New York - The Novel

old to hide from reality. Do you know the trouble with Charlie? He’s intelligent, he may even have talent, but he’s old money. Not that he has any, you understand. But he belongs to it. That’s my fault, I’m afraid.” She sighed again. “I mean, it always seemed so important.”
    “It isn’t important now?”
    “I’m getting old. It’s strange how your view of life changes when you get older. Things …” she made a gesture with her hands, “fall away.”
    “I never met old money before Charlie, Mrs. Master. I love Charlie’s manners, and he’s so charming.”
    “He is charming. He always was. But let me tell you the trouble with people like us, my dear. We have no ambition.” She paused. “Well, sometimes people of our class have ambition. Look at the two Roosevelts. Two presidents from one family—
very
different branches of the family, of course, but still …” She stared out of the window again. “Charlie’s not like that. He knows all kinds of things, he’s interesting to talk to, he’s thoughtful, he’s very kind to me—but he’s never
done
anything. And even with you beside him, dear, I’m afraid he never will. It isn’t in his nature.”
    “You think it takes pushy Jewish people to get things done?”
    “I don’t know about Jewish. But pushy? Definitely.” She looked at Sarah seriously. “If my son marries you, dear, I don’t know how he’ll be able to afford another family. But even if he finds the money, he will still be old a long time before you are. And as time passes, I’m afraid you will become impatient with him. You deserve something better. That’s all I can tell you.”
    “I wasn’t expecting to hear you talk like this.”
    “Then you wouldn’t have learned anything, would you?”
    “No,” said Sarah, “I guess not.”

    On Friday Sarah went home as usual. It was good to be back with her family, and to hear about the daily lives of her brothers. The Shabbat meal passed quietly. During the morning service, she listened to the rabbi and tried not to think about anything else. In the afternoon, though, her brother Michael won three games of checkers against her so easily that he couldn’t believe it. After that, she sat quietly with her thoughts.
    What did she feel about Charlie? She really hadn’t expected him to propose to her like that. She hadn’t been prepared at all. Did she love him?
    She realized one thing. Whenever he wasn’t there, she missed him. If she saw a picture she liked, or heard a piece of music, or even a joke, she wanted to share it with him. The other day an objectionable client had come into the gallery, and she automatically found herself thinking: I wish Charlie were here, he would hate this man so much.
    She liked to dress him the way she thought he ought to look. She’d bought him a blue scarf that he looked very nice in. But he had this terribleold hat, and he absolutely refused to stop wearing it. She didn’t really mind—it just became a challenge to figure out how long it would take to get him to give it up. In fact, she liked the challenge. If he’d given it up without a fight, she’d have been disappointed.
    So how would she feel if Charlie were her husband? Pretty good, actually. As for having a little boy that was like Charlie, or a little girl he could dote on—why, that seemed the most wonderful thing in the world.
    But what about religion? Would the Master family insist that she or the children be Christians? That she couldn’t agree to. However, Charlie hadn’t raised the question, so he couldn’t care about it that much, she supposed. She’d expected that old Mrs. Master would be the one really to object, but unless Rose was bluffing, Sarah’s Jewishness no longer bothered her that much. If Christians used the term, Sarah thought, the Episcopalian Masters appeared to be secular rather than observant.
    As for herself, though she loved her tradition, Sarah reckoned that she could probably live in Manhattan without too much difficulty as a secular Jew, and even bring her children up that way—so long as they could experience their heritage whenever they visited her parents. If Charlie would make that compromise, then she could cope. She knew it could be done. She had friends in the city with mixed marriages who seemed to be happy enough.
    But that still left the big problem. Her parents. Her father especially. Everyone knew the views of Daniel Adler.
    Might it help that her father liked Charlie? “I