“Amen,” my mother and I said.
“Mary Jane,” my mother said, forking ham onto my father’s plate, “what country club do the Cones belong to?”
“Hmmm.” I chugged from my cup of milk. “I don’t know. They haven’t gone to one since I’ve been babysitting.”
“Certainly not Elkridge.” My dad removed his tie, placed it on the table, and picked up the newspaper. My mother loaded succotash onto his plate.
“How do you know they don’t belong to Elkridge?” I asked. That was our country club.
“It’s spelled C-O-N-E,” my mother said. “I looked it up in the Blue Book.” The Blue Book was a small directory for our neighborhood and the two neighborhoods that abutted us on either side: Guilford and Homeland. You could look up people by address or by name. Children were called Miss if they were girls and Master if they were boys. The Blue Book also listed the occupation of every man, and any women who worked. Sometimes, when I was lying around the house doing nothing, I flipped through the Blue Book, read the names, the children’s names, the father’s job, and tried to imagine what these people looked like, what their house looked like, what food they’d have in their refrigerator.
“The Cones are Jews,” my father said. “Probably changed the name from Co-hen.” He turned the page and then folded the paper in half.
“Well, then not L’Hirondelle, either. What are the names of those two Jewish clubs?” My mother stared at my father. My father stared at the paper. She was holding a corn muffin aloft.
“Are you sure the Cones are Jewish?” I didn’t know any Jewish people. Except now the Cones. And Jesus, who, if I were to believe everything I heard at church, knew me better than I knew him.
“Jim Tuttle told me they’re Jews,” Dad said without looking away from the paper.
“I should have known sooner. A doctor.” My mother placed the muffin onto my father’s plate and picked up the coleslaw.
“They haven’t said anything Jewish,” I said. Though I had no way of knowing what Jewishness might sound like. I knew there was a neighborhood in Baltimore where they all lived—Pikesville—but I’d never been there and I’d never even met someone who’d been there. I’d just heard my parents and their friends mentioning the area in passing, as if they were talking about another country, a country far, far away, where they were unlikely to ever travel.
“I’m sure they’re just being polite.” My mother was onto the peas and bacon. “But being a doctor makes up for being a Jew.”
“What do they have to make up for?” I asked.
My father put the paper down on the table. “It’s just a different type of person, Mary Jane. Different physiognomy. Different rituals. Different holidays. Different schools and country clubs. Different way of speaking.” He picked the paper back up.
“They look normal to me. And they sound the same to me.” Well, there was the shouting. Did all Jews shout? And there were Mrs. Cone’s breasts, which usually seemed on the verge of being exposed. Was that a Jewish thing? If so, it would be interesting, though maybe embarrassing, to travel to Pikesville.
“Look at their hair. It’s often dark and frizzy.” My mother served herself now. I would serve myself after she had fixed her plate. “And look at their long, bumpy noses.”
“Mrs. Cone has red hair and a little button nose like Izzy,” I said.
“Probably a nose job.” My mother held the serving spoon over the coleslaw, stared at it, then dumped half back into the bowl.
My father put the paper down again. “It’s another breed of human. It’s like poodles and mutts. We’re poodles. They’re mutts.”
“One breed doesn’t shed,” my mother said.
“So Jesus was a mutt?” I asked.
“Enough,” my father said, and he snapped the paper in the air as he turned the page.
After dinner, I stood at my closet and looked for the best outfit to wear when I met the rock star and the movie star. Everything was so contained, tidy, new-looking. My mother even ironed my blue jeans.
I pulled out a pair of bell-bottoms. The hem was above my anklebone, what the kids at school would call floods. They had fit last time I’d worn them.
Mom and Dad were in the TV room watching the news. I quietly went down the hall into my mother’s sewing room. On the wall was a rack with hooks on which hung various-size scissors. I took down the heaviest pair and then leaned over and cut up the seam of the jeans. When I got above my knee, I paused. I wanted to go shorter, but would I dare? No, I wouldn’t. I stopped about four inches above my knee and then turned the scissors sideways and cut off the leg. When that leg was done, I did the other, then returned the scissors to their rightful spot.