Florence Adler Swims Forever(18)

* * *



“The only thing I can’t figure out about this room,” said Fannie to Isaac, “is where the radio is.”

Isaac looked around the room, absentmindedly. “What makes you think you’re meant to have one?”

“Some of the women down the hall have them. I can hear their programs at night.”

Isaac pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“Do you think I’m being selfish? Obviously, it’s a very nice—”

“Knock, knock,” came a voice from the hallway. Fannie sat up straighter when she saw it was Superintendent McLoughlin on her morning rounds.

“Oh, I see you have company,” said the superintendent. She looked at her wristwatch.

“Mr. Feldman, you’ll kindly recall that visiting hours begin at nine o’clock in the morning. It is only half-past seven.”

“Is it that early?” he said with a sardonic grin, but McLoughlin did not appear to be amused.

Fannie wondered if she should ask about the radio, hoped that Isaac might do it so she didn’t have to. McLoughlin intimidated her, had done ever since she’d met her last summer.

McLoughlin began to read through Fannie’s chart, and Fannie took the opportunity to mouth the word radio to Isaac. He acted like he didn’t understand what she was saying, and she rolled her eyes at him, exasperated.

“Your blood pressure looks good. It’s still slightly elevated but nothing for us to be too concerned about. Has Dr. Rosenthal spoken with you about it?”

Fannie acknowledged he had.

“Good,” said McLoughlin, closing the chart with a snap. Last summer, Fannie had assumed that somewhere in that chart, thick with notes, were answers. Why had she delivered so early? Was it her fault, Isaac’s, God’s? For a while, she had asked McLoughlin and Dr. Rosenthal every chance she got, but they never gave her any answers that satisfied her. Eventually, she’d stopped asking.

Isaac wasn’t in favor of asking so many questions, then or now. She mouthed the word radio to him again, and he shrugged his shoulders, leaving her with no choice but to make her own inquiry. “We were just wondering, are the rooms equipped with radios?”

McLoughlin looked at Isaac. If Fannie didn’t know better, she’d have said the superintendent scowled at him. “Not every room.”

“Oh?” said Fannie.

“It’s an extra charge.”

“How much?” she asked.

“More than your father wanted to pay.”



* * *



After McLoughlin left, Isaac and Fannie had very little to say to each other. Isaac sat on the edge of his chair, as if he might flee at any moment, and absentmindedly spun his hat around and around his forefinger. He had such long, elegant fingers.

Finally, Fannie couldn’t take it anymore. “You’ll ruin the brim,” she said, and he stopped.

“Did you see Gussie yesterday?” she asked, trying to find a conversation that might suit them both.

“Hmm?”

“Gussie? Mother says she’s doing well.”

“Oh yes,” he said hesitantly, “I… I did see her.”

“I’m missing her something terrible,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be this bad. I mean, I was only in the hospital a week, maybe ten days, last summer.”

“Mmmm.”

Were all men such poor conversationalists when thrust into situations that made them uncomfortable? Or was it just her husband? “She seems all right? Happy?” Fannie asked.

At the word happy, Isaac looked up. His forehead wrinkled.

“Happy?” he asked, as if he hadn’t understood the question.

“Happy.”

“Yes, yes. Of course, she seems happy.”

After several more conversations ended in this manner, Fannie set Isaac free. “You should get to work. Before McLoughlin has you forcibly removed for breaking hospital protocol.”

She had been trying to be funny but Isaac didn’t laugh. He was already on his feet, his hat on his head.

Isaac stooped to kiss her cheek, but she grabbed him by the tie and steered his lips toward hers. She needed to feel like the old Fannie for just a minute—the Fannie who had seen something remarkable in the way he looked at her. Isaac responded to the kiss, and for several long moments, they were back in their old hiding space, under the Boardwalk, at Sovereign Avenue. There was no Gussie, no loan, no Hyram. Their biggest worry was only whether Esther and Joseph would allow their eldest daughter to marry a man of no means.

When Fannie pulled away, Isaac’s cheeks looked slightly flushed, and the makings of a smile had crept across his face. He touched her chin and kissed the tip of her nose before turning toward the door.

“Isaac,” she called when he had nearly crossed the room’s threshold. “I almost forgot.”

She reached for the envelope, still without a stamp, on her bedside table and held it out to him.

“Will you be a dear and deliver this to Florence?”





Joseph


By the time Joseph arrived at Wischafter’s Beach Concessions, on the morning after his daughter’s burial, a beachboy of fourteen or fifteen years old was already unstacking chairs and unfurling oversized umbrellas.