Anna in Chains

by Merrill Joan Gerber

  “Irving bubbie, light of my life, go back upstairs or go across to the Crown and see the show but do us a favor and shut up,” said Sadie.

  “Aah, they die like flies here,” Irving said. “What’s the point? Tell me,” he leaned forward and addressed Anna. “What is the point of it all?”

  Anna squinted, trying to see him better. She made out a pair of white suede loafers with red rubber soles, some skinny knees.

  “There is no point,” Anna said in his direction. “You’re right—it’s all a big nothing.”

  “Look around you,” he said. “We all come to the last stop like lemmings running to the ocean. We run to Miami Beach and play cards with our last breaths. We’re dying and playing cards at the edge of the cliff till we get shoved off.”

  “You’re a sick man?” Anna asked.

  “I have AIDS,” he said.

  “AIDS?” Anna said, shocked. She shut her mouth tightly. He didn’t look like the type, but you could never tell. A snort came from Ava at the card table.

  “Tell her, Irving, what kind of AIDS you have.”

  “You want to know?” He addressed Anna.

  “Don’t feel you have to talk about it,” she said, trying to breathe very shallowly.

  “I’m happy to tell you. I’m able to talk very freely about this.” He paused. “I got hearing aids!”

  It took a moment for Anna to digest this information. Then she felt taken. She wished fervently she were home in her dark apartment in Los Angeles where the Armenians next door choked her with their barbecue fumes. She had come on this trip to Florida to see Ava one last time before one of them died. Sisters were sisters, after all, and how much time was there? Ava already had a pacemaker and an artificial heart valve. Anna, thank God, had only the usual: arthritis, glaucoma, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, nothing serious.

  Irving said, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, take your pick.”

  “Serious things like AIDS you shouldn’t joke about,” Anna insisted. “Have some respect.”

  “For what? I should take the world seriously? Why should I? What’s the world ever given me that’s any good except maybe my children?”

  “And then even they don’t visit,” Anna remarked strictly for his benefit only, since her daughters, when she was home in LA, called her every day.

  “Not my children. My daughter is married to a millionaire,” Irving corrected Anna. “She sends a limousine for me every Sunday, I go to eat Chinese, Italian, whatever I want, cost is no object.”

  Ava called over from the card table, “Tell the truth, Irving. Tell my sister you eat with the chauffeur, not with your daughter. When does she come? The last time was when you fell out of the elevator and broke your elbow.”

  “Never mind. The chauffeur is like a son to me,” Irving called back. “Better than a son. Don’t lose your concentration, Ava—those cardsharps over there will cheat you blind if they get one chance.”

  “I’m ahead four dollars, already, Irving,” Ava informed him, “…and the night is young.” Each time, she pronounced his name “Oiving,” and Anna winced. The Bronx still lived in full color in Ava—nothing could winnow it out. The Bronx sat on Ava’s tongue like a wart. Anna herself was certain she had no trace of any crude accent. She tried to speak like an American descended from someone who came over on the Mayflower.

  “Listen to this one,” Irving said. “Two old men are playing golf, but their eyes are so bad they can’t see where the ball lands. A third alta cocka comes by and says he has perfect eyesight, he’ll help them out. He’ll watch the ball for them. So one of them hits the ball and then asks, ‘So did you see where it landed?’ The alta cocka says, ‘Of course I saw, I got perfect eyesight.’ ‘So where is it?’ the golfer says. ‘I forgot,’ says the old man.”

  “An Alzheimer joke! For shame!” Sadie said. “With Ida sitting right here and poor Herman upstairs, putting on his socks backwards this minute.”

  Irving’s attention was drawn away as a fire truck and an ambulance raced by, their sirens screaming. “What’s your hurry?” Irving asked, waving his hand at them in dismissal.

  Anna’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she watched Irving’s bald head wobbling on his turkey neck. His ears were huge; they hung on his skull like some strange invention. Certain animals, when she saw them on nature programs, made her feel this way. They adapted to their environment without regard for polite shapes. She didn’t want to have to look at their hanging pouches or spiky chins or poison sacs. Old people, too, grew strange parts, took on camouflaging skin pigments, adopted peculiar postures and gaits. Anna hated belonging to an indelicate species.

  “Another cowboy bites the dust,” Irving said as the taillights of the ambulance disappeared. “Who knows who’ll be next?”

  “Comes an earthquake we’ll all be gone,” Anna pronounced.

  “Here we have hurricanes,” Irving told her. “At least get your catastrophes straight.”

  “A flush!” Ava said with a cry of glee, laying down her cards. She swept the pile of coins in the kitty toward her.

  “Believe me, you can’t take it with you,” Irving predicted. “Slow down, Ava, enjoy the sights.”

  “I’m done, anyway…it’s time for us to go up,” Ava said. “Wheel of Fortune is on in five minutes.” The four ladies pushed back their chairs and stood up. Ava tapped the cards into a neat little square and set the deck down on the table. She gathered up her big pile of quarters and dropped them in the jacket of her flowered pantsuit. She adjusted her mink.

  “You ladies live by the game shows,” Irving said. “But look, right here, isn’t life the biggest game show of all?”

  “You’re giving away trips to Hawaii?” Sadie asked him. “If you’re giving away free cruises, we’ll stay and watch you.”

  “I told you before, Sadie—you want a cruise, I’ll take you on a cruise.”

  “When I’m that desperate, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m going upstairs now, Anna,” Ava said. “Come with me.

  “Maybe I’ll stay here a while. I could do without the Wheel of Fortune,” Anna said.

  Ava shot her a look, the same kind of look she’d sent her when Anna had been flower girl at Ava’s wedding in 1914 and stepped on her train, causing Ava to stumble. “Come up,” Ava demanded. “Irving sits here all night. Irving is always here. You’ll see him when we come down again from nine to ten to watch the sideshow going by,” Ava assured her.

  “Your sister thinks this is the army, she lives by a schedule,” Irving mumbled into the dark. Anna had noticed this was true: Ava woke at eight, ate toast dipped in coffee poured into her saucer, watched the $25,000 Pyramid, watched Cardsharks, watched the daytime Wheel of Fortune, came down for poker till Meals on Wheels arrived, ate lunch from Styrofoam boxes with the other ladies on the porch (a drumstick, yellow wax beans, a slice of white bread, a cup of bouillon soup and some Jell-O). After lunch, a nap, then an I Love Lucy rerun, then down to the porch for card playing till dinnertime, then up for dinner, then down again for cards, then up again for TV, then down again for one last blast of bus fumes on the porch. On certain days there were doctor appointments, and once a week the trip in Hyman Cohen’s hotel station wagon to the Food Circus.

  As Anna walked by Irving’s big feet to follow Ava into the lobby, he reached out for her hand. He had the nerve to grab it and squeeze it for a couple of seconds before he let it go. She looked down into his blue eyes and saw him smiling up at her. “Laugh a little, sweetheart,” he said. “There’s no good jokes six feet under.”

  A strange sensation woke Anna; the room glowed blue with particles of light reflected from the shimmering signs of the Crown and the Cadillac. No air came in the lowered windows. Ava never ran the air conditioner: she said it was too noisy, but Anna knew it was the expense. Ava had always been a miser. When they had talked long distance, arranging the visit, Ava had promised Anna a room of her own “right across the hall from mine, one with its own T
V,” but when Anna had arrived at the Colby Plaza, the first thing Ava said was, “I got a cot in my room for you so you wouldn’t have to be all alone. It worried me, you should be all alone in a strange place.”

  The cot is cheaper, Anna thought, but then was sorry to think badly of her sister who was soon, no doubt, to depart this vale of tears. Ava lay only a foot away breathing noisily through her open mouth. The segments of her false teeth shone like some plastic toy. The room made Anna feel claustrophobic: two beds, a stove, a sink, a refrigerator, a dining table, a dresser, a TV, a recliner chair. All Ava’s worldly goods were here; from her huge, human life—a husband, children, big decisions to make—to this: Wheel of Fortune, Meals on Wheels, poker, little tiny portions of milk frozen in margarine containers to last the week. (Anna already lived this way in LA; it wasn’t news to her but to see that her powerful sister had come to this was a shock.)

  She tried to go back to sleep. She kept remembering how Irving had grabbed her hand. An old turkey. A no one. Still, his fingers had felt alive. There was heat and strength in them. She had felt something, a feeling. This was astonishing, to feel something and to think about it. To bother to think about something and to feel pleasure from it.

  Anna tiptoed out of bed, put on her clothes, and went down in the old elevator to the lobby. The light of dawn was just arriving through the windows; the desk clerk, a Cuban named Jesús who always wore a dirty black suit, was sleeping on one of the old couches. Anna didn’t know what to do with herself. The cards from last night, she saw, were still on the table outside. She could play solitaire. She could actually walk to the ocean and watch the sunrise.

  Would it be dangerous? To go alone to the beach? Did they have muggers in Miami Beach? Never mind muggers, she would go anyway. At her age forget everything. Doom was just as likely hiding in her arteries as on the sand.

  Irving was still outside on the front porch, sleeping in his chair, his head back against the stucco wall. Had he really been there all night? Anna stared. She thought she could see dew condensed on his bald head. His white shoes glowed in the dimness. Maybe he was dead. She went over to him and tapped on his skull. He jerked upright.

  “Dummy,” she said with relief. “You don’t have a bed?”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said, straightening his eye glasses. “Just taking the air.”

  “Who cares?” Anna said. “I’m going beachcombing.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m going alone,” Anna said. “I need an adventure. When did I ever see the sunrise? In California, you only get sunsets. And at the end of the day, who’s going to run to the beach?”

  “Here no one runs, we all walk,” Irving explained, as he creaked himself out of the chair. He offered Anna his arm. “But allow me to come along and be your bodyguard.”

  They saw it happen, a fuzz of pink over the blue horizon, a blur of white cloud, and then the emerging burning ball, coming up on a fountain of flame.

  “That alone,” Irving said, standing against the rail of the narrow boardwalk while seagulls screeched and wheeled overhead, “…and you could believe in God.”

  “You believe?” Anna asked.

  “What am I, some kind of sucker?”

  “Smart people, really smart people—some of them are believers.”

  “I’ll take my medicine straight,” Irving said. “I’ll face the firing squad without a blindfold.”

  “It would be nice to believe something,” Anna said. “Then you could have reasons, you could have meaning, you could have a social center, you could have someone to say a prayer when you’re dead. This way, like for my husband Abram, I had to hire a stranger, a baby calling himself a rabbi, he reads from a printed sheet ‘This was a good man, a good husband, a good father.’ A know-nothing.”

  “If I were going to believe, I’d choose Jesus,” Irving said. “He’s the best deal around. But no one in Miami Beach, Florida, in the Jew-nited States of America, thinks he’s worth two cents.”

  “They prefer Moses?”

  “He can’t hold a candle. All he did was talk to God in the burning bush. The trouble is, when you’re this old, you should have something to hang on to.”

  “How old?”

  “Ninety-two,” Irving said. “Come June.”

  “My husband died at fifty-five,” Anna said. “You had a whole lifetime extra over him.”

  “It’s never enough,” Irving said. “It doesn’t feel like I even started yet.”

  They began to walk along the wooden boardwalk. Two seagulls lit on the railing and walked right up to them. They stared boldly, craning their beaks forward.

  “They want something,” Anna said.

  “So who doesn’t?” Irving answered. The sun was well out of the ocean now, getting redder.

  “Look,” Anna said. “Is that beautiful or is that beautiful?”

  “You’re what’s beautiful,” Irving said.

  “Don’t get carried away, Irving,” Anna said. “My week is up. I’m going home tomorrow, and anyway I’m not available.”

  “My mistake. The first day I saw you on the porch we should have got acquainted. I should have talked to you sooner. You got a boyfriend?”

  “My heart belongs to Arthur Rubinstein,” Anna said.

  “He’s younger than me? Richer?”

  “Never mind,” Anna said. “It’s not going anywhere with Arthur and me.”

  “Even at our age we have a right to pleasure,” Irving said.

  “Don’t lump yourself together with me,” Anna said. “You’re old enough to be my father. Look how you can hardly walk and I’m limber on my toes like a ballet dancer.”

  “It’s these rubber soles,” he explained. “New shoes. They glue me down. It’s like wearing suction cups.”

  “You want to go on the sand?” Anna asked. “You want to stick your toes in the water?”

  “In my heart, I’m running down to the waves already,” Irving said, stopping to lean on the rail, breathing hard. “I’m splashing you with water. I’m ducking you under.”

  “And I’m jumping over waves,” Anna said, looking out at the blue wide ocean.

  “I’m tickling you,” Irving said.

  “I’m laughing,” Anna said. She turned her head away from him.

  “So how come you’re crying?” Irving asked after a minute.

  “Because it’s a pity,” Anna said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “What we used to have, and what we can’t have anymore.”

  “At least let’s take what we can get,” Irving said. He held out his hand. Anna studied it. Then she crooked her fingers in his. He brought their hands up to his mouth and kissed Anna’s fingers. “I’m doing more than this with you,” he said. “Much more. You understand what I mean?”

  “Don’t have a dirty mind,” Anna said.

  “I’m doing everything,” Irving said. “Every sweet thing. We’re in heaven.”

  Anna was silent.

  “I’m going too far?” Irving asked.

  “No,” Anna said. “I appreciate it.”

  The next afternoon, the last of her visit, when the Red Top Cab had been called and was to pick her up in one hour for the trip to the airport, Anna put on her new silky flowered dress and got everything else into her suitcase. Ava was already down on the front porch playing cards. Anna realized that if she stayed here for a year, the sister business wouldn’t improve. Ava wasn’t going to get sentimental. A big bossy sister stays a big bossy sister. To cheer herself up, she sprayed herself five times with Ava’s expensive perfume, and by the time she rode down in the elevator with her suitcase she smelled like a lilac tree. She would be lucky if in two minutes there weren’t bees landing all over her head.

  Irving was spiffy in a plaid jacket and a red bow tie.

  He saluted her from his chair. “Forgive me if even on this farewell occasion I don’t stand up,” he said. “One knee isn’t so good today.”

  “Stand up anyway, Irving,” Ava called ov
er to him. “Use it or you’ll lose it.”

  “He lost it already,” Sadie said, with a hoarse laugh. “Otherwise I’d go with him on a cruise.”

  “I didn’t lose it, sweetheart,” he said, getting red in the face. “I just don’t give it away to big-mouth yentas.” He turned to Anna. “You’re lucky you’re getting out of here. If I could go with you, I’d run in a minute.”

  “So where am I going that’s so special?” Anna said, suddenly seeing a picture in her mind of her tiny dark apartment, of her pianos, two of them, with the lids down over the keys, of the milk going sour in the refrigerator.

  “Maybe you could get a room here,” Irving suggested. “You know,” he called over to the ladies at the card table, “I don’t think Hyman rented the room yet from after when Sam Kriskin died.”

  “No thank you,” Anna said. “I’m not interested in living in a dead man’s room.”

  “He didn’t die in the room,” Irving assured her. “Only on the way in the ambulance. Not a single bad thing happened in the room. Kriskin was an immaculate person. That man was as clean as holy water.”

  “What’s the rent?” Anna said. It was a question she didn’t expect to ask. It was meaningless, it was to make talk. It was stupid to have brought it up, what did she care? In LA she had a very good rent-controlled apartment, and, besides, she would never leave her daughters, what for? To come here and sit with some old man?

  But Irving’s blue eyes shone like electrified marbles, and he was already getting up slowly from the red metal chair. “We’ll go in the lobby, Anna,” he said. “We’ll find out the rent, maybe you’ll stay, then what a time we’ll have, you and I—we’ll go across to the Crown every night and watch the floor show, we’ll go out to dinner on Sundays with my daughter’s chauffeur, we’ll buy a VCR and rent a movie…”