Free The Romantics by Galt Niederhoffer Page B

marriages with short superlative statements. A conversationalist of the highest level could use one phrase for two wholly disparate scenarios. For example, “How is that guy anyway?” could be used for both of the following queries: “How is your one-month-old?” and “How is your dying father?” Both were asked with the same furrowed concern and chipper aplomb.
    God forbid one answer a question with too much gravity. Earnest expressions of sorrow or distress were best left for one’s diary. Of course, the uninitiated might hear the question, “How is your dying father” and mistake it for a sincere query. But the distinction between the words and the questioner’s intent, though subtle, was all-important, for it spared the cocktail realm incongruous heaviness—subjects better saved for private talks on the porch—and it enabled good manners to be mistaken for sincere compassion.This, of course, was a dangerous mistake should you ever find yourself in need of a confidante.
    Laura had first encountered the language freshman year in college when she and Lila together took on Yale’s secret society punch. Never mind that they were conversing with a population that was almost exclusively drunk, these people were incomprehensible to Laura. For months, she struggled to understand; Lila was fluent from the start.
    Nearly ten years later, Laura was finally conversant. She had, of course, been subject to an immersion course while living with Lila, and she had honed the ear of a foreigner from the day she was born. Her own parents were members of the caste known most affectionately as reformed Jews, in other words, Jews who had all but converted to another religion. They were people who summered in the Hamptons and lived on the Upper East Side, or resided in Brookline and summered on the Vineyard. They were people who sought membership at Bath and Tennis Clubs all over the New England seaboard in spite of their well-known membership policies. They were the people who supported a multibillion-dollar industry of retail modeled on yachting attire. They were people Laura had come to think of in the most simplistic way: Jews were black and Wasps were white, and she was some shade of gray in between.
    Boarding school was the defining turn in her religious education. As one of four Jews in her grade-school class, she had always been outnumbered. But at boarding school, she was marooned, finally far enough from her city roots to forget her urban identity. Quickly and quietly, thirteen-year-old Laura had completed a total makeover, trading in the Doc Martens in which she arrived for tasseledmoccasins. The pictures she tacked on her wall still revealed the stylish iconoclast of her younger years; the foray into rubber bracelets, a short affair with side ponytails. But, without this evidence, her classmates would never have known her secret history. By the time she returned from Thanksgiving break, the transformation was complete; her room was stocked with J. Crew catalogs, her drawers filled with plaid flannel shirts. Only a genealogical expert would have guessed her ethnicity.
    She sometimes blamed her parents for this disgrace. It was their job to instill pride in her heritage. Instead, they had confused her with a surplus of cultural identities, as though religion were something you could change at will to match a new pair of pants. Her family’s Chanukah tradition typified the problem. On the first night, her mother unveiled a dusty menorah, assembled the family in the kitchen, lit a candle from the burner in the stove, and sang a dirge-like Hebrew prayer. The custom was entirely devoid of joy and magic. It felt both cursory and compulsory, like the stats class required of all freshman at Yale, which no one really studied for, but everyone eventually passed. On the five remaining nights, the menorah was lit, but the somber songs were dropped. Hastily wrapped presents were exchanged over a takeout meal.
    Her mother’s approach