Never Too Late for Love (16 page)

"I'm afraid if he quits, he'll just give up,"
Francie said.

Hymie patted her arm.

"It's no trouble for us," Hymie said. "None
at all."

Not a word of protest had been raised by any of them.
Somehow the game got played, though Blintzie's decisions were always bad ones
and none of them would dare interfere. It wouldn't, after all, be fair.

One Tuesday, near the end of the game, Blintzie suddenly
groaned and his sightless eyes watered.

"There's something I got to say," he said. They
had expected it, but not this quickly.

"I've cheated." Blintzie said, his fingers
clutching the edge of the table. The men looked at each other. Hymie put a
finger over his lips.

"I've been doing it for years," Blintzie said.
"And now my conscience is beginning to bother me. You guys have been so
damned good to me, so patient. I can't see a goddamned thing, and I know I'm
ruining the game."

"The last part is bullshit," Hymie said.

"You've always been a blind poker player," Benny
said.

"Well, you guys have been the blind ones,"
Blintzie protested. "It's begun to bother me and I want you to know that I
didn't do it deliberately."

"The least you could do is tell us how you did
it?" Itzie asked.

"That, I'll never tell." Blintzie said. The
confession seemed to have eased his burden.

"All I can say," Benny said with a wink, "is
that whatever you did, it couldn't have been so bad. You lost anyway. Now, if I
cheated, that would be something else."

"I just wanted you to know," Blintzie said.

"Somebody deal, please," Mortie cried
impatiently. "You guys are getting like a bunch of old yentas."

Benny Bernstein's second stroke complicated the game even
further. It affected his hands and his speech, and he had to be moved in a
wheelchair. One of the men would pick him up at his apartment and wheel him to
the game while another would act as a seeing-eye dog for Blintzie. The person
who stayed out for each hand now would not only have to whisper the hand to
Blintzie but play the hand for Benny, following his whispered instructions.
Unfortunately, Mortie's heart condition was too aggravated by Blintzie's
playing to make him an effective assistant, and Itzie was too deaf to hear the
proposed options.

This meant that only Solly and Hymie could be dealt out.

"Why don't you stop already?" Muriel asked one
Tuesday when Hymie returned from the game.

"Stop the game?" He looked at her as if she was
crazy.

Actually, except for the hardship of playing, there was no
change in the rhythm of the game. Benny always won. Blintzie invariably lost,
though Benny occasionally made an error on purpose to let Blintzie win a hand.
But no one ever mentioned it, and the game continued.

One Tuesday while playing seven-card stud, Benny's head
slumped over his chest, a gurgle came from his throat, and he expired quietly.
It came at an odd time for Benny, as he had just asked that his final raise be
made. Solly was acting for both him and Blintzie, and Hymie was in the game. It
was a big pot, and Hymie had just called Benny's raise, convinced that his
Kings over full house beat both Blintzie's possible straight flush, which
seemed an obvious bluff, and Benny's possible Jacks over full house. Hymie was
relishing the possibility of winning, on the heels of three weeks of losing.

"I think Benny's gone," Solly said searching for
Benny's pulse on a vein in his neck.

They looked at the slumped figure in the wheelchair. Even
Blintzie's sightless eyes turned toward him. They were playing in Hymie's
kitchen, and the room was quiet except for the steady purr of the air
conditioner. No one stirred and Hymie had the sensation that they were frozen
in a kind of eternal tableaux, like the picture of them that had appeared in
the Sunset Village newspaper over the caption "Fifty Year Poker Game:
Longest Ever."

"My God," Mortie exclaimed. He was the first to
stir, reaching into a pocket for his pill box. "Benny dead?"

There were a pile of chips in the center of the table, and
the three hands lay in front of the three players.

"We better call his wife," Itzie said.

"Not until we know," Blintzie said, his eyes roaming
uselessly around the table. Hymie was silent, the shock of Benny's sudden death
engulfing him.

"He'd want it that way," Blintzie said.

"We owe him that," Mortie agreed.

"I call," Blintzie cried.

"And me," Hymie said.

Solly slowly lifted Benny's cards.

"I'm sure Benny would have wanted it that way,"
Solly said. He knew, of course, what cards were in the hole.

"Four Jacks" he called, looking at Benny's
immobile face, growing swiftly gray.

"He had all the luck," Blintzie said, feeling for
his cards and turning them over.

"Lucky bastard," Hymie said, his voice cracking.

They put Benny's last pot in the open coffin in the funeral
parlor, where it laid overnight before the funeral.

"Who knows?" Hymie said, "Where he's going,
he may need the chips." He wanted to laugh, but his reflexes wouldn't
respond. Even Itzie, always quick with a wise crack, could only shake his head.

They skipped the game the following Tuesday, and the
Tuesday after that. Then a month went by. None of the guys mentioned it.

"No more game?" Muriel asked one night.

Hymie hesitated. "I hate four-handed poker," he
whispered, turning away to hide his tears.

They called her "the Angel of Mercy," and there
was no mistaking the sarcasm. They observed her on her daily rounds, a bent-over
snip of a woman, with piano legs that made one wonder how she was able to get
around in the first place, matted gray hair over which she wore a yellow
bandanna, and a faded old-fashioned black dress, a little shiny with use. She
wore sensible but quite ugly laced shoes, a necklace, obviously a piece of
Yemenite jewelry that someone might have brought her from Israel, and she
always carried her pocketbook, a heavy brown thing, by the handle so that it
hung down to her knees.

Not even her closest neighbor on the ground-floor row of
condominiums had ever been inside of her place, seeing it only from the
outside, as the woman opened or closed her door. She caught sight of a rather
overstuffed but threadbare couch and an upholstered chair with stiff doilies
pinned to its backrest and arms. While she never really got close enough, the
neighbor had the impression--just the impression--that the place smelled a
trifle unclean, musty and old. But this could have been the impression that the
woman herself gave. It was hard to tell how she might have looked as a girl, or
even a middle-aged woman, since old age had shaped and gnarled her so
completely. The Florida sun had tanned her deeply lined face, which looked like
a muddy-colored brier, and only the fact that she smeared a deep-red lipstick
too generously on her cracked lips and put two circles of rouge on her cheeks
provided evidence of a still-lingering feminine vanity.

It was unfortunate that she gave such an impression, for
she hardly thought of herself as eccentric, and the sick and infirm that she
visited daily, sometimes five or six in a day, actually began to look forward
to her visits. They, too, had formed bad first impressions and were always
surprised when she first showed up, wondering, after seeing her ancient face,
whether she was the harbinger of death. This, in itself, was neither strange
nor morbid, because in a community like Sunset Village, death was an
ever-present specter, actually a friend who seemed to be watching everyone from
some balcony in the heavens, observing all the aged Jews and trying to decide
who goes next.

Maybe it was something genetic, something buried in the
Jewish psyche, the thing that gave the world so many Jewish comedians, but, at
least here in Sunset Village, death was treated somewhat as a joke, a kind of
embarrassment, like a cuckolded husband in a French farce. That was probably
why a sick person, lying supine in his bed gasping for air, could actually
smile when he saw this little bent-over woman appear and draw out of her huge
pocketbook a cellophane-wrapped bag of candies tied with a tiny red ribbon.

"Well, it's all over now," a patient would say
when she left. "The Angel of Mercy has arrived?" But when she came
again and the patient was still alive, she was treated with somewhat more
respect and might even be offered tea and cakes, which she rarely refused.

"You feel better, Mr. Brodsky?" she would ask,
parting her over-red lips in an odd grin.

"I feel wonderful, Mrs. Klugerman. I'm already in the
undertaker's cash-flow projections." Mr. Brodsky had been an accountant,
and the Angel of Mercy assumed that this might be a joke, so she smiled more
broadly.

"Why should you make them rich?" she would say.
Such a remark would provide the patient with a key to the Angel of Mercy's
character and would, despite his first impression, cheer him.

Sometimes a healthy spouse, child or other relative would
be annoyed at the woman's constant visits.

"She's a ghoul. I understand she spends her entire day
visiting the sick."

"So what's wrong with that?" the patient would
say.

"Ghoulish, that's all."

"She annoys you?"

"It's weird."

"If you're flat on your back, it's not so weird."

In a place like Sunset Village, with most of the population
well over sixty and growing older, the sickbed activity was, if the term could
be applied in connection with Yetta Klugerman, frenetic. There she would go,
ploddingly along, using the little open-air shuttle bus to get around, visiting
her wards. She never left the premises of Sunset Village. This meant that she
could choose from three types of patients: the not-very-sick, the
post-operative, and the terminal.

The odd thing about her visits was, from the patients'
point of view, that she revealed very little about herself and her history.
This was odd in Sunset Village, where everyone at that stage in life had a
history. She was friendly, humorous, gentle, even loving, but when she left
there was never any completed picture about her; it was as though she were an
apparition.

A bedded yenta with little to do but sponge up gossip from
her visitors could summon up a good head of outrage during a visit by Yetta
Klugerman.

"You lived in New York?" the yenta would ask.

"Yes."

"Brooklyn?"

"No."

"The Bronx?"

"You're looking so much better, Mrs. Rabinowitz. The hip
is healing?"

"I get occasionally a gnawing pain, but the doctor
said it is to be expected." There would be a pause as the patient surveyed
Yetta Klugerman's kindly face.

"In Manhattan?"

"Actually, we lived all over," Yetta would say
and smile benignly.

They would sit for a few moments, contemplating each other,
the uneven red lips poised in a half-smile.

"Your husband died?"

"I'm sure you'll be up and around in a few days, Mrs.
Rabinowitz. You'll see how easy it is to use the walker."

"I'll be a walking wounded, like an old lady, ready
for the home."

"You'd be surprised how many people have had your
problem. They use the walker for a few weeks, then all of a sudden, they're
recovered. Believe me, it's not so bad. You should see some of the cases I've
visited."

The yenta would be torn between trying to discover more
intimate details about Mrs. Klugerman and learning about her visitations. In
the end, the stories of the other sick people won out. Nothing seemed more
compelling to a bedridden patient than the ailments and mental attitude of
people in the same boat.

"Mr. Schwartz lost a leg from diabetes," Mrs.
Klugerman would say.

"Oh my God."

"His attitude is getting better. They'll give him an
artificial leg and a cane and he'll be able to get around. Look, it's better
than Mrs. Silverman."

"She has cancer?" The patient's face would
tighten, revealing the impending fear of the answer.

Mrs. Klugerman would nod her head. "She has a very
marvelous attitude. She said she had a full life, a lot of children and grandchildren,
and her husband is alive to take care of her."

"She has pain?"

"They give her something for it. Really, it's not so
bad."

"You must see a lot of people who are dying, Mrs.
Klugerman."

"One way or another, we're all going to go in the same
direction."

"Better tomorrow than today."

"You'll be dancing, Mrs. Rabinowitz. You'll see. I
give you less than a month."

"You think I can do a cha-cha-cha with a pin in my
hip?"

"You should see them."

"Next week, I'll go on the dance floor with my
walker."

Because the people who got sick were older, the recovery
period or the lingering with some terminal disease was longer, and Mrs.
Klugerman sometimes would stretch her visits over many months. She became
something of a legend. Most of the time, she learned about a sick person from
the patients she visited. Other times, people would simply call her to provide
her with the information and request a visit. It was one of the inevitable
consequences of living in Sunset Village that if you were sick, sooner or later
you would get a visit from Mrs. Klugerman.

It became somewhat of a local joke around the card tables,
or the pool. Someone would complain of an ache or a pain.

"Better watch out. You'll soon be ready for the Angel
of Mercy."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Klugerman."

"God forbid."

But if Mrs. Klugerman knew about these jokes, she said
nothing. The initial visit always created somewhat of a stir. First, there was
a shock of seeing the little bent woman at the door clutching her huge
pocketbook and drawing out a little cellophane bag of candies. A son or a
daughter or a sister or brother, usually someone who had flown down to act as
nurse, would scurry back to the sickbed.

"You know a Mrs. Klugerman?"

"Yetta Klugerman?"

"I didn't ask her first name."

"A little old lady with piano legs?"

"The same."

"She has candy?"

"That's her."

"She's the Angel of Mercy."

"The what?"

"It's a local joke."

In the end, they let her come in, as they knew she would be
persistent in her efforts. Some tried to bar her way, but her tenacity usually
won out. Besides, there was a suspicion, particularly in the minds of those who
had been sick, that somehow she had something to do with their recovery.
Naturally, the people who had died might have had a different story.

"Laugh all you want," a former patient might tell
a skeptic. "She was there maybe four, five times a week. More than my
so-called friends." At this point, the patient--male or female--might
glare at his or her companion, who might melt with guilt. "And I'm here to
tell about it."

"You might have been here just the same."

"That's the one thing I can't be sure about."

So Yetta Klugerman became welcome wherever there was a sick
person. It was well known, too, that she never went to funerals, which gave
some added encouragement to those patients sufficiently uncertain about their
prospects. Max Shinsky was a case in point.

He returned from the Poinsettia Beach Memorial Hospital, after his third heart attack, convinced that his faulty ticker could hardly withstand
even the slightest activity. He would lie in his bed in the bedroom of his
condominium, depressed and frightened that each move would be his last. Mrs.
Shinsky was a woman of great courage and energy, whose loquaciousness was a
legend in itself. Compulsively, every day, when she was not attending to Max,
she would sit next to the telephone and call a long list of friends to whom she
would outline even the most minute details of Max's illness. There seemed to be
an element of salesmanship about these calls, as if she was trying to sell her friends
on the proposition that her troubles far exceeded those of anyone else.

"You think you got troubles, Sadie," she would
say when the innocent at the other end of the phone tried to make a cause for
her own misfortunes. "I've got troubles," Mrs. Shinsky said.
"What you got is aches and pains. I've got tsooris."

When Mrs. Klugerman arrived on the scene with her little
cellophane candy bags, her presence was an added confirmation of Mrs. Shinsky's
monumental misfortunes.

"I've got Mrs. Klugerman visiting my Max--daily,"
she told her friends on the phone.

"That's trouble," her friends would agree.
"On a daily basis? That's trouble."

Mrs. Klugerman would arrive first thing in the morning, a
sign in itself, because it had come to be assumed that the first visitation of
the day was reserved for the patient who was least likely to make it to
sundown, a fact that did not improve Max Shinsky's spirits.

"You had a good night, Mr. Shinsky?" Mrs.
Klugerman would say, her heavily rouged mouth ludicrous in the bright morning
sunlight that streamed into the room.

"Lousy," Max would say, his hands crossed and
clasped over his stomach.

"That's to be expected, Mr. Shinsky," Mrs.
Klugerman would reply. "It gets worse before it gets better."

"From your mouth to God's ears."

"I know what I'm talking about."

When she left, Max would shift in his bed and Mrs. Shinsky
would bring him a cup of tea.

"She has to come so early?" he would ask.

"Look, I could tell her not to come," Mrs.
Shinsky would reply.

"Do I have to be the first one? When she walks in the
room, I begin to hear the angels singing."

"For you, it wouldn't be angels, Max," Mrs.
Shinsky would say, trying to cheer him up.

He would look up at the ceiling and raise his hand.
"You gave me her for fifty years. You were so good to me."

"You're making a big deal about Mrs. Klugerman,"
Mrs. Shinsky would say, straightening the bed. "At least she visits."

One day, Mrs. Klugerman did not arrive first thing in the
morning. Max looked at the clock; it was past eleven and the sun was high in
the sky, throwing different shadows in the room. Despite himself, he felt the
beginnings of his own anxiety.

"How come Mrs. Klugerman didn't come?" he finally
said, when the clock read noon.

"I can't understand it."

"You think she's sick herself?"

"Mrs. Klugerman? How can the Angel of Mercy be
sick?"

"I'm worried about her."

"Worry about yourself."

Finally, just after noon, Mrs. Klugerman arrived. She moved
slowly into the bedroom and sat down by the bed. Max Shinsky felt relieved.

"I'm surprised you didn't come earlier," he said,
searching her wrinkled face, the features composed under the smudged and
hopeless make-up.

"First I went to Mr. Haber, then Mrs. Klopman, then
Mr. Katz. They all just came home from the hospital."

He was tempted to ask about their condition, but a sense of
fear tightened his throat.

"You look better," Mrs. Klugerman said suddenly.

"Then I wish I felt like I looked."

"He's a real kvetch," Mrs. Shinsky volunteered.

"When people tell me I look better, it's time to
worry," he said.

She stood for a while watching him, smiling thinly,
benignly. He had never paid much attention to her before, except as an odd
joke, something to be endured. Now she appeared differently, a puzzle. He
wondered why she did this. Was she a little touched in the head, as everyone
seemed to imply?