Zahava
Zahava Elman contemplated the towering stack of open bills in front of her – gas, electric, water, the dratted credit cards – with creeping horror. This wasn’t hundreds of dollars. This wasn’t even thousands of dollars. The financial hole they had fallen into was so huge it would take winning the lottery to close it.
She kneaded her forehead in distress, feeling a pounding headache coming on. Then she forced herself to stop – hadn’t she just seen an article online that said rubbing your face could cause wrinkles? Fine, she was only 29, a little young for furrows, but that dreaded number 30 was looming on the horizon like a tornado barreling over the plains, threatening to lay waste to all her hopes of matrimony.
It was like she had an expiration date stamped on her forehead. Ouch! The very idea sent another stab of pain straight across her temples.
She eyed the electric bill. How could it cost so much to run the air conditioning? It didn’t seem to her they’d paid this much last year. Okay, the house was big, and it did have central air, and her father wasn’t careful about turning it down or off when everyone was out of the house. The gas bill wasn’t as astronomical, but then again, winter was over, and their gas consumption now only meant the stove, which they didn’t use all that often. Zahava, unlike her dear departed mother, a”h, wasn’t a particularly inspired cook. Her signature Shabbos dishes were teriyaki salmon (pour a bottle of teriyaki sauce over fish and throw it in the oven) and duck sauce chicken (pour a bottle of duck sauce over chicken and throw it in the oven).
Oy – the liquor store bill was crazy! Her father was no alcoholic, but he liked a glass of cognac or whiskey in the evenings, and he only bought top-of-the-line brands – no Johnny Walker Red for this feinshmecker. “I need good bottles of wine and spirits for when my friends came over,” was his excuse, and since that was often enough, his trips to the wine store always cost a small fortune.
She glanced across the room, to where her father was sitting with a snifter of cognac in a leather recliner, poring over a book. Velvel Elman wasn’t much of a reader, but the Elman family had commissioned a handsome volume ten years ago in honor of the yahrzeit of her grandfather, a”h, and it was still one of her father’s prize possessions. It included a family tree tracing the yichus of the Elman clan all the way back to the saintly Rav Elimelech Shraga Feivel of Chelminsk, whose descendants’ portraits continued to grace the synagogues and study halls of Europe, Israel and, to a lesser extent, America.
“What a pity it is that none of us had a son to carry on the family legacy!” her father sighed, looking up at her. His only brother Yankel had failed to produce any children, and Velvel’s only children were Zahava and her two younger sisters. The Elman family name would end with their particular branch of the family, although there were a few distant cousins who had children and could be hoped to perpetuate Rav Elimelech’s illustrious legacy.
“Yes, Tatty,” she said impatiently, having heard this before. “It’s not something we would have chosen.”
“If only that shidduch with Yerucham had worked out. I never understood what happened!”
“Tatty, stop!” Zahava said, digging her fingers into her long blond hair. “It’s in the past. I don’t want to talk about it.” Their debts were bad enough. Did he have to open up old wounds on top of it?
Velvel shrugged and went back to his book.
Yerucham Elman was a distant cousin who stood in line to inherit the family business from Uncle Yankel, who now owned the import business that his (and Velvel’s) father had grown into a national brand. The business had once supplied department stores across the country. But as it steadily lost ground to Chinese goods and online sales, her father had bowed out, selling his part to Uncle Yankel. Yerucham had given Yankel the brilliant (to his mind) idea to rebrand the company as Perry Elman Designer Fashions.
With the best of intentions, Yankel had tried setting up a shidduch for Zahava with Yerucham, who was a snappy dresser with the smooth manners of a used car salesman. Hopes were high all around that they might close the endangered family circle and continue the direct line of descent by marrying. But then Yerucham inexplicably pulled out of the shidduch and went on to marry a girl from an extremely well-off but low-class family, amassing himself a tidy fortune in the process.
“He just wanted quick money,” was the common consensus, and now, Zahava thought grimly and uncharitably, Hashem had clearly punished him for his greed. His poor wife had died shortly afterwards, perishing from a sudden, tragic aneurism during a particularly leibedig Zumba class. No one seemed to know what had happened to Yerucham afterwards, although she’d heard a rumor he was living in the Five Towns, rattling around in the McMansion he’d bought with his shver’s money and investing in real estate here and there.
In the meantime, no shidduch had been brought up for Zahava that had worked out. She wasn’t interested in someone who didn’t possess some sort of yichus comparable to her own, and/or at least could promise to maintain her in the style to which she was accustomed. But at her age, there were fewer and fewer attractive prospects left. The idea of continuing life as it was, schlepping around as her father’s plus-one to Chinese auctions, charity galas, yeshiva dinners, and other people’s simchas, was infinitely depressing. Her job as a party planner was only sporadic. The thought of a life composed of an infinitely long string of evenings shopping online or Sundays at the gym made her want to climb into bed and never come out.
“At least Rikki has come back into my life,” she sighed. Having her friend Rikki Kline around helped tremendously to stave off the ennui. The daughter of her father’s accountant, Mr. Shapiro, Rikki had disappeared for a few years to Monsey after marrying a guy in marketing.
“What a loser he turned out to be,” Rikki told Zahava. “Money poured through his fingers like water!” But Rikki was a fighter, and now she was back, camping out at her father’s house in Boro Park to retrench, and trying to transplant her sheitel and makeup business to Brooklyn. Five years older than Zahava, she had a keen eye for the trendy, as evidenced by her Insta posts. Her bold sense of fashion was mirrored by her bold personality, and Zahava found that edginess refreshing and invigorating. Only Rikki could convince her to exchange her go-to shade of petal pink nail polish for more daring shades of coral, robin’s egg blue, and bronze. Being with Rikki made her feel younger, never dowdy.
But thinking of Rikki made her think of Rikki’s father, their accountant, and their finances, and she pulled the stack of bills back into view. The amount of debt they’d amassed was staggering. How was this even possible?
Zahava remembered wistfully the days when she was a little girl, when her mother was alive and healthy and her father’s business still generated a generous income. There had been trips to toy stores and amusement parks, and vacations in Israel and Europe. Her mother didn’t believe in extravagance, but she had an eye for quality and used to buy them well-made, exquisite outfits that didn’t come cheap. No one thought twice about regular family meals in expensive restaurants, meals accompanied by appetizers, glasses of the house’s best wine, and dessert with coffee. And of course they had the house, their stately, enormous, pillared brick mansion on Avenue K near Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, elegantly furnished with the help of a decorator.
But as her childhood wore on, her fathers and his colleagues grumbled increasingly about the shmatteh business moving to China, and then to Amazon and internet commerce, sucking business away from regular merchants. Some businessmen knew how to roll with the times and make those transitions, or at least were astute enough to hire sharp young things to do it for them. Yankel wanted to make the necessary changes, but Velvel, in his recalcitrance and obtuseness, refused to believe they really needed to, as if China and online shopping were merely passing fads that would soon go the way of pet rocks and fidget spinners. In the end, Yankel downsized the business drastically and bought his brother out, only surviving by hiring advisors like Yerucham who helped him move much of the business online. Zahava remembered her mother shrugging her shoulders philosophically and telling her father, “Maybe it’s for the best, Velvel. You didn’t enjoy working at the business, and we have this beautiful house and some investments on the side that will keep us going.” And when Mommy was alive, they didn’t have trouble keeping up with the bills. Mommy kept a sharp eye on expenditures and reined in her husband’s more extravagant follies.
Yes, they never would have landed in such a pickle if Mommy were still alive. And Mommy would have turned the world upside down to make sure she found an amazing shidduch for her. Zahava felt the prick of tears in her eyes as she thought of her pleasant, mild-mannered, sensible mother. How could she have abandoned them so soon?
(To be continued)
