by Warren Adler
"That's to be expected, Mr. Shinsky," Mrs. Klugerman would reply. "It gets worse before it gets better."
"From your mouth to God's ears."
"I know what I'm talking about."
When she had left, Max would shift in his bed and Mrs. Shinsky would bring him a cup of tea.
"She has to come so early?" he would ask.
"Look, I could tell her not to come," Mrs. Shinsky would reply.
"Do I have to be the first one? When she walks in the room, I begin to hear the angels singing."
"For you it wouldn't be angels, Max," Mrs. Shinsky would say, trying to cheer him up.
He would look up at the ceiling and raise his hand. "You gave me her for fifty years. You were so good to me."
"You're making a big deal about Mrs. Klugerman," Mrs. Shinsky would say, straightening the bed. "At least she visits."
One day, Mrs. Klugerman did not arrive first thing in the morning. Max looked at the clock which showed it was past eleven and the sun was high in the sky and threw different shadows in the room. Despite himself, he felt the beginnings of his own anxiety.
"How come Mrs. Klugerman didn't come?" he finally said, when the clock read noon.
"I can't understand it."
"You think she's sick herself?"
"Mrs. Klugerman? How can the Angel of Mercy be sick?"
"I'm worried about her."
"Worry about yourself."
Finally, just after noon, Mrs. Klugerman arrived. She moved slowly into the bedroom and sat down by the bed. Max Shinsky felt relieved.
"I'm surprised you didn't come earlier," he said, searching her wrinkled face, the features composed under the smudged and hopeless make-up.
"First I went to Mr. Haber, then Mrs. Klopman, then Mr. Katz. They all just came home from the hospital."
He was tempted to ask about their condition, but a sense of fear tightened his throat.
"You look better," Mrs. Klugerman said suddenly.
"Then I wish I felt like I looked."
"He's a real kvetch," Mrs. Shinsky volunteered.
"When people tell me I look better, it's time to worry," he said.
She stood for a while watching him, smiling thinly, benignly. He had never paid much attention to her before, except as an odd joke, something to be endured. Now she appeared differently, a puzzle. Why did she do this? he wondered. Was she a little bit touched in the head--as everyone seemed to imply?
"You must be very busy, Mrs. Klugerman," he said suddenly, looking about him. "In this place. All of us alte cockers." He knew he was leading up to something. He wanted to know why she did it. "I appreciate it," he said, wondering if that was what he really meant.
When she had left, he discovered that his depression had dissipated.
"You think I should go outside and sit?" he asked his wife, who secretly marveled at his sudden change of attitude.
"Mrs. Klugerman made you better?" She felt a sudden elation within herself. Was such a thing possible? When she telephoned her friends that day, she felt the hollowness of her own insistence on the extent of her troubles. Could Max be really getting better?
The fact was that Max did, indeed, show signs of getting better and despite his own lingering fears about his condition, he was able to take walks about the house and had begun to sit outside in the morning sun. Mrs. Klugerman's visits came toward evening now. He was no longer in bed, but sitting in the living room when she arrived.
"I'm not coming tomorrow, Mr. Shinsky," Mrs. Klugerman said.
"You're not?" He felt his heart lurch, but there was no pain.
"You're not sick anymore, Mr. Shinsky." It seemed a confirmation of his new-found strength.
After a while she got up and he walked her to the door, holding out his hand, which she grasped. He felt the parchmentlike skin and the hand's strength that belied the little bent body and the piano legs. As he watched her, she seemed to walk directly into the blood-red sunset, a tiny figure disappearing.
She is more than what she says she is, he thought, wondering if it would seem childish to articulate his feelings, especially to his wife. But as he grew in physical strength, he pondered the riddle of Mrs. Klugerman. Occasionally on his daily walks he would see her from a distance and would wave, but she did not seem to notice. Perhaps her eyes were failing, or had she forgotten who he was?
But the idea that she was somehow responsible for his recovery persisted in his mind and, although he resisted giving it expression, he could not subdue its power. He wanted to know more about Mrs. Klugerman and began to ask questions of others who had been sick and who had received her visits.
"She has no permanent friends?" he might ask, casually, hoping his curiosity would not seem blatant.
"Nobody knows."
"Has anyone ever seen her place, been inside?"
"I never heard of any."
"And you say you were very sick?"
"Like a dog."
"She came early in the morning?"
"At first. Then later and later."
"And the last time?"
"At the end of the day. Like I was being released from her custody."
"You felt that too?"
It was as if the idea of her strange power was floating through the soft tropical air, hovering near the surface of the minds of all those who had been sick and visited by Mrs. Klugerman. Not that the jokes did not continue--but only among those who had not been sick. The healthy ones actually laughed as they saw her plodding along on her daily rounds, clutching her pocketbook filled with cellophane bags full of candy.
"There goes the Angel of Mercy."
"Who?"
"Oh, the local ghoul."
But Max Shinsky continued to wonder and ask questions. Once he even rang Mrs. Klugerman's bell, but no one had answered. The venetian blinds had been drawn and he could not see inside her condominium, although he knew from the way it was situated that it was the smallest one they had built at Sunset Village. Finally he began to follow Mrs. Klugerman around, always at a distance, dallying about innocently while she made her daily visits, amazed at her energy. He was convinced, after a series of confrontations, that she had forgotten who he was.
"Where do you go on those walks, Max?" his wife would ask.
At first he had ignored her questioning, but one day he responded directly: "I'm following Mrs. Klugerman around."
"You keep doing that you'll have her visiting you again." She lifted her arm and made a circular motion with her finger at her temple.
"I wouldn't dare repeat what I'm finding out to anyone but you." He felt the chill along his spine and goose pimples pop out on his flesh. "She's not just Mrs. Klugerman."
Mrs. Shinsky squinted into her husband's eyes, sighing, convinced that her troubles were multiplying again. Heart, I can understand, she thought. But the mind--God forbid.
"It sounds crazy, right?"
"Right."
"Then how come some of the terrible sick cases she visits, people they have given up, like me, suddenly recover?"
"Not everyone she visits recovers," Mrs. Shinsky said.
"That's right," he said. "It is as if she chooses who will live and who will die."
Mrs. Shinsky stood up, her lips trembling with anger and disbelief. "Now I got a nut on my hands," she said.
"You're not going to say anything about this?" he asked, ignoring her outburst. She was a peppery woman, and he had been prepared for her reaction.
"Believe me," she cried, "I'm not as crazy as my husband."
At that point he decided to refrain from airing his suspicions. Especially now, when they were, at least in his own mind, confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Sometimes he would make discreet inquiries about patients Mrs. Klugerman had been visiting.
"She was so sick I thought she would never see the light of day."
"And now?" he would ask.
"It's a miracle."
Which was a word he had refused to voice, especially to
himself. Whenever he saw or heard about a new sick patient that Mrs. Klugerman was visiting he wondered: Will she choose to make that person live? Or die?
Finally he found he could not keep on following her on her daily rounds. Instead, he took to hanging around the court in which her condominium was located, sitting on a bench and observing her door, waiting for her return. Occasionally he would engage a neighbor in conversation. They were all very pleasant, very polite, even talkative, but what he learned could be put into a thimble.
"You know Mrs. Klugerman?"
"I say hello."
"She has no friends?"
"I never see anybody come to her place."
"Children?"
"I don't know."
"How old?"
"Mister, in Sunset Village that's the one question you don't ask."
"When I was sick she visited me."
"That's her business."
"A business?"
"I don't mean a business business."
He learned nothing, but, nevertheless sat watching her door and the windows with the drawn blinds to which she rarely returned except, surely, to sleep. But by then he was long gone.
One night he awakened with a start and turned to his wife, who was a light sleeper and woke the minute he moved.
"How did she know I was sick?"
"Who?"
"Mrs. Klugerman."
"Mrs. Klugerman again?"
"Did you send for her?"
Mrs. Shinsky shrugged. "Why would I send for her?"
"Then how did she know?"
"How does she know anything?"
In the morning he called the Poinsettia Beach Memorial Hospital, but no one on the staff had ever heard of her. If this was so, how then was she able to know the discharge date of each Sunset Village patient? He remembered that he himself had not known when he would go home until the morning of his discharge. And she had arrived almost immediately upon his return.
He wanted to confide in his wife again, to reiterate his suspicions, but he dared not. It wasn't only fear of ridicule, he decided. She'd already rejected the idea of it. He imagined that he might hear her as she busily called her friends on the telephone, voice lowered, conspiratorial, as she was when she had something to impart about him and his illness.
"Max thinks Mrs. Klugerman is really an Angel from Heaven."
"You're kidding."
"He really believes it."
"Are you going to see a doctor?"
"I'm afraid if I mentioned it, he would have another heart attack."
As a result, he became more secretive, more inhibited about his confidences, more cunning in his subterfuges. At times, walking in the bright sunlight, breathing in the heavy tropical scents of the planted shrubbery, he mocked himself for his childish suspicions. It did not seem possible in this peaceful sunlit world, where everything was clearly defined. But at night, observing the mystery of the stars, a canopy for the universe, he felt the pull of other forces. The literal observations dissipated. There was more, much more, out there than met the eye and could be logically explained. Sometimes, sitting outside near the rear screened-in porch, looking upward into the eternity of the twinkling sky, he felt a strange elation, as if someone had entrusted him with knowledge that he could not define or articulate. At these moments, too, he might argue with himself, or, more precisely, two parts of himself would debate the question.
I'm a reasonable man, one part of him could testify. A practical man. A shoe salesman, after all, must be particularly practical. As a boy I went to shul. I was bar mitzvahed and, today, if I am not overly religious it doesn't mean that I don't think there is a God. I accept that--even if I don't indulge in heavy intellectual activities on the subject. I am not superstitious. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't get frightened at horror movies. And I am convinced that the supernatural is ridiculous. And yet--
How come I lived? How come Mrs. Klugerman knew when I got home from the hospital? How come she knew exactly when to stop coming first thing in the morning? How come nobody knows anything about her early life? How come I am thinking what I am thinking?
Sometimes his more practical side would win out, and he would go for days without giving Mrs. Klugerman much thought, spending his time by the pool or going to the clubhouse at night to watch the entertainment.
But the idea always hung over his mind like a morning mist, and when he heard of a death, read about it, or felt an occasional twinge in his chest, it reminded him of his own mortality, and he would believe absolutely in the miraculous force possessed by Mrs. Klugerman.
Sometimes, after a particularly disturbing night of doubt and debate with his more practical self, he would rise early and rush to find a vantage point near Mrs. Klugerman's condominium, and post himself there to await her exit. At precisely seven he would see her open the door and leave--a tiny bent woman plodding along the neatly trimmed path while the dew still glistened on the tips of the grass. Her eyes were always slightly lowered, and if she saw him, she never acknowledged it.
As the months wore on, and his less practical self became more ascendant, his morning assignations increased until it became a kind of ritual in his life.
"Where do you go every morning?" his wife would ask.
"I love the mornings," he would respond. "Walking in them refreshes me."
His wife would shrug and turn her back to him as he sat on the bed putting on his shoes and socks.
It was only natural in a ritual so precise and rhythmical that the least disruption could become a major source of anxiety. It had, of course, been the moment he most dreaded: when Mrs. Klugerman would prove to him her vulnerability, her mortality, evidence of which he feared as much as death itself.
When she did not leave her condominium precisely at seven one morning, he knew that the moment of truth had indeed arrived. He had, of course, shaken his watch to be sure of the time, reassuring himself by the position of the sun that the hour had come and gone. But even then he could think of many reasons for some delay, since even in his wildest musings he had invested the Angel of Mercy with human raiment. Whatever she was, she was still encased in a decrepit body, one in which the aging joints and muscles might interfere with the plans of the spirit, her spirit. He gave such a possibility the benefit of his growing doubt. As the morning wore on and the sun's heat became a hardship, he moved to the feeble shade of a palm tree. The morning progressed. People moved past him, eying him curiously as he leaned against the back of the bench concentrating on his vigil. As always, nothing stirred behind the drawn venetian blinds. And while he was tempted to ring her buzzer, he concluded that she might have left before he arrived. Perhaps an emergency case had intervened, he thought, leaving his post by the palm tree after being convinced of this assumption by his more practical self.
But when he arrived earlier the next morning, and still Mrs. Klugerman did not appear, he began to lose faith in that assumption. Finally he gathered the courage to ring her buzzer. There was no response, nor could he see anything through the drawn blinds.
When he returned to his own condominium, he decided to enlist the aid of his wife, who, through her network of yentas, could be relied upon to ferret out all sorts of surreptitious information.
"I think Mrs. Klugerman is sick," he said casually, feeling the tension build in his chest and throat.
"That's funny," his wife replied.
"Funny?"
"Mrs. Zuckerman had a gall bladder and Mrs. Klugerman was paying her visits. Then two days ago she stopped coming."
"Stopped completely?"
"Mrs. Zuckerman decided that she was getting better."
"Was she?"
"Not really. I think the gall bladder was just a boobimeister. I think she's sicker than that."
"Something is definitely wrong with Mrs. Klugerman," he said aloud. He could feel the panic grip him and a cold sweat begin to drip down his back and under his arms.
"You're pale as a ghost, Max," his wife said with some c
oncern. "Do you feel okay?"
"I'm worried about Mrs. Klugerman."
Perhaps it was his paleness and the look of anxiety on his face, but Max Shinsky's wife swung into action on the telephone to investigate the disappearance of Yetta Klugerman.
"You're right, Max," she said later. "Nobody has seen her."
Later that day he went back to Mrs. Klugerman's condominium and rang the buzzer for a long time. He also banged on the door, despite the fact that he could clearly hear the sound of the buzzer. Then he called out her name in ever-increasing crescendos.
"Mrs. Klugerman! Mrs. Klugerman!"
A door opened beside him. It was Mrs. Klugerman's neighbor, someone he had talked to earlier.
"I don't think she's home. I haven't heard a sound," she said.
"You think we should call the management?" he asked.
"Maybe she went away."
"Where?"
"To visit. How should I know?"
"All of a sudden?
"I think maybe we should call the management," Max said and quickly walked to the end of the court and took the little trailer to the management office. A woman with harlequin glasses on a chain and blue-gray hair smiled at him, showing slightly yellow teeth.
"You got a record of Mrs. Klugerman leaving?" he asked, giving her the name and address of the Angel of Mercy.
"You're the third person today that has asked," she said. "No, we haven't heard anything."
"Then I think you had better open her place."
"I'll have to talk to Mr. Katz."
"Of course," he said, wanting to add "and hurry," but he lacked the courage. He was now afraid of what he might find behind her closed door. He watched the woman with the bluegray hair dial the phone and speak to someone on the other end.
"Yes, of course. I'll go myself." She nodded into the phone, then hung up.
"I knew he'd approve," she said.
"This happens often?" he asked as he climbed beside her into the Sunset Village station wagon.
"When you have this many old people and lots of them living alone, you have to expect it." She seemed indifferent, looking at him through faded blue eyes, the harlequin glasses hanging over her thin chest.
"Found one last week," she said, gunning the motor and then accelerating out of the parking lot. "Had been dead for three weeks. It was actually the odor that prompted our going in there." He felt his stomach turn. "Actually it's a tremendous complication in terms of the estate. Sometimes we can't find the children or any heirs. It makes it rather difficult, considering the condominium fees." He sensed her feeling of superiority over him. Old shiksa, he thought contemptuously.
