Never Too Late for Love

by Warren Adler

  "I wanted my Barry," Emma cried. "If only I could have called my Barry."

  "We're here," Dolly said.

  "We're here," Molly repeated.

  They watched her as she fought to control herself again. After a while, her chest stopped heaving and the wailing ceased.

  "You should have called him," Molly said gently. "It would have made you feel better." She had always called her children when she felt frightened and blue and they would talk to her until she felt better and could poke fun at her silliness. And her children would call her when they felt the same way, at any hour of the day or night, sometimes collect, which she didn't mind.

  "He'd think I was crazy," Emma said, recovering.

  "But he's your son," Molly said, sorry now for having probed. For a moment she thought she had set her off again, but Emma was in control now, although vulnerable, her guard down.

  "I used to call him," she confessed, her lips trembling, "but then I stopped."

  "You stopped?" Molly was puzzled. She looked at Dolly, who turned her eyes away.

  "He flew down a psychiatrist from New York."

  "A psychiatrist?" Molly said, startled.

  "He must have thought I was crazy."

  "It doesn't mean you're crazy if you see a psychiatrist," Molly said.

  "What did the psychiatrist say?" Dolly asked.

  "Nothing. I didn't let him in the place."

  "What did Barry say to that?"

  Emma paused, crumpling her wet tissue and reaching for another. "He said I needed help and that I was foolish for not seeing him and that he had spent lots of money to send him down. He said the man charged seventy-five dollars an hour."

  "My God," Molly said.

  "It costs a thousand dollars," Emma said. The remark seemed to signal her returning strength.

  "At that price, maybe you should have seen him," Dolly said.

  "What was he going to tell me?"

  "They are doctors, Emma," Dolly said. "Perhaps he might have helped."

  "Like they helped Mrs. Margolies. Put her in an institution. I told him that all I wanted to do was talk to him, that it made me feel better."

  "Do you feel better now?" Molly asked gently.

  "Much," she said. She reached out and held her two friends by their hands. "It's so good to have someone," she said, the tears beginning again, rolling down her cheeks. But they were tears of gratefulness, not of fear. Molly felt her own tears begin.

  "Look, now she's crying, too," Dolly said, her voice cracking, her tears beginning. They all reached for the tissues at the same time.

  "We're making a river here," Molly said, feeling laughter begin in herself as she dabbed at her eyes.

  After a while, Emma stood up. "I'm better now," she announced while walking to the window and drawing the blinds. Dawn had come. They could see the first pink and red signs of the rising sun.

  "Now can we go and get some sleep?" Dolly asked. Molly nodded. The huge black bird had disappeared.

  When she got back to her condominium, she lay down and looked at the ceiling. Then she picked up the phone and dialed her daughter.

  "My God, you scared the hell out of me."

  "I just wanted to talk to you. I just wanted to hear your voice."

  "Sure, Ma," Alma said.

  "I missed you, that's all. I was lying here and decided how much I missed you."

  "Me too, Ma."

  They talked for a few minutes.

  Then Molly said, "It's long distance. I better hang up."

  "You feel better?" Alma said.

  "Much better." She paused for a moment. "I love you, my darling."

  "Me too, Ma."

  She hung up, lay quietly for a few moments, then dialed her son.

  "Did I wake you?"

  "Wake me? Hell no, Ma. I'm just going to sleep. Pushed a hack all night."

  "Did you have good business?"

  "Not bad, Ma."

  "Wonderful."

  "Are you OK?"

  "I'm terrific. I just missed you, that's all."

  "Great, Ma. It's nice to be missed."

  "You be a good boy, Harry."

  "I'm always a good boy."

  "It's long distance, Harry. I just called to hear your voice."

  "Sure, Ma, anytime."

  She hung up and pulled the covers up to her chin, waiting for sleep to come. It arrived quickly and she slept soundly until noon.

  AT LEAST YOU HAVE YOUR BINGO

  When Jack and Barbara Katz's first son was born, Barbara's mother gave him a $100 savings bond and Jack's mother bought a sweater. That wasn't the start of it, but it made matters worse.

  "Only a sweater?" Barbara asked.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Jack replied.

  "No sense belaboring the obvious," Barbara said. She finished giving the baby his formula and laid him in the crib. Then she went into the kitchen and began to busy herself with preparing dinner.

  "You mean every gift has to be equal?" Jack asked.

  "Not equal," Barbara paused and cleared her throat. "Necessarily?"

  "Necessarily? I don't get it?"

  He was really not confused. He knew what she meant. Barbara was an only child and her mother was determined to keep her under her wing. At first, he accepted the various gifts proffered by Barbara's mother as the due of newlyweds. Jack's mother, on the other hand, was not much of a gift giver, except on birthdays, anniversaries and other appropriate times. Nor did she have any desire to keep him under her wing. Boys are different, he decided. Their mother preferred that they fly on their own. Mothers of girls were apparently not so disposed. He had one brother and, therefore, little experience with the relationships between mothers and daughters.

  He wasn't making much money then, although he had a good job as a bookkeeper with a dress manufacturer. It was mostly the food gifts that got under his skin.

  "Things aren't that bad," he told Barbara when his mother-in-law left a big bag of meats and groceries.

  "She likes to do things for us!" Barbara said.

  He let it pass, though it bothered him. Then it became a weekly ritual.

  "I don't feel comfortable about it!" he said.

  "Don't be silly," Barbara said. They had only been married a few months and the little hurts were easily mollified by a bit of hugging and kissing. It continued to bother him, of course, but it wasn't until the first baby gifts that he began to understand what was happening. The $100 savings bond had been a link in an endless chain. Barbara's mother also bought them the crib, the baby dresser, the bassinet, an entire set of baby bottles and the sterilization equipment.

  "How can she afford all these things?" he asked.

  "She loves us."

  "My mother loves us, too." he said, regretting the words. She looked at him with sarcastic disdain.

  "You don't believe that?" He wanted to press the issue, but he held off.

  There was no doubt in his mind how his mother felt about him.

  "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," Barbara said. By then, he was getting aggravated, and every night when he came home from work, the issue grew more and more magnified. They would eat their dinner in a state of nervous tension while the baby cried in the background.

  "I think he's colicky," Barbara said, rushing off to the telephone to describe the symptoms to her mother. The Greensteins, Barbara's mother and father, lived a few blocks away, and any hint of disturbance in connection with the baby brought them rushing to Jack and Barbara's apartment. Mrs. Greenstein would lift the baby from the crib and pat his back until a few more burps would emerge. Then she would hold the baby until he fell asleep and gently replace him snugly in his crib.

  "She's wonderful with him," Barbara would say.

  "He's your kid. You would be wonderful with him."

  "She loves him, Jack. Would you deprive her of her pleasure?"

  "You mean we had him for her benefit."

  "I didn't say that." But she was quick to tears in thos
e days. "At least one grandmother loves the child!" she whispered between sniffles.

  By then, the implication was quite clear, and when his parents came to visit on Sundays, Barbara would sneer at their fussing over the baby. Sometimes she became irritable and impolite, and his mother would call him the next day to complain.

  "She certainly doesn't treat us very well," his mother would say. She, too, was quick to tears and her voice cracked easily.

  "It's called the after-birth blues."

  "I feel like I'm intruding."

  "Don't be silly," he lied, hoping she would understand, not daring to explain.

  Both sets of parents had been reasonably polite and affable to each other before the marriage. They were all on their best behavior. But after the marriage, that all changed. They had, for example, come to his parent's house every Friday night for dinner. It was obvious to Jack that these visits were a source of rapidly diminishing enjoyment for Barbara.

  "Do we have to?" she said after the fifth visit.

  "It's a small price to pay. Besides, it makes them happy."

  "It's such a hassle to get there, and so ritualized. And, if you must know, boring."

  "I go with you to your parents every Sunday. I wouldn't call it exactly a barrel of laughs. Besides, your mother spends nearly every day with you at the apartment."

  His parents lived in Coney Island and it took more than an hour to get there from Forest Hills, where they had an apartment not far from Barbara's parents. It was, admittedly, a shlep, but there had been a tradition in his family for them all to get together on Friday nights. Not that they were religious. It was a regular routine of his grandparents' life, his mother's parents, and somehow it passed on to the next generation. Most important of all, his mother looked forward to it and worked hard to make a great meal.

  One Friday night, Barbara absolutely refused to go to his parents' dinner. Jack had to call his mother and tell her that his wife was sick.

  "But I made a delicious chicken and potato kugel the way you like it."

  "You always do that, Ma."

  "So I'll see you next Friday."

  But Barbara refused to go on the following Friday and he had to make more excuses. In the end, they worked it out to come once a month and, by the time the baby was born, the Friday night dinners at his mother's house were a thing of the past. The baby became the prime excuse and there was little that his mother could protest when it came to that.

  Mrs. Greenstein continued to visit daily, leaving just before he came home from the office. It was she who advised her daughter to quit her job two months before the baby was born.

  "Your duty is to your child," she told her daughter. "I'm sorry, I don't agree with the way they bring up children today. Someday you'll go back to work. In the meantime, your husband's duty is to be the breadwinner and yours is to be a good mother,"

  Despite Barbara's devoting all of her time caring for her baby, Mrs. Greenstein insisted on helping her and often cooked dinner.

  "What are mothers for?" she intoned on a daily basis.

  "I see your mother's been here again," he told her. She was a good cook. There was no denying that. But it annoyed him that Barbara didn't make his dinner.

  "I'd prefer you to make dinner," he said.

  "I don't see what difference it makes. Your ideas are old-fashioned, Jack. If my mother wants to help, what's wrong with that? Where is it written that I also have to make meals?"

  "I still like the idea. It makes me feel more like a husband than a son-in-law."

  "You don't appreciate anything my mother does for us, Jack. I think you're damned ungrateful."

  They would finish the meal silently, until the baby began to cry and the tension would increase, and he would wind up having to take an AlkaSeltzer before he went to bed. Why am I putting up with this? he asked himself. And yet, despite his instinctive misgivings, he felt some pettiness on his part and, in the end, tried to placate Barbara by enduring the situation. On the baby's first birthday, they had a party for him at the apartment and invited both sets of parents. Mrs. Greenstein gave him another $100 in a savings account and announced that she would add to it frequently.

  "That will be for his college," she told them, flourishing the pass book then putting it ceremoniously into her pocketbook.

  Jack's mother gave the baby another sweater, one she knitted herself.

  "It's beautiful, Ma," Jack said, kissing his mother on the cheek. His father watched him, beaming. Mr. Katz was a quiet little man. He worked in a butcher shop and his fingers were always chapped from being in and out of the refrigerator. When he touched the baby, Jack could feel Barbara wince, as if his rough hands would somehow injure the baby.

  She brought up the matter after the party.

  "I wish your father wouldn't touch the baby."

  "You think he'll contaminate the kid?"

  "I think he'll scratch him."

  "That's ridiculous. He never scratched me." She pouted for a while and, just before they slipped into bed that night, she said, "Well, at least he won't have to worry about college."

  "Stop grandstanding," he mumbled.

  When he received a respectable raise, Jack insisted that he and Barbara look for an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, which was much closer to his Manhattan office near City Hall. It wasn't easy to persuade Barbara to leave her mother's neighborhood.

  "What about my mother?"

  "What about her?"

  "She'd die if we moved so far away."

  He had secret thoughts about that, but he held his tongue, although the silence telescoped his message. Finally, in an unusual act of courage, he signed the lease to a Brooklyn Heights apartment himself, forging Barbara's name as well. He put down a two-months' security deposit.

  "We're moving at the end of the month," he announced. He had stopped by a bar to give himself a bit of courage.

  "You are. I'm not."

  "The hell you aren't. Either you move with me, or we've had it. And I mean it." He could tell she was frightened. His threat took all the fight out of her and he felt quite proud of himself. By the time he arrived home from work the next night, she was resigned to the move. He knew, of course, that she had discussed it with her mother and his action must have frightened her as well.

  Three months later, Barbara's parents moved to Brooklyn Heights. Not that distance had been much of a barrier to Mrs. Greenstein's daily visits. She would dutifully take the subway, changing three times, walking five blocks from the station to their apartment, always laden with packages.

  When Barbara announced that her parents were moving around the corner from their new apartment, Jack resolved to have a heart-to-heart talk with his father-in-law and took off to visit him at the retail jewelry store he owned in Rego Park.

  "Really, Dad, I think you should stay where you are," Jack told him. "First of all, it will take you more than an hour to get to work. Second of all, Ma is much too possessive of Barbara and the baby."

  "You can't change people," Mr. Greenstein said. It was his favorite line. Jack liked him. Being in the retail business kept him working most of the time. He wondered if it was more by choice than necessity. Living with his mother-in-law must have been a rather trying experience.

  "That's not very hopeful, Pop. She's ruining my marriage."

  "Learn to live with it," his father-in-law said, with a sigh.

  "Why should I have to live with it?"

  "Because people don't change."

  It went around and around like that for nearly an hour and after their little talk was over, Jack was more depressed than ever.

  "You can't talk her out of it?" he asked Barbara that night.

  "Why should I? I like my mother around."

  There was no moving her. It was a conspiracy and he knew it.

  "How would you like it if my parents moved around the corner?" Next to threatening to walk out, that seemed the most telling argument.

  "I don't care where they move, as long as I
don't have to see them. It's a free country."

  "What did they ever do to you?"

  "You mean for me? Not one damned thing. That's the whole point."

  "How would you like it if I said that about your mother?"

  "My mother?" She took a deep breath, like a baseball pitcher winding up. He was sorry he had started it. "My mother is a saint, the dearest sweetest most wonderful woman in the world and my greatest friend. Your mother is a selfish, egocentric, domineering bitch."

  The fury of her response frightened him. The words were more of the old refrain, but the venom with which they were delivered seemed to have a sharper edge to it than usual. In fact, he sensed an air of finality. For whatever reason, she hated his mother and, by inference, anyone on his side of the family. He knew then that, unless he walked out on their marriage, his options were few. Her mother would always be a thorn in his side and Barbara would always treat his mother as a stranger.

  The gauntlet was down, but he didn't pick it up, and life went on as before.

  They had two other children and, as it happened with their first child, Mrs. Greenstein dominated the gift department. By then, his own parents had been relegated to the role of pariah and when they occasionally did come to visit, Barbara usually cooked up some pretext to assure her absence.

  "She's gone to a PTA meeting, Ma," he would say sheepishly. "But she did make dinner," he lied. He had made the dinner.

  "You think I'm a dummy," his mother would say.

  "No really Ma. PTA."

  On these occasions, his mother would spend the entire visit crying, and by the time she left, her eyes were puffy and red.

  "What's wrong with grandma?" his oldest son would say.

  "She has a toothache."

  "Boy, it must really hurt."

  "It does, booballa," his mother would say, hugging the boy to her breast.

  "What did I do to her?" she would ask. It now was a regular part of her conversation with her son.

  "She's just busy," Jack would say.

  "I can't understand it. Am I such a horror? I gave her a beautiful boy, a good provider. What did we do to her?"

  "Nothing, Ma."

  He would curse Mrs. Greenstein in his heart. It was, he believed, all her fault. She was the evil force in his life. She possessed his wife, possessed her mind. Not that it didn't have an effect on her body. She was not as loving as she might have been.