Never Too Late for Love

by Warren Adler

  "She was married." he continued. "But her husband was a traveling salesman and was away a great deal of the time. Her kids were all grown up and, to make matters more convenient, she lived only a few blocks from us in Sunnyside. And you were busy with Millie and the new grandchild. Remember, you were at Millie's house more than you were at home. All you could talk about, think about, was Alan. Not that I don't love Alan. But he and Millie were your whole life then. You used to make dinner and leave it for me under a piece of plastic with a little note, 'Went to Millie's. Baby-sitting for Millie and Bob.' That's all right. I didn't care. Really I didn't. Nor am I blaming you. Frankly, I think you were tickled to death to get rid of me in those days. Remember all those executive meetings I said I was going to. We never had one. Our executive meetings usually were held before the store opened. Anyway, you didn't complain. You didn't have to worry about my dinner and you could spend more time with Millie and Bob and Alan. I really liked Dolly Schwartz, and she really liked me. We had a good time together. She was all woman. We even considered giving up our marriages."

  "You think I'm terrible, don't you?" he said, pausing and, for the first time since they had been at the pool, drawing her eyes toward him. But they were quickly deflected when someone they knew approached her.

  "You still on the sweater?" the woman asked.

  "It's a cardigan. It's always harder to make a cardigan."

  "Who is it for?"

  "For Arnold," she said, pointing at him.

  "That's one thing we got plenty of in this family," Arnold said. "Sweaters." When the woman left, Rachel began knitting furiously again. He picked up his paperback mystery, opened it, then closed it again.

  "The thing with Dolly Schwartz actually lasted three years. It might have gone on longer but Millie and Bob were getting upset with your being overly possessive. Look, let's face it. That was the real truth. Why do you think they moved so far out on the Island? Bob told me. It wasn't that they didn't love you. You know how much they love you. But every night, Rachel? They had no privacy. Also, Sammy was already in med school, so that was that. Not that I didn't have those 'executive meetings' maybe once or twice a month, but, frankly, I didn't like the idea of leaving you alone at night. So I began coming home nearly every night, and Dolly wasn't too happy about that. So that was the end of Dolly Schwartz."

  The sun sank behind the clubhouse, throwing their end of the pool into the shade. A few minutes later, they got their things together and drove back to their apartment. Rachel had defrosted some chopped meat and, while she took a shower, Arnold made the salad and formed the meat into patties. He made a good salad, sliding the garlic around the bottom and sides of the wooden bowl like he had seen the waiters do at expensive restaurants. By the time he finished the salad and mixed in the dressing, she had come out of the shower, so he went in for his. There was always just enough hot water for two showers. When he had dressed, the hamburgers were ready and the table was set, complete with little glasses of tomato juice on each plate. They always ate dinner at the dining-room table.

  "Too rare?" Rachel asked, as he bit into his hamburger. He chewed it for a few moments, then held up two fingers in a sign of approval.

  "That new broiler was a good choice," he said. They ate in silence for a while.

  "You like the salad? That's the one thing about Florida. You can get the ingredients for a good salad."

  When they finished their main dish, Rachel scooped out two balls of chocolate ice cream and served it.

  "Dolly Schwartz wasn't the last of it," Arnold began again. "But she was the last where there was any danger attached to it. You know, as far as us breaking up. I don't think I really considered breaking up our marriage, Rachel. Not in my heart. I mean that. You were you and I was me. Sex isn't everything, although it seemed pretty important to me at the time. But people are different, and you can't expect to get everything in one package. Not that I was such a bargain myself. You used to tell me, 'Arnold, you're not so good in bed yourself.' Maybe you were right. I was no big deal.

  After awhile, it became too much of a hassle and, by the time I was sixty, I finally figured out that it was ridiculous. Oh, there were one or two little knishes on those retailers conventions, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't that I felt old. Frankly, I felt that I was really being unfaithful. We were married nearly forty years and I was just beginning to feel unfaithful."

  They finished the ice cream and did the dishes together. He washed and she dried. When all the dishes were put away and the apartment was swept, they drove to the movie theater. He showed the cashier his senior-citizen's discount card, paid for the tickets, waited in line for some popcorn, and they got into the theater just before the film rolled. They liked to sit up front, right in the middle of the big screen, where they could watch the huge characters parade before them, a hundred times bigger than life. They always held hands in the movies, but this time he was afraid to touch her. He had taken his pills before dinner but felt the pains begin as the picture progressed and he had to take another nitro during the movie. The pain then went away quickly.

  "Did you like it?" he asked as they walked back to the car.

  "Not as good as that other one we saw him in."

  "Definitely not as good as that."

  "Nothing he has ever done has been as good as that."

  It was very dark now and he drove slowly, knowing that Rachel got particularly nervous on the road at night. She sat beside him tense and watchful. Concentrating fully on his driving, he didn't think about what he had confessed to her until they got back to their apartment. He sat alone in the living room while she undressed for bed. Had he told her everything? Had he left something out? He did not feel any special elation in the unburdening, except that he had, at last, wiped the slate clean, and that was worth the effort. Maybe he did censor things a bit, he thought. He had come very close to breaking up his marriage over Judy Farber and Dolly Schwartz, but he could not remember in any detail the reasons why he had rejected the idea. Surely, he could not have conveyed to Rachel the intensity of his feelings, the wrenching crisis of decision, the agonizing. It had all occurred internally, far from her field of consciousness, as if they had lived on different planets.

  He got up and went to the bedroom. She was already in bed reading the newspaper. It was her habit to save the morning paper to read before she went to sleep. She had put a single curler in her hair and had lightly creamed her face. He put on his pajamas, picked up the paperback mystery that he had with him at the swimming pool and slipped in beside her.

  He wondered what might have happened if he had told her about his escapades at the time they happened. Surely, that would have meant the end of his marriage. He wanted to ask her but didn't dare right now. It had never occurred to him that she might have known about these things all along, but that was another question he thought best to postpone.

  For some reason, their marriage had survived it all. That was the enigma.

  He couldn't concentrate on his book, so he closed it and put it on the night table beside him. There were other unanswered questions, he thought. Perhaps, she too, had a confession to make. He doubted if it would be as extensive as his own, nor could he imagine that she could ever have been unfaithful to him. He would forgive her, he pledged secretly, knowing that she had forgiven him.

  She crinkled the newspapers, lay them on the floor beside the bed and, almost simultaneously, they pulled the light chains of the lamps on each side of the bed. He lay there quietly for a moment, hearing her sigh. Then he turned, moved his body close to hers, and slipped an arm around her, cupping one breast, toying with her nipples. He felt himself stir, an unusual feeling these days, but he knew its signals.

  Through it all, he must have loved her, he thought, wanting to say it, just as he felt it. He was warm now, wanting, and the beat of his heart crashed in his chest as he drew her closer to him and let his hand slide down over her belly.

  "I'm nauseous from the popcorn," she said su
ddenly. As always, he froze momentarily and felt his ardour sputter and cool.

  "Shall I get you an Alka-Seltzer?" he asked.

  "Its all right," she sighed. "I'll be OK in the morning."

  He moved away from her and listened as her breathing became more regular and she dropped off to sleep. He must have followed soon after because the next thing he knew it was morning and the sun was streaming in through the spaces in the blinds.

  HE'S GOING TO MARRY A SHIKSA

  When Heshy Leventhal first announced that he wanted to marry Pat Grady, his mother became instantly hysterical. He had, of course, expected the reaction, but the suddenness, not to mention the noise of her eruption, was beyond his most fearsome expectations.

  "A Shiksa?" she screamed, the sound a shattering thunderclap in the family's small Brownsville apartment.

  "Sha. The neighbors," his father cautioned, turning to his son.

  "You're willing to disgrace us," he said, his small myopic eyes misting behind thick rimless glasses.

  "A Shiksa?" his mother screamed again, repeating the word in an ever-increasing crescendo.

  "I knew you'd feel this way," he mumbled. He had told Pat that, come what may, he would stand up to them. The promise reassured him, although his mother's wailing was enough to tempt fate.

  "It's out of the question," his father said. His mother had collapsed in a chair, her shoulders heaving. She buried her head into the crook of her arm.

  "Look what you've done to your mother," his father admonished. He had always chosen the path of quiet reason. He was a socialist. His father's words seemed to encourage his mother's hysteria, and her sobs grew louder.

  "My mind is made up," Heshy said.

  "You couldn't find a Jewish girl," his father said. He lifted his hand and pointed to the window. "The streets are filled with Jewish girls. You couldn't find one. One single Jewish girl?"

  "It just happened, Pop," Heshy said, reaching out to touch his father's shoulder. The older man shrugged him away as if Heshy was deliberately communicating some disease.

  "I love her," Heshy said. The words seemed hollow, almost foolish as they rolled off his tongue.

  "Love!" his mother burst out. Her tears had slowed and he knew she was getting her second wind. She was not one simply to cry it out without words. "Love!" she screamed, looking at her son, her lips curling with contempt and sarcasm. "This pisher knows about love."

  "We love each other," Heshy said quietly, remembering his promise to Pat, trying to withstand the powerful intimidation of the ridicule.

  "And the children. What about the children?" his father said, still relying on quiet logic.

  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

  "This is the son you raised," his mother screeched. He knew that, from now on, she would communicate with him through his father, as if he was not in the room.

  "It never works," his father said. "They become Catholics. They'll take the children. They always take the children. And the Catholics will hate them because they're part Jewish."

  "They'll hate him anyhow," his mother said. "She'll treat him like dirt," she intoned. "And it'll serve him right."

  "You'll like her, Mama," he said. It was a futile remark, he knew, but his 'I love her' argument had little effect and he felt he should try a new tack.

  "He says I'll like her. How could I like her? I don't ever intend to see her. I don't ever intend he should come into my house again. I would rather they rolled me into the grave this minute than see her. And I swear on my mother's memory, may she rest in peace, that the Shiksa will never come into my house, ever."

  "I'm sorry you feel that way," Heshy said, feeling his own tears begin. A tiny sob stabbed at his chest.

  "But I love you both."

  "Love again," his mother screamed, the sound a thunderdap.

  "I think you're crazy," his father said finally. He must have sensed that it was futile to continue a strategy of reason.

  "This is 1951," Heshy said. "The world is changing."

  "Nothing changes," his father said. "Not for Jews."

  "When we let him drop out of college, it was our first mistake," his mother said, continuing to ignore him. The remark seemed an odd watershed in her hysteria. Actually, college was an enormous economic hardship and he had taken a job as a toy salesman in Manhattan. Pat had been the secretary to one of the bosses. Since then, they had always taken refuge in the argument that his dropping out of college had somehow addled his brains.

  "I'm sorry," he said finally, knowing, as he had suspected, that it was beyond resolution. "My mind is made up." As he turned to go, he heard the cacophony of his mother's last reserve, the outpouring of a passionate frustration, plumbed from some powerful genetic undercurrent.

  "You're not my son," she screamed. "You and your Shiksa died today. I curse you in my mother's memory." As he closed the door, gently, because he was leaving in sadness not anger, he heard his father's stern attempt to placate her. "Please, Dorothy. Don't say what you might regret."

  Pat Grady's experience was not much different.

  "My father threw me out of the house," she told Heshy when they met later. "He called you a bunch of Christ killers and dirty kikes. My mother kept crossing herself and saying that your people ate babies." Her eyes were swollen from crying and he held her tightly, kissing her cheeks, tasting the saltiness that lingered there.

  "You they called 'The Shiksa.'"

  "Just that?" She paused and brushed his hair back from his forehead.

  "In their mouths, it was not a pleasant term. More like a curse." He smiled. He loved her and that was the balm to ease his pain. "So we're both orphans."

  They were married in City Hall and, though he called his father inviting him to the brief ceremony, he knew what was in store for him.

  "You're killing us, Heshy," his father said, the voice of reason barely recognizable. Heshy could imagine what the poor man was going through with his mother.

  "And mother?" he asked. His mother was bound to inquire whether he had mentioned her.

  The moved into a tiny apartment on the edge of Greenwich Village, deliberately choosing a more diverse neighborhood than the circumscribed ghettos of Brooklyn and the forbidding suburban waspiness of Queens. The estrangement with their parents continued but they kept of them informed of their lives nonetheless.

  "I spoke to my mother today," Pat would report.

  "And?"

  "She's still babbling about going to Church and praying for my soul."

  "Tell her it's one of our boys that's hanging up there on the cross."

  "I'm sure she'd appreciate that. She refers to you as 'him.'"

  "Better than kike."

  "I could hear my father grumbling in the background. I thought I heard him say 'Jewboy.' She smiled and patted his arm. "But you know, I think she was glad to hear from me. I think if I said to her: 'Mom, I'm sick. Mom, I need you,' she would break her neck to get here."

  "Did you tell her you were pregnant?"

  "Yes."

  "I told my father," Heshy said. "And the voice of reason prevailed."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said that now my troubles were just beginning."

  When Marvin was born, Heshy dutifully called his parents. His mother answered the phone. He had not heard her voice for more than a year, but the fact she had picked up the phone seemed like a minor victory. He imagined that she might have been waiting for news, since he had informed his father about the impending birth. Her voice was calm, not without a touch of pathos. She had this ability to create an aura of pathos about her on the telephone. I will not feel guilty, he told himself. It was his private incantation and it had sustained him through this trying period.

  "Ma?" There was a long silence.

  "Who then?"

  "You have a grandson."

  He could hear a long sigh, then: "You want me to say Mazeltov?"

  "Of course."

  "Mazeltov."

  "His
name is Marvin, after your mother. His middle name is Patrick after Pat's father."

  "A regular Abie's Irish Rose." He detected her sarcasm, then the evidence of her repentance. Obviously, she knew she had gone too far. "He's healthy?"

  "Eight pounds."

  "You were nine pounds." He smiled, waiting for her to continue.

  "And the Shiksa?"

  "For crying out loud." He felt a sharp tug of anger. "Her name is Pat and she's the mother of your grandson."

  "To me, she's still a Shiksa."

  "She's the mother of your grandson," he said, enunciating each word slowly so that she would not miss his drift. Two can play this game, he thought. Now the guilt ball is in her court.

  "Be that as it may," his mother said, but he could sense her grudging retreat. "At least," she said, drawing the line, "I hope he's going to be circumcised."

  "He was already. The doctor did it." He decided to preempt her thoughts. "And no, he won't be baptized."

  "Why not? They'll get him sooner or later." He decided to ignore the remark and, instead, said good-bye, deliberately cold and distant. He sensed that she wanted to continue to talk, but he decided that it was her turn to suffer the agony of guilt.

  "My mother came to visit me," Pat told him while she was still in the hospital. She seemed glowing with happiness. A white ribbon was tied around her hair and little Marvin's red pinched face was nestled against her breast, greedily nuzzling the nipple. She looked down at Marvin. "She says he looks Irish and made the sign of the cross over him so many times, I thought she was the Pope."

  "And your father?"

  "He was outside looking into the nursery at the baby. But he wouldn't come in."