Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  Isaac didn’t know what to say to that. If Stuart didn’t have access to his father’s checkbook, he was as unlikely an investor as Gussie was. And Isaac’s plan to raise the rest of the money was as worthless as any he’d ever concocted. Isaac shuddered at the idea of admitting to Fannie that he’d squandered more of their savings but what he really couldn’t stomach was the thought of going back to his father empty-handed, of admitting that the old man’s hard-earned money was gone.

  “I was just making conversation, Stuart. No need to get upset.”

  “Well, next time you want to make conversation, why don’t you do it on dry land?”

  Stuart’s words stung. Who was he to order Isaac around? Isaac felt the urge to hit him or, at the very least, to shove him—hard—onto the packed sand. He clenched his fists, then unclenched them and wrung the water out of his shirttails instead. There had to be a better way to get what he wanted. There almost always was.

  Stuart

  Stuart watched as a storm took shape on the horizon. At the height of a busy Atlantic City summer, an overcast day came as a welcome relief to the members of the Beach Patrol. Absecon Island’s permanent residents stayed away from the beach, opting to be more productive at home or at the office, and the summer residents hunkered down in their vacation rentals, reading magazines and playing Parcheesi. Only the day-trippers, with no place to go, tried to make the best of things. They spent as much time at the beach as they could bear before giving up and seeking shelter at the arcades and amusements of the piers.

  By midafternoon, there were so few people in the water that Robert took the rescue boat out, just to break up the tedium. “Whistle if you need me to come back,” he said as Stuart waved him off.

  Stuart’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to make a save while he was down a boat, but that the impending storm would interfere with Anna’s lesson, which was still a couple of hours away. On lesson nights, Anna arrived at the beach tent at six o’clock on the nose. If Stuart wasn’t yet finished putting away his gear, she waited patiently, and then they made their way across the Boardwalk to The Covington, where he had finally managed to convince her to stop asking him if they were really allowed to use the pool.

  In the distance, Stuart could see lines of rain, like gray thread, fastening the clouds above to the ocean below. He couldn’t cancel Anna’s lesson if he wanted to; he was stuck in this chair until six o’clock. It occurred to him that Anna might not come, might decide on her own that the weather looked too bad to warrant leaving the Adlers’ apartment. A sinking feeling came over him. If she wasn’t at the beach tent, waiting for him, he knew he would be disappointed.

  A hundred yards off the coast, beyond Robert and his rescue boat, a group of porpoises moved south. Occasionally, one of the beautiful creatures would throw itself into the air, landing back in the great, green lake with a flick of its tail, but more often, they skimmed the water’s surface, showing off no more than a nose here and a fin there. Stuart could have watched them all day but they never stayed that long.

  “Do you see that?” a small voice said from the sand below. Stuart looked down from his chair to find Gussie staring up at him.

  “Hey you,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  Stuart scanned the beach. If Gussie was here, Anna had to be close by. Maybe she intended to cancel the lesson and had brought Gussie along for company. He hoped like hell Isaac hadn’t brought her. It had been a week since Stuart had seen him, and he liked it that way. “Who are you here with?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Nobody?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Can I come up?”

  She actually couldn’t come up. It was one of the rules. No one but an Atlantic City Beach Patrol employee was allowed in the stand.

  Stuart looked up and down the beach, one eye out for the chief. He was probably at home playing Parcheesi, too.

  “Come on up but be quick.”

  Gussie was an agile child but she still had a hard time heaving herself onto the platform. After a few failed attempts, Stuart reached down, grabbed her hands, and hoisted her up.

  “Here,” he said, handing her his sweater and an ACBP cap. “Put these on.” He was kidding himself to think that Chief Bryant would spy a sixty-pound child in his stand but discount her because she was wearing the proper uniform.

  “Does your grandmother know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “She’s going to panic when she realizes you’re missing. You can’t stay long.”

  Stuart wondered if he should call Robert back. The beach was quiet enough that he could walk Gussie home. Maybe it’d give him a chance to see Anna, to make alternate plans.

  “Oh, there they are again!” Gussie shouted, the ACBP cap falling down over her eyes. She pushed it back up on her head and looked at Stuart. “Dolphins.”

  “They’re not dolphins. They’re porpoises.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The fins. Dolphins have curved fins, and porpoises’ fins look like little triangles.”

  “I like dolphins,” said Gussie. “They have their own special language.”

  Stuart gave his best dolphin impression.

  “What were you saying?”

  “I said, ‘Your grandmother is going to skin your hide.’ ”

  “It’s like how we have ARP talk.”

  “True.” It was hard for Stuart to comprehend how this child could be Isaac’s. She was so thoughtful and earnest.

  Stuart and Gussie watched the last of the porpoises swim beyond Million Dollar Pier and out of sight. The wind was picking up and the rescue boat was getting smaller with each passing minute. If the waves got much bigger, Robert would have to turn around.

  “Stuart,” Gussie said, tucking a piece of hair that had escaped the cap behind her ear, “if Florence hadn’t died, would you have married her?”

  The question felt like a kick between the shoulder blades. Stuart pictured the brunt force of her remark knocking him off the stand and into the hard-packed sand three feet below.

  “That’s a big question for so small a girl.”

  “I’ll be eight soon.”

  “I guess that’s true.” How could he explain his relationship with Florence in terms a little girl—even one as precocious as Gussie—might understand? That there had been days when his wanting had felt like an open wound that needed to be tended to immediately, and other days it had felt like a bone he could bury in the backyard, something to come back to when Florence was ready, if she would ever be ready.

  “Did you love her?” Gussie asked.

  “I did but it wasn’t that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  It was a good question. Why hadn’t it been that simple?

  “Well, for one thing, I’m not Jewish.”

  “Does that matter?”

  Stuart turned to look at her. “It shouldn’t but it does.”

  “What are you?”

  “Nothing. Maybe Protestant? I don’t really know anymore.”

  “So Jews can’t marry Protestants?”

  “I think Jews prefer to marry Jews.”

  Gussie squeezed her lips together and her chin began to quiver. Worried she might cry, Stuart scurried to fix what he’d said. “I don’t know that that was it, though. I was also her coach.”

  Another poor excuse. He wasn’t nearly as noble as all that. If Florence had given Stuart even a small sign, during one of those early morning practices, he would have been tempted to make love to her, right there in the bilge of the boat. But she had never given him the slightest indication she was interested.

  “Are coaches not allowed to get married?”

  Stuart laughed. “No, they are.” When Florence returned from France, he had imagined that he might tell her how he felt and see if she felt the same way. If the revelation changed the dynamic of their friendship, then that would have been something he had to live with.


  “I made you something,” Gussie said, reaching into the pocket of her sundress.

  She withdrew a small rock and handed it to him.

  Stuart turned it over. On one side she had painted two miniature sea horses.

  “How lovely, Gus. Thank you.”

  “I wanted to ask”—her voice suddenly a whisper—“if you might marry me?”

  * * *

  By six o’clock that evening, when Robert and Stuart lowered their lifeguard stand into the sand, secured their boat, and headed toward the beach tent, the sky had not yet opened up but the storm clouds had settled squarely over the Boardwalk. As they approached the tent, Stuart convinced himself that Anna likely wouldn’t be there. Who could blame her? Any minute, it was going to pour.

  Stuart put away his rescue can and the pair of oars he and Robert had taken that morning.

  “Can I help with anything?”

  He whipped around to find Anna standing a few feet behind him, the shoulder strap of her bathing suit peeking out from the neckline of her cotton dress. A pale pink cardigan hung from her shoulders.

  “Good! You came. I was worried the storm would keep you away.”

  “There’s no storm yet.”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a raindrop landed on Stuart’s cheek. Anna turned her face up toward the sky, and Stuart took the opportunity to grab her hand. “Come on, let’s hurry.”

  They ran up the stairs and across the Boardwalk, through the lobby of The Covington, and up the hotel’s back stairs to the second floor. By the time they tumbled out the door and onto the pool deck, Anna was out of breath and Stuart had begun an impersonation of his father that had them both cackling. “Shhh, whisper,” he said in the loudest whisper imaginable, which only caused her to laugh harder. The deck was empty. In preparation for the coming storm, all the chairs had been stacked against the walls, the umbrellas removed. Someone had taken all the towels and seat cushions inside.

  Anna took off her cardigan and placed it aside. The first time Stuart had brought her to The Covington, she had been shy about getting undressed in front of him. He remembered her turning away from him to unbutton the front of her dress. Now, as the rain began to pick up, she reached for the material that cinched around her waist and pulled the dress up and over her head in one fluid movement. Anna wore Florence’s old Ambassador Club suit, a uniform that Stuart would have recognized anywhere. He didn’t have the heart to mention it, knew she had to be wearing it because she didn’t own a suit of her own. She had surely picked it because it was the plainest of Florence’s suits, the least likely to attract attention. On Florence the suit had seemed like a second skin. But on Anna, Stuart realized he was conscious of the fact that it was an article of clothing, and that, under the right set of circumstances, it could be removed.

  Stuart shook the image from his head, pulled his shirt over his head, kicked off his shorts, and took a running leap at the pool. At the last minute, he grabbed Anna’s hand and pulled her into the water with him. She let out a yelp, submerged, and then surfaced. The rain was falling harder now. Big droplets bounced off the surface of the water, hitting the undersides of their chins. The pool water was so cloudy Stuart couldn’t see the bottom.

  Anna had gotten much better at the crawl, and she swam three or four lengths before stopping to ask Stuart a question about her breathing technique. He took the opportunity to distract her. “I assume Gussie made it back in one piece?”

  “She did. Thankfully, Esther didn’t realize she was gone until about thirty seconds before she walked in the door.”

  “Did Gussie say where she’d been?”

  “Are you trying to figure out how much trouble you’re in?” she asked, moving closer to him.

  “Something like that.”

  “She told Esther she wanted to give you something.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What was it?”

  “A rock.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It came with a very sweet marriage proposal,” Stuart said, unable to wipe the grin from his face.

  Anna raised her eyebrows and splashed water at him, but not so hard that any got in his face. “Be serious.”

  He laughed. “I am.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That if she reached the age of twenty, and decided she wanted to marry an old man, she was welcome. But if, in the meantime, she fell in love with someone younger and more handsome, she should feel free to ask to be let out of the arrangement.”

  “Poor Gussie.”

  “Am I such a terrible prospect?”

  “I think you are likely to break her heart,” said Anna, in a serious enough tone of voice that Stuart began to wonder if they were still talking about Gussie.

  “Anna, I want you to know something. Florence and I were never a—”

  “I know,” she said, quickly, as if she were embarrassed that he had felt the need to explain.

  “You do?” he asked.

  “She”—Anna’s voice faltered, then returned to her—“told me a little.”

  Stuart was struck by an overwhelming urge to wrap his arms around her, to protect her from the storm that was brewing above their heads.

  “I loved her,” he said, not quite believing that he was saying the words aloud for the second time that afternoon. For some reason, it felt important to be honest with Anna. “But I never said anything. And I don’t think she felt the same way.”

  Anna wrapped her arms around her chest, and Stuart worried he shouldn’t have said anything. Not two minutes ago, he would have sworn she wanted him to kiss her. “Are you cold?” he asked. “Do you want to get out?”

  She shook her head no. “What was it you loved about her?”

  Stuart dipped his head back in the water and looked at the sky, let the rain leak into his mouth, run down his nose. He raised his head, forced himself to look Anna in the eyes. “I suppose I loved how brave she was. And capable. There was almost nothing she wouldn’t or couldn’t do.”

  “Like the Channel?” she asked, holding his gaze.

  “She would have made it across, definitely. But it was more than just that one swim, or even swimming at all. You felt lucky if you got the chance to watch her make a sandwich.”

  Anna wiped at her eyes. Was she crying? With all the rain, it was impossible to tell.

  “Do you want to get out?”

  She nodded and he pulled himself out of the pool and onto the deck, looking around for anything dry they might use in place of a towel. Anna’s dress and his shorts were both soaked. A chaise lounge was covered in a piece of oatmeal-colored canvas, embroidered with the words The Covington, and Stuart figured the underside had to still be dry. He whisked it off and carried the armful of canvas over to Anna, who had just emerged at the top of the ladder.

  “It’s not particularly soft but it’ll do the trick,” he said, wrapping the canvas, which was as big as a tent, around her shoulders.

  “Thank you.”

  “Come over here where it’s dry,” Stuart said, leading her toward the rear of the pool deck where the roofline of the hotel created a small overhang—no more than a foot or two in depth. Anna offered him a portion of the canvas, which he draped around his own shoulders. The pair leaned together, pulling the canvas around themselves, and watched the rain come down.

  “How are things going with your parents?” said Stuart. “Isaac says not so good.”

  Anna scrunched up her nose. “Isaac?”

  “He’s probably not a very reliable source?” Stuart said with a laugh.

  She shook her head, pulled the canvas a little closer. “Actually, their prospects seem better.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ve got two extra letters now, besides Joseph’s. And Joseph was very generous and started an account at the Boardwalk National Bank for them, so I think that will help.”

  So that’s what Joseph had done with the check on the afternoon they’d re
turned from Atlantic Highlands. Put the money in an account in Anna’s parents’ name. He was a good man. “That’s great news, Anna.”

  She looked up at Stuart then, her face as open and effervescent as he’d ever seen it. He liked the idea that Florence’s death, her failure to do the one thing she’d ever wanted, was making it possible for Anna’s family to be reunited. He thought Florence would have liked it, too.

  They stood in silence for several long and quiet minutes. Finally, Stuart broke the spell. “I guess we could go inside. I might be able to find us some robes.”

  “This is nice,” was all Anna said but it was enough to make him stay right where he was.

  * * *

  Stuart could hear Mrs. Tate’s heavy footfalls on the stairs that led up to his room. His landlady was a large woman, with fat feet and swollen ankles, and it was rare for her to take the stairs at all, let alone all the way to the boardinghouse’s third floor. The wood risers groaned under her weight, and—as if in response—Mrs. Tate did as well.

  The sound caused Stuart to sit up in bed, rub his eyes, and look around for a shirt. He had begun to dig through a pile of dirty clothes when he heard the knock at his door.

  “Mr. Williams?” On the other side of the door, Mrs. Tate was doing her best to catch her breath.

  “One minute.” Stuart spied a sweater and pulled it over his head.

  “You have a package.”

  Odd, Stuart thought. Mrs. Tate usually left all mail—packages included—on the table under the stairs. In the three years he’d lived here, how many times had he overheard her telling a tenant that she wasn’t the Pony Express? A dozen times? More?

  “You didn’t have to come all the way up,” he said as he opened the door but, when he saw the package in her hand, he knew why she had made the trip.

  It was one of The Covington’s gift boxes—the kind that they used in the shop on the first floor, purple with gold lettering foil stamped on the lid—and she had to be curious as to its contents, not to mention the lineage of her third-floor tenant. She handed it to him.