Florence Adler Swims Forever(62)

The handwriting on the note wasn’t Florence’s—it was neater and more controlled. When Fannie unfolded it, she saw that the message, which was short, had been written on a piece of hospital stationery.

Fannie,

Florence stopped by tonight but you were already asleep. You looked so peaceful that she hated to wake you. She asked me to tell you that she loves you, and that she’ll be thinking of you and the baby constantly over these next few weeks.

Bette



Fannie let the note slip from her fingers. It fell closed and settled on her lap. Was this really it? Florence was going to leave for France with no real good-bye? The thudding pain in Fannie’s temples had returned. She picked up the note again and reread Bette’s words. She asked me to tell you. Why would Florence have passed along a message through Bette when she could simply have woken her? Or asked Bette for a piece of stationery and a pen and written the note herself? Surely, Florence could have spared the two minutes it would have taken to toss off these few lines. Did she care so little about Fannie? Fannie’s breathing started to quicken. She crumbled the note into as tight a ball as she could manage and, letting out a low growl, threw it across the room and out into the hall.

Fannie pulled her nightgown back down over her stomach. Her hands had gone numb, and she could barely feel the cloth of the gown beneath her fingertips. A wave of nausea washed over her and then she was hot, so incredibly hot, that she kicked her sheets all the way to the bottom of the bed.

Dr. Rosenthal and a nurse Fannie didn’t recognize walked past her room on morning rounds. The doctor stooped to pick up the wad of paper, then glanced into Fannie’s room, as if he were trying to calculate its trajectory.

“Fannie?” he said, hurrying into the room.

Fannie’s breath was coming in short bursts now. She had tried to put her head between her knees but found she couldn’t, not with the bulge of her stomach in the way. All she could do was lock her arms around her knees and rock back and forth, trying to get a gulp of air. It wasn’t working. What was wrong with everyone? Florence, Isaac, her mother, even Gussie? It was as if no one cared what happened to her.

“Fannie, can you hear me?” Dr. Rosenthal said. His voice sounded very far away and also like he was shouting. Why was he shouting?

She wanted to nod her head but it took so much effort.

“Helen, get the curtains. Make the room as dark as you can.”

Fannie heard the heavy whoosh of the curtains closing out the sun.

Dr. Rosenthal put a hand on her back and steadied her. “You have to breathe, Fannie. You understand?” he said.

She couldn’t.

“Did you get bad news?”

She nodded her head, tried to speak. “My sister—”

He moved his hand to her shoulder, squeezed it tight, and whispered, “I know.”

“She, she, she left for France without saying good-bye.”

Dr. Rosenthal removed his hand from Fannie’s shoulder. “Right,” he said as he busied himself monitoring her pulse and taking her blood pressure. Finally he sat down on the bed beside her. “Fannie, your numbers are very high. I’m tempted to induce your labor right now.”

The threat shocked Fannie back into her own consciousness. “It’s too soon.”

“Well, then, listen to me. I don’t give a damn whether your sister is swimming around the horn of Africa, and, from this point forward, neither do you. Your only concern is this baby and carrying it safely to term. Do you understand?”

Fannie couldn’t make so much as a word in response.

“Do you understand?” repeated Dr. Rosenthal.

She nodded vigorously.

He removed the extra pillows from behind her back, told her to lie down, and then, perhaps thinking better of his directness, added “please.” As she did so, he scribbled something on a small piece of paper and handed it to the nurse. “Will you get this?” he asked, quietly. “A hundred milligrams.”

When Fannie was flat on her back, staring at the dark ceiling, he spoke again. “Here are my new rules: No daylight, no getting out of bed. Helen is going to give you something that will help you relax, and we’re going to see if you can get your blood pressure down on your own.”

“And if I can’t?”

“I think you can.”

The nurse hurried back into the room, carrying a small tray. She set it on the table beside the bed and asked Fannie if she could roll over onto her side.

Fannie did as she was told and a moment later, she felt the pinch of a needle in the soft flesh of her backside. As the nurse pushed the syringe down, Fannie imagined its contents spilling throughout her body, enveloping the baby, touching all the neglected parts of her. The baby kicked. I’m here with you, Fannie thought, though she had never felt so alone.





Joseph


On the day his younger daughter would have sailed to France, Joseph found he was too distracted to get much of anything done.

“Mrs. Simons, is that pair of binoculars still around here somewhere?” he called from his office as he searched his desk for his keys.

Joseph pulled the car around the front of the building and was about to turn onto Mediterranean Avenue when he noticed a man, dressed in a seersucker suit, walking toward him. The man was almost directly in front of the car when Joseph realized he was Stuart. He rolled down his window and called to him.