Read Online Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan by Paula Marantz Cohen - Free Book Online Page A

to you.”
    Jessie turned down the volume on the remote and addressed her daughter in a serious tone: “Well, dear, I can certainly understand how you feel. I thought that Shirley MacLaine was off her
rocker too, and I still think she made the half of it up—it doesn’t ring right. But sometimes life surprises you. What was it Will used to say: ‘There’s more going on, Horatio, than you dreamed up in that philosophy of yours’? Can’t recall who Horatio was, though.”
    â€œIsn’t that from Hamlet ?”
    â€œWho knows? I could never keep the plays straight; he wrote so many.”
    â€œMother, are you saying, are you implying—some sort of delusional relationship—with William Shakespeare?”
    Jessie sighed. “I’ll grant you, it wasn’t the expected thing, especially for that time. An Englishman, and a gentile on top of it. He said he had Jewish blood on his mother’s side, but then, they always say that if they think it will help. He came to Venice to see that friend of his, Kit Marlowe, who everyone thought was dead but was really hanging out with the cross-dressers on the Rialto. That’s how I met him.”
    â€œMother! I want you to stop this at once. Since when do you know anything about William Shakespeare?”
    â€œIt’s true. I was never a literary person.”
    â€œSo where did you get this—information—you’re spouting?”
    â€œWhere did I get it? From him, where else? He was smitten the first that he saw me, as he liked to say. I was taking a platter of kugel over to the rebbe’s house across the campo and he stopped me and said that my eyes had bewitched him.”
    â€œMother—William Shakespeare’s been dead four hundred years.”
    â€œDon’t I know that? What do you think—I was born yesterday?”
    â€œSo what is all this about Venice and London, and knowing Shakespeare?”
    â€œI’m just saying that that Shirley MacLaine wasn’t wrong, though I still think she embroidered. It’s come back to me lately as clear as the bakery in Vineland. Clearer. Will was a more colorful character than your father. Not that Milt didn’t have his points.
He could bake a good rye bread, but he couldn’t write a poem to save his life, and the thought of him in breeches—well!”
    â€œMother, I want you to see a doctor. They probably have medication for this kind of thing.”
    â€œI don’t want medication. It’s nice to remember. If you don’t want me to talk about it, I’ll be more careful. I can’t promise that something won’t slip out now and then, but I’ll make an effort. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling a little tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

Chapter Twelve
    â€œ S o you’re SAYING THAT MOM THINKS SHE’S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?” said Margot distractedly, twirling a piece of lettuce on her fork and glancing around the restaurant, a fashionable bistro on Rittenhouse Square near Margot’s apartment.
    The restaurant had changed ownership recently and, with it, décor. Carla, who had eaten here when it had featured leather armchairs and heavy drapes, thought at first she was in the wrong place when she saw the spindly wrought-iron tables and Japanese lanterns. But then, all the restaurants on Rittenhouse Square were continually changing ownership and décor, rather in the way their patrons were continually changing boyfriends and wardrobes.
    As usual, Margot had begun to draw attention. The waiter had already sent over a bottle of wine, courtesy of two businessmen at the next table, and a man in an ascot at the bar had been eyeing her since they came in.
    â€œMargot!” Carla addressed her sister sharply in the tone she used when Stephanie got out of hand: “Mom doesn’t think she’s William Shakespeare; she thinks she had a relationship with William