“PLEASE! AUNT GOLDIE!” Clancy had wondered who she had wronged in this life to be suffering now as she worried a long strand of blonde hair between her fingers.
“But Clancy dear… what was wrong with Michael?” Minerva Goldberg sat back in her overstuffed chair and watched her adopted niece pace the hard wood floor of her parlor. The old Jewish woman had taken Clancy under her wing and was intent on finding her a husband.
“You know, when my mother asked you to look after me I don’t think it included my love life.” An agitated hand crossed her brow in frustration.
Clancy was fast approaching that magical age of 30 and, according to Mrs. Goldberg, she was as good as dead. This date had been a failure from the start, in a long line of failures, and it looked like her singular status was going to stay that way.
“Oi vey. I have never failed in my duty, Clancy, and you are not going to be my first.” Mrs. Goldberg took her matchmaking duties very seriously. “So, what was wrong with Michael? He had parsley between his teeth? His tie was crooked? He dribbled his soup? What?”
“There was just no magic there, Aunt Goldie.”
“Magic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Clancy honey. You’re a sweet girl…”
Clancy inwardly moaned. Oh no… ‘you’re a sweet girl’. It was the kiss of death. It meant just about anything, from ‘you’re an ugly bitch’, to ‘there’s a booger hanging out of your nose’, to ‘you need mouthwash… and bad’.
“You have set me up with… how many men?”
“At last count, eight, and you’ve rejected all of them. Too tall, too fat, too thin, too short, too… this and that. They were all too…”
“…much, aunty. I want to live my own life.”
“But, you should have a man…”
“And none of them appeal to me. Is it me or is it them?”
Goldie bit her tongue. How could she say that Clancy was dragging her feet? But she could see that the young woman could read her like a book. Damn her expressive face. “None… at all? Not even in your college years?”
“I was too busy for that kind of thing. I had a plan for business college and boys weren’t in the schedule.”
“Hmmm…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Goldie smiled and flipped open her card file that sat next to her chair. Her fingers danced across the cards until she found what she was looking for.
Why did Clancy have a feeling that nothing was actually something? Surely there were more twenty-nine year old virgins in the world besides herself. What was the big deal anyway?
Goldie read the information on the card with a secret smile. “You have a date Saturday afternoon. Dress casual for lunch at the 24th Street Café.”
Clancy sighed and her shoulders slumped. “It’s just going to be the same, aunty.”
“Nonsense!” Goldie rose to her feet and hung an arm across the younger woman’s shoulders. “This next one will be perfect. Trust me.”
She walked her Clancy to the front door of her small house. “One o’clock lunch… oh, and wear a white carnation.”
Before her niece could argue the point, she shooed the girl out the door with a wave and a smile. She watched out the door’s window until Clancy had pulled away from the curb before rushing back to her chair. She had arrangements to make.
* * *
Clancy arrived at the café five minutes early, requesting a booth near the window in the hope she would get a good look at her lunch date before he arrived. She ordered a hot cup of tea and idly watched the sidewalk traffic go by. Several men entered the establishment but none were wearing a white carnation. As the clock on the wall ticked by, finally clicking over to one-thirty, she began to think she had been stood up. Just like her life. Ticking towards that ever-shortening deadline.
While in mid-sip from her tea cup a tap on the window made her jump. A woman on the street was waving at her and mouthing the word ‘sorry’, pointing to the cell phone pressed to her ear. Clancy looked around to see who the woman was communicating with but found no one paying attention. When she looked back the woman had turned her back to her and seemed to be having an animated conversation with whoever was on the other end of the phone.
She sat her now empty tea cup down and waved at the waitress who hurried over to her. “I’m ready for my check.”
“Stood up?” the waitress idly asked as she prepared to write up the bill.
Just as Clancy was about to answer, the other side of the booth was occupied and a melodic voice apologized. “Sorry about that. I had to settle a little work dispute.”