came toward her grandmother, took her hand, squeezed her hand, brushed it against his cheek, kissed it lightly, lowered it, leaned toward her, kissed her on her cheek, kissed her again on her cheek, then kissed her on the corner of her mouth, stopping just short of a full-mouth kiss, but it was not necessary, he had already done enough to show his intentions toward her grandmother, and when Emily looked at her grandmother’s face, peachy and flushed and so clearly delighted, then watched as her grandmother leaned forward toward this man and fully, blatantly, kissed him on his lips, like she didn’t even care that Emily was standing right there (with so many questions), Emily knew that there was no way her grandmother was ever going to go away to any fat farm or ever stop eating all that Chinese food, and Emily could not blame her, because if she had a man who looked at her like Kenneth looked at her grandmother and wanted to cook for her and kiss her all over her hands and cheeks and lips, she would stay with him forever and ever, until the day she died.
Middlestein in Love
OH, BEVERLY, thought Richard Middlestein, daydreaming again of his first crush since sometime in the late 1960s, right before he met his wife (his estranged wife, to be precise) and gave up his life completely (or incompletely, as he had been thinking lately) to a woman he no longer loved. But here, now, he felt, as genuinely as he was capable of feeling, that he had a second chance at love with Beverly, formerly of the UK until a Chicagoan stole her away twenty years earlier, red-haired (still natural, even in her late fifties; this bowled him over), plump-cheeked, bold but not brassy, practical, smart, witty, clever even, half Jewish but on the right side, with big, batty, beautiful green eyes, lovely Beverly who made perfect sense all the time and had a certain order to her life that he would like to apply to his own.
Beverly! Who gave him the time of day only once a week, if he was lucky, leaving his e-mails unreplied to, his phone calls unanswered, until he finally got the hint, she was not a woman who could be crowded or pushed, she did everything on her own time in her own way, she carried herself through this life with dignity, and he wanted a little of that for himself. Whatever she knew, he wanted to know.
Beverly! The lovely widow of a fantastic man, a kind ophthalmologist, who’d left her set for life. (She had a lot more than Middlestein in the bank, that much he knew.) Beverly, childless (no baggage, none whatsoever!), but who still loved children. Beverly, who liked to do things, lots of things, go to the movies, go to the theater, watch footy on weekend mornings, go for drives along the lake, go for bike rides, eat nice meals, have elegant dinner parties, all these things that did not involve walking too much, many of them mainly related to sitting, which was perfect for Richard and his not-so-great knees.
Beverly! So precious with her British accent, in her soccer jerseys, hanging out in that ancient, smoke-stained pub with the awful breakfasts (shriveled, ruddy sausages; Middlestein had been unable to force himself to even take a bite) with her expat girlfriends, cheering for Tottenham, even though (or because) they were a bunch of losers. Once she had let him come and sit with her for a match early on a Saturday morning, and they had all cheered and roared (this year, at last, Tottenham had been winning), and sipped Guinness (for her and her friends) and Bloody Marys (for him), and afterward she had listened to his problems and, miracle of all miracles, solved them, or some of them anyway, the early-morning alcohol perhaps infusing her with a shocking clarity, and in retrospect he became convinced she could even see into his soul. And now he waited to be invited every week—he knew he couldn’t just crash her party, that would be the surest way to make her lose interest in him—but she hadn’t asked him since, settling instead for quiet little dinners, which were satisfying in their own way, but there was something about the moment they had both experienced during that early-morning drunk, how her hand had fluttered to his hands and once to his cheek, the directness of her gaze, which seemed to melt with his in the dusty streaks of sunlight vibrating in their booth; he hadn’t felt that same connection with her since, and he knew if he could just have one more morning with her, if she would grace him again with that same energy, they would be able to move beyond the gentle pecks on the cheek she gave him when she bid him good-bye in the parking lot of whatever restaurant they had dined in—too briefly!—that night.