A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell Page A

hats — “and I’m wondering if we might trouble you for a place to sit and a glass of tea?”
    That was my mother. She possessed a flair for the dramatic reversal. From the few photographs of her from that time, one can see that she keeps the great sweep of her caramel-colored hair in a high, muscular pompadour. Her cheeks radiate an ecstasy of blushing. Her white teethflash each time she throws back her head to laugh. Her torso and rib cage are robustly articulated; her bosoms, straining against her bodice, are like two scoops of ice cream on a spoiled child’s plate. Each of her arms is larger in diameter than my father’s neck. Through the shimmer of her skirt, you can see the magnificent strength of her haunches, as strapping as a young colt’s. And yet, at sixteen, despite her monstrously good health, there’s nothing masculine about her at all. She’s soft, spherical, thoroughly estrogenic, her hips muscularly wide as though engineered specifically for the vigorous work of childbearing.
    And now it is my Grandmother Sammelsohn’s turn to search for a polite excuse. With a mother’s concern, she regards her future daughter-in-law, this Brünnhilde stepped off the stage of some Wagnerian nightmare, with unadulterated horror, certain that if her stick-figure son pursues a marriage to this Amazon, he will survive neither the rigors of his wedding night nor the travails of the marriage bed.
    What to do?
    Grandmother Sammelsohn coughs and fidgets. She fingers the watch she wears on a gold chain around her neck with her stubby fingers. She makes suggestive nods towards her brother, my great-uncle Chaim-Mottle, who, to her dismay, seems as enchanted as his nephew by this radiant, gracious horse of a girl, now serving tea and passing around the mandelbrot her mother baked for them.
    Grandfather Horowitz, his plump hands on the head of his cane, his curly black beard bristling with pride, sits at my mother’s side like a barker at a carnival showing off the strong man: Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen! Behold this marvelous creation, this strapping lioness that I have produced … yes! … from my very own loins!
    Had my father been a normal man and not a pious scholar, he would have been unable to take his eyes off my mother. As it was, she was so beautiful, he forbade himself to glance at her even once. Instead, crumpled up like a damp handkerchief in his chair, one long leg looped around the other, his chest sunken deeper than usual by his slouching posture, his pallor as moldy as cheese, he attempted, when the tubercular coughing to which he was subject permitted it, to make learned conversation with the men, quoting this or that Gemara, this or that Mishnah, thisor that word of this or that sage, demonstrating his value as a potential husband to this vibrant girl, surprising himself, no less than the others, by the seductive brilliance of his remarks.
    Indeed, Father was so smitten that at one point, when his and Mother’s eyes accidentally met across the parlor table, he blushed so deeply his face took on the mottled color of a bruise. Embarrassed, he looked down at the crumbs in his lap and then raised his tearful, bloodshot eyes to take in the new family portrait before him.
    Unable to suppress a grin, he revealed to the others all the grey luster of his translucent teeth.
    IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE for Grandmother Sammelsohn to protest. How could she when her son had been refused by girls with squints and incipient mustaches and small disfiguring humps? As formal promises were exchanged over the dregs of Russian tea, she excused herself politely, went into her kitchen, and vomited. Her kerchief balled up in her fist, she beat her breast, wailing quietly enough that no one in the adjoining rooms might hear her.
    She wasn’t alone in her concerns. No one in the entire town expected Father to survive until the wedding. The strain on his heart would prove too great, they said. He was so skinny, you could