Florence Adler Swims Forever(10)

Despite the jacket, Isaac was a handsome man. He had a high forehead and a strong jaw and teeth that were unnaturally straight. At thirty-three, his dark hair was starting to recede, but Esther imagined that he’d remain an attractive man, even when it was gone.

Last evening, Esther had telephoned Fannie and Isaac’s apartment three times before Isaac picked up. When he finally answered, near midnight, he had seemed out of breath, and Esther wondered briefly if he’d been drinking. He told her he’d been asleep, which explained the endless ringing and his hard breathing, but not his stoic reaction when she told him that Florence was dead. Isaac asked so few questions, demanded so few answers, that Esther found it difficult to believe he could have possibly heard her. He’d known Florence since she was twelve years old. Surely the duration of their relationship, if nothing else, demanded a real reaction.

It wasn’t until she proposed keeping Florence’s death from Fannie that Isaac seemed to come fully awake.

“What will we tell her?” he had asked, his voice unsteady.

“Nothing. Or rather, the ordinary things,” said Esther. “That she’s busy training to swim the Channel. That she’s preparing for the trip to France.”

“How long can we possibly keep that up?”

“Florence is set to leave on the tenth of July.”

The line went quiet. Was. Florence was set to leave on the tenth of July.

“It feels wrong,” said Isaac. “Not telling her. She’d want to know.”

“Isaac,” said Esther, not yet pleading but utterly prepared to, “you remember what it was like.”

“We don’t know what caused the early labor.”

“Do you want to risk it? And possibly lose another son?” She was playing almost all of her cards now, even the ones she’d promised herself she wouldn’t touch.

“So instead I should just lie to her for two months?”

“It’s not lying,” said Esther, weakly.

“What about Gussie? She’ll be an accomplice in this? Or is she just going to be kept from her mother all summer?”

“No, of course not. She’s a smart girl. We’ll explain it.”

“And the staff at the hospital? Surely some of them have already wandered in off the ward to give their condolences?”

“Very few people know. And I’ll speak to Miss McLoughlin first thing in the morning.”

The line fell quiet again. Esther could hear the slow in and out of Isaac’s breathing.

“Isaac, please,” Esther begged. “I’ve lost enough today.”

Still, he didn’t give.

Esther could stand it no longer. She played her final card.

“It would mean so much to Joseph.”

Isaac owed his entire livelihood to Joseph. She knew it, Isaac knew it, and Isaac knew that she knew it. Without Adler’s Bakery and the job Joseph had fashioned for him at the plant, their son-in-law would be nowhere.

“And if I go along with this,” he asked, “what then?”

“After the baby is born, I can tell her.”

When he didn’t respond immediately, she held her breath, frightened she had said the wrong thing.

Finally, he said, “No, I’ll tell her.”

Esther swallowed hard, “That would be fine, too.”

It was the following morning—after her visit with Nellie McLoughlin—before Esther felt she’d fully recovered from her conversation with Isaac. She returned home and made her way through the apartment, preparing the rooms for Shiva. She covered mirrors with sheets and poured out standing water from teakettles, watering cans, and washbasins. Anna tried to be helpful, unfolding and refolding bed linens and offering to drape the mirror above Florence’s dressing table, so that Esther might avoid the room entirely.

Before Esther draped the mirror in her own bedroom, she studied her reflection. Her hair was gray and had been since the girls were small, but for years it hadn’t mattered. Her face had looked young, and inside, she still felt like the nineteen-year-old girl who had once been so bold as to ask Joseph, a handsome young waiter at Chorney’s Hotel, to go for a walk. Joseph and she had married and started the bakery, the girls had been born and grown up, Fannie had married and had Gussie, Florence had gone away to school, and the house had grown quiet again. How often had Esther remarked to Joseph, “I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a married daughter” or “To think I’m a grandmother! How can this be?” Now, as she rubbed her hands against her temples, pulling the puffy skin around her eyes as tight as she could, she felt every one of the forty-nine years that had marched across her face. Esther threw a sheet over the mirror, disgusted with herself. Jews covered their mirrors during Shiva to prevent exactly this kind of shallow reflection.

“Should I lay anything out for the seudat havra’ah?” Anna asked.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Esther. “I told Rabbi Levy I didn’t want him to make any announcements to the congregation. No one will know to cook anything.”

Anna opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and shut it again.

When Esther instructed Anna to keep Gussie at home during the burial, Anna surprised her and pushed back, asking if she might attend instead. Esther hadn’t said a word in response, just looked at her long and hard. The girl had known Florence for, what, less than a week?