Never Too Late for Love Page 6

  "Shankowitz. I didn't think it was such a common name."

  Sarah remained silent, reached for the coffee cup, but her hands shook and she quickly put it down again. She could tell by the woman's sudden interest that she wanted to inquire about her health, but she was holding back. At Sunset Village, one did not make quick inquiries about what seemed like obvious afflictions.

  "I've been a widow for three years, so a number of my friends live here now and I finally decided to come." Sarah felt her eyes watching her.

  "You got a husband Mrs. Shankowitz?"

  "I had one," Sarah mumbled. "He ... He died."

  The woman shook her head.

  "When was that?"

  "A long, long time ago," Sarah said, finding little courage, abruptly changing the subject, postponing it in her mind.

  "How long does it take to adjust?"

  "Adjust?"

  "You know what I mean. To the point where it doesn't hurt as much."

  Sarah's instinct was to say "never," or was it simply the automatic expectation, the desire to hurt. Hurt who?

  "Your name is Yetta?"

  The woman smiled.

  "How did you know that?"

  "You got a Cousin Irma?"

  "My God! Yes. Cousin Irma from Philadelphia."

  "And a sister Molly."

  "I can't believe it."

  "And an Irving in Barcelona."

  "My brother. He's traveling in Spain. Maybe we're related?"

  "Maybe." Sarah shrugged. "Actually, I'm getting your mail, your telephone calls. I expect in a little while that you'll get mine."

  "The Shankowitz girls. I could see where that could be a problem."

  Yetta seemed thoughtful. She pointed a finger at Sarah. "You know, I'll bet maybe we are related. Maybe our husbands were cousins. What was your husband's name?"

  Sarah continued to squirm now. She rubbed her finger joints as the pain shot through her hands.

  "You'd be surprised how we're related," Sarah said. It was not easy, she thought. Thankfully, she could see the beginnings of confusion on Yetta's face, the first flush of realization.

  "You're her?" Yetta whispered. Sarah nodded.

  "I'm her."

  "Oh my God." Yetta's hands went, birdlike, to her hair, fussing with it. "I can't believe it. I had no idea." Sarah felt the edge of indignation and stood up.

  "If you think this was easy..." Sarah began, but her voice trailed off. Yetta was visibly agitated. Her face had become grayer, suddenly more drawn.

  "You said he was dead a long time."

  "I lied. But not completely. To me, he was dead."

  "I can't believe it. We both land here in this place."

  Sarah shrugged.

  "What was I supposed to do? Tear up the check?"

  Yetta was having a difficult time recovering. She nodded and continued to fuss with her hair. It was obvious that she wanted Sarah to leave.

  "It's all right," Sarah said quietly, letting herself out of the door and walking quickly toward the bus stop. She regretted the confrontation. I could have given the check back to the mailman. I could have merely called her on the telephone. You're a dumb yenta, she told herself. Besides, what was so special about her, she thought. A raving beauty, she wasn't. And those glasses, a regular cockeyed Jennie. And a skinny merink on top of it. By the time she reached her own place, Sarah had convinced herself that she had been the better of the two bargains. But who needed her in Sunset Village?

  Late that afternoon, the telephone rang.

  "This is Sarah?" the voice asked. It was Yetta.

  "Yes."

  "I want to apologize. It was rude. You did a wonderful thing. But it was such a shock. I was stupid."

  "I figured you needed the check," Sarah said, feeling an odd sense of superiority. Yetta paused.

  "Look, he was a nice man. But he wasn't such a good provider. There was no insurance. No nothing. Perfect he wasn't."

  "You're telling me." There were questions to be raised, Sarah thought. Old curiosities resurrected. Apparently such thoughts were in Yetta's mind.

  "We'll see each other again?"

  "It's a small world here," Sarah said.

  "And how is your son?"

  "He's fine. He called me New Year's."

  "He's a nice boy. I haven't seen him since Nat died."

  "A very nice boy. He calls me often." She paused. "He's very busy."

  "Give him regards."

  "Of course."

  That night, the old life with Nat came to her again with full recall. But her image of him was suddenly different. She could not summon the same degree of enmity; the old hate had cooled. What was the real story? In the morning, she called Yetta.

  "I'm going shopping this morning. Would you like to come?"

  "I could use some things," Yetta said. They met on the bus and got off at the stop near the Safeway, walking together through the aisles sharing a shopping cart.

  "Nat liked All-Bran," Yetta said, reaching for a box of Rice Crispies.

  "I remember. He was always constipated."

  "That was always his main problem."

  "That and snoring."

  "He always snored?"

  "From the beginning."

  Later, putting the purchases in Yetta's refrigerator while Yetta made coffee, Sarah said, "You had the problem with the salt?"

  "My God, the salt."

  "There was always too much salt. I used to say, 'I never cook with salt. Not even a pinch.' But there was always too much salt. In the pot roast. In the hamburger. In the vegetables."

  "He drove me crazy."

  "I couldn't understand how, if he hated salt, he liked potato chips."

  "And they always gave him heartburn."

  "Always." They laughed, drank coffee, made tuna-fish sandwiches.

  Sarah filled her in on various aspects of Sunset Village life. When she got home, she got a call from Eve Shapiro.

  "The game. You forgot the game."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "We were worried. We called. There was no answer. Where were you?"

  "I had a problem." Sarah said, thinking quickly. There was no need to tell her the story. The Yentas would ferret it out soon enough. "Someone who just moved in from New York. They had a problem."

  "Oh?" It was a signal for more information.

  "They needed help with the shopping. You know. Details."

  "Enough to forget the game? Who was it?"

  "Someone from New York."

  "A relative?"

  "Yes."

  "A cousin?"

  "No. Not a cousin."

  "A what?" Eve Shapiro demanded.

  "A sister-in-law."

  "I didn't know you had one."

  "Yes. We weren't very close."

  "You're husband had a brother?"

  "Yes. But he lived in Queens. They weren't very close."

  Barely satisfied, Eve's indignance would not abate.

  "You should at least have called."

  The next day, Yetta came over to Sarah's place to lunch.

  "You got a nice place here, Sarah."

  "Its not the Ritz. But its OK."

  "You've got such nice things." She touched a grouping of little Wedgewood dishes.

  "I went on a B'nai B'rith tour to London once."

  "I never went anywhere. Nat didn't like to travel. Not that we could afford it."

  "Don't forget, I worked for twenty years."

  "He didn't like to go anywhere," Yetta sighed. "He came home. Went to sleep on the chair in front of the TV. Sometimes he would snore so loud I couldn't hear it."

  "Then he would go to sleep and snore some more."

  "I never met anyone who could sleep so much."

  Sarah felt the necessity of telling Yetta what she had said to Eve Shapiro.

  "I told her we were sisters-in-law." she said. "But she's such a yenta, I didn't want her to find out. They'd make a big joke about it?"

  "I was thinking about th
at."

  "If we don't tell them, they won't know."

  "But we're both Mrs. Nathaniel Z. Shankowitz."

  "No more. From now on I'm Mrs. Sarah. I'm going to write to everybody, the mail, the phone company, the social security."

  "And I'll be Mrs. Yetta."

  "The Shankowitz girls."

  "That's us."

  "That would be something. Nat wouldn't think it's so funny."

  "Nat is dead," Sarah said.

  "Poor Nat."

  "To me, he's not so poor."

  They continued to see each other every day. Sarah introduced them to her friends and Yetta to hers.

  They went to the clubhouse together, watched the shows, went shopping and sat together at the pool. Minor problems intruded only when the subject of husbands came up.

  "Tomorrow is Abe's birthday," Eve Shapiro announced one day as they sat around the pool. Impending birthdays of dead husbands were special moments of self-pity. "He would have been eighty-six."

  "An old man already," Sarah said.

  "He was twenty years older than me," Eve responded.

  "How much?"

  "Eighteen, actually," Eve said. "And yours?" The question was directed to Yetta.

  "Let's see." She held out her fingers, tapping each one in turn.

  "Seventy-five," Sarah said quickly, too quickly.

  "You know so much about your brother-in-law?" Eve probed.

  "Yes, that's right" Yetta added, as if to buttress Sarah's revelation and deflect Eve's naturally suspicious nature.

  "He would actually be only seventy," Yetta commented later.

  "No. He was seven years older than me."

  "You saw his birth certificate?"

  "No. But when we married he was twenty-five."

  "He said he was forty when we got married."

  "And how long were your married?"

  "Thirty years."

  "Then he would have to be at least seventy-five. We were married twenty years."

  "You think he lied?"

  "Do I think he lied? I know he lied."

  Yetta pondered the matter.

  "Actually I lied, too, so I took off three, four years."

  "What's good for the goose," Sarah said, but she was thinking of other things, the events that had, up to now, demanded a barrier of silence between them. By then, they had known each other six months and Nat had been their common bridge, their meeting place. Always, when the idea popped into Sarah's mind, she resisted, waiting for the right moment.

  "Were you really the other woman, Yetta?" she said finally one day as they walked back from the pool in the declining sunlight, through the well-tended paths. The traffic around them seemed muted, the air soft. A warm breeze rustled the low plantings.

  "Me? The other woman? I was a waitress in the coffee shop downstairs from where he worked. We used to talk a lot. He was a man. I was an old maid."

  "He never..."

  "With me? Never."

  "I thought you did."

  "One night, he called me at home. He said you threw him out. So I let him come in. Look, I was an old maid. I was alone. You know, when you're alone you do strange things. I wasn't a homewrecker. I was alone"

  "He said I threw him out?"

  "That's what he said."

  "Like he was forty instead of forty-five."

  "I was alone," Yetta mumbled. They walked for a while, then Yetta stopped and turned toward Sarah. "You know Nat. He was always weak, a weak man."

  "Weak. That's exactly right. Weak," Sarah agreed. She could barely remember the circumstances of that night. What had she said to him? How had he replied?

  "Does it matter now, Sarah? Does it really matter?"

  She took Yetta's hand and they continued on their way. A few months later, they moved in together in a larger condominium and were known to everybody as the Shankowitz girls.

  A WIDOW IS A VERY DANGEROUS COMMODITY

  At Sarah Gold's funeral, Zaber's smallest funeral chapel was filled to capacity. Many people had to stand throughout the entire ceremony. Murray Gold, though weighted down by grief after the loss of his wife of nearly fifty years, could not contain his surprise at the turnout. He wasn't prepared for Sarah's overwhelming popularity and, while he was secretly proud, he also was perplexed.

  They had been living at Sunset Village for ten years. One of the pioneers, Sarah reminded at every opportunity--especially to new arrivals, as if there was some special status to being among the first residents. Sarah made many friends. She was both gregarious and curious, the two basic attributes of being a yenta. And Sarah was, above all, a yenta.

  "Why do you have to be such a yenta?" Murray admonished her repeatedly. She knew what was simmering in every pot, and he endured her endless chattering about this one and that one, although he rarely commented. What was the use? It was enough for him to find things to do to get through the day. He had never been good at making friends, and after the first few months at Sunset Village, she gave up on him.

  "My Murray is a quiet fellow," he heard her say more than once. "He reads the paper. He sleeps in a chair. He helps me with the shopping and he does the laundry."

  "He doesn't like cards?" one of her friends would ask.

  "He hates cards."

  "He has no hobbies?"

  "He sleeps. That's his hobby."

  "He likes it here?"

  "If I like it here, he likes it here."

  To Sarah, to her friends, to himself, Murray knew, he was considered an "accepted fact." He was simply, irrevocably, Sarah Gold's husband. Most of her friends barely remembered his name. He simply followed her around, a form of appendage, while Sarah reveled in her self-actualized role of being the eyes and ears of Sunset Village. It was not that she ignored him. He was, even to her, an "accepted fact."

  Other husbands played cards, pursued hobbies, watched football games, took long walks, bragged about their previous accomplishments. Not Murray. When Sarah went to her various meetings, her card games, her "yenting" sessions, Murray slept, usually in a chair in front of the television set.

  "How come you didn't go to bed?" she would say when she arrived home in the evenings after her activities.

  "I was waiting up for you."

  She was perplexed, then she would begin to chatter about her evening, telling him about the gossip, who was sick, who bought what, who was feuding with whom, who was two-timing who, whatever, and by the time she had washed her face and put on her nightgown, he was already slipping peacefully beyond understanding.

  It was true that what she liked, he liked. Nearly fifty years of conditioning had confirmed this. Actually, the converse was far too formidable for him to cope with and he finally surrendered to it. When she was unhappy, he was made unhappy. And how.

  Like when the air-conditioning broke down and all her caustic entreaties brought little results from the maintenance people.

  "You're the man in the house," she screamed at him. "You tell them. You march over there right this minute and tell them, 'This will not do.'" She banged her hand on the wall. "I cannot live with this. It is your duty. We pay good money for the maintenance."

  He had, of course, made the usual call to the maintenance people, and they had promised to fix the unit, just as soon as they could get to it. The explanation satisfied him, although he knew he would not be able to placate Sarah.

  "What do you mean, wait our turn? They're lying to you. I never saw such weakness. You go right over there now and tell them. Now. Do you hear? Right this minute." Her voice rose, in an endless mind-boggling cacophony.

  "But I went..." he protested.

  "You went."

  She looked around their one-bedroom apartment, sweltering in the summer heat, the windows open. He was sure the neighbors could hear every word. "What kind of a man are you?" She turned away from him as if talking to someone else in the room. "What kind of a man did I marry? No wonder you never made any money. People step on you. That's what they do. They step all over you
. They use you for a doormat."

  "All right, I'll try tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow? What about tonight?"

  "They're closed tonight."

  "Then get them out of bed." Again she looked away from him.

  "Look what kind of a man I married. What did I do to deserve this?"

  It cost him a hundred dollars, secretly withdrawn from their account, to bribe the maintenance man to fix the air conditioner on his own time. It was either that or endure her wrath. It wasn't the heat as far as he was concerned.

  "You see," she said finally when the air conditioning was fixed. "If I don't push you, nothing gets done." And she was happy. And when she was happy, he was happy. Or, at least, content.

  Occasionally when their son Milton came to visit, he would ask his father if he was enjoying his retirement.

  "Your mother is very happy here."

  "But what about you, Pop?"

  "Me?" It seemed a puzzling question. "I'm happy if your mother's happy."

  Milton would look at him and shrug. Later, when they thought he was asleep on the chair, he would overhear them talking.

  "Is he really happy here, Mom?"

  "Does he look happy?"

  "I can't really tell."

  "In his own way, he's happy."

  Maybe that was true, he thought. She had, after all, always known what was best for him. He hadn't been that good of a provider. The Depression hurt his parents badly, and he never quite recovered from the psychology of failure, holding one lousy job after another.

  Yet Sarah knew how to stretch a dollar and, with Milton's help, they bought this condominium. Better than living in Brooklyn, the way it had become, though he missed certain things. The mornings, especially.

  He loved getting up early, going downstairs to the candy store for his bagel and coffee and reading the New York Times. Maybe things had deteriorated, but he did like walking the streets of New York, the hustle and bustle. Still, he knew that Sarah was happier in Sunset Village and if she was happy, he was happy.

  What right had he to be otherwise? She set a nice table, kept the house neat as a pin. He was a small man, a little hard of hearing now, but thankful that he was able to get around. Not bad for seventy-one, he told himself.