Page 329 - WhyAsInY

WHat’s in a naMe?
was not, however, Sylvia or Phyllis who next emerged to seal the deal— it was my mother, and she looked distraught. It turns out that she was standing with Sylvia when Phyllis presented the options. Unfortu- nately, my mother, who had a practiced eye for human response and was very sensitive to the psyches of others (just ask), concluded, not based on any spoken word, that Sylvia was not as impressed as my mother would have liked (don’t ask). Phyllis’s reaction seemed to have been beside the point.
It took very little time for me to grasp the next step. Phyllis would be reassured that the three rings were not intended for any purpose other than to display shape, and that I had shown the three particular, small, samples to her because Edna Nelkin did not have round, oval, and marquise shapes in any other, more preferable, size at the time at which I had gone to her jewelry store. Thus, now that we knew that the mar- quise was the right configuration of carbon for Phyllis’s hand, all that remained to be done was to return the specimens and obtain a marquise diamond of suitable size. I wanted to hide but did nothing to slow the train that was now speeding down the best-possible-impression track. Grandma’s apparently inexhaustible beneficence once again rose to the challenge, and a larger marquise diamond was found at Edna’s and duly placed on Phyllis’s ring finger, to which, as anyone who knew anything could see, it was in absolutely the best possible proportion.
Rabbi Number Two
Apart from having a subordinate role on the bimah at our wedding, Rabbi Letterman would rear his covered head at least two more times in my life, the first of which was hard to rival. At some point before the wed- ding, the one at which he was not going to preside, the good rabbi had called Harry to say that, naturally, he should and would be happy to meet with and counsel the young couple in advance of their nuptials. Understandably, Harry did not fend off this request. Rather, my guess is that—because Harry was one who basked in the presence of rabbis and
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