Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

by Rachel Beanland

  “I have to call my sister.” Fannie didn’t wait for Dorothy to grant her permission. Rather, she made her way toward the small table where the telephone sat, figuring that if Dorothy didn’t like what she was doing, she’d stop her.

  “Your sister?” Dorothy asked.

  “That’s right,” said Fannie, the handset already in hand. She dialed the operator and waited until she heard the familiar, “Number, please.”

  “Yes, can I have 4452, please?”

  While Fannie waited for the line to connect, she strummed her fingers against her stomach. What was the right tone to take with Florence? She was angry, sure, but also disappointed. She had learned that sometimes, with Isaac, disappointed worked better.

  Her father answered the phone.

  “Hi, Pop.”

  “Fannie?”

  It had been almost six weeks since Fannie had seen or heard from her father, and it felt good to hear his voice—always quiet and calm—in her ear.

  “How is everything?” she asked.

  A few seconds slipped by before her father said anything. “Oh, you know how it is.”

  She didn’t, so she tried a different tack.

  “How’s the bakery?”

  “We just hired a few new drivers. I think we’ve almost got enough manpower to start distributing in Philadelphia.”

  “Wow. Philly?” she repeated, astonished. Isaac hadn’t breathed a word of this to her. Did he think she wouldn’t find it interesting? “How easy is it to increase production?”

  “Your mother’s eager to… say hello.”

  Fannie ignored him. Now that she had him on the phone, she didn’t want to be passed off to her mother. “How’s Gussie?” she asked.

  “She’s fine. Eating a giant serving of rice pudding as I speak.”

  “I miss her like crazy.”

  She could hear her mother whispering to him in the background.

  “And how’s Florence?” asked Fannie. She could feel the hair on her arms stand up. “That’s really the reason I called. I assume she leaves for New York tomorrow.”

  “Here’s your mother—”

  Fannie sighed. Sometimes there was no moving beyond the roles each of them played. Her father, a quiet supporter. Her mother, an assured arbiter. What was Fannie’s role? Did she even have one anymore? Had she ever had one?

  “Fannie?” Esther said, too loudly, into the telephone.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “You’re not meant to be out of bed. Where are you?”

  “The nurses’ lounge,” said Fannie, eyeing Dorothy. Dorothy had stopped eating her sandwich and was watching Fannie intently. “One of the nurses was sweet enough to let me use the phone.” She flashed Dorothy a smile.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, walking all the way to the lounge in your condition.”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” said Fannie, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I actually called to speak to Florence. Can you put her on?”

  The phone line went quiet, and for a moment, Fannie wondered if they’d lost their connection. “Mother?”

  “What?”

  “Can I speak to Florence?”

  “Yes, oh, you know what? I think she just stepped out.”

  “I thought you were in the middle of dinner? Pop said Gussie’s eating rice pudding.”

  “She had some errands that couldn’t wait,” her mother said, then paused, as if she were reading Fannie’s mind. “I think she said she was going to stop by the hospital, too. To say good-bye.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have much time. Visitors’ hours end at nine.”

  “Right.”

  Was Florence really so angry with Fannie that she’d ignored her apology letter? Then put off a visit until the last hour of the last day she was in Atlantic City? She and Florence had fought—surely—but they’d gotten in terrible arguments before and had always managed to patch things up quickly enough.

  “You know how she is,” her mother said, with what sounded like forced enthusiasm. “Just leaves things to the last minute. I’m sure she’ll be by soon.”

  Fannie glanced over at Dorothy, who was looking more uncomfortable by the second. She had thrown the crusts of her sandwich away and was wiping down the tabletop with her unused napkin.

  “Which train is she catching tomorrow?”

  Now it was her mother’s turn to sigh. “I can’t recall.”

  “You can’t recall?” Fannie’s mother had never failed to recall anything in her entire life. She could recall the moment Fannie had lost her first tooth, the number of matzo balls she’d made for last year’s Seder, and the name of every flower she’d ever planted in the beds at the Atlantic Avenue house. But she could also recall more practical things—the telephone extensions of every member of Beth Kehillah’s women’s committee and the names of anyone who had ever been late paying on an account at Adler’s, at least in the years before she stopped working behind the counter.

  “It’s either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Central of New Jersey, the two twenty-five p.m. or the four thirty-five p.m.,” said Fannie. “Which is it?”

  Fannie was so distracted by the conversation that she failed to notice Mary enter the room. When she tapped her on the shoulder, Fannie nearly dropped the handset.

  “I need you to finish up this call,” she said, before turning her attention to Dorothy. “Who’s she talking to?”

  Esther was saying something about the train schedule but Fannie had stopped listening. Was Mary angry at her or Dorothy? It was hard to tell. “Mother,” she said. “I think I have to go. Tell Florence I’m counting on her to come by. Really.”

  She replaced the handset on the receiver. Her back ached and her feet felt like bricks. Maybe her mother was right and she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.

  “Sorry,” she said to Mary. “I just needed to speak with my sister.”

  “This phone’s not for patient use,” Mary said, shooting Dorothy a withering look. There was still a small dab of mayonnaise on the nurse’s top lip. “Dorothy, will you get her back to bed?”

  No one on the hospital’s staff had ever spoken to Fannie in such a stern voice, and for a brief moment, she felt almost guilty for implicating Dorothy.

  Dorothy got to her feet slowly, as if she’d rather be doing anything else, and gave Mary a wide berth as she guided Fannie out of the lounge. As they walked down the hall, she muttered to herself. Fannie thought she heard her say, “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” but that hardly made any sense. Doing what? And who was the “we”—surely not Dorothy and Fannie?

  “What did you say?” Fannie finally asked, when they’d reached her room.

  “Huh?”

  “You said something.”

  Dorothy was either hard of hearing or had chosen to ignore Fannie’s question.

  “Listen, Dorothy, I really am sorry if I got you in trouble.”

  Dorothy ignored her. All she said, as she turned the bed down was, “In you go.”

  * * *

  Fannie awoke to the fluttering kicks of the baby inside her. The sensation of being prodded from the interior of her own body had never grown old. She pushed down her bedsheet and lifted her nightgown to reveal her bare stomach, hard and round. Sometimes, on mornings like this, when the baby was active, she could actually see her stomach tremor, the muscles subtly bending to accommodate the jut of a tiny fist or the heel of a foot. She imagined this baby vaulting off her pelvis, swinging from her ribs.

  Fannie reached for her water glass on the bedside table, and saw a folded piece of paper leaning against the glass. Across the flap, her name was written in pretty script. Confused, Fannie picked up the note.

  Now she remembered—she had stayed up later than usual, waiting for Florence. First, she had worried that her sister wouldn’t make it to the hospital before visiting hours ended, and then, as nine o’clock came and went, that she wouldn’t come at all. Fannie had tried not to doze but it had been
impossible not to; she was always so tired now. At one point, she’d stirred and could have sworn she overheard McLoughlin reprimanding Dorothy but now she realized she must have been dreaming.

  The handwriting on the note wasn’t Florence’s—it was neater and more controlled. When Fannie unfolded it, she saw that the message, which was short, had been written on a piece of hospital stationery.

  Fannie,

  Florence stopped by tonight but you were already asleep. You looked so peaceful that she hated to wake you. She asked me to tell you that she loves you, and that she’ll be thinking of you and the baby constantly over these next few weeks.

  Bette

  Fannie let the note slip from her fingers. It fell closed and settled on her lap. Was this really it? Florence was going to leave for France with no real good-bye? The thudding pain in Fannie’s temples had returned. She picked up the note again and reread Bette’s words. She asked me to tell you. Why would Florence have passed along a message through Bette when she could simply have woken her? Or asked Bette for a piece of stationery and a pen and written the note herself? Surely, Florence could have spared the two minutes it would have taken to toss off these few lines. Did she care so little about Fannie? Fannie’s breathing started to quicken. She crumbled the note into as tight a ball as she could manage and, letting out a low growl, threw it across the room and out into the hall.

  Fannie pulled her nightgown back down over her stomach. Her hands had gone numb, and she could barely feel the cloth of the gown beneath her fingertips. A wave of nausea washed over her and then she was hot, so incredibly hot, that she kicked her sheets all the way to the bottom of the bed.

  Dr. Rosenthal and a nurse Fannie didn’t recognize walked past her room on morning rounds. The doctor stooped to pick up the wad of paper, then glanced into Fannie’s room, as if he were trying to calculate its trajectory.

  “Fannie?” he said, hurrying into the room.

  Fannie’s breath was coming in short bursts now. She had tried to put her head between her knees but found she couldn’t, not with the bulge of her stomach in the way. All she could do was lock her arms around her knees and rock back and forth, trying to get a gulp of air. It wasn’t working. What was wrong with everyone? Florence, Isaac, her mother, even Gussie? It was as if no one cared what happened to her.

  “Fannie, can you hear me?” Dr. Rosenthal said. His voice sounded very far away and also like he was shouting. Why was he shouting?

  She wanted to nod her head but it took so much effort.

  “Helen, get the curtains. Make the room as dark as you can.”

  Fannie heard the heavy whoosh of the curtains closing out the sun.

  Dr. Rosenthal put a hand on her back and steadied her. “You have to breathe, Fannie. You understand?” he said.

  She couldn’t.

  “Did you get bad news?”

  She nodded her head, tried to speak. “My sister—”

  He moved his hand to her shoulder, squeezed it tight, and whispered, “I know.”

  “She, she, she left for France without saying good-bye.”

  Dr. Rosenthal removed his hand from Fannie’s shoulder. “Right,” he said as he busied himself monitoring her pulse and taking her blood pressure. Finally he sat down on the bed beside her. “Fannie, your numbers are very high. I’m tempted to induce your labor right now.”

  The threat shocked Fannie back into her own consciousness. “It’s too soon.”

  “Well, then, listen to me. I don’t give a damn whether your sister is swimming around the horn of Africa, and, from this point forward, neither do you. Your only concern is this baby and carrying it safely to term. Do you understand?”

  Fannie couldn’t make so much as a word in response.

  “Do you understand?” repeated Dr. Rosenthal.

  She nodded vigorously.

  He removed the extra pillows from behind her back, told her to lie down, and then, perhaps thinking better of his directness, added “please.” As she did so, he scribbled something on a small piece of paper and handed it to the nurse. “Will you get this?” he asked, quietly. “A hundred milligrams.”

  When Fannie was flat on her back, staring at the dark ceiling, he spoke again. “Here are my new rules: No daylight, no getting out of bed. Helen is going to give you something that will help you relax, and we’re going to see if you can get your blood pressure down on your own.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “I think you can.”

  The nurse hurried back into the room, carrying a small tray. She set it on the table beside the bed and asked Fannie if she could roll over onto her side.

  Fannie did as she was told and a moment later, she felt the pinch of a needle in the soft flesh of her backside. As the nurse pushed the syringe down, Fannie imagined its contents spilling throughout her body, enveloping the baby, touching all the neglected parts of her. The baby kicked. I’m here with you, Fannie thought, though she had never felt so alone.

  Joseph

  On the day his younger daughter would have sailed to France, Joseph found he was too distracted to get much of anything done.

  “Mrs. Simons, is that pair of binoculars still around here somewhere?” he called from his office as he searched his desk for his keys.

  Joseph pulled the car around the front of the building and was about to turn onto Mediterranean Avenue when he noticed a man, dressed in a seersucker suit, walking toward him. The man was almost directly in front of the car when Joseph realized he was Stuart. He rolled down his window and called to him.

  Stuart looked relieved to see him and doubled back to talk to him through the open window. “Good to see you, Mr. Adler.”

  “No bathing suit?”

  “Day off,” he said. “Since I was paying you a visit, I thought I’d put on real clothes.”

  Joseph liked the boy’s sense of humor, always had. “Did you hear from the coach?” Joseph asked.

  “I did,” he said, reaching into his pocket for an envelope. “That’s why I was coming to see you. Burgess enclosed a check for the entire deposit.”

  Stuart handed Joseph the airmail envelope, and he took it, studying the return address, the French stamps, the Calais postmark.

  “He said he was very sorry to hear the news.”

  “That’s kind of him.”

  “He’s known for being tough to deal with, so I was a little surprised he parted with the money so easily.”

  “What are you doing this morning?” Joseph asked.

  “Coming to see you.”

  “Do you want to take a drive? I can have you back in Atlantic City by midafternoon.”

  A look of surprise came over Stuart’s face. “Sure,” he said.

  Joseph patted the exterior of the car’s door. “Get in, then.”

  Stuart hurried around the front of the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “Where are we headed?” he asked, when the door was closed behind him.

  “Highlands.”

  Stuart nodded his head, as if he understood perfectly. When a few long seconds had passed, he asked, “Why Highlands?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Joseph crossed the Thorofare and eventually the marsh, then traced the coast. “Have you ever been to Highlands?” he asked Stuart when they were on Highway 4 North, the car beginning to pick up speed.

  “Once, to Highlands Beach, for a lifeguard competition.”

  Joseph wondered if Florence had tagged along. Last summer, when she’d returned home from school, she’d scarcely ever been at the apartment. It had been difficult to keep up with her whereabouts—she’d spent so much time training for the Absecon Island swim. “Did Florence go?” he asked.

  Stuart shook his head no. “It was three summers ago.”

  Joseph didn’t have anything to say to that, could hardly remember what any of them had been doing three years ago.

  The two men fell quiet, listening to the steady rush of air that whipped around their heads and beat against th
eir eardrums. Out their windows, New Jersey’s coastal plains passed by. Joseph hadn’t laid eyes on the ocean until, at seventeen, he had boarded the SS Frankfurt in Bremen. Now he couldn’t imagine living somewhere where he couldn’t see the sea.

  “Did you know Trudy Ederle was from Atlantic Highlands?” said Stuart. “Or at least she spent her summers there.”

  Joseph did remember that. Half the news stories had claimed she was a resident of Manhattan, where her father owned a butcher shop, but the other half had claimed she hailed from Highlands, where her parents had a summer cottage. Highlands Beach was where she and her sisters had learned to swim. Joseph was sure that, if he wanted to discover the Ederles’ cottage—maybe even knock on the front door, all it would take would be a quiet inquiry at a local establishment or two. “She probably doesn’t get back much these days.”

  “Probably not,” Stuart agreed, letting the car go quiet again before he asked, “So, assuming we’re not dropping in on the Ederles, what’s in Highlands?” He gestured at the binoculars that Joseph had tucked into the seat. “Bird-watching?”

  Joseph glanced at the binoculars, then at Stuart. Would it be kinder to let him in on the plan now or later? He wasn’t quite so quick-thinking or clearheaded as Esther, wasn’t ever certain that he knew what was in anyone else’s best interest. No, he’d tell him later, Joseph finally decided. He was enjoying the ride—and Stuart’s company—too much to sap all the pleasure from the day.

  Joseph had been to Highlands several times before but the craggy landscape always took him aback, so different was it from the rest of the Jersey shore. A yellow ribbon of sand stretched from Cape May to Atlantic City and all the way to Sea Bright, but when it reached the Atlantic Highlands, a headland rose more than two hundred feet above sea level. A long and narrow sandbar stretched into New York Harbor, protecting Highlands from the worst of the northeast’s winds, and it was that sandbar, the Navesink Highlands in the background, that Joseph had first laid eyes on when he had come to America. He had stood on the deck of the Frankfurt, among hundreds of other hopeful immigrants—Austrians, Poles, Russians. A murmur went through the crowd. “New Jersey,” someone said to the person next to him. “New Jersey?” the next person asked. Everyone knew about New York but nobody knew about New Jersey. “America,” someone translated. A tiny American flag waved at them from the Twin Lights but only the young, whose eyes were still good, could see it. Joseph let out a whoop and jumped in the air, causing some of the older women who stood nearby to eye him with suspicion. It would be another half hour before the Statue of Liberty and the docks of Ellis Island came into view, before the tugboats came to meet the ship and lead it into the harbor but, as far as Joseph was concerned, he had already arrived.