The Ninth Wife (43 page)

We heard a scratchy recording of a waltz, like a record playing on an actual turntable, and there they were, dancing, arm-in-arm, in the middle of the room. They looked beautiful, like a dying maple leaf falling from its branch, how it takes its time and twirls in the air. That’s what they made me think of, or what Fawn made me think of, towering over him. I thought she was radiant, like a sunset: she wore orange pants, a burnt red sleeveless blouse, and a long crimson head scarf all shimmering and flowing about her. He looked more like a piece of bark that got stuck to her and was along for the ride, but he was happy. His smile was as wide as I’ve ever seen. I could have stood there and watched him for a long time, there with the sunlight streaming in.

Fawn had a body much younger than her age would let on, though you could see the truth if you looked closely enough at the veins in her skin or the gray at her roots. But it was mostly her face that gave her away. It was so wizened and pale, as if all she had endured in life was there in every crease and blemish and frown when she thought no one was looking. And those dark, sunken eyes of hers. It made me sad to see her eyes.

But I noticed all that later. When we first walked in the room Fawn and my grandfather were dancing and there were about a half dozen other folks sitting on the couches in a circle cheering them on. Someone yelled,
You show him how it’s done, Fawn
, but my grandfather stopped when he saw us. He let go of Fawn and stood there encircling his hands one in the other.

I said hi to everyone. I didn’t know what else to do.
Please don’t stop on our account
, I said, but that came out petty, even though I didn’t mean it that way. There was an awkward silence then when everyone was just looking at us so I started the introductions. Fawn came over and shook our hands and said she was very pleased to meet us. I realized that she and my grandfather had had a few hours at least to get to know each other and I wondered—How much did he share? Did he talk about my grandmother? Did he mention the e-mail, or that it was from me that he knew where to find Fawn?

The waltz on the stereo stopped and then started again from the beginning and Fawn said,
Mr. Steinbloom, you should dance with your wife
. He held out his hand and asked my grandmother to dance
.
It was such a little thing, a stupid invitation in a crowd of strangers in the middle of nowheresville, but it was so sincere even if it wasn’t his idea and I almost cried seeing him there with his hand out to her. If I could have willed anything I would have closed my eyes and willed that dance to happen. It just seemed to me like everything would be okay, that all of this wouldn’t have happened if they could have just danced a waltz in the sunlight. But she said no.
No, thank you
, she said, and he lowered his arm and the moment evaporated. That’s when I saw Fawn’s face. Really saw it; she was looking at me with such deep understanding that it gave me chills.

But Fawn changed the mood. She clapped her hands, went to a corner, and changed the music to salsa while she talked of the weather and welcomed them to take a seat. She did a little dance move on her way back to the couches. Then she plopped down on the couch next to an older gentleman, took off her shoes, and put her feet up on his lap.
Use the peppermint
, she said to him, pointing to a bottle of lotion on the table, and he squirted a dollop in his hand and began massaging her feet. I was fascinated by this minutia surrounding her
being
. She was one of those people whose
being
you noticed. She commanded that room. I could tell they all idolized her. Even my grandmother was somewhat mesmerized by her, though she tried not to be, looking away and down at her lap every now and again. I was surprised she even wanted to stay.

Fawn got everyone talking about all sorts of things, the kinds of things I tried to get my grandparents to talk about the whole drive out from Washington. Things from their childhoods, like visiting the candy stores and the Fireside Chats on the radio and the polio scare and how sad all the Jews were when Roosevelt died. I loved it. I asked questions and took notes. I couldn’t write fast enough, spelling the names wrong, I’m sure—Milton Berle, Artie Shaw, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Jack Barry. Fawn talked some about dancing, but she was more excited to talk about Loretta Young’s dresses. I noticed she liked to say the phrase
P.S.
a lot, like she always had the last word. Someone would finish a story about Arthur Godfrey, for example, and she’d say,
P.S. he was the biggest goddamn anti-Semite in the whole country
. And then she’d make a joke. I got the feeling everyone there was Jewish and probably originally from the East Coast, that maybe that’s the kind of community it was.

My grandfather was mostly having a great time, laughing and slapping his thigh, but my grandmother was pretty quiet. Though, I caught her smiling. I found myself hoping the place they’re moving to has people like this that they can relate to.

Then things got serious.

Someone said something like
Those were the good ol’ days
, that made everyone contemplative and despondent. Fawn broke the silence with an odd admission; she said,
I’ve been sober for eight years
. It was odd because no one had asked her, no one brought up the fact that they weren’t all good ol’ days, but she said it as if everyone was thinking it anyway and she needed to clear the air. The funny thing was, I really was thinking about it. The way Rory described her, she was an alcoholic and a coke addict back then and yeah, she seemed to be okay now so I wondered, healthwise, how she was doing.

I can’t remember what caused the change. The music stopped, that’s one thing. We were left listening to the sound of our own breathing, which, collectively, got to be loud in a room full of older folks. And then there was this woman, a huge, lumbering woman in the corner. She was mumbling things throughout the conversation. They called her Agnes. I couldn’t hear Agnes until everyone stopped talking and then I could hear she was a little senile. Fawn yelled at her to shut up. I was taken aback, because Fawn had been so pleasant. I looked at my grandparents and they were surprised, too, as if we just glimpsed behind the curtain and everything up until then had been a mirage—the dancing, the laughing, the trip down memory lane. It got a little Twilight Zoney.

Somewhere in there, maybe to make polite conversation, my grandfather asked Fawn how she knew Rory. She looked like she didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about, so I offered a few details—his name, what he looked like, that she had met him at a bar in Las Vegas and what year that might have been. I didn’t say they got married, mostly because I hadn’t told my grandparents that he’s been married before, but Fawn said it. Only, she said it as a joke.
Did I marry him?
She said it as if it was the most absurd thing in the world, and everyone laughed. Fawn laughed, too, and I could tell she really didn’t remember. But then her smile waned just enough. Fawn gazed directly into my eyes. It was a look that lingered an extra second that made me think Fawn was reading my thoughts and understood on some level. And not only that, that she was sorry.

Then she said—and I memorized this—
A man iz voser iz, nit voser iz geven
. I asked her what it meant and my grandmother of all people was the one who translated. She said it was Yiddish for
A man is what he is, not what he has been
. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

We left the group right after that. My grandmother asked in front of everyone if my grandfather had made arrangements to get home—she said
home
not back to the hotel. He said no and she said in her nasty way,
I didn’t think so
, and it was at that point that I got up and corralled them into their good-byes and back into the van.

Right after we started driving, my grandmother said she had to go to the restroom. I stopped at the next bathroom I could find, which was that McDonald’s. I waited in the car while they both went in.

This is going to sound strange, but I’ve never been in a McDonald’s. My parents were into healthy food and never took me, and then, I don’t know, it wasn’t a principle so much as a challenge. But then this woman burst open the door and yelled at me to come inside. My grandmother must have told her I was outside. I ran in and found my grandfather on the floor. He was unconscious and folded up against the wall. My grandmother was on her knees, crying. This guy—I’m guessing he was probably the manager—he told me he had already called for help. He and I laid my grandfather out and I put a shirt or apron, something, under his head, all the time I was saying,
Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay
to my grandmother or maybe to myself, I don’t know. I fixed his crooked glasses. He was breathing, I could tell that, but I couldn’t get him to open his eyes. I kept asking what happened, but my grandmother was sobbing too loud for me to understand her and the few people standing around didn’t know. The manager said he only heard a confrontation. There was a girl who was using the restroom. She said she heard my grandparents arguing but she couldn’t say what the argument was about.

I held my grandmother, just so she’d stop shaking and crying. We sat at my grandfather’s feet. I think I was in shock, because what kept going through my mind was:
So this is the inside of a McDonald’s
.

We were sitting there and the girl said,
Guy his age, maybe he had a heart attack
. It made me think of Agnes and Fawn. Agnes mumbled about a lot of things, one of which was her cardiac muscle. She was going on and on about it until Fawn told her to shut up.
P.S.
, said Fawn,
it’s called a heart, Agnes.
Broken, bashed in, or ripped apart, it’s still a human heart and it pumps until it doesn’t.
Look around you . . . we’re all still pumping away.

I don’t know . . . sitting there on the floor of the McDonald’s with my grandfather unconscious and my grandmother upset like that, I thought of that phrase,
pumping away
, and I heard it differently. I had this image of them rowing out from shore, pumping the oars, waving good-bye, turning their heads to the ocean and fading into the haze of the horizon. Images like that make me want to curl up in a corner and cry until I can’t cry anymore.

And I do sometimes. Sometimes, I actually do.

Chapter Thirty-three

E
xcuse me,” says a nurse who has knocked on the door and poked her head in. “Your grandfather is awake. I’m sure he’d like to see you.”

Bess looks around Dr. Higgins’s office for the time and doesn’t see it. She wonders how long she’s been talking. “Where’s my grandmother?” she asks the nurse.

“I sent her to get something to eat.”

Bess follows the nurse to Irv’s room. His breathing sounds labored through his open mouth. His skin is slightly gray, his eyes nearly unblinking as he stares at the window. Laid out on a bright white sheet in a hospital bed much too large for his slight frame, he has the look of a fresh trout on wax paper.

“Gramp? How are you feeling?”

He lifts a knee and turns to her. His gaze graduates from confusion to recognition to affection.

“Like a million bucks, Bessie dear.” His voice is weak and strained.

“Inflation being what it is, we should be able to do better.”

“Ech, your generation. You’re all spoiled.” His smile lasts only a second before he winces in pain at having tried to move.

“Easy,” she says, adjusting his pillow. “Do you know where you are?”

“A Caribbean beach resort, I hope.”

“Close.”

Bess adjusts his pillow. “Gramp, what did the doctors, say? You all right?”

“I’m fine. They think I fell, bumped my head. Nothing to worry about.”

“No heart attack? No concussion?”

“Your grandfather, he’s a tough one,” he says with his thumb pointed at his chest. “Takes more to beat me down than a fast-food joint.”

“I see.” Bess points to the gauze taped to his arm. “Does it hurt?”

“That? No. They go overboard, these doctors. It’s enough already with the gauze, I told them.” He avoids her gaze.

“Gramp. She can’t be doing that to you.”

“I got a little scratch this time. So what. She doesn’t mean it.”

“How do you know she doesn’t mean it?”

He sighs and places his hand over his heart, perhaps unconsciously. “Because we never mean to hurt the ones we love most.”

Bess feels her sadness like a tangible thing in her throat. “She has to stop, Gramp. It’s not right.”

“I told them: What’s right or not right is between her and me.”

Bess wants to ask him more questions, but he has closed his eyes as if he’s ready to slip back into sleep.

She doesn’t buy his last statement, but she is touched to find him loyal to Millie, as if by airing their domestic disputes to such a degree, they have pushed the emergency reset button that recalls a sixty-five-year-old partnership, turning them from foes to allies against the rest of the world. But she can’t help wondering: Is he implying that he believes Millie has just cause? And how far back is he willing to give her to justify that cause?

Sometime between the start of her conversation with Dr. Higgins and now it has turned dark outside and she has been informed that visiting hours are coming to an end. She steps out of the room to make a call.

“Where have you been?” says Cricket.

“We’re okay. Sort of.” She relates the events of the afternoon in a more abridged version than she delivered to Dr. Higgins. It feels good to talk to Cricket. Unlike Dr. Higgins, Cricket syncopates her story with gratifying exclamations of shock and sympathy. She feels homesick hearing his voice.

“My Lord,” says Cricket. “Well, it could have been much worse. At their age. Imagine. I’m glad Irving is okay. And Millie, she’s holding up?”

Bess rubs her eyes. “I don’t know. I hope so. I’m afraid of what the psychologist is going to say. Sometimes I think she doesn’t know her own strength. You know how she pinches your cheek and can turn it black and blue? But then, I do think other times she knows exactly what she’s doing and can’t help herself. And I don’t know why.”