Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death by Mark Reutlinger Read Free Book Online

Sol behind her. She gave me a look with the eyebrows that seemed to say, “The situation is totally
fercockt,
” you’ll excuse the expression.
    Mrs. K gestured that I should step back from the door, which I did. Sol then went up to the door and said, “Lily, it is me, Sol. Please listen. You have things all wrong.”
    “Sex mad, that’s what you are,” Lily said very loudly through the door. “Who is the
tsatskele
with whom you are planning to take up?”
    “You don’t understand,” Sol replied, sounding very frustrated.
    “What is there to understand? Is there not the book and the pills? Do you deny it?”
    “I mean there is no
tsatskele
—no other woman. I am not seeing another woman, and I am not planning to. You have made a big mistake. I would like to explain.”
    There was silence for about a minute. Then we heard some movement in the bathroom. The door handle turned slowly and there was the
click
of it unlocking. The door opened just a little and we could see Lily, eyes red, peeking out. We had made progress!
    “So explain already,” Lily said. For the first time since we arrived she was sounding more reasonable.
    Mrs. K and I exchanged a small smile. It was good to see these nice people were making up. A happy ending.
    Sol stepped forward and said into the narrow door opening, “Lily, like I said, there is no other woman. There is only you.”
    “Then what is with the book and the pills?” Lily asked, speaking softly but still sounding suspicious.
    “That is for us. For you.” He lowered his voice way down, but I could hear that he said, “It is so we can go back to…to having sexual relations again.”
    Maybe in this case he was better off not using that word. The scream from Lily was even louder than when she was accusing him of
shtupping
a
tsatskele
. In fact, from the sound of it, perhaps she would rather he were fooling around with another woman than he should fool around with her!
    “Sex mad! That is what you are! At our age? You must be
meshugge
! Don’t you come near me with your Viagra and your crazy ideas!” The door slammed shut and the lock went
click
once again.
    At this point, Mrs. K rolled her eyes. She whispered to me, “I hope Lily gets over this. Like they say, if you do not feed your dog at home, he will get his dinner from the neighbors.” I nodded in agreement. And Sol was a dog who had not eaten dinner in a long time.
    Mrs. K gestured to me that it was now time for us to leave. It is one thing to help to remove an obstacle of misunderstanding between a husband and a wife. It is quite another to interfere when the problem is that they understand each other only too well.
    So we made a quiet exit. As we passed by Sol, Mrs. K patted him on the shoulder to let him know that we were behind him.
    But only from a safe distance.

11
    The next day was the memorial service for Bertha Finkelstein. As you might expect, memorial services are not infrequent events at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors. Any place where there are over a hundred residents with an average age of maybe seventy-five, and many over eighty, is bound to provide a lot of business for both the rabbi and the undertaker. Death is a fact of life, as someone once said. So these services, although sad occasions, especially when the guest of honor was a long-time or well-liked resident, are almost routine. But this service was especially difficult for Mrs. K, for obvious reasons, and I could see the strain on her face and hear it in her voice.
    Rabbi Rosen made for Bertha a very nice service. Her children had given him a lot of information about her—I am certain he did not know any of this beforehand—and he made from it a little story of her life. Some of it was not so pretty.
    The rabbi told us, “Bertha was born in Poland in 1930, and she had a very difficult childhood. She lived in a
shtetl,
a small village, and the Jews there were constantly being harassed by the authorities. Bertha told