Даниэла Стил: All That Glitters

Sam’s religious Orthodox Jewish parents were uncomfortable about their friendship from the beginning, and found it strange that a boy and girl would be best friends. Their greatest concern was that eventually, when they got older, their closeness would turn into romantic feelings, and they would fall in love and want to marry. Sam’s mother, Zippora, particularly didn’t want that to happen, although his father didn’t want it either. When the time came, they wanted Sam to marry within their faith. Zippora kept a kosher home. They celebrated Shabbat every Friday night, and obliged Sam to go to synagogue with them on Saturdays. He was the oldest of four children, and had two sisters and a brother. The others had gone to a religious school in Brooklyn, but they sent Sam to a more liberal, nonsectarian school in the city, and were never sure it had been the right decision. But he had flourished there and was an excellent student, which was their main goal for him.

Eventually his next youngest sister, Sabra, gave them real cause for concern. She fell in love with Liam, an Irish Catholic boy she’d met at an interschool high-school conference on diversity, and she was determined to marry him after they graduated from college. She was even willing to convert for him. That took the heat off Sam and his friendship with Coco, and caused the Steins even more anxiety than Coco did.

Sam was a year older than Coco, and had just graduated as an econ major from NYU. Coco had gone to his graduation and his parents had been polite to her, as they always were, but having known him for twelve years, she knew how they felt about their being best friends. They made no secret of it, and lectured Sam constantly about the danger of their being friends.

Sam had insisted that she be invited to his bar mitzvah when he was thirteen. She had sat through all four hours of the religious ceremony at the temple, and had then gone to the lavish party his parents had thrown for him at the Plaza hotel that night. Her parents had dropped her off. There had been two hundred guests and Coco had enjoyed it. It was the first bar mitzvah she’d ever been to, and she felt very grown up being there alone. She told her parents afterward that she wished she could have a bat mitzvah herself. She loved the celebration, and especially when they carried Sam’s mother around the room aloft in a chair to riotous applause and lively music.

Coco’s family was Catholic and had never been overly religious. Neither were Coco and Sam. Sam said he didn’t think he would hold Shabbat when he grew up, and he hated living in a kosher home. He ate bacon every chance he got when he went out, but of course never told his parents. He felt that his mother’s religious passion was stifling. Both his sisters had rebelled against it, but his brother, Jacob, always desperate to please them, said he wanted to be a rabbi when he grew up. He was a studious boy and Sam thought he’d do it.

Sam was expected to go to work at his father’s successful accounting firm after college, and they encouraged him to become a CPA now that he had graduated. He wanted to go to business school in a few years, but the ink was barely dry on his bachelor’s degree. Sam and Coco loved the fact that they had both gone to college in New York City, she at Columbia and he at NYU, and could continue to spend time together, when they weren’t studying or with friends at their respective schools. Sometimes they managed to study together. Sam always helped her with her math, economics, and statistics, and she had written more than one paper for him in psychology and literature. They pooled their strengths and had both gotten good grades and maintained a strong GPA all through college. Their parents could never complain that their friendship distracted them from their schoolwork, since their grades had never suffered from the time they spent together. And it was a mystery to Sam’s parents how they were so often with each other, remained friends, and didn’t fall in love.

One of the big differences between them was that Sam’s parents expected him to conform to their rules, their expectations for him, and their way of life, and hers didn’t. There was no room in his parents’ thinking for Sam to make his own choices, and they made it clear what their plans were for him, both for marriage and career.

Coco’s parents wanted her to find a career that was fulfilling, be creative about it, and march to her own tune, as they had done, Bethanie by marrying someone who came from a different world and Tom by achieving so much more than his parents had ever envisioned for him. They urged Coco not to accept other people’s limited views, and to fly with her own wings. It left a broad range of options and choices for her future, and her friendship with Sam had never worried them, neither due to his sex nor to his religion. They respected her ability to make good decisions and choose her own friends. Sam always said he envied her because her parents were so open-minded. He dreaded confrontation with his parents, and couldn’t imagine himself marrying the kind of girl they would eventually want to choose for him, a girl from an Orthodox Jewish home. Any other possibility was out of the question. His mother always urged him to marry early and have many children, as they had done. Both his parents came from big families.

Sam had no intention of doing any of that when he eventually left home. He had only graduated a month before, and in two more weeks they expected him to start work at his father’s accounting firm. He dreaded it, and for that Coco felt sorry for him. But he knew it was expected of him and he didn’t want to let them down.

Coco was excited about her summer internship, and her senior year at Columbia before she graduated. She knew her parents were disappointed that, because of her job at Time, she wouldn’t be able to join them for their annual summer trip to Europe. She went with them every year. This would be the first time she couldn’t. They were leaving on Sunday, so she had agreed to spend the weekend with them before they left.

Sam’s parents lived in an apartment on upper Central Park West, not in one of the fancier buildings further south, like the Dakota or the San Remo, where famous actors, producers, and writers lived, but in a very respectable building nonetheless. His sisters shared a room, as did he with his younger brother. He didn’t have enough money saved yet to move into his own apartment after graduation, and he suspected he would have to live at home for the next few years. The starting salary his father was giving him would be enough for spending money, and some dinners out with friends and occasional dates, but not enough to live on yet, not by any means. He’d have to work hard for that, and he intended to. He longed for his own apartment, which still seemed like a distant dream.

Coco was planning to move out when she graduated, once she got a job, and assumed she would have roommates, which she did in the dorm at Columbia too. She didn’t mind. Her parents had promised to help her get an apartment after graduation. Sam always envied how generous her parents were, but he didn’t hold it against her. He just thought Coco was a very lucky girl, and most of the time, she agreed. At other times she found her parents’ single-minded focus on her too possessive and intense. She hoped they would relax their vigilance in the next year or two, but there was no sign of it yet. She was sorry she couldn’t go to Europe with them this year, but it felt grown up and exciting to have a summer job and stay home. She was enjoying it, and it was already clear to her that she wanted to work at a magazine when she finished school. She was even considering graduate classes in journalism.

Her father was waiting for her when she stepped off the jitney. He was a tall, youthful looking man with gray hair at his temples, and his face lit up as soon as he saw Coco. She was happy to see him, gave him a big hug, and they chatted in the car all the way back to the house, where her mother was waiting with a light dinner at a beautifully set table on the patio next to the pool. Like everything else Bethanie did so perfectly, she was a creative cook, kept an elegant home, and the house was tastefully decorated. Tom was always very generous with her. She had dabbled in decorating when she was younger, and enjoyed it. But once Tom started making big money, she had never worked again, and was available at all times to her husband and daughter. She had amazing flair with everything she did, an easy style and eye for beauty. Coco had inherited some of that from her. Her mother’s grace and open-mindedness hadn’t gone unobserved by her daughter. The freedom she had to be herself and choose her own path was the exact opposite of how Sam had been brought up, with his parents constantly dictating to him and attempting to restrict him.