Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,36

cinnamon ring, then parked my car and walked the rest of the way to Miriam’s house on Formosa. I didn’t want them to know that I was driving on Shabbat, because I knew this was considered work—even though the sun hadn’t yet set. There was something nice about being forced to be done with everything by sunset, to be excused from life. It was like a teacher’s note from the ultimate authority.

The house was one of those large two-story LA mishmashes on a small lot that looked like it had been built before the 1940s, renovated in the ’60s, and then neglected since the ’80s. It was made of stucco and brick and siding and stone, with wrought-iron detailing—some painted black and some painted white. Next to the front door was, of course, a mezuzah, and on the door hung a wooden cutout of an owl that said THE SCHWEBELS. So that was her last name: Miriam Schwebel. I smelled something roasting, some kind of meat, and immediately thought, Turn around Run. The intimacy of it, the smell of another family’s life, was terrifying.

Miriam must have been waiting. Before I even knocked, she opened the door and corralled me inside. I was the guest of honor. She’d lined up most of her family in the entrance. Eitan was fifteen, and Noah was nine—and both of them had payos. Her father had payos too, but I was surprised he didn’t have a beard. I reached out to shake his hand, and he didn’t move. I remembered that he wasn’t allowed to touch me. Miriam had a younger sister, Ayala, three years her junior, who she said was upstairs. There was also a toddler clinging to Miriam’s foot.

“She’s so cute,” I said of the toddler.

“Ezra is a he,” whispered Miriam.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine, of course,” said Miriam’s mother, smiling. “We don’t cut their hair until they are three.”

I liked Mrs. Schwebel for not judging me—and for acting like anyone could easily make that mistake. She looked so much like Miriam. They both had the same roundness: the large belly, the big ass, the plumpness under the chin. Her mother wore no makeup but was more stylish than I imagined. She had on a pretty long black dress and red loafers that looked like they could be Gucci. Her wig was a Rita Hayworth red, shoulder-length, and parted on the side.

“We’ve lived here since I was two,” Miriam explained as she took me on a tour of the house, which was huge, but also a little cruddy.

“Oh,” I said. “Where were you born?”

“Monsey,” she said, as we entered the living room. “New York. My parents came here so my father could get into commercial real estate with my uncle Lavie.”

The living room was done in ’60s Flintstones chic, with avocado-green carpeting and furniture, and a faux-stone fireplace. I recognized it as the same faux stone from the exterior of my apartment building. But while this room was filled with what looked to be a whole century’s worth of knickknacks—three shofars, two menorahs, a grandfather clock, a cuckoo clock, a broken Ms. Pac-Man arcade game, a collection of rabbi statuettes—my apartment was newly renovated, painted white, and existed in a timeless vacuum of nothingness. I had only my white Ikea bed, my white Ikea night table, my black Ikea sofa, and that was it. I’d thought about getting a rug, but I couldn’t commit. I felt that committing to a rug would mean I existed on the planet more than I actually wanted to exist.

“When did your family get into yogurt?” I asked Miriam.

“Later. I was twelve when they started with the yogurt.”

“Oh.”

“It was my mother’s idea, actually,” she said, leading me into the dining room, which was older and more antique-looking than the living room, with dark wood paneling and white molding. “If we were still in Monsey, she never would have come up with it probably. Women don’t really work there—or, like, they definitely aren’t supposed to be the ideas people when it comes to business. Both of my parents come from ultra-ultra-Orthodox families. But here we’re just modern Orthodox. Uncle Lavie is barely observant at all. He’s my father’s younger brother. He quit yeshiva to move out here and marry an Israeli woman. They only have two kids. They’re Reform, or something.”

“Who’s Reform?” asked a young woman, entering the dining room. She was beautiful, with dark hair, sleek and shiny, and eyes that were almost black. Her ankles were