Pug Hill - Alison Pace [12]
I did, I imagine, what anyone would have done. I stopped returning Pamela’s phone calls for a while, and about four months later I signed up on JDate. It wasn’t just Pamela, it was a tribute to Nana, too. She used to love to tell me that she was pretty sure I’d never be happy if I didn’t stop dating the goyim. She just didn’t understand how I could date non-Jew after non-Jew in good conscience. The fact my father wasn’t Jewish never seemed to play into her logic. But even so, it had gotten to the point where I’d had to wonder, where I’d begun to believe that if the last ten years of dating were any indication, maybe she was on to something.
Evan was the first and only JDate I ever went on. I used to think that it was all so easy for us: how we e-mailed, and met, and then he made that really nice phone call to me, and I melted, and then pretty soon we were dating exclusively. I used to think that maybe, except for the whole being half-Catholic thing, I could be the poster child for JDate, because it all worked out so well for me. I don’t think that anymore.
At the top of the stairs, I turn left and walk into the library. It’s impossible, even if you hate having dinner at The Union Club, not to be taken in, even if it is ever so briefly, by the breathtaking woodwork, the four-hundred-foot-high ceiling, and the grand leaded glass windows that look out onto Park Avenue. I see Evan at the far end of the room, sitting on a couch with a blond couple, one of those couples who look, from across a very large room at least, like they are brother and sister. As I approach, I notice that the sister/fiancée is wearing a headband. I can hear Evan caw-caw-ing all the way from here. Evan has a caw-caw-sounding laugh, and apparently someone has just said something funny. Everyone stands as I reach them. The brother and sister (and I should stop calling them that; I should start right now calling them the affianced) are both ten feet tall.
“Hope, hi, I’m Courteney. Evan has told us so much about you,” says the sister, I mean the fiancée, I mean Courteney, as she reaches out her hand to me. Evan has not reached out to kiss me, to say hello, yet. He hangs back; it is because he wants to observe the interaction between Courteney and me. Evan is judgmental, too.
“Hi, Courteney,” I say with a (slightly fake) smile, “it’s so nice to meet you, too.” We shake hands. She is so tall, and thin, and long-limbed, and blond, and I don’t want to feel threatened by that, but I am. I try to push any comparative thoughts from my mind as Evan reaches over, places his hand on the small of my back, leans in and pecks me on the cheek.
“You remember Brandon, right?” he asks.
“Yes, hi, Brandon.”
“Hope, great to see you.”
“Shall we?” Evan asks. Shall we? And we head together to the elevators, up to the fourth floor to the dining room.
Courteney turns to face me, once we are seated. The table is square and I am next to her, and Brandon is across from me, next to Evan.
“Evan tells us you’re from Long Island.”
“Yes.”
“Whereabouts?” she asks, perky, bright-eyed.
“Huntington?” I ask it, I don’t say it, and I wish I didn’t do this. “It’s about an hour outside of the city,” I say, more assertively, wishing to appear as someone who is more informed about where she is from than I just have.
“Is that near Locust Valley?”
“Kind of.”
“Do you belong to Piping Rock Club?” she asks, her eyes all lit up. The Piping Rock Club, a country club in Locust Valley, is for WASPy people what Pug Hill is for pugs. It is the Mecca, if you’ll excuse the really poor analogy.
“No,” I tell her.
“Oh, Creek Club then?” she asks, slightly tempered but still enthusiastic.
“No,” I say, and she smiles at me, maybe a little sadly, and reaches a hand over to Brandon, places it on top of one of his.
“Brandon shot skeet at Piping just last weekend.” Brandon looks up at Courteney, and into her eyes, and the way he looks at her, it just says, “I love you,