MIAMI ICED

by Susan Sussman

  It seems years before the uniformed crew bangs in and begins working over Mrs. Galdino, years more before they finally load her onto a gurney and wheel her out. A young man at the next table presses a business card into Caprice’s hand. She follows her mother out, climbing in back of the ambulance as the doors close behind her.

  It’s over in minutes.

  Lucille crosses herself.

  “Jeez,” says Nikki.

  “Amen,” says the Professor.

  “Think she’s dead?” asks Farley.

  “She was alive when they wheeled her out,” says Nikki. “I saw her leg twitch.”

  I didn’t see anything but I’d put my money on Nikki when it comes to people-watching.

  “Wasn’t that something?” says our waitress, refilling our water glasses.

  “Chef’s tuna melt a bit off?” asks the Professor.

  “Ho-ho,” says the waitress. “Personally, I can do without drama during lunch hour. Do any of you know them?”

  “They’re mother and daughter,” says Nikki.

  “Involved in the case we’re watching,” I explain. “The woman’s husband is on trial for murdering her sister.”

  The waitress whistles softly. “You think you got troubles until you start listening to all the shit going on in other people’s lives.” She leaves to clean the now-deserted booth, returns carrying a sad looking leather purse. “This was on the floor under the table,” she says.

  “That’s the mother’s purse,” says Nikki.

  “I live in the building where she’s staying,” I say. “I can get it to her.”

  “Great.” She hands it to me. “Leave me your name and phone number, in case they call looking for it.” I write it on a napkin.

  Nikki spears a chunk of cantaloupe, nibbles around the edges. “What’s going to happen to this afternoon’s court?”

  “The prosecution will likely ask to adjourn for the day,” says the Professor, “until they figure out what to do about Mrs. Galdino having a heart attack, if that’s what it is. If she dies, it might make her husband seem a more sympathetic character to the jury.”

  “That’s cold,” says Lucille.

  “The way of the world,” says the Professor.

  “She’s needs her purse,” I say. “I.D., Insurance information, credit cards. How do I find out where they’ve taken her?”

  “Don’t go,” says Farley. “Those hospitals are crawling with germs. I had a friend, eighty-two years old, cut his finger cooking. Went to the ER for stitches. The guy flew planes in World War II, played tennis five days a week, had a fifty-year-old girlfriend could knock your socks off. The ER stitched him up, sent him home and he was dead in a week. MRSA. Kills more people each year than AIDS.”

  “Still,” I say, “she’s going to want her purse.”

  “That’s your man,” says the Professor, pointing out the young attorney who slipped his card to Caprice.

  I walk over and introduce myself. “Do you know where that ambulance took that woman?” I ask.

  He brightens. “Are you a relative?”

  “No.” He waits for more but that’s all I have.

  “Usually they go to the closest hospital unless someone insists on a different one.”

  “She’s not from around here. I doubt she knows one hospital from another.”

  He straightens, a bit more interested. “So, you know her?”

  “Slightly. Very slightly. Hardly at all.”

  “Give me her name,” he says. “I’ll make some calls, check around for you.”

  I am not feeding Maria Galdino to this ambulance-chasing shark. “Thanks, but I’d really like to bring her purse to her now.”

  He glances at his watch. “I have court in twenty minutes. Shouldn’t take long. If you wait, I’ll go with you.” No, not shark. Leech. Once he attaches, he won’t let go.

  I pour steel in my voice. “She’s needs her purse right now.”

  He sighs, takes out his phone and hits speed dial. “Hi, Mark? Bill, here. Say, how’s that woman you just picked up. Great. Great. Where are you taking her? No, it’s not for me. No, really. I swear. Her friend is here.” He holds his phone out to me. “Say Hi to Mark.”

  “Hi to Mark,” I say.

  “Wants to go to the hospital,” this to Mark. “ Great. Thanks.” He hangs up. “They’re going to Broward Memorial.”

  “I need directions.”

  And, as he tells me the quickest route to the hospital, “…avoids all the main streets,” he flips open a silver case and slides out a couple of business cards. “Tell your friend, if I can be of any help, any help at all, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Thanks.” I slip the cards in my pocket. I’ll do him the courtesy of waiting until I’m out of sight before tossing them in the trash.

  25

  Some malicious miscreant moved the hospital. According to young Perry Mason’s directions, it should be right here. Somehow, I’ve become lost in a maze of narrow streets where faded Florida bungalows hide behind ancient banyans. Manatee mailboxes sprout from masses of purple Bougainvilleas. Overhead, thick vines dangle from canopies of gnarled branches. A sudden wind cracks them like bullwhips. Some of the vines look suspiciously like pythons. Thunder rumbles. Storm’s a brewin’.

  Maria Galdino’s purse sits on the passenger seat. I need to get it to her. “No right turn” “No left turn” “No outlet” You can’t get there from here. Every street coils around and dead-ends at the Intracoastal. A couple of times I catch sight of canals hiding along the roads, lying in wait for unsuspecting cars. My immediate goal is to avoid becoming the lead story on tonight’s news. “This afternoon, a woman with two purses and a lousy sense of direction drove into a canal and drowned.” I need to buy one of those gizmos that slices your seat belt and shatters your windows so you can escape as your car sinks in the murky depths. I’ll put Bitsy on the case -- if I ever find my way out of here.

  I glance at the purse. It has presence, like a person. The sky blackens and I double-back yet again, stop a mailman on his appointed rounds and get directions to the hospital. Seven blocks later, I’m pulling into the jammed Emergency Room lot when the storm hits full on. My windows fog. I put on the wipers, blast the defroster, wipe a viewing space with my hand until I spot a parking space and pull in. Water hits my windshield like a fire hose. I’m at zero visibility. Lightning rips so close that I hear branches of electricity crackling off the main bolt. Nothing to do but wait.

  Maria Galdino’s purse pulls me like a magnet.

  -What kind of person looks through another person’s stuff?

  -Someone with a natural healthy curiosity.

  -It’s peeping-Tomish.

  -You sound like an old lady.

  -Hey, forty-ish is the new twenty-something.

  -Like stupid is the new smart?

  I lift the purse onto my lap. The soft leather is high quality, beautifully stitched, worn along the seams. It smells faintly of leather cream, balm for old scratches and nicks. Sections of the straps have been artfully restitched and reinforced. This is the purse of a frugal woman. Not flea market frugal, not knock-off cheap, but a woman who appreciates superior quality and is not quick to toss items aside for popular fashion. This purse says Maria Galdino is not like her late sister, Brandy, who seemed a devotee of the Church of Conspicuous Consumption. The New Jersey jeweler testified that Brandy was a careful spender back in the day, until all that nouveau money made her riche. If given the same sudden millions, would Mrs. Galdino also have embarked on some serious spending?

  Blinding flash. Crackling air. Electricity stands my arm hairs on end. That settles it. I’m not leaving this car. I’ll wait to give the purse to Caprice back at the apartment. Another flash. My fingertips buzz. I run them along the gold clasp.

  -What if Maria Galdino needs this purse right now?

  -Nothing is that urgent.

  -What if she’s having a heart attack? What if Caprice is stuck arguing with Admitting abou
t insurance instead of comforting her mother? And here you are, sitting with the purse that could spare them such heartache?

  I open the clasp.

  An amethyst rosary lies on top of the handkerchief Mrs. Galdino held while testifying. The cloth is fine linen with a field of hand-stitched roses, the initials MG embroidered on one corner. I move these aside, uncovering a gold leather wallet stuffed too full to close. I lift it out, set it on my lap, take a deep breath before invading this woman’s privacy. Maria Galdino is a keeper of photos, old photos, black-and-white pocket-sized of her and her daughter, her sister and brother-in-law and their children, babies, children’s school photos, an old-world couple in dated European garb. A separate foldout packet shows Mrs. Galdino standing outside the same small church over a period of years, growing older alongside a parade of priests.

  She carries a single credit card. I peek into the money section -- a couple of twenties, a ten and two singles. Not much for a woman traveling alone. I check the side pockets where she might have stashed a couple of folded fifties or hundreds. Nothing. A New Jersey ID card shows the same younger healthier Maria Galdino I’d seen in photos on Brandy’s boat. I look at her date of birth. It catches me up short. This broken old woman isn’t all that much older than Bitsy. Behind her ID card is one for Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. I have no choice. I need to bring her this purse now. The storm passes as quickly as it came. I step into the soupy air and head for the Emergency entrance.

  “Help you?” asks the woman behind the desk.

  “I’m looking for Maria Galdino,” I say. “She was just brought in by ambulance.”

  “You are?”

  If I say I’m a friend I’ll be kept in the waiting room -- and in the dark -- indefinitely. Saying I’m a family member might get me in, but it might also give Caprice the willies.

  “Her assistant.” This seems important without being personal. I hold up my show-and-tell. “I’ve brought her purse with her insurance information.”

  The woman checks papers on a clipboard. “She’s in number eight,” she says, “but the doctor is with her now. You can bring her insurance to Admitting, around the corner to your left.”

  “Thank you.” I walk around the corner, past Admitting, heading toward the ER. I stride purposefully as if I belong. It’s a trick learned from a lifetime of tending to children, parents and assorted family members in a variety of hospitals – keep going until someone tells me I can’t. In all these years, I’ve never been stopped.

  I push through the double doors into the ER. A couple of doctors and nurses work at a central desk. Ten curtained cubicles ring the room. Several stand empty, their white-sheeted beds ready for the next patients, others have their curtains drawn. No one pays attention to one frizzy-haired furtive woman carrying two purses.

  A paunchy policeman sits on a folding chair outside cubicle three, thumbing through a Golf Digest. Is he some sort of protection for the Galdino family? As I pass, I see a teen handcuffed to the bed’s side rails. “You can’t keep me here,” he yells, his words slurred, “Nooooooo waaaaaayyyy,” singing loud and proud. The guard turns a page, disinterested. “Ain’t keepin’ me here. Nah, uh-uh-uh.”

  Cubicles six and seven are empty but the curtain is drawn around eight. I slow outside the curtain. “…lost some vital fluids, electrolytes…” the low hum of a man’s voice.

  Now what? Should I knock? Clear my voice to alert them someone is outside waiting? Pull aside the curtain? What did I think would happen? I didn’t think and now I can’t bring myself to intrude on this private moment.

  “Nooooooo waayyy-aaaayyyy-aaaayyyy,” the strung out singer ratchets it up a decibel or two.

  Suddenly, the curtain is yanked aside and a nurse hurries past toward the cubicle with the yelling teen. I blink at the tableau in front of me – a ghostly white Maria Galdino stretched out on whiter sheets, IV fluids dripping into her skinny arm, the doctor standing on one side of her, Caprice on the other, her back to me.

  I feel naked standing here, voyeuristic. I clutch the purse thankful no one notices me. Maybe if I back up real slow I can go back out and leave the purse at the desk.

  The doctor is checking off a list on his clipboard. “And are you on any other medications?” he asks.

  “Diuretics,” says Maria Galdino.

  “You promised you’d stop using those,” says Caprice, her voice stern.

  “I…I must have forgotten, put them in with my other pills when I was packing.”

  “My mother takes diuretics to lose weight,” says Caprice. “She’s been warned they might make her lose too much water or potassium.”

  “Those things aren’t for weight loss,” says the doctor. “They can cause heart failure –”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my heart,” says Maria.

  “They can also cause kidney damage,” says the doctor, “all sorts of side effects.”

  “She knows,” says Caprice. “This isn’t the first time she’s fainted.”

  “May I help you?” asks a voice at my side. The nurse has returned. Caprice whirls around, her body tensed, as if instinctively guarding her mother. She’s staring at me, not processing who I am. Then she notices her mother’s purse in my arms.

  I hold it out like an offering. “They found this in the restaurant,” I say. “I thought your mother might need it, be worried about it. Someone knew where the ambulance had taken your mother so I offered to bring it to you.” I walk into the cubicle and hand it to her.

  Her watchful expression softens. “Thank you,” she says.

  “Give that to me,” demands her mother, grabbing her purse, retrieving her rosary.

  “Will she be all right?” I whisper. Caprice nods. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, thank you. Thank you. This was… very kind.”

  “Call if there’s anything at all,” I say and I leave them to this latest dramatic twist in their soap-opera lives.

  I slide in an Art Thieme CD and crank up the volume, grounding myself in the clean pick of acoustic guitar and comforting Midwest twang. Drivers along Federal honk or drive around me but I need to go slow and careful. I’m crying and it’s blurring my vision. The hospital got to me – resurrected memories of Michael on a cold metal table, roused ghosts of family and friends past.

  It also made me painfully aware how hard it is for me to get a handle on anything anymore. What I thought was the heart attack of a woman ravaged by sorrow turns out to be a fainting spell caused by an emaciated woman’s vanity over her weight. Maria Galdino pops diuretics to get down to a size what? Minus zero?

  And then there’s Sam Parker who I believed was going to be the ticket out of my boat payments. Turns out he was playing me. And what about my sister, climbing out of one miserable relationship and tumbling headlong into another? And the woman leaving threatening notes under my door turns out to have the makings of a friend. Life used to be crisp and clear. Now everything slips sideways.

  Thieme sings of love and dogs and sailin’ ships. His Burl Yves honesty soothes my raw ends. I’m stopped at a light when a black pickup pulls next to me, its sub-woofered music jacked so loud it rocks my car. The young driver leans to his right, centering his head between speakers so his rap-du-jour can blow out both eardrums at the same time. I crank up my Thieme and roll my windows down, boys, roll my windows down.

  The light goes green and we drive this way a while, dueling radios side by side, neither of us in any great hurry. The never-ending-gob-stopping line of ice cream lovers outside Jaxkson’s turns to watch as we pass. Impatient cars begin piling up in my rearview. I feel an overwhelming sense of I-don’t-care.

  Stopped at the next light, the Rap Boy’s head slowly rotates my way, his lizard-like eyelids at half-mast. His is the languid blink of someone high on something other than life. Brandy Lucas’ son looks like that some days, as if he’s in court but not in court, his physical self in one place while the rest of him drifts into some parallel universe. It occ
urs to me that Rap Boy might have a gun. That he might take offense at this older white woman dissing him with a little something folksy. He might…

  His lizard eyes blink again as he looks at me more closely. Then he nods and smiles and blows me a kiss before peeling west onto a side street. Of all the ends I could have imagined to our musical dual, an air kiss didn’t make the top one thousand. I flip down my visor against the afternoon glare and stare at myself in the mirror. Black mascara rings my eyes. Mr. Rap Man was being nice. He saw my sadness and understood. It makes me smile, it does. Random acts of kindness are alive and well, my friend. They come in all shapes and sizes and sneak up when we least expect them.

  I drive into my complex, content, happy I went out of my way to return that purse. What difference does it make what caused Maria Galdino to pass out in the restaurant – heart attack, diet pills, eau du Naugahyde? The fact is I helped ease one small concern in the life of a troubled human being at a time when every small thing must seem huge.

  Been there, done that. Don’t ever want to go there again.

  26

  From the way Bitsy and May are sprawled on the living room sofas – shoes off, a half-empty bottle of Kettle One, diet tonic and a bowl of lime wedges on the coffee table -- it looks as if they’ve been here a good long while. Afternoon light pours in through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking our pool and the Intracoastal. The storm that held me hostage in the hospital parking lot has moved out into the ocean and become a distant black line across the horizon. Overhead, there’s nothin’ but blue skies. I fix a drink and join the party.

  “Guess where May’s from,” says Bitsy.

  “Venus.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Chicago.”

  “Close. Genoa City.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  Genoa City, Wisconsin, population the size of a phone booth, was the Jewish Catskills of the Midwest.