Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal

Author:Lore Segal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sort Of Books
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Making Good

Rabbi Rosen liked circles. They rearranged their chairs and Gretel volunteered to go first: “I am Gretel Mindel. You are Margot Groszbart. You are Rabbi Rosen…”

The rabbi said, “How would you all feel about just: Gretel, Margot and Sam? Hard enough to remember twenty new first names, no?”

Gretel started over. “I am Gretel, you are Margot, Rabbi Sam, Bob and Ruth. Erich. Steffi. And you are…?”

“Konrad Hohenstauf,” murmured the eldest of the ten Viennese visitors – elegant, fragile, a little tremulous like a man after a heavy illness. He had a high, narrow nose – an alp of a nose, thought Margot Groszbart, who was one of the ten Viennese-born New Yorkers. Margot liked to say the only thing she missed was the mountains.

Konrad Hohenstauf’s papery brown lips parted as if reluctantly: “Gretel. Margot. Rabbi Sam. Bob and Ruth. Erich. Steffi. Father Sebastian. And you?” He looked past – not at – Shoshannah Goldberg, who was hard to look at. If looking at Shoshannah was hard, it was impossible to not look and try to figure out what was wrong – beside the inward-turning left eye, the abbreviated left leg and frozen shoulder – with the way that she was held together.

Shoshannah Goldberg forgot the name of the forgettable Erich Radezki, and Erich got as far as Fritz Cohn with the Kaiser Franz Joseph moustache. Gretel Mindel was the first to remember all the names and close the circle.

Rabbi Sam invited everybody’s input. “Questions? Any suggestions anybody would like to share?”

“Yes, I,” said the responsive Gretel Mindel. “This morning I walked into this room and was surprised with myself that I believed that all you…” and Gretel Mindel did not, of course, say “all you Jews”. She said, “that all you in New York must know each other. I surprised myself that I believed this.” Gretel appeared to be addressing herself to Margot Groszbart. During their first American breakfast of sugared doughnuts and bad coffee, Gretel had failed to get close enough to talk to the elderly pianist whom she had once seen from the back of a Vienna concert hall. From across the room in New York, Margot Groszbart looked to have retained a lot of black in her hair. Her eyes had a snap; they lighted briefly and without particularity on Gretel Mindel before continuing to rove the room. Gretel understood that she had made no impression on the elderly Jewish musician.

Margot Groszbart had surprised herself too. After not responding to Rabbi Rosen’s repeated and particular invitation that she join his Bridge Building Workshop, she found herself on the phone postponing a visit to her daughter in Los Angeles. Rachel said, “I thought you said Rabbi Rosen wasn’t your cup of tea.” “I know, but it’s interesting – ten of us stuck in a room with ten of them. Unlike your Brooklyn mother-in-law, I don’t walk around in a state of chronic Holocaust anger.” “Why don’t you?” asked Rachel. “Don’t know,” said her mother. “Don’t have the chronic anger gene like your dear mother-in-law.

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