Fran Ross: Oreo

discounting, of course, head, hands, and feet.

Major and minor characters in part one of this book, in order of birth

Jacob Schwartz, the heroine’s paternal grandfather

Frieda Schwartz, his wife (died in paragraph one but still, in her own quiet way, a power and a force)

James Clark, the heroine’s maternal grandfather (immobilized in paragraph two)

Louise Butler Clark, the heroine’s maternal grandmother (two weeks younger than her husband)

Samuel Schwartz, the heroine’s father

Helen Clark Schwartz, the heroine’s mother

Christine (Oreo), the heroine

Moishe (Jimmie C.), the heroine’s brother

Concerning a few of the characters, an aperçu or two

Jacob: He makes boxes (“Jake the Box Man, A Boxeleh for Every Tchotchkeleh ”). As he often says, “It’s a living. I mutche along.” Translation: “I am, kayn aynhoreh , a very rich man.”

James and Louise: In the DNA crapshoot for skin color, when the die was cast, so was the dye. James came out nearest the color of the pips (on the scale opposite, he is a 10), his wife the cube. Louise is fair, very fair, an albino manquée (a just-off-the-scale –1). James is a shrewd businessman, Louise one of the great cooks of our time.

Samuel Schwartz: Just another pretty face.

Helen Clark: Singer, pianist, mimic, math freak (a 4 on the color scale).

A word about weather

There is no weather per se in this book. Passing reference is made to weather in a few instances. Assume whatever season you like throughout. Summer makes the most sense in a book of this length. That way, pages do not have to be used up describing people taking off and putting on overcoats.

The life story of James and Louise up to the marriage of Helen and Samuel

In 1919, when they were both five years old, little James and little Louise moved to Philadelphia with their parents, the Clarks and the Butlers, who were close friends, from a tiny hamlet outside a small village in Prince Edward County, Virginia. When they were eighteen, James and Louise married and had their first and only child, Helen, in the same year.

During World War II, James worked as a welder at Sun Shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania. Every morning for three years, he would stop at Zipstein’s Noshery to buy a pickle to take to work in his lunchbox. He would ask for a sour. Zipstein always gave him a half sour. From that time on, James hated Jews.

After the war, James had enough money saved to start his own mail-order business. He purposely cultivated a strictly Jewish clientele, whom he overcharged outrageously. He researched his market carefully; he studied Torah and Talmud, collected midrashim , quoted Rabbi Akiba — root and herb of all the jive-ass copy he wrote for the chrain -storm of flyers he left in Jewish neighborhoods. His first item sold like latkes . It was a set of dartboards, featuring (his copy read) “all the men you love to hate from Haman to Hitler.” No middle-class Philadelphia Jew could show his face in his basement rec room if those dartboards weren’t hanging there.

With this success as a foundation, James went on to tie-ins with other mail-order houses. He was able to offer his customers cheese blintzes for Shevuoth, handkerchiefs for Tisha Bov (“You’ll cry a lot”), dreidels for Chanukah, gragers and hamantashen for Purim, wine goblets for Passover, honey for Rosh Hashanah, branches for Succoth (“Have the prettiest booth on your block”), and a recording of the Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur (“as sung by Tony Martin”). Next to each item in his catalog was a historico-religious paragraph for those who did not know the significance of the feasts and holidays. “You have to explain everything to these apikorsim , ” he told Louise, who said, “What say?” Over the years, his steadiest seller was the Jewish History Coloring Book series, including “the ever-popular Queen Esther, Ruth and Naomi, Judah and the Maccabees (add 50¢ for miniature plastic hammer), the Sanhedrin (the first Supreme Court), and other all-time Chosen People favorites.” At last, his money worries were over. He was able to send Helen to college and buy Louise the gift of her dreams: a complete set of Tupperware (5,481 pieces).

Temple University, choir rehearsal

As Helen sang her part in the chorale chorus Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring , she constructed one of her typical head equations, based on the music’s modalities and hers:

where B = Bach

T = time

U = weight of uric acid, ml

Simple, she conceded, compared with the overlapping fugal subject-answer-countersubject head equations that were her favorites — elegant, in fact, but not quite absorbing enough to keep her mind off the fact that she was perspiring and wanted desperately to pee.

Samuel, passing through the rehearsal hall, caught a glimpse of Helen’s face and, mistaking her expression of barely controlled anguish for religious fervor, was himself seized with an emotion that mystics have often erroneously identified as ecstasy- cum -epiphany ( vide Saul on the road to Damascus, Theresa of Ávila every time you turn around): the hots. His accounting books fell to the floor.

Decisions, decisions

After much soul- and neshoma -searching, respectively, Helen and Samuel decided to marry and live in his hometown, New York City. Samuel wanted to be an actor. Furthermore, because Helen was a math freak, obviously gifted, Samuel wanted to have Helen’s child — or, rather, he wanted her to have her/their child. Helen did not mind. Pregnancy, she felt, would give her time to sit and play the piano and do her head equations while Samuel was studying Intermediate Walking and Talking at drama school.

Birth of the heroine

A secret cauled Christine’s birth. This is her story — let her discover it. Helen named the baby girl in a moment of pique after a fight with Samuel in the hospital. They made up before the ink was dry on the birth certificate. Although Samuel was a nonobserving Jew and did not give a fig that his daughter was named after Christ, he playfully extracted a promise from Helen that he could name the next child.

Helen and Samuel

Later that year, Samuel stroked Helen’s thigh and joked, “Now let’s try for the Messiah.”

Helen and Samuel (cont’d)

They fought Mondays and Thursdays. Finally, Samuel said, “When Christine is old enough to decipher the clues written on this piece of paper, send her to me and I will reveal to her the secret of her birth.” He handed Helen the paper, adding a lot of farchadat instructions it is not necessary to go into here. “I still hope to see you from time to time,” he said.

“Later for you, shmendrick ,” said Helen.

Samuel left to work on a scene in drama class in which he was to play Aegeus.

Helen goes home

After the breakup but before the divorce, Helen moved back to Philadelphia. She was with child again. In the fullness of time, a son was born, in circumstances neither more nor less unusual than those that attended the advent of Christine. Samuel sent Helen a one-word telegram: “MOISHE.” He thought it was funny to name a black kid Moishe. It was the name on the birth certificate, but everyone called the child Jimmie C., after his maternal grandfather and, inadvertently, after his paternal grandfather (James = Jacob).