Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

“I applied last fall, after I was admitted to New Jersey State Teachers College.”

  “That’s a funny school for you to have found all the way from Berlin.”

  “I may have had something to do with it,” said Joseph. “Sherm Leeman sits on the board of governors.”

  “Is this guy telling me you couldn’t have gotten in on your own?”

  “Oh, I don’t—”

  Joseph interrupted. “She’s a very smart girl. Her parents just asked me to do what I could.”

  “You wouldn’t have thought I was so smart if you’d seen me in Berlin. I was denied admission to every single university I applied to.”

  “I have to assume it had nothing to do with your grades,” said Mr. Hirsch.

  Anna could feel her face go crimson.

  “The university admissions committees are controlled by the Nazis. You didn’t consider going to school in France? Or Belgium?”

  “I don’t speak French. Just German, Hungarian, English, and a little Yiddish.” She looked over at Joseph. “My father studied English literature at the University of Vienna, and my mother knew Mr. Adler, so—”

  The waiter returned, placing an amber-colored cocktail, garnished with a bright red cherry, in front of Anna. She took a small sip and tried not to wince as the whiskey hit the back of her throat.

  “And your parents’ visa application was denied?”

  “Yes,” said Anna. “Recently.”

  “And the reason they cited?”

  Anna glanced at Joseph, unsure how much of the talking he wanted her to do. He seemed far away, and she wondered, yet again, if it’d been a good idea to let him make the lunch date. After all, Florence had been dead less than three weeks.

  “That Mr. Adler wasn’t an immediate relative,” she finally said.

  “I assume your affidavit said that you’d provide them with an income?” Mr. Hirsch said, speaking to Joseph directly.

  “Forty dollars a week.”

  “But you didn’t promise a job?”

  “Aaron Wexler told me that can make things worse.”

  “He’s right,” said Mr. Hirsch, taking a swallow from his glass. “It’s a mess. The consul doesn’t want to let anyone in who might become a drain on society, but God forbid you tell them you plan on working. They don’t want to see Americans forfeit a single precious job.”

  “It’s hard to prove you won’t be a drain on society if you’re not meant to work,” Joseph agreed.

  Mr. Hirsch ordered the lobster salad, and Anna told the waiter she’d have the same thing. She had never had the sweet meat and had to refrain from scraping her plate clean. The drink, combined with the food, left her feeling bolder.

  “We were hoping you’d be able to advise us on our next steps,” she said to Mr. Hirsch as she put down her fork.

  “The way I see it, you’ve got a few options,” he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “You can submit more reference letters, or even try to find a second sponsor who will provide an affidavit of his own—anything to try to make up for the fact that Joseph is not a relative. Or you might try to establish a bank account in your parents’ name and deposit enough money into it to prove they won’t become public charges.”

  Anna thought about the fifty precious dollars she kept hidden inside her copy of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which she’d brought from home. Her parents had warned her that the money needed to last, that they didn’t know when or if they’d be able to send more.

  “How much money is enough?” said Joseph. He’d barely touched the trout on his plate.

  “That, my friend, is the riddle. A thousand? Maybe more? Does it need to be enough to help them land on their feet or live indefinitely? No one is getting a straight answer.”

  Anna made a quick grab for her drink and held it up to her lips only to realize it was empty. She had the same nervous feeling, listening to these two men discuss her parents’ future, that she’d had when she got off the SS New York at Ellis Island. She was young and healthy and had all the right paperwork but she couldn’t help feeling as if the immigrant inspectors and medical officers were looking for reasons to turn people away. That if she dragged or coughed or said the wrong thing, she’d dash her parents’ dreams and ruin her only chance at an education.

  “Should we do both?” Joseph asked. “Send more reference letters and establish a bank account?”

  “It certainly couldn’t hurt but perhaps try the letters first. If their application is denied, you’ll just lose a few months.”

  Anna’s heart sank. It had already been three months since she’d seen her mother.

  “I’m more than happy for the committee to write a letter,” said Mr. Hirsch. “With the amount of money we’ve raised in the past year, one would hope the consul general is beginning to take us seriously.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Joseph, glancing at Anna.

  “And I think we could swing a letter from Congressman Bacharach, attesting to your ability to support the Epsteins. Two more letters ought to be enough to get them through. Particularly if one’s from a congressman.” Mr. Hirsch beckoned to the waiter, indicating that he’d take the check.

  “I know Ike Bacharach but I’m not particularly close with him,” said Joseph. “You think he’d really be willing to write a letter?”

  “He owes me a favor. I’ll arrange it if you send me the particulars.”

  “It’s the first thing I’ll do when I’m back at the office.”

  Anna thought of Joseph’s office, of the forlorn beach chair she’d seen in front of the fireplace on her last visit. It was hard for her to tell if he considered Mr. Hirsch’s request a welcome distraction from his grief or an unwanted interference. Maybe it was both.

  The waiter brought the check, and Mr. Hirsch reached for his wallet.

  “Let me get this,” said Joseph. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Hirsch, counting out six one-dollar bills and putting them on the table.

  The maître d’ brought him his hat, and he stood to go.

  “Miss Epstein, there is one other solution to your parents’ predicament.”

  “What’s that?” Anna asked, sitting up at attention. She watched him put on his hat.

  “Marry yourself an American,” he said as he straightened the brim.

  Anna let out a little laugh.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Joseph,” Mr. Hirsch said with a wink. “It’s still the quickest way I know to get a visa.”

  * * *

  The drink, combined with the afternoon heat and Mr. Hirsch’s promises, had left Anna feeling light-headed. At the door of the Adlers’ apartment, she dug in her purse for a handkerchief and her compact, blotted the perspiration from her neck and the skin around her hairline, and assessed her overall appearance in the small mirror. She made a face at herself and probably would have made several more had the door not opened to reveal Gussie.

  “I thought I heard you out here!”

  Gussie extended her hand to offer the secret handshake, and Anna shut her compact with a snap, slipped it back into her purse alongside the handkerchief. Then she reached for the little girl’s wrist.

  “Wharp-ere warp-ere yarp-ou?” Gussie asked

  “Let’s speak in English for now, okay?”

  For a moment Gussie looked crestfallen but then her face brightened. “I have a letter for you!”

  “Oh?” Anna had received a letter from her mother, just a few days ago, but perhaps her father had written. In place of long letters, he usually sent articles or a short story he’d torn from the pages of the magazine Kladderadatsch. Maybe it was all the years he’d spent studying and teaching English, but he seemed to understand that reading German, for Anna now, had become a kind of treat.

  Gussie led her into the kitchen, where the table was covered in old newspapers, cut to bits.

  “What are you working on?”

  “Nana says Mother likes the Dionne quintlets.”

/>   “Quintuplets.”

  “That’s what I said.” Anna had clearly irritated the girl. She raised her eyebrows at Gussie, who was rooting through the paper scraps, looking for something. Hopefully Anna’s letter hadn’t been cut to shreds, too.

  “So, you’re cutting out pictures of the babies?”

  “Yes, see?” Gussie held up a piece of blue construction paper onto which she’d glued a half-dozen versions of the same photo Anna had seen plastered on every periodical at every newsstand in Atlantic City. In it, the quintuplets’ doctor loomed over a bassinet, in which all five babies, each in her own bunting, were packed like sardines. It was hard to make out their faces.

  It seemed a little tactless to present a pregnant woman at risk for miscarrying with a collage of baby pictures, but Anna had to assume Esther had sanctioned the activity.

  “Where’s your grandmother?”

  “In her bedroom, lying down.”

  “Ah.”

  “Here it is!” Gussie said, removing a folded piece of paper from underneath a three-day-old section of the Atlantic City Press.

  Anna’s heart sank. The note wasn’t in the light blue aerogram envelope she’d become accustomed to looking for on the dresser in the Adlers’ entryway. In fact, the note wasn’t in an envelope at all.

  “Have you read it?”

  Gussie nodded earnestly and handed the note over. Before Anna could unfold the piece of paper, Gussie blurted out, “It’s from Stuart!” and scurried around the table to read the note, once more, over Anna’s shoulder.

  Anna,

  Now is as good a time as any to learn to swim. Your first lesson is tomorrow evening at six. Meet me at the Kentucky Avenue beach tent?

  Stuart

  “How did you get this?” Anna asked Gussie.

  “He dropped it off.”

  Anna sucked in her breath, wondering how Esther would feel about a would-be suitor of Florence’s dropping off notes for Anna.

  “Did your grandmother see it?”

  Gussie shook her head. “She was in her room.”

  Anna thought for a minute. “Maybe we don’t tell her? In case it makes her sad.”

  Gussie didn’t acknowledge Anna’s request. She just walked back around the table, picked up the pair of scissors, and began to cut out a baby in a Gerber’s advertisement. The baby was jolly and round, old enough to sit up and smile. Behind the child’s head read the words For Babies Only. Anna assumed Gussie knew that this baby wasn’t one of the Dionne babies, none of whom could have been easily confused with a bouncing six-month-old. Gussie put a careful dot of glue on the backside of the baby’s picture and pressed it onto her collage.

  “So, you’re including other babies?” Anna asked, unable to help herself.

  “Mother likes them,” said Gussie, defensively, as she began cutting away at the next clipping. Anna couldn’t be sure but, from across the table, the baby looked like Charles Lindbergh Jr. She stood and peered over Gussie’s work, trying to read the photo’s caption. After his transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh had become extremely popular across Europe. His son’s kidnapping had made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, and Anna imagined that the German people had followed the case almost as closely as their American counterparts. After the child’s body was discovered, the coverage had slowed but, now that the trial was under way, the beautiful boy’s picture was back in all the papers.

  “Gussie, don’t use that picture.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because”—Anna hesitated—“that baby is dead.”

  Gussie put her scissors down. “Like Hyram?”

  Anna nodded.

  Gussie placed the clipping back down on the table and smoothed its edges. Was she hurt? Anna couldn’t tell.

  “Do you have a bathing suit to wear?” Gussie asked, and Anna wondered if this was the child’s own small attempt to get back at her. She didn’t have a bathing suit. She’d worn a cotton dress to the beach on the day Florence had died, and Gussie knew it.

  “I don’t,” Anna admitted, watching Gussie for a response.

  “You could wear one of Florence’s.”

  “I think that might be unkind.”

  Gussie shrugged her shoulders. “She can’t wear them anymore.”

  * * *

  Anna waited until the apartment grew quiet, Gussie tucked into bed on the sun porch, Esther and Joseph retired to their bedroom down the hall. Then she rose from her own bed, went to Florence’s dresser, and switched on the lamp. She thought she remembered Florence keeping her bathing suits in the top left drawer, but when she slid it open, as quietly as she could, she was confronted with a jumble of slips and stockings. So, she eased the drawer closed and tried another one.

  Florence’s drawers were a mess, which came as no surprise to Anna. She was the type of person who left wet bathing suits hanging on bedposts and her shoes in exactly the spot where she kicked them off at night. Magazines and books were left open to the page where she’d stopped reading, a testament to her assumption that she’d return to them before too long.

  Anna, who was grateful the Adlers had found room in the apartment for her at all, had been in no position to demand that Florence make her bed or push in her drawers. For the brief time the two girls had shared the room, Anna had just tidied up after her—folding down the pages of Florence’s books and magazines so that they might be stacked on the dresser and lining up her shoes, toes in, under the window, where Anna kept her own. Anna would have liked to think that Florence appreciated her efforts, but she wasn’t sure she even noticed. Florence struck Anna as the type of girl who was used to being looked after, used to getting her own way. She blew in and out of the room with the confidence of a person who had been the family’s baby for two decades, who believed everyone was always glad to see her and that she could achieve her wildest ambitions if for no other reason than that no one had ever told her she couldn’t.

  In the third drawer she tried, Anna found what she had been looking for. Among Florence’s underwear and brassieres were a handful of bathing suits. Anything Anna had seen Florence wear in the days before she died was immediately discarded—a Jantzen molded-fit in a burnt-red color and a teal Zephyr with a black belt that cinched at the waist. She shuddered when she realized that the suit Florence had worn to the beach two Sundays ago was, like its wearer, undoubtedly gone forever.

  At the back of the drawer was a plain black bathing suit that Anna didn’t recognize. She held it up to get a better look at it. The wool was stretched, the cut not nearly so modern as the suits Florence had worn this summer. Would Stuart recognize it as belonging to Florence? Anna sincerely hoped not. She placed the suit on the dresser top and pulled her nightgown over her head. For a moment, she stood in front of the bureau’s mirror, not moving, just studying her naked body.

  She was not nearly so curvy as she’d been in high school. In the last year, there had been the worry over whether she would go to school, then the worry over whether she’d get a visa. Once her visa application had been approved and she knew she was really leaving Berlin and her family behind, it had been hard to eat much of anything, and during the six-day crossing from Hamburg, she’d been unable to hold down so much as a cracker. Even when she’d arrived safely in Atlantic City and Esther had begun spooning generous servings of noodle kugel onto her plate, Anna found it difficult to eat much. Now she blamed homesickness, and perhaps Florence’s death, for the fact that she could count her own ribs. She reached for the suit, pulling the scratchy fabric up and over her hips and then her breasts until it snapped taut against her shoulders. When it was on, she stepped back to examine herself, trying to see as much of her body as the small mirror allowed. The suit cut into her thighs in an unbecoming way, but otherwise, Anna was pleased with the result. She moved her arms through the air in big circles, the way she’d seen Florence do before entering the water.

  Somewhere in the apartmen
t, Anna heard a small crash and then the creak of floorboards as Joseph or Esther moved to retrieve what Anna could imagine was a fallen book or a dropped shoe. Terrified that Esther would discover her wearing Florence’s suit, Anna scooped her nightgown up off the floor, switched off the lamp, and dove for her bed. Under the cover of darkness and a thin bedsheet, she wriggled out of the suit and back into her nightgown. What would Anna say if Esther discovered the suit was missing? The poor woman hadn’t set foot in the girls’ room since Florence had died. Surely, she hadn’t kept track of the bathing suits her younger daughter had carted back and forth between the house on Atlantic Avenue, the apartment, and Wellesley?

  * * *

  Anna was all nerves by the time she left for the Kentucky Avenue beach tent on Tuesday evening. She was nervous to get in the water, where she knew she’d have no control of her own body, but she was more nervous to approach a tent full of lifeguards she didn’t know and ask for Stuart. What if the lifeguards couldn’t understand her accent? Or worse, thought she was one of those silly girls who Florence had liked to make fun of—the ones who chased lifeguards up and down the beach. What if Stuart wasn’t there? It was possible he’d changed his mind about the whole thing. She worried she’d been too forward asking for the lessons in the first place. Ever since Florence had drowned, she’d just felt so overwhelmed. Somehow, her inability to swim felt like an indicator that she was ill fit to be here at all. If, at any point, the ocean might swallow her up, what would the rest of this big and disorderly country do to her?

  The beach was beginning to clear, and while the beach tent was full of guards hustling back and forth, it was easy to spot Stuart, who had to be half a head taller than most of the men on the Patrol and was definitely the most handsome.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye out for you,” he said as he stacked a bunch of oars against one of the walls of the tent.

  “Am I late?”

  “No, not at all.”

  He threw a final oar on the pile and shouted to someone inside the tent, “Bernie, I’m out of here.”