Never Too Late for Love

by Warren Adler

  That was that. Later, there were lawyers. She got custody of the son, although he was already nearly eighteen. Nat sent her money until the boy was twenty-one. She went to work for a furniture store in downtown Brooklyn as a bookkeeper and no longer found time to schmooze with Mildred, who got fatter and fatter.

  When the neighborhood began to change, Mildred and Sam moved away. But by then, she had made new friends, mostly widows, divorcées like herself, and old maids. Women alone. Occasionally, she went out with other men, but she could no longer trust them and her suspicions as to their motives made it impossible to develop any lasting relationship.

  "You can't just keep pushing them away," her son remonstrated.

  "I should trust them? After what your father did to me?"

  "You should try, at least, to be pleasant."

  "I am pleasant."

  "Is it better to be lonely?"

  "I'm not lonely."

  If she was lonely, she would never admit it to herself. Nor did she allow herself to have regrets, although she maintained a continuing high level of animosity toward Nathaniel Shankowitz, which did not soften with the passage of years.

  He had remarried, her son told her, within a year after the divorce--to whom, she supposed, was the other woman. There were twinges of jealousy and anger at the time, but because it followed the pattern of Nat's infamy in her mind, it only added fuel to the flames of her animosity.

  She never saw him again, nor did her son ever broach the subject, although he saw his father very briefly on rare occasions. When he did mention him again, the son was, by then, a paunchy graying man with his own family responsibilities, reasonably prosperous, with a liquor store in Flushing.

  "Pa died last week," he said, shrugging, as he whittled at the fat on a slab of pot roast in his mother's apartment during his weekly Friday night visit. His wife rarely came. Sarah did not even stop chewing, although she felt the beginnings of heartburn prompted by the sudden revelation.

  "You were at the funeral?"

  "Of course."

  She tried to put the idea out of her mind, but she could not fully contain her own feeling of elation at his dying first. It wasn't really nice to think such thoughts, she told herself, remembering, for the first time in years, their early years together. She wondered if she should have gone to the funeral.

  By the time she became eligible for social security, the neighborhood had changed drastically. The apartment house was completely black and, although she found her neighbors hard-working and reasonably quiet, she felt decidedly alien in their midst. Her friends, many of whom had already moved out of the neighborhood to Flatbush or Queens, had already begun to leave for Florida and it wasn't long before her son bought her a small condominium in Sunset Village.

  "You like it there, Ma?" her son would ask whenever he called, which was increasingly rare.

  "Better than Brooklyn."

  "You got a lotta friends?"

  "Too many. They're all a bunch of yentas." It never occurred to her that she was a yenta as well.

  Not long after she received the New Year's card from Cousin Irma, she got a person-to-person call from Huntington, Long Island.

  "I have a person-to-person call for Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz from Huntington, Long Island," the impersonal voice of the operator announced.

  "I'm Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz," she said, a note of tempered hysteria in her voice, as she did not know anyone in Huntington, Long Island.

  "Go ahead, please," the operator said.

  "Yetta?" It was a woman's voice.

  "Yetta?"

  "This is Molly."

  "Molly?"

  "Your sister Molly, Yetta. You don't know your sister, Molly? Are you all right?"

  Sarah grimaced at the phone, then began to click the button on the receiver.

  "What's that noise?" the voice asked.

  "I'm not Yetta."

  "But the operator said you were Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz."

  "I am."

  "And you're not Yetta?"

  "No."

  The confusion was obvious. The woman mumbled something about a wrong number and the telephone connection was broken abruptly. Stupid operators, she thought. It was an accepted axiom that all of the operators in Poinsettia Beach were dumb.

  The day after the phone call, she got a letter from the credit department of Macy's in Brooklyn. It was one of those computerized letters, addressed to Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz, which carried the dire threat of credit cancellation unless the sum of $3.48 was paid immediately.

  Coming so close on the heels of the telephone call from Molly something-or-other, the situation took on the air of a genuine, and most annoying, mystery. She hadn't been into Macy's in years. Besides, she lived in Florida for nearly five years by then.

  "The computers are going crazy," one of her friends told her. "They got you mixed up."

  But when she got a post card signed "Irving" from Barcelona, she decided to take some action. In Sunset Village, taking action meant going to the big main office near the clubhouse. She had never "taken action" before and had prepared herself for intimidation by the blue-haired lady with the big round glasses on a chain who presided over the office.

  One knew immediately upon seeing her, with her imperious air and frown lines around the eyes, that she would be menacing behind her fixed false-tooth smile, the quintessential image of the jew-baiting shiksa. She was, rumor had it, the builder's secret weapon, keeping all the complainers at bay.

  "Somebody's got me mixed up," Sarah told the woman, mustering her courage. The blue-haired woman looked at her through the big round frames, her ice eyes expressionless, although the smile never wavered. She said nothing, demanding, Sarah knew, further explanation by her silence.

  "I keep getting strange letters and phone calls for Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz."

  "Obviously some address problem," the woman sneered. "Have you called the telephone company or the post office?"

  "No."

  "Well, don't you think you should?" the woman asked, as if she were addressing a child.

  "The problem is," Sarah said, ignoring the admonishment, "I am Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz." She detected a sudden brief movement of surprise in the blue-haired woman's eyes.

  "Who?"

  "Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz."

  Surprise became puzzlement as her lip curled in contempt. It was well-known that the woman felt she was in an institution where the occupants were suffering from galloping senility.

  "You're not Mrs. Nathaniel Shankowitz," the woman said haughtily.

  Sarah felt her anger rise and her knees grow weak. She gripped the counter.

  "You're telling me what I am?" Sarah asked.

  "Not what. Who."

  Sarah fumbled in her bag and brought out her wallet with the Sunset Village identification and, leaning over the counter, placed it in front of the woman's eyes.

  "In black and white."

  The woman hesitated, her lips wavering slightly over her tight smile, tiny evidence of her defeat. Still silent, with a lingering look at Mrs. Shankowitz she went to the resident card file and flicked through them, slowly, with disdain, as if such duties were meant for lesser souls. Then she returned with two cards in her hand.

  "There are two of you," she said, as if describing two different kinds of obscene germs. "One of you has just been here complaining about a missing social security check."

  But the idea of two had registered and Sarah stared at the card with the strange address under her name with disbelief. "Mrs. Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz and, in parenthesis, (Yetta)." Could it be? Could it really be?

  She felt herself grow hot, her embarrassment intense. There should have been some ritual of victory now, some contemptuous gesture to the blue-haired woman who had been bested, but her strength was gone and she moved, speechless, out of the office.

  Walking home, she contemplated the impending humiliation. The two Mrs. Shankowitzes. Number one and number two. They would snicke
r behind her back. "There goes number one." She would be an object of ridicule, talked about, ridiculed, a yenta's delight. "Shush, girls, number one is coming."

  People would laugh about it at the table. Briefly, she entertained the idea that her first assumption was wrong. But logic and old memories intruded. They had been the only Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz in the Brooklyn directory. It was too much of a coincidence. Besides, she knew that Nat had been living in Queens and, once, just once, she had looked up his name in the Queens directory.

  There, too, it was the only Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz. She cursed her pride now, the insistence that she be listed by her married name with the man's name intact. It seemed such a harmless little idea, but she felt some protection from it and in Sunset Village, especially Sunset Village. It had buttressed her pride. Her and her stupid pride. Where had it gotten her?

  By the time she had returned to her apartment, she was in tears. The mail had come and she picked it up from the floor beneath the slot. She was too harassed to look over the envelopes and, instead, put them aside and sat on the couch, where she stared into space for the better part of the morning, contemplating her disastrous fate.

  She had no alternative but to move now, she knew. To pick up and find some other place to live. But as the day wore on, self-pity turned to anger, humiliation to indignation. How dare she? She will not do it a second time. Without proof, she had firmly decided that the second Mrs. Shankowitz was "the other woman." Who else? It was she who should move, Sarah decided, as her hatred took shape again and crowded out all self-pity.

  It was with that sense of new-found strength that she finally got to the mail, sometime in the late afternoon, after she had done her household chores and checked in with her various friends. Actually, she had called them in rotation more to feel out their knowledge than for any other specific reason. Assured that the cat was still in the bag, she busied herself with the affairs of her household, which included looking at the mail.

  It was check day, the third day of the month. In Sunset Village, that was more like a religious holiday with the mailman being followed around as if he were the Pied Piper. Her interest in it had been momentarily deflected but, remembering, had prompted her to seek out the spot where she had put the mail. The check was there, its bluish official-looking funny typescript peering at her from the little plastic window. But the envelope below it was exactly the same. Same name. But the address was quite different. The mailman had simply made a mistake.

  She held up the second envelope to the light. Was the amount the same as hers? Or more? Surely more. That scheming woman surely had found a way to squeeze more out of the government. Sitting down, she put the envelope on the cocktail table in front of the couch and looked at it. What if she opened it? It had the same name. She knew there was a penalty for opening the wrong check. Hadn't she warned others about it from time to time. She was not a fool, she thought, rejecting the idea.

  But as she sat there watching the envelope, other thoughts began to fill her mind. Suppose she simply let it sit there. Just that. Put it under the candy dish and leave it there. Who would be the wiser? She reveled in this sudden sense of power over the second Mrs. Shankowitz. For a change, she, Sarah, would not be the victim. The woman deserved it. Look what she had done to break up her marriage.

  A missing social security check was one of the major disasters, next to sickness and death, that could affect their world. It was, of course, replaceable. But that took time, and the aggravation it caused was more than simple inconvenience. For those who lived from day to day, it was the fuel of life. Without it came the humiliation of borrowing from friends, or, if pride meant more than hunger, foraging for scraps among the household leftovers.

  She slipped the check under the candy dish. Wasn't she entitled to inflict such punishment? she asked herself, knowing that the missing check was already causing the woman anxieties. But look what she had done to Sarah. Considering the crime, it was hardly the punishment for twenty-five years of loneliness and humiliation. She could be honest with herself now. It was lonely. It was humiliating.

  She made herself dinner and went out for her usual Mah-Jongg game with her friends in the clubhouse cardroom. But she could not concentrate. Her mind dwelled on the envelope hidden under the candy dish.

  "Whatsamatter Sarah?" Eve Shapiro asked. When it came to Mah-Jongg, Eve was all business.

  "I got a headache."

  "You got worse than that, Sarah," Eve Shapiro pressed as she exposed her winning combination.

  "You let her win, dummy," Ida Fine said, shaking her henna red curls.

  "I'm not myself," Sarah protested.

  "Yourself is such a big deal?"

  During the night, she could not sleep, declining to take a sleeping pill. Did the other Mrs. Shankowitz really deserve such punishment? But the envelope beneath the candy dish loomed bigger and bigger in her mind as the night wore on. She got up, made herself some tea, and sat sipping it while she watched the candy dish and prayed for the swift end to night. In the sunlight, she might find her courage again, she decided, knowing that remorse was beginning to afflict her now.

  In a way, she was fortunate. She had worked for more than twenty years. There were a few dollars put aside in the bank and, of course, there was always her son, although she dreaded to ask him for anything beyond the fifty dollars a month he usually sent her. But she had heard enough horror stories over delayed or missing social security checks to blunt the edge of her malevolence as the night wore on. Think of what that woman did to you, she repeated to herself over and over again, charging her resolve. But by morning, she was contrite. It was a monstrous thing to do, even to your worst enemy, she concluded. And that was precisely the case.

  That morning, she dressed with care, although she had no intentions, she assured herself, of doing anything more than putting the check in the mailslot of the other Mrs. Shankowitz's apartment. That, and nothing more. Then why was she dressing with such care, running the comb repetitively through her hair, putting on faint patches of rouge, even powder. The mirror taunted her as it did every time she saw her ravaged image in it. A sixty-eight-year-old wreck of a woman. Where had her life gone? Secretly, she hoped that the other Mrs. Shankowitz was ravaged beyond her years.

  The address on the check made it necessary for her to take the open air shuttle bus, and she waited patiently at the stop, checking to be sure that the check had been secured in her purse. She got on the shuttle bus and nodded politely to the familiar faces, wondering how they might react when they finally knew. She could imagine how they would suddenly drop their voices, watch her as they whispered the story among themselves. No. She could not bear that. She got off in the approximate vicinity of the address on the check and, with beating heart and a sense of dragging in her limbs, she walked down the path, following the sequence of the numbers.

  When she arrived at the correct address, she stood in front of the door, rummaging in her purse, while, peripherally, she looked beyond the transparent curtains into the apartment's interior. She saw the bluish glow of a television set and the brief movement of a shadowy figure. Instinctively, she knew she was being watched, which triggered a conscious desire to leave quickly, although she felt herself rooted to the spot. The door opened before she could slip the letter into the slot, and the check fell to the ground.

  "Yes?" a woman's voice said. She was a slight woman, very thin, in a seersucker house dress. She wore brown horn-rimmed glasses with very thick lenses, which made her eyes seem oddly magnified and distorted. Sarah watched her, embarrassed, unable to find any sensible words, transfixed, it seemed, by the magnified lenses. In the shock of confrontation, she had momentarily forgotten the fallen check.

  "Mrs. Shankowitz?" Sarah finally managed to blurt out. In her mind, it seemed a contemptuous ejaculation.

  "I'm Mrs. Shankowitz," the woman said. Although her hair was dyed brunette, her face had a gray caste, testifying to the futility of the dye job. It was Sarah's first logical o
bservation, bringing the woman into perspective on a human scale.

  "So am I," Sarah said, nodding. She had felt a sense of diminished dignity at first, as if she had been caught peeking, being a yenta. But she was recovering fast now, remembering the check, which she bent to retrieve.

  "I got your social security check," she said, lifting it and handing it to the woman, whose face brightened, the lips trembling into a warm smile, although the teeth were devastated.

  "Thank God," the woman said. "I was going crazy."

  "We had a mix-up."

  "Please. Please come in," the woman said, opening the door and stepping beside it in a gesture of hospitality. "I was going out of my mind." Sarah hesitated. "Please. We'll have a nice cup of coffee."

  Where had her animosity fled? Sarah wondered, although she could not shake her embarrassment. Was she about to be humiliated? Was this the wrong thing to do? I shouldn't really, she prepared herself to say, but the words stuck in her throat as her legs carried her into the apartment. Like hers, it was the efficiency type, the smallest unit, still incomplete in furnishing.

  "I'm here only two weeks. Forgive the mess." Candace Bergen was on the television tube talking about telephones. The woman flicked off the set and went into the kitchen. Sarah heard the sound of coffee cups rattling.

  "They tell me the first check is always a problem. The woman at the desk says the mailman first has to get to know you. That I can't understand..."

  Sarah listened, half-understanding, surveying the little apartment with an avid curiosity, knowing that something in the room was engaging her, tugging at her.

  "...Frankly, she wasn't very helpful. You can't imagine how grateful I am." There was a brief pause. "You say your name is Shankowitz..."

  She had seen it briefly as she came into the apartment, but apparently something inside her would not let it register. Nat's picture staring at her from a corner wall, the hawk eyes watching her, although the face was fuller, older. Her heart thumped, and she sat heavily on the couch. The woman came in with the steaming coffee cups on a little tray. Sarah continued to feel the hawk-like eyes watching her, looking inside of her.