The View From Penthouse B

31





Benefit of the Doubt


THOUGH I WAS no longer looking for a beau, the amateur sociologist in me noticed that four days had passed without a reply from Mrs. Offenberg’s son. I conducted what I hoped was a casual poll at a sisters-plus-Anthony dinner on a warm April day that took us up to the roof terrace. Betsy had treated us to a smorgasbord of Chinese food and was sticking serving forks and spoons into the generous array of take-out containers.

“Suppose,” I began, when we were finally seated and wine had been poured, “someone sees your ad and writes to you . . .”

“Your specific ad?” Betsy asked. “Or are we talking hypotheticals?”

“My ad. Someone answered—”

This aroused a chorus of whos and whens and a clamor for details.

I waited. I skewered a dumpling with my fork and sampled it, lollypop-style. “It was a reply, once removed,” I hinted between bites.

“Meaning?” asked Anthony.

“It was a mother writing on behalf of a son.”

Immediately, sides were taken. Betsy and Anthony were on the No team—forget it; what kind of wimp lets his mother ask someone out on a date?

Margot was on the Extenuating Circumstances team—perhaps . . . benefit of the doubt . . . it’s very likely that he is too modest to sing his own praises in the way needed to catch someone’s attention.

“Tell us what she said,” Betsy ordered. “And I don’t want the abridged version.”

I said I could give them the gist. The engineer son was also widowed; had two more-or-less grown daughters; was fifty-plus, smart, tall, and a resident of Manhattan.

“Photo?” asked Anthony.

“No, but she said he was good-looking.”

Margot coughed out a laugh.

I found myself on the cusp of being insulted. Did I not have sound judgment and good instincts? Was I not capable of reading between the lines to distinguish a decent prospect from a dreadful one?

Betsy asked, “Did you green-light it?”

“If you mean did I answer, I did. I wrote back and asked the obvious: Did she have her son’s approval to speak on his behalf?” I reminded them, “I’m out of this business. I don’t even want to meet him. I quit Match before my subscription ran out.”

“So you’re just making conversation?” asked Margot.

“There’s nothing more to tell. I never heard back.”

“Time frame?” asked Betsy.

“Four days ago.”

I saw a droop of acute disappointment on Margot’s face. “I don’t love that,” she said.

My MBA sister said, “So Gwen will write him.”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Hold on,” Betsy said. “You’re saying no because you’re thinking in terms of your pride. But why should you care? He doesn’t know you. It’s not like high school where you’d have to see him in homeroom and he’d tell his friends and they’d snicker when you walked by.”

Anthony liberated his legs from between table and bench, and said he was going back for sesame oil. “Don’t make any decisions without me,” he called from the rooftop door.

We obeyed, turning the conversation temporarily to our nephews’ summer camp destinations (overnight in Vermont, day camp in New Jersey). Anthony returned quickly with the sesame oil, two bottles of beer, and my laptop.

“Good,” said Betsy. “Now she can read us the original e-mail.”

“Not till she eats. Everything’s getting cold up here,” said Margot.

Anthony said, “I’m still working on ‘What does Gwen have to lose?’ And I’m getting close to ‘Why let this candidate drop off the face of the earth because his mother only checks her e-mail once a week?’”

“And if she doesn’t answer this time,” said Margot, “if she doesn’t have the common decency to say, ‘My son, as it turns out, is not open to my matchmaking. So sorry to have gotten your hopes up—’”

I said, fibbing, “She didn’t get my hopes up. I have zero expectations.”

Anthony asked us to pass the rice—the white, not the brown—and also the chicken, the tofu, and the noodles. He asked if we were planning on leftovers and if Betsy had even expected that he’d be joining us. Kudos on the selection of dishes, by the way. Especially the pork with Szechuan pickles.

“Eat up,” Betsy said.

I meant to introduce other topics. I was interested in their social and work lives, yet I couldn’t help returning in the next conversational break to “So? Is everyone agreeing with Betsy?”

“Everything’s delicious,” said Margot. “I hope the delivery guy left us a take-out menu.”

“Not that,” I said. “I meant—to follow up or not?”

Anthony pointed with his chopsticks toward my laptop.

“Now?” I said.

“You get Wi-Fi up here?” asked Betsy.

“Let’s take a stab at it,” said Anthony. “A rough draft.”

Not one of them trusted my instincts or actions. I’d married late. Malformations of my husband’s heart had gone undetected, and I’d slept through his death. My abstemious escort service—a terrible idea to begin with—was DOA. My personal ad had drawn only one response, and it was from an unauthorized proxy. I said, “No, thank you. I’ll do it later.”

“But write before the mother’s bedtime,” said Margot.

“BCC us?” asked Betsy.





At eight-forty-five p.m. I sent the following to Myra Offenberg: As a conscientious correspondent, I wanted to be sure that my reply of Monday night reached you. And hating myself even as it was uploading, I attached my best photo. I didn’t include my telephone number, fearing she might befriend me on her own, and soon I’d be accepting an invitation to a matinee or a seder. Confident for a few seconds, I pressed SEND. But then the second-guessing crept in. Had I done the right thing? Was I appearing needy and undesirable? And what about the no-date, no-beau vow I’d made to myself?

There was a message waiting from Myra when I woke up, bearing the exclamation points of a high-priority dispatch. Could I call Eli myself due to his being on the shy side? Four telephone numbers including his fax line were supplied.

I wrote back. Does he even know of my existence?

Yes came her answer. Do you enjoy the movies?

Within seconds, another e-mail arrived, its subject line was “p.s.”: Forgot to mention that he likes your looks.

Who isn’t emboldened by flattery? I wrote back. Even the shyest person can compose an e-mail.

Again, no answer for an eternity. After thirty-six hours, I found a new sender in my in-box, an eoffenb.





Dear Ms. Schmidt,

I’m on a campaign to end maternal harassment. Would you care to meet for coffee or a drink some time?

Cordially,

Eli Offenberg





I neither forwarded it nor asked my team about strategy. Should I or shouldn’t I? Would I be inviting another disappointment? Even though I didn’t approve of my own actions, I pressed REPLY and surprised myself with a Yes and an exclamation point.





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