Conversations with My Husband (Sample #2)

"Look at how big those whitefish are," Ricky said as he munched on his sesame flagel loaded with egg salad.

Ricky and I were enjoying breakfast at our favorite Upper East Side bagel place, the deli counter filled with its glistening mounds of cream cheese varieties, salad mixtures and smoked whole fishes unfurling across from our table.

I turned to look at the glass-encased counter.

"It says sturgeon and sable," I said, reading the little signs near the fish.

"Those are whitefish," he said.

"But it says sturgeon and sable. Maybe that's why they're so big," I said.

"Those are whitefish," Ricky said. "They're really big whitefish. I don't care what the sign says."

"How do you know?" I said.

"Because I've been a Jewish male my entire life," he said.

I considered this and determined that, yes indeed, he had been a Jewish male his whole life.

"I know my way around sable and sturgeon and whitefish," he said. "You know how my mom used to pick out whitefish? You have to pick the one with the little head and the fat body."

I pictured Ricky's mother, who passed away years ago, elbowing her way up to the deli counter. I could see her five-foot-tall, broad-shouldered frame, topped with bright-red, hair-sprayed beauty-parlor hair, wedging up to the glass and telling the man to give her the whitefish with the small head and fat body.

"This is an art form that is becoming lost," I said.