reading—no, she used to say “listening to” books on tape. He knows some of that is familiar. Probably some more about her teaching and what she’s planning to do once her two-year teaching fellowship ends. He knows he asked her where she just came from to get to the drugstore, since it’s not in her neighborhood, “but I should mind my own business.” She said “That’s all right and this used to be my neighborhood. My parents still live on West 78th, but I didn’t come from their place. The Esplanade Apartments on West End,” and he said “For a therapy appointment? I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have blurted that out,” and she said “I don’t mind,” and yes, her therapist is there. How’d he know? He said “A couple of people I know go to therapists there, or did — maybe one of them to yours, but I don’t know the therapists’ names.” “Mine’s Lonya Silberblatt. She’s also become a dear older friend and is an accomplished self-taught painter of Jewish themes, biblical to modern. I have a terrific one of hers of shtetl life. Do you know how to spell shtetl? It’s a word that’s always been a problem for me,” and he said “Shtetl? Cousin of shtick; that’s how I always get it,” and he spelled them both. “I’m Jewish, you might have surmised,” he thinks he said then — it was a good place for it — or maybe he said it on their next date, over beer at the bar they met at or the restaurant they finally settled on, but he knows he brought it up in one of their first two meetings. “Yes, I thought so,” she said, if it was then the subject came up. “Not so much because of your looks or accent — definitely not your looks and if your speech has any identifiable characteristic, it’s just a trace of New York. It’s that you know how to spell shtetl and shtick, and your name.” “Martin Samuels?” he said in an exaggerated Jewish accent. “So you think that’s Jewisch?” And then dropping the accent: “My guess is you’re Jewish too. But what I should have said, rather than what I did, was ‘And what religion are you?’ Or ‘religious persuasion’ might be better, or better yet ‘What religious belief or faith were you raised in or inculcated with and may have since rejected?’ If even any of those are right. Also, definitely not your looks or the way you speak. There’s no trace of Judaism or New York in your speech or any region, here or abroad, typifying you other than as a person with a very nice voice and very good diction. Also, only a little because of your name, but your surname only, since Gwendolyn’s not your typical Jewish name. You are, though, aren’t you?” and she said “Why, is that a problem?” and he said “Quite the contrary. Both of us being Jewish? — but you are, right?” and she said yes. “I’d think that makes it easier talking about some things, like being Jewish. And no doubt more things to reference and connect with. Just as a Roman Catholic is probably better able to connect with another Roman Catholic — fish on Fridays, confessional stalls, ears tugged by angry nuns, and so on; blood and wafers, the pope. Does that make any sense, and I’m talking about two Roman Catholics who have both either stayed in the church or left, or do you think I’m being slightly ridiculous? Don’t answer. I’m Jewish and I don’t want to hear — no, that’s enough.” “What does being Jewish have to do with it?” and he said “Nothing; that’s why I cut myself off.” “Listen, Martin, I think we have to change the tone and direction of this conversation a little if we’re to come to some understanding of one another,” and he said “Uh-oh. I don’t know if I’m going to like this,” and she said “Please let me finish,” and he said “Of course.” He remembers having that sinking stomach feeling again — he was expecting the worst; she was about to kiss him off; something — and pictures them sitting on the stools and looking at each other but not smiling. “Long as we’re on the subject of Jewishness,” she said, “I want to explain something to you, but seriously, no jokes,” and he said “Got you.” So what she was about to say wasn’t going to be as bad as he’d thought, he must have thought. And they did get serious, he thinks, more than he first remembered, at the drugstore or possibly one of the two places they went on their second date. Knows it wasn’t in her apartment, which they went to for what she called a nightcap—“Like to come up for a nightcap?” she said in front of her building, after he walked her there from the restaurant. Nor the third time they got together, when he phoned her from the street around ten or eleven at night, after not calling for about a week, and asked if she wanted to meet at that bar again for a beer and she said “Now?” and he said “Too late?” and she said something like “If you don’t think it’ll take you too long, why don’t you just come here?” She said that time “Though I’m by no means a religious or observant Jew — at most, I’ll buy a box of egg matzos for Passover, though I’ll continue to eat bread and rice over the holiday — my Jewish identity is very strong and important to me because of my family history. In fact, the reason I’ve never been seriously involved with Gentile men since high school, or really only one and not for long, is because I never felt they could understand my experience of growing up as the daughter of Holocaust survivors.” “They lost a lot?” and she said “Everyone but my mother’s father.” “I’m sorry,” he said, “so sorry. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them and no doubt still is,” “Also, because I know how much it’d hurt them, I could never have married a Gentile, although if I had it couldn’t have been as disastrous as the one I had to a Jewish man, but that’s not my point. But have I made myself clear? I worry sometimes that I don’t,” and he said “Very much so. And I appreciate why you brought it up now,” though at the time he wasn’t sure why she did. He must not have caught everything she said, he thought. Her voice was soft and low, and it could have been that because of the seriousness of what she was saying, he didn’t want to cut in and ask her to speak up. He knows he liked that she was telling him something so important and personal to her. She said “Last thing I wanted to do, with my Jewish identity talk, is put a damper on our little meeting” or “first real date. But when the matter of our religion came up and our feelings about it, I thought it too opportune a time for it not to come out. Now as for my name, Gwendolyn…it starts with the same initial as my paternal grandmother’s, Guta — you know the Ashkenazic tradition regarding given names. But my parents thought — I was born almost two years to the day the war ended in Europe and conceived a month or two before they got here; not quite on the boat but almost — that they were protecting me in the future in case there was an American pogrom or even another Holocaust by giving me a Christian name.” The serious Jewish stuff couldn’t have been said at the drugstore or their walk after — too early — and certainly not the second time he was in her apartment. The first time there, maybe. More likely it took place on their first real date, as she always referred to it, and at the restaurant, which he thinks he remembers as being quiet because it was nearly empty, and not, because that’s the way it always was when he was in it, the crowded noisy bar. She said “What about your family…when did they first get here?” and he said “All my grandparents came over in the major Jewish wave about fifty-five years before your parents did, if my calculations are correct. Settled on the Lower East Side like most of the others…worked there, kept kosher, had my parents, never learned much English, at least my father’s folks, because they didn’t have to — the perfect world: everybody spoke Yiddish. Not much really to tell. Nothing like what your parents went through, and all were buried before I was born.” And she said “Oh, that must have been a very interesting time then and as hard for them as it was for my parents and grandfather, starting out new here,” and he said “No, you’re right. As for my origins? Conceived in an apartment in Flatbush, where my parents first lived, delivered in New York. Also an only child, although there was one before and after me, so that’s how it turned out. But can I say something about my going out and so on with Gentile women?” and she said “That’s an odd question and one never directed at me, but go ahead. Although I want you to know that some of my best women friends are Gentile,” and he said “Did you just make that up?” and she nodded and smiled proudly and he said “Very funny,” and she said “It wasn’t that much, but thanks. To be fair, dozens must have coined it before me, but I never heard it and felt I had to say it. Again, too good an opportunity to pass up.” “No, but I bet you were the first to say it, and I’ll probably use the line several times in the future and then, after the laugh, give you credit for it. So, are you ready? A confession to parallel yours. Just about every woman I’ve gone with for any length of time since my last years in college has been Gentile, don’t ask me why,” and she said “Surely you know,” and he said “I’m telling you, I don’t. it wasn’t that I had anything against women who were Jewish because they were so smart and tolerant and warm and kind, or that I was predisposed to women who weren’t Jewish because they gave me a hard time and were