by Rita Lakin
7
No Rest for the Weary
Back home. At last. I’m beyond exhausted. Time to lie down and take our afternoon naps. I can’t wait. We deliver Irving’s groceries, then get our own packages out of the car and into the building’s shopping carts. On the elevator, riding up, I hear this:
Bella: “Did we say we were eating in tonight or going out?”
Ida: “Out, we said OUT! Twenty times in the car.”
Bella: “Oh, I didn’t hear that.”
Ida: “Well, if you wore your damned hearing aid—”
Sophie: “Not Chinese again. We ate that yesterday.”
Evvie: “No, we didn’t. That was last Friday.”
Sophie: “So where did we eat last night?”
Evvie: “Home. We stayed home. It was canasta night.”
Bella: “We played canasta?”
Sophie (the light bulb goes on): “Oh, that’s right. I won.”
Evvie: “No, I won. Didn’t I, Glad?”
Me: “Who can remember?”
Sophie: “You won last week. I know I won.”
Ida: “Who cares! When Sophie wins, it’s by reason of insanity. She drives everybody nuts and we all give up!”
Evvie laughs. “Sore loser.”
Ida: “Look who’s talking. You almost filleted her with the cheese ball knife.”
Evvie: “My finger slipped.”
Bella: “I like Eleni’s. Or Nona’s. Can’t we go there?”
“Next time. The birthday girl chose Continental. And,” I remind them, “don’t forget your presents.”
We help Sophie in with her stuff from the cleaners, which took all of us to carry. We divide up the grocery bags from the shopping carts. Then Evvie starts to lead Bella back to the elevator, so they can take their things across the parking lot to their own building. Bella looks confused.
“Don’t I live here?”
“No, dear, we live over there. We had to help Sophie.”
“Oh.” We once left Bella downstairs to wait while Evvie helped us carry, but she wandered away and it took us twenty minutes to find her, so now we just bring her up one building and down the other. Ida wants to put a bell around her neck.
Finally everyone is safely deposited in her own apartment. I turn up the air, start undressing. I head toward my bedroom, then remember. I rush to the phone. Too late. It rings. I wasn’t fast enough to turn it off.
“Yes, Bella,” I say.
“It’s me, Sophie.”
“Sorry. Yes, Sophie.”
“So where did we say we were eating?”
“Continental,” and I hang up before she can say another word. I quickly turn off the ringer.
Finally I am in my cool bed in my cool room looking forward to my nap with the utmost of pleasure. I might even get in a little reading later.
My eyes are closing and I feel myself letting go of consciousness when the doorbell rings. I try to ignore it, pulling my pillow over my head, but it doesn’t stop. Finally, swearing and stumbling, I race to the door to find Sophie there.
“What!” I screech at her.
“There’s something wrong with your phone. We got cut off, but when I rang again it didn’t answer.”
“No! It didn’t answer, because I didn’t answer! Go back to your apartment. Now!”
And Sophie scurries away wondering why I raised my voice at her. I want to bang my head against the door, but what did that door ever do to me?
8
Library and Liberation
Through the plate glass window, Conchetta Aguilar sees me staggering toward the entrance, carrying my usual load of returns. Grinning, she moves to the coffeemaker and pours me a cup full of her great Cuban coffee and hands it to me as soon as I put the stack of books down.
“Leaded? I hope.”
“You betcha. I only needed one look at your face. Hard morning with the inmates?”
I nod, gulping the hot liquid down. “I left them in the clubhouse playing mah-jongg. I feel like I escaped Alcatraz.”
Conchetta is head librarian for the Lauderdale Lakes branch. She’s in her thirties, about five feet tall and just as round, and a lot of fun. When she found out I used to be a librarian in my New York days, she reached out as one professional to another. When she realized that the library is my one escape from Lanai Gardens, we became even closer.
Not only am I designated driver, but I am designated book chooser. This is no mean feat, since I have to carry around each girl’s list of what she’s read before. Heaven help me if I bring home a repeat. Bella reads only romances in large print. Evvie wants biographies of the stars. Ida likes the best-sellers, Sophie prefers the Reader’s Digest condensations, and Francie reads cookbooks. Happily, nobody else wants to make the trip, so coming here is like a vacation for me.
“Come on, muchacha. Tell mamacita everything.”
“What a day. Those girls are wearing me out. Publix was bad enough. Going to the cleaners was maddening. It was the bank that did me in.”
Conchetta leans her arms against the counter, ready to listen. “Good. A bank story.”
“The bank is always mobbed on Friday. Everyone has checks to cash. Ida, who hates waiting for anything, gets this brilliant idea. She sneaks in a slice of her famous pecan coffee cake and slips it to a teller who knows Ida’s cakes. The bribe gets her to the front of the line. Neither one of them being subtle. And what a geshrie from everyone on line!”
“Geshrie, I guess, means an uproar.”
“You got it. Wait ’til you hear what happened next. Harriet Feder, who’s near the front of the line with her mother, lifts Ida up and carries her bodily, feet dangling, and drops her back at the end of the line where she belongs. All the while, Ida is hitting her with her purse, thus emptying the contents all over the floor. Everyone’s hysterical. Ida is mortified. Knowing Ida, she will never forgive Harriet.”
“And . . . I can tell there’s more. . . .”
“Greta Kronk struck again.”
“Barney, quick. Another Kronk episode.”
A tall, skinny, and proud-to-be-a-nerd young man strides over. “Fantabulous,” Barney Schwartz says. “Our Lady of the Garbage.”
“Our what?”
“We’re having a contest to give Greta a title worthy of her accomplishments,” says Conchetta.
Barney adds, “I want to publish her poems. I already have the title of the book: From Under the Belly of the Alligator.”
I burst out laughing. “You guys are so bad!”
“I especially love ‘Hy and Lo put on a show. They make me throw. Up.’ Brilliant,” says Barney.
Conchetta recites her favorites. “‘Tessie is fat. That’s that.’ And ‘Esther’s a pest and Harriet can’t get no rest, yes.’”
“They’ve been benign up to now. Today took a different turn. She hit on a couple named John and Mary.” I recite it for them and their eyes widen.
“Wow,” says Conchetta. “I think her crazies are escalating.”
“Is he?” asks Barney. “Gay?”
“I’ve always wondered, but how could Greta know?”
“That woman needs help.”
“We’ve tried. But to no avail.”
Conchetta is being beckoned. As she moves off to help a fellow book lover, she calls back, “Typical. The authorities are waiting for her to hurt somebody.”
I head at last for the mystery section, perturbed by our exchange. But quickly my mood gentles. I am among my favorite things. Books.
A half hour later with a Virginia Lanier, a Barbara Neely, a Mary Willis Walker and a Ruth Rendell in hand (so many great women mystery writers these days), I have enough to keep me happy for a week. I pick out books for the girls. It’s nearly dinnertime and I must gather up the lambs before they turn into lions.
Conchetta smiles at my customary stack as I check out. Then she picks up my Barbara Neely. “Like it so much you’re gonna read it again after only two weeks?”
“What are you mut
tering about?” I pick up Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. “I didn’t read this one. I read her first and third.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Oh, yeah, smart stuff, what’s this one about?”
“Blanche sends her kids to a snooty private school and they start getting attitude.”
I smile sheepishly, and take it off my pile. “Well,” I say, “if I ever get Alzheimer’s, I’ll only need one book from then on.”
“And we’ll be out of business.”
I say my good-byes and schlep my books out to the car.
She knows I’ll be back very soon. It’s the way I stay sane. But all the way home I find myself thinking of Greta Kronk and what loneliness can do to people. But is Conchetta right? Is she dangerous? Would she do more than hurt someone? Would she kill?
9
Dinner at the Deli
The parking lot is already packed and the line outside the Continental deli winds clear around the perimeter of the minimall.
We’re late, of course. Half past three is a shoo-in. Four o’clock is the right time. Four-thirty is pushing it and five is rush hour for the early-bird dinner ($6.50 for six courses plus coffee). It’s now twenty-five minutes after five.
“I told you . . .” howls Evvie.
“Don’t start,” I caution my sister.
“The milk is spilled already,” says Sophie, “so don’t keep drinking.”
Francie, the birthday girl, glances at Sophie and shakes her head. “I think she needs a translator.”
“I think she needs a keeper,” Ida snarls. “Why can’t you say ‘Don’t cry over spilt milk’ like everybody else?”
“That’s what I said.”
We get out of the car and head for the end of a very long line.
“Well, at least we can window-shop,” Bella, our little ray of sunshine, says, eyeing the minimall with eagerness.
I keep time. Ten minutes stalled in front of Discount Linens. Fifteen in front of Klotz’s Klassy Klothing. Sophie has disappeared into the deli to scope things out and now she returns with her report.
“The kasha varnishkas are already a dead duck. I told Dena to hide a plate of kreplach for us, there’s only two left. If you were dreaming of the stuffed cabbage, wake up.”
A few moans accompany the food report. Followed by a couple of I-told-you-so’s.
Now a short wait in front of the prosthetics shop (a really cheerful window) and then the ninety-nine-cent store and finally we are in. It’s ten after six and naturally everyone is starved.
The place is packed and we don’t get our favorite waitress, Dena. Now you really hear groans. We get Lottie, she of the long, bushy black hair (a strand of which Ida swears gets in her soup every time we are stuck with her) and the very bad breath. She’s so ugly and antagonistic, Francie swears she must be a relative. Who else would hire her?
As we sit down, she practically throws the pickle and sauerkraut appetizer dish at us, then hurries away like Hurricane Hannah, whirling from table to table, hurling dishes and insults with equal fervor.
The deli customers consist of a smattering of families, some couples, but mostly women sixty and up. We’re all of us regulars here.
We study the menu avidly, as if we didn’t know it by heart. Before we even get past the soups, there’s Lottie, order book in hand. “What’ll ya have, gals?”
“I don’t know yet,” Bella says warily, bracing herself for trouble.
“I don’t got all day, so lemme hear something before I die on my feet.”
Intimidated, Bella blurts out her choices, stringing them together like Jewish worry beads: pineapplejuice-saladwithThousandIsland-matzoballsoup-broiledchicken-rice-spinach.
Ida, just to infuriate Lottie, goes into slow-motion mode. Every word takes forever to pass her lips. “Let . . . me . . . see. First . . . I might like the . . . tomato juice . . . with a piece of lemon . . . or maybe the grapefruit. . . .”
Francie interrupts, trying to avoid trouble. She places her order quickly. “Tomato juice. Pot roast. Baked potato. Salad. French dressing.” Evvie and I follow suit. We always get the same things, anyway.
“And . . . how . . . is . . . the kreplach soup this evening?” Ida’s voice seems to get slower and sarcastically sweeter.
“It’s the way it always is. In or out on the kreplach?”
“Well, I could say ‘in.’”
“Say it!” we all shout.
“In. Alright already.”
“And?!” Lottie is gritting her teeth.
“And . . . for my meat dish, I am simply torn between the sauerbraten and the sweetbreads.”
“Don’t be so torn, pick already!”
Ida looks her dead in the eye. “I do not like to be rushed. It is not good for my blood pressure.”
“And I have six other tables to worry about. Think, dollink, I’ll be back.”
Lottie leaves and we all glare at Ida.
“Enough, already,” I say.
“Why? I’m enjoying myself.” She leans back, relaxed.
“Meanwhile, I’m starving,” wails Sophie. She takes a bite of a sour pickle on the tray. “This is good.”
“Then you should spit it out,” says Bella, being bossy.
“Why?” Sophie asks mid-bite.
“My doctor says if it tastes good, then it’s bad for you.”
Evvie ignores this exchange and shakes a fist at Ida. “Why can’t you behave? You are ruining Francie’s birthday party.”
“You certainly are,” adds Francie, pretending annoyance.
Now that we’ve ordered, the bottles come out of the purses and the vitamins and the prescription drugs are lined up. Bella gasps. “I’m out of my Zantac. What should I do?”
“Tomorrow is another day,” says our Sophie philosophically.
“I always take it before dinner.”
Ida digs around in her purse. “I have some.” She takes one out. As she hands it to Bella, “I’ll take two dollars now, thank you.”
Evvie swats her with her purse. “How can you! You would sell seltzer to a dying man in the desert!”
Ida is insulted. “My late husband, Murray, taught me that business is business. Supply and demand. Bella just demanded. I just supplied. I get paid. It’s the American way.”
Bella’s eyes start to tear up. Francie takes a tissue from her purse and hands it to her. “Now you’ve done it.”
“What did I say? I was talking about my Murray.”
The tears flow harder, followed by pathetic little hiccups. Evvie rolls her eyes heavenward. “You said the h word. As in ‘husband.’ As in dead and not here anymore and we never go there! And furthermore, Zantac only costs a dollar seventy-five, you gonif!”
“Oh, if only my Abe, my angel, was here, things would be different.” Bella was now going out on an old limb. Things would be different, all right, and not for the better. As the years pass, Abe’s memory gets a whitewash. The mean-spirited, domineering Abe who often brought her to tears now brings her to tears because she’s rewritten history. Now he’s a saint!
Lottie is back. Ida sees five sets of steely eyes glaring at her. She shrugs. “I’m ready. Where were you? I’ll have the noodle soup and it better be hot. Salad, oil and vinegar and no cucumbers. The steak rare and that doesn’t mean well-done or medium or raw. Potatoes mashed and leave out your usual lumps. Oh, yes, and make sure we all have separate checks.”
Lottie just stands there.
“What?” Ida asks, all innocence.
“Are you finished, Mrs. Have-it-your-way? I wouldn’t want to miss something of vital importance.”
Haughty now: “Yes, thank you. That will be all, my good woman.”
“Oy,” says Sophie, “I wish the food would get here so I can take home the leftovers.”
And it goes downhill from there. Ida sends her soup back because it isn’t hot enough. Bella chokes on a chicken bone. Ida pulls Bella’s arms over her head and pounds on her back. Evvie makes her eat a piece
of bread because that’s supposed to prevent the bone from stabbing her. Francie makes her do special breathing. Sophie makes her blow her nose to free the passages. I am on standby in case we need the Heimlich, but finally, the bone is gone, and everyone takes credit for her method.
We give Francie her presents, apparently many minds with similar brainstorms. They all give her pretty soaps or bath salts. Francie good-naturedly wonders if we are trying to tell her something about her personal hygiene. I, of course, give her a book. A cookbook.
We all order dessert, but none of us eats it. We never do. There is always too much food to eat and dessert is taken home to be indulged in later. Naturally, Francie, the chocoholic, orders the chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
And finally the check comes. One check. Ida has a small fit, but there is nothing we can do but figure out who had what, which need I say takes another half an hour. Leaving the tip is one of the heavy decisions of eating out. Everyone is responsible for deciding her own. No one amount ever gets the same number of votes, with much debating on how fast the service was, how good, etc. But having Lottie makes it easy. Everyone tips the minimum. Except Ida, who tips nothing.
We drive home with Evvie leading us in a medley of musical comedy tunes.
10
A Waltons’ Good Night
Wearily we each trudge to our apartments, bloated as usual with too much food, carrying our little doggie bags. We watch one another, making sure we each get inside safely.
“Don’t forget to double lock,” Francie calls.
“Don’t forget, movies tomorrow afternoon.” This from our social director, Evvie.
“Don’t forget, I have an early dentist’s appointment,” Ida reminds me.
“Good night, Bella.”
“Good night, Ida.”
“Good night, Glad.”
“Good night, Evvie.”
“Good night, Sophie.”
“Good night, Francie. Happy Birthday.”
I am the last one in and I know at least one of the girls is watching out for me through her kitchen window.
We said good night, but we didn’t know we were saying good-bye.
