Jane Austen in Boca

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  The friendship was odd in its way. Though all three women were Jewish and over seventy, they were also very different in disposition and style. Lila Katz was the shortest, barely five feet, with a trim, bosomy figure and a mass of red-orange hair that she kept carefully lacquered through weekly trips to the premier Boca stylist. It was her one indulgence, since she was on a fixed income and obliged to be vigilant about expenses.

  “If Mort, the schnook, had had the good grace to leave me something, I wouldn’t have to worry about the mortgage on the condominium and go around in rags.”

  “Rags?” queried Flo, looking doubtfully at Lila’s Nicole Miller top and Ralph Lauren skirt.

  “Well, they might as well be, for what I paid for them,” explained Lila. “Why shouldn’t I be able to buy retail? I’m not saying that I would, but I should be able to if I want.” Lila’s sense of what should be had the incisive clarity of the best Utopian philosopher.

  “I think you look lovely,” interjected May.

  “I don’t want to look lovely,” protested Lila, “I want to look glamorous.”

  May Newman listened to Lila’s tirades with amusement. She had none of her friend’s flash or sense of frustrated entitlement, and her unassuming manner might have rendered her invisible were it not for an unusual sweetness of disposition and a definite if faded prettiness that gained by the novelty of her unawareness of it. She dressed conservatively, dyed her hair the light brown of her youth, and wore little jewelry. She was zaftig, as she liked to say, and was forever turning down the offered piece of cheesecake by explaining that she needed to lose twenty pounds. Flo argued otherwise: “If you ever lose weight,” she said, “you’ll look like a movie star and be shipped off to Hollywood to compete with that skinny half-Jewish Gwyneth Paltrow—so eat the cheesecake.”

  Florence Kliman, the most educated and acerbic of the three women, was also the hardest to categorize. She was taller than the others—”Five-seven on a good day,” as she put it—and had the lean, long bones of the former athlete and expert tennis player that she was. Her face was angular—sharp features, long nose, large, dark eyes, and a wide mouth with prominent teeth made more so when she laughed, which was often. She had worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago until she and her husband moved to Florida three years before. He had been a successful real-estate lawyer, a workaholic whose doctor had urged him to retire and move south.

  “But the sunshine and leisure immediately did him in,” explained Flo. “Eddie used to go out in twenty below and make ten deals in a morning; but eighty degrees and a game of pinochle, he couldn’t handle.”

  She had considered moving back to Chicago after her husband’s death but had decided in the end that she liked Florida—not a chic position among the academic-type women she had worked with back home. “Those women all wear Dr. Scholl’s and like films about Tibet,” she declared.

  May and Lila enjoyed Flo’s wit but were also a little afraid of it. There was no telling when she might turn it on them.

  Having resolved the issue of the evening’s entertainment, the women moved on to other topics. Lila’s interest in socializing inspired Flo to describe the men in West Boca.

  “They’re all alike.” She expounded: “Pastel shorts, little caps, deaf in one ear, and a joke up the sleeve for culture. I used to look out the window and see twenty who could have been my Eddie, and who knows, but I may have gone to bed with two or three of them.”

  “Flo, you’re terrible!” protested May, though she couldn’t help laughing.

  “I think it’s a top-secret government plot,” continued Flo. “All the men over seventy in Boca have been turned into identical clones of each other.”

  “Well, I’d take one with a nice pension in a minute,” declared Lila. She had announced to her friends that if she didn’t snag a husband this year, she would be forced to take a more modest place, maybe move out of the complex altogether.

  Lila had embarked on the subject of the dreaded move when the doorbell rang. The three women ran to the window: A Bermuda-shorted, capped man of seventy-five was holding a bakery box in front of May’s door.

  “It looks like May has an admirer,” said Lila.

  “Oh, Mr. Marcus.” May was embarrassed. “He lives in Fairways. He once gave me a ride to the clubhouse.”

  “Aha!” observed Lila with interest.

  “Is he nice?” asked Flo.

  “I suppose so,” said May, sounding unsure. “Well, I’d better see what he wants.” She rose and left the room.

  There was a murmur of voices near the door, and Hy Marcus, having apparently escaped May’s attempt at a barricade, fairly jumped into the kitchenette.

  “Ladies, ladies. I brought some Danish from New York City. I was visiting my son, Steven, a gastroenterologist with an office off Central Park, very successful, with a beautiful brownstone and a house in the Hamptons. My wife and I used to spend most of the summer there.” He now waved the box and put it down in the middle of the table. “May said she liked prune Danish when I gave her a lift to the clubhouse last week—saw a lady in distress, thought much better to ride in a Lincoln than schlump along and swell up the ankles—so when I saw these in the Boolangarary, which is the best French bakery in New York City where my daughter-in-law shops, I had to bring her back some. A prune for a princess,” he proffered gallantly.

  May, looking overwhelmed, had pressed herself near the wall and watched with combined fascination and horror the progress of Hy Marcus’s monologue. Flo rolled her eyes, but Lila made an effort to respond:

  “How nice that your son is doing so well.”

  “Well, he went to the best schools and it cost enough, but I can’t complain.” And there proceeded a detailed description of the colleges, medical schools, and professional schools that his two children and their spouses had attended.

  “Do you have grandchildren?” persisted Lila.

  “Two little superstars! Ashley, as smart as a whip and what style; and Michael, throws a ball like a pro.”

  Lila nodded and drew out their visitor with a series of questions that elicited more gleeful boasting, until finally, depleted of subject matter and with no questions forthcoming from the other two women, he felt obliged to take his leave.

  “God help us,” exclaimed Flo as the door closed behind him. “Can you imagine being married to that?”

  “No!” May laughed.

  But Lila was more philosophical. “I think you’re being unfair. You happen to have enough to live on, but the fact is that for most women, a man who has some money and can give some security is not so ridiculous. This man is a decent man. Look, he brought May the Danish she liked from New York City.”

  “Well,” said May, “I think he said he liked prune Danish and asked me if I did, too, so I agreed to be polite.”

  “You see,” said Flo, “she doesn’t even want the Danish.”

  “Not the point,” said Lila. “He thought of her. He was, in his way, considerate. So he’s proud of his children’s accomplishments. Is that a crime?”

  “Only when we have to serve as the audience,” said Flo.

  “It’s a woman’s lot to listen. If the men are more educated, they use fancier words and boast about fancier topics. But it’s all the same. They talk, we listen. That is, if they have the money and we don’t.”

  “Well, I’d rather be on my own,” said Flo, “wouldn’t you, May?”

  May, who had never thought to think comparatively this way, failed to respond, but Lila did.

  “Well, I haven’t that luxury,” she declared. “If you’re not interested, May, give me his number—I am.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONCE TAKEOFF FROM NEWARK AIRPORT HAD BEEN accomplished, Carol Newman set to work, a confined space thirty thousand feet above sea level being the ideal forum for her networking skills. Her operative strategy was to bump up against and ask questions of anyone within any proximity of her. Since she moved around a lot, this came to include the ent
ire plane.

  A man in a leather jacket with a large gold chai around his neck assisted her in stowing her valise and, in the process, recounted how he owned a condominium with his wife in Boca Vista, only a few miles up the road from Boca Festa. Carol explained about her mother-in-law, recently widowed and alone, and the man clucked and thought he knew a nice widower, a little deaf but otherwise in good shape, who might love meeting May

  A young woman trying to appease a cranky two-year-old was invited by Carol to share her Alison’s crayons. The two children were soon battling over a box of Chiclets as Carol and the mother discussed their respective mothers-in-law. The woman’s mother-in-law lived in Century Village but was looking around for something different. Perhaps she’d want to stop by and see May’s place? Carol would speak to her mother-in-law and arrange it.

  Seven-year-old Adam, on his way to the bathroom, stepped on a man’s foot, and Carol insisted that he return, herself accompanying, to apologize. This led to a conversation and the discovery that Adam’s victim, a man in his eighties, lived in Palm Beach—which meant he probably wasn’t Jewish and thus was of negligible interest. Carol didn’t pursue the conversation.

  Alan had called his old high-school classmate Mark Grafstein and discovered that his friend’s father inhabited the fashionable Broken Arrow Club. Carol was impressed. Only the biggest machers—Park Avenue dermatologists and real-estate moguls—could afford to live there.

  “What I wouldn’t give to have your mother settled in Broken Arrow,” Carol declared, her determination now greatly intensified.

  Carol, it must be emphasized, was not mercenary in any conventional sense. Although she could appreciate a Gucci handbag as well as the next woman, things in themselves did not interest her so much as what they stood for. Above all, she relished a challenge and was always prepared to direct her considerable energy and cunning to meet it.

  It had been arranged that when Alan came down on the weekend, they would pay their respects to Norman Grafstein at his club. Carol was not entirely sure how she would proceed from there, but she had a talent for improvisation and enjoyed working under pressure. By the time she and the children landed in West Palm Beach, she had amassed a slew of names from her encounters on the plane that she could add to the contacts her Jersey friends had given her. She hoped to organize something—a little brunch, perhaps, on the Sunday they were scheduled to return home—in which Norman Grafstein, if everything went according to plan, would be present among a bevy of other prospects. With any luck, her mother-in-law would soon be launched on an exciting and productive social life. Luck, as Carol knew, was a euphemism for rigorous calculation, unswerving vigilance, and continual, relentless nagging. The combination had always worked for her in the past; there was no reason to doubt it would do so again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAY WAS WAITING FOR HER DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AND grandchildren by the luggage pickup. As always, retrieving the valises and loading them on the carts took considerable time. Though only down for a week, Carol had not stinted in the packing department. The children had been well provided with games and toys and an assortment of coordinated outfits, complete with vests and cloche hats, that the designers might have concocted with the express purpose of making small children feel uncomfortable. Carol was one of the few mothers capable of actually getting her children to wear them, her talent for bribery and threat being more advanced than that of her peers.

  She had also brought two large suitcases of her own that contained a wide range of clothing calibrated to small variations in the weather. A hot, moderately humid day and a hot, very humid day were two different things with entirely different wardrobe specifications. She had also bought her mother-in-law two cute outfits that she was hoping to bully her into wearing. May tended to gravitate to the same off-white pantsuit, and Carol was determined to get her into something more glamorous.

  “You see,” Carol declared as she greeted her mother-in-law, “look at all the work I’ve done for you—a whole padful of names. We’re going to have a party! Get you into the swing.”

  “Carol, dear, relax. Stop with the parties. Let me enjoy the children.” May tried to sound forceful, but knew she was no match for her daughter-in-law. She had recently had a nightmare in which a large predatory bird, scarily possessed of Carol’s face, had descended from the skies and plucked her up in its very long and apparently very strong talons, carrying her to the top of a tall tree. There had been a vague prospect of painful and embarrassing operations to follow, but May had awakened with a start before they could begin. The dream had probably been inspired by her visit to a spa a few months back—part of a birthday gift that Carol had arranged long-distance through her emissaries. May had been placed on a treadmill for half an hour and had had to be rescued by a young man with an earring. Her poor flaccid muscles, used to nothing more than the short walk from her apartment to the clubhouse, had been thrown into a panic at the prospect of moving briskly for a sustained period on a rolling piece of rubber. The “day of beauty,” as it was called, had included an application of acrylic nails, which Flo had helped her to remove the next day, and a deep-tissue massage that had given her aches and pains that lasted a week. Like her son, May was both in awe of Carol and afraid of her, a combination that allowed her daughter-in-law’s particular brand of bullying to proceed.

  “I don’t know …” began May tentatively.

  “Mom, just leave everything to me. Why do you think I’m here? For my health? I need a Florida vacation like I need a hole in the head. Adam, get over here this minute. Stop kicking Alison, and take the gum out of your mouth—how many pieces are you chewing, anyway? Tie your shoelaces and hold your grandmother’s hand.” May clutched her grandson’s hand for dear life.

  “How big is your counter space?” asked Carol as she maneuvered in front of a group of businessmen waiting for a taxi and snatched it away from them with a curt, “My mother-in-law has phlebitis.”

  “We’ll go informal,” she continued. “Sloppy Joes. Or maybe bagels and lox. Sunday brunch or Saturday afternoon. Brunch is better. No one has anything to do Sunday and it breaks up the day. You take me to the best deli around and we’ll choose together what to serve.”

  Carol exuded the authority of a general taking stock of troops and artillery before an important battle. It would be hopeless, May realized, to try to resist. She let herself be pushed into the pilfered taxi and sat docilely while her grandchildren fought beside her. For the next week Carol would be taking over her home and her life, and she might as well sit back and accept it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BOCA’S RETIREMENT CLUBS CONFORM TO A DEFINITE SOCIAL hierarchy. At the top are the elite residences like Broken Arrow, whose impressively landscaped grounds are hidden behind clipped shrubbery, where a golf membership costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, and where the waiters are never seen without their white gloves and special shoes resembling spats. At the bottom are the more austere, no-frills residences where a large pool and a cavernous card room constitute the major amenities. In between lie a plentiful array of graded facilities, their position in the hierarchy as carefully noted by the local population as the Great Chain of Being by medieval scholars or the circles of hell by the readers of Dante. May Newman, for example, occupied a club somewhere slightly above center—neither ritzy nor shabby, in Boca parlance.

  Yet although the hierarchy exists and is scrupulously noted by all residents, there are also extensive linkages among the various levels. In Boca, the degree of separation between any two individuals, instead of holding to the conventional six transitional bodies, never exceeds two, and generally involves only one. As a result, the possibilities for the development of relationships are enormous, as two people sitting next to each other at a restaurant, in a movie theater, or poolside wall, in striking up conversation, soon discover that they belonged to the same synagogue in Edison, New Jersey, or enjoyed the rye bread at the same bakery in Jersey City.

  There are al
so the secondary linkages provided through children and grandchildren up north. An unofficial matchmaking operation of grandchildren and divorced children is one of the major industries of Boca Raton—and the number of disastrous blind dates that have resulted from Mrs. Schwartz telling Mrs. Levine about her darling nephew with a degree in theater arts has filled countless therapy sessions on New York’s Upper West Side.

  The subtleties and intricacies of the West Boca landscape were of extraordinary interest to Carol Newman. She loved meeting new people and was tireless in excavating their lives, mining for the ore of some shared association. Standing next to a middle-aged woman in orange capri pants with a gold and turquoise belt at the Clinique counter of the Saks in Town Center, she moved quickly to establish a connection.

  “I love the belt,” she said. “I saw one like it in Chico’s when I was in Cherry Hill last month. Seeing it on you, I should have bought it.”

  “You think so?” said the woman. “I wasn’t sure. Maybe the gold looks a little cheap.”

  “Not at all,” said Carol. “You were right to buy it. And you couldn’t beat the price.”

  “That’s true,” said the woman. “You look familiar. You’re from Cherry Hill?”

  “No, North Jersey, Morristown; I grew up in Bayonne. My husband’s from South Orange.”

  “I’m from Long Island,” said the woman, “my husband, too.” She seemed disappointed. “But he went out with a girl from Bayonne, if I recall. A Robin Fleishman.”

  “Robin Fleishman!” screamed Carol. “I went to summer camp with Robin Fleishman.”

  “You did? Phil said she was a bitch.”