Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death

by Mark Reutlinger

  When we came to the door of his and Lily’s apartment, Sol knocked, just in case Lily had come out of the bathroom and we were not needed. But there was no answer, and Sol unlocked the door. He entered first, with Mrs. K and me trailing behind.

  The bathroom, as in our smaller apartments, is to the left off the entrance hallway that leads to the living room. The door was shut. Sol tried the handle, but it was locked. He called out, “Lily,” and from behind the door we heard, “Go away!”

  Lily was definitely in there.

  “Lily,” he called through the door, “I’ve brought Rose and Ida. They want to talk with you. I will leave while you talk.”

  And without waiting for an answer, Sol left, closing the door behind him. As he was going he looked over his shoulder at us and his expression quite clearly said, “I hope you can do something with her.” Poor Sol—it must be very stressful to have one’s wife locked in the bathroom.

  As soon as Sol left, Mrs. K took his place at the bathroom door and said loudly, so even a person on the other side of the closed door could hear, “Lily, it’s Rose Kaplan. Ida and I would like to help. Can you tell us what is the matter?”

  From the other side there was only something like a sob; no other answer.

  Mrs. K tried again: “Lily, did Sol do something bad to you? Did he strike you?” I was certain Mrs. K didn’t think Sol would ever do such a thing, nor did I. She was just trying to get a response from Lily.

  It worked. “No, no, he did not hit me!” Another sob. Poor Lily, she was totally farklempt.

  “Then why…”

  “He is…he is…”

  But that seemed to be as far as she was able to go.

  “What is he, Lily?” Mrs. K asked. “What are you trying to say?”

  Quietly, so we had to strain to hear, Lily said, “Fooling around. He is fooling around with someone.”

  Mrs. K and I looked at each other, both surprised and puzzled. Sol is not the kind of person to “fool around,” if Lily meant having what they call “intimate relations” with another woman. And at his age?

  “Lily, what do you mean?”

  “Sex mad, that’s what he is! Sex mad and fooling around.” By now Lily’s voice had regained its volume and we could hear her quite well. So no doubt could their neighbors.

  “Why do you say that, Lily?” Mrs. K asked.

  Silence.

  “Lily, why do you say Sol is ‘sex mad’? And what do you mean he is fooling around? He has always been a perfect gentleman, a real mensch, as long as I have known him.”

  Lily answered in a slightly calmer voice: “I found…things. I found…”

  At this point it seemed she could not go on and began to sob again.

  We waited, but Lily didn’t tell us what she found. Now of course I was curious to know, and I must admit not just for Sol’s sake.

  Sol had already told us that Lily was waving around a book about better living for older people. But what had this to do with sex or “fooling around”?

  We looked around the apartment, and immediately Mrs. K spotted a book that had been left on the sofa, with a bookmark in about the middle of the pages. She went over and picked it up and I could see that the cover said, in big gold letters, Enjoying the Golden Years: How to Live a Happy Life after 65. She then opened it to where the bookmark resided and read those two pages. Her brow furrowed but she said nothing. When she was finished, she brought it over to me and indicated I should read it also. I was a little reluctant, as I assumed it must have been something very bad to have had such an effect on Lily. But Mrs. K was insistent, so I read the two pages.

  It was part of a chapter titled “Sex After 65: Keeping Intimacy a Part of Your Married Life.” I cannot remember it word for word, but it described in some detail how two older people, even who are somewhat limited physically, can still, well, you know what. There was a graphic description of how to go about this, and I was embarrassed to be reading it in public, so to speak, if Mrs. K being there made it public. On the other hand, if my late husband, David, had been reading it and I found it, I don’t think I would have been running and locking myself in the bathroom. To be honest, it is more likely I would have been running into the bedroom and hoping he would follow; but that is another matter entirely. One man’s honey is another man’s vinegar, as they say. It is the same for the ladies.

  Again Mrs. K and I looked at each other. She shrugged her shoulders and took back the book as she again stood in front of the bathroom door.

  “Lily, has it something to do with this book that was on the sofa, the one that talks about having sex in a person’s ‘golden years’?” I probably would not have been speaking quite so bluntly, but Mrs. K was clearly not embarrassed by this at all.

  “That’s not all,” sobbed Lily. “I also found…I found…a bottle of those pills that men take to help them…to help them do what it says in that book.”

  “You mean pills like, what is it called…”

  “Viagra,” I whispered to Mrs. K. I have seen those silly commercials on TV so many times. I think they are men’s answer to those awful “feminine hygiene” commercials for us women. Feh! A curse on both of them.

  “Yes,” Lily sobbed. “That is it. I found it in his nightstand drawer. That is how I know he is fooling around.” Further sobs.

  Again Mrs. K and I looked at each other. We both thought Lily was speaking nonsense: Not only did we not think Sol would do such a thing, but a book on improving one’s sex life and a bottle of Viagra is hardly proof that one’s husband is shtupping another woman, you’ll excuse the expression. But apparently Lily thought that it was. This was much more complicated than meat loaf!

  Mrs. K stopped to think about this for a minute. Then she turned to me and said quietly, “Ida, you stay here just in case. I am going to talk with Sol.”

  I was not certain “just in case” what, but I nodded and pulled over a chair from the living room and sat down. I would rather have been listening to the conversation with Sol than to Lily’s sobbing. It can get on one’s nerves.

  As Mrs. K told me later, she walked straight back to the lounge, where Sol was still sitting and looking distressed.

  He looked up when he saw her and asked excitedly, “So did you talk with her?”

  “We talked with her.”

  “Nu, so what did she say? What is this mishegoss, this craziness?”

  Mrs. K proceeded to tell Sol what Lily was saying to us. As he listened his expression changed so that, as Mrs. K put it, at the end he looked a little like a carp before it is chopped into gefilte fish—bulging eyes and open mouth.

  “I do not know whether to laugh or cry,” he said to Mrs. K after he recovered. “Lily is totally fertummelt! All mixed up. She could not have things more backward and upside down if she were standing on her head and looking in a mirror!”

  “I assume you mean you are not having an affair with some other lady, or planning to, as Lily seems to think.” (As usual, Mrs. K did not mince words.)

  “Of course not,” Sol said, his tone indignant. “And I cannot believe she would even think that!” He took a minute to gather himself and then said, “I’ll tell you why I was reading that book, and why I had that medicine, if you’ll help me straighten Lily out—and get her out of the bathroom.”

  “Ida and I have already offered to help,” said Mrs. K. “But you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  “No, no, I don’t mind. It is perfectly ordinary, and I need your advice anyway. You see,” and here he lowered his voice so only she could hear, “Lily and I have not…have not, you know, had relations for quite a while. Several years, in fact.”

  Sol hesitated and waited for a reaction, but when Mrs. K did not respond, look shocked, or even change expression, he continued, “Lily says she does not enjoy it. To be truthful, I am not sure she ever did, but especially since she has gotten older. And in any event, for some time now I cannot do it anyway. I guess I have what they call ‘E.B.�
� or some such thing in those television commercials.”

  “I think it is ‘E.D.,’ ” Mrs. K corrected him, “but it is no matter. I understand.”

  “Yes, well, lately I have been talking with friends who are my age and still have relations with their wives (and in one case, with several young ‘nieces,’ if you know what I mean), and I got to thinking that perhaps with the right advice, and maybe the right medicine, Lily and I can…can go back to acting like married people in the bedroom.”

  Sol was looking here a bissel embarrassed, but he cleared his throat and continued: “So I went to a doctor, who examined me and agreed there was no reason we could not do this, and he prescribed the pills to correct my…problem. And he suggested reading some books about how older people can still enjoy, you know, sex.” It had taken him a while, but he finally said the word.

  “And did you not tell Lily that you were going to this doctor and reading these books?”

  “No, I thought it best to wait until the right moment to suggest we…we try it. To be honest, I was not sure just how to approach it.”

  “Well,” Mrs. K said, “it looks like it is now through the bathroom door you will have to approach it.”

  “Yes, it seems that way,” Sol said. He got up, straightened his jacket, and gestured for Mrs. K to lead the way.

  —

  Back at the apartment, I was holding the fort, as they say. Lily was not saying much, just an occasional whimper. Once or twice there was the sound of the toilet flushing. And I was not trying to strike up a conversation. What was there to say? So I was glad when Mrs. K returned, with Sol behind her. She gave me a look with the eyebrows that seemed to say, “The situation is totally fercockt,” you’ll excuse the expression.

  Mrs. K gestured that I should step back from the door, which I did. Sol then went up to the door and said, “Lily, it is me, Sol. Please listen. You have things all wrong.”

  “Sex mad, that’s what you are,” Lily said very loudly through the door. “Who is the tsatskele with whom you are planning to take up?”

  “You don’t understand,” Sol replied, sounding very frustrated.

  “What is there to understand? Is there not the book and the pills? Do you deny it?”

  “I mean there is no tsatskele—no other woman. I am not seeing another woman, and I am not planning to. You have made a big mistake. I would like to explain.”

  There was silence for about a minute. Then we heard some movement in the bathroom. The door handle turned slowly and there was the click of it unlocking. The door opened just a little and we could see Lily, eyes red, peeking out. We had made progress!

  “So explain already,” Lily said. For the first time since we arrived she was sounding more reasonable.

  Mrs. K and I exchanged a small smile. It was good to see these nice people were making up. A happy ending.

  Sol stepped forward and said into the narrow door opening, “Lily, like I said, there is no other woman. There is only you.”

  “Then what is with the book and the pills?” Lily asked, speaking softly but still sounding suspicious.

  “That is for us. For you.” He lowered his voice way down, but I could hear that he said, “It is so we can go back to…to having sexual relations again.”

  Maybe in this case he was better off not using that word. The scream from Lily was even louder than when she was accusing him of shtupping a tsatskele. In fact, from the sound of it, perhaps she would rather he were fooling around with another woman than he should fool around with her!

  “Sex mad! That is what you are! At our age? You must be meshugge! Don’t you come near me with your Viagra and your crazy ideas!” The door slammed shut and the lock went click once again.

  At this point, Mrs. K rolled her eyes. She whispered to me, “I hope Lily gets over this. Like they say, if you do not feed your dog at home, he will get his dinner from the neighbors.” I nodded in agreement. And Sol was a dog who had not eaten dinner in a long time.

  Mrs. K gestured to me that it was now time for us to leave. It is one thing to help to remove an obstacle of misunderstanding between a husband and a wife. It is quite another to interfere when the problem is that they understand each other only too well.

  So we made a quiet exit. As we passed by Sol, Mrs. K patted him on the shoulder to let him know that we were behind him.

  But only from a safe distance.

  11

  The next day was the memorial service for Bertha Finkelstein. As you might expect, memorial services are not infrequent events at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors. Any place where there are over a hundred residents with an average age of maybe seventy-five, and many over eighty, is bound to provide a lot of business for both the rabbi and the undertaker. Death is a fact of life, as someone once said. So these services, although sad occasions, especially when the guest of honor was a long-time or well-liked resident, are almost routine. But this service was especially difficult for Mrs. K, for obvious reasons, and I could see the strain on her face and hear it in her voice.

  Rabbi Rosen made for Bertha a very nice service. Her children had given him a lot of information about her—I am certain he did not know any of this beforehand—and he made from it a little story of her life. Some of it was not so pretty.

  The rabbi told us, “Bertha was born in Poland in 1930, and she had a very difficult childhood. She lived in a shtetl, a small village, and the Jews there were constantly being harassed by the authorities. Bertha told her children hair-raising stories of soldiers or mounted police riding through her village on horseback, breaking windows and even setting fire to the modest little houses of the residents. Everyone would try to hide until they went away, and if they caught someone outside, maybe an old man or woman, the soldiers would beat them, or worse. Then when Bertha was only twelve years old, the police came to the door of her house and demanded entrance. Bertha’s parents hid her in the root cellar just before the police broke down the front door. They took her parents away, and she never saw them again. Bertha was taken in by another family, and she managed to survive the Shoah—the Holocaust. After the war, she came to America, where she met and married Bernard Finkelstein (of blessed memory). It is a blessing that Bertha, after her traumatic childhood, settled down in America to a quiet and happy life, making a home for herself and Bernard, and helping Bernard to run his business. They were married for over fifty years when Bernard passed away and Bertha came here to the Home to spend her remaining years.”

  So Bertha had survived the Holocaust, but not Mrs. K’s chicken soup!

  The rabbi went on for a while, as rabbis will do when you give them the chance, but you get the idea. As he spoke, I was struck by how much Bertha’s past, about which I knew only a little, and mine were similar, at least as children. I too, as I already mentioned, remember the visits from the soldiers—as well as the stories my parents told of terrible pogroms they had lived through—although I grew up in what was then part of Russia and not in Poland. The lines they draw between countries, always dividing them up and changing their names or where the border is between them, really make no difference. It is the people who live there who make a difference, and for the Jews in Russia or Poland, it was the people who lived there, whatever they were called, who made our lives as difficult as possible.

  —

  After the service and lunch, Mrs. K told me she had been thinking about what had happened since the day before and would I mind if she ran by me some of those thoughts. I said I would be happy to oblige, and where would she like to talk?

  “I think it would be best if we did not talk here in the lounge, or even in the building,” she said. “Let’s see if the shuttle is going downtown this afternoon, and if it is, we’ll go along and have a nice chat over tea at the Garden Gate Café—the one next to the Four Star Theater.”

  I agreed that would be a good idea. We went up to the front desk and looked at the schedule for the shuttle. We could always take a taxi, or even the publ
ic bus, of course, but the shuttle is so much more convenient, not to mention it is free. We found that the shuttle was indeed going downtown just after lunch, so after we finished eating (the vegetable soup tasted just like warm water into which a few carrots had accidentally fallen and drowned), we signed out and climbed into the van.

  Already Mr. Jack Winterfelt and his wife, Miriam, were seated in the front, which is actually where we like to sit, and at the back were some ladies from the bridge club, probably on their weekly outing to play against the ladies at the Lutheran Home. These ladies take their bridge extremely seriously, and I have heard that the competition with the Lutheran Home is fierce, sometimes leading to angry words that are not very ladylike at all. Personally, although I always try to win, I prefer a nice quiet game among friends.

  So Mrs. K and I settled for the long sideways-facing seat just behind Andy, the driver. I looked out of the window and I became anxious when I saw Daisy Goldfarb leaving the building dressed in her hat and coat and heading in the direction of the van—I was not ready to talk with Daisy about her earrings, and I was sure Mrs. K was not either—but she passed right by and walked in the direction of the corner drugstore. I was relieved. Other residents climbed aboard, and pretty soon the shuttle van was almost full. Most residents like to get away into the outside world every now and then.

  Mrs. K and I chatted about nothing in particular as we waited for the shuttle to leave, being careful not to mention the recent events. Jenkins, the not-so-nice detective, had warned us not to tell anyone about what we were discussing in Mr. Pupik’s office, because it was not generally known about Daisy’s earrings being stolen or any of the other details of Bertha’s death. He didn’t have to bother: Believe me, neither Mrs. K nor I had any desire to announce publicly that she was under suspicion of theft and maybe even murder.