by Susan Isaacs
“Make it nine-thirty. Ten is when the service starts, and you generally say all your ‘I’m so sorrys’ before that.”
“Yes, of course. And Judith...” I looked at her. “You’re a brick. Thanks.”
She turned up the collar of her coat and left, followed by destiny’s darling, North. As she walked down the path to the driveway, I tried to consider exactly why I have always been so intimidated by that class of WASP, the ones who always seem to dress in thick, rich tweeds no matter what the season and never perspire. It’s not a matter of pedigree. Nancy’s family probably became Anglicans the same day as Henry VIII and she’s a descendant of Oglethorpe, but she is real. Her periods are painful and she thinks Woody Allen is funny and she has a passion for Italian salami. But there’s something so unfailingly correct about people like Scotty, as though they’ve been programmed to be eternally vigilant in order to avoid a social gaffe. Scotty’s shirts never rumple, her children say “thank you” without prompting. I’m sure she never had wax in her ears. And when I’m with her, I feel she expects something more of me. But I don’t know what.
At least tomorrow, I thought gratefully, I’ll be on my own turf. At a wet-eyed, damp-palmed Jewish funeral. And maybe a sneaky-looking murderer, paring his or her fingernails with a pointed instrument. Well, maybe not. But better than facing two weeks’ accumulation of laundry.
Chapter Five
Baum Brothers occupies a large building, a white brick cube, with a blue canopy stretcher out in front and space for three hundred cars in the rear. It could easily pass for a catering hall, except, as you enter, you are greeted by one of several good-looking young men, doubtless young Baums or Baums-in-law, dressed in black suits, white shirts, and narrow, somber, striped ties. When they ask, “May I help you?” they sound sad but somehow reassuring, as if they recognize their responsibility to mute their grief and carry on.
“The Fleckstein funeral?”
“Second floor. The elevator will take you up.”
I followed Scotty, observing that the short, almost mincing steps seemed incongruous for such a tall, long-legged woman—as though as a girl she had been embarrassed by her height and had mimicked the walk of a petite classmate. She was perfectly dressed though: a simple gray dress with a white collar and cuffs. Everyone would know she was truly sorry but not one of the prime bereaved, not one of the family. My black sweater and plaid skirt seemed wrong, and I began to sweat under my arms.
“It’s chilly in here,” she remarked, as we paused by the brass elevator door. “Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like funerals.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. Although I was fully aware that no one would challenge me, that no one would point a finger and demand, “Why are you here? Who do you know in the family?” I felt terribly uncomfortable. And with Scotty around, I’d have to keep a stiff upper lip; I could not change my mind and bolt.
When we got upstairs, we stepped into the room where the family waited. About half the faces, about a hundred people, looked faintly familiar to me. They were faces I saw in Shorehaven, in the supermarket, the bakery, the playground, PTA meetings. But I felt my eyes drawn to a beige leather couch. There was Norma Fleckstein, surrounded by men and women with sad expressions. I couldn’t gauge hers because she was wearing large sunglasses, although she seemed not to be crying. As I inched closer, I heard her say, “Thank you,” and, “I don’t think it’s hit me yet.”
“That’s his wife,” I said softly to Scotty. “Do you want to say something to her?”
“No,” she responded abruptly, staring, it seemed to me, at Norma’s long, thin legs, which were covered in translucent black stockings. “I mean,” Scotty added, turning to me, “I’ve never met her. I don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Okay,” I said, a little regretfully. I had thought to test my courage by going over to Norma and offering my condolences.
Scotty touched my arm and whispered, “There’s Brenda Dunck.” She lifted her head in the direction of another beige leather couch across the room, near a coat rack.
So that was Brenda, Dicky Dunck’s wife. I knew her. At least I had seen her half a dozen times. She belonged to the health club where I swam occasionally, when I felt my body going from merely soft to mushy. She was fairly short, about five foot three, and slim but very buxom, with a beautiful head of black hair, which she wore in a tight chignon at the base of her neck. Her face was not at all pretty; she had small, hazel eyes and a rather sallow complexion, but at least her small, sharply hooked nose and square chin gave it some character. Now, though, she looked wretched. Her eyes were bloodshot and there were red blotches on the sides of her face, darker than the rouge on her cheeks.
“Brenda, I’m very sorry,” said Scotty, offering her right hand.
“Scotty, how nice of you to come. Thank you so very much.” Brenda seemed to perk up a bit at our arrival. Maybe she liked Scotty. Maybe she felt comforted by her presence. Maybe she felt hysterics would be unacceptable and sobbing a wee bit overdone.
“Brenda, you remember Judith Singer.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you for coming.” Clearly, she had no idea who I was. But because I was attached to Scotty Hughes, I must be a person she should have remembered.
I blinked. I swallowed. “Brenda, I’m sorry. This must be a hideous shock to all of you.” I felt I sounded wonderfully sincere.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s been a horror. An absolute horror. And of course for Norma and the children. A nightmare.” I don’t know why, but her voice seemed to have a pretentious ladylike quality. I wanted to poke my elbow in her ribs and say, “Aw, come on, Brenda. Talk regular.”
She turned to the man next to her, her husband, Dicky Dunck. “Dicky dear, you remember Scotty Hughes. And Judith Srrg.”
“Yes. Yes. How are you ladies?” His goatee was too long and untrimmed. He looked like a billy goat.
“I’m fine, thanks,” said Scotty.
“Fine,” I echoed.
“I hope the next time we meet it’s on a happier occasion,” said Dicky. “A great guy, taken in the prime of life.”
We all nodded and Brenda started to cry. “It’s a loss, a loss to all of us,” she sobbed. Scotty drew a handkerchief out of her pocketbook and offered it to her. “Oh, I don’t want to ruin your handkerchief.”
“That’s all right,” Scotty reassured her.
“Who could have done it?” Dicky demanded. “A homicidal maniac. Nobody’s safe these days. He was like a brother to me.”
We nodded, and Brenda sniffled delicately into Scotty’s handkerchief, rubbing the soft Irish linen between her fingers.
A black-suited Baum emerged from a door a few feet away and announced: “Would everybody except for the immediate family kindly step into the chapel?”
The chapel was a high-ceilinged room, paneled in maple. The casket, unadorned and in a slightly darker wood, stood front and center. A small lamp, the Eternal Light, was suspended above it. When everybody was seated, still another Baum walked noiselessly to the side of the casket and asked: “Would you please rise?”
We rose and the family walked through a door at the front of the chapel. First Norma, in a clingy black wool wrap dress, relieved only by a long strand of large, luminescent pearls. Very simple and quiet, befitting a widow not yet merry. An older woman clung to her arm, obviously Mrs. Fleckstein the elder; she had her son’s generous nose and wide mouth with thin lips. She looked like the one who had been embalmed: one of those women well past middle age who, through dieting and plastic surgery, managed to look about forty from a distance, but who, as you get closer, have the dry, brittle look of a mummy. They were followed by a girl of about ten. According to the obituary, there were three young Flecksteins, two boys and a girl. This was obviously the eldest, Nicole Kimberly. A momentary break in the procession and then came the Duncks, Brenda listing against Dicky and Dicky peering intently into the chapel, as if taking a head count. And, finally, a short man in a long blac
k robe and the wrap-around aviator glasses that were popular a few years ago. He motioned us to be seated.
“Who do you think he is?” Scotty whispered.
“The rabbi.”
“But he’s not wearing a hat.”
“He’s Reformed,” I explained.
“What?”
“Norma, Nicole, Mrs. Fleckstein, Brenda, Dicky,” began the rabbi, “family and friends. What can we say about Bruce Fleckstein?”
Let me up on the pulpit and I’ll tell you, I thought. Scotty looked at me, then, strangely, blushed and looked away.
“We can, of course, say what a tragedy it is, a fine man taken from us in the prime of his years. And we can mourn the loss to our community of a dedicated professional. But the loss of Bruce, or Marvin, as his beloved mother adoringly called him, is the loss of the hub of the Fleckstein family wheel, the center of their world. As Yeats so aptly put it, ‘The center will not hold.’”
Obviously not, as Norma, with a great noise, took in a huge breath of air and started sobbing. “I’m glad she’s finally letting it out,” the woman in front of me said to her husband. The woman looked about forty-five and had exactly the same streaky colored hair as Norma. They must have met at the beauty parlor.
“And what can we say to Bruce’s wife, to his three fine children, to his mother, his family, his friends?” pondered the rabbi.
You can say that whichever one of them gave him a Polaroid for his birthday made a big mistake. As he went on, I peered around the chapel. Everyone seemed to be concentrating intently, possibly because at this funeral of a contemporary, they might hear a preview of how their own eulogies would sound. They all seemed serious, but not suspiciously so. Could any of these ordinary, predictable people have ended Fleckstein’s career as the Don Juan of dentists?
The rabbi banged his fist down on the pulpit, as if remonstrating me for losing interest in his sermon. “We may be deluged with rumors, besieged by innuendo,” he continued, “nearly strangled by the half truths and smears the media call journalism. But we all know the sort of man Bruce Fleckstein was. We know...”
I sensed, more than felt, a shudder and glanced at Scotty. Her eyes were filled with tears and she opened them wide so the tears wouldn’t run down her cheeks.
“Scotty,” I said softly, “are you okay?” She nodded, staring at the rabbi. “Scotty?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. At first I was bewildered. The combination of Scotty Hughes crying and irritable was barely believable. She was such a controlled person that normally the most emotion she could show was a big round of applause at a tennis match.
Then I knew. “Scotty,” I murmured, “were you having an affair with Bruce Fleckstein?” She whipped her head around to stare at me and then turned away. I knew I had committed a gross breach of etiquette, but I persisted. “Scotty, this is important,” I whispered. “Did he take any pictures of you?” This time, her whole body turned toward me.
“You?” she whispered.
“No. A friend of mine.” I watched as she rummaged through her pocketbook, obviously looking for the handkerchief she had given to Brenda. I reached into mine and handed her a clean but linty tissue. She pressed it against her eyes.
“Scotty,” I began again.
“I think enough has been said, Judith,” and she turned from me, offering me a bit more of her back than was polite. There was no way I could pressure Scotty, as I had Mary Alice, to give me information.
Mary Alice was so easily manipulated, and Scotty was a bright, self-possessed woman. But Bruce had gotten to her too.
“...that Bruce Fleckstein was a man, a fine man with a fine family, and the memory of his warmth, his humor, his thousand little kindnesses will be our record of his life, our inheritance.” I tuned out the rabbi again and looked around. In a pew across the aisle, I saw my dentist, Dr. Burns. He was a soothing sort, small and quiet, who had Chopin piped into his office.
A few rows in front of him sat a friend of mine, Fay Jacobs. I was startled. How could she know the Flecksteins? Fay and I had met three years before at a NOW conference, where I had led a seminar on women in the New Deal. We began chatting and discovered we lived no more than a mile apart. Fay was in her fifties, short, stocky, and as muscular as a longshoreman, with chopped-off gray hair. She wore no makeup except for bright red lipstick, which invariably became smudged, giving her mouth a kind of pleasing, undefined generousness. She had been teaching history at Shorehaven High School since the late nineteen forties and was totally dedicated to her subject and her students. I adored her.
“As Wordsworth so aptly put it...” the rabbi was saying. Certain that the quotation would not be apt, I glanced away from Fay back to Scotty. Her large, bony hands gripped the arms of her seat, and her eyes were locked on the Eternal Light in a red-rimmed, unblinking stare. Had she come to Baum Brothers for a short goodbye, for a last moment with a lover who had brought passion and spontaneity into her placid, correct life? Or was she simply making sure the corrupt, manipulative son of a bitch was dead?
“‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” I heard dimly. How many women had followed him to the Tudor Rose Motor Inn, bleating with excitement? Would I have? If Marvin Bruce had told me how substantive I was, how thrillingly intelligent, would I have allowed myself to be led to an afternoon’s frolic?
The mourner’s Kaddish, the benediction, and then a brief announcement: “The family will be sitting shiva at the home of Mrs. Norma Fleckstein. The address is number fourteen, Fieldstone Road, Shorehaven North.” The “North” added about seventy-five thousand dollars to the price of the house. Every home there had, minimally, a “water vw, central AC, and over 2 acs of beaut. wooded property.”
The frosted-haired woman in front of me turned to her husband: “The home of Mrs. Norma Fleckstein. I can’t believe it.”
“Can’t believe what?” he asked. He was about fifty, with adolescent-length gray hair, dressed in a tan corduroy sport jacket with suede elbow patches. They clashed. She was with it, a Bloomingdale’s lady in a gray cashmere dress and heavy bracelets. He should have complemented her with a snug body shirt and Cardin suit, but instead, as if to emphasize the gulf between them—or to hide his paunch—he had opted for the sincere, professional look. He probably misquoted Buber to his nineteen-year-old girlfriends.
“I mean, I can’t believe that just a few days ago it was Bruce and Norma’s house and now it’s the home of Mrs. Norma Fleckstein. That’s what I can’t believe.”
A Baum entered from the wings and asked us to rise again. We did, and the family began to trudge out.
I turned to ask Scotty if she was ready to go. But she had already left. I could see her weaving through the crowd, heading along the side of the chapel to the rear exit. People poured into the aisles, a few looking dazed, a few waving eagerly to friends and neighbors across the chapel. A swelling wave of voices rose after the funereal silence. “How’ve you been?” “God, I hate funerals.” “How was Martinique?” I pushed my way past them and over to Fay Jacobs.
“Judith. How are you?” she asked, beaming at me and adjusting her bra strap. She explained my presence to the woman standing next to her: “Judith is my favorite historian since Commager.” The woman looked a little confused and then decided Fay had told a joke. She laughed and then quickly excused herself.
“Fay, it’s good to see you. It’s been months.”
“I know. Why don’t we have lunch? Come on, Judith, don’t refuse me. I took a personal day and I have all afternoon.”
I thought for a second. “Sure. But I have to pick Joey up at a friend’s house at two-thirty.”
“No problem,” she said. “I feel like pampering myself today. Let’s go some place very quiet and luxurious.”
“How about Quelle Crêpe? They have a decent salade niçoise.” She put on a too-long red plaid coat and buttoned it slowly. Her knuckles were swollen with arthritis and even that simple task was painful for her.
We walked outside,
blinking from the bright sunlight, and stood under the canopy, watching the hearse and its escort of limousines and cars. “I didn’t know you knew them,” Fay declared. “They weren’t friends of yours, were they?”
“No. Not really.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I don’t know, Fay. I just shaved my legs and I wanted to wear a skirt and show them off.”
“Judith,” she smiled, “come on. Why?”
“I really don’t know, Fay. The mother of one of Joey’s friends said she was going and I volunteered to keep her company. Just a whim. Curiosity. I don’t know.”
We walked to the parking lot, Fay waving to every other person. She had lived in Shorehaven for so long that she seemed to know everyone. She patronized their stores, taught their children, worked with them at countless fairs and rummage sales.
“How did you know the Flecksteins?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you rather discuss the revisionist view of Kennedy?”
“No.”
She opened her pocketbook and extracted her car keys. “He went to dental school with my nephew Roger. I suggested to Roger that he practice here, but his little boy had asthma, so they moved out West. But he told Bruce about Shorehaven, and when Norma and Bruce first moved here, I had them over to dinner a couple of times. Mainly to introduce them to some couples of their age.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” I commented. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Fay, what was he like? Really like?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be able to comprehend him. You lead a decent, uncomplicated life.” She opened the door to her car with some difficulty, unable to get a tight grip on the handle.
“For God’s sake, Fay. What’s this decent business? What are you going to do, explain the situation to me when I grow up?”
She looked up at me, coloring a bit. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to sound condescending. Look, let’s get to the restaurant and I’ll tell you everything I know about the Flecksteins. If you’re interested.”