View from Saturday (9781439132012) Read Free

in rows, holding coupons they’d clipped since printing began. They asked me to be master of ceremonies.
    I sat at a table in front of the clubhouse room and called out items from the master grocery list. It was a lot like a game of Go Fish. I said, “I need one Crisco, four margarines,
pareve,
and let’s have all your paper towels.” Everyonesearched through their fistfuls of coupons and gave me the ones that were needed. Tillie circled the items we had coupons for.
    Then we checked the newspaper for supermarket specials and made out lists for each of the stores, depending on which one had the best buy in a particular item. I wrote the Gershom list in calligraphy. It didn’t slow things down too much, and the citizens of Century Village are accustomed to waiting.
    Later that day, everyone returned to the clubhouse with the groceries and the store receipts. Tillie added, divided, and straightened out who owed and who was owed, and no one bothered to check because everyone knew that Tillie Nachman did not make mistakes. Then we had to check the grocery list against the menu and who was cooking what. I helped distribute the groceries to the proper households, using the new red wagon.
    Fact: I did a wonderful job.
    On the day of the wedding I was in great demand to take things over to the clubhouse in my wagon. The African violets alone took three trips, and the briskets took two. Next, Mr. Cantor and I delivered the orchid corsages to the bride and her maid of honor. In the real world, I had never met anyone who spent as much time with flowers as Mr. Cantor. Mrs. Draper’s maid of honor was to be her daughter, Mrs. Potter. Mrs. Draper used to live in my hometown, which is Epiphany, New York, and her daughter, Mrs. Potter, still does. Mrs. Potter bought a new dress and flew down for the wedding, but we didn’t fly down together. I had come weeks before—my first trip as an unaccompanied minor.
    Mr. Cantor and I took flowers over to the groom and his best man to put in their buttonholes. Allen, who was Izzy Diamondstein’s son, was to be best man. They both live in Florida and have the same last name.
    Allen Diamondstein still lived in the real world because even though he was Izzy’s child and even though he was full-grown, he was too young to live in Century Village. Fact: Allen Diamondstein was the most nervous human being I have ever seen in my entire life. Fact: His wife had left him. She had moved to Epiphany and taken a job with my father, who is the best dentist in town (fact).
    Allen Diamondstein kept saying, “Isn’t it ironic? My father is getting married just as I am getting divorced.” This was not the greatest conversation starter in the world. No one knew what to say after he said it. Some cleared their throats and said nothing. Others cleared their throats and changed the subject.
    I must have heard him say it a dozen times, and I never knew what to say either. At first I wondered if that was because I didn’t know the meaning of
ironic.
So I looked it up.
    The meaning that best fits (and does not use the same word in its definition) is “the contrast between what you expect to happen and what really happens.” But after I looked it up, I couldn’t figure out what was ironic about Allen Diamondstein’s getting divorced and Izzy Diamondstein’s getting married. The way Allen Diamondstein acted, I can tell you that divorce would be the only possible thing you could expect from marriage to him. And the way Izzy acted around Margaret, marriage would not only be expected, it would be necessary.
Sha! a shanda far die kinder.
They were embarrassing to watch, but not so embarrassing that I didn’t.

    Wedding cakes are not baked as much as they are built. In the real world, people don’t build wedding cakes. They order in. If you are going to build it yourself, it is not done in a day. It takes three. On the first day, Grandma Sadie baked