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Openminded

David Larsen

    Ira Kanter hung his sport coat in the hall closet and slipped out of his cordovan weejuns; he left the shoes on the floor at the foot of his and Rebecca’s queen-size bed. She’d pick them up and put them away in the morning when she made the bed. When he was angry with his wife, as he was tonight, he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, talk to her, have a drink with her, even go to bed with her, though eventually he’d have to, but a goodnight kiss would be perfunctory and nothing more. They’d done their talking in the car, arguing mostly, bitterly. Twenty-eight years into marriage, two children, grown and out of the house, she had a way of getting his goat, needling him about the most trivial matters.
    “Are you still upset?” asked Rebecca. She had changed out of her new soft blue dress and had draped her beige terrycloth robe, her birthday gift from Ira, over her shoulders. Her breasts showed intermittently as she moved carefreely around the kitchen.
    He sat glumly at the table, a glass of orange juice in his hand. He didn’t bother to look up at his wife, though her exposed boobs had caught his attention when she came into the room.
    “I’m not mad,” he said. “It’s just that whenever I have an opinion about something, you have to make a big deal about it.” He turned the glass in his hand. “All I said was that I thought a black wedding dress is inappropriate.”
    “And all I said was that it’s none of our business what Zooey wears at her own wedding.” Rebecca sat across the table from him. He could feel her gaze on his forehead.
    “People gasped when she walked down the aisle with Julian. If I was her father, I would’ve refused to have any part in a ceremony like that.” He looked up and glared into his wife’s blue eyes. She’d removed her lightly-tinged pink lipstick, but her fragrance, the one she only sprayed on for special occasions, still lingered in the air. “And what kind of church was that? The minister looked like he belonged in Haight Asbury—fifty years ago. He could’ve at least trimmed his hair and beard. My whole family was there. I think that preacher was stoned.” Ira paused. “I think the bride and groom might have been zonked out.”
    “They weren’t.” Rebecca smiled. “If it was what Zooey wanted...and your sister and Julian didn’t have a problem with it...what’s it to us? You’re just getting crotchety in your old age.”
    “I’m as openminded as anyone,” he said. “It’s just that there are norms that people expect you to observe. And what’s the deal with her carrying black roses? And the groom, what’s-his-name, wearing a white suit? I felt like I was an extra in a Fellini movie. And why did she have to marry a non-Jew? Just to drive the family nuts?”
     “You were at a nice wedding in a Unitarian church,” she said. “And I didn’t think you paid all that much attention to what was going on. You seemed to be more than slightly interested in the woman across the aisle from us. The silver-haired woman in the gray dress.”
    Ira felt the blood rush to his face. His wife notices everything. The stunning woman, maybe fifty, sat cross-legged to his left, not more than four feet away. A silver, not glittery, high-heeled shoe dangled from the painted nails on her long, narrow foot. She was striking. He was stricken. Rebecca never polished her toenails. The woman was exotic. Her stern-looking husband sat with his arms crossed throughout the whole ceremony; the stuffed-shirt didn’t deserve her.
    “I just thought her hair was unusual,” said Ira. He couldn’t deny noticing the woman, but he could downplay his interest, his infatuation.
    “I suspect it was more than that.”
    “I hardly noticed her. What I did notice was the fiasco my niece made us sit through.” Ira sat back and crossed his arms, like the woman’s bald, stuffy husband. “She was fifty, if not older. I’m too old to pay attention to other women. I’m almost sixty, you know. Women aren’t interested in men my age.”
    Rebecca shook her head. Then stood. “I’m going to bed. You’d better take two Tums after drinking orange juice this late. Otherwise, you might wake up in the middle of the night with acid reflux. A man who’s too old to notice attractive women needs to be careful.”
    Her robe open, her legs and breast exposed with each step, Rebecca walked across the room.
    Ira stepped to the sink and rinsed his glass. He thought, “It’s written somewhere, ‘A person may not drink out of one goblet and think of another,’ but what do the rabbis know? If Zooey can get married to whoever she wants, in some Christian church, to some hippie who won’t convert, then I can take an antacid and have thoughts about anyone I feel like. What difference does it make? I’ll make up with Rebecca and take a load off of my mind. Two birds with one stone. If it’s openminded they want, then I’ll give them openminded.”

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