by Warren Adler
"You're quite a woman, you know," Milton Sussberg said. She lifted his wrist and focused on his watch.
"I better get going," she said, moving her hand to the door latch. Outside, he stood next to her. She looked up, directly into his eyes.
"It was wonderful," she said again, and he gathered her in his arms.
"When will I see you again?" he whispered.
"Again?" She was suddenly confused.
"Of course," he insisted.
"Why, never," she answered. "I'm a married woman. You're a married man. This is a small community. Surely, you didn't expect..." Her voice trailed off and he moved her away from him to get a better view of her face. He is very cute himself, she decided, reaching out and touching his hair.
"But I thought you said it was wonderful," he said. There was a note of pleading in his voice.
"It was."
There was the sound of a motor. A car was coming, and they stepped backward into the shadows. She bent over and kissed his cheek. Then she turned and moved quickly away. She did not look back, although after a while she heard the engine of his car start. When she reached the court where her apartment was located, she paused and looked up at the sky. Every star in the firmament seemed to be looking down on her.
"Wasn't I entitled to just once, God?" she whispered. She was not a religious woman but she felt, for the first time in her life, some connection with the universe. She held up one finger toward the sky.
"Just once," she said, like a child begging with all its charm and persuasion for a special favor. "Just once," she whispered again. She stood there, waiting, watching the stars.
Then she sighed, took a deep breath and, with a big smile on her lips and a great wave of happiness in her heart, she let herself into her apartment.
THE BRAGGART
It was not that Molly Berkowitz was intolerant of other people bragging about their children. She always listened patiently, with attentiveness, hiding her heartache and pain. Invariably, the braggarts talked endlessly about their successful children--doctors, lawyers, captains of industry, daughters who had either married well or made it big in the business or professional world.
She imagined that she hid her desperation well. What use did it do to trample on someone else's joy because of her own pain. In that sense, she felt herself wise. Besides, she was a widow and to criticize what to many was the single crowning glory of their lives might jeopardize her friendship with the group. And the life of a lonely, friendless widow in Sunset Village could be a true purgatory. So she held her tongue and bore her heartache as she listened to her friends recount the victories and glories of their children.
"My Barry opened another store last week. He called me and sent me another hundred dollars as a good-luck gift. He now has fifty stores." It was Emma Mandel talking, a never-ending avalanche of braggadocio.
"How wonderful," Molly Berkowitz would respond.
But Emma's story would set off a chain reaction as, one after another, Molly would be treated to a hurricane of repetitive one-upmanships from her group.
"My Joycie has become a full professor," Helen Goldstein would say smugly, tipping her nose skyward in a pose of superiority. You can't buy intellect with money, she seemed to be saying, requiring a blatant response from an unabashed materialist, usually Dolly Cohen, who, along with Emma, was one of her closest friends.
"My grandson Larry got his car last week, a Mercedes," she would say smugly. "All my grandchildren get a Mercedes when they pass their driver's test."
"How wonderful," Molly would respond, forcing a smile of shared joy.
"And when they're twenty-one, they get a trip to Europe for three months."
"How wonderful."
"And when they marry, my Bruce gives them a house in Scarsdale and sets up a trust fund for their children."
"Do they have children when they get married?" one of the women would interject, winking at the others, breaking the tension in Molly.
"They don't have children," another wag among the yentas would wisecrack--usually one of the other women who also bragged about her children. "They buy their children in Saks." Then, after a pause: "In the section next to better dresses."
"Wait. Wait until they get old. They'll have everything. There'll be nothing to look forward to."
"When their teeth go, they'll put in a false set with diamonds, so when they smile people should know how much they got." The women laughed.
"I couldn't picture anyone with diamond teeth."
"What's wrong?" Emma said. "If you've got it, flaunt it."
"Really, girls," Dolly Cohen would admonish them, although she was obviously secretly proud to emphasize Emma's point."What is my Bruce going to do with it? Take it with him?"
"He might give it to you," someone said.
"I wouldn't take it," Dolly Cohen insisted. Pride was the only thing that made the bragging palatable, a vindication. Molly knew what pride meant. It was the source of her pain. Her children could hardly be bragged about. They were total failures, economically, and, it seemed, emotionally. Her daughter, Alma, was in the throes of a bitter divorce from her third husband, and her son, Harry, was a taxi driver in New York, scratching to make a living, not even owning his own cab.
Many a night she had cried herself to sleep thinking of their condition, wondering where she and Al had gone wrong. We worked day and night in the grocery store, she would rationalize, wondering if that had been the real reason, knowing in her heart that it couldn't be. They had always been present to provide advice and love to their children, who also helped in the store. What had they done to make their children turn out so badly?
Her mind spent hours dwelling in the past, groping through the early days, sifting and evaluating decisions that might have pointed them in the wrong direction. Where had Al and she gone wrong? They had always stressed education, and though they had been foreign-born, they had forced themselves to improve their English so that their children might not be ashamed of their accents. Al never did succeed in eliminating his, but that was because he arrived in America as a teenager, when his speech patterns were already fixed.
Al, a good man, devoted husband and father, was fifteen years older than she. She bitterly regretted not having been more forceful when Harry wanted to quit high school--at least that was the illusion she liked to live with. Actually, she had raised hell and invoked every tactic of persuasion she knew--hysterics, guilt, dire warnings, threats.
"Without education, you're a nobody in this country, a nobody," she had cried. And when that admonishment had no effect, she used other tactics.
"You're breaking my heart," she said, meaning it.
For Harry, the die was cast and Vietnam came as a welcome relief for him. He enlisted against her wishes. Molly could never erase that time from her consciousness, as if it were a trauma. Harry had gone to Vietnam and, although he was a military policeman and generally in the rear of the combat zone, she worried about him constantly. Perhaps, she thought, it was her worrying about Harry that started Alma down the wrong path. She had been a pretty little thing with genuine reddish-blonde hair and green eyes and a figure that had matured earlier than her mind. She had, Molly knew, mistaken lust for adoration, even love, and no amount of explanation ever managed to get that point across.
It came as a shock to her to discover that her daughter was not a virgin at fourteen. It was during the war--Harry had been overseas two years by then--and Alma, a freshman at Erasmus Hall High School, seemed a normal adolescent. She would kiss her mother and father every day before she left for school, warming their hearts. She is a good girl, a wonderful girl, they told themselves proudly.
The explosion of that illusion seemed to mark the sealed fate of her hopes for her children. She had been busy with a customer when the telephone call came, the ring persistent from the back of the store. Surely a customer, she thought as she excused herself and rushed to answer the phone. An angry voice screeched into her ear.
"Am I
speaking to Mrs. Berkowitz?" the voice snapped.
"This is Mrs. Berkowitz." Her heart lurched. She thought perhaps it was someone with word about Harry.
"Will you keep your whore away from my daughter?"
"What?" Molly was confused, yet relieved to find it was not about Harry. Obviously, this was the wrong number.
"I want you to keep Alma away from my daughter."
"Alma?"
"This is Mrs. Kugel, Marilyn's mother."
Of course, Marilyn, one of Alma's friends. She would remember what came next for the rest of her life.
"I work all day. Today I came home sick. I found them in my apartment. They were in bed with boys."
There seemed no logic in the conversation, in the revelation. Her Alma? There must be some mistake. Her tongue froze in her mouth.
"She has ruined my daughter. I saw them. I nearly vomited."
"You are mistaken," Molly managed to whisper.
"I saw them!" the woman shouted. Molly felt weak in the knees. Cold sweat poured from her armpits. Her little girl? It was impossible. Then Mrs. Kugel hung up.
The confrontation with Alma was the first of many, the beginning of an endless chain, always accompanied by tears and hysterics and, when Al was alive, with threats of "telling your father." Always, the confrontations ended with confessions, tears, and exhaustion.
"But why?" To Molly, this had always been the central question, eye of the enigma. Was it something we have done? she wondered.
"I don't know, Ma."
"Is there something wrong, something missing?" It had seemed such a monumental sin in those days, and she had concluded that the sense of right and wrong was somehow missing in her daughter's make-up.
"I don't know, Ma."
At great expense, she had taken her daughter to psychiatrists, thinking she was being very modern and understanding, but it hadn't helped. Nothing helped and, as her daughter's promiscuity advanced and she became the talk of her school and the neighborhood, Molly had no choice but to accept the fact of her daughter's behavior.
What it had led to was three broken marriages, although she was happy that one of them had produced a lovely grandchild, a beautiful boy, gentle and polite, whom she had practically raised. And yet, despite all the heartache and disappointments and the obvious failures of her children, she still loved them and they still loved her. An emotional upset, invariably involving some man, always brought Alma running home to her mother. She was in her mid-forties now and although the cute little figure had thickened and the blonde hair now required the help of dyes, she still retained, Molly thought, vestiges of attractiveness.
"I've botched things up, haven't I, Ma?" she would say when she had settled in at her mother's condominium after the drive from up north. Molly sat beside her on the couch holding her hand.
"You're still my daughter, Alma."
"Thank God for that. I'm gonna change, Ma. I'm gonna put it all behind me now."
"I know, darling."
"No. Really, Ma. This time I'm going to get it together." She would look at her mother and tears would begin to flood her eyes. "We haven't made you very proud, have we, Ma?"
She could remember then, the pain inflicted by her friends.
"Your kids are just a couple of losers," Alma would say, wallowing in self-pity, searching for the needed kind word.
"I have two of the sweetest children in the whole world," Molly would respond, watching the words soothe, like medicine.
"And I have the most wonderful mother."
It was, of course, her secret pride. And while she would not dare confess it to her friends, she knew that, despite their failures, her children still came to her for emotional repair. My children still need me, she told herself proudly.
Harry would visit her every few months, taking the bus from New York. He always arrived exhausted, more tired than the visit before, although he tried to put on a brave face. He was over fifty now, paunchy and bald, with deep black circles under his eyes.
"I look like hell, don't I, Ma?" he would say, as Molly watched him eat the chicken she had roasted in anticipation of his visit. His wife, Natalie, never visited, nor did Molly ever inquire why. Harry had enough troubles, she thought.
"A few days in the sun and you'll feel better."
"I wish could I live here permanently, Ma," he would confess, biting into the chicken like a man assuaging a terrible hunger. When he had finished the meal, he would light a cheap cigar and stretch out on the couch in the living room.
"New York's a jungle. I was robbed three times last month alone. Pushing a hack is like riding around in hell."
"You should do something else."
"What the devil else am I good for? I've got no skills. No education. And no luck. Ma, if Natalie didn't work, I couldn't make it. How's that for laughs? Some reward, eh? I fought for this goddamned country when they needed me. And now all I get is a good swift shove in the butt."
"Maybe you could find a job down here," Molly would say, searching for ways in which to comfort her son.
"Are you kidding?" he would say, closing his eyes. "What the hell would I do for a living?"
Before he left, Molly would always thrust a handful of money into his hand.
"What's that for?" he would say, staring dumbly at the bills.
"I can't give my son a present?"
He would put the money in his pocket and shake his head.
"I'm an old woman, Harry. What does it matter?" He would take the money, perhaps out of superstition, as if it represented some talisman, something to renew his hope.
She never complained of her children's failure to her friends, although she felt that they did surmise her pain and that their knowing did not prevent them from bragging about their children's success. Nor did it interfere with their friendship. Widows at Sunset Village had a great deal in common, besides the loss of their mates. They needed each other to ease the loneliness and help ward off the occasional bouts of despair.
One night, the telephone in Molly's condominium angrily intruded on her sleep. With a pounding heart and shaking fingers, she reached for the instrument and, gasping, mumbled into the receiver. There was no fear greater than a telephone call in the night with its urgent message of disaster. My children, she thought, and was secretly relieved when she heard Emma Mandel's frantic voice.
"Please, Molly. You must come," she cried.
"What is it?"
"Please, Molly."
Throwing a housecoat over her nightgown, she rushed out of her condominium and walked quickly to Emma's place in the next court. The night was warm and humid and the effort caused a thin film of perspiration to gather on her upper lip. A brief glance at the clock in her bedroom had told her it was three a.m. She was not surprised to see Dolly Cohen rushing from another direction, and they converged at Emma's front door. They nodded at each other and Molly knocked lightly. The unlocked door gave way under her knock.
Emma was seated in the living room, her ample body paunchy in its old-fashioned satin nightgown. A single lamp threw a yellow light over the room, dominated by an oil painting of her son and furnished with expensive antiques that he had sent her from all parts of the world. They knew the history of each item. It had been drummed into their brains through repetition.
She looked up at them as they entered. Her eyes were puffed with tears. A pile of wet tissues lay on the end table beside her.
"What is it, Emma?" Molly asked, understanding well herself this pose of despair.
"We're here, Emma," Dolly said, taking her hand in her own and patting it.
They sat down on each side of her as Emma dissolved into tears, her body racked with sobs as she struggled to catch her breath.
"We're here, Emma," Molly said, certain that her friend had just received a terrible emotional blow.
"Is it Barry?" Dolly asked. "Did you hear from your son?"
Emma managed to control her sobbing for a moment, time enough to shake her head in the negative.
"Are you sick?" Dolly asked. "Does something hurt you?"
Again, Emma shook her head in the negative. The questioning and the closeness of her friends seemed to soothe her. She gripped their hands and Molly felt the moisture of the tear-stained tissue. The tears rolled down Emma's cheeks as she sought to control the heaving in her chest.
"It's all right now, Emma," Molly said, squeezing her hand. "Your friends are here."
They waited while she slowly quieted down. Molly watched the pendulum of an antique clock move smoothly behind the glass in its base. She had spent many hours in this lavishly appointed room.
"Everything is genuine," Emma had often bragged.
"There, don't you feel better now?" Dolly asked, glancing at Molly and nodding. "She's better now."
"I could see she feels better now," Molly said.
Emma nodded, disengaging her hands and reaching for the tissue box beside her. With the clean tissue, she rubbed away the wet tears and blew her nose.
"I was lonely," she said, sniffling, her speech still interrupted by involuntary heavings in her chest. "I feel so--"
"Nonsense." Dolly said. "What are friends for?"
"I couldn't sleep and I was just sitting there in the dark." Emma's chest heaved again. "And I was so frightened."
"There's nothing to be frightened of now, Emma," Molly said. She knew the affliction, the sudden fear, the terrible onslaught of anxiety, as if a great black ugly bird were suddenly thrashing about in the room.
"It came over me suddenly. I felt I was going to die."
"Now that is silly," Dolly said.
But they all knew that was not being silly.
"I needed someone," Emma said. "I cried out in the darkness for David. My husband, David. He's been gone for ten years." The tears came again.
"It's all right now," Molly said, looking toward the drawn blinds, hoping for a sliver of light. The big black bird could not stand the light, could not hide in the brightness of the sun. She knew the terror that the night could hold.
"I wanted to call my Barry," Emma sobbed. Then she was silent for a moment, perhaps gathering her energy for the long wail that followed, a familiar sound at funerals. The friends reached out and held her hands again.