FIRST NIGHT OF Chanukah. Also the night of her first date with Ben, and though it seemed as though that might’ve been a coincidence, Amanda did allow herself the smallest moment of belief that the universe was in favor of them going out. If she ever got ready in time, though. She’d been held later at work than she intended. Traffic around the mall just a few days before Christmas was insane, and she barely made it home before it was time to light the first candles.
She definitely didn’t have time for them to burn out before Ben was knocking at her door, though she had, thank goodness, grabbed a quick shower and changed from her scrubs into a pretty maxi dress and her favorite knee-high boots. Not much she could do about her hair other than twist it into a loose bun, but a bit of mascara and some lipstick made a huge difference. Maybe too much of one, she thought as she opened the door and saw the look on Ben’s face.
“Hi . . . umm . . . Wow. You look . . .”
Amanda stepped aside so he could enter. “I look . . . ?”
“Nice,” Ben said.
Would they always just stare at each other this way? Ben looked at her as though she were some brand new road he’d discovered, one that wasn’t on any map. An uncharted gaze in admiration of the road stretching out ahead of them to some as yet unknown destination.
“Thanks,” she said.
He was looking past her to the menorah she’d set up on the windowsill, well out of the way of the curtains. “Oh.”
“It’ll be another ten minutes or so before they burn out,” Amanda said by way of apology. “I got home late.”
Ben shook his head. “I didn’t realize.”
“Oh. I should’ve waited for you. I’m sorry . . .”
“No. It’s fine. I just didn’t think about it.” He smiled at her, though there was a shadow in his gaze. “We can wait. That’s fine.”
“Would you like a drink? I have some beer. Wine.” She eyed his expression. “Do you drink booze?”
Ben laughed and gave his head a rueful shake. “Yes, Amanda. I drink alcohol, sometimes. But I won’t if you’re not going to.”
“I’m driving, so I’ll have soda. Lemonade? Iced tea?”
“Iced tea would be perfect, thanks.”
He was still watching the candles burn down when she brought him the glass. They both drank cool, sweet tea while they studied the flames glinting against the window glass. When she looked up at the reflection of their faces, Ben was staring at her. She didn’t look away. Shoulder-to-shoulder, Amanda became very aware of the heat of his body against hers.
“I wasn’t going to light the candles,” Ben said quietly.
There was a story there, and it seemed long and complicated. Keeping her gaze on his in the reflection, Amanda asked, “Why not?”
“It felt wrong, somehow.”
She turned then, to face him. “Why wrong?”
“I can’t explain it,” Ben said. “Because I’m not feeling it, I guess? Because why would I light the candles to celebrate a miracle when I’ve stopped doing everything else? It seems shallow, maybe.”
She thought about that. “You can share mine, if you want.”
“What?”
She laughed a little and shrugged. Ben looked at her. “You can share mine. I’ll light them every night. I’m not the greatest about doing some of the other things, but I do make sure to light the candles for Chanukah. You don’t need to have your own, if you’re suffering some sort of . . . umm . . . existential or philosophical difficulty with it.”
Ben blinked. “How is it, Amanda, that you’ve only just met me, and yet you get it?”
“No clue,” she admitted with a nudge of her hip against him. “Lucky guess? Or maybe it’s because I’ve done my share of questioning what matters and what doesn’t make sense?”
He looked again at the candles, the shamash in the center of the menorah now guttering and going out. “I was taught my entire life to question. To study and debate. To dig in deep to the questions of what mattered, of what was important and how to obey. But now, I guess I just don’t know what I believe anymore. Sorry. That’s heavy for a first date, right?”
“It’s that demeanor of yours,” she told him, and grinned at his look of embarrassment. “Relax. Kidding. I like it.”
“You do?” He returned her smile.
“Yeah. I do.”
It was okay, she thought, if they kept doing that thing. That warm, tingly, lingering, intense staring thing. It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel the way Ben did with something as simple as a look.
IT STILL FELT strange to go into any old restaurant and order whatever he wanted off the menu.
“The food’s good,” Amanda explained as she dragged a piece of carrot through the hummus she’d dipped onto her plate. “You don’t have to be a vegetarian to appreciate it. But I thought you might.”
“Just like you don’t have to celebrate Christmas to help others celebrate it.”
She nodded. “Yep.”
And it was kosher by default, even if his father would not have approved of it. Amanda hadn’t said so, but Ben knew that was one of the reasons she’d picked this place. To make sure he didn’t struggle with the menu options.
They shared the appetizers, and when the entrées came, those as well. The conversation moved from one topic to the next with ease, covering subjects so varied that Ben found by the time they got to the end of one, he’d forgotten where and how it had begun. Amanda had an easy laugh that lit up her face and urged him to laugh along with her, something it felt like he hadn’t done in a long, long time. At least not this way.
She was beautiful.
And smart. Inquisitive. Emotional; he could see it in the way her expressions shifted as they spoke. How animated she became when discussing her passions for books, movies, lemon scones. Watching her, Ben knew he should’ve felt embarrassed by the wealth of cultural references he missed because he simply didn’t have the same background as she did. They were both twenty-five, but no matter how many times he didn’t understand what she meant, Amanda never made him feel stupid.
“My television viewing was restricted growing up,” he said at last, when she asked him if he was familiar with a childhood TV program she had watched. “We watched only what was considered appropriate, and it was hardly ever what was secularly popular. Movies, books. All the same. We had plenty to entertain us and keep us busy, don’t get me wrong. You had Sesame Street. We had Shalom Sesame on VHS tapes that my mom brought home from the synagogue library. We had Lamb Chop’s Chanukah special.”
“Hey, we watched that one, too!” Amanda grinned. “I loved that one.”
He didn’t want her to think he’d grown up shut away, somehow, from the real world, even if at times looking back he felt that was exactly what had happened. “It wasn’t that we didn’t hear about Christmas or bacon or whatever. We knew about those other things. We just didn’t do them. When we got older, my best friend Levi and I would take the subway to sneak off and see movies we weren’t supposed to. I had a small radio and we’d tune into the popular stations when our parents weren’t around. Small rebellions, really, when you think about what sorts of things we might’ve gotten into. But our parents would’ve punished us for them anyway.”
“All kids do that,” Amanda said with a chuckle. “My parents have no idea about some of the things I did when I wasn’t supposed to. To be honest, I hope they never find out.”
Ben laughed. “I guess it’s universal, no matter where you grew up.”
She didn’t dig into him about things, no matter how curious she must’ve been. Ben appreciated that. It made it easier, actually, to open up to her about his past, which was in no way shameful and yet he’d felt was better kept secret. That was his baggage, he realized as he watched Amanda’s expression while he described to her what Passover was like in their house. Dinner and commentary on the Passover story that lasted for hours, glasses of wine drunk, singing and hilarity and joy until the children fell asleep and had to be woken so they could hunt for the afikomen.
“A piece of broken matzo that was supposed to be dessert, who ever thought that was a good idea?” Amanda made a face as she laughed. “My gramps was always the one who hid it. Whoever found it got gummy rings. You know, the Kosher for Passover kind, those fruit jellies? So gross.”
“Disgusting,” Ben agreed, letting himself relax into enjoying the way her face scrunched up at the memory.
She nudged the plate of chocolate cake toward him and waved her fork. “The worst part of Passover for me was school lunches. My mom would pack us tuna or egg salad and matzo, but man, it never failed, that was always the week they had pizza and spaghetti and macaroni and cheese. Torture! But we did it. It was important, she said, to remember that even if we’re different, it’s what makes us who we are.”
“I wasn’t around anyone who was different. We were all the same. Our schools closed for the holiday. Passover was great. We played a lot of board games.” Ben hesitated, remembering. “My mother would spend all day cooking for the seders and tell us we had to eat the leftovers for the rest of the week, but then she always ended up cooking full meals every day. That’s funny, how for you it meant problems with the food, and for us it was when we were allowed to eat cake for breakfast. And not those boxed seven-layer deals from the supermarket that were baked months in advance. She made everything from scratch. My mom’s an amazing cook.”
“Hey, I could get behind that. Cake for breakfast? No problem.” She paused, not looking at him as she forked another bite of rich chocolate. “So . . . Ben. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but . . .”
She was going to ask him why he left Brooklyn, he thought. He’d have to tell her the whole story. Watch her face twist again, maybe with pity this time, at how he’d spent his life chasing something that didn’t exist.
She looked at him with a faint, curious smile. “Floaters or sinkers?”
For a moment he didn’t understand. Then he laughed, first softly and then a little louder. “Floaters. Of course floaters. Who likes matzo balls that sink?”
“Me!” Amanda tipped her head back in glee, and he took the chance again to appreciate her reactions. She looked at him sideways. “My mom used to tell me I liked my matzo balls the way I liked my guys. Dense.”
His eyebrows lifted. “She didn’t.”
“Yeah, she did. And she wasn’t wrong.” Amanda sighed, shoulders lifting, and tucked her hair behind her ear. She caught him looking, fascinated by the way her fingers stroked through the smooth auburn silk. Her smile faded for a second before becoming something else, something echoed in the small slant of her eyes as she looked him over. “I don’t have a great track record with guys.”
“No?” Mouth suddenly a little dry, Ben swigged from his cooling coffee.
She shook her head. “No. I seem to go for the ones who start off sweet but don’t end up that way.”
“That’s a shame. A woman like you deserves a man to appreciate her. To treat her like a queen. My father used to sing to my mother every Friday night before we ate dinner. It’s a prayer called ‘Eyshet Hayel.’ A woman of valor,” Ben said, then added quietly, sadly, thinking of his parents, whom he’d disappointed so much, “I’m sure he still does.”
“It sounds really nice. A woman of valor has a price beyond rubies, right? That’s it?” He nodded. Amanda smiled. “I didn’t know it was a song.”
He’d always thought that one day he would sing that prayer to his own wife as they sat down to the Sabbath meal. He’d imagined singing it to Galya, because she was the only woman he’d assumed he would marry. At least he’d imagined it before he began thinking about all of the places he would never see, the things he would never do, as long as he stayed where he was.
“Thank you for asking me out, Amanda.”
She looked faintly surprised, then her brows knit. She bit her lower lip and didn’t meet his gaze for a few seconds before braving it. Those dark brown eyes, alight from within. He could get lost in them, if he let himself. There was danger there, but Ben couldn’t convince himself to mind it.
“A woman who lives at the home told me I should, or else I’d regret it,” Amanda said.
“She said you would regret not asking me on a date? She doesn’t even know me.” Ben laughed, bemused.
Amanda shook her head. “More that she told me to take a chance, you know? Because if I didn’t, I’d never know what might’ve been, or what could happen. If I’d waited for you to ask me . . .”
“You might still be waiting,” Ben told her honestly. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
Amanda’s gaze didn’t waver from his this time. “She said if you wanted to see where a road might end, you needed make sure you started walking it. So . . . I’m walking it, Ben.”
Impulsively, he reached across the table to capture her hand with his. Her fingers were strong and warm, her skin soft. She gripped him, palm to palm, fingers interlocking as they both squeezed gently. It would’ve been a forbidden touch where he grew up, but here, with her, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
“I’m glad I asked you,” Amanda said.
“Despite my demeanor?”
“Oh, definitely in spite of it.” She squeezed his hand again, lightly. “Hey, I have an idea. Are you busy tomorrow night?”