Never Too Late for Love (21 page)

"You had a fight?"

It was futile to protest.

"Nothing serious."

"I could tell you about men," Mrs. Milgrim said.

"Don't," Sheila said, curtly. She wondered if
Mrs. Milgrim would catch her discourtesy. She hadn't.

"Could I tell you about men?"

"I really don't want to hear it," Sheila said.
What could they tell her?

The historical gap was infinite. Actually, she felt like
E.T., a different species on another planet. What am I doing here, cried within
herself.

"I'm going to take a shower," she said to Mrs.
Milgrim. "And I don't need anything from the store. I don't need any
solace. I don't need any pity. I don't need any advice."

"You're upset?"

She didn't answer, going into the bathroom and slamming the
door behind her, listening, until she could hear Mrs. Milgrim's shuffling steps
and the opening and closing of the front door.

When she came out, she sniffed. Mrs. Milgrim had left her
trademark. Sheila squirted air freshener into the effluvia.

Then she got into her bikini and lay on the blanket behind
the apartment, her body to the afternoon sun, waiting.

She could hear Marvin Shrinsky dragging his chair out of
the screened porch, setting it up beside her. She looked up and squinted into
his face.

"I've had one lousy weekend," she said.

"So I understand."

"And I'm getting the hell out of this place as fast as
I can."

"Who can blame you?"

"I'm young," she said, holding down the edge of
her hysteria. "I'm young. Look at my body." She started to undo her
top strap.

"Please," Marvin said.

She got up and went into her apartment. He followed her.
The screen porch led to her bedroom and she stood there in the center of the
room.

"I'm young," she said again, removing the top and
letting her breasts fall free. She held her hands under them.

"See," she said, her voice breaking. "Touch
them."

He hesitated at first, reaching out finally, touching her
nipples, watching them harden.

"Can I kiss them?" he asked.

"Help yourself," she said, feeling aroused. She
noted the tell-tale bulge in his long shorts and thought of Mrs. Shrinsky's
earlier comment about Marvin's absent potency.

"Would you like to, Marvin?" she asked, seeing
the opportunity for a kind of weird redemption, a way to strike back at the
enemies of her peace of mind.

"I'm a man wandering in the desert dying of
thirst," he sighed. She pulled down his pants and discovered his youthful
readiness.

"You've been hiding your light under a bushel, Mr.
Shrinsky," Sheila said, leading him to her bed.

"From her," he sighed, demonstrating that he was,
indeed, up to the mark in that department.

"And if she walked in right now?" Sheila asked.

"I'd be a legend in Sunset Village till the end of
time."

When they were finished, Marvin kissed her on the forehead.

"Thank you," he said.

"It's my parting gift," Sheila said. "My
statement for your wife and Mrs. Milgrim and Bruce for putting me in this
prison. I feel like a free woman."

"I'll help you pack," Marvin said. "That's
the least I could do."

When his persistent chest pains were diagnosed as angina,
Arnold Gold realized that he was, indeed, approaching the outer edges of his
mortality. He was frightened at first, then surprised. For at Sunset Village, death was commonplace, and the Sunset Village theme song--the ambulance
siren--was as ubiquitous as lightening bugs on early tropical evenings.

The knowledge that his flesh was expiring wrought profound
changes in Arnold Gold. The doctor said he could live another ten years if he
watched himself carefully, rested, and took his medication as prescribed. But,
then, they always said that. Having just passed his seventy-second birthday,
reaching his eighties in a reasonably together state seemed too remote a
possibility to contemplate, especially when the pains stabbed at his chest.

The idea of confessing must have surfaced in his
subconscious during the night after his visit to the doctor, because when he
awoke the following morning, there was no debate raging within him. The
decision was made; he would confess. He would tie up those last loose ends of
his life.

He put on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen, where his
wife, Rachel, was busy making coffee. They shared most household chores, and it
was Arnold's job to make the English muffins. He put them in the broiler and
watched them brown, pats of butter melting and running over their ridged
surfaces.

"I'm about to tell you something Rachel," he
said, looking at the muffins as he lifted them from the broiler with a spatula.
"I'm about to make a full confession." He sensed that his wife
hesitated briefly as she poured the coffee, but it did not deter him.

"I've been unfaithful," he said, finally turning
toward her as he put the muffins on the small Formica surface where they had
their breakfast. She continued to fill the cups with steaming coffee, then sat
down, busying her hands with mixing the cream and sugar into her cup. She kept
her eyes averted, concentrating on her task at hand. He knew she wouldn't look
at him now, not directly, until he finished what he had to say. That was her
way. She was a pouter, and her anger smoldered rather than erupted. He sat
beside her, sipped his coffee, and started on his muffins.

"Just don't say anything until I've finished," he
said, biting off a tiny bit of muffin and washing it down with coffee.

"Jam?" she asked, moving the jar of blueberry jam
toward him.

"It started when I worked in the Vogue Shoe Store on Kingston Avenue," he said. "We must have been married seven years. Believe me,
Rachel, I never looked at another woman until then. But you were having those
terrible headaches and, let's face it, I had certain needs." He looked up
briefly. She was sipping her coffee quietly.

"We're different, you and I," he continued.
"You could take it or leave it--mostly leave it--but I was going crazy.
She was Charlie Weinstein's wife. They owned the store, and Sherry Weinstein
was helping with the books and the stocks."

Arnold paused, spooning a pat of
jam on his muffin. He noticed that the spoon shook as he felt a faint stab of
chest pain. He wondered if he was getting another attack, but it passed
quickly. He finished his muffin and washed it down with coffee.

"She seduced me. I swear it. Charlie was on a buying
trip in Manhattan, so we were alone in the store, and while I was checking the
stock in the back, she came over and grabbed me. At first, I pushed her away.
She knew I was a married man. You remember, we once met her on the street. But
she seduced me, and since you had started having those headaches and I couldn't
go near you, I was busting."

They stood up from the table and moved the soiled dishes to
the sink. Rachel rinsed and he dried. He didn't look at her, wondering if she
was crying. Sometimes she cried quietly.

"It went on for six months. Then she started to get
too attached, and I wasn't going to give up my family. There was no way that I
ever was going to give up my family. You know that, Rachel. No way. There was a
terrible scene when I quit. Charlie couldn't understand it. I was the best shoe
salesman they ever had. My commissions were the highest of anyone in the
history of the store. You know that. That was the year we bought the Buick. But
Sherry made one terrible scene right in front of Charlie, calling me an
ungrateful bastard for giving up the opportunity they had given me. I never
told you what I went through, Rachel. I was so filled with guilt and remorse
that I could barely stand it."

He felt a lump gather in his throat and his voice cracked,
but he felt better for having said it. She might as well know everything, Arnold thought.

When they finished washing the dishes, he followed her into
the bedroom and they began to make the beds, he standing on one side, she on
the other. He looked up at her and saw her lips pursed tight, her eyes
concentrated on the movement of the sheets and blankets.

"Hand me the pillow," she said. They tucked the
bedspread under the pillows and rolled it above them, smoothing the sides.

"There was no chance that she was going to break up
our marriage. All right, so you weren't very sexy and I was. That wasn't
everything. After a while, you can get used to anything. I wish I could have
gotten used to it. But then, remember when I got that job selling the Debbie
line in Macy's. One day a woman comes in, a small Italian woman with long black
hair. I'll never forget the first time. She came in and insisted that she wore
a size three. She had very small, well-made feet, but when I measured her, she
was actually a four. 'You're a four,' I told her. I mean, I knew women were
vain about their feet, but there was no way that I could have stretched a three
or a three-and-a-half onto her feet, so I told her straight out that she was a
four. 'I said three,' she insisted. 'No way,' I told her again. But she was
really insistent so I went to the stockroom and brought out a size three in two
different styles and wrestled with her feet for a while. Maybe it was the way I
handled her feet. She also was married and wore a ring, as I did. I would never
pretend I was anything but married. It was an act of faith with me Rachel. An
act of faith."

Rachel went into the bathroom to use the shower first,
while Arnold vacuumed the apartment. As he passed the mirror, he shut off the
vacuum cleaner and looked at his face. Over his lips was a thin film of sweat,
which he wiped away with a tissue. This is the toughest thing I've ever done in
my life, he thought to himself, sensing the anguish he must be causing her and
wondering if things would ever be the same between them again. But he
had
to tell her. They had been married forty-eight years. My God, where did it all
go? He wondered if he would ever make it to his fiftieth anniversary.

When Rachel had finished in the bathroom, he went in,
showered, shaved, and dressed. She was sitting in the living room when he
emerged, stonefaced, reading the newspaper. It has to be said, he wanted to
tell her, but he was afraid it would hurt her more if he put it that way. Better
to be forthright. Just let it come out, he decided, steeling himself for the
recriminations. "See what a damned liar your husband has been!" he
wanted to cry out.

He picked up the shopping list, which they had prepared
together the night before, from the top of the television set, and she followed
him out to the car. He welcomed the idea of doing something that required being
watchful and looking straight ahead. She sat beside him, silently, listening.
Occasionally, he imagined that he could hear her sigh.

"Could you imagine? Her name was Concetta, and I used
to meet her at her apartment in Greenwich Village about three times a week,
before I got to work. It was on those days that I didn't start until
twelve--only you didn't know that. I was crazy taking chances like that.

"Her husband was a garbage man, and he usually left
the place at five a.m. She lived on the ground-floor apartment and always left
the door open for me. She had a kid, a boy, but he was always in school when I
got there. If there was any problem, she would simply keep the door locked and
I knew to stay away. I liked her Rachel, I really liked her, but luckily she
was a Catholic and there was no chance that she would endanger either of our
marriages. I know I should rot in hell for what I did, Rachel. But what was I
supposed to do? I wanted you. But you were having cramps, or headaches, or were
too nervous or too tired or the kids had gotten you down. I'm not making
excuses. I really wanted you to want me." He swallowed deeply and didn't
notice the speed bump in the street, and they lurched as he sped over it.

"Be careful!" Rachel squealed as her head knocked
the ceiling of the car.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"You'd better watch where you're going," she
said, the words ejaculating in a hiss that revealed her pain and anger. I have
got to tell her, he vowed, pressing on with his story.

"There's another thing I never told you," he
said, the muscles in his throat constricting. "I don't know how to tell
you this. It sounds so terrible, even when I say it to myself. But I
masturbated a lot in those years. I couldn't help myself. I was young. I had
needs. I used to think that maybe I was abnormal, a sex maniac or something.
Sometimes I masturbated two, three times a day. Can you believe that? It made me
feel dirty. How was I going to tell you what I was going through? Would you
have understood?" He listened for some reaction, but none came.

"You weren't interested. You could take it or leave
it--and you left it, mostly. I wasn't bitter. I respected what you felt and,
after a while, I stopped pressing the point. Sometimes you would say it:
'Arnie, what's the matter? You getting old? You got a girlfriend?' Well, my
girlfriend was Madame palm and her five sisters." How obscene, he thought,
ashamed of the crude joke.

"It wasn't that I was a philanderer, Rachel. I was
emotionally involved only twice." He hadn't quite expected it to come out
that way. He paused as he searched the parking lot of the supermarket for a
space. The traffic was heavy and they had to circle the lot several times
before they found a place to park.

In the supermarket, they split the list and went their
separate ways with their separate baskets, meeting, as they always had, near
the first checker, where they unloaded the two baskets together.

"How are things with the Golds?" asked the
checker, a large woman whose glasses slipped down to the tip of her nose.

"How are you Helen?" Rachel asked pleasantly, but
with an edge that told Arnold she was putting on a front.

"You're looking good, Helen," Arnold said, as
they waited for her to make the change and pack the bags, which they wheeled in
a cart across the parking lot before loading them into the car. Then they
headed back to Sunset Village.

"When they made me assistant buyer, they had a cashier
at the store named Judy Farber. She was eighteen, a pretty little thing. I
think I was thirty-six then, because I made a big thing about being twice her
age. She would kid me a lot about it, calling me 'old man.' Imagine at
thirty-six being-called 'old man.' We used to take our lunch hours together
and, after we ate, we'd take walks down thirty-fourth street when the weather
was good. I swear, Rachel, I wasn't looking for trouble. After Concetta, I had
vowed that I would never be unfaithful again. Who needed it? I had you. I had
our kids. I had a nice life. We had just moved to that new place on Empire
Boulevard and had bought a lot of furniture on time, and I had to take another
job to pay it off. You remember. I worked Saturdays at that shoe store on Flatbush Avenue. You used to tell me not to work so hard, and I used to say I had to or we
couldn't pay these things off? Actually, it's a wonder I didn't have a heart
attack then."

He maneuvered the car through the Village gates, waving at
the guard and slowing down to take the bump, then headed toward their court.

"I'm really ashamed of this, Rachel," he said,
pausing. "She was a virgin. She lived with her family in the Bronx, and
since we lived in Brooklyn, I couldn't see her very much at first. Neither of us
had any money, and there was barely any way to enjoy any real intimacy. We
necked and petted in the stock room, or in doorways. A couple of times, we went
to the movies and sat in the last row. Christ, its embarrassing to tell you
this."

Arnold was silent as he drove the
car into their court and carefully edged it between the white lines of their
parking space. They both carried groceries into the house and began to load
them into the cabinets and refrigerator.

"I think you forgot the soda," Rachel said. He
went out to the car and found the six pack of soda on the floor behind the
front seat and brought it into the house.

"This cheese is moldy," Arnold said, sniffing a
package that he was about to put in the dairy drawer of the refrigerator.

"I never saw so much spoilage in my life," Rachel
said.

"We'll take it back tomorrow."

When they finished putting away the groceries, they went
into their bedroom to put on their bathing suits. They tried to get to the pool
before one o'clock each day, so as to get chaise lounges that would allow them
to take advantage of the sun late into the afternoon.

While they changed into their suits, he began again.

"It wasn't until we discovered that a friend of Judy's
had an apartment, a cold water flat in a brownstone, in the forties, that we
really found a way to be together. It cost us $5 a week; her friend was really
hard up. I used to get there at about seven o'clock every morning. You were
always asking why I had to go in so early when the store didn't open until ten.
Sometimes it was pitch dark when I left the house. Well, it was Judy Farber.
You know, I can barely remember her face. I try sometimes and it just fades
away. I was thirty-six years old, and she was a virgin."