The Sunset Gang

by Warren Adler

  "I'll take poison," Sophie Berger responded, which was enough to shock Milly into facing her friend's immediate problem.

  "I'll be glad to help if you need me, Sophie," her friend said with feeling.

  "Don't worry, I'll holler."

  On the first night of their arrival, the children of Sophie Berger sat around in her bedroom talking. It was the first time in years that they had been together, just the four of them, and despite her fears she felt good about that. But Ben should be here, she thought.

  "If only your father were alive." She sighed. "He'd be so happy seeing us all together."

  "Daddy is with us," Sandy said. She was the youngest and had been very attached to her father.

  "At least he could protect me from the wrath of you women," Leonard said.

  "You never had it so good," Marilyn said, sticking a finger in her brother's chest. She smiled at him, always the big sister. "If only you hadn't married that bitch of a wife. We could have been friends."

  "Leave Cynthia out of this."

  "Don't worry."

  "She always does this, Ma," Leonard pleaded.

  Later, after they had reminisced and discussed their childhood, which had been a happy one, Sophie believed, they broached the heart of the matter. She was ready and waiting, although the reminiscing had lulled her into a false state of security. The opening shot came from a predictable source. Her eldest.

  "The question, Ma, is what do we do with you?"

  "With me?" Sophie asked innocently, feeling a sudden sharp twinge of pain in her hip.

  "We can't put all this burden on Sandy just because she lives in Florida."

  "Really it's no burden," Sandy said, a moment too fast in her response.

  "Don't be ridiculous. You have a family, a husband."

  "Mama can live with me anytime she wants," Sandy said, kissing her mother's cheek.

  "She can live with me, too," Marilyn said. "Ma, anytime you want you can live with me and Marvin. We'd love to have you, you know that."

  "You make it sound as if I don't want her," Leonard said, taking his mother's hand.

  "You think she would be happy living with that bitch you married?" Marilyn shouted. "I wouldn't have my mother degraded."

  "She's got to stop about Cynthia, Ma. She's my wife and I want her respected."

  Sophie listened, waiting for the ultimate suggestion, holding back her tears. She cursed her frail body, felt its humiliation. She had once been a big woman, a strong woman, the last to tire.

  "I don't know what you're all worried about. In a few weeks the hip will be good enough. Then I'll throw away the walker and start with a cane. The doctor said it's a long process, but you know seventy-four is not exactly ancient. Not in this place."

  Marilyn looked at her and shook her head.

  "Seventy-nine, Ma."

  "Who said?"

  "Ma, this is Marilyn. These are your children. We know your age."

  "You saw my birth certificate?" She had been so used to lying about it that the truth escaped her. She nodded her head, suddenly feeling old, but refusing to surrender. In six months she'd be eighty. My God, eighty. Her mind was young. Her heart was young, she told herself.

  "There are people here living alone in their nineties," she said proudly. They looked at each other, shrugged. Then Sandy bent over her and patted the pillows. They each kissed her in turn and left her in darkness.

  But the way the condominium was constructed and the thinness of the walls made it possible for her to hear every word despite their whisperings. She listened, alert to every sound, every nuance.

  "For sure she can't stay here," Marilyn said, her voice urgent. "Maybe the hip will heal faster, but then what about the cataract." So they knew about that? "We'll worry ourselves sick."

  "Look, she's a proud woman," Leonard said. "Maybe she should stick it out by herself for a while until she finally comes to the realization on her own."

  "It's okay for you to say," Sandy snapped. "You're up there. I'm down here. I'm the one that will have to suffer for it. Already my husband is threatening me with divorce."

  "Don't exaggerate, Sandy," Marilyn said. "We've had our problems, too."

  Sandy sniffled loudly. "Shut up. You'll wake Mama."

  She heard someone tiptoe into the room and stand silently in the doorway for a moment, then leave and close the door softly behind them. How could she blame her children? She thought of them when they were young but could not find any relationship between the little faces of their childhood and the reality of their adulthood. They were middle-aged now. Marilyn was well over fifty. Who were those people out there in the living room deciding her fate? Were they the screaming babies that she had once suckled at her breast, the helpless lumps of flesh that greedily took sustenance from her? They were definitely not the same people, she decided. And the woman who suckled them was a different woman. Her mind searched back to herself in that time, the tall buxom woman with the tight skin who could feel and enjoy the strength of herself.

  "You work too hard, Sophie," Ben would say, planting the idea of tiredness.

  "Who will do the housework?" she had always responded, the martyred woman, knowing now that she did not deserve her martyrdom. She had had the strength to endure. It was Ben who faltered. Ben was the weak one. But the voices persisted as her attention drifted back to them.

  "She's going to have to face it sooner or later," Marilyn said, with a tone of finality.

  "The problem," Sandy said, "is an immediate one. She can barely make it to the bathroom, and only with my help. I have to help her out of bed. Can she go shopping? She needs help when she dresses."

  "But surely she'll recover from the hip," Leonard said.

  "You got a guarantee?"

  Perhaps it was the reference to the bathroom that triggered the sense of her own indignity. In the hospital, they had viewed her body as an inanimate object, something to be pushed around and her private parts exposed, even explored by indifferent fingers. They had finally put a little sitting potty by her bed and watched her as she performed, like a child. But in her own home? How dare those people discuss her personal toilet problems. Over my dead body will anyone ever take me to the toilet again, she vowed, feeling the full impact of her indignation. She wanted to rush out of bed and into them screaming with both barrels blazing. Gripping the sheets, she balled the material up in her fists and calmed herself, listening again.

  "If we can just get her to accept the idea," Marilyn was saying.

  "Marilyn and her big mouth," Sophie hissed into the darkness.

  "Look, we can afford the best there is. They're waited on hand and foot. We're not talking of a charity case. I think if we approach it right and not make her feel that we're putting her in a prison, she could be persuaded to accept it."

  "Wonderful," Leonard said, his sarcasm obvious. "Who is going to tell her?"

  "You're the son," Sandy said.

  "Did that ever mean anything in this family? You've all always treated me like some sort of bric-a-brac. When did I ever have any authority in this group?"

  "You should tell her, Marilyn," Sandy said. "You're the strongest."

  "Since when?" Marilyn said.

  "Well, you have the biggest mouth," Leonard chimed.

  Sophie smiled, enjoying their discomfort.

  "You know just because I have a big mouth it doesn't mean I'm the strongest. You know how it is with Mama and me. If I say black, she says white. Marvin has more influence with her. Sometimes I wonder if she actually likes me."

  "Mama?" Sandy said.

  "What's the rule," Marilyn said, "that says a mother must like a child?"

  "She loves you, Marilyn. She loves us all."

  "Equally?" Marilyn wondered aloud.

  "I never thought about it," Sandy said.

  "Leonard was always the favorite," Marilyn said. "My Leonard this. My Leonard that. Little Lord Fauntleroy, Leonard Berger."

  "You're exaggerating," Leonard said.
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br />   "Deny that you're the favorite," Marilyn pressed.

  Sophie heard the long pause.

  "See?" Marilyn said.

  "Well, I was the boy," Leonard said. "I was the minority."

  "She still favors you," Marilyn said. "You can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. My Leonard. My wonderful Leonard."

  If it was just up to me, she could live with us," Leonard said. "You both know that."

  "With that bitch you married? I think she might wish she were dead," Marilyn said.

  Sophie thought she was certainly right about that.

  "She could live with me, too," Sandy said. "She knows that she's welcome in my house."

  "Oh she's welcome, but I don't think she'd want to be bored to death."

  "Bored? In my house?"

  "Bored, Sandy. Bored by your boring husband and your boring children. What do you want her to do, sit in the corner and twiddle her thumbs?"

  Sophie smiled again. Marilyn might have a big mouth, but she knew how to put her finger on a situation. My poor Sandy, Sophie thought. Poor, boring Sandy.

  "Am I glad I live in Florida and not near your big mouth," Sandy fired back.

  "I didn't mean it," Marilyn said, her contrition filtering through the thin walls. "I was exaggerating to prove a point."

  "Well, it's no exaggeration that Mama would not want to live in the immediate vicinity of your fishwife mouth."

  "That I know," Marilyn said. "God, I'd love her to be near me. But she'd have a nervous breakdown in a week."

  "That's for sure."

  "So what are we going to do?" Leonard said.

  "We could get her a maid, a companion," Sandy suggested.

  A keeper, Sophie thought. Never. She would be the laughing stock of Sunset Village. That was worse than a home, she felt. She wanted to shut off her hearing now, to tell them all to go away. Who needed them? Lifting her arms from under the blanket, she pressed them against the sides of the bed, straining against the mattress to raise the upper part of her body. The gasping of her breath drowned out the sounds of her children's voices as she raised herself with effort to a sitting position and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. Pausing, she caught her breath, gathering her strength and searching in the darkness for the sight of the walker, the outlines of which she could make out at the foot of the bed. Pressing down on her palms, she tried lifting her torso, moving sideways, inching her way in the direction of the walker. It took all her strength. She felt her heart beating in her chest as she strained the muscles of her upper body, compensating for the pain in her hip and the weakness of her legs. Sweat poured down her back as she paused to recover her energy. She heard the voices again.

  "Look," Leonard was saying, "she is an intelligent woman. She knows the realities, the burden that she is putting on the three of us."

  "Play to her guilt, right, Leonard?" Marilyn said with contempt.

  "Well, she plays to ours," Sandy said. "That's why we're all here."

  "Guilt?" Marilyn said. "I thought it was love."

  "Are you saying that I don't love Mama?" Sandy asked, the pitch of her voice rising. "Who do you think has been taking care of her?"

  "I didn't say you didn't love her." Marilyn turned to Leonard and said, "She's so damned sensitive."

  "If you went through what I went through in the last few weeks, you'd be sensitive too."

  "I didn't say you didn't love Mama," Marilyn said, her voice reaching the fringes of gentleness, but proceeding no further.

  "I love her more than you do," Sandy said.

  "I doubt that." The attempt at gentleness was gone.

  "We all love her equally," Leonard said.

  "What the hell does that mean?" Marilyn said.

  The strain of her movement made Sophie gasp again. The voices became incoherent. Her progress was slow as she moved her body to the foot of the bed, every tiny progression taking a major effort and with it all of her resources. When she felt her endurance slacken, she rested, waiting for her heart to slow, her concentration to clear. I must not be discouraged, she told herself, taking comfort in even the most minuscule progress. She had, after all, traversed nearly the entire bed by herself. She suddenly thought of the story of the tortoise and the hare, which she had read to them when they were children, feeling elation now as she looked sideways to measure the distance from her pillow.

  "Well then, it's decided," she heard Leonard say. "We'll suggest it together, a kind of unanimous committee decision. Then we'll make arrangements to take her out for a visit. The one in Lauderdale, the Seaview. It's the best in the area, I'm told. And she'll still be close enough for Sandy to visit and we'll promise that we'll visit her at least three times a year. At least that."

  "More," Marilyn said. "It's three hours by plane. No big deal."

  Sophie had reached the foot of the bed, reaching out with her hand for the walker, gripping its cool metal, then drawing it as close to the bed as possible to insure a firm grip. The crisis would come at the moment when she had to pull herself up, when for a second her arms had to support her full weight. She waited quietly in the dark room, her body poised at the edge of the bed with both hands on the metal frame of the walker. She knew that if she did not make it, she would fall, and they would hear the sound of her helplessness confirming their worse fears. Her hands tightened on the metal frame as she closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts, and willed her aging body to give her this one victory. She tightened her eyes, feeling the backwash of tears and the quickness of her breath, a signal perhaps that her body was rejecting her will. Then suddenly the will exploded and she felt her arms tighten and her body lurch upward. There was a brief dizziness, a momentary faintness, and then she was standing, proudly standing. She stood there for a long moment, catching her breath and listening to hear if they had heard the inner explosion, the gasping breath, the beating heart.

  When she realized that they had not heard, she arranged the walker before her and calculated the distance to the door. They would hear the light thumping, but she hoped that they would not notice until she had opened the door, an exercise that she knew she could perform. Pausing, she listened again.

  "It's the only logical solution," Leonard said. "Otherwise we'll drive ourselves crazy with worry. We must make her see that."

  She moved cautiously, lifting the walker. She felt the strength return to her arms as she slowly moved forward, but had to ignore the twinge of pain in her hip.

  When she opened the door, the light momentarily blinded her and she squinted into the room where they were sitting.

  "Mama!" Sandy cried. "My God, you'll fall."

  "Go on talking," Sophie said, taking a step, feeling her energy surge, the power of her victory. "I'm just going to the bathroom."