"The Kosher Test"

My brother and I put down heaping plates of chicken parmesan and fettuccine Alfredo the way Zelda asked us to and watch my mother lick her full lips. She clears her throat and looks away.



“What’s wrong Sam? I got your favorites,” Zelda says innocently, the acting gene clearly springing from her loins.


“Mom doesn’t eat meat and cheese together. She eats kosher style, right mom?” Jack asks and goes to remove her plate.


“When did this start?” Zelda asks Mr. McGee because there is no way he can know.


“I think you know,” Mr. McGee says, raising his furry eyebrows. “I’ll take that Jack.” He hands our mother a plate of chicken that he’s taken the liberty of removing heavy cheese from. Mom blushes and touches his arm just long enough for Mr. McGee to clear his throat.


Mom never kept kosher when dad was alive. He’d tried to get her to respect the Jewish dietary laws against dairy and meat but all she knew was a lifetime of bacon and eggs mixed in with a handful of High Holiday tickets to the temple. But after the car accident, after the funeral with the closed pine coffin and a slew of Shiva visitors to remind her that Jewish roots meant more than Zelda’s mahjong games and matzoh balls on Passover, mom stopped mixing meat and cheese and ended her love affair with lobster. I pretend it annoys me, but I secretly relish mom’s dietary changes in the face of dad’s absence. It is perhaps the only proof I have that mom misses him. Judging from the satisfied smile on Zelda’s lips, I’d say my grandmother’s just as pleased. Her parmesan and fettuccine Alfredo was nothing more than a test—one that mom and Mr. McGee were both passing, for now.


“So what do you do all day, Mr. McGee?” Zelda asks and sips the red wine he’s brought.


“I eat, breath, speak and sleep. And you Mrs…” Seth nudges his father to behave, but Mr. McGee is having too much fun to care.


“Just call me Zelda,” she says, patting her firmly sprayed hair. She is looking at his olive shirt, trying to figure out how much a man with bad taste in clothing and bangs in his eyes is worth.


“Ooh, like the video game, eh?” Mr. McGee turns to my mother who is giggling and desperately trying to hide it.


“Zelda means gray warrior,” Jack pipes in proudly.


“Oh, that definitely suits you, mother,” mom giggles. “She’s always trying to fight something.” Mr. McGee chuckles, but he is really taking in mom’s beautiful smile.


Jack begins to giggle. It is a shallow laughter, the kind that can only come from not understanding what is so funny. He is simply laughing because our mother is laughing. It is contagious and Seth and I look across at each other and begin to chuckle too. It is funny to think of this little woman with perfectly lacquered nails and large gold hoop earrings fighting anything other than a line at Bloomingdale’s or Sax Fifth Avenue. But I know better than to be deceived by Grandma’s delicate appearance. Zelda is at war and she’s taken up my former enemy: Mr. McGee.


“So is that what you do all day, Zelda? Do you fight?” His eyes are warm. He has mistaken Zelda for his ally.


“I spend a lot of money. It is like water to me. So I am never thirsty. Are you thirsty Mr. McGee?” Zelda asks and the laughter bubbling to the top of our tiny kitchen bursts into a thick glob of silence.