Page 82 of Dearest Beast
“Perhaps,” Rebecca conceded. She pressed her lips together. She should stop, halt this. Be gracious and polite.
Instead, she said, “Though you never responded to my original question, regarding precisely who would be included in the group of us that are best hidden away. Who? I presume Hannah Weiss?” She tapped a finger to her chin. “But wait, she’s married to your own friend Sol. So would that mean you’d not want to be seen with him in certain company?”
She gazed at him sharply. “And naturally, this group of undesirables would include me, would it not?”
Silence once again fell over the table. Even Fannie and Michael were still in their chairs.
Her face heated, but she could not cease. “You might not have been thinking of me or Sol in particular, but our kind. Ashkenazis who work, not invest for our keep, and have the misfortune of odd,noticeable attributes that paint us as Jews. In my case, unattractive ones,” she continued, the words tumbling out now as she ranted. “Worse, we’ll ruin all your hard work on our behalf, using the wrong fork or wrong title or—”
“No,” Roger interrupted, his voice firm.
She blinked at him. “No?”
“That’s not why you’d infuriate them,” he explained.
“What would I do?” she asked.
“Be yourself,” he told her.
There was a gasp from the assembled group.
It was as if he slapped her.
“Roger,” Mrs. Berab admonished.
“I’m that offensive?” she asked him, her voice now tight.
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re that threatening,” he told her. “You’re smarter than them—smarter than all of us—and you don’t hide it.”
She squinted at him. “That’s the worst sin I could commit?”
“Yes,” He folded his arms over his chest and had the nerve to appear proud of himself.
“Roger,” Mrs. Berab repeated, her face stricken. She glanced at her husband for assistance, but he was merely staring at the two of them.
“You want to know why?” Roger continued, suddenly far surer of himself than he’d been since she entered the conversation. And smug. Which was obnoxious and yet somehow also alluring and, oy, what was the matter with her?
This was why she should never have come. But she was there, and she did want to know.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because that would mean one of us had something they don’t, or worse, something that they value, and that would—” He pressedhis lips together. “They’d presume that it could only come about via subterfuge or trickery or something diabolical.”
“Such a secure place we’ve built for ourselves,” she retorted.
He raised a brow. “Do you have an example of anything better?”
Rebecca paused, searching her mind, and—no, she could not quite find an example where they had been granted anything better.
At least under someone else’s rule.
“No,” she admitted, wagging her finger at him again. “But do we really want to divide ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in accordance with their whims? Especially when there’s not always a consensus between them on the matter?”
There was another pause, with the entire rest of the table glancing back and forth between them.
“Touché,” he said finally.
She stared at him. “Pardon?”
