Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 (3 page)

3

Swimming

J
ust as I'm ready to walk out
the door and head for the pool, I look at the phone, count to three,
and--it rings. I pick it up and say, "Yes, Sophie."

"Are we going to the pool?"

"Yes, dear."

"Can I walk down with you?"

"Only if you're ready."

"Well . . . I'll just be a minute."

Knowing Sophie's minute, I tell her as I always do, "I'll
start down. You can catch up to me."

I hang up, but stay by the phone. I know my customers. It
rings again. My daily double. "Yes, Bella," I say as I pick up.

"Are we going to Publix today?" she asks.

"We usually go shopping on Friday."

"Is it Friday?"

"Yes, dear. Now go knock on Evvie's door and she'll walk
you down to the pool. Don't forget your towel."

"All right."

The phones. Umbilical cords. Lifelines. To keep
connected. To counteract loneliness. God bless Bell South.

I walk down the three flights instead of taking the
elevator, another small attempt to keep fit, and join the parade
heading for the pool. Everyone's in bathing suits, sun hats, and thongs
(not the kind worn by the young girls at Miami Beach, but the ones
which adorn wrinkled feet) and carrying towels and small beach bags.
Swimming time is also early in the morning--before it gets too hot to
sit around the pool.

Francie is in the parking area chatting with Denny Ryan
as he rakes up fallen palm fronds. He is a big six-footer, in his early
forties, but you'd hardly know it. Perhaps being slightly slow-witted
has kept him childlike. His mother, Maureen, died suddenly about seven
years ago. Maybe it's cruel to say it, but he's better off. Even though
she was his sole support and caretaker, she was a harridan. But there
is a real sweetness to Denny, and we try to add to his small allowance
from Social Security by giving him odd jobs around our apartments. He
can and does fix everything.

It was poor Denny, just doing his job, who came up to
Selma's apartment to fix a plumbing leak. He was the one who found her
dead body, and he still hasn't gotten over it.

Francie and Denny have something in common: their love of
gardening. Denny is very proud of the patch of ground the condo board
gave him to raise flowers and vegetables. You should have seen the look
of wonder on his face the first time a small shoot came up from a seed
he planted.

"Good morning, Denny," I say.

"Hi, Mrs. Gold. Guess what Miss Francie gave me? A new
plant." Denny will never address us by our first names. He feels it is
impolite. Except for Francie, who is special to him. He squints down at
the little identification tag, struggling with the Latin words. "Ge-nus
of tu . . . tu . . . berous . . . herba . . ."

Francie and I exchange concerned glances. Her kind
gesture is meant to help him get over his shock. "Forget the big
words," she tells him. "Just call it dahlia."

"Dahlia," he says, smiling, committing it to memory.
"Dahlia . . ."

"That's really pretty," I say.

Francie gets in step with me, and arm in arm we continue
down the brick-tiled path toward the pool. In front of us, Ida is
cursing our resident ducks as usual. They deposit their droppings right
smack on our paths and it sends Ida into a tizzy.

The regulars are already at the pool. The seating
arrangement is a tableau. Everyone has his or her designated place. And
no one ever varies from it. Or there would be war.

At the farthest end of the pool, completely alone, sits
Enya Slovak on a chaise longue. At eighty-four, she is a fragile
remainder of a woman who was once very beautiful. She wears a big,
floppy sun hat, but it's less to hide from the sun than from the rest
of us. While her husband, Jacov, was still alive, he made her attend
the various events we have in the clubhouse. The holidays were vitally
important to him. Especially the group Passover dinner. Enya merely
endured those celebrations. Now that he is gone, she has reverted to
how she really wants to be. Alone. I say hello. She nods, then her head
swivels back down to the book in her lap. Enya met her husband after
they were released from Dachau at the end of the war. They had both
lost their entire families. When I look into Enya's haunted eyes, I get
the feeling she never fully left the camps.

Directly across the pool from Enya sits a small group who
always congregate together. They are the snowbirds--the
Canadians--renters and owners who fly in every winter to get away from
the bitter weather up north. They're friendly but generally stick to
themselves.

Moving clockwise from the snowbirds is another story and
a half. Harriet Feder and her mother, Esther. Poor Harriet. Sometimes
it sounds like it's already become part of her name: "Poor-Harriet."
When Esther went into the wheelchair, Harriet gave up her Miami
apartment and moved in with her. It's already four years. I swear that
Esther, who looks like a sparrow and can out-eat anyone, is in better
health than the whole bunch of us. But meanwhile, her daughter,
Harriet, is stuck at age forty-four without much of a life. She's not
bad looking, if she'd only use some makeup, maybe do a little something
with her hair. . . . She's such a nice girl. Unfortunately for her, she
grew up big-boned like her late father. And going to the gym every day
. . . all those muscles . . . it doesn't help. Esther boasts that no
one on her side of the family died before the age of ninety-five. And
she is only seventy-seven. It's not that Esther is a bad person, she's
just so demanding. Get me this, get me that. . . . Poor Harriet. See
what I mean?

In the shallow end of the pool, by themselves, holding
hands and bobbing up and down like two rosy apples in a barrel are "the
Bobbsey twins" as we call them behind their backs, Hyman and Lola
Binder--aka Hy and Lo, when we are playing cards, but more about that
later. Lola would be all right away from Hy, but that's the point. She
is never away from his side. They've been married for sixty-five years
and she hasn't had a thought in her head that he hasn't put there. They
are still in love if you call obsession love. Hy is short and chunky;
Lola is taller and much thinner. We decided that the happiest day in
Hy's life was when the children grew up and moved away. I once
commented to Irving Weiss that he and Hy were the only men left in our
phase. Irving, a man of very few words, shook his head and said, "Then
I'm alone."

I glance toward dear Irving, sitting next to his Millie
in the shade outside of the pool perimeter. His life is hell these
days, but he never utters a complaint. Millie's Alzheimer's is getting
worse, but do not mention putting her into a hospital to Irving. Not a
chance. There she sits, totally unaware of all her friends around her.
She stares down at her sundress, picking at a thread, muttering to
herself. We all take turns helping Irving dress her and bathe her and
do the shopping and it is breaking our hearts to see what has become of
the funny, warm-hearted Millie we once knew.

Denny Ryan walks up the path carrying a rose from his
garden. He reaches Millie and gives it to her. He whispers to her and
she seems to answer him.

Francie and I walk over to give her a kiss on the cheek.
She stares up at us, vacantly. "Good morning, Millie," we say.

"Do you see them?" she says shrilly. Irving stiffens.
Here she goes again. "Do you see the children? There! There, sitting on
the fence. No! No! Don't let them see you looking! Don't make them mad!"

Francie and I are distraught by her hallucinations, but
Denny, God bless him, joins in her fantasies. "Yes," he says, "I see
ghosts, too."

"Do they scare you, Denny?" She always knows him,
although she hardly recognizes the rest of us.

"Oh, yes," he says, "they scare me, too."

Millie shudders. "They're out to get us."

Irving puts his arms around her. "I'll protect you." She
pulls away angrily, shouting. "No, you can't, they're too strong!"
Everyone's watching, responding in their own private ways. Some with
sadness, compassion, fear, and even terror. All with the unstated
There,
but for the grace of God . . .
Irving helps her up from the bench.
"We better go back in," he says.

Irving leads Millie away, Denny following behind, as if
to shield them. There is silence, but the mood lifts. We have been
living with Millie's deterioration for a long time.

Swimming is a euphemism for what we do in the pool.
Except for Francie who really swims, the rest of us walk. Back and
forth across the width of the pool, walking and talking.

Now Hy Binder slogs through the water toward us. "Look
out," my sister Evvie whispers. "He's got a new joke."

I groan.

"Hey, Gladdy." I try to move out of his path, but I'm not
fast enough. He punches my arm. He always punches my arm. He makes me
black and blue. "Didja hear this one? Didja? I got it off the Internet
on my e-mail. Six old guys"--they're always about old guys--"are sitting
around the old folks home, smoking stogies and drinking schnapps when
Sexy Sadie comes by batting her eyelashes at them. She holds up her
pocketbook and says, 'If you guess what's in the purse you get free sex
tonight.' One old guy says, 'Ya gotta elephant in there?' She bats her
eyes again. 'Close enough.'"

Hy screams with laughter at his joke. "Didja get it,
didja?" It's in incredibly bad taste. But then, so is Hy. I paddle away
and he heads back to Lola, delighted with himself.

Evvie shakes her head. "Meshuggener. That man is an
idiot."

I sigh. "But he's our idiot."

Francie points. "And here comes the other one."

"Hell-o, here I am." In yet another of her hundred
color-coordinated garments--lemon yellow this time with a matching
parasol to ward off that nasty sun--wiggles our beloved Sophie. Just in
time for the rest of us to get out of the pool and head for the
showers. . . .

Years ago, when a group of us were sitting around and
kvetching about our troubles, wise old Irving said, "Go ahead, everyone
put your pains on the table and pick up somebody else's. Believe me,
you'll take back what belongs to you." When I look around at the
denizens of our phase--Enya from the concentration camps; Millie with
Alzheimer's, and Irving's anguish; Esther in a wheelchair; Harriet,
lonely; and all the women, now widows, left to cope as best they
can--Irving was right.

Little did we know the troubles soon to come would be
shared by all of us.

4

The Designated Driver

I
am in my apartment, showered
and dressed and waiting for the others to get ready to go out for our
typical late morning errands. And the phone rings.

"It's a matter of life and death. I have to get to
Publix. I'm out of everything." This in a panicky whisper from Bella,
she who has enough food in her pantry to feed all of Miami.

I reassure her, yet again that, yes, we will stop at
Publix. I barely get the phone back on the hook when the next country
is heard from.

Sophie, the fashion maven, sighs when I pick up. "Oy,"
she says, dropping one of her many philosophical malapropisms, "when
did my wild oats turn to kasha?" I wait. She reveals that she has to
drop off thirty or so garments at the cleaners. Of course I'm
exaggerating. But only slightly.

Next. Evvie reminds me that she needs to deliver her
latest review for the Lanai Gardens newspaper, which my sister started
twenty years ago with a group of frustrated ex-New Yorkers who loved
movies, plays, and all the arts. Everyone reads the
Free Press,
the pulse of Lanai Gardens, listing its Hadassah meetings, club
activities, religious holidays, etc. The biggest draw is Evvie's famous
movie reviews. We girls go to the movies every Saturday afternoon and
afterwards Evvie goes home and dutifully comments on them. She has a
big following.

Ida, cranky as usual, phones in, and in that imperious
voice of hers, says she must go to the bank. Sometimes I think that
tight bun of hers cuts off the air to her brain. She always goes to the
bank on Fridays, and she knows I always make a stop there, but she will
call to remind me--the Phone God must be served.

And
everyone
has to go to the drugstore for the
usual assortment of prescriptions that have to be refilled. Not to
mention vitamins and Dr. Scholl's foot pads and Ex-Lax. Francie has all
of us on some herbs called Brain Pep. She swears that
Ginkgo biloba,
gotu kola, and Schizandra (I did not make this up) will save our
memories. It obviously isn't working for me.

Gentle Irving now phones to ask that I please not forget
the items on his shopping list. Things his Millie needs. As if I would
forget.

"Everybody report in by now?" This is Francie calling to
check up on whether everyone else checked in yet.

"All present and accounted for."

We both laugh at the daily absurdity of the phone calls.
We know that before they even made these calls to me, they'd already
talked to one another and gone through the exact same litany.

And why do they all call
me
? Because I'm the
only one of the girls who can still drive and hasn't relinquished her
car. Denny has his mother's old Ford Fairlane, which we use as a taxi
occasionally. He also helps out by driving relatives to and from the
airport--for a fee which we set for him, or he'd be too shy to ask. Hy
Binder also drives, but no one in their right mind would get into a car
with him, except Lola, who has no choice. God help her--he thinks he's
racing the Daytona 500.

Harriet works; that lets her out. And Francie gave up her
car when her car gave up on her.

"Well," Francie says, winding up, "enjoy your chores, Ms.
Limo Driver."

"Sure you don't want to come along?" There actually is
room for six in my old Chevy wagon, but it's a tight fit. "You can
always sit on Ida's lap."

"What, and get stabbed by her quills!?"

"Sophie?"

"And get stabbed by her parasol?"

"Coward."

"Glutton for punishment."

"What can I do? They
neeeeed
me." As if we
haven't enjoyed this conversation a hundred times.

"Read my lips." And we recite it, singsong, together.
"Get a cab! Take a bus. Walk. Stay hoooome."

I smile as I hang up. I love that wonderful woman. She is
my soul mate. What would I ever do without her?