The Shayner Yid

After New York I moved to Boston. After doing more theatre there than in New York, I applied for a job at a law firm. My dear, old friend from college, Temple Dickinson (who is not Jewish despite the name ... not that a sensible person would think so, but not all people are sensible and he used to get Hannukah cards from one of the other paralegals) told me that they were always looking for more paralegals at his firm to go through a huge document production in a massive national litigation. And, despite my connection with Temple, I was hired.
I met some great people, most of them a great deal younger than I was because they were either just out of college or on summer break from same. One of my favorites was Jere Beck. Jere was a paralegal who was desperate to write comedy. He would write small jokes on post-it notes and read them to us during break. I can't describe Jere without referring to his brother, who looked just like Elliot Gould. So, picture Elliot Gould shorter, slender, and very very blond with bluer than blue eyes. Jere was a nervous type. He literally exploded with laughter when he found something funny.
When Jere was young, his parents split up. He said it was all for the best because they fought constantly and lop-sidedly. His mother would yell and his father would shut down. He'd leave the room and she would follow him, keeping up her end of the argument. Unlike his other siblings, Jere took sides. His father, in his opinion, was wrong, dead wrong, and that was the end of the story. Being the nervous type myself, I can just imagine how painful that was to listen to.
Jere and I were friends, just friends. I was going through a fallow period on that front at that time, one of many, so I was used to it. One day he invited me over to watch a movie, one of his favorites. He was even going to drive me so either I didn't have to take the T or he wouldn't have to explain to me how to get to his place. Jere had a car ... in Boston. I was carfree since my move to New York. He said that his family was coming over. I had heard so much about them, I thought it could be interesting or stressful, but I picked interesting.
Because he drove me straight from work, we got to his place early. He had a lot to do to get ready, etc., so he asked if it would be all right to leave me in the living room alone. That was fine with me.
His mother showed up early. She was tall and pleasant, if a bit intense. Again I felt the eyes on me. Jere introduced us and went on with his mysterious tasks. His mother asked me what my name was again and how it was spelled. Then she asked me when my birthday was. I don't like giving out my birthday. I don't mind people knowing how old I am, but I don't like giving out the date. She was sweet but insistant and I got this bizarre idea that, like my old friend Kathy's mother use to do, she was going to have a private investigator check me out to make sure I was suitable and not just some ... blonde shikseh out for the family money. That didn't seem logical. Because Jere had sided with his mother, his father wouldn't give him any money. But I supposed Mrs. Beck didn't know I knew that. She took out a small pencil and a piece of paper and wrote it all down. Then, after studying it for a minute, she gave me a horoscope reading. Well, hot-damn! I can't tell you what a relief that was. I had been picturing trying to reassure her that I was not after Jere and our relationship was not like that (which inevitably leads to further explanations about how this could be despite the son in question being a "real catch").
Slowly, the rest of the family arrived. We all sat around the room and watched "The Coco-Cola Kid" - a movie that I wouldn't show my mother.
It seemed a rather odd evening, although I couldn't put my finger on it. Was I so imposing that Jere felt he needed his whole family on hand to keep the evening from looking like a date?
It was all explained the next day, although it didn't make me feel any better, when Jere thanked me for coming over.
"That was the first time my parents have been in the same room together without fighting since before the divorce," he told me. I was there to make sure they behaved themselves. He hadn't told me, of course, so that I wouldn't be nervous.
This is not unlike my elderly aunt Cordella not telling us that she intended to die on the trip we all went on to Europe in 1972. She told my mother this on the plane on the way back. "I wanted to die while I was doing something I loved," she said. My mother had cared for Cordella all through Europe, where locations were recalled by how many angina attacks she had, as in, "Oh, Salzburg, that's where I had three!" "Cordella!" my mother shouted over the airplane noise, "we wouldn't have known what to do with your body!" "Oh, that wouldn't have been a problem," she said, "I looked it up before we left." "But you didn't tell us!" my mother pointed out. "I didn't want you to worry," Cordella replied. "You couldn't have told us if you were dead!" she was told. Oh, she hadn't thought of that.