Florence Adler Swims Forever(27)
“I’m sending some rugelach to your father,” Esther had said, “for his recovery. Will you give him our best?” and Isaac had immediately regretted his own duplicitousness.
Gussie didn’t say much as the car sped down the four-lane road, and Isaac wondered if she’d gotten enough sleep.
“You all right?” he asked.
Gussie turned to look at him, seemed confused by the question. It was one, he realized, that no one ever asked her.
“You’re sleeping okay?”
She nodded, returned her eyes to the road. Isaac wondered if it might be wise to address Florence’s death directly, to let Gussie know that she could talk to him about it if she wanted. He considered what he might say to her. That death comes for us all? That Florence was with God? That they’d carry her memory with them, always? It all sounded ridiculous, so in the end, he kept his mouth shut. There was absolutely nothing to say to a seven-year-old about any of this sad business.
The little communities of Mizpah and Buena Vista rushed by, and it wasn’t until Isaac coasted into Vineland that he was forced to slow down. The highway turned into a broad avenue, with rows of flowers and shrub trees bordering the houses that lined the street. While he was growing up in Alliance, Vineland had felt like a big city, though compared to Atlantic City, it was still a small town. Isaac’s family had walked the half mile between Alliance and Vineland to purchase items they couldn’t grow or make on the farm—things like winter jackets and shoes. As a boy, Isaac had assumed that Alliance would one day catch up with Vineland, that when his father and mother and their neighbors had worked hard enough, Alliance would also have a picture house and a pharmacy and a five-and-ten store.
On the other side of Vineland, the city lots gave way to countryside—big patches of fields between groves of birch trees. Isaac looked at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. He was sure he’d find his father at shul, particularly since he hadn’t told him he was coming. Isaac turned onto Gershal Avenue and after a few more minutes pulled the car into the grass in front of Congregation Emanu-El. The Oakland was the only car on the property. Some of the men in the community, although certainly not Isaac’s father, were doing well enough to own a car but no one would have dared to drive one on Shabbos. Isaac rather enjoyed the idea of the men saying their last Aleinu, closing their prayer books, and coming out onto the steps of the congregation to be confronted by Isaac and his automobile. He imagined them all returning to their farmhouses, telling their wives that Isaac Feldman looked like he was doing well for himself.
“Are we going in?” Gussie asked when Isaac threw on the parking brake but didn’t cut the ignition.
“I think we’ll wait for Grandpa out here.”
Gussie asked if she could get out of the car to play, and Isaac agreed, watching as she skipped off in the direction of the tree line that bordered Saul Green’s property. Twice she stopped to scavenge for sticks in the grass, finding first a twig and then a three-foot-long branch to wield. Gussie loved going to Alliance, though it was a fact that Isaac didn’t bring her to visit nearly often enough. Just as Isaac had once thought Atlantic City exotic, his daughter now thought Alliance so.
“Hey, Gus-Gus!” he called, beckoning her back over to the car.
She ran toward him, cutting through the air with her stick. “I’m King Arthur!” she yelled.
“I think you mean Guinevere.”
She came to a stop in front of the driver’s-side door. “No, King Arthur. I have a sword. See?”
“Ah, I do. Look, Gus, I forgot to mention something.”
She looked up at him, her eyebrows furrowed. Between her mother’s absence and her aunt’s death, the poor girl was probably waiting for another shoe to drop.
“Grandpa’s a little sensitive about his fall. So, let’s not bring it up in front of him.”
“But Nana sent rugelach.”
“Yes, yes. We’ll still give that to him. We just won’t tell him we hope he feels better. That way, we won’t make him sad,” said Isaac. “Do you understand?”
Gussie nodded slowly, and Isaac wondered, briefly, if his young daughter could see right through him. “Go have fun,” he said, with an intentionally wide smile, and he watched as she ran off.
Isaac had read half of yesterday’s newspaper before the doors of the synagogue opened. He watched as, one by one, Alliance’s residents trickled out, the men removing their taleisim and pocketing their yarmulkes as they made their way down the steps and into the yard. All of the old men, Isaac’s father among them, had built the clapboard temple together, milling the timber and framing the one-room structure when Alliance had no more than four hundred residents and less than a hundred homesteads. In many cases, men had prioritized the construction of the temple over their own homes, living in government-issued tents for an extra winter so that they could raise the roof in time for the High Holy Days.
Gussie met her grandfather at the foot of the synagogue’s stairs and threw her arms around his thick waist before pointing toward the car. Isaac gave a small wave, then opened the door and got out. He met his father in the middle of the yard, Gussie bouncing back and forth between them like an excited fox terrier.
“Isaac,” said his father, pronouncing his name Itzhak. “Dem iz a ongenem iberrashn.”
“In English!” Gussie pleaded, “I won’t be able to understand anything!”