Florence Adler Swims Forever(25)

It wasn’t that Isaac didn’t mourn Florence’s death or want to honor her life. In fact, he felt his sister-in-law’s loss acutely. He could remember, on his early visits to the Adlers’ apartment, twelve-year-old Florence interviewing him with the same ferocity as her parents but with much less tact. Have you kissed her? she asked once, looking him straight in the eye. Isaac, who had been the baby of his own family without ever managing to be babied at all, marveled at her confidence and got some satisfaction out of watching her grow into a woman who was every bit as loud and brash as the girl she’d once been.

Sitting Shiva for Florence would be painful. Excruciating without Fannie or any callers to offer up distractions. Isaac could try to disappear for a few hours on Saturday, tell Esther and Joseph he needed to visit Fannie. But he hated visiting the hospital almost as much as he hated visiting his in-laws’ apartment. It wasn’t just about Hyram. There was something about being on the maternity ward, surrounded by so many women, all of them concerned with the business of life and death, that left him feeling exposed. He could feel Fannie studying him, as if she could see him more clearly without the interference of the outside world.

Isaac remembered the letter Fannie had given him when he’d visited on Tuesday, and felt for it in his jacket pocket. It was still there, folded in half, its corners beginning to curl. He removed it, smoothed it at its crease, and studied his wife’s handwriting. The loop of the F, the generous A. What would Fannie do when she learned that Florence was dead? Was Esther right? Would this news be too much for her to bear?

Isaac was not inclined to think so. But then again, he had been the one who had urged Fannie to ride the Dodgem with him last spring.

It had been a pretty day, still two months before Fannie’s due date, and Esther had volunteered to watch Gussie for the afternoon. The day had a carefree quality that reminded Isaac of that first summer, before they were married. The two of them had eaten a hamburger at Mammy’s and then walked to Steeplechase Pier, which had recently reopened. They picked their way through the crowd, admiring the loud games and the brightly colored carousel at the center of the pier. Behind it sat a new ride with a big yellow sign that screamed DODGEM in giant blue letters.

“Oh, I get it,” said Fannie. “Dodge them.”

Isaac watched as fifteen or twenty people, all in miniature metal cars with thick rubber bumpers, whipped around a small rink.

“I suppose the point is to bump into each other?” he asked as they watched a man, who looked oversized in his little car, plow into the car of a small boy who must have been his son. Fannie didn’t say anything, just laughed when she saw the boy lurch forward in surprise.

Isaac pulled two quarters from his pocket, held them out to Fannie, and said, “Shall we give it a spin? You’ve always wanted to learn to drive.”

Fannie shook her head no, inclined to stay on the sidelines, but Isaac pushed.

“It’ll be just like old times. Remember when we used to ride the Roundabout?” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

“Do you think it’s safe?” she asked, one hand resting protectively on her stomach.

“Perfectly.”

When Fannie started bleeding early the following morning, Isaac hadn’t wanted to believe that the two incidents could be related. They had called Esther and Joseph immediately, told them that something was wrong and that they needed them to take Gussie right away. While they waited for Joseph to come with the car, Isaac had practically pleaded for absolution from Fannie, and if not that, then for Fannie to keep the correlative circumstances to herself.

“Fan, it was barely a bump. I mean, you didn’t feel a thing, right?”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with a terrified expression on her face.

“It was just fun, that’s all,” he said, a detectable note of fear creeping into his voice.

Hyram was born at six o’clock in the evening but it was a quarter past nine before Isaac learned of his son’s arrival. A doctor, who introduced himself as Gabriel Rosenthal, came to find Isaac in the hospital lobby, and it was the way he said “Mr. Feldman” that made Isaac realize, with a kind of gross certainty, they would lose the child.

Fannie had suffered a placental abruption, Dr. Rosenthal explained. There had been nothing to do but allow her to labor.

“Is she—?” Isaac asked, not knowing how to finish the question.

“She’s fine. We’re watching her closely and it looks like the bleeding has stopped.”

“And the baby?”

“He’s very small,” said the doctor. “It’s unlikely he’ll make it through the night.”

“He?”

“Yes, a boy.”

“A boy,” Isaac repeated, numbly.

The doctor looked at him with apologetic eyes.

“May I see him?” Isaac asked.

“We don’t recommend it.”

“Yes, but I think I’d like to, if it’s all the same.”

The doctor led Isaac upstairs to the nursery, where a nurse gestured to a chair in the middle of the room. The room was lined with bassinets, but Isaac avoided looking inside them, terrified to catch a glimpse of his son before he had fully prepared himself for the encounter. The nurse walked over to a bassinet and reached for a bundle of blankets that didn’t look much different from any of the others. She held the bundle close to her chest and hesitated as she neared Isaac.