The Matchmaker's Gift(18)
Abby listened to both messages again. The Fourth fell on a Monday this year, making the weekend an almost perfect escape. Her mother was flying to San Francisco to see Hannah before traveling for work for the rest of the month. Most of Abby’s friends would be away—off to the beach or to the Berkshires. She’d been invited by a few of them, but she hadn’t felt up to a big party weekend.
There was even an offer from her father for brunch at his new girlfriend’s house in Westchester, but Abby could tell it was half-hearted, at best. After Tanja, Abby could never be bothered to pretend to be interested in her father’s lady friends. She knew the invitation was an apology of sorts—Abby was still miffed at him for not showing up at Sara’s funeral—but she also knew it would be better for all of them if she did not accept. Abby had learned years ago that the less she expected of her father, the easier the disappointment was to bear.
Abby wondered whether she should admit to Will that she had no plans or whether she should put him off until the following week. It wasn’t in her nature to lie, and besides, she thought, Will was sweet. Last night, when they were done with drinks, he insisted on dropping her off at her building. He made the taxi driver keep the meter running while he walked her to her door—an act of chivalry practically unheard of for a first date in New York. As soon as she opened the door to her apartment, Abby’s first impulse was to call her grandmother. When she remembered that she could not, the realization left her feeling hollowed out. Her grandmother, she knew, would have told her to go on the second date this weekend.
With Sara on her mind, Abby fell onto her couch and stared at the pile of notebooks on her coffee table. She hadn’t had much time to look through them yet, and she wasn’t sure how to best approach the task. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she had no idea what the task even was. Was she supposed to read the notebooks in chronological order? Look for hidden messages? A list of reasons that might convince her to believe in love? As she contemplated returning the books to their boxes, she pictured her grandmother’s disappointed expression. Aren’t you even the least bit curious? Do you know so much? Are you such a big shot now that you can’t spare the time?
She sat up from the couch. The big shot. The match her grandmother had made for the Pickle King’s daughter. Abby wondered whether Sara had included it in her notes, and, if so, what she had written about it. After flipping through the entire first notebook, Abby finally found what she was looking for in the middle of the second volume. The top of the page was dated 1916. Her grandmother had been sixteen years old.
Ida Raskin, 19, bride. Parents: Moishe and Bella Raskin. Father’s occupation: Owner and Proprietor, Raskin’s Pickles of Rivington Street. Owner of four buildings on Allen, Rivington, and Orchard Streets, Owner of Raskin’s Farm on Long Island (approximately 1,400 acres).
Ida was described as “extroverted.” She attended Barnard College, where she served as the business manager of the Barnard Bulletin. Abby was surprised that a young Jewish woman from the Lower East Side had been accepted to Barnard in 1916. Ida Raskin must have been incredibly smart—not only smart, but ambitious, too.
Beneath the paragraphs devoted to Ida were those describing her future husband.
Herman Lipovsky, 26, groom. Occupation: Dentist. Education: New York University College of Dentistry and Columbia University. Parents: Israel and Myrna Lipovsky.
Herman, apparently, was “serious” and “reserved.” He was the second of the four Lipovsky children and practiced dentistry with his older brother, Isidore.
Pressed between the handwritten pages of the notebook was a faded scrap of yellowed newsprint. When Abby unfolded it, she was surprised to see an article clipped from The New York Times. “Pickle King Wedding Splendor Amazes East Side: Rivington Street in Awe as Miss Ida Weds Dr. Lipovsky.” One of her grandmother’s matches was in The New York Times! Abby wondered why Sara hadn’t mentioned it before. She scanned the article quickly for her grandmother’s name, but when she didn’t see it, she went back and read the piece more carefully.
Two blocks of Rivington Street were full of people yesterday, trying to catch a glimpse of the bride, Miss Ida Raskin, as she left her family home for the wedding ceremony. Miss Raskin is the daughter of Moishe Raskin, known throughout the city as “The Pickle King of New York.” Fifty carriages and a dozen taxicabs hired by Mr. Raskin transported the most important guests from his home to the family’s synagogue, only two blocks away.
Described by friends as “the catch of all the east side,” Miss Raskin is the Business Manager of the Barnard College Barnard Bulletin. Her Pickle King father is known by his colleagues as “a humble man of hard-earned success,” determined to make his nineteen-year-old daughter the happiest bride in New York.
That this match was not a typical east side “brokered marriage,” in which a professional matchmaker, or schatchen, was hired, was pointed out by the bride’s father, who said that the couple first met in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, last fall.
Dr. Herman Lipovsky, the groom, is a dentist, in practice with Dr. Isidore Lipovsky, his brother, who gifted the bride and groom a piano. Among additional gifts was a house from the bride’s father and a complete set of furnishings from the parents of the groom.
On Sunday evening, five hundred less fortunate members of the community were invited as guests of the bride’s family to the vestry room of the synagogue to participate in the “schnorrer’s tithe,” in which the bride passed out five hundred separate half-dollars and helped to serve a lavish supper.