Florence Adler Swims Forever(50)
“Well, your grandmother wants you to go for a walk. She gave me some money and said we should go to the Pier to see the parakeets.” Anna jingled the coins in her hand, as evidence. When Gussie didn’t make a move, Anna said, “You probably don’t care for them. Or hot dogs?”
Gussie didn’t say anything, just went back to staring at the ceiling. For a dime, the parakeets at Steel Pier would hop up onto a stick, grab a fortune out of a fancy bird-sized castle, and saunter down a miniature boardwalk to deliver it. The offer was tempting but not nearly so tempting if she had to go with Anna.
Anna patted the edge of the door and made like she was about to close it. “I’ll go tell her you’re not interested.”
Gussie sat up in bed. “Wait!”
* * *
It was National Children’s Week in Atlantic City and everywhere hotels, restaurants, and stores had posted signs, welcoming children to the resort and advertising specials to their parents. There was a children’s parade and a sing-along on the beach and, yesterday, there had been a big fireworks spectacular for the Fourth of July. At the end of the week, one lucky kid was going to be named mayor of Atlantic City for a day. Gussie had begged her grandmother to let her register, particularly after she had spotted the spiffy badges all the children wore on their collars, but Esther explained that the program was only for children from out of town whose parents were staying in cooperating hotels.
Even without a badge, Gussie had to admit—only to herself, definitely not to Anna—that the day had turned around. She and Anna caught the second half of the sing-along, and when they stopped at a hot dog stand on the Boardwalk, the cashier gave Gussie a special Children’s Week button with their change. She didn’t and wouldn’t have asked Anna to help her pin the button to her lapel but Anna did it anyway.
“Let’s go in there,” Gussie said to Anna, her mouth stuffed with hot dog, as they walked past Couney’s Premature Baby Exhibit, across from Million Dollar Pier.
Anna looked at the hand-lettered sign on the window and at the tiny baby asleep in a little glass box in the window display. A poster, affixed to the door, claimed ONCE SEEN, NEVER FORGOTTEN.”
“You have to pay a fee to go in,” said Anna, counting the change in her hand. “You won’t have enough money to see the parakeets, too.”
“I know,” said Gussie, already pulling open the exhibit’s heavy glass door. “I’ve seen the parakeets a hundred times. Besides, they always tell girls the same thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You will have a large family.”
“What do they tell the boys?”
“Oh, you know. All the normal things. That they’ll be successful and earn tons of money and go on lots of adventures.”
Anna let out a small noise and helped her with the door, and as Gussie walked through it, she felt an odd surge of satisfaction, as if she had won something big and important.
Inside was a long room with a worn wooden floor, whitewashed walls, and a ceiling stenciled with green vines. A line of seven incubators, small glass boxes that sat on tall metal stands, lined one wall, and between each one sat a potted palm tree, as if the nurses, who walked back and forth in fitted white dresses and funny hats, were trying to convince the babies that they were living on a tropical island instead of in a Boardwalk amusement.
“The next lecture begins at three o’clock,” said an attendant, who exchanged the coins Anna handed her for a receipt and a leaflet.
A metal handrail prevented visitors from getting too close to the babies, which was unfortunate, as far as Gussie was concerned. She grabbed hold of the railing and hoisted herself into the air, leaning her body as far over the railing as she dared. From that vantage point, it was easier to read the little signs that sat propped above each incubator.
“Gussie, get down.”
“I’m reading the incubator charts.”
“You can read them with your feet on the ground.”
That was not true. And moreover, Gussie did not like it when Anna told her what to do. She thought about reminding Anna that she was not her mother but she had a feeling that Anna would march her home if she did. Instead she let out a loud sigh, loud enough, she hoped, to let Anna know she was annoyed, before slowly lowering her feet to the floor.
The signs provided visitors with the babies’ names and birth dates, along with some numbers and symbols that Gussie didn’t bother trying to interpret. She loved reading the baby’s names, some of which were so silly that they had to have been made up. Who named a child, even one who was likely to die, Marigold? Perhaps Marigold’s family had been too nervous to name her themselves? Or was it possible that Marigold wasn’t the baby’s real name and that her actual name was Mary or Margaret?
“Hyram was in that one, over there,” Gussie said, pointing to an incubator in the corner. “I think.”
“I didn’t know Hyram was here. I wouldn’t have—”
“Let me come?”
Anna looked uncomfortable. “You visited him here?”
Gussie nodded, cautious about giving too much away.
“With your parents?”
Gussie didn’t say a word. She just trailed over to the corner unit where a baby no bigger than a squash lay sleeping, bundled in white blankets. Sometimes Anna was quite daft. Of course, Gussie’s parents wouldn’t have brought her here. It had been Florence who had asked if she wanted to go, Florence who had understood how frustrating it was to be told she had a baby brother she could not see.