Never Too Late for Love (7 page)

"I never met anyone who could sleep so much."

Sarah felt the necessity of telling Yetta what she had said
to Eve Shapiro.

"I told her we were sisters-in-law." she said.
"But she's such a yenta, I didn't want her to find out. They'd make a big
joke about it?"

"I was thinking about that."

"If we don't tell them, they won't know."

"But we're both Mrs. Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz."

"No more. From now on I'm Mrs. Sarah. I'm going to
write to everybody, the mail, the phone company, the social security."

"And I'll be Mrs. Yetta."

"The Shankowitz girls."

"That's us."

"That would be something. Nat wouldn't think it's so
funny."

"Nat is dead," Sarah said.

"Poor Nat."

"To me, he's not so poor."

They continued to see each other every day. Sarah
introduced them to her friends and Yetta to hers.

They went to the clubhouse together, watched the shows,
went shopping and sat together at the pool. Minor problems intruded only when
the subject of husbands came up.

"Tomorrow is Abe's birthday," Eve Shapiro
announced one day as they sat around the pool. Impending birthdays of dead
husbands were special moments of self-pity. "He would have been
eighty-six."

"An old man already," Sarah said.

"He was twenty years older than me," Eve
responded.

"How much?"

"Eighteen, actually," Eve said. "And
yours?" The question was directed to Yetta.

"Let's see." She held out her fingers, tapping
each one in turn.

"Seventy-five," Sarah said quickly, too quickly.

"You know so much about your brother-in-law?" Eve
probed.

"Yes, that's right" Yetta added, as if to
buttress Sarah's revelation and deflect Eve's naturally suspicious nature.

"He would actually be only seventy," Yetta
commented later.

"No. He was seven years older than me."

"You saw his birth certificate?"

"No. But when we married he was twenty-five."

"He said he was forty when we got married."

"And how long were your married?"

"Thirty years."

"Then he would have to be at least seventy-five. We
were married twenty years."

"You think he lied?"

"Do I think he lied? I know he lied."

Yetta pondered the matter.

"Actually I lied, too, so I took off three, four
years."

"What's good for the goose," Sarah said, but she
was thinking of other things, the events that had, up to now, demanded a
barrier of silence between them. By then, they had known each other six months
and Nat had been their common bridge, their meeting place. Always, when the
idea popped into Sarah's mind, she resisted, waiting for the right moment.

"Were you really the other woman, Yetta?" she
said finally one day as they walked back from the pool in the declining
sunlight, through the well-tended paths. The traffic around them seemed muted,
the air soft. A warm breeze rustled the low plantings.

"Me? The other woman? I was a waitress in the coffee
shop downstairs from where he worked. We used to talk a lot. He was a man. I
was an old maid."

"He never..."

"With me? Never."

"I thought you did."

"One night, he called me at home. He said you threw
him out. So I let him come in. Look, I was an old maid. I was alone. You know,
when you're alone you do strange things. I wasn't a homewrecker. I was
alone"

"He said I threw him out?"

"That's what he said."

"Like he was forty instead of forty-five."

"I was alone," Yetta mumbled. They walked for a
while, then Yetta stopped and turned toward Sarah. "You know Nat. He was
always weak, a weak man."

"Weak. That's exactly right. Weak," Sarah agreed.
She could barely remember the circumstances of that night. What had she said to
him? How had he replied?

"Does it matter now, Sarah? Does it really
matter?"

She took Yetta's hand and they continued on their way. A
few months later, they moved in together in a larger condominium and were known
to everybody as the Shankowitz girls.

At Sarah Gold's funeral, Zaber's smallest funeral chapel
was filled to capacity. Many people had to stand throughout the entire
ceremony. Murray Gold, though weighted down by grief after the loss of his wife
of nearly fifty years, could not contain his surprise at the turnout. He wasn't
prepared for Sarah's overwhelming popularity and, while he was secretly proud,
he also was perplexed.

They had been living at Sunset Village for ten years. One
of the pioneers, Sarah reminded at every opportunity--especially to new
arrivals, as if there was some special status to being among the first
residents. Sarah made many friends. She was both gregarious and curious, the
two basic attributes of being a yenta. And Sarah was, above all, a yenta.

"Why do you have to be such a yenta?" Murray admonished her repeatedly. She knew what was simmering in every pot, and he endured
her endless chattering about this one and that one, although he rarely
commented. What was the use? It was enough for him to find things to do to get
through the day. He had never been good at making friends, and after the first
few months at Sunset Village, she gave up on him.

"My Murray is a quiet fellow," he heard her say
more than once. "He reads the paper. He sleeps in a chair. He helps me
with the shopping and he does the laundry."

"He doesn't like cards?" one of her friends would
ask.

"He hates cards."

"He has no hobbies?"

"He sleeps. That's his hobby."

"He likes it here?"

"If I like it here, he likes it here."

To Sarah, to her friends, to himself, Murray knew, he was
considered an "accepted fact." He was simply, irrevocably, Sarah
Gold's husband. Most of her friends barely remembered his name. He simply
followed her around, a form of appendage, while Sarah reveled in her
self-actualized role of being the eyes and ears of Sunset Village. It was not that
she ignored him. He was, even to her, an "accepted fact."

Other husbands played cards, pursued hobbies, watched
football games, took long walks, bragged about their previous accomplishments.
Not Murray. When Sarah went to her various meetings, her card games, her
"yenting" sessions, Murray slept, usually in a chair in front of the
television set.

"How come you didn't go to bed?" she would say
when she arrived home in the evenings after her activities.

"I was waiting up for you."

She was perplexed, then she would begin to chatter about
her evening, telling him about the gossip, who was sick, who bought what, who
was feuding with whom, who was two-timing who, whatever, and by the time she
had washed her face and put on her nightgown, he was already slipping
peacefully beyond understanding.

It was true that what she liked, he liked. Nearly fifty
years of conditioning had confirmed this. Actually, the converse was far too
formidable for him to cope with and he finally surrendered to it. When she was
unhappy, he was made unhappy. And how.

Like when the air-conditioning broke down and all her
caustic entreaties brought little results from the maintenance people.

"You're the man in the house," she screamed at
him. "You tell them. You march over there right this minute and tell them,
'This will not do.'" She banged her hand on the wall. "I cannot live
with this. It is your duty. We pay good money for the maintenance."

He had, of course, made the usual call to the maintenance
people, and they had promised to fix the unit, just as soon as they could get
to it. The explanation satisfied him, although he knew he would not be able to
placate Sarah.

"What do you mean, wait our turn? They're lying to
you. I never saw such weakness. You go right over there now and tell them. Now.
Do you hear? Right this minute." Her voice rose, in an endless
mind-boggling cacophony.

"But I went..." he protested.

"You went."

She looked around their one-bedroom apartment, sweltering
in the summer heat, the windows open. He was sure the neighbors could hear
every word. "What kind of a man are you?" She turned away from him as
if talking to someone else in the room. "What kind of a man did I marry?
No wonder you never made any money. People step on you. That's what they do.
They step all over you. They use you for a doormat."

"All right, I'll try tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? What about tonight?"

"They're closed tonight."

"Then get them out of bed." Again she looked away
from him.

"Look what kind of a man I married. What did I do to
deserve this?"

It cost him a hundred dollars, secretly withdrawn from
their account, to bribe the maintenance man to fix the air conditioner on his
own time. It was either that or endure her wrath. It wasn't the heat as far as
he was concerned.

"You see," she said finally when the air
conditioning was fixed. "If I don't push you, nothing gets done." And
she was happy. And when she was happy, he was happy. Or, at least, content.

Occasionally when their son Milton came to visit, he would
ask his father if he was enjoying his retirement.

"Your mother is very happy here."

"But what about you, Pop?"

"Me?" It seemed a puzzling question. "I'm
happy if your mother's happy."

Milton would look at him and shrug.
Later, when they thought he was asleep on the chair, he would overhear them talking.

"Is he really happy here, Mom?"

"Does he look happy?"

"I can't really tell."

"In his own way, he's happy."

Maybe that was true, he thought. She had, after all, always
known what was best for him. He hadn't been that good of a provider. The
Depression hurt his parents badly, and he never quite recovered from the
psychology of failure, holding one lousy job after another.

Yet Sarah knew how to stretch a dollar and, with Milton's help, they bought this condominium. Better than living in Brooklyn, the way it
had become, though he missed certain things. The mornings, especially.

He loved getting up early, going downstairs to the candy
store for his bagel and coffee and reading the
New York Times
. Maybe
things had deteriorated, but he did like walking the streets of New York, the hustle and bustle. Still, he knew that Sarah was happier in Sunset Village and if she was happy, he was happy.

What right had he to be otherwise? She set a nice table,
kept the house neat as a pin. He was a small man, a little hard of hearing now,
but thankful that he was able to get around. Not bad for seventy-one, he told
himself.

She died suddenly. She had played cards and, as usual, he
had slept on the chair until she had come home.

"Ida Katz talked all night about her heartburn.I
couldn't concentrate," she said as she got into bed that night. "I
told her to take a Malox or stop stuffing herself so much."

He remembered drifting away, but he heard her last words.
"Malox is constipating, she told me." Then he had heard a long sigh, and
the next thing he remembered, he was shaking her in the morning. But she didn't
move. She was dead.

He sat in the funeral chapel, consumed with grief, his eyes
puffy from crying. The loneliness that assailed him that night was terrible,
although Milton had flown down to keep him company for the night.

"How can I live?" he asked his son. "She was
my whole life."

He looked around the condominium. "Everything here
reminds me of her."

"I don't know, Pop," Milton said, "I know it
won't be easy."

"Easy? It will be impossible," Murray said,
holding his head in his hands, feeling the unbearable weight of his loss.

"I should have gone first," he said. "At
least she had friends here. She could have gotten along fine without me."

"That's the way it goes, Pop."

He surveyed the little funeral chapel. It was amazing how
many people showed up. Mostly women. He recognized many of them from the
clubhouse. Others had been merely shadowy figures, passing acquaintances. He
hadn't realized she had so many friends. The women from her regular canasta
group were in the second row behind him and Milton. They were particularly
solicitous.

One of them, Mrs. Morganstern, touched his shoulder and
whispered softly in his ear.

"You shouldn't worry about anything, Murray. We took
care of everything. There'll be bagels and herring and cakes for after the
funeral. We'll set everything up. It'll all be perfect."

He felt her breath on his earlobe, the pressure of her hand
on his shoulder. He nodded, lowering his misted eyes as the rabbi finished the
eulogy. They were so wonderful, he thought. Sarah had that rare ability to make
friends, the Rabbi said, responding to what he had told him. The rabbi had,
after all, never met Sarah and had been hired for the occasion for fifty
dollars. But what Mrs. Morganstern and her other canasta players were doing was
proof enough.

Walking behind the coffin, supported by his son, he
followed it out to the hearse and got into the hired limousine, with Milton beside him. Another woman was inside waiting. He recognized her as Minnie Schwartz,
Sarah's old friend from Brooklyn, who, he remembered, just moved into Sunset Village.

"I asked Minnie to come with us," Milton said.

"Thank you, Minnie," Murray said. He could barely
control his sobbing. He felt her arm entwine itself around his.

"I know. I know," she said, sniffling, blowing
her nose into a bit of tissue, already moist with previous tears. "When I
lost my Sam, it was a living hell, a living hell."

"I should have gone first," Murray mumbled,
repeating the thought all the way to the cemetery.

It was a terrible ordeal, watching Sarah lowered into the
strange Florida ground on this sunny day, the air thick with the scent of
tropical plants. At the first drop of earth on the hollow coffin, a high wail
filled the air as the women reacted. The crowd was almost exclusively female,
and Minnie Schwartz's wail was the loudest.

"How can I go on?" he sobbed, as the big
limousine headed back to Sunset Village.

"You'll go on, Murray." Minnie Schwartz said. She
clutched his arm in such a way that he leaned against her bulky body. "I
did and you will. Time will heal everything."

"Time," he said. "She should have had the
time."

"She was a wonderful woman."

"Wonderful," he agreed.

"We'll all miss her, Murray."

Back at their little apartment, the canasta players had
arranged what seemed like a lavish repast. It was traditional among Jews for
the chief mourner to provide for the guests, and they had done a splendid job.

"You'll tell me later how much it all costs," he
said to Mrs. Morganstern when he finally washed his hands, also a tradition,
and settled into his chair. The apartment was filled with people, mostly women,
all of Sarah's friends. He hadn't realized she had so many friends.

"I wouldn't think of it Mr. Gold," Mrs. Morganstern
said. She gripped his hand. "Sarah was my friend."

"How can I ever thank you, Mrs. Morganstern?" he
said.

"Lily," she responded.

He seemed confused.

"Call me Lily," she said. "After all, Sarah
called me Lily. She was my friend"

"Of course."

In the kitchen, two women did the dishes, while others
puttered around, removing plates and neatly arranging additional food when the
table needed to be replenished.

There was only regular seating for six in the small dining
room, but additional chairs had materialized and he noticed that he was
encircled by women, some of whom he did not recognize. Others arrived, whom he
had never seen before.

"I'm Mrs. Bernstein," a woman said, bending over
him, clutching his hand and pressing it to her breast. Despite his grief, he
felt the ample softness. "Sarah was the finest woman in Sunset Village. We'll miss her."

He nodded, and the woman lingered whispering in his ear,
the strong scent of perfume emanating from her skin. "If there is
anything, anything, I can do. Please let me know. Will you?"

"Of course."

"I'm Harriet Berstein from across the court--222,
upstairs."

He hadn't ever seen her before, he was certain. She stayed
a moment longer, shook her head in a gesture of sympathy as she blinked her
eyes, heavy with mascara, and passed on to the buffet table. He hadn't realized
that Sarah had made such an immense impression, had won so many hearts.

"I'm sure Sarah mentioned me," another woman
said, gripping Murray's arm. "I was once a model. It was a long time ago,
but I showed her the clippings from the magazines." He couldn't remember,
but he nodded in affirmation. "She mentioned me?"

"Of course," he said solemnly.

"I could have gone on to a bigger career, but you know
I got married, had children. You understand."

"Yes," he said.

"When Harry died, I came here," she said, her
voice carrying through the room. Some of the other women turned to watch.
Sensing this, she lowered her voice.

"Life goes on," she whispered. "You'll learn
that. You need a lesson in that Mr. Gold, just call on Rose Ginzberg." She
paused.

"Better yet, I'll call you. I'm a Hungarian. You
should taste my goulash."

She had so many wonderful friends, Murray thought. If only
he had been a better husband.

"You can't imagine how much we'll miss Sarah." It
was Ida Katz, stuffing herself as usual, her mouth filled with herring as she
moved to a vacant chair. There seemed to be some rhythm in the movement onto
the chairs. When someone stood up, someone immediately sat down, as if to find
a place in the circle around Murray was the most coveted honor of the day. He
remembered that Sarah had been talking about Ida the night she died.

"She was always so much fun. Always joking. A kind
word for everybody." She paused, concentrated on eating the last morsel on
her plate. "And you, Murray. She always said such wonderful things about
you."