Vil’amsburg Diaries: Shidduch Crisis

Mr V. is screaming. His face is read, as is his neck. I suppress a laugh. He just looks so ridiculous. Now he sees me and directs his anger at me. Our family connection got me the best seat in the office, right across the half wall. We face each other standing, and he always listens to my phone calls when sitting.

Niko is lost. He always gets lost. And most times it is my fault. I get on the phone. While he looks around for a sign of him I open Google maps.

Nuchem, my oldest, knows computers. Last year — before we sent him away to a Yeshiva for older boys — he taught me how to get on the Internet and find useful things. It must be the Internet that made him look like this. A real bum. I can’t find a good shidduch for him. He’s twenty and not getting any younger, and his sister Suri is next. She’s still eighteen, very marriageable, but in two months she is turning nineteen. Who is going to want an older girl? Nuchem is doing everything to anger me when he is around. The shidduchim they’re talking for him. Oy. Lekowitz’s whoring daughter! Truth be said the daughter might be a fine girl, but the parents? Bums. Mr. Lekowitz has a beard that is maybe two inches long. Crazy. What’s the point in shaving anyway? Can’t he tuck it away nicely like I do? And Suri, she is such a wonderful girl. Great midos. Smart too. Looks don’t matter anyway. Her teachers never realized how smart she is. The teachers in school and the rebbes in cheider are drek. All of ‘em. They’re probably at fault for how Nuchem turned out. He was such a sweet kid and now? Oy.

Niko is back. Mr V. is breathing hard banging away on his keyboard. He never got used to the whole computer thing. His keyboard is changed on a bi-weekly basis. Niko wants to smoke a cigarette with me. What does he find in me anyway? We’re so different and he isn’t the curious type. We just stand outside in the back of the building without exchanging a word. We both smoke immersed in our own thoughts. What can he be thinking about? Unlike me, he doesn’t have a family to take care of. He will never have nine kids anyway. He won’t even have four. These goyim have it easy. He must be thinking about girls. I wonder if he would find Cha-Layeh attractive. She’s good looking. But she’s already forty. Women her age don’t usually look as good. Having only four kids must’ve helped. There was a fifth pregnancy, but she never came home from the hospital with a baby. She told Breindy that she has a “miss.” But who know? Maybe it was a sick child, and they gave it away. The Shameshs from around the block did that. They never even go visit. No one knows about it. I only know because her next door neighbor told her sister who told Breindy who told me. No one else knows.

“Hershy, please pick up line one,” the PA greets me as soon as I walk in the doors. I pick up the phone in the hallway. It’s Breindy. She never calls my cell; it’s as if she must always verify that I am where I say I am. She doesn’t trust me. Ever since that incident a few years back she just doesn’t trust me. It happened when Esti was born. Esti is now six. She found the incriminating evidence in my pocket. Stupid me, I could have thrown the stupid recipt out the window on the way home. I’ve done it so many times before. One idiotic, stupid, moronic receipt from a stupid theater. I can’t even remember the name of the movie. Breindy claims it’s the lying that got her angry, not the movie going itself itself. To me it makes no difference, she still uses it whenever she can. Now I can’t go to a friend’s wedding without first showing her the invitation.

All my friends are making weddings, and I’m the only putz who can’t find a shidduch for my son. All I asked for is nachas. I wouldn’t mind having a winterized home in the mountains like Pini and Cha-Layeh, but I don’t need it. Nachas is something I need, otherwise I might die one day. On the street like the poor Fastig guy. A young man, maybe fifty, probably not even. They say he couldn’t handle the stress of his daughter’s divorce. There were rumors of shimtzige maases. God have mercy.

Breindy is emotional on the phone. “You hear? He wants a picture? What is wrong with him?” Nuchem wants a picture. Typical Nuchem. Oy, I would just slap him senseless now. Why? Let’s first find out if this shidduch is right for you. Do some Research. Find out if it this is not another drek they’re proposing. No, he needs a picture. As if looks make a successful marriage. Cha-Layeh, as pretty as she looks, has a bad one. Pini is a tuches-kop. I see how he acts sometimes. I wish she would leave him.

At least they’re talking shidduchim, though. The Neimans are a good family. They are going to settle for my Nuchem only because of the sister. With a meshigeners in the family you don’t rate well on the shidduch list. She had a nervous breakdown years ago. Poor soul. Too bad they couldn’t hide her from the world; they would have been sought after by everyone. My father, the lamdan, would love to sit near R. Dov, Neiman’s father-in-law, at the wedding. Nuchem deserves some peace too. At the end of the day he’s a good boy. The Rebbes in cheider messed him up. They didn’t understand him.

I hope it works out this time. I better say some tehillim.