The Girls (6 page)

Under cover of the movement into the dining room Naomi whispered, “Jenny, could you come alone tomorrow morning? There’s something I have to tell you. I don’t want Flora to know.”

Naturally, there had to be a touch of family intrigue. And intrigued Jenny was. “Of course. First thing in the morning. Nine o’clock too early?”

“I don’t want Flora to know. You call nine o’clock early? I’m up every morning at five.”

“Okay, I’ll manage. Nine o’clock. Alone.”

“Wheel me in,” Naomi said aloud, “with the rest of the deaf and the dumb dumb dummies, dear sisters,” and laughed. “I’m paying for your dinners. Eight fifty apiece, and please don’t forget or they’ll try to get you to pay again. Just tell them your sister put you on her bill.”

“Do we tip?” Jenny had forgotten from previous visits. “Let me do the tip.”

“No tipping.” Flora, adamant. “I bring little gifts now and then to show appreciation for how nice they are to Naomi. Tipping spoils them.”

“Nice? Why do they have to be nice? I don’t give them any trouble. There’s no need for little gifts. Nice!” Naomi, indignant.

“I like to show appreciation,” Flora said. “In the end it pays. People like to be appreciated. In the end they do more for you.”

“The less they do for me the more I like it,” Naomi said, and recited parts of the menu as they wheeled her past the blackboard. “Pea soup. Good. I love pea soup, but not the croutons. Too hard on the teeth. I hope they skipped the croutons. Ice cream. I hope it’s butter pecan or rum raisin, but probably no such luck, just dumb vanilla is what we mostly get. They think we don’t know any better.

“We
are
in luck,” Naomi went on, laughing again. They were passing a baby grand piano on the way to Naomi’s table. “I forgot tonight was Wednesday. Miss Molly and Her Songs of Yesteryear. You’re in for it. Thank God our table is sufficiently removed.”

Miss Molly was a very large, violently redheaded woman in an elaborately beribboned dress. She sat at the piano,
grimpling.
No other word for it. The vamp of an old pop song was being performed with many flourishes and more errors, the verse sung in a quavering off-key soprano. “‘Be sure it’s true when you say I love you …’”

“Forgive her, sisters, she knows not what …,” Naomi began, but her laughter stopped her.

“She’s doing the best she can,” Flora said. “She’s trying. That’s better than giving up. You can’t understand the strain of performance. Not that I’d compare what she’s doing to what I do.”

“Well, we can’t all live up to your standards, Flora.” Naomi was signaling mysteriously to Jenny. “I give up,” she said. “And it’s a far, far better thing I do than Fatso there. Time to know when to quit. I quit.”

“That’s the trouble with Naomi,” Flora complained to Jenny under the applause. “She’s given up, she’s given up.”

Wasn’t that what Flora wanted Naomi to do?

Jenny, helping settle Naomi’s wheelchair at the table, was startled by a pull on her arm and Naomi’s hurried whisper.

“Never mind about tomorrow. I changed my mind. I don’t want to tell you. Forget about it.” She pushed Jenny away. “That’s fine. Stop fussing. Now let’s eat.”

Flora insisted on taking a bus to Eva’s residence. They had finished dinner and seen Naomi off to her bedroom, though it was not yet six o’clock. The air in the vehicle was too cold. Flora fished out of her orange leather carryall a brown corduroy outer jacket, an orange knitted scarf, and orange gloves.

“I’m always prepared for these buses. You can get pneumonia in a minute from the air conditioning. Aren’t you freezing? I told you to bring something warm.”

“I’m fine,” Jenny said. “I’m used to the cold.”

“I don’t know how you stand it up there in that freezing snow and ice, all alone.” Then, more cheerfully, “But everybody’s different. Live and let live, that’s my motto. I’d get pneumonia the first week. Or die of boredom the second, whichever came first.” Flora let out her loud, clear laugh.

Jenny coughed.

“See? See?” Flora, triumphant. “I told you.”

“It’s the air conditioning,” Jenny said. “It bothers me, something about it makes me choke.”

“I told you, I told you.”

“Not because it’s cold. It catches in my throat, I don’t know why.”

“You have to bring something warm to put over your shoulders in the buses. You have to, I told you. Here.” Flora dug her arm into the big bag. “I have another scarf in here somewhere.” She dragged out a white crocheted shawl and draped it around Jenny.

It was a long ride. Again they traveled through quickly changing scenes and neighborhoods. The bus was filled with Miami Beach workers heading home. The blacks were mostly Haitians; the Latinos were white and black; the white whites were like Flora and Jenny, middle-class oldsters on their way to the movies, or to upscale Bal Harbour shopping and dining, or on a hospital or nursing home visit. Most of them dismounted at Bal Harbour, a short trip from Naomi’s residence. The bus had already carried them through remarkably diverse areas, posh, seedy, lush green, arid construction sites, messy concrete disrepair, then over a pristinely beautiful waterway, past an enclosed, guarded state park skirting the beach, and through Flora’s run-down neighborhood.

The only people boarding now were workers, Haitians, Cubans. What had happened to Florida’s homegrown blacks? Apart from a bunch of noisy teenagers, some of whom were Latinos, there seemed to be no American blacks on the bus. The black driver was carrying on a lively conversation with a woman in the front seat, in Spanish, about a mutual cousin. They had nothing good to say of her. There were some babies, mostly quiet, one crying, and a boy and girl of four or five singing commercials at the top of their tuneless voices, standing backwards on a forward-facing double seat and drumming on the seat back with what seemed to be Ping-Pong paddles.

“What I can’t stand about them is how noisy they are—Cubans, or whatever they are.” Flora, in loud voice. “And they never discipline their kids. No matter what their kids are up to, they let them get away with murder. Then they wonder why they turn out the way they do.”

“Sh!” Jenny said, too late.

Without turning her head or looking in Flora’s direction, a middle-aged woman said in Spanish to the young woman next to her, “Listen to Big Nose over there. That Jew is calling us noisy? Did she ever listen to herself? Do they hear themselves? Never. The Chosen People. Perfection incarnate. But please notice the way she’s dressed. Beautiful, no? Right out of the garbage, the whole wrinkled mess. She ought to be ashamed of herself. Old lady dressed like a sloppy teenager.” She said “mess” and “sloppy teenager” in an almost unaccented English. “Look who dares to speak badly of our children. The way they’ve raised theirs, raised them to squeeze the life out of others. Hitler should have finished …”

“No,” the young woman interrupted, also in Spanish. “That kind of talk isn’t right. Don’t talk that talk.”

“You defend them?” the first woman said.

“I defend decency. That kind of talk is bad. There are plenty of fine Jews, and we know it. We all know it. I work for a very fine Jewish lady—”

“Sure. Who buys you with worthless little—”

“Off, off the bus!” The driver, directing the teenage group. “Your stop, and thank God for that.”

“I’ll say one thing for them,” Flora continued blithely. “They’re hard workers, they know how to work. They’ll do anything. Pay them and they work. And always smiling. Nobody works harder than the Cubans. They put the blacks to shame. But the noise level! God help us.”

“Shhh!” Jenny said. “They speak English, you know.”

“Oh, very few do. Anyway, I’m complimenting them.” Flora put her head back. “I’m exhausted. Could we not talk for a while? I can’t stand any more talk right now, if you don’t mind.” And closed her eyes, pulling the peaked cap down over her face. “If I fall asleep, keep an eye on my bag. You never know.” She was gripping the clasp of her carryall with both hands.

They stopped at one of the old street malls. The bus almost emptied, and refilled with similar people, more of these white. Hospital and nursing home workers—nurse’s aides, cleaning women, maintenance men, shleppers, drivers, kitchen help—cogs in Florida’s billion-dollar industry.

Flora said, without opening her eyes, “I told the bus driver to let us know when we reached Villa Rosa. Listen for it, Jenny, or we’ll get lost. You can get terribly lost in Miami.”

“It’s okay,” Jenny said. “I know the cross street, I’ll watch for it.”

“No, listen for the bus driver. If we go past the stop we’ll get terribly lost.”

“Yes, I will, I will. Don’t worry, go back to sleep.”

“Who can sleep with all this noise?” Flora said.

Jenny looked at her sister. Eighty-five, strangling in unfulfillment, dying not to die before accomplishing some vague greatness for which she would be remembered forever, venting prejudices so she could feel herself larger, more vividly significant. Scared. Scared of getting lost in Miami. As if cabs didn’t exist. Scared of spending the money she had in good enough quantity to live out her days in comfort. Scared she would catch a cold. Scared her bag would be snatched out of her lap. Scared she’d fall. Scared she’d break a hip. Scared she’d die. Scared she wouldn’t, but would live on and on through a cycle of horrors: cane, walker, wheelchair, bed, pain and doctors, indignity after indignity, alert and resistant all the way to the coffin.

Jenny reached over to tuck the orange scarf more securely around Flora’s neck.

Flora snuggled in. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Take a nap too. Put your head on my shoulder.” Then corrected herself. “Though I guess one of us should stay up and listen for our stop.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Jenny said. “I’ll listen.”

They were on a causeway crossing a stunning stretch of brilliant blue water, its edges lined with smallish homes, little docks, little boats. An unidentifiable flock of white birds lifted into the golden evening sky from a small island so green it shone black in this light. Artificial? The island? The waterway? Did it make any difference if it was man-made? Was it less beautiful?

Naomi’s request shot into her head, followed by the quick, odd retraction. What was that about? Money. Something about money. What else could it be? Money and Naomi and Flora—had to be some such configuration. Naomi had cautioned her not to tell Flora. A family mess about money. In short, a nightmare.

Now they were stopped at a railroad crossing in another sudden change in the landscape, a neighborhood of little factories, seedy stores, strange characters lounging around in the heat on the sidewalks. The train lumbered by endlessly. A skinny white man sitting directly across from Jenny and Flora muttered crazily.

“Goddamn, goddamn, they don’t give a goddamn. Don’t care how they treat us. Don’t care how late they make us. Time belongs to them. They got everything else, and now they got jurisdiction over time. My time.”

He looked desperately unhealthy, unwashed, uncombed, as if he had never eaten right in his life, never slept in a wide clean bed, never taken a long luxurious bath with good soap, never washed his thin greasy hair. His cotton slacks and shirt hung on a frame without substance.
Coat upon a stick.
Probably bound for the dog races to lose the last penny he had in his grimy pocket. Jai alai, maybe. He quieted as soon as they were moving again.

She thought,
I must go to the bank tomorrow and check on Naomi’s accounts before I ask her what this is all about.

The scene had altered once more. They were in an enclave of high-rise condominiums surrounded by waterways, golf links, tennis courts, swimming pools, tree-lined bicycle paths and walks, lush greenery and flowering plants, pretty as a picture. In the distance the huge white arches of a thruway overpass cut into a sky now magnificently stained with the setting sun. Orange, purple, green. Gaudy. Gaudy as Flora.

Brave, extravagant, gaudy, foolish Flora. Her closest sister in age. Her pal, her rival, her self.
There but for the grace of God.

Then Naomi, ten years older, a sister-mother, watching over little girl Jenny, combing and washing Jenny’s hair. Delicate, witty, heartbroken Naomi, longing for someone to watch over her, pouring out on Jenny the care she craved for herself.

And Eva, fifteen years older, a mother-sister from the beginning, generous, dependable, loving, hopelessly bourgeois Eva.

And herself? Little girl Jenny? Born last to a mother and father too old and worn. Mothered by her older sisters. Bullied, bossed, and petted by her older brothers. Grown into the disguise of a civilized, self-contained intellectual, Jane Witter, academic, essayist, critic.

Nobody ever heard of you, Jenny, except a couple of your New York women friends. Jane Witter, professor of literature, book reviewer, freelance writer of an occasional article. Not even your true name. Witter
—
borrowed from a Brooklyn apartment house, the Witter Arms. Jenny Witkovsky masked as Jane Witter. You are of a piece with your sisters. A poor thing. Coat upon a stick. Stop disowning them. They are you.

Suddenly the driver called out their stop. They disembarked hastily and crossed a broad avenue heavy with traffic, Flora hanging on Jenny unsteadily, swaying, pushing.

“I feel horrible,” Flora said. “I need a drink. I hope to God Eva has some vodka in her apartment.”

“She always does,” Jenny said.

They entered through tall wrought-iron gates, past a handsome stone plaque announcing “Villa Rosa.” Eva and a black attendant waited just inside the complex. She was in a wheelchair under the shade of a few limp trees planted on the edge of a paved parking lot. Jenny knew it was Eva by her voice; otherwise she was unrecognizable. Her normally narrow, intelligent face had been transformed into the balloon of an idiot. Her skin was covered by a fine gray fuzz along her chin and cheeks. Her dark, large eyes had become animal slits. She was agitated, crying out in delight mixed with incomprehensible rage.

“Jenny, Jenny, I thought I’d never see you again.”

This woman Jenny didn’t recognize, except for her voice, cried like a child, grabbing at Jenny in a hungry, sloppy embrace, reaching up pitifully with wasted bare arms. How could the face be so round and the arms so thin? Jenny kissed this stranger, her eyes watering, but her tears were for the serene, composed sister she remembered, Eva of the strong slim body and the quick responsive face, who had always been fully in charge of herself and of others. Jenny had never seen Eva cry.