Florence Adler Swims Forever(22)

“You’re kind to be considering this now, after—everything.”

He had been willing to help Inez and Paul before Florence’s death, so it seemed antithetical to turn his back on them now. He told himself that Florence would have wanted it this way but that wasn’t all of it. Joseph appreciated staying busy and knew he got some relief from focusing on anything as straightforward as a visa application, for all its perils and pitfalls. If he followed the right practices and procedures, paid the proper fees, it might at least be possible to conjure Anna’s parents out of thin air. The same could never be said for Florence. “It’s nothing,” he said as he watched Anna come to the last page.

“The address isn’t here,” she said as she closed the notebook. “Stuart will have it. Or be able to get it for you.”

He reached for the little book, and she gave it to him with two hands, as if it were something fragile and dear.



* * *



Stuart was sitting in the beach chair, quite awkwardly, when Joseph arrived at the office on Friday morning. As Joseph entered the room, the boy stood, too fast, and the chair folded in on itself. The frame banged loudly against the floor, and Joseph flinched.

“Your secretary said you wanted to see me.”

Joseph didn’t say a word, just walked across the room to his desk, picked up the heavy oak swivel chair behind it, and carried it over to the fireplace.

“Sit here,” Joseph said. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

Stuart started to argue, but Joseph held up his hand, refusing to hear a word, “You’re doing an old man a favor, Stuart.”

Beneath Stuart’s healthy tan, he looked tired and gaunt. There were dark circles under his blue eyes, and Joseph wondered how much he’d slept in the five days that had elapsed since Florence’s death.

“How’s Fannie?” Stuart asked.

“You know, I’d like to tell you. But, you see, I’m not a very good father. I don’t visit.”

“The hospital?”

Joseph shook his head as he righted the beach chair. “I haven’t been inside one since the war.”

“I don’t think that makes you a bad father.”

Joseph frowned. “I could do better.”

“Were you a medic? During the war?”

“An ambulance driver.”

“You and Hemingway?”

“I suppose,” said Joseph. “Except I was driving for the U.S. Army. And I’m not sure I made it look quite so glamorous.”

He had to get to it, ask Stuart for what he needed, or he’d be telling war stories all morning. “Look, Stuart, I need some help tracking down Bill Burgess. To cancel the swim.”

Stuart looked surprised, as if he had temporarily forgotten that Florence couldn’t be both dead and a champion swimmer at the same time. He nodded slowly.

“I don’t know where he lives, or if I can get the deposit back,” Joseph said. “Florence handled it all.”

“I have an address for him in Calais.”

“Would you mind writing him? I’m not sure I feel up to it.”

Stuart shook his head vigorously, the way people do, during a crisis, when they’re grateful to have been given a task, no matter how small.

“I’ll send a telegram. I can send one to the hotel, too. Just in case he’s already left for Cape Gris-Nez.”

“Thank you. Let me give you some money to cover the cost,” said Joseph, reaching for his billfold, but it was Stuart’s turn to hold up his hand.

“Please, no. This is the least I can do.”

Joseph studied Stuart, who studied his own fingernails, bitten to the quick. “It’s not your fault, you know?”

Stuart didn’t say a thing, just nodded his head like a marionette.

Joseph tried to put himself in Stuart’s place. What if he had lost Esther that first summer, when she was as much ephemera as she was an actual woman standing in front of him?

When Esther had checked into Chorney’s, accompanied by her parents, in the summer of 1904, Joseph’s command of the English language had been so poor that he had been afraid to talk to her. In lieu of words, he had offered her the best seat in the dining room, bestowed extra hard-boiled eggs on her at breakfast, and delivered her an unsolicited slice of Boston cream pie at dinner. Her parents had raised their eyebrows at his antics but had otherwise disregarded him, so sure were they that their nineteen-year-old daughter would not return the attentions of an Eastern European Jew so recently arrived from the old country. When he cleared their table one evening, and discovered the note Esther had left for him under her discarded napkin, he had thought his heart might stop beating in his chest.

My parents are going to the theater after dinner. If you can get away, would you care to go for a walk? I’ll be in the lobby at half-past eight.

Esther



Joseph had never bused the dining room so quickly. At half-past eight, when the room was still not empty and the last of the dishes were still not clean, he traded an extra shift with another busboy for the chance to slip out early. Joseph stuffed his apron in an umbrella stand and rushed to the lobby, where he found Esther sitting on a small settee. She sat up straight and didn’t appear to have been watching for him, which gave the impression, at least to Joseph, that she had been confident he would come.