Interview With a Jewish Vampire by Erica Manfred Read Free Book Online Page A

appreciated being able to swim in a pool outside my door and sit on a patio overlooking a faux lagoon—which was actually a repository for water runoff. Alligators were rumored to live in the lagoons, so you weren’t supposed to get too close to them, but I suspected the alligator rumors were exaggerated. No one had actually seen one but everyone had heard of a little boy who got his arm chomped off. I wasn’t taking chances. I kept away from the lagoons.
    Even though Mom’s apartment in Century was spacious, it felt cramped because she followed me around hectoring me about my sloppy ways. I had never been in an apartment in Century that wasn’t immaculate. Most of them were furnished with white, squishy upholstered furniture and thick beige rugs. Mom’s apartment, however, was a spectacular exception to the standard décor. My father had been an architect and they were both obsessed with modern furniture and design. They collected classic pieces and took them to Florida, including a huge white pedestal table, bentwood chairs and a graceful glass kidney-shaped coffee table that my father had designed. The couches were long, low-slung slabs of covered foam on spare wood frames. They were elegant but incredibly hard and uncomfortable. The entire room was stunning but it was mostly for show; there was no place to curl up and read a book. I couldn’t imagine bringing Sheldon here to meet my mother; I saw him more in a shtetl with mud huts just like in Fiddler . He’d had 150 years to adjust to modern décor, but vampires and Bauhaus just didn’t compute. I wasn’t fond of 1950s modern myself. I much preferred country casual, with comfy couches you could sink into.
    Mom was a neat freak, while I was constitutionally incapable of neatness. If I left a dish in the sink overnight I heard about it.
    “ Rhoda, if you leave anything out we’ll have ants,” she chided me the morning after I arrived. “No orange peels on the counter please.”
    “ Jeez, Mom, I left the orange peels in the sink.”
    “ Why didn’t you turn on the garbage disposal?”
    “ That thing is too goddamned noisy.”
    We could have kept on bickering but the phone rang. The phone rang constantly at Mom’s. She was a regular social butterfly, one of the most popular girls, or “goils” as they called themselves in Century. She had three close friends and many aspirants for the position of one of the goils. The gang consisted of Mom, Judy, an acerbic heavyset pushy type who did not censor her sarcastic opinions, Ellen, a sweet former social worker who listened to everyone’s problems, and Miriam, my favorite, an oddball closet intellectual who often expressed her irreverent opinions in a deceptively soft, genteel tone of voice. Judy was on the other end of the phone this time. I could only hear Mom’s side of the conversation.
    “ She’s fine. She’s very happy. She’s madly in love.” Long pause. “With a vampire,” Mom said with an embarrassed laugh. Another long pause.
    “ No, I don’t think she’s lost her mind,” she said into the phone, sounding defensive. “Maybe she’s just desperate. There aren’t a lot of available single men in New York for fortyish women.”
    “ Well, she’s my daughter and I’ll stick by her even if she’s a little delusional. We can’t all be as sensible as you,” she said sarcastically.
    My poor mom was stuck defending my love affair with a vampire. That was harder than defending my marriage to a philanderer.
    “ Yes, I’ll pick you up at five. How about the China Palace?”
    The girls ate out together every night and Mom always drove. She was the only one who could still drive at night. They liked to dress for dinner as well. My mother was the most fashionable of the girls. Her walk-in closet was the envy of Century Village; unlike her friends who wore mostly pastel or beige polyester, Mom loved natural fabrics and interesting patterns. Her Indian cotton dresses and silk blouses were