Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  So, where was she now? Suddenly, it occurred to Fannie. “She’s looking for Isaac, isn’t she?”

  Joseph pressed his lips together, as if he were trying to refrain from saying the thing he most wanted to say. “The nurse who called said she tried him first. He must not have heard the phone ring.”

  “Must not have,” she said, unable to meet her father’s eyes. The ring of the telephone in their apartment was so shrill that, for years, she had unplugged the receiver whenever Gussie napped. Where could Isaac be?

  “I may have woken you for nothing,” she said, glancing at Dorothy, who seemed utterly bored by their reunion. “A quarter hour ago I felt certain I was about to be wheeled off to the labor room but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I’m glad for the excuse to come. I should have done this months ago.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” said Dorothy, from her chair, “men are never any good at this.”

  “Dorothy,” Fannie said, desperate to get the girl out of her room, at least for a few minutes. “Would you give us a little time? I promise he’ll come get you if anything changes.” Dorothy looked unsure of herself, torn between wanting very much to be back in the lounge, listening to her radio program, and not wanting to upset Dr. Rosenthal. Finally, she got up and left.

  When Dorothy had rounded the corner, Joseph shook his head and chuckled, “That must be the one your mother’s always complaining about.”

  “She’s a pip.”

  “I don’t know how you’ve stood it,” said Joseph as he moved around the bed and took a seat in Dorothy’s vacant chair. “A whole summer in this bed.”

  “I’d have much preferred to be anywhere else,” said Fannie. “I’m so jealous of Florence, I could scream.”

  Her father looked away from her, and Fannie immediately regretted the remark. She sounded catty, when what she wanted was to come off as generous, patient, and kind. So, she tried again.

  “Honestly, the hardest part’s been being away from Gussie.”

  Joseph didn’t say anything, just nodded appreciatively. Then they both allowed several quiet moments to pass.

  “Your mother says you’ve been following the Dionne quints quite closely,” he said, finally. “Have you heard the littlest one is getting a radium treatment for a tumor on her leg?”

  Fannie felt a great tenderness for her father, who she knew did not approve of the reportage of sensational stories and who certainly did not believe it necessary for newspaper editors to devote multiple column inches to the daily activity of five infants—quintuplets or not. Of course, Fannie already knew about the radium treatment. Bette continued to bring her clippings, although they were hard to read in the dark of her room. “Dr. Rosenthal says radium can cure anything.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, not anything. But lots of things. Not me. And not Hy—” Fannie stopped herself. Why had she done that? Bringing up Hyram when she was so close to going right back into that same delivery room. She kept one hand on her stomach, feeling for the slightest indication that another contraction was imminent.

  “Fannie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot this summer. I think we did the wrong thing with Hyram.”

  “The incubator?”

  “No, the burial. We should have buried him at Egg Harbor.”

  Halakhah was clear. There were no burial rites or mourning traditions for babies who died before their thirty-first day of life. Despite Fannie’s pleadings, her child had been buried in an unmarked grave.

  Fannie felt her face grow hot, her eyes well with tears. “I thought you said Rabbi Levy wouldn’t allow it.”

  “I should have pushed harder,” said Joseph. “Insisted.”

  “You quoted Maimonides to me.”

  “Maimonides lived seven hundred years ago. What does he know? He didn’t see the way you loved that baby.”

  On the day Hyram had slipped away, the nurses at the incubator exhibit had called Fannie at home and told her to hurry down to the Boardwalk. By the time she arrived, they had transferred her baby to an incubator in the back, out of view of the mobs of summer tourists that snaked around the perimeter of the exhibition hall. She had hoped to catch her son’s last breaths, to feel the grip of his tiny finger as he touched the edges of the next world, but he was already gone when she arrived.

  “Mother said it was frivolous to name him.”

  “What did either of us know about losing a child?” said Joseph. “We should have said Kaddish, observed Yahrzeit.”

  Fannie had known, sitting in front of that incubator, that there would be no funeral, that they would not sit Shiva. In lieu of a funeral prayer, she issued an apology to her tiny son. “I’m sorry for not taking better care of you,” she whispered.

  That memory, which was usually so vivid, grew blurry as the baby inside Fannie tugged hard at her insides. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and dug her fingers into the hospital mattress. As the pain subsided, Fannie reminded herself that this baby did not care that the one before it had not lived.

  “Should I get the nurse?” her father asked, already halfway across the room.

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly a quarter after two.”

  A half hour had elapsed since her last contraction. She didn’t need Dorothy Geller to tell her that she had a long way to go.

  “Let’s wait a little longer.”

  Joseph returned to his chair and slowly lowered himself back into it.

  “Thank you,” said Fannie. “For what you said about Hyram.”

  “Sometimes I worry, Fan. That I got so caught up with turning Florence into a champion swimmer, I forgot to ask what you wanted out of life.”

  “Oh, Pop. I’m fine.”

  “Are you?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  “Being a wife is obviously very important,” said Joseph slowly, “but I don’t think it’s the only thing.”

  “What else is there?” She had meant to pose the question sarcastically but it hadn’t come off that way.

  “I see Mrs. Simons, at the plant. She has a husband but is also a skilled secretary and an extremely competent logistician. She seems happy. Or maybe fulfilled is a better word.”

  Had Fannie ever felt fulfilled? Perhaps that first day she had held Gussie in her arms. Most days she hardly felt anything at all. It had gone on like this for so long, even before Hyram’s death, that she had forgotten there was any other way to feel.

  “Once this baby is a little older,” said Joseph, “I wonder if you might want to come work for me.”

  “At the store?”

  “No. In the office. At the plant.”

  It was a thrilling idea in theory but in practice it might be a great deal more discouraging. “Alongside Isaac?” she asked, trying to imagine how she’d navigate her marriage if there were no natural boundaries, no quiet places to seek refuge. She pictured packing two lunch pails each morning. At midday, when they took their break, Isaac would eat his pickle and hers, too.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I wonder if Isaac would like that?”

  “Does it matter?” her father asked quietly.

  Fannie didn’t have a quick answer to that. Nothing witty or sharp. She certainly couldn’t act taken aback, not when they both knew that Esther was turning over every stone in Atlantic City, looking for her husband. She wished her mother had come to the hospital first. Fannie might have given her some places to look. Or told her not to bother.

  “You’re a smart girl. Always have been,” said Joseph.

  Truth be told, Fannie didn’t even really know what people did in offices. In secretarial school, she had learned how to write memorandums and business letters and how to answer a phone but she had quit before they’d gotten to anything very tricky.

  “I don’t know anything about business.”

  “You’ll learn.”

  Joseph

  When Dr. Rosenthal returned to check on Fannie at a quarter to three, Jose
ph stood and excused himself. “I’ll wait in the corridor,” he said, although he wasn’t sure either of them heard him.

  He worried he wasn’t doing a very good impression of Esther, who would—were she here—know what questions to ask Dr. Rosenthal and what to say to reassure Fannie. Both his girls had been born in the apartment over the store, and on each occasion, he’d done nothing more than pace the living room and say a prayer when the midwife brought word of a healthy daughter, and more importantly, a healthy wife. Shehecheyanu.

  He heard his wife’s footsteps in the stairwell before she appeared in the corridor. From where he stood, outside Fannie’s room, he could fully appreciate her approach—the sure clip of her heels, the hard-set chin, the way her eyes were, perhaps for the first time in two months, open wide. Only her mouth, pinched at both sides, gave her away. She was afraid.

  “Did you find him?” he asked when she was close enough that he could use a loud whisper.

  “I gave up and left a note on the door of their apartment.”

  “Where the hell could he be?”

  “They haven’t moved her?”

  “Not yet. I think soon.” He studied his wife’s anxious face.

  They stood in silence for several minutes, still unsure of what to say to each other in the aftermath of their argument. When Joseph could stand it no longer, he spoke. “Bub, Mrs. Simons came to see me this afternoon.”

  A look of concern flashed across Esther’s face. He knew she liked Mrs. Simons, always had.

  “She’s fine,” said Joseph. “It’s Isaac.”

  “What now?”

  “She thinks he’s been stealing money from the company.”

  Esther didn’t look surprised. Just tired. “How?”

  “He brought on a few new accounts this month. In Northfield. Opened lines of credit for each of them. But Mrs. Simons says they’ve actually been paying for their orders in cash.”

  “And she thinks Isaac’s been pocketing their payments?”

  “She’s certain of it.”

  She closed her eyes, kneaded the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Have you talked to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What will you—”

  The door opened and Dr. Rosenthal stepped into the hallway.

  Esther looked up. “How is she?” she asked him.

  “I want to give her a few more hours, see if she progresses on her own,” he said. “If she does, then we’ll move her.”

  “May I see her?” Esther asked.

  “Yes, but be quick. She needs to rest. You two should probably get some sleep as well.”

  “Isaac may be on his way over,” said Esther, and Dr. Rosenthal cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “I’ll wait for him downstairs,” offered Joseph. He reached for his wife’s hand and squeezed it, nodded at the door of Fannie’s room. “Go.”

  Esther didn’t squeeze his hand back, didn’t turn to look at him. As he watched her disappear into the room, he was struck, for the first time, by the full weight of their decision to keep Florence’s death from Fannie. It was exhausting to sit with Fannie, to so carefully consider every word, every facial expression. He had agreed to his wife’s plan but had not helped her see it through. It was no wonder she was angry all the time.

  The lobby was empty. Joseph took a seat close to the door so he would be sure to see Isaac coming. What was his son-in-law doing out at three o’clock in the morning? He knew Esther had had good intentions when she insisted that Gussie come to stay with them for the summer but now Joseph wondered whether it might have been better to require Isaac to look after his own child. Esther could have watched Gussie during the day, while Isaac was at the office, but if their granddaughter had gone home with her father in the evenings, it was likely Isaac would have spent considerably less time putzing around Atlantic City, doing God knows what.

  Isaac arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. When he yanked at the big front door, he let in the smell of the ocean breeze, which whipped across Absecon Island at night. Joseph watched Isaac scan the lobby. He raised a hand, then waited for his son-in-law to cover the distance between them.

  “What’s happening?” Isaac said, in lieu of a greeting.

  Joseph was not inclined to give him the information he wanted, certainly not yet. “Where were you?”

  “I must not have heard the phone ring.”

  “Or your mother-in-law pounding on your front door?”

  Isaac didn’t even blink. “Right.”

  “So, I am to believe that, in the middle of the night, you woke up and thought, ‘I’d better check the front door to see if anyone’s left me a note.’ ”

  Isaac reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper, which he balled up and tossed onto Joseph’s lap. “Right. Now what’s going on?”

  Joseph grabbed up the piece of paper and unfolded it, smoothing it against his knee. Sure enough, it was Esther’s note, short and to the point. In big letters she had written, The hospital tried to call you. Fannie is in labor. Where ARE you?

  This behavior of Isaac’s was new, and it made Joseph nervous. Isaac might have always disliked Joseph and Esther but, until now, he had acted deferentially toward them.

  “Are you drunk?” Joseph asked quietly.

  “Where’s Fannie?”

  “In her room but you can’t go up there right now.”

  Isaac turned toward the stairs.

  “Stop,” said Joseph. “The doctor said no more visitors.”

  Isaac ignored him and kept walking in the direction of the stairs. Joseph was out of his chair in a split second, at Isaac’s side before he could fully consider his next move. He grabbed Isaac by the shoulder and yelled “Sit down!” in a voice far larger and louder than he’d ever used with his son-in-law, with anyone for that matter. Joseph watched Isaac wind back his arm, then watched it dawn on him that he was about to clock his father-in-law. “Please, sit down,” Joseph repeated, in a quieter voice than before.

  Isaac unclenched his fist and returned it to his side. He looked around, found the nearest chair, and sank into it. Joseph followed, sitting in the chair next to him.

  “Their plan is to try to let her get a little rest, and then take her to the labor room in a few hours.”

  Isaac nodded vacantly. Did he even care?

  “What’s going on, Isaac?” He didn’t smell like alcohol, just sweat.

  Isaac didn’t answer.

  “Is this about the Florida deal? I’m sorry I didn’t buy in.”

  “It’s too late for any of that.”

  “Investing or apologizing?”

  Isaac let out a short laugh. “The first one. Or maybe both.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “About five hundred. Plus everything my father had.”

  Joseph turned his head to get a better look at his son-in-law. Was he hearing him correctly? “Does that include the money you took from Adler’s?”

  It was Isaac’s turn to look surprised.

  “Mrs. Simons figured it out,” said Joseph, “the new Northfield accounts.”

  Isaac made no denials, didn’t even bother searching for an excuse.

  How could a man who had so much always manage to believe he had so little? It was as if, looking at Isaac, Joseph could see straight through to the end of Fannie’s life. She might live a half century beyond her sister but she was always going to be burdened by a husband who was dissatisfied with his own existence, with hers as well. If Joseph did nothing, Fannie would drown, too, just much more slowly.

  He did some quick calculations. Isaac had been repaying the loan for almost five years, which meant that more than a thousand dollars had accumulated in the account Joseph had established at the Boardwalk National Bank. In all the years Isaac had been making the payments, Joseph had never once considered forgiving his son-in-law’s debt. He thought of the money in the account as Fannie’s and imagined returning it to her eventually in th
e form of an inheritance or something more tangible that he could watch her enjoy. He had contemplated using it to help the couple buy a house or send Gussie to college. The trick, he had always known, would be to find the thing that Isaac’s greed couldn’t spoil, the thing he couldn’t beg, barter, or steal out from under Fannie’s nose. The thing that would most directly improve his daughter’s life. What if that thing was ridding her of Isaac?

  “There’s a thousand dollars in the account at the Boardwalk National Bank,” Joseph said.

  Isaac shot a glance at Joseph. “You’d let me have that?”

  “With some stipulations.”

  Isaac didn’t say anything, just sat up straighter in his chair. Joseph knew he had his attention. Was he really going to propose this?

  “Leave town.”

  “You want us to move?”

  “Just you,” said Joseph. Then he held his breath.

  It was possible that Isaac would let out a loud laugh and relay this offer to Fannie the first chance he got. Tonight? Tomorrow? After the baby’s safe arrival? In any of those scenarios, Joseph was sure to lose his remaining daughter. And Gussie, too. What would Fannie think of him if she learned he had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy off her husband? Other parents might be accused of meddling but this was something else altogether.

  “For good?”

  Joseph didn’t hear the question, so worried was he that he had just made the largest mistake of his life. “Hmm?”

  “You want me gone for good?”

  Maybe it was best not to answer that question so directly. “Isaac, when I look at you, I see a man who wants a different kind of life.”

  “What man doesn’t wake up some days wanting a different life?”

  “Me.”

  “Even now?” Isaac asked, waving his hands around at the hospital’s surrounds. “After this summer? There aren’t things you’d change?”

  “Of course there are,” said Joseph. “But even on the day I buried Florence, I was glad for every one of the days that had preceded it.”

  “And you think I’m built so differently?”