Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  Florence’s attentions went a long way toward pulling Anna out of her melancholy but they didn’t cure her, by any means. She still missed her parents fiercely and worried about them constantly. The night before Florence died, the two girls had returned home from the pictures to find a letter from Anna’s mother on the dresser in the apartment’s entryway. Anna had grabbed it, torn it open, and begun reading it on the spot, while Florence summarized the plot of Little Miss Marker to Joseph, who sat in the living room reading.

  “Anything interesting?” Joseph had asked, over the hum of his daughter’s monologue.

  “Didn’t you think the little girl in the film was brilliant?” said Florence. “Mark my words, she’s going to be a big star.”

  Anna ignored her and read a small excerpt of the letter aloud, translating as she went, “A new statute has just come out of the Reichsregierung. The Nazis are levying a special tax on Jewish émigrés, equal to twenty-five percent of our capital.” Florence stopped talking.

  “She goes on,” said Anna. “ ‘Considering the other seventy-five percent of our money is already earmarked for the Sperrkonto, this is very bad news indeed.’ ”

  “What’s the Sperrkonto?” asked Florence.

  “A crime is what it is,” said Joseph. “The Nazis are telling Jews that, if they want to emigrate, they can only take two hundred Reichsmarks with them. Everything else, minus the taxes, goes into a special state-owned bank account, which they can tap if and only if they return to Germany.”

  “They can’t do that!” Florence said, indignant.

  “Unfortunately,” said Joseph, “very few people are telling Hitler ‘no’ these days.”

  “So, they’ll have to start over here? With nothing?” Florence had barely gotten the question out before she spit out a solution. “You’ll help, won’t you, Father?”

  “Of course I’ll help. But it’s not so straightforward. They need that capital to prove they won’t be a drain on the U.S. economy. It’s a requirement for getting a visa.”

  “It’s a paradox,” said Florence.

  “Exactly.”

  Anna didn’t know what the word for paradox was in German and wondered if she should interrupt to ask. The letter shook in her hands. “You’re sweet. Both of you. But I think I’m going to go to bed.”

  “Of course,” said Joseph. “We can talk more tomorrow. Remember, Anna—this isn’t a setback. Not yet.”

  “I know.” She could feel her voice beginning to break. “It’s just a lot. To take in.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  She folded the letter and made her way out of the room.

  “Anna,” Joseph called, when she had already disappeared around the corner and down the hall. She stopped, retraced her steps, hovered in the living room’s doorway. “Your parents are not so old they can’t start again. None of us ever are.”

  Anna dared not cry in front of Joseph. So, when she felt her chin begin to tremble, she pressed her lips together—tight—and tried her best to nod her head believingly.

  In the bedroom, she kept the lights off, crawled into bed with her clothes on, and wept. After several minutes, the door creaked open and shut and the springs of the bed next to hers groaned.

  “Anna?” Florence asked. “You all right?”

  She tried to say yes but her words dissolved on her lips. It was as though this setback had released a torrent in her, and now she was crying for all sorts of reasons that had both nothing and everything to do with the content of her mother’s letter. She cried because Esther had barely spoken two words to her since her arrival and because she wasn’t in a university lecture hall in Berlin and because she was unlikely to see her school friends for years, if ever again. She cried because she missed the way her mother twisted her hair out of her face and the way the tobacco in her father’s cigarettes smelled when he rolled them at their kitchen table. And she cried for Germany. How was it possible to both pine for and resent a place so much at the same time?

  “Do you think it’s so unlikely the visa application will be approved? Even with everything Pop’s working on?” Florence asked.

  Anna shook her head, a signal she wasn’t sure Florence would be able to interpret with one side of her face buried in her pillow.

  The springs under her own mattress rasped, the mattress bending to absorb the weight of a second person. Florence had moved to the edge of Anna’s bed and begun repeating a soft “shhhhh.” She stroked Anna’s hair, and Anna let out a whimper. The gesture reminded Anna of all the times her mother had tucked her into bed and soothed her to sleep. When Anna’s shoulders continued to heave, Florence lay down beside her in the dark, took hold of her hand, and waited.

  Anna could feel Florence studying her in the dark, and eventually, that sensation—of being carefully considered—did calm her. Her convulsions became shudders and her sobs hiccups. She opened one eye and then the other, and was able to make out Florence’s features, so close that she couldn’t focus on them. Even the sharp line of her nose and the arch of her eyebrow blurred. Anna pulled back several inches so that she could view Florence properly.

  Florence moved to brush a tear from Anna’s cheek, running her thumb along her cheekbone. Was it possible that, in only three months of living among strangers, Anna had forgotten what it felt like to be touched? Florence lifted her head off the pillow and stared at her as if she were awaiting the response to a question Anna hadn’t heard her ask. She leaned forward and kissed the spot on Anna’s cheek where the tear, fat with anticipation, had sat so recently. Anna held her breath as Florence scattered several small kisses across her cheek, like tiny seeds that might take root and grow into something sturdy. Florence brushed her lips against the corner of Anna’s mouth and pulled back slightly, as if watching for some signal. Did Anna want this? It was hard to know anymore. Without giving herself any more time to think, Anna lifted her head, ever so slightly, from the pillow and let Florence’s mouth, warm and inquisitive, absorb her heartache.

  July 1934

  Gussie

  When Gussie pressed her ear to the bathroom door, she thought she could hear her grandmother crying. The noise sounded a bit like the call of a baby fox, or at least what Gussie imagined a baby fox might sound like. For a moment, Gussie allowed herself to imagine a small woodland creature, skating across the hexagonal tile floor and making its home among her grandmother’s bath salts and her grandfather’s foot powder. Both the existence of a baby fox in the bathroom and the idea that her grandmother might be crying seemed equally preposterous.

  Gussie turned the glass doorknob and slowly pushed open the door. The bathroom had filled with steam, and it took Gussie a moment to locate her grandmother, who was lying in the big claw-foot tub. When Esther saw Gussie, she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  “Are you sad about Florence?” Gussie asked in a small voice.

  Esther contorted her mouth into something that resembled a smile but didn’t make her eyes squint. “Yes, very.”

  It was difficult not to stare at her grandmother’s breasts, which bobbed along the surface of the water, big and floppy with nipples the size and color of gingersnap cookies. Gussie wondered if her own chest would ever develop to such a degree. The thought of carrying something so large around with her, everywhere she went, was a terrifying prospect. When Esther noticed Gussie studying her chest, she shifted in the tub and submerged the buoys beneath the cloudy bathwater.

  “Grab the stool over there,” Esther said. “You can keep me company while I finish up.”

  Next to the commode was a small three-legged stool that Esther sat on when she gave Gussie baths. Gussie picked it up and positioned it close to the tub. She liked it when her grandmother took baths because it was easy to get and keep her full attention. Now, more than usual, she had questions she needed answered.

  “What happens to people when they die?” Gussie asked when she was a few minutes into her vigil.

  Her grandmother seem
ed startled by the question. After several seconds passed, she whispered, “Oh, darling. I wish I knew.”

  “Do we go to heaven?”

  Her grandmother cleared her throat. “It’s a good question, but Jews believe it’s not the most important question.”

  “What is the most important question?”

  “Whether you’ve been a good person. Done good things for other people.”

  “Florence used to take me for pickles on Heinz Pier, which was a very good thing.”

  Her grandmother’s eyes grew wet again. “Yes,” was all she said before she slipped farther down into the tub, allowing her ears to sink below the waterline. Her grandmother’s hair looked darker when it was wet, and Gussie liked the way it moved in the water.

  “Nana,” said Gussie, trying to be heard through the water. “Nana.”

  “Hmm?”

  “What about Hyram? He didn’t have a chance to do good things.” At the mention of Hyram’s name, her grandmother surfaced, tilting her head to clear her ears. Gussie repeated her question.

  “Babies are always doing good things. Hyram made your parents happy and you happy. That’s enough.”

  Had Hyram made Gussie happy? She wasn’t so sure.

  “Can I shampoo your hair?” Gussie asked.

  “I’ve already shampooed it but I’ll take a little crème rinse.”

  Gussie’s heart fluttered. Nothing thrilled her more than getting the chance to do things she wasn’t normally allowed to do, and washing her grandmother’s hair fell squarely in that category. Esther sat up in the tub, water streaming from her head and shoulders, and Gussie grabbed the glass bottle of Breck from the little shelf that sat nearby. She untwisted the cap and concentrated on pouring a modest dollop of the concoction into her hand. The crème felt cool in her palm and smelled of coconut. She rubbed it between her hands before working it through her grandmother’s hair, which was surprisingly long when wet.

  “My mother doesn’t use crème rinse.”

  “Your mother has such lovely hair, she probably doesn’t need to.”

  Gussie pulled her fingers through her grandmother’s hair, working quietly for several minutes. She was particularly careful when she got to the tangled pieces, which Gussie knew, from personal experience, could make a person yelp.

  “Would you like me to take you to see your mother?” Esther asked.

  It had been weeks since Gussie had been to the hospital. Her grandmother said it was because children weren’t often allowed on the maternity ward, and her father said it was because they’d all been so busy, but Gussie knew the real reason was because no one trusted her to keep a secret.

  This frustrated Gussie. Even before her induction into the Florence Adler Swims Forever Society, she had been extremely good at keeping secrets. She never told anyone when her parents argued in their bedroom at night or when her father muttered not-nice things about her grandparents under his breath. On the days when her mother was too sad to get off the sofa, Gussie never let on to her grandmother. She hadn’t breathed a word about Anna borrowing Florence’s bathing suit, even after Gussie went looking for it and found it damp and draped behind the radiator. And, most important of all, Gussie had never told a living soul about her own plan to marry Stuart.

  “Remember, if we went, you wouldn’t be able to say a word about Florence,” warned Esther as she stepped out of the tub and toweled herself off.

  Gussie trailed Esther into her bedroom, uttering promises as she went. The way her grandmother had talked, she assumed they’d go to the hospital as soon as Esther had put on a fresh dress; however, after Gussie watched her remove a girdle from a drawer, consider it briefly, then put it back in its place, she began to second-guess herself. When Esther slipped on a housedress, Gussie knew her grandmother had no intention of leaving the apartment.

  “What about the hospital?”

  “Please don’t whine.”

  Gussie rephrased the question and asked it in a falsetto: “Nana, are we going to go to the hospital now?”

  “I told you I’d take you, but not today.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  * * *

  Gussie banged around the apartment loudly for the next hour. During that time, she managed to knock over the hatstand in the front hall and spill half her grandmother’s lavender oil down the bathroom sink. Both accidents, of course. Then she refused to eat lunch, despite the fact that her grandmother was serving tuna fish sandwiches, which were a particular favorite of Gussie’s. When Esther had had enough, she sent Gussie to her room and told her to stay there until she could figure out how to be more pleasant. Gussie didn’t dare bellow as she stomped off to the sun porch but she did make sure she slammed the door with plenty of umph.

  It was hard to be pleasant when so much was going wrong. Gussie swiped some of the treasures on her windowsill to the floor but she was careful to avoid upsetting the tiny ceramic animals that had come in the Cracker Jack boxes her grandfather kept leaving on her bed. There was an otter and a pig and a seal that balanced a ball on his nose. When she was satisfied with the mess, she threw herself onto the bed, grabbed hold of her Raggedy Ann doll, and studied the tiny wormholes in the beadboard ceiling.

  After a half hour or so, there was a light knock on the door.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Anna said, peeking her head around the door.

  Gussie was annoyed. People were always deciding what she should be doing.

  “I don’t want to go for a walk. I want to go to the hospital.”

  “Well, your grandmother wants you to go for a walk. She gave me some money and said we should go to the Pier to see the parakeets.” Anna jingled the coins in her hand, as evidence. When Gussie didn’t make a move, Anna said, “You probably don’t care for them. Or hot dogs?”

  Gussie didn’t say anything, just went back to staring at the ceiling. For a dime, the parakeets at Steel Pier would hop up onto a stick, grab a fortune out of a fancy bird-sized castle, and saunter down a miniature boardwalk to deliver it. The offer was tempting but not nearly so tempting if she had to go with Anna.

  Anna patted the edge of the door and made like she was about to close it. “I’ll go tell her you’re not interested.”

  Gussie sat up in bed. “Wait!”

  * * *

  It was National Children’s Week in Atlantic City and everywhere hotels, restaurants, and stores had posted signs, welcoming children to the resort and advertising specials to their parents. There was a children’s parade and a sing-along on the beach and, yesterday, there had been a big fireworks spectacular for the Fourth of July. At the end of the week, one lucky kid was going to be named mayor of Atlantic City for a day. Gussie had begged her grandmother to let her register, particularly after she had spotted the spiffy badges all the children wore on their collars, but Esther explained that the program was only for children from out of town whose parents were staying in cooperating hotels.

  Even without a badge, Gussie had to admit—only to herself, definitely not to Anna—that the day had turned around. She and Anna caught the second half of the sing-along, and when they stopped at a hot dog stand on the Boardwalk, the cashier gave Gussie a special Children’s Week button with their change. She didn’t and wouldn’t have asked Anna to help her pin the button to her lapel but Anna did it anyway.

  “Let’s go in there,” Gussie said to Anna, her mouth stuffed with hot dog, as they walked past Couney’s Premature Baby Exhibit, across from Million Dollar Pier.

  Anna looked at the hand-lettered sign on the window and at the tiny baby asleep in a little glass box in the window display. A poster, affixed to the door, claimed ONCE SEEN, NEVER FORGOTTEN.”

  “You have to pay a fee to go in,” said Anna, counting the change in her hand. “You won’t have enough money to see the parakeets, too.”

  “I know,” said Gussie, already pulling open the exhibit’s heavy glass door. “I’ve seen the parakeets a hundred times. Besides, they alwa
ys tell girls the same thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You will have a large family.”

  “What do they tell the boys?”

  “Oh, you know. All the normal things. That they’ll be successful and earn tons of money and go on lots of adventures.”

  Anna let out a small noise and helped her with the door, and as Gussie walked through it, she felt an odd surge of satisfaction, as if she had won something big and important.

  Inside was a long room with a worn wooden floor, whitewashed walls, and a ceiling stenciled with green vines. A line of seven incubators, small glass boxes that sat on tall metal stands, lined one wall, and between each one sat a potted palm tree, as if the nurses, who walked back and forth in fitted white dresses and funny hats, were trying to convince the babies that they were living on a tropical island instead of in a Boardwalk amusement.

  “The next lecture begins at three o’clock,” said an attendant, who exchanged the coins Anna handed her for a receipt and a leaflet.

  A metal handrail prevented visitors from getting too close to the babies, which was unfortunate, as far as Gussie was concerned. She grabbed hold of the railing and hoisted herself into the air, leaning her body as far over the railing as she dared. From that vantage point, it was easier to read the little signs that sat propped above each incubator.

  “Gussie, get down.”

  “I’m reading the incubator charts.”