A Bride for My Son

A BRIDE FOR MY SON/Dorothea Freund THE SIGHT OF THE GIRL'S short neck made me look away. Awide, stocky neck shaped like an overturned flower pot, with no space for a string of fine pearls. I had always been proud of the slender stems on which the women in our family carried their heads. It spoke ofbreeding, of our long rabbinical Une. But what good did it do right now? Ancient family pride was not going to help me wave away this girl's flaws. She had a way of gesturing with her large hands as she spoke. And the red hands themselves looked like they'd spent many hours in dishwater. "Not exactly your class," Riba the matchmaker had said. Trying to hide her discomfort, she busied herself with a tiny feather duster, whisking it over the rows of toasters and blenders in the narrow room that served as her shop for small home appliances. "They are simple people," she explained. "The husband has had a sudden business success—manna from heaven after years and years of day-old bread. They could afford the finest new house now, but first things first. Their biggest dream is a fine rabbinical scholar like your son for their eldest daughter." Reuven, my son, had celebrated his twenty-first birthday in Jerusalem with his little circle of friends, intense yeshiva boys who lived to study and practice the Talmud. Then he came home and reminded me that it was time for him to take a wife—and that it was my duty to find the right candidate for the job. Unlike my elder son, he would not even see the girls unless I screened and approved of them. When you have found one who is at least ninety-five percent suitable, he said, then I will be ready to meet her. I did not laugh at these instructions. Reuven had no sense of humor when it came to matters of religion. Instead I made the telephone calls and visits to the matchmaker that finally led to the gilded lobby of a Sheraton hotel on a chilly November evening. I sat there across a little table from Lea, who couldn't find a comfortable position on the edge of a handsome English sofa. A uniformed waiter brought a tourist-style tea service, and she held a tea bag in the air, wondering whether she should drop it into her cup or into the teapot. I had a set of lines prepared , but resented having to speak them. Worse, there were my own private doubts about lifelong marriages, yet here I was trying to select a perfect lifetime companion. "How can I choose someone through your eyes?" I asked my son. 126 · The Missouri Review "You?" Reuven shook his head. "You are not doing the choosing." He raised a long, bony finger, on his face Ul-concealed pity at my overblown self-importance, and explained patiently. "Remember that forty days before a soul descends on earth, a match is decreed in Heaven. So you needn't worry. God will guide you to the right one." "Try and look into the girl's soul," was the one guideline he had sent me with. "If you look very closely," he explained patiently, "you will see what's there." I tried. But all I saw when I peered closely into her face was that the tip of her nose flared at its end like the bulb of a spring onion. I criticized myself intensely for not being on a higher spiritual level, but judging people by their exteriors had always been a weakness of mine. How could I tell Reuven that the lowest items on his scale of priorities—looks, worldly education, grace, sophistication—were the first things that drew me to a person? I was better off hiding from him certain sides of myself. "You understand that Reuven wants to live in Jerusalem, and only in Jerusalem?" I continued, determined to get on with the interview. I extended my hand toward Lea, took the sugar bag she couldn't deal with, shook the grains down to the bottom and carefully tore open a corner. She...