Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  The use of Florence’s name, so far from his in-laws’ apartment, gave Isaac an odd jolt. Alliance and Atlantic City felt worlds away from each other.

  “It came as a shock,” said Isaac.

  “Terrible.”

  “She was a good swimmer. A great swimmer, really.”

  “I remember. What do they think happened?”

  “No one knows. Maybe a cramp. Or a rip current.”

  “And Gussie saw the whole thing?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Poor—” Isaac’s father said, but stopped short when Gussie returned to the porch, walking ever so slowly so as not to spill the water, which she’d filled to the brim of a tall glass.

  “Could I have a glass of water as well?” Isaac asked her. She sighed dramatically, as if she were always being put out with such requests, but then ran back inside the house.

  “How is Fannie taking it?”

  “We’re not telling her,” said Isaac, watching his father for some indication of his opinion on the matter. Surely other normal people thought Esther’s plan preposterous?

  Isaac’s father gave nothing away, just asked, “Is the pregnancy so risky?”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing. I don’t know. Her blood pressure is a little high, and we don’t know what happened”—Isaac paused—“last time.”

  In between the dozen Feldman children who had lived, there had been several others who had not. It had never occurred to Isaac to ask his parents about those children until after Hyram died, and by then his mother was gone and his father’s memory was failing. There were logistical questions he had wanted to ask. Was it all right to plan a small burial for a dead baby? Should they sit Shiva? And then there were more personal questions. When would the pain in his chest go away? When would he stop seeing his son’s face when he closed his eyes at night? In the end, he had asked his father nothing.

  Gussie and Isaac sat with his father on the farmhouse’s wide front porch into the early evening when the sun sank low in the sky. Isaac tried not to catalog the house’s failings—the peeling paint, the wood rot, the tree that had grown too close to the porch.

  When the mosquitoes came out, Isaac’s father shuffled inside to take the cholent off the stove. He poured wine and unwrapped a loaf of rye bread, a few slices already cut away.

  “No challah?” Isaac asked.

  “No challah,” said his father, “but this will do.” Isaac wondered how often his father was getting into Vineland to shop and made a note to bring groceries the next time he visited.

  Isaac knew that, if it weren’t for this visit, his father would be back at the synagogue now, marking the end of Shabbos with the Havdalah. To his credit, he didn’t try to get Isaac to go. Instead, he lit a candle and led a blessing, both tasks Isaac’s mother would have done when she was alive. After he sang the Shavua Tov, Gussie joined in. Eliyahu hanavi, Eliyahu hatishbi, Eliyahu hagiladi. Bimheirah b’yameinu, yavo eileinu, im Mashiach ben David.

  They made a modest dinner of the overcooked meat and potatoes, and Gussie fell asleep on the sofa in the front room because both men had forgotten that seven-year-old children still needed to be put to bed.

  Isaac stacked their dirty plates on the drainboard and returned to the kitchen table with the bag of rugelach, a bottle of sherry, and two small glasses.

  “How’s business?” his father asked, reaching for the bag.

  “Fine. Good.” Isaac poured the sherry, allowing for an extra splash or two in his glass.

  “Joseph is a lucky man to have you as his number two.”

  Isaac cringed. It was a loaded statement and his father, who would have given anything for Isaac to remain on the farm, knew it.

  “Technically, I’m the head of sales. The bakery manager is number two.”

  His father dismissed Isaac’s attempt at modesty with a wave of his hand and took a large bite of pastry.

  “Joseph is sixty?”

  “Closer to fifty.”

  “You’ll be running the place in no time,” he said, assuredly.

  Would he? Isaac often wondered about that. Is that what he wanted? Was it what Joseph wanted? He’d never said as much. Isaac had spent his entire adult life trying to break out on his own, to be his own man. When he had married Fannie, he’d seen Adler’s Bakery as nothing more than a soft place to land. He hadn’t wanted to be trapped there any more than he’d wanted, growing up, to be trapped on the farm. But that was before Joseph expanded the business. Now Adler’s was booming, and Isaac wondered if he could spend an entire career working in the back office, sustaining his father-in-law’s dream. He knew lots of guys who would give their eyeteeth to have married into a family business like Adler’s.

  “I’ve got something new I’m working on—on the side,” Isaac offered.

  His father took another bite of rugelach.

  “A land deal.”

  “In Atlantic County?”

  “Florida.”

  His father furrowed his eyebrows, licked the cinnamon off his fingers. “I thought you were done with Florida.”

  “I thought I was, too,” said Isaac. “But I got a call from an old friend last week. You remember Jim?” Why should his father remember Jim? Isaac could practically count the letters he’d written home from West Palm Beach on one hand.

  His father shook the brown paper sack, eyeing the remaining pastries. He held the bag out to Isaac. “Take one.”

  Isaac did as he was told. They really were delicious. “Jim’s working on a big deal. A developer went under and there’s a lot of land that’s coming on the market—cheap.”

  “How much land?”

  “There’s one package I’m looking at that’s a little more than a hundred acres.”

  His father let out a low whistle. The farm was forty acres, and Isaac knew that, at harvesttime, it felt like it might as well be a hundred. “In Palm Beach?”

  “The county, not the island,” said Isaac. “Toward Lake Okeechobee. It’s an old citrus farm.”

  “What would you do with it?” his father asked. Isaac had made it very clear he was no farmer.

  “Sell it, when the time’s right. Jim thinks he can get the price down to thirty dollars an acre. Land like that should be selling for at least two times that amount.”

  “That’s still a lot of money to come up with.” Isaac didn’t ask but he could feel the question hanging in the air between them: Do you have it?

  “I told him that the only way I can consider the opportunity is if I bring on some investors. Heck, it might even be something you want to get in on,” Isaac said, surprised at his own audacity. He looked around the kitchen, then forced himself to finish the thought. “You invest a couple of hundred dollars. It doubles and then triples. Maybe does even better than that.”

  His father raised his eyebrows, humored Isaac with a soft chuckle.

  “A thousand dollars could go a long way toward fixing up this house,” Isaac pushed. “Maybe hire extra hands to help you with the harvest.”

  Isaac had hit on another sore point, so he got out in front of it, “Of course, if I were a better son, I’d come help you.”

  His father didn’t say anything, just patted Isaac’s hand.

  * * *

  The following morning, Isaac’s father made eggs for Gussie and black coffee for Isaac. When it was time to go, Isaac whistled for his daughter and carried her small bag out to the car. His father followed him outside. In his hand was the old Campfire Marshmallows canister.

  “You said Jim thinks you can get them down to thirty dollars an acre?”

  Isaac went mute as he watched his father pry the lid off the can and count out a small wad of bills.

  “This should be enough for about ten acres?” he said, handing Isaac three hundred dollars. There was very little money left in the can.

  Isaac had talked a good game the previous evening but now he wondered whether he’d pushed too far. If he took this money, combined it with his own, and b
ought the binder, he’d be on the hook for finding the rest of the money, for getting investors on board, for closing the deal.

  It was a lot of pressure. But wasn’t this what Isaac wanted? Not just the chance to make something of himself but the chance to show his father what he was capable of?

  “You’re sure about this?” Isaac asked.

  Before his father could answer, Gussie came barreling out of the house and into her grandfather’s arms.

  “Come back to Atlantic City with us! Please!”

  Isaac’s father rubbed the top of her head and chuckled. “No cities for me, Augusta. But tell your father to bring you back soon.”

  “You can sleep in my room,” said Gussie.

  “Time to go, Gus,” said Isaac as he held the car door open for her.

  Isaac shook his father’s hand and gave him a firm pat on the back. He couldn’t bear to look him in the face, to catch his father studying him in the early morning light. “I’ll let you know when the purchase has gone through,” he told the patch of earth between them.

  “Give my best to Fannie. And tell her parents I’m sorry.”

  Isaac nodded, got into the car, and started the ignition. He gave his father a small wave as he released the clutch and pulled out of the yard.

  “Feel better!” Gussie shouted into the dust as the car sped down the farm’s dirt drive.

  As Isaac wound his way through Alliance and back toward Vineland, he could think of nothing but the money in his pocket. Between what Isaac had saved and what his father had just given him, he had enough for a binder. He’d call Jim first thing Monday and ask him to send the paperwork. Once Isaac signed, he’d have thirty days—maybe sixty—to get together the rest of the money to close the deal. Selling a few folks on an investment opportunity this good wouldn’t be as easy as it had been in ’25 but it wouldn’t be hard either.

  “Hey, Gus,” Isaac said as they passed the synagogue and then the cemetery. “Grandpa said you told him about Florence.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered from the seat next to him.

  “It’s okay. He’s allowed to know.”

  “I thought he might be sad.”

  “Like you’re sad?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Isaac could see her bob her head.

  “I’m sad, too,” he said.

  “Mama will be the most sad,” Gussie offered.

  “That’s true.”

  Isaac watched the road peel away in front of him for several minutes.

  “Has your grandmother talked to you about how we’re not going to tell Mother about Florence for a little while?”

  His daughter nodded again. “Because of the baby.”

  “Right,” said Isaac. “When you see her, it’s going to be hard not to say anything.”

  Gussie was quiet for a few minutes.

  “Why can’t the baby know?”

  Stuart

  Florence had been dead a week, but Stuart continued to take the rescue boat out each morning at six o’clock, as if nothing had changed.

  He had begun taking Florence out in the boat early the previous summer, when she had returned from Wellesley obsessed with the idea of swimming the English Channel. Since Ederle’s swim in 1926, two other women had successfully made the crossing—one just three weeks after Ederle made headlines and another the following year. In the seven years that had elapsed since, no one else—woman or man—had made it across. Why not me? Florence had written to Stuart from school.

  In her letters, Florence admitted to spending late nights at the library, reading through old newspapers, looking for clues as to how to best train for a Channel swim. She had so many questions, and her coach, who did all her swimming in the pool, could only answer some of them. Florence wanted to know how Ederle and the others had managed to stay warm, what they’d eaten, how they’d appropriately gauged the weather, and how they’d kept the salt water, which was a major irritant, from their eyes. Her list of questions had grown so long, she told Stuart, that she kept them in a small notebook, which she had bought expressly for that purpose.

  When it came to open-water swimming, Stuart was Florence’s best resource, and she wrote to him with increasing frequency as the winter months passed and her notebook grew fat with scribbling. Stuart didn’t know the Channel but he knew the ocean—both what it could give a swimmer who was paying attention and what it could take away. As important, he knew Florence. He knew what each muscle in her body was capable of, where she had exposed weaknesses, where her confidence might be a gift and where it might get her into trouble. In one of her early letters, Florence had told Stuart that she wanted to attempt her crossing the following August, before she returned to Wellesley for her sophomore year, but Stuart persuaded her to give it one more year. The English Channel, he had written to her, will still be there in 1934.

  Stuart suggested Florence spend the summer of 1933 training to swim the perimeter of Absecon Island. It was a twenty-two-mile swim, roughly the same distance as the swim from Cape Gris-Nez to Dover, albeit under much more pleasant conditions. The Channel’s waters were rarely warmer than sixty degrees, and the air was just as cold. In the Straits of Dover, weather could change abruptly, so even if a swimmer left France under sunny skies, it was likely she’d encounter drenching rain, thick fog, and gale-force winds before she reached England.

  Florence hadn’t been keen to put off the Channel for another year but she did like the fact that Ederle had pulled off a similar stunt to great effect. Weeks before she swam the Channel, Ederle had swum from New York’s Battery Park to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Aside from the seventeen-mile swim being good practice, it had turned out to be excellent publicity. Stuart argued that, if Florence wanted the Press or one of Atlantic City’s big businessmen to take her Channel swim seriously—and potentially sponsor it—she needed to make a name for herself in her own hometown, and she begrudgingly agreed.

  Most mornings that first summer she was home from school, Florence had met Stuart on the beach in front of the Maryland Avenue beach tent. The sun wasn’t yet up but, by the time he dragged a rescue boat across the sand and pushed it off its rollers and out into the open water, Florence seated at the bow, the horizon had turned pink. She didn’t talk much as he rowed out past the breaking waves, but he liked having her in the boat anyway. On the nights when he stayed out too late at the Ritz’s Merry-Go-Round bar or Garden Pier’s ballroom, it might have been tempting to shut his alarm off and turn back over in bed. But instead, he nursed his coffee and gave Florence last-minute reminders to relax her shoulders or extend her pull a little farther. If she had questions she asked them but, more often than not, she simply nodded, stretched her arms above her head several times, pulled off her cover-up, and plunged into the water.

  While Florence swam, Stuart rowed behind her, careful to maintain a distance of several boat lengths, lest she stop suddenly and he plow into her. Sometimes he tried hollering at her, either to read from the stopwatch he kept in his pocket or to warn her she was veering off course, but between the cap she wore over her ears, the natural hum of the ocean’s underworld, and the sound of her own arms churning the water around her head, it was difficult to get through to her. It didn’t matter much anyway. She knew Atlantic City’s landscape well enough to know that Central Pier was a half mile down the beach from Garden Pier, and that Million Dollar Pier was a half mile farther still.

  Eventually, Stuart would shout to Florence that it was time to get back in the boat, and she’d acquiesce, allowing him to grab her under the arms and haul her over the side of the boat and into the bilge like a fresh catch. He knew there were many mornings she would have preferred to wave the boat away and to keep swimming, to return to the beach when it suited her, but Stuart, who made hundreds of saves each summer, wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re not invincible, you know,” he often told her.

  The row back to shore was always Stuart’s favorite part of the morning. With her swim behind her and the sun in the sky, Florence w
as much more talkative. She’d wrap a towel around herself, swallow what was left of Stuart’s coffee, and ask questions she already knew the answers to—did her frame look tighter and did he think she had a chance at the Pageant Cup again this year? That’s one of the things he liked most about Florence. How sure she was of herself. He also liked her collarbones, which danced up and down when she laughed. Oh, and her eyes. He liked her eyes very much.

  On days when Stuart didn’t have to be up in the stand immediately, he took his time getting back to the beach. Florence frequently teased him, “My father has, at this point, already called the Coast Guard.”

  Now, without Florence in the boat, the vessel felt large and unwieldy. The ocean was bigger, lonelier. The beach farther away. Stuart imagined rowing toward the horizon until he could no longer see the Boardwalk, or even the small spit of land on which Atlantic City was precariously perched. With no landmarks except the sun, could he find his way home? Would he want to?

  * * *

  Stuart was on his way to find breakfast when he came upon the Adlers, standing near the entrance of Steel Pier. At least it looked like the Adlers from so far away. He squinted, trying to get a better look, and counted heads. Joseph, Esther, Isaac, Anna, and little Gussie. Yes, it was definitely them. He raised an arm in the air and waved but no one seemed to notice.

  “Mr. Adler. Mrs. Adler,” he called, once he was within shouting distance. They looked up. Esther didn’t look pleased to see him but she didn’t look disappointed either. A good sign, he thought.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, an edge of concern in her voice, when they were close enough to hear one another properly.

  He hesitated for a moment, unsure why she’d asked.

  “Everything’s fine. Or I mean, you know.” Could he be a bigger dunce? Of course, things weren’t fine. Florence was dead. Maybe Esther asked because she was worried he hadn’t been able to put a lid on the lifeguards at the Virginia Avenue Hospital Tent? The poor woman had a lot on her mind. “I just saw you and wanted to say hello.”