Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  No, there was something else.

  The jitney rolled past Agron’s Furs and Elfman’s Shoes and the Block Bathing Suit Co. In the window of Block’s a large sign read JANTZEN BATHING COSTUMES. ON SALE NOW!

  That was it, thought Esther. Anna didn’t own a bathing suit.

  * * *

  Esther felt hot with rage as she entered the apartment. Her hands trembled as she removed a few dollars from her wallet, rolled them up tight, and handed them to Gussie.

  “Anna!” she called into the quiet apartment. “Will you go by Lischin Bros. and pick up some veal cutlets? Take Gussie with you.”

  When the girls were gone, Esther locked the front door of the apartment and walked directly back to the bedroom Anna had shared with Florence. She hesitated, briefly, in the doorway. It had been almost a month since she’d seen any of Florence’s things. A shudder ran through her body but she shook it off, pushed back her shoulders, and forced herself forward.

  Florence’s bed was made, her dresser a little neater than she’d left it. It was tempting to turn over each of the objects on the dresser top, to feel the heft of the books and earrings and Pageant Cup, to picture the last time her daughter had held each item. But Esther did not allow herself that pleasure. She walked straight over to Fannie’s old dresser, now occupied by Anna, and began opening drawers.

  It didn’t matter that Florence had owned several fine bathing suits and that Anna had none, that Florence was dead and could wear none of them and that Anna was alive and slim enough to stretch any one of the suits across her limber frame. In another time, Esther might have been generous. Why don’t you borrow a bathing costume of Florence’s? she pictured herself saying to Anna if Florence was still away at college or already in France. But not now. She sifted through one drawer and then another, looking for the evidence that Anna was usurping her daughter’s life.

  In the bottom drawer of Anna’s dresser, she found no clothes at all, just a stack of neatly bundled papers. Esther picked the packet up and began to thumb through it. It was all of Anna’s immigration paperwork, paper-clipped according to some system Esther could not interpret. There were medical records, school transcripts, a police clearance, and a copy of Anna’s acceptance letter from New Jersey State Teachers College. So much paperwork for one person. One piece of paper came loose and fluttered to the floor, and Esther stooped to pick it up.

  It was a copy of Joseph’s affidavit of support, neatly typed and notarized by the Atlantic City commissioner of deeds. Joseph had completed the section, for naturalized citizens, at the top of the form, and had then gone on to list his age and occupation, his weekly earnings, and his assets. He’d outlined the balance of his bank account and the value of his insurance policies and real estate holdings. Esther sucked in her breath when she got to the section of the form where Joseph had been asked to list the names and ages of his dependents. The words Florence Adler (19) jumped out at her from the middle of the page.

  Farther down the page still, Joseph had listed Anna’s information—her full name, her sex, her birth date, and the country of her birth. Under occupation, he indicated that Anna was a student, and under relationship to the deponent, he had typed Please see addendum.

  Esther forgot the bathing suit completely and began to dig through the papers in earnest, looking for the addendum. Joseph had submitted several supplements to the affidavit—everything from bank statements to copies of his personal income tax returns—so it took some time to locate the document she wanted. Finally, she found it near the bottom of the stack. It was a typed letter on Joseph’s stationery that began, To Whom It May Concern.

  He wrote, I understand that this affidavit of support would be looked upon more favorably if I were a close relative of the applicant. Esther scanned the next several sentences, in which Joseph did his best to document the childhood Inez and he had shared in Lackenbach. She assumed he was making enhancements here and there, anything to demonstrate the durability of the relationship. Esther would likely have done the same.

  At seventeen, the applicant’s mother and I became engaged to be married. Esther went back and read the sentence again. Engaged? Joseph? The engagement lasted for a period of three years after I immigrated to the United States, and while we did not ultimately marry, I remain committed to the welfare of both her and her family.

  Esther felt like a fool. How had she not realized it all along? Of course, Joseph had been promised to someone. It explained the three years he’d spent with his head down, working day and night, first at Kligerman’s in Philadelphia and then at Chorney’s. He had been saving to bring Inez over. Now Esther understood why it had been she who had asked Joseph to go on that first walk, why he had looked so startled when, later, she had reached for his hand. He had been spoken for. At what point, she wondered, had he written to Inez and called off the engagement? Assuming, in fact, that he had been the one to call it off at all.

  Esther read the rest of the letter but she couldn’t take anything else in. The fact that this letter existed at all, much less in the bottom drawer of Anna’s dresser, meant that Anna also knew the specifics of Joseph and Inez’s relationship. How had the girl managed to sit on information so compelling? Maybe she assumed Esther knew the truth, had always known it.

  What did Esther really know about her own marriage? What did anyone ever know about a relationship that could look as transparent as a Coke bottle one moment and as milky as sea glass the next?

  In the early days, Joseph had been besotted by Esther. She had felt it in his glance, his touch, even the way he breathed—a little more deeply when she was near him. She had felt similarly, had been willing to disregard her parents’ wishes and marry him, move to Atlantic City, and start a life from scratch.

  As they aged, the longing they had felt for each other was transmuted into a calm and constant love Esther could see all around her. It was in the bakery and the house but—most importantly—in the two beautiful girls they raised together.

  In thirty years, Esther had never looked back. She’d never had reason to.

  Fannie

  Now that Fannie’s blood pressure readings were higher than normal, Bette and Dorothy and Mary and the rest of the nurses on the ward were in and out of her room with much more regularity.

  Twice a day one of them popped in, the sleek, metal case of the Baumanometer tucked under an arm, a stethoscope stuffed in a pocket. Each time the nurse wrapped the cuff around her arm and pumped it tight, Fannie tried to clear her mind, to concentrate on breathing normally. It helped to find a spot on the wall in front of her, some smudge or imperfection that she could focus on as she breathed. If it was true that her own ill feelings could contribute to high blood pressure, she didn’t want an errant thought about her husband or her sister to send her into the operating theater.

  Outside of mealtimes and these twice-a-day readings, the nurses had started making up reasons to check in on Fannie. They plumped her pillow and adjusted the light—turning lamps on and off and opening and closing the curtains as the sun shifted in the sky. Now they were always rearranging her bedsheets, too. They pretended to be tightening the corners but Fannie assumed that, when they lifted the sheets, they were actually inspecting her ankles. “Are they big as boats yet?” she’d ask, to which the reply was always no.

  On slow days, Bette would pop her head around the doorway and ask if Fannie wanted company. Even when Fannie was feeling tired or out of sorts, she never said no. Who knew when she’d get another visitor? Her mother came by most days but on the days no one visited, the quiet of the room was deafening.

  “I brought you these,” Bette said as she handed Fannie two newspaper clippings about the Dionne quintuplets. While Fannie scanned the articles, Bette interrupted. “Only one of them has any information.”

  It was clear that, while the public demanded a daily accounting of the babies’ welfare, there was less and less genuine news to report.

  “Stop the presses, Bette,” said Fannie. “ �
��Mrs. Dionne Leaves Bed.’ ” When she read it aloud, the headline sounded even more ridiculous. The babies were thirty-eight days old. Why shouldn’t their mother be out of bed?

  “You’ve got a week after you deliver, and then we’re giving you the boot.”

  Fannie couldn’t imagine spending six more weeks in bed after the baby was born. She hoped Bette was right—that she’d be up and around within a week. Secretly she hoped that, within six weeks, she’d have her waist back.

  She reached for the copy of Sara Teasdale’s poems her mother had brought her, and opened the book to “Truce,” where she’d taken to stowing all of her quintuplet clippings. She slipped the newest clippings alongside the older ones. By now there was a thick wedge of them that made the book’s spine bulge.

  “Are those any good?” Bette asked.

  “What?”

  “The poems.”

  “Oh,” said Fannie, thumbing through the pages that were not stuffed with clippings. They felt stiff beneath her fingers. “I have to admit, I haven’t read them all.”

  “With all this time on your hands?”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “My sincerest apologies,” said Bette, teasingly, as she held out her hand for the book. Fannie gave it to her, and she flipped to a page near the end and began to read aloud, “ ‘Laid in a quiet corner of the world, there will be left no more of me some night.’ Good God, these are depressing.”

  “Bette, should I be worried?”

  Bette closed the book with a sharp clap, as if she’d suddenly remembered herself. “There’s no need,” she said briskly as she walked around the bed and replaced the book on Fannie’s bedside table. She met Fannie’s eyes and offered a sweet smile, but when she straightened her cap, which didn’t need adjustment as far as Fannie could tell, Fannie knew she was lying.

  * * *

  One person who did not appear to be at all worried by Fannie’s mounting blood pressure was Isaac. He came and went from the hospital as if it were F. W. Woolworth’s and he was ticking his obligations off an imaginary list: knock lightly, kiss wife on head, sit but not too comfortably lest wife believe you might stay for a while, explain why you haven’t visited in several days, indicate you have a very important meeting for which you mustn’t be late, look at watch several times, stand and stretch, remark on how the time has flown, kiss wife once more. Most of the time, he was in and out of the room within half an hour.

  Fannie could put up with the long absences but she worried about what they were doing to Gussie. Between her mother’s silence on the subject, the strange way Gussie had acted on her last visit, and the little information she managed to drag out of Isaac, Fannie felt sure he wasn’t visiting their daughter. At least not frequently enough for her liking. Fannie knew she was biased but she actually thought Gussie was good company. She was funny and quick and kind, and behind her eyes, which were as big as oceans, there was a light of understanding that Fannie recognized as both familiar and extraordinary. What must it be doing to her to feel so pitifully ignored by her own father?

  Lately, Fannie had begun to wonder if there might be something wrong with Isaac. He’d spent the whole of his last visit talking about a trip to Florida he wanted to take with Fannie and Gussie after the baby was born.

  “We can take the train down,” he had said from the edge of his seat. “See the Everglades. Jim says you can pay a guide to take you through the wetlands by boat.”

  “The Everglades?” Fannie repeated, slowly.

  “Sure. In Florida.”

  “I know where they are.”

  “There are alligators and sea turtles and all sorts of birds. Gussie would love it.”

  “You want to take a newborn baby to the tropics in the heat of summer? Are you mad?”

  “It’d just be for a few weeks. Long enough to take a look around. Put my eyes on some land that’s up for sale in Palm Beach County.”

  “Land?”

  “Jim gave me a tip on a parcel of land. Near Lake Okeechobee. About a hundred acres off Conners Highway.”

  “You want to buy land in Florida?”

  “Prices are low.”

  “Didn’t Florida go bust?”

  “That’s why it’s such a good investment.”

  “Isaac,” she said slowly, trying to get his full attention, “we can’t even pay for this room.”

  “Yes, well—”

  “And what about a house? Or paying back my father?”

  “This deal is what’s going to get us there. I’ll hold on to the land for a few years and when we go to sell, I’ll make a good profit.”

  “Please tell me you haven’t already signed.”

  “All I’ve bought is the binder.”

  “Is it refundable?”

  Isaac looked at her like she didn’t have a clue in her head. “A binder is a deposit.”

  “That you can or can’t get back?”

  “I’ve got forty-five days to get together the rest of the money.”

  “You’re not answering my question,” Fannie persisted. “If you don’t raise the rest of the money or if your wife loses her mind, can you get it back?”

  “No.”

  Fannie suddenly felt short of breath.

  “But, Fan, I’ll raise the money.”

  She grabbed hold of her stomach with both hands and tried to concentrate on taking deep, slow breaths, like the kind she took when Bette or one of the other nurses took her blood pressure. Had sheer irritation ever sent a woman into early labor?

  “Fan?”

  She was reluctant to meet Isaac’s gaze, scared that if she did, she might say something she’d later regret. Eventually, she let out a long sigh and turned to face her husband. “I can’t talk about this now.”

  Her head pounded. Dr. Rosenthal had warned her to pay attention to her body’s signals. Headaches, stomach pains, and swelling in the legs could all be signs that something was wrong. Of course, those symptoms could also be signs that she was eight months pregnant and feeling extremely anxious and put out. She leaned back against her pillows, permanently propped upright, and closed her eyes. When she did so, did the pressure subside? She thought it did.

  “I want to—” Isaac started to say, but Fannie held up a hand to stop him. She was so tired of his big ideas, of never having a cent to their name. With her eyes shut tight, she could pretend he wasn’t in the room, wasn’t in the process of throwing over their life.

  Fannie breathed slowly, in and out.

  Eventually she fell asleep but, when she did, she dreamed she was in the Florida wetlands. The baby, so newly born, was missing, and Fannie waded through brackish water, calling its name at the top of her lungs. The mud along the bank was thick, and her feet couldn’t get good purchase. Eventually she was forced to swim but the weight of her wet nightgown slowed her progress, as did the alligators that nipped at the hem. After what felt like hours of swimming but was probably only minutes, Fannie discovered the baby, afloat atop a giant lily pad. The baby was motionless and pale and shimmered in the hot sun, as if it had been submerged in the water for several hours first. Three vultures circled overhead. Fannie screamed, trying to ward off the birds, but now she couldn’t recall the baby’s name. In her confusion, she screamed, “Florence!”

  * * *

  All day, Fannie had waited for her sister to walk through the door of her hospital room, and all day, she’d been disappointed when one nurse or another bustled in instead. If Florence’s ship was leaving from Chelsea Piers on the tenth, it was likely she’d take the train up to New York on the ninth and stay overnight, somewhere close to the port. If that was indeed the plan, then today was Florence’s last day in Atlantic City, and by extension, the last day she might reasonably pay her sister a visit. Fannie looked at the small clock that sat on her bedside table. It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening.

  “Selfish, selfish, selfish,” Fannie muttered under her breath as she heaved herself out of bed. Her feet were beg
inning to feel heavy, a sensation she thought she remembered from her first pregnancy.

  There was only one thing to do. She’d borrow the telephone in the nurses’ lounge and call the apartment. Ask to speak to Florence directly. It was dinnertime. Everyone was sure to be at home. In fact, it was likely her mother had cooked a big meal, a special send-off for the Channel swimmer. She imagined the table laid with her mother’s Adams Ironstone Calyx Ware and silver-plated cutlery. Sometimes, on special occasions, her mother filled a vase with fresh-cut cornflowers. Were they in bloom now? Fannie couldn’t remember.

  She steadied herself. She had gotten so little practice lugging this new body around. Even her trips to the bathroom, which had begun to feel like outings, had been curtailed. Most of the nurses, with the exception of Dorothy, who was lazy, now urged her to use a bedpan instead.

  Fannie barely managed to tie her robe around her midsection. She had no hope of getting her feet into her slippers—it was as if they’d shrunk two sizes—so she kicked them under the bed and padded, barefoot, out of the room and down the hall.

  Dorothy was in the lounge eating a tuna sandwich when Fannie rounded the corner. “Hey! What are you doing out of bed?” she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The smell of the tuna invaded Fannie’s nostrils and nearly turned her stomach.

  “I was hoping to use the telephone.”

  “You’re not supposed to use this one.”

  “I don’t have one in my room.”

  “Yes, well…” said Dorothy. Her voice trailed off.

  Dorothy had been behaving oddly for several weeks now, and Fannie began to worry she’d overheard her poking fun at her, to Esther or one of the other nurses. Fannie had also complained about Dorothy to Superintendent McLoughlin on at least two occasions, and she suspected her mother had as well.