Jane Austen in Boca (27 page)

M
ANY OF THE GRANDCHILDREN VISITING DURING SPRING BREAK
were indeed adorable, and some even appeared to have genuine affection for their
bubbies
and
zaydies,
but though Flo knew that her neighbors pitied her for not having grandchildren to show off, she was secretly content to be left alone. One morning, she was sitting on a chaise longue near the pod pool reading Saul Bellow’s recent roman à clef,
Ravelstein,
a book that brought vividly to mind the qualities that annoyed her in its author. It was her impression that the book was less a disguised jab at Bellow’s old friend Allan Bloom, as critics would have it, than it was a more vicious attack on his second wife—or was it his third or fourth?—a Romanian mathematician whom Flo remembered traipsing through the library as though she owned the place. No doubt she had traipsed through her marriage to Bellow with the same air of confident entitlement and done a job on her husband’s self-esteem. It was just like a Jewish man to use his literary gifts to get back; hadn’t Roth done something similar in one of his earlier, self-aggrandizing tomes? Given her annoyance at such things, she wondered why she kept on reading these men’s books. She supposed it was to confirm for herself that the battle of the sexes still raged undiminished as the fuel for literary creativity.

She had been reading near the pod pool for a while with no one to distract her. Very few people frequented the pod pool, except when there were pod meetings or when someone had reserved the pod cabana for a private party. Most Boca Festa
residents preferred the more social atmosphere of the main pool, where gossip and people-watching were the major attractions. Once, it is true, she had seen a man reading a book near the main pool, marking in it assiduously with a yellow highlighter. On drawing near, she had discerned its title—
How to Satisfy a Woman
—and had brought Lila and May out to look. The man had peered up at them over his bifocals, considered them for a moment, perhaps contemplating whether he might want to satisfy
them,
and apparently deciding otherwise, returned to his highlighting. That was the only occasion, as far as Flo could recall, of a book making an appearance at the main pool.

Flo occasionally liked to sit by the main pool with May and Lila, but she found the shady tranquillity of the pod pool more to her taste, especially because no one else did. This morning she had been engrossed for close to two hours in translating the fictionalized pieces of Bellow’s book into their real-life counterparts, when she looked up to see a rather rumpled Stan Jacobs walking toward her on the little path that connected the parking lot to the pool. His appearance was a surprise.

She had seen him fairly regularly since May and Norman had become what Boca Festa matrons winkingly called “an item.” She sometimes drove May to his house to garden (though May would occasionally take Norman’s advice to call a cab, she still found herself averse to what she termed “taking advantage”). When Flo did drive May, Stan generally made a point of going out to the backyard to help her friend. Flo preferred to stay in his study and browse through his books. She had once caught a glimpse of him watching her silently from the hall—he must have entered the house very quietly, since she had heard nothing—and she quickly put down the volume she was looking at (a collection of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer), remembering his reaction when she picked up a book the last time she was there. But when she turned around again, he was gone.

Whenever she joined May and Norman for lunch or dinner
at Broken Arrow, he was usually present, though he rarely said much. She continued to catch glimpses of him looking at her when he thought she was unaware of it. It had made her careful about chewing with her mouth closed and holding her knife properly. Once, catching his eyes on her as she reached across the table for the salt, she proclaimed fearlessly:

“I realize I’m reaching across May’s plate for the salt and should ask her to pass it but, say what you will against me, I’m a reckless and uncouth character. And I continue to use salt in flagrant disregard of dietary wisdom.”

Stan had muttered that he saw nothing wrong with reaching for salt or using it, but Flo was convinced that he had filed the lapse away as another mark against her.

She had also seen him, though he hadn’t seen her, in the Publix supermarket parking lot on several occasions. Publix was another Boca wonder. Not only did the employees do an impeccable job bagging one’s groceries (in New York and Chicago, you bagged yourself or risked the lettuce and Brie at the bottom of the bag), but there was always a friendly and efficient individual waiting nearby to wheel your cart to your car and unload the groceries for you—tip refused. It was the kind of service that even the ten-year veterans of Boca still found astonishing—proof, if any were needed, that they had attained to heaven on earth. On three occasions, the last only a few days ago, she had seen Stan speaking to one of the young Hispanic women who helped wheel carts and unload groceries. Flo was struck, as she had been when she saw him talk to the waiter at the Valentine’s Day dance, by the earnestness and duration of the conversation. What, she wondered, could he be saying to someone so far outside his conventional social circle? None of these individuals looked remotely like Florida Atlantic undergraduates. It was a mystery that, had she had any interest in him at all, she would have pondered more closely.

If he was looking for Norman and May now, she was at a
loss as to why he would look here, since May was in pod 3 of Crestview. Then it occurred to her that the couple was not at the club today but had left early in the morning to take Adam to the beach, with Amy and her crew accompanying. Stan doubtless didn’t know this and was seeking information as to their whereabouts. He approached in what Flo thought was a shy manner for him, though glancing at her book, he immediately commented dryly, “A disaster.”

Flo was more or less of this mind about the book herself but, feeling a welling of loyalty to Bellow and a natural inclination to disagree with Stan Jacobs, responded with equal dryness, “Not at all. I’d say, rather, a confusion of genres. With a few minor adjustments, it would make a first-rate memoir.”

Stan was silent. He seemed uninterested in arguing the relative merits of Bellow’s book at this time.

“May and Norman went to the beach with Adam,” said Flo, assuming that this was the information Stan was after. “They should be back around two.”

“I know,” said Stan.

Flo lifted her left eyebrow. She had highly expressive features, but at moments of extreme puzzlement, her face remained immobilized and the full burden of reaction fell to this eyebrow, which had an impressive ability to lift itself high above its neighbor in an effect that would have been right at home in a thirties screwball comedy.

Stan moved forward and seated himself at the wrought-iron table near her lounge chair. Flo noticed that he was sweating almost as much as when she had beaten him at tennis.

“I came to see you.”

Flo stared, and Stan, though looking uncomfortable, plowed ahead, though not without taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopping his face.

“The fact of the matter is, I’m having a hard time getting you out of my mind. Believe me,” he continued, more rapidly now,
“I find it strange, stranger than you can possibly imagine, this … infatuation. My wife was nothing like you. She was a warm, domestic sort of person. Loved to cook, garden, a really wonderful woman. I adored her.” He paused. Flo’s face remained impassive, though she could feel her neck turning red as she struggled to maintain her composure.

“This makes it all the more mystifying to me,” continued Stan, putting his hand through an unkempt mop of white hair, “why I would find your particular brand of, uh, humor appealing. And it’s not as though I have a problem being alone,” he added. “I enjoy my own company, and I don’t mind being a third wheel with Norman and May.”

Flo had hardly moved since Stan had begun this speech, and she now waited in a state of coiled alertness for him to finish.

“So that’s the story,” he said, putting his hands on the table as though he had just finished teaching a particularly brilliant seminar and was waiting for her to congratulate him on it.

Flo turned and pulled herself to a sitting position in the lounge chair. Then, as though thinking that even in this position the force of her words might appear insufficient, she rose to her feet. She now stood directly facing Stan Jacobs’s seated figure.

“Your monologue,” she said, in a measured tone that barely repressed her rage, “has been enlightening. I knew you were an arrogant boor, a man who, for all his book-learning, had failed to master the rudiments of polite conversation and etiquette. I knew that you had a jealous and malevolent streak, that you had been instrumental in ruining a job prospect for Mel Shirmer. Whatever his failings, and I admit he has many, he didn’t deserve your slandering him to his friends and destroying the possibility of a job at Florida Atlantic. I never dreamed that, given your treatment of him and your incivility to me, you would still have the audacity to approach me as you have. I pride myself that I never led a man on—and in your case, I think, I have been clearer than I needed to be in indicating that I find your
snobbish, superior manner insufferable and that I only tolerate it out of affection and respect for Norman and May. That you could come here and tell me that I lack all the qualities you admire most, that I am the antithesis in all respects of your wife, that you like me despite your good taste and better judgment—and then expect me to respond with gratitude—seems not only arrogant beyond words but stupid. Whatever else I had taken you for, I had not taken you for a stupid man, Stan Jacobs, but now, I’m afraid, I must add that attribute to the others.”

Stan looked as though someone had given him a quick but powerful punch to the stomach. He was sitting down, but he had bent forward, his face lowered, as Flo continued her harangue. He had not felt so devastated, so thoroughly mortified, since his twenties, when he had received back from a publishing house where he had submitted it his effort at the Great American Novel with a letter advising him to take up woodworking. He had chosen a middle course and become an English professor. He reacted to Flo’s words now as he had reacted to those in that long-ago letter. They struck him as harsh and surprising, but as he listened, he also found them to be true. It was a tendency of Stan Jacobs to weigh evidence, even in the most trying of circumstances, and to arrive at reasoned judgments. Watching his colleagues over the years, he had noticed that some of the most astute literary critics were the most blind to their own obvious failings—the ability to read well and to have insight into oneself being two very different skills. But he had never thought to apply this observation to himself. He had been blessed for forty years with a wife who adored and indulged him, and he had continued to see himself through her eyes even after she was gone. It came as a shock and a revelation to realize that the world at large did not necessarily see him this way Listening to Flo and seeing the extent of her anger, he realized that his attitude toward her—and toward people in general, even his own friends—had been condescending and rude. He saw now that what he had
taken to be the obvious marks of his superiority, his gift for critical observation and analysis, were not attributes at all, but signs of an often ungenerous and intolerant snobbery. There was only one area in which he felt she had been unjust.

He stood now and mopped his face again with his handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He was too mortified to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry to have … pained you. I can see that I have. I understand everything you say, but on the subject of Mel Shirmer, I feel compelled to set the record straight, though I promise not to say anything more after that. Mel Shirmer”—Stan was clearly trying to control the emotion in his voice—”is a consummate liar and con artist. He pursues women for their money. My cousin in Boca West was ‘in love’ with him—the phrase sounds sophomoric, I know, but it seems that such things still happen, even at our age.” Despite the attempt at satire, his voice faltered here, and he paused, then continued more briskly: “They were going to get married. Date set, caterer, everything. Then he discovered her late husband’s money was in trust to the children—her idea, I might add—and he hightailed his way out of there as fast as you please. She hasn’t gotten over it yet, and no doubt never will. When I first met Mel, I sensed inconsistencies in his stories but put it down to nothing more than self-promotion—that is, until conversation with a friend who edits one of the weekly newspapers in New York set me straight. A good education, good mind, squandered through greed and irresponsibility. There was never any job at Florida Atlantic, so I did nothing to him on that score. The man has never had a steady job to speak of. He worked as a stringer on a number of papers over the years, low-level positions that he couldn’t hold on to. Until recently, he did piecemeal work for some small PR agencies—writing press releases, public service announcements, that sort of thing. He’s been through a fortune or two already. He soaked his first wife for every penny before he divorced her, and he’s been on the prowl for a suitably wealthy replacement.
He thought he found one in my cousin in Boca West, and when that didn’t pan out, he laid low for a while. When I saw him with you, I realized he was back for another try I wouldn’t have thought you’d have sufficient funds to attract him—excuse me, you certainly didn’t seem showy that way—but perhaps he has his sources. I know, as you probably do, that he has since married a wealthy widow in your club. Perhaps she deserves him or can handle him. But to most decent women, he’s a menace. On that subject, at least, you’ve been wrong about me. The rest—” He broke off. “If I’ve insulted you, forgive me. I won’t—I promise—do it again.”

Flo stared at him. What he said about Mel rang disturbingly true. There was no denying that his interest in her had waxed and then waned in accordance with his perception of her net worth. The final proof of his character, if any were needed, lay in his covertly arranged marriage to Roz Fliegler. But that was Mel. As far as everything else, she stood by what she had said. And yet…