Florence Adler Swims Forever(6)
“Fannie’s expecting again,” said Esther, her blood simmering beneath the surface of her skin. “She’s been at Atlantic City Hospital for two weeks.” Surely, she’d mentioned it to him. If she hadn’t, someone on the women’s committee had.
“When is the child due?” the rabbi asked.
“Not until August.”
“And you want to keep this news from her?”
Esther looked at Joseph. “We can’t risk her losing another baby.” Her husband continued to stroke his face, his eyes unfocused. “You agree, don’t you, Joseph? Joseph?”
“What?” he finally said.
“That we can’t tell Fannie. Not when the pregnancy is already so precarious.”
“What you’re proposing will be extremely difficult,” said the rabbi, looking across the room to Abe for support.
Esther considered all the different ways Fannie might learn that her sister was dead. The plan was not without risk. But what felt riskiest was telling Fannie the truth.
“We sit Shiva so we can have the time to look inward, to properly reflect on our loss. But we invite the community in because mourning is intensely lonely, and our friends and family can offer comfort.” Rabbi Levy continued to talk long after Esther had stopped listening.
“What time is it?” she interrupted.
The rabbi consulted his pocket watch. “Half-past eight.”
“Abe, is there a telephone I might use?”
He motioned down the hallway, “There’s one in my office.”
Joseph grabbed her by the arm as she stood, “Bubala?”
“I’m going to call Samuel Brody, over at the Press,” she said. “We have to keep this out of the paper.”
* * *
It was late when Rabbi Levy dropped Esther off at the apartment but, even in the dark, she recognized the young man sitting on her front stoop.
“Do you know him?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes.”
The rabbi let the car run while he walked around to open Esther’s door and help her out. “I’ll collect you tomorrow at two.”
She nodded, unable to take her eyes off Stuart, who was still in his ACBP uniform. When he stood the streetlamp illuminated his face, and she saw that he’d been crying.
The rabbi’s car puttered away, and Esther motioned for Stuart to sit. Then she joined him. “Are Anna and Gussie upstairs?”
He shook his head. “When I got over here, Anna answered the door. I didn’t believe it was true until I saw her face.”
“How’s Gussie?”
“Confused, I think.”
Something about Florence’s friendship with Stuart had never sat right with Esther. It was her experience that boys like him, whose fathers owned hotels on the Boardwalk and not shops north of Arctic Avenue, went away to college and usually to the sorts of schools she and Joseph lambasted. Schools like Princeton and Yale that had, in the last several years, implemented strict quotas and new admissions standards to keep their classrooms from swelling with too many Jewish students. That he had joined the Atlantic City Beach Patrol as a lifeguard, and cobbled together a coaching career in the off-season, struck Esther as a move designed to infuriate his father as much as anything else. His father was worth infuriating—The Covington Hotel was one of several hotels that refused Jewish guests—but sometimes Esther wondered if Stuart’s friendship with Florence was just another way to get under his father’s skin.
It was Stuart who had encouraged Florence to apply to Wellesley; he had even taken the liberty of writing to Wellesley’s swim coach, a Miss Clementine Dirkin, on Florence’s behalf. Dirkin was apparently an icon in the Women’s Swimming Association, and Stuart had argued—quite convincingly—that Florence needed to go to a school where women weren’t relegated to synchronized swimming competitions, as was so often the case. At Wellesley, he promised, Florence would not just be swimming the 400, 800, and 1500 events but she’d be medaling in them.
Of course, it was Joseph, and not Stuart, who had taught Florence to swim. But for the last six years, ever since Florence had joined the Ambassador Club and then gone away to school, it was Stuart who had pushed her to swim faster and farther. He was always on the lookout for new races, always talking about the next big swim. Without Stuart, would Florence have swum the pageant swim? The solo swim around Absecon Island? Certainly, she wouldn’t have set her sights on the English Channel. Were it not for him, Esther couldn’t help but wonder, would her dear girl still be alive?
“I would have followed her in the boat.”
“I know,” she said, her voice as coarse as sandpaper.
“What was she doing out there on her own?”
Esther didn’t know what to say, how to begin to admit that her daughter had acted rashly.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t.”
Stuart wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands. “When will she be buried?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That soon?”
“Jews don’t wait.”
Stuart studied his knees. “May I come?”
Her inclination was to tell him no, that the graveside service would be for family only. If Fannie couldn’t be there, it seemed unfair for Stuart to be. But Esther could imagine Florence chiding her for her bad behavior. It was obvious that Stuart loved Florence, and Esther found herself wondering if her daughter had known. Perhaps she had even loved him back. Sol and Frances Goldstein, who lived around the corner, had sat Shiva for their eldest daughter when she married a goy, and at the time, Esther hadn’t so much as batted an eye. Treating a daughter who was alive and well—and even happy—like she was dead, all because she’d married outside the faith, felt suddenly preposterous.