Getting Old Is Murder

by Rita Lakin

  Next. Evvie reminds me that she needs to deliver her latest review for the Lanai Gardens newspaper, which my sister started twenty years ago with a group of frustrated ex-New Yorkers who loved movies, plays, and all the arts. Everyone reads the Free Press, the pulse of Lanai Gardens, listing its Hadassah meetings, club activities, religious holidays, etc. The biggest draw is Evvie’s famous movie reviews. We girls go to the movies every Saturday afternoon and afterwards Evvie goes home and dutifully comments on them. She has a big following.

  Ida, cranky as usual, phones in, and in that imperious voice of hers, says she must go to the bank. Sometimes I think that tight bun of hers cuts off the air to her brain. She always goes to the bank on Fridays, and she knows I always make a stop there, but she will call to remind me—the Phone God must be served.

  And everyone has to go to the drugstore for the usual assortment of prescriptions that have to be refilled. Not to mention vitamins and Dr. Scholl’s foot pads and Ex-Lax. Francie has all of us on some herbs called Brain Pep. She swears that Ginkgo biloba, gotu kola, and Schizandra (I did not make this up) will save our memories. It obviously isn’t working for me.

  Gentle Irving now phones to ask that I please not forget the items on his shopping list. Things his Millie needs. As if I would forget.

  “Everybody report in by now?” This is Francie calling to check up on whether everyone else checked in yet.

  “All present and accounted for.”

  We both laugh at the daily absurdity of the phone calls. We know that before they even made these calls to me, they’d already talked to one another and gone through the exact same litany.

  And why do they all call me? Because I’m the only one of the girls who can still drive and hasn’t relinquished her car. Denny has his mother’s old Ford Fairlane, which we use as a taxi occasionally. He also helps out by driving relatives to and from the airport—for a fee which we set for him, or he’d be too shy to ask. Hy Binder also drives, but no one in their right mind would get into a car with him, except Lola, who has no choice. God help her—he thinks he’s racing the Daytona 500.

  Harriet works; that lets her out. And Francie gave up her car when her car gave up on her.

  “Well,” Francie says, winding up, “enjoy your chores, Ms. Limo Driver.”

  “Sure you don’t want to come along?” There actually is room for six in my old Chevy wagon, but it’s a tight fit. “You can always sit on Ida’s lap.”

  “What, and get stabbed by her quills!?”

  “Sophie?”

  “And get stabbed by her parasol?”

  “Coward.”

  “Glutton for punishment.”

  “What can I do? They neeeeed me.” As if we haven’t enjoyed this conversation a hundred times.

  “Read my lips.” And we recite it, singsong, together. “Get a cab! Take a bus. Walk. Stay hoooome.”

  I smile as I hang up. I love that wonderful woman. She is my soul mate. What would I ever do without her?

  5

  Going into Town, Or

  Trying to

  Glad, can we please get going? I’m dying from the heat already.” Evvie has a right to complain. We’ve been waiting forever, or so it seems, for everyone to get into my car. The pavement is burning our feet.

  First, Bella, terrified of forgetting anything, left her shopping list on the kitchen table, so she went scampering back for it. Then Sophie, who would never let anyone break her record for lateness, went back for her sunblock even though we’d only be walking outside from the parking lot into the market.

  “We can always leave them behind,” I say.

  “Then let’s do it. Heckle and Jeckle are driving me up one wall and down the other,” agrees Evvie, the impatient organizer.

  “Bella! Sophie! Get down here already,” screeches Ida, who has less patience than anyone.

  Sophie waves gaily out her window. “I’m almost ready. I got my head together, but the rest of me is falling apart.”

  Ida is in a bad mood anyway. As usual, her mailbox was empty this morning. She mailed an expensive birthday gift to one of her grandchildren. (She’d never admit it’s bribery.) No one has bothered to thank her or even acknowledge receiving it.

  I try not to open my mailbox when she is around. I feel guilty when I get so many wonderful letters from my grandchildren in New York. I’m truly blessed. And genuinely sorry for Ida.

  Evvie is tapping her foot, a very bad sign. “I promised Meyer I’d get my copy over to the newspaper before noon. Now, he won’t be there when I get there. I’m going to kill those two shmegeggies!”

  She’s furious; she’s never late with her copy.

  I’ve pulled the sunshade off the windshield, I’ve got all the windows and doors open, and I’ll put the air on as soon as I see them coming. The car should be bearable enough to get in now. And we’re still waiting.

  Ida, trying to keep her temper in check, is now reading the notices on the bulletin board next to the elevator. “Did you see this, girls?” We turn.

  “There’s another flyer warning us about this guy who’s killing older women. They say we should never go out alone at night, or go into bad neighborhoods.”

  “Well, we don’t have to be concerned,” Evvie says. “We’re always asleep by nine o’clock and, anyway, we never leave our neighborhood.”

  “They’re worried about us being followed home,” I comment as I read over her shoulder. “This guy manages to get into women’s apartments without breaking in.”

  “How can he do that?” Evvie asks. “You have to be pretty stupid to let in someone you don’t know.”

  “Well, it happens all the time. My murder mysteries come up with tons of different ways. A guy carrying flowers poses as a delivery man. You’d open the door, wouldn’t you? Or a telegram. Or someone in a cop’s uniform? Or someone says your kids were in an accident and he’s the good Samaritan they sent to get you. . . .”

  Ida and Evvie are silent for a moment. “I see what you mean,” Ida says. “Who’d ever question any of those?”

  I suddenly feel my blood run cold. “Is it possible,” I say, thinking about Selma yet again, “maybe it wasn’t a heart attack or an accident—?”

  “Hey, dolls! Up here!”

  Ida jumps, startled. We look up, to the second floor.

  And guess who? It’s our favorite pain-in-the-ass, Hy Binder, heading for the laundry room with a basket load of wash.

  “We almost got away,” Evvie moans.

  “Didja hear this one?” he calls out to us. “What’s the difference between a wife and a girlfriend?” Not bothering to wait for a response, he tells us. “Forty-five pounds.”

  “Get lost, Hy,” Ida yells.

  “What’s it called when a woman is paralyzed from the waist down?” Pause, then a guffaw. “Marriage!”

  There’s no stopping him.

  Evvie shrieks at him. “Why don’t you go soak your head in the dryer?”

  “Don’t you mean washer?” Ida asks.

  “Washer. Dryer. Who cares. Just get rid of him!”

  Evvie starts to get into the car. “I’d rather melt than listen to his dreck!”

  “Wait, but didja hear what happened real early this morning? No joke.”

  Lola comes out of their apartment with another basket of laundry. She continues it for Hy. “Guess who crazy Kronk got this time?”

  “Who, now?” Evvie asks, changing her mind about the car in the face of a choice piece of gossip.

  Greta and Armand Kronk lived here for many years. She was Spanish, he German. They hinted vaguely at being in “showbiz” and they would have nothing to do with any of us, although one year they did offer classes in flamenco. But they were so unpleasant, and their prices so expensive, very few people took their classes. Eventually Armand died and just about no one has seen Greta since. Food and liquor are delivered to her door. Especially liquor. A few years ago she started getting creepy, prowling the Dumpsters at night. First, she would smear g
arbage all over people’s cars and front doors. Then she began scrawling juvenile kinds of poems on our front doors in greasepaint. Very short. To the point. And scary in their accuracy. No one can figure out how she knows so much about all of us. No one ever admits how close she comes to nailing us.

  “The Muellers over us?” Hy comments. “I could hear them early this morning when John went out to pick up the newspaper. He woke us up with his yelling and Mary trying to quiet him. I looked out and he was pounding on Kronk’s door, screaming, daring she should come out. So he can kill her!”

  By now the two prima donnas have managed to come downstairs. And they want to know what’s going on. Evvie shushes them.

  “Wow!” says Ida. “What did she write this time?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t believe—” Lola begins.

  Hy interrupts. “He got some soap and wiped it off the door real fast.”

  Sophie, the queen of pastels, tugs on Evvie, insists on knowing what she and Bella missed by being a teeny-weeny bit late. Evvie, annoyed, fills her in quickly.

  “But before he finished wiping,” Lola continues, “Mrs. Feder already read what Greta wrote.”

  “Wait just a minute,” I say. “How did Esther Feder see from across the way on the first floor at the other end of the building to the Mueller’s top floor at this end? What did she do, wheel her chair down the sidewalk?”

  “She has binoculars,” Hy announces, grinning. Hy is really getting a charge out of all this. “Well, old Feder told her darling Harriet. Harriet told Lola. Natch, Lola told me.”

  “I can’t believe nobody blabbed about it by the pool this morning,” Ida says, amazed.

  “Not in front of the Canadians,” says Lola.

  We are always on our best behavior with our northern visitors.

  Sophie, who reads the end of every novel first because she can’t stand the suspense, pushes forward. “So, alright already, what did Kronk write?”

  Hy beams from ear to ear, emoting dramatically. “‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Kick him out. Your John’s a fairy.’”

  Conversation comes to an immediate halt.

  Bella is the first to recover. In her own inimitable way of thinking, she’s gleefully made a connection. She delicately wiggles her hand to get our attention. “Is that why he always wears pink?”

  Back to my car. I jump in and quickly crank up the air. Ida gets in, and I wait to hear what she will say. She never disappoints me. “Glad, turn down the air! You want me to freeze?”

  “Get in already,” Evvie says. “I’m melting out here.”

  “Now where are you beauties off to?” a melodious voice wafts down the sidewalk towards us.

  Oh, oh. From Hy’s frying pan into Leo’s fire. It’s Mr. Leo Slezak, aka Mr. Sleaze, waving at us. That’s mine and Evvie’s name for this real-estate entrepreneur and slimeball. A not-too-bad-looking man, fifty-ish, if you like his type. Dapper in an oily sort of way. He favors creased white linen suits, Panama hats angled rakishly across his forehead. And a lot of gold chains.

  He’s standing with Tessie Hoffman, a hefty two-hundred-fifty-pounder, best friend of the deceased Selma Beller, and fellow Weight Watchers dropout. We all like Tessie because she can make fun of herself. If we ask what she’s had for lunch, she’ll say Shamu and fries. Like that. Selma’s sudden death has devastated her.

  Like a shot, the girls are out of the car again, ready to melt once more, but this time from Leo’s baloney. Evvie and I cannot stand this man, but most of the other females in Phase Two think he is God’s gift to women.

  “Why are you here today, Leo?” Sophie gurgles.

  “You, of course, know about Selma Beller. So sad. Well, her children gave me the listing and Tessie, here, is giving me the key to her apartment.”

  At the mention of Selma’s name, Tessie’s eyes tear up. She shakes her head and repeats her familiar litany. “She never even got to open her birthday present.”

  Smarmy Slezak pats her on the shoulder. “There, there,” he says with his usual phony sentiment. He beams back at us. “I have a couple of hot prospects coming this afternoon.”

  I wonder how he gets those listings. Leo hasn’t sold a condo in over a year. More than a dozen units just stand empty. He keeps moaning that business is bad. The snowbirds aren’t buying much anymore. There are bigger and fancier condos going up all over the place, like the Wynmore or Hamilton House. If this keeps up, eventually we’ll all have our choice of graveyards—Beth Israel, across town, or stay right here in our own apartments.

  I swear if I didn’t know better, I’d think he stands near the ambulance exit at the hospital and follows them when the sirens go off. One of us dies and that embossed card is out of his pocket and into the hands of a grieving relative faster than you can say “Escrow is closed.”

  “How do you ladies do it?” he says with that simpering lisp. “How do you keep so fresh and beautiful in all this heat?”

  You don’t want to hear their nauseatingly sweet answers. It would make your stomach turn.

  Evvie leans over and honks the horn. “We have to go, girls.”

  Almost sighing, the three little twits begin backing away from Leo, the lady-killer. Like a magician, Leo whips a hand into his pocket and his cards instantly appear. His greatest fans take them lovingly. Evvie and I keep our hands folded. He reaches toward us.

  “No, thanks. We already have a few dozen,” Evvie says with ice in her voice. My sister does sarcasm very well.

  Leo taps at the brim of his Panama and says what he always says: “Don’t buy out the stores, ladies.”

  And we are off. Thank God. I have such a headache already. But as I drive through the wrought-iron gates out onto Oakland Park Boulevard, I think once more about Selma’s death. It’s the way she died that’s beginning to nag at me. It reminds me of something. Someone I’ve seen before? But I can’t drag it out of the cobwebs in my mind. Damn getting old and what it does to your memory!

  6

  Supermarket Shuffle

  We have finally arrived at our local market. Picture a supermarket in any city in America. So, pardon me if I don’t waste time describing where the cream cheese is.

  But our Publix has one big difference: the customers. Shoppers under fifty-five are referred to as “the kids.” The rest of us are seniors who live along Oakland Park Boulevard in the various condos, boardinghouses, apartment buildings, and retirement homes. The dress code? Canes. Walkers. Wheelchairs. The object? Shopping for food and surviving the experience. The secret agenda? Kill or maim everyone in your way. OK. Carts at the ready. Bracing ourselves, we take a deep breath, and start wheeling! Welcome to the Supermarket Shuffle!

  Evvie and I watch as Ida, bun bobbing, teeth bared, relishing a chase, immediately dashes off on her own. Bella and Sophie, their four eager hands pushing one cart, meander their jolly way down the nearest aisle. And off Evvie and I go.

  Aisle One. There goes Yetta Hoffman, ninety-seven, from our Phase Six, using her cane to dig into the back of eighty-eight-year-old Miltie Offenbach. He dares to block her view of the pickled herring specials. Move on. That cane is sharp.

  Aisle Two. Look out for Moishe Maibaum, in fine fettle, using his walker like he used to fly his P51 Mustang fighter plane in World War II. “Oops, sorry, Mrs. Garcetti,” he says, “just a flesh wound,” as he knocks her against what was, only seconds ago, a tall pyramid of sugar peas.

  Aisle Three. We are debating pineapple juice over prune.

  Aisle Four. A store employee is giving out minuscule samples of lox on crackers the size of pinkie-nails and the line snakes around the perimeter of the entire store, punctuated by much pushing, shoving, and insulting.

  “Putz!”

  “Yenta!”

  “Meeskite!”

  “Lunatic!”

  (Translation: Penis. Busybody. Ugly one and lunatic.)

  A familiar announcement comes over on the loudspeaker. Cleanup on aisle seven. No, not some careless child, only a senior
with palsy. A jar of Korean kimchi has smashed. You know what kimchi smells like?

  Look out! Eleven o’clock, wheelchair bearing down on us. Jump! Breathlessly we grab for a couple of the hanging salamis and hold on for dear life. (Well, actually we just step out of the way.)

  In aisle eight, a drama is taking place. Two women. Photographs. A letter. Tears. We reach for our items and move past quickly and quietly.

  Meat and Poultry. A tug-of-war. Two sets of spindly arms hold tight to two equally spindly chicken wings. A fight to the finish. Move on. Forget making chicken soup. Get lamb chops instead.

  One long hour later, our shopping is finally done. Evvie, Ida, and I have checked out, but we have to wait for Bella and Sophie. And here they come, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, basket filled to the brim. I sigh. This will take forever.

  The checkout stand. One needs the patience of Job. Fifteen minutes for the first customer; one tiny change purse filled with coins and the slowest fingers in the world eking them out.

  Then the next customer and an argument over two cans of sardines. “They were cheaper last week. So how come the price is higher this week?”

  “No, they’re exactly the same price as last week.”

  “Listen, you little pisher, don’t tell me! I’m old enough to be your great-grandmother.”

  Finally Bella and then Sophie.

  Every item calls for a debate.

  “How come the Bosc pears are so high?”

  “How come the broccoli has no taste?”

  “How come you don’t carry the Del Monte peaches anymore? I mean the ‘cling’?” Then there is the obligatory exchange of recipes. Complaints about the store. The attitude of the help. Local politics. World hunger.

  Evvie taps her foot throughout, muttering obscenities, but that doesn’t move them any faster.

  When we’re done, our clothes are rumpled and our faces are flushed and our pulses are beating just a little faster. All right. So I exaggerated. But, at our age, where else can we go to have this much fun?