by Teri Emory
On Friday morning, I persuaded Aunt Sylvia to keep her regular hairdresser appointment and to join her weekly canasta game instead of going to the hospital with me, assuring her that new developments with Mom were unlikely. Anyway, apart from emergencies, things slow down in hospitals as weekends approach. Nurses are staffed to the minimum, doctors make only necessary rounds, no lab tests or special procedures are ordered. Dr. Ling’s partner, a young neurosurgeon from Dublin, charmed Mom with his brogue and friendly smile late Friday afternoon, explaining that Dr. Ling would be off for the weekend but that he would stop by each day. The social worker, too, was off until Monday. It was going to be a long two days. Mom was still sleeping most of the time. Awake, she felt just well enough to be bored by staying in bed but not well enough to leave her room except for brief jaunts down the hall.
“You don’t have to stay here all weekend just to watch me sleep,” Mom said. “Go take a walk on the beach, do some shopping. Please, dear, for me.”
Her words were still a bit garbled, but I was heartened. She was sounding like a slightly inebriated version of her old self. “You win, Mom. I’ll find something to do in the morning and come see you in the afternoon.”
The sky was still light when I left the hospital on Friday evening. A late-afternoon thunderstorm had cooled the air and filled the potholes around the parking lot. I stood under the flamingo pink stucco overhang at the front entrance, trying to remember where I had parked. A taxi pulled up to the circular driveway, splashing water from one of the puddles onto my legs. Through the window, I caught the driver’s eye; he mouthed an apology. The back door of the taxi swung open.
“Sorry,” the passenger called to me. I was bent over, brushing drops of water off my sandals. “This is not the entrance I had in mind.”
Gabe, dressed in jeans, a tropical print shirt, and a Yankees cap, stepped out of the taxi. Before I could speak, his arms were around me.
“You shouldn’t have to do this alone,” he said.
__________
Aunt Sylvia invited Gabe to sleep on the couch at her place, but he had already reserved a room at a small hotel nearby. She insisted on cooking dinner for the three of us before he left for the night.
“Is he your boyfriend?” she whispered when he was out of earshot.
“Not exactly.”
“He came so far, and he’s not your boyfriend?”
“Really, I hardly know him.”
“He looks at you like he’s your boyfriend,” she said. “If a handsome man like him looked at me that way, I’d be happy to be his girl.”
In the morning, I met Gabe for breakfast at the Miramar Cuban Bakery and Café, adjacent to his hotel. The full measure of his being in Florida with me was just starting to register.
“When things calm down, I imagine I’ll be able to process the fact that you came all this way for me. A gutsy move, arriving unannounced.”
“Well, no guts, no glory.”
“And the expense. A last-minute ticket like this . . .”
“I’ll confess: I had a frequent flyer ticket I had to use before the end of the year. Meanwhile, fill me in on what’s happening with your mother. I’d love to meet her, if you think it would be all right.”
Out of ICU now, Mom was permitted to have visitors beyond immediate family members. I expected Gabe’s presence might confuse her, but when I introduced him, Mom behaved as if it were completely natural that he had shown up. She called him Neil a few times, and once she asked him why he hadn’t brought her grandchildren to see her, but for the most part she made sense of what was happening around her. On occasion she was adorably flirtatious with Gabe, insisting, with fluttering eyelashes, that he call her Celeste instead of Mrs. Kaplan.
“It makes me feel younger, hearing you call me by my first name,” Mom insisted.
At times, though, what came out of her mouth was stream-of-consciousness—sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes painfully candid.
“My beautiful daughter,” she said out of the blue, pointing to me but looking at Gabe. “Why she never got married, I can’t understand.”
“Celeste!” Aunt Sylvia said. “Please, it’s not the right time for all that.”
“Mom, are you scheduled for physical therapy today?” I said, clumsily trying to change the topic.
Mom showed no sign that she had heard me. She continued talking directly to Gabe, in a conspiratorial stage whisper. “She came so close, and with handsome young men, like you. Rich ones, too. Of course, I never met that Southerner—what was his name again? A humdinger, that one. She was never the same.”
I avoided looking in Gabe’s direction. Aunt Sylvia’s eyes, wide with surprise, caught mine. I turned away.
Mercifully, a nurse appeared with a thermometer and a blood pressure cuff and asked us to step outside while she examined Mom. In the hallway, Gabe broke the painful silence.
“Ladies, where can I take you two to dinner tonight?”
I breathed deeply for the first time since Mom had begun her discourse about my love life.
“Not me,” Aunt Sylvia said. “Three’s a crowd. You two go, try one of those nice restaurants at the beach.”
Gabe repeated his invitation to Aunt Sylvia, but she held firm.
“Enjoy yourselves. You deserve a little fun, Miriam darling.”
Gabe and I sat at an outdoor table at a seafood restaurant on the water. We avoided talking about Mom’s outburst, though the temptation—for him to ask more, for me to attempt some explanation—clung to the air between us.
“What happens when you get Celeste back to New York?” Gabe said.
“I’ve got a stack of brochures about places in the city. My homework for the weekend was going to be reading them and coming to some kind of decision. That was before you showed up.”
“I came to help, Miriam. Maybe I can do your homework with you.”
“Tomorrow, then. For tonight, I’d like to enjoy the beautiful weather, and your company, and some Florida shrimp, and conversation that isn’t sad or worrisome. Do you think it’s terrible of me to want to escape from all of it for a few hours? I’ve had no one but Aunt Sylvia to talk to all week, and I worry that she’s going to keel over any minute.”
Gabe reached across the table and laced his fingers with mine. “Your aunt is probably asleep, your mother is in good hands, and there’s nothing we can do for either of them until tomorrow. Maybe it will help you to think more clearly if you unwind a little tonight. We can make like we’re on a date, even see if there’s a movie to catch somewhere before it gets too late. And then in the morning, it’s back to reality. Sound reasonable?”
It did.
We wound up at Gabe’s hotel, having rented Adam’s Rib to watch on the VCR in his room. We kicked off our shoes, climbed onto the king-sized bed and leaned back against the huge pillows. He clicked the remote, and as the video started he reached for my hand. What pleasure to watch a movie with a kindred spirit. From time to time, one of us would reach for the remote, pause the film, and offer commentary. Gabe said, and I agreed, that this film was the best of the Hepburn-Tracy series. I said, and he concurred, that Judy Holliday was never better than in this role. Like me, Gabe kept his eyes on the screen and didn’t budge until the last film credits rolled.
He clicked off the TV and moved his face close to mine. “Tired?”
“A little. I probably should get back to my aunt’s place.”
He rubbed his fingers along my neck. “I can imagine what this week has been like for you,” he said. “I don’t want to complicate matters. But Miriam, I’m dying to get close to you. Not just physically, though I can’t count how many times I have thought about making love to you. Something happened to me when we met at Beth and Jim’s. Bolt of lightning! My mother’s family—the Jewish relatives—they use a word, bashert. Have you heard it?”
“It
means something that’s meant to be. My family uses the word all the time, too.”
“My mother believes in bashert relationships between men and women. Divinely inspired, and all that. I’ve been asking myself since I saw you and haven’t been able to get you out of my mind, whether this is what Mom has been talking about. You are gorgeous—no, please don’t give me any false modesty, you know you are—and at first I thought this was all about chemistry. But when I felt as if I had to get on that plane and be here with you, I knew there was something else going on. With the situation here, I certainly didn’t come with the idea of getting you into bed. Not that I would fight you off, mind you. I just felt as if I wanted to be with you, to help you, to . . . Oh, God, my timing is probably just terrible.”
“Gabe,” I said, “I am attracted to you, and your coming here has touched me in a way I’ll probably never be able to describe to you. But you should know this: I stopped believing in bashert a long time ago.”
Gabe moved his body around and pulled me to him, kissing me long and hard and passionately. It made my heart flip, the way it hadn’t since . . .
“I know you must think I’m crazy,” he whispered in my ear, “and I don’t want to rush you . . .”
“I need some time,” I whispered back. “Please, not tonight, not here . . . “
“I know,” he said. “Miriam, I want more than just your beautiful body. You still haven’t told me your story—who you are, where you’ve been. I need to understand why you gave up on bashert.”
“You may be disappointed,” I said. “My story may not be so interesting after all.” He’s thinking about what Mom said in the hospital.
“Try me.”
“Where should I begin? My first kiss? The boy who gave me his ID bracelet in junior high school? Getting lavaliered in college? Getting engaged? Getting engaged again? And again?”
“I want to hear it all. But speaking of sleep, both of us could probably use some. I think I need to walk you back to your Aunt Sylvia’s place—before I wind up ripping your clothes off and driving you so wild with desire that you’ll insist on spending the night, and my reputation with your Aunt Sylvia will be ruined.”
“Aunt Sylvia has already had a few words to say about you.”
“Like what?”
“She noticed the way you looked at me. She found it endearing.”
“Endearing? That was lust, my darling.”
__________
The next morning I tucked Aunt Sylvia into a taxi headed to the hospital, and Gabe and I set ourselves up at the dining room table at her condo. We plowed through pamphlets and booklets—even a video or two—which the social worker had given me from at least a dozen facilities in the New York area. In a couple of hours, we had narrowed the choices to three, all within a reasonable distance from my apartment as well as Mom’s neighborhood. I figured some of her friends would visit her if they didn’t have to travel too far.
“Your friend Sarah, the one in healthcare, think it would be a good idea to call her?” Gabe suggested. “She may know how we should check these places out.”
We! He was in this with me. “I think I can catch her at home now. This time of the morning, she’s probably still in her bathrobe, doing the Sunday crossword puzzle,” I said.
Sarah recognized the names of all the nursing facilities on our short list and knew them to be reputable. She offered to do additional research online. “I can find out if there have been any recent problems with them—licensure issues, that kind of thing,” she said. “I’ll also call around to see who has vacancies.”
“You’re the best, kiddo,” I told her. “Call me back if you find out anything I need to know. I’m on my way to the hospital. Leave a message on my cell. Meanwhile, how the hell how are you, Sarah? I haven’t talked to you since the party. I saw you huddling with Bruce Jacobs. Everything all right?”
“Just ducky, except I’m going to lose my job any minute, and there’s something, um, complicated going on with Kevin. Too much to go into over the phone. I’ll fill you in at brunch.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t wait until we can talk in person. I hope to leave here before the weekend. We’re overdue for brunch—you know how we usually like to do a post-mortem on the Gillian soiree.”
“Couldn’t be helped, with your being away. And, Miriam? I’d love to know what’s going on with Gabe. Beth told me that he called Jim to ask for advice about joining you in Florida. Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall for that exchange? I’m guessing it’s hard for you to talk now, right?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely,” I said, with an exaggerated lilt to let her know that Gabe was nearby.
“The vote up here is unanimous. Gabe’s been elected Mensch of the Year.”
“I agree.”
“Oh, and one more thing. I have some advice from Beth. She’s known Gabe for a long time, and she has one of her profound, therapeutic insights for you.”
“I can’t wait. Out with it.”
“She says, please do your best not to fuck things up with him.”
Gabe took a flight back to New York at dawn on Monday morning. Driving him to the airport felt sweetly domestic, as if we had long been in the habit of performing mundane kindnesses for each other.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said.
“Gabe, no matter what happens, I’ll never forget . . .”
“Stop right there. I’m happy I came. You take care, and tell Celeste to behave herself. I’ll see both of you when you get home.”
Beth:
Lost and Found
“Well, then, what’s to be the reason
for becoming man and wife?”
—Noel Paul Stookey
Six-thirty. The morning after the party. I’ve slept fitfully and not long enough. With effort, I raise my head; there are streaks of mascara on the pillowcase because I fell asleep before I washed off my makeup. Jim has already left for the office. His new partners will need him night and day until they return to London. He’ll sleep in the city all week.
“Call you later,” I heard him whisper as he tiptoed out.
The party was a grand success. Everybody said so. There were no marital brawls or unruly political squabbles or regrettable drunken incidents. (We’ve had all three at previous gatherings.) The parking valets neither lost anyone’s keys nor damaged a single car. MaryJo’s Catering managed to find ripe blood-oranges for the salad and ventresca di tonno, the rich tuna in olive oil that makes a perfect sauce for cold veal. In spite of his hesitation about an evening of theme music, Sam Humphrey did a masterful job playing the movie scores I requested. I knew the music would be just right, not too intrusive or too stuffy. The kind that stirs up nice feelings.
The cleaning crew is due at nine. Carmen is coming to supervise them. Nothing urgent for me to do, nowhere I have to be today. Half asleep still, I tilt my head to scan the framed pictures on the dresser. A Sears Studios Portrait of Adam, age four, and Nicole, less than a year old, smiling as they sit in the doorway of a façade meant to look like a playhouse. A black-and-white of Jim’s parents strolling on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, wheeling Jim in a fancy pram. Sarah, Miriam, and I amid a sea of bodies in front of the Washington Memorial, holding aloft a banner that reads, “Give Peace a Chance.” A shot of me at the Bocca della Verità in Rome. I am pretending, Roman Holiday/Audrey Hepburn-style, to be frightened as I tentatively reach towards the gaping Mouth of Truth.
“Put your hand in, and tell me I’m the best lover in the world!” Andrew had called to me as he snapped the picture.
My eyes come to rest on a Polaroid of Jim and me, tanned and gleeful, festooned with leis at a luau in Maui. There’s no hint in our smiling faces of the knotty truce that led to our being in Hawaii, or the restive months that preceded the trip. It was the vacation we took, Jim says, instead of getting a divorce.
__
________
Carmen was at the house with me six years ago when I found out about Jim’s affair. Jim and I had celebrated Valentine’s Day a few days early, the night before he left on a business trip to Tokyo. The work on enlarging our pool and putting in a new cabana had just begun, and Jim’s gift to me was a white hooded terry cloth beach robe and a pair of iridescent flip-flops in the same shade of blue as the designer logo on the pocket of the robe. I gave him a silk tie splashed with bright cartoon icons of stock market ticker tapes, the World Trade Center towers, the Wall Street Journal banner—meant to represent the financial world he had already conquered. I made arrangements for the kids to sleep at friends’ houses for the night, and, by candlelight in the dining room, I served him his favorite dish, lasagna with sweet sausage. After his second glass of Chianti, Jim yawned and said he’d better be turning in early; he had a long flight ahead of him the next day. When he fell asleep in our bed without a kiss or a word, I truly forgave him. He had been working so hard lately.
My practice was already flourishing by then, but I cancelled all my appointments for Valentine’s Day so I could be at home. With Jim in Tokyo, I had to make myself available to the crew from All-Green Landscaping. They arrived early in the morning to survey our property, to draw up plans that would accommodate the pool and cabana. By noon, they were still wandering around the backyard, but they said they wouldn’t need me for a while.
I went up to my bedroom to pay some bills. There was a charge on our American Express bill, dated February 1, from Le Boudoir. It made me smile. Le Boudoir is a fancy lingerie shop on Madison Avenue, not far from the tiny Manhattan apartment where we lived when we were first married. That shop was one of many in our neighborhood whose prices were way beyond our modest income at the time. When Jim got his first promotion and bonus, he bought me a silk nightgown at Le Boudoir, and we spent an entire weekend celebrating on our waterbed.