Getting Old is a Disaster

by Rita Lakin

  “Herby was so embarrassed, he backed up and ran for the door. I yelled after him, ‘How come you’re not in the army?’ ”

  The group is entertained and distracted. Bella claps. Evvie turns to see my frown.

  “You sang in a bar when you were sixteen and you never told Mom and Dad?”

  “Oops,” says my adventurous sister; grinning at me.

  Sophie raises her hand like a kid at school. “I got one. I got a story.”

  All eyes turn to her.

  “Remember when we all had to wear girdles?” There are sighs of uncomfortable memories at that. Bella comments, “We had to wear them every day. Even if we only went to the mailbox.”

  “Even if we were skinny,” Ida comments.

  “I was the Corseteria’s best customer;” continues Sophie. “One day I saw this picture in the paper of a crowd of women burning their bras.”

  Ida nods. “In the sixties.”

  “Well, I was living in a cute house in Long Island at the time and I took all my bras and girdles out to the bum barrel in the yard and set fire to every foundation I owned. However, I didn’t take into account that the rubber in the garments and the plastic stays would start the smelliest fire you could ever imagine. The fire trucks came and my neighbors hissed at me. When Stanley came home that night, he had a fit. ‘Why, why, did you do it?’ he screamed.

  “I put my hands on my hips and said, ‘Because I’m a feminist now.’ He looked at me and screams, ‘Well, you’re a fat feminist, so put your girdle back on.’ ”

  The girls and I are awash with laughter. I even see a tiny smile appear on Enya’s face.

  Bella waves at us. “Me, too. Me, too. Could I tell a sex story?”

  We look at her in amazement. Bella?

  “Must you?” says Ida.

  “Go ahead,” says Sophie, patting Bella on the back. “Ignore the manhater.”

  Ida, on the other side of her, shoves her elbow sharply into Sophie’s side.

  “Ouch,” Sophie cries.

  Bella manages to stand up. “Well,” she says in her wispy little voice, “my Abe never undressed in front of me. And I never undressed in front of him. He went into the closet and I went into the bathroom.”

  Incredulity on every face. The things you don’t know about your friends. We push forward to hear better. Even Ida.

  Bella continues, “I must say I was curious about what he did in that closet, so one night I got in with him.” She beams. We wait, openmouthed.

  “And?” Sophie says to encourage her before her short-term memory loss kicks in and she loses track of what she’s saying.

  “And from then on we had the best sex ever in that closet.”

  Sophie screams with laughter. Evvie and I join her. Even Ida loses it. And Enya is actually smiling.

  Bella adds in all innocence, “I must admit, we did smell like mothballs when we got out.”

  “I love this,” Evvie says. “Speaking of sex, you wanna know the first time I did it?”

  I squint at her. “I’d certainly like to know, big mouth.”

  “Well, if you feel that way...”

  “I could live without any more of your stories,” says Ida.

  Sophie pinches Evvie. “Come on, tell us.”

  “Okay, now that you’ve twisted my arm, so to speak. We were in a phone booth. In Times Square. On VE Day.”

  Need I say the girls gasped at that? My sister, what a bold young thing she was. And I—I was al-ways the well-behaved one. How boring, I think now in retrospect.

  Evvie looks at me and giggles. “Don’t worry. I was with my husband. Joe had just come home from the war.”

  Our laughter fades as suddenly there’s another crashing sound close by and the lights go out.

  Uninvited Guests

  We are in a total state of panic. I feel the girls scrambling to get off the mattresses and sleeping bags, bumping into one another, crying out in fright.

  I grab my flashlight. “Find your flashlights and turn them on.”

  “I’ll light the candles,” Evvie says.

  “Enya, where are you?” My light finds her standing up next to the table. She waves her arms at me to indicate she is all right.

  I crawl on my knees until I’m able to stand: “I’ll check the phones.” I make my way, cautiously, along the walls to the kitchen. Just what I was afraid of. “Can’t get a signal,” I call out to them.

  Evvie says, “Try the cell.” I pick it up from the kitchen table.

  “That’s dead, too,” I tell them. All I can think of is not regaining contact with Jack. I can’t stand not knowing what is happening over there.

  Evvie tries to calm everyone. “Come on, stay down and form a circle and light up the center with our flashlights. Let’s pretend we’re camping in the woods and we’re sitting in front of a fire telling ghost stories.”

  Sophie says eagerly, “Should I get some hot chocolate and marshmallows?”

  Ida groans. “Enough with the food, already. Besides, we don’t have marshmallows. And we won’t be able to heat up the hot chocolate. Can’t you make believe?”

  “Ugh,” Bella says, hugging herself. “Too many insects. I hate the woods.” She slaps at her arm as if something bit her.

  Ida huffs. “We’re making this up, silly. Stop slapping.”

  “I don’t like ghost stories,” Sophie says. “They scare me,” Evvie is exasperated. “All right. All right. We’re not in the woods, we’re in Sawgrass Mall. Shopping.”

  “Ah,” says Sophie, “that’s better. I could use a couple of things.”

  We move around, trying for more comfortable positions. The storm’s roaring sounds are terrifying, the winds are howling. The building feels like it’s actually shaking. I can hear dishes rattling in the kitchen.

  Sophie shrieks as she hears a cracking sound above us. “Maybe we should have gone to a second-floor apartment. What if the roof caves in and blows us all away?”

  Ida looks up fearfully. “If we were on the second floor and the roof caves—then the third floor will fall on the second floor and we’ll all be buried alive!”

  “Are we going to die?” Bella asks plaintively.

  “Are you ready to go if we do?” asks Ida, curious.

  Evvie gets angry. “What kind of dumb question is that?” She looks nervously at Enya, who seems not to be listening.

  Sophie pipes up, “When they asked my deaf aunt Fannie if she wanted to go, she said, ‘You bet!’ She thought we were talking about going to the Hamptons.”

  Leave it to Sophie to break the tension. But then she asks, “Does anyone believe in an afterlife?”

  “Not me,” says Bella, “not ’til I know there’s a there there.”

  Sophie continues, “My dead cousin Sooky once came back to me in a dream. She said, ‘Don’t bother, stay where you are, it’s nothing much.’ ”

  Enya speaks softly. “I wanted to die when they took my husband and children.”

  It’s very quiet for a while after that.

  Evvie locates the battery-operated radio and turns it on. She fiddles with the dial until she finds music.

  “Maybe we should all try to sleep,” I suggest. “Or at least rest.”

  The music is basic elevator stuff, but perfect for this occasion. Enya returns to the bedroom. The girls lie down. And one by one we settle into our makeshift bedding. Evvie hums along to songs she recognizes, sometimes singing the words with that beautiful voice of hers.

  As I’m lulled to sleep, I can even believe the storm is lessening. I close my eyes and think, Jack, please be all right.

  A horrific pounding awakens me. Because of the boarded-up windows I can’t tell if it’s still night. I think I’m having a nightmare, but I finally realize the pounding hasn’t stopped and voices are shouting. We all begin to stir.

  Evvie is up first. “Someone’s trying to get in,” she says fearfully as she climbs over us to get to the hallway. I’m right behind her.

  “Get out o
f the way,” I say, “when the door opens.”

  And I’m right. Once Evvie unlocks it, the wind slams the open door against the wall behind her. To our astonishment, Hy and Lola practically fly inside. The whooshing sound of the wind behind them is mind-boggling. It takes the four of us to get the door shut again.

  Everyone is up now, even Enya, who hurries out of the bedroom. All of us stare at Hy and Lola as they drop down to their knees on the floor of my hallway, panting.

  What a sight they are. In robes and pajamas, with ropes wrapped around their bodies. They are soaking wet.

  Sophie runs to get towels. Evvie quickly dashes to put up hot tea. But then she remembers we have no electricity. She reaches for the one pathetic quarter bottle of scotch which has been in my cupboard seemingly forever, and pours two glasses. “What happened?” Ida asks.

  The couple can hardly catch their breaths.

  Hy manages to croak out his words. “The plywood didn’t hold. Our living room windows shattered and the winds raged in and threw our furniture all around. It was so strong, it knocked us down. We had to get out of there.”

  They tug off their sopping-wet slippers. Evvie hands them the scotch. Hy downs his quickly. Lola, trembling, sips hers.

  “Lucky we had ropes in our front hall closet,” Lola says, crying with relief that she is safe, “or we’d be dead now.”

  “We crawled on our hands and knees through the cars, using them to shelter us. We made it across the way, tying the rope to fenders, telephone poles, streetlights, whatever we could hook on to and pull from,” Hy adds.

  Ida doesn’t understand. “Why didn’t you go to Irving, right under you?”

  Hy says, “We tried, but with all our banging, they didn’t hear us. We saw the candles in your kitchen window so we hoped you were still up.”

  Lola sips gratefully. Color starts to come back into her face. “It must have taken us an hour to get here.”

  Hy reaches over and pats her gently. “It only seemed like it, toots.”

  She shudders. “I thought the wind would pick us up and... and toss us away... like rag dolls.”

  I find a selection of bulky sweaters and sweats and the two of them go into the bathroom to change.

  When they come out, toweling their hair, and in an assortment of my clothes, they sit down at the dining room table and we surround them anxiously.

  Evvie asks what we all need to know: “What’s going on out there?”

  “I don’t know,” Hy answers. “It was hard enough trying to keep our eyes open to see our way, and we had to bend our heads down against the wind. But I could tell a lot of our cars are damaged.”

  Lola moves closer to Hy, shuddering. “It was so pitch black. No light anywhere. Like the end of the world.”

  He puts his arm around her; comforting her. This is a Hy we’ve never seen. Caring, even strong. And brave. A kinder, gentler Hy? Perhaps we’ve been unfair to him all these years.

  After a makeshift breakfast of cold cereal, milk, and juice (kept cool by the now-melting ice cubes), everyone is feeling a little better. The wind seems to be dying down. The worst might be over. Our battery-operated radio informs us that the storm is moving southeast along the Atlantic Coast, back toward Puerto Rico and Cuba. But it’s still not calm enough for us to go outside.

  No one is sleepy anymore. We lounge around the living room, listlessly waiting for it to be over.

  Sophie moans. “I wish the TV was on so we could watch something.”

  Evvie comments, “Our Titanic movie is over by now.”

  Sophie complains, “But I wanted to see how it ends.”

  Ida is sarcastic. “You know how it ends. They all live happily ever after.”

  Sophie is miffed. “They do not. Most of them drown.” She hits Ida on the shoulder and Ida hits her back.

  “Dummkopf ’,” says Ida.

  “Meanie,” retorts Sophie. “I don’t care. I’d watch anything right now.”

  Ida scoffs, “Why bother? There’s never anything of interest besides the news, which is always depressing.”

  Evvie agrees. “No kidding. It’s all dreck. Garbage produced by kids and watched by kids. And cable—the language, the violence, the filth. It’s almost enough to turn you against sex. Disgusting stuff. Is nothing sacred anymore? No wonder kids today are a mess.”

  Even I have to put my two cents in. “I don’t know why they don’t have a senior cable station.

  We’re nearly forty-eight percent of the population now. Where’s our representation?”

  Sophie jumps in. “Maybe that rich guy—what’s his name? Turner, who Jane Fonda used to be married to? I like his channel with old movies. He could afford our idea.”

  Bella rhapsodizes, “We could watch really grown-up love stories, with seniors falling in love and with clean language. That would be nice.”

  Evvie murmurs, “I wouldn’t mind some dirty language myself.”

  Lola adds, “Grown-up family dramas where wise grandparents are listened to, for a change, so their silly children and grandchildren would learn some lessons.”

  “And fashion shows with mature-bodied women modeling,” chimes in Sophie. “I’m sick of seeing all those bulimic girls who look like they just threw up.”

  “And those stupid sitcoms where everyone acts like morons.” Evvie is in her element. “Our senior network would have intelligence and class. We’ll be seen as sensible people living happily in this, the third act of our lives.”

  The girls applaud her little speech.

  Hy, lying comfortably across one of my couches, comments, “Never happen.”

  We turn to him. Evvie, hands on hips, demands, “And why not?”

  He gets up, stretches. “Those lovely shows you predict? Think of the commercials that will keep interrupting.” Hy, frustrated show-off that he is, gets up and acts them out with gusto. “Here’s the sponsors of your quality shows: Hey, you oldsters, get your Depends diapers so you won’t embarrass yourself in public. One size fits all. Is that a bulge in your bottom? Or are you not glad to see me?” Now he prances in between the pillows. “Teeth dropped out? How about our gluey dentures? Bald, but for us, not by choice and definitely not a fashion statement; hair transplant anyone? Need orthopedic shoes? Hearing aids that never work? Varicose veins. Knee replacements. Hip replacements. Pacemakers. Walkers. Wheelchairs. Rascal scooters when you can’t walk at all.”

  We watch him in hideous fascination as he hops and skips through the bedding on the floor.

  “Assisted living at End of the Trails Retirement Home. No waiting. Vacancies every day. Estate planning—don’t bother; the kids will fight over everything. Reverse mortgages—get thrown out if you linger too long. Come and pick your own satin casket. Initials optional. Go choose your cemetery plot. Every one with a view. Overlooking the golf course.”

  Now he’s jumping up and down, with his hand over his groin. “Gotta go, gotta go. Gotta go. Oops, too late.” He squats.

  “Enough already,” shouts Ida, throwing a pillow at him. “You’re disgusting.”

  “Yeah? And how about Viagra, that little blue pill that gives you a thrill.” He winks. “Gets you up when you’re feeling down.”

  Lola gently says, “You might try them yourself, dear.”

  “Quiet, toots, who asked you?”

  Evvie is seething. “Are you through yet?”

  “How about prunes for your constipation and Imodium for your diarrhea? And let’s not forget Vicodin and Digoxin and Detrol and fifty others. You think we got a lot of pill sponsors already, just wait...” Hy is finished. He takes a bow. “How about all that?”

  “How about we throw you back into the hurricane,” Ida says.

  “Hey, who else is gonna sponsor you old relics? It ain’t Mercedes and Versace and Helena Rubenstein. Bupkes, that’s what you old broads will get. Bupkes. No one cares about what you want to watch!”

  I sigh. That’s our old Hy, back again by unpopular demand.

  I leav
e the living room with everyone screaming epithets at him. Entering the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Hy has followed me. As I drink a glass of water, he grins. “Like the show?”

  “You were pretty disgraceful.”

  “Yeah, ain’t I always, but I sure took everybody’s mind off the hurricane.”

  Touche.

  Aftermath

  We are awakened by the sound of people shouting. And sunshine peeping through the uneven slats of my boarded windows. I can’t believe I actually fell back asleep, especially since Hy’s snoring nearly drove me crazy. But he did look cute cuddled up with Lola.

  I jump up from my mattress, grab my sneakers, and quickly shove my feet into them. In the hall-way, I open the front door carefully, then, realizing it’s safe, I pull it wide. In moments, Sophie, Bella, and Lola, awakened by my activity, follow behind me as I hurry outside onto the balcony. Sophie and Bella cling to each other, jumping up and down. It’s really over. Blessedly over. And we’d survived.

  We see our neighbors down below, walking around, surveying the damage. What a mess it is. Most of the cars were hit. Some crashed into one another; some landed on roofs of others. Trees have fallen. Telephone poles are down. The street is a sloppy mess of wet trash. Broken-glass is every-where, and plywood slats that failed and fell. My neighbors wear boots and walk carefully amid the rubble, calling out to one another.

  From inside, I hear Evvie say, “Phone’s still not working. Power’s still off.”

  Hy, in my kitchen, is complaining, “I’d kill for a cup of hot coffee.”

  Tessie and Sol, downstairs, in robes, wave up to us. She calls, “Everybody okay?”

  Sophie calls back, “We’re good. How’s your group?”

  “We’re still here.”

  I can’t stand the suspense. Why isn’t Jack looking for me? He would have rushed over by now. I start down the stairs and yell back up, “I’m going to look for Jack.”

  Evvie calls, “Wait for me.”

  Still wearing the clothes we slept in, looking utterly disheveled, we hurry down what’s left of our cement staircase, which, thank goodness, we can manage by holding on to the dangling wrought-iron rails. Behind us we leave the others dazed and bewildered, heading for their own apartments to assess what has happened during the night.