The Sunset Gang (20 page)

"They're going to try and put me in a home," she
whispered.

"They'll never get me into one alive," Milly
Klepkes said. There was a tendency to think first of oneself in Sunset Village.

"I'll take poison," Sophie Berger responded, which
was enough to shock Milly into facing her friend's immediate problem.

"I'll be glad to help if you need me, Sophie,"
her friend said with feeling.

"Don't worry, I'll holler."

On the first night of their arrival, the children of Sophie
Berger sat around in her bedroom talking. It was the first time in years that
they had been together, just the four of them, and despite her fears she felt
good about that. But Ben should be here, she thought.

"If only your father were alive." She sighed.
"He'd be so happy seeing us all together."

"Daddy is with us," Sandy said. She was the
youngest and had been very attached to her father.

"At least he could protect me from the wrath of you
women," Leonard said.

"You never had it so good," Marilyn said,
sticking a finger in her brother's chest. She smiled at him, always the big
sister. "If only you hadn't married that bitch of a wife. We could have
been friends."

"Leave Cynthia out of this."

"Don't worry."

"She always does this, Ma," Leonard pleaded.

Later, after they had reminisced and discussed their
childhood, which had been a happy one, Sophie believed, they broached the heart
of the matter. She was ready and waiting, although the reminiscing had lulled
her into a false state of security. The opening shot came from a predictable
source. Her eldest.

"The question, Ma, is what do we do with you?"

"With me?" Sophie asked innocently, feeling a
sudden sharp twinge of pain in her hip.

"We can't put all this burden on Sandy just because
she lives in Florida."

"Really it's no burden," Sandy said, a moment too
fast in her response.

"Don't be ridiculous. You have a family, a
husband."

"Mama can live with me anytime she wants," Sandy said, kissing her mother's cheek.

"She can live with me, too," Marilyn said.
"Ma, anytime you want you can live with me and Marvin. We'd love to have
you, you know that."

"You make it sound as if I don't want her,"
Leonard said, taking his mother's hand.

"You think she would be happy living with that bitch
you married?" Marilyn shouted. "I wouldn't have my mother
degraded."

"She's got to stop about Cynthia, Ma. She's my wife
and I want her respected."

Sophie listened, waiting for the ultimate suggestion,
holding back her tears. She cursed her frail body, felt its humiliation. She
had once been a big woman, a strong woman, the last to tire.

"I don't know what you're all worried about. In a few
weeks the hip will be good enough. Then I'll throw away the walker and start
with a cane. The doctor said it's a long process, but you know seventy-four is
not exactly ancient. Not in this place."

Marilyn looked at her and shook her head.

"Seventy-nine, Ma."

"Who said?"

"Ma, this is Marilyn. These are your children. We know
your age."

"You saw my birth certificate?" She had been so
used to lying about it that the truth escaped her. She nodded her head,
suddenly feeling old, but refusing to surrender. In six months she'd be eighty.
My God, eighty. Her mind was young. Her heart was young, she told herself.

"There are people here living alone in their
nineties," she said proudly. They looked at each other, shrugged. Then Sandy bent over her and patted the pillows. They each kissed her in turn and left her in
darkness.

But the way the condominium was constructed and the
thinness of the walls made it possible for her to hear every word despite their
whisperings. She listened, alert to every sound, every nuance.

"For sure she can't stay here," Marilyn said, her
voice urgent. "Maybe the hip will heal faster, but then what about the
cataract." So they knew about that? "We'll worry ourselves
sick."

"Look, she's a proud woman," Leonard said.
"Maybe she should stick it out by herself for a while until she finally
comes to the realization on her own."

"It's okay for you to say," Sandy snapped.
"You're up there. I'm down here. I'm the one that will have to suffer for
it. Already my husband is threatening me with divorce."

"Don't exaggerate, Sandy," Marilyn said.
"We've had our problems, too."

Sandy sniffled loudly. "Shut
up. You'll wake Mama."

She heard someone tiptoe into the room and stand silently
in the doorway for a moment, then leave and close the door softly behind them.
How could she blame her children? She thought of them when they were young but
could not find any relationship between the little faces of their childhood and
the reality of their adulthood. They were middle-aged now. Marilyn was well
over fifty. Who were those people out there in the living room deciding her
fate? Were they the screaming babies that she had once suckled at her breast,
the helpless lumps of flesh that greedily took sustenance from her? They were
definitely not the same people, she decided. And the woman who suckled them was
a different woman. Her mind searched back to herself in that time, the tall
buxom woman with the tight skin who could feel and enjoy the strength of
herself.

"You work too hard, Sophie," Ben would say,
planting the idea of tiredness.

"Who will do the housework?" she had always
responded, the martyred woman, knowing now that she did not deserve her
martyrdom. She had had the strength to endure. It was Ben who faltered. Ben was
the weak one. But the voices persisted as her attention drifted back to them.

"She's going to have to face it sooner or later,"
Marilyn said, with a tone of finality.

"The problem," Sandy said, "is an immediate
one. She can barely make it to the bathroom, and only with my help. I have to
help her out of bed. Can she go shopping? She needs help when she
dresses."

"But surely she'll recover from the hip," Leonard
said.

"You got a guarantee?"

Perhaps it was the reference to the bathroom that triggered
the sense of her own indignity. In the hospital, they had viewed her body as an
inanimate object, something to be pushed around and her private parts exposed,
even explored by indifferent fingers. They had finally put a little sitting
potty by her bed and watched her as she performed, like a child. But in her own
home? How dare those people discuss her personal toilet problems. Over my dead
body will anyone ever take me to the toilet again, she vowed, feeling the full
impact of her indignation. She wanted to rush out of bed and into them
screaming with both barrels blazing. Gripping the sheets, she balled the
material up in her fists and calmed herself, listening again.

"If we can just get her to accept the idea,"
Marilyn was saying.

"Marilyn and her big mouth," Sophie hissed into
the darkness.

"Look, we can afford the best there is. They're waited
on hand and foot. We're not talking of a charity case. I think if we approach
it right and not make her feel that we're putting her in a prison, she could be
persuaded to accept it."

"Wonderful," Leonard said, his sarcasm obvious.
"Who is going to tell her?"

"You're the son," Sandy said.

"Did that ever mean anything in this family? You've
all always treated me like some sort of bric-a-brac. When did I ever have any
authority in this group?"

"You should tell her, Marilyn," Sandy said.
"You're the strongest."

"Since when?" Marilyn said.

"Well, you have the biggest mouth," Leonard
chimed.

Sophie smiled, enjoying their discomfort.

"You know just because I have a big mouth it doesn't
mean I'm the strongest. You know how it is with Mama and me. If I say black,
she says white. Marvin has more influence with her. Sometimes I wonder if she
actually likes me."

"Mama?" Sandy said.

"What's the rule," Marilyn said, "that says
a mother must like a child?"

"She loves you, Marilyn. She loves us all."

"Equally?" Marilyn wondered aloud.

"I never thought about it," Sandy said.

"Leonard was always the favorite," Marilyn said.
"My Leonard this. My Leonard that. Little Lord Fauntleroy, Leonard
Berger."

"You're exaggerating," Leonard said.

"Deny that you're the favorite," Marilyn pressed.

Sophie heard the long pause.

"See?" Marilyn said.

"Well, I was the boy," Leonard said. "I was
the minority."

"She still favors you," Marilyn said. "You
can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. My Leonard. My wonderful
Leonard."

If it was just up to me, she could live with us,"
Leonard said. "You both know that."

"With that bitch you married? I think she might wish
she were dead," Marilyn said.

Sophie thought she was certainly right about that.

"She could live with me, too," Sandy said.
"She knows that she's welcome in my house."

"Oh she's welcome, but I don't think she'd want to be
bored to death."

"Bored? In my house?"

"Bored, Sandy. Bored by your boring husband and your
boring children. What do you want her to do, sit in the corner and twiddle her
thumbs?"

Sophie smiled again. Marilyn might have a big mouth, but
she knew how to put her finger on a situation. My poor Sandy, Sophie thought.
Poor, boring Sandy.

"Am I glad I live in Florida and not near your big
mouth," Sandy fired back.

"I didn't mean it," Marilyn said, her contrition
filtering through the thin walls. "I was exaggerating to prove a
point."

"Well, it's no exaggeration that Mama would not want
to live in the immediate vicinity of your fishwife mouth."

"That I know," Marilyn said. "God, I'd love
her to be near me. But she'd have a nervous breakdown in a week."

"That's for sure."

"So what are we going to do?" Leonard said.

"We could get her a maid, a companion," Sandy suggested.

A keeper, Sophie thought. Never. She would be the laughing
stock of Sunset Village. That was worse than a home, she felt. She wanted to
shut off her hearing now, to tell them all to go away. Who needed them? Lifting
her arms from under the blanket, she pressed them against the sides of the bed,
straining against the mattress to raise the upper part of her body. The gasping
of her breath drowned out the sounds of her children's voices as she raised
herself with effort to a sitting position and slowly swung her legs over the
side of the bed. Pausing, she caught her breath, gathering her strength and
searching in the darkness for the sight of the walker, the outlines of which
she could make out at the foot of the bed. Pressing down on her palms, she
tried lifting her torso, moving sideways, inching her way in the direction of
the walker. It took all her strength. She felt her heart beating in her chest
as she strained the muscles of her upper body, compensating for the pain in her
hip and the weakness of her legs. Sweat poured down her back as she paused to
recover her energy. She heard the voices again.

"Look," Leonard was saying, "she is an
intelligent woman. She knows the realities, the burden that she is putting on
the three of us."

"Play to her guilt, right, Leonard?" Marilyn said
with contempt.

"Well, she plays to ours," Sandy said.
"That's why we're all here."

"Guilt?" Marilyn said. "I thought it was
love."

"Are you saying that I don't love Mama?" Sandy asked, the pitch of her voice rising. "Who do you think has been taking care of
her?"

"I didn't say you didn't love her." Marilyn
turned to Leonard and said, "She's so damned sensitive."

"If you went through what I went through in the last
few weeks, you'd be sensitive too."

"I didn't say you didn't love Mama," Marilyn
said, her voice reaching the fringes of gentleness, but proceeding no further.

"I love her more than you do," Sandy said.

"I doubt that." The attempt at gentleness was gone.

"We all love her equally," Leonard said.

"What the hell does that mean?" Marilyn said.

The strain of her movement made Sophie gasp again. The
voices became incoherent. Her progress was slow as she moved her body to the
foot of the bed, every tiny progression taking a major effort and with it all
of her resources. When she felt her endurance slacken, she rested, waiting for
her heart to slow, her concentration to clear. I must not be discouraged, she
told herself, taking comfort in even the most minuscule progress. She had,
after all, traversed nearly the entire bed by herself. She suddenly thought of
the story of the tortoise and the hare, which she had read to them when they
were children, feeling elation now as she looked sideways to measure the distance
from her pillow.

"Well then, it's decided," she heard Leonard say.
"We'll suggest it together, a kind of unanimous committee decision. Then
we'll make arrangements to take her out for a visit. The one in Lauderdale, the
Seaview. It's the best in the area, I'm told. And she'll still be close enough
for Sandy to visit and we'll promise that we'll visit her at least three times
a year. At least that."

"More," Marilyn said. "It's three hours by
plane. No big deal."

Sophie had reached the foot of the bed, reaching out with
her hand for the walker, gripping its cool metal, then drawing it as close to
the bed as possible to insure a firm grip. The crisis would come at the moment
when she had to pull herself up, when for a second her arms had to support her
full weight. She waited quietly in the dark room, her body poised at the edge
of the bed with both hands on the metal frame of the walker. She knew that if
she did not make it, she would fall, and they would hear the sound of her
helplessness confirming their worse fears. Her hands tightened on the metal
frame as she closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts, and willed her aging body
to give her this one victory. She tightened her eyes, feeling the backwash of
tears and the quickness of her breath, a signal perhaps that her body was
rejecting her will. Then suddenly the will exploded and she felt her arms
tighten and her body lurch upward. There was a brief dizziness, a momentary
faintness, and then she was standing, proudly standing. She stood there for a
long moment, catching her breath and listening to hear if they had heard the
inner explosion, the gasping breath, the beating heart.