Jenny Say What?

“Watchawana eat?” The skinny waitress with the pinched features was staring down at Sheldon Finkelstein, who had taken an empty counter seat at the Brandenburg Diner. The woman wasn’t unsightly, just nondescript in a hardscrabble, no-nonsense sort of way.  Over the past year he had seen her numerous times talking to a heavy-set, thuggish boyfriend in the foyer of the restaurant. On several occasions the fellow pulled her close and kissed her before rushing off.  “What’s it gonna be, Buddy?”

“The breakfast special. Eggs over easy, hash browns with a side order of bacon.”

“To drink?” She scribbled something on a notepad with a stubby pencil.

“Coffee and a glass of orange juice.”

“Large or small?”

Sheldon pushed his eyeglasses up on the bridge of his nose with a taut index finger and squinted myopically at the stony-faced creature. When he indicated a small glass, the  unflappable woman hurried off to place the order. Ten minutes later the food arrived, and Sheldon squirted a puddle of ketchup alongside the hash browns before settling in with his meal. 

In no great rush to get to work, he lingered over the coffee mug once the plate was empty. The eyewear boutique where he worked was run by a despotic, money-grubbing chiseler, who tormented all the employees, insisting that they gouge as much money out of every unsuspecting customer. Regarding the owner’s sleazy mindset, Sheldon kept his mouth shut and gloomy thoughts to himself. By the beginning of the new year he would quit and open his own shop; he would jetison the ultra-deluxe, designer frames and offer a more reasonable alternative to the over-priced fashionwear.

During college Sheldon minored in philosophy, where he stumbled across Rousseau’s theory of the ‘noble savage’. The Frenchman from the seventeen hundreds argued that humans were basically good by nature but corrupted by society.  Rousseau described early humans as solitary, self-sufficient creatures. The ‘noble savage’ lived in a state of grace far gentler than anything contemporary folk could ever imagine, satisfying simple needs and untouched by avarice. Man is born free, and yet everywhere he is in chains - that’s one of the Frenchman’s most famous sayings. Clearly, the miserly bastard who ran the Brandenburg Eye Clinic never read any of Rousseau’s enlightened commentary.

“Warm your drink?” The waitress had returned with a container of fresh-perked coffee. Sheldon raised his cup and she filled it to the rim. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an optician. We fit and dispense eyeglasses and contact lenses from an optometrist’s prescription.”

The woman stared listlessly into space digesting the information. “Got a girlfriend?”

“No wife and no girlfriend,” Sheldon replied. 

“A decent-enough lookin’ guy like you with a swell job… I could fix you up with any one of a dozen eligible women from the Elderberry apartment complex where I live.” Sheldon smiled but held his tongue. One step up from a bare-bones rooming house, the Elberberry Apartments catered to a motley collection of local riffraff, police regularly visiting the complex to break up fist fights or arrest troublesome characters. The waitress’ lips suddenly curled in a tepid smile. “Better yet,” she seized the initiative, “maybe the two of us could spend some quality time together, if you’re interested.”

The offhand remark caught Sheldon unawares. “But you’ve already got a boyfriend.”

“Not any more. He’s… he’s…” She seemed unable to find the proper term.

“Je ne sais quoi,” Sheldon blurted. 

“Jenny say what?” 

“It’s a French term… an idiom. You say ‘je ne sais quoi’, when something’s difficult to describe.”

“Incapacited!” That’s the word I was lookin’ for. My former boyfriend’s incapacitated. Our relationship’s dead and buried.”

* * * * *

“Where’re you going, all dressed up?” Sheldon’s mother, a pudgy, middle-aged woman with hazel eyes, frizzy auburn hair and a tendency to emotional excesses, pressed. It was late Saturday afternoon, and her son was wearing new slacks and a colorful sport shirt.

“I got a date,” he said. 

Mrs. Finkelstein's eyes bulged. “So maybe you could tell me something about my future daughter-in-law?”

“It’s a first date,” Sheldon qualified. “We haven’t gotten around to discussing wedding plans or a fixed number of siblings.” Grabbing his keys, he bolted toward the front door with his mother bringing up the rear.

“Jewish or goy?”

“Hard to say,” he conveniently side-stepped the issue. Mrs. Finkelstein habitually expressed the opinion that, each time a Jew married outside the faith, he metaphorically lopped another branch off the tree of Judaism. Sheldon once observed that America was a melting pot of differing nationalities, but his mother wasn’t buying into such shallow-minded nonsense. 

“Where’d you meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“At a restaurant.” 

“College educated?”

Sheldon was getting increasingly aggravated. “We didn’t discuss curriculum vitae or post-graduate studies.”

“How soon can I expect to meet the woman?”

“It’s a first date.”

Mrs. Finkelstein would not be denied. “You wanna know what your problem is?” 

“No, not particularly.” 

Sheldon had heard the stilted line of reasoning a hundred times. Mrs. Finkelstein insisted that, where romance was concerned, her son was far too fussy, finding fatal, insufferable, unmanageable and excruciating demoralizing flaws in every woman he dated. The Cohen woman’s niece was grouchy, prone to mood swings and under psychiatric care; Phylicia Neuman, pretty enough with her blonde hair and ample chest, couldn’t hold up her end of light conversation; Hilda Bukowski, the  brilliant, MIT electrical engineering student on full scholarship - Sheldon would rather cut his throat with the twelve-inch, serrated bread knife than suffer through a second date with Hilda Bukowski!  

“A mother can raise ten sons,” Mrs. Finkelstein added, splaying both her ample arms in a gesture of abject despondency. “The saying… it’s from the biblical story of Hannah in the Book of Samuel.” 

“But ten sons,” Sheldon conveniently finished the Yiddish proverb, “couldn’t raise up a single Jewish mother.” “You’ve told me so repeatedly.” He disappeared out the door.

* * * * *

When Sheldon arrived at the Elderberry apartments, Ginger was already waiting outside in the parking lot. She wore a summery, print dress with short heels, her hair pulled back in a pony tail. “I thought we’d drive over to Patriot Place and eat at Davio's,” Sheldon said once she had settled into the car.

“That’s a treat!” She grinned good naturedly. “By the way,” she continued once they were cruising comfortably on the interstate headed north toward Foxboro, “I’ve got to thank you for something that dates back to when you first stopped by the diner.” Sheldon looked up inquisitively. “You always left generous tips. Even when you were in a hurry and ordered nothing more than a bagel and cream cheese, you never rushed off without putting some loose change on the counter.”

Sheldon shrugged. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, well apparently lots of people never learn right from wrong.” She curled up on the passenger seat. “There’s this snooty college professor who comes in two or three times a week, orders the deluxe breakfast and never bothers to leave a crummy cent by way of a tip. I dubbed him Professor Snootypants .” 

Sheldon’s features melted in a sliver of a grin. There was a professor from the local university that taught economics, who sat next to him at the counter on several occasions. The fellow was so full of himself it made Sheldon retch.  “Yes, I think I know the fellow you’re referring to.”

At Davio’s Sheldon ordered the Atlantic Miso Salmon, with hulled wheat and spelt along with sugar snap peas in a citrusy butter sauce. Ginger chose the East Coast Cod, Milanese risotto with a green tomato concasse. Glancing about the room, she noted, “Such a swanky place!” 

“Yes, it’s definitely one of the trendier spots.” “I’m curious about something.” Sheldon sipped at his wine, deftly shifting the conversation elsewhere. “You mentioned that your former boyfriend was ‘incapacitated’.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Eddy got caught doing sixty in a residential area and the court sent him away to a correctional facility just over the state line in Connecticut.”

Sheldon reached for the bread basket. “People don’t generally get sent to prison for speeding violations.”

“No, of course not, but he was driving the getaway car in an armed robbery.”

“I see.” The salads arrived and they settled in with the food. Midway through the meal, Sheldon leaned across the table. “I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier in the car about Professor Snootypants, the arrogant snob, who thinks he’s more deserving than everyone else.” He proceeded to tell her a stripped-down version of Rousseau's take on the human condition. When he finished, he took another swig, finishing off the last of his second glass of wine. “Am I boring you with my philosophical nonsense, because if I am- ”

“Heck no!” Ginger interjected. “When the hell do I get the opportunity to discuss all this highfalutin stuff in a fancy-schmancy eatery.” Suddenly and without warning, she snaked an arm around the back of Sheldon's neck, pulled him close and planted a moist kiss on his lips. “You’re a peach of a guy!” 

“What you’re saying,” Ginger spit the words out doggedly  “is that life was reasonably pleasant until a bunch of uppity jerks like Professor Snootypants came on the scene and screwed everything up.” She ran her tongue over her top lip, then leaned precipitously over the table so that her face was within inches of Sheldon’s nose. “That’s true enough, but that French philosopher from the old-fashion, horse-and-buggy days - what else did he say?”

Sheldon was beginning to feel a peculiar affinity for this woman of meager means. “He said that the greatest form of wisdom was kindness.”

“A gift that’s in short supply these days,” Ginger shot back. “What else?”

 “People should never try to build their happiness on other people’s opinions.”

Her eyebrows dipped and features clouded over. “And why not?”

“Because, if you knew where to look, you’d discover all the joy and personal fulfillment you ever needed secreted away in your own heart.” 

Her eyes misted over. “Keep going.”

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.”

“Which is to say,” she interpreted, "trust your heart not your head.”

“Or as Rousseau might have put it, love is the dawn of marriage, marriage the sunset of love.”

* * * * *

“Jenny say what,” Ginger blurted when they were a couple of miles from the Elderberry Apartments. She was rubbing her thumb and index finger in a repetitive gesture, vainly trying to organize a flurry of unwieldy thoughts. 

“Excuse me?”

“That French saying when you’re trying to express something that’s hard to put into words."

“Je ne sais quoi,” Sheldon said.

“When you told me about the French philosopher, it hit home like a sucker punch to the gut, because most days I feel like Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, trying to muddle my way through a world overflowing with the likes of Professor Snootypants.”

“Would you like to get together again?” Sheldon pulled up in front of the apartment, where a bunch of residents were milling about the entrance.

“That’d be swell.”

* * * * *

In the morning Sheldon’s mother fixed her son a plate of waffles with sliced peaches. She set a jar of maple syrup, cinnamon and a tub of whipped butter on the table alongside his plate. “Well, how was your date?”

“Okay.”

Mrs. Finkelstein blew out her cheeks. “That’s all you're gonna tell me?”

Sheldon dusted the waffles with the cinnamon then slathered them with butter. “In response to the unspoken question that’s hovering on your lips, we’re going to hear country and western music tomorrow night at a club on the wharf in downtown Boston.”

“Tommorow… did you say tomorrow?” Sheldon’s mother pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. Placing a clean napkin next to his plate, she poured an extra dollop of light cream into his coffee even though he hadn’t requested any. “You just went out last night, and now you’re going out again.” She began drumming her fingertips on the wooden table. “Is the shana punim Jewish?”

“Pretty face,” Sheldon translated from the Yiddish. “No she isn’t Jewish and, at best, Ginger’s just average looking.”

“Ginger,” his mother exclaimed, “what the hell sort of a name is that? Ginger’s an oriental herb, a hot spice.” She made a placating gesture, rose from the chair and began pacing the floor. “No matter! We can live with that. What colleges has she attended and what’s the woman’s professional background?”

“She never went to college. The girl works as a waitress at the Brandenburg Diner.” Sheldon freshened his coffee. “Are there any more peaches?”

“Yes, of course.” Mrs. Finkelstein located a fresh peach in the refrigerator, sliced the fruit into small cubes and placed them on a separate dish. “A few more questions, if you don’t mind me asking…”