Never Too Late for Love (4 page)

"It's no sin to want more," she said suddenly in
Yiddish, the inflection of the language reassuring.

"We are in for some tough times in the near
future," Velvil said. He was thinking how the telephone lines must be
burning between his wife and their daughters.

"I am prepared," she said calmly, her faltering
resolve shored up as she watched his face. "We will help each other."

By the end of the day, he had sublet a condominium and
moved some of his clothes out of the place he shared with his wife. She had
sobbed bitterly as he packed a small valise, wailing like a mourner at a
graveside. I am not dead yet, he thought, to give himself courage, but he could
not fully control his pity. In ten, maybe fifteen years, it will hardly matter
to anyone, he assured himself. Such a thought bolstered his courage.

They agreed to meet at the poolside that evening. Genendel
was late. When she finally came, he noted again the puffiness of her eyes and a
deepening in the lines of her face, which even in the dim light seemed to have
assumed a gray cast. They began to walk along the path that led around the
pool.

"Your wife called me," Genendel said, her voice
breaking.

"The bitch--"

"Please, Velvil. I understand."

"Was she hysterical?"

"Worse. She accused me of being a whore, of stealing
her husband."

"The bitch. I hope you hung up on her."

"No. I listened. I listened to every word."

"It wasn't necessary."

"It was to me."

He was agitated. He balled his hands and hit them against
his thighs in frustration. They walked for a while in silence.

"Your children will be here tomorrow," she
announced.

"My children?"

"Both daughters and their husbands."

"She told you this?"

"And mine are coming too."

"How awful." He was feeling his indignation now,
searching her face in the darkness for a hint of her reaction.

"I agreed."

"Agreed?"

"When she calmed down, David got on the phone and they
decided that perhaps we should all meet."

"Together?" It would be, he told himself calmly,
a new experience. Perhaps this was what was required. One big final meeting. He
shook his head. "It is sheer madness," he said. "They'll
overwhelm us. We wouldn't have a chance against them."

"What could I say?"

"You could have said no." He willed his anger
under control.

"They have no right. We are entitled to our own life,
to our own decision."

"I said that, but then your son-in-law called."

"Larry?"

"The lawyer."

"That one. You should have hung up the phone. He's the
worst of the lot. He has ten women on the string, a miserable character."
He felt fear at this effort to pry them apart. "We must resist them."

"We are going to meet tomorrow morning."
Genendel's voice broke as she said it. "How could I refuse? They're our
children. Our families."

"I have finished my duty toward them," he said,
sensing the frustration of the impending confrontation. "I have made
enough sacrifices."

"I felt we owed it to them," she said, holding
back her tears.

"I knew it wouldn't be all wine and roses, but I hadn't
expected this."

"Are you sorry?"

"Not sorry," she said, the tears coming now.
"Confused."

"Unsure?"

"Please, Velvil," she said, then sniffled.
"I've been a quiet, peaceful married lady for forty-four years."

"A vegetable."

"Yes, a vegetable. But this kind of aggravation is
more than I think I can take."

"When is the meeting?" he asked stiffly.

"Tomorrow morning. In a room in the clubhouse."

"My God, it is like an innocent family affair, a
family circle."

He bit his lips. "I'm not coming," he said weakly,
knowing his protest was in vain.

"I promised for you."

His anger would not dissipate, and walking her back to her
car in the dark parking lot, he wondered if he had lost her. She should be
coming home with me, he told himself, gathering her in his arms, kissing her
cheeks, tasting the saltiness of her tears.

"Are you slipping away from me?" he whispered.
But she did not answer. She got into the car and drove off, leaving him lonely
and despairing in the darkness, feeling the weight of his years.

During the night, he tossed in the strange bed, going over
imaginary conversations with his children and their husbands, with David, with
Genendel's children. In all of these fantasies, his words sounded hollow,
unpersuasive.

How can an old man talk of love? Even in his own mind, he
sounded like an adolescent. It was only toward morning that he discovered that
the conversations in his imagination were not conversations at all. Information
was transmitted to him, but not from him as he had been talking Yiddish. That idea
restored his courage and calmed him enough for him to fall into semi-slumber.

He timed himself to be the last to arrive. They all looked
toward him, tight, anxious faces masked with bitterness rising like steam. They
had set the room up like a business conference, twelve seats around a long
table. Thankfully, they left one seat empty at the far end of the table. Larry,
his son-in-law, sat at the other end, looking very much like a board chairman.

Genendel was sitting between what must have been her son
and daughter. They resembled her. Dutifully, he kissed the proffered cheeks of
his daughters, who each mumbled something politely. Mimi turned her eyes away.

The scene was ludicrous, he told himself in Yiddish, a
strange assemblage. He knew that the two families had briefed themselves in
advance, had hit upon a strategy and, as he had suspected, had appointed Larry
as their spokesman. Looking at the group, he was surprised at his own calm.

His eyes sought Genendel's, who lifted hers. She had been
crying again, he saw, hoping he could will her to take heart. She looked
defeated and he sensed her indecisiveness. We must free ourselves from them, he
vowed. It is our only hope.

"We felt this was the only way, Pop," Larry
began.

What a pompous ass, Velvil thought, observing him with his
coat opened and the Phi Beta Kappa key dangling from his vest.

He wondered why they hadn't brought the grandchildren. It
was, after all, everybody's business.

"I don't want you both," Larry began unctuously,
"to think of this as any kind of special pressure. We are simply all in
some way involved in these decisions. What we are discussing here are two
families, children, grandchildren, and, essentially, peace of mind. We all have
a genuine interest in your mutual welfare." He paused, as if he were in
court, feeling the strength of his own authority.

Mimi sat stiffly, indignant and sour-faced, but assured and
under control. Velvil watched as David nodded.

"We all honestly feel that if we appealed to your
reason and intelligence, to your practicality and good sense, that you would
conclude that this idea is detrimental to yourselves and all of us," Larry
said.

"As far as I'm concerned, they could both rot in
hell," Mimi suddenly blurted.

Larry turned to her in disgust. "You promised, Ma. You
promised." He banged the table. "We will have none of this, do you
hear?"

"They can still rot in hell." Mimi huffed and
folded her arms over her fat breasts.

"If we allow ourselves to get emotional," Larry
said, glaring at Mimi, "then we might as well adjourn this meeting. We are
here as mature adults discussing what could become a complicated problem, one
that will give us all, everyone in this room, the kind of grief that none of us
have a stomach for. We've all taken time out of our lives to see if we can
solve this problem."

He looked at Velvil. "Now, Pop, my understanding is
that you wish to divorce Mom and marry this woman."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't refer to my mother in
those terms," Genendel's son said.

"I hadn't intended anything disparaging," Larry
said quickly.

"I wish you wouldn't interrupt," Genendel's
daughter said to her brother.

"You realize, of course, Mrs. Goldfarb," Larry
said, looking at Genendel, "that you are encouraging an action that will
result not only in humiliation for your husband and my mother-in-law but
ostracism for yourself and my father-in-law."

"Now you're trying to fix blame," Genendel's son
said. He had his mother's gentle face. Velvil wondered if he was sympathetic, a
thought quickly dispelled. "I don't agree with what they're doing, but I
don't think you can fix blame."

"She's a woman," one of Velvil's daughters
interjected. "She knows that it's the woman who controls the situation.
She encouraged him."

"I resent that," Genendel's son said. "Your
father is not exactly innocent in this matter."

"They should both rot in hell," Mimi said, her
voice booming in the room. "I still say he needs a psychiatrist."

"That's for sure," one of Velvil's daughters said
huffily.

"It's that Yiddish Club," Mimi shouted.
"They should close that Yiddish Club."

"This is getting out of hand," Larry shouted and
banged on the table. He waited until they settled down again.

"You're all acting like a bunch of children."

"I think Mother's right," Larry's wife said.
"Dad needs some help."

But Velvil listened calmly, surveying, in turn, each of the
people around the table allegedly debating their fate. He looked at Genendel
again, observing her calm, which gave him courage.

David Goldfarb wore a long face, the embodiment of gloom.

"You must realize, Pop," Larry said, "that
you're being cruel to all of us. You're breaking up two families. Both of you
are."

He was being manipulative, attempting to use guilt as a
weapon of last resort.

"Are you all right?" Velvil said suddenly to
Genendel in Yiddish.

"I'm not exactly comfortable, but I think I can bear
it."

"You see," Mimi cried, "they're talking
gibberish again."

"Please speak English, Pop," Larry said in
exasperation.

"They are all idiots, Genendel," Velvil said,
sure that his courage had returned. "Nothing they say will matter to
me."

"I feel better now too, Velvil," she said.

He imagined he could see the gray cast to her skin lift and
a healthier color begin.

"They're sick. It's obvious," one of Velvil's
daughters said. She looked at him, glaring. "Will you please speak
English?"

"I'll speak whatever I feel like," he said in
Yiddish.

"See. Was I right?" Mimi asked, posing it as a
general question to the group.

"In order to solve this," Larry said,
"you've got to communicate in a language we can all understand."

"I didn't call this meeting," Velvil said in
Yiddish addressing the group. He could see Genendel smiling. "I don't
think it's any of your business. Who are you to preside in judgment over our
lives? What do any of you know of our lives?"

"Of course," Genendel said in Yiddish. "They
have no right."

She looked around the room. "None of you have any
right."

"What are they saying?" Larry said and stood up.
"Is there anyone here who knows what they're saying?"

"I know what we're saying," Velvil said, feeling
the joy in his strength, in his freedom.

And I know what we're saying," Genendel said.

This is impossible," Genendel's daughter shouted,
turning to her mother.

"I didn't ask you to come," Genendel said,
continuing to speak in Yiddish.

"I can't stand this," Mimi shouted, standing up.
She put a hand over her throat as if she were in agony.

"See what you're doing to her," one of his
daughters said, holding her mother's free hand.

"She's only acting," Velvil said. "Can't
they see that?"

"They know it," Genendel said. She stood up.

"Where are you going, Mother?" Genendel's
daughter shouted.

"That bitch. That whore," Mimi shouted.

"Who are you calling a whore, you fat pig?"
Genendel's daughter said.

"They're a low-class family. Pigs!" one of Velvil's
daughters shouted.

"A whore," Mimi cried, forgetting about her
assumed frailty, pointing her finger at Genendel, then at her husband.

"Rot in hell. Both of you."

"My conscience is clear," Genendel said quietly.

"We can still make the Cycling Club, Genendel,"
Velvil said quietly.

"A wonderful idea," Genendel responded. She moved
toward him, reaching for his arm. They stood now together at the end of the
table, looking at the faces of their families.

"Please," Larry persisted. "If you will all
sit down..." But neither of them was listening.

"Who are these people?" Velvil asked, as they
turned and proceeded toward the door, arm-in-arm.

"I guess some people we used to know," Genendel
said, as they walked out of the room.

"Cousin Irma," Sarah whispered, as she looked
again at the signature below the message on the New Year's card, tapping her
finger on the edge of her coffee cup. "Who is Cousin Irma?"

She studied the card, the postmark, "New York City"
in the center of the canceled imprint and the name "Mrs. Nathaniel Z.
Shankowitz" with her Sunset Village address. She searched through the
imaginary archives of the family tree, both on her and her ex-husband's side,
finally shaking her head in defeat.

"Do I have a Cousin Irma?" she asked herself. It
was a mystery.

When her son called from Connecticut on the Jewish New
Year, she quickly disposed of the amenities and asked him the question that was
on the surface of her mind.

"Do I have a Cousin Irma?"

"Who?"

"That's what I said. Your Uncle Eddie has Rebecca and
Arthur and my father and mother, your grandmother, had no other relatives in
this country..." She paused, shook her head and shrugged. She emitted a
sigh of surrender.

"Maybe it's the wrong address?"

"No." She paused again. "Did your father
ever have a Cousin Irma?" Even twenty-five years of divorce did not temper
the unmistakable acid tone. After the divorce, Nat had always been "your
father," the tone heavy with sarcasm as if he were some terrible obscenity,
which he was, of course, in her mind.

"Not that I remember," the son said. He was used
to such inferences and let it pass tactfully, a posture that always annoyed
her, triggering old insecurities and suspicions.

"What would you know about him anyway?" she said,
feeling her own crankiness emerge. Since the divorce, he had only seen him a
few times and that was soon after he had left the house. She sensed his
annoyance and knew that she had, as always, gone too far.

"Well, it's not important" she said finally.
"Look, I'm grateful you called, darling. Happy New Year and send my
regards." The implication was clear. His wife wanted no part of her, an
old divorcée with an only son. Who could blame her? She understood and was
happy to get his periodic calls.

Now that she got her son's call, she would be able to
report that fact to the yentas around the pool and the pity would pass on to
some other poor woman whose ungrateful children hadn't called on New Year's.

"Your Barry didn't call?"

"He called last week."

"He didn't call on New Year's?"

"They had company. Her people came all the way from Chicago."

"That's an excuse?"

It was a form of torture she really did not like to hear.
It was bad enough that she had been a divorcée. Even at sixty-eight, such
status had its special distinctions in the pecking order of the Sunset Village yentas. A married woman was the highest order of female, with her
credentials descending in the order of the condition of her husband's health. A
woman with a vigorous healthy husband was on the highest rung of yenta envy. At
next to the last rung of the ladder, lower than the women with the most sickly
and debilitated husbands, lower than the varying gradations of widowhood, was
the divorcée, further graded by the chronology of the divorce. A woman divorced
beyond twenty-five years, like Sarah Shankowitz, was just short of yenta
purgatory. Purgatory, the lowest rung, was the old maid, although woman's lib
had provided some measure of late respectability to the condition.

If Sarah Shankowitz knew what was in store for her, she
might never have precipitated the action that sealed her fate. She knew she had
made a mistake in prompting the divorce from Nat, but she never confided that
to anybody.

"You have your pride," her best friend Mildred
had advised. She lived in the apartment across the hall and every day, when the
husbands and the children had gone off to work and school, they spent the
morning over coffee, sharing the intimacies of their lives. Neither of them
were what might be called "liberated" women. They lived their lives
as their mothers did, housewives who manned the homefront while others in the
family went out into the world.

"Maybe he's getting senile early. He doesn't seem
interested anymore," Sarah confided to Mildred one day. They had begun to
share little secrets and, on the days when self-pity emerged in Sarah's heart,
Mildred would rise to the occasion with energy and investigative zeal. Encased
in fat, her big unburdened breasts resting over a bloated belly, she had an air
of superior wisdom and self-satisfaction. Perhaps it was the flesh itself that
gave her the illusion of solidity, but the less assertive Sarah envied her
confidence and what she supposed then, her worldliness. Mildred tapped two fat
fingers into a dimpled palm.

"Show me bed trouble and I'll show you marriage
trouble."

"I'm not exactly Marilyn Monroe."

"How long has it been?"

"Maybe a month." Actually, she remembered, she
had lied by half. "But he works so hard," Sarah had added quickly.
"He comes home and sleeps in the chair." Nat was a cutter in the
garment district. "It's not easy."

"That's no excuse."

"Maybe he should see a doctor. He might have just lost
his pep."

"They don't lose their pep so easily," Mildred
said cryptically.

"To tell you the truth, I don't really care that much
about it."

"What has that got to do with the price of fish in
Canarsie?"

"But you noticed?"

"Certainly I noticed." Despite her confidences,
she still maintained a delicacy when it came to sex. Perhaps, Sarah thought,
she had confided too much, but now that the floodgates were open, Mildred
persisted.

"I make sure my Sam is always interested."

"How do you do that?"

Mildred smiled, her jowls tightening. Sarah found it
difficult to think of her in that context, especially since Mildred was such a
big woman and Sam so slight.

"I don't give away trade secrets."

But the matter became a constant inquiry and Sarah could
not bring herself to lie about it.

"Not yet?"

"No." She would twist and untwist her fingers.
Seeking something to do, she would pour more coffee, which only made her more
nervous than she was.

"You know it could be another woman?" Mildred
said one day, lowering her voice as if the walls could eavesdrop. It was, of
course, a seed planted. That had been the farthest thought from Sarah's mind.
Other women were not in the range of her experience. She had been married at
eighteen, twenty years ago. Life was making a living, making ends meet, taking
care of her son, cleaning the house, going shopping every day for food, talking
to Mildred. And on Sundays, they would go to his mother's, Friday nights to her
parents'. Occasionally, they would go out to eat Chinese food or to the movies.
Other women? That was only on the soap operas.

But despite her skepticism, the idea was loose in her mind,
rattling around like clicking marbles, causing her to look at Nat in some new
way. She watched him snoring in his chair and could not conceive of such a
thing.

He wasn't exactly Cary Grant himself, with his bald pate,
pale skin and hawklike nose, although she once had thought him very attractive.

Besides, he was rarely out of her sight. Except for the
twice-a-month meetings of his Veterans' group, he was always home at the
regular time, tired, a bit-forlorn, but home. Of course, there was the
once-a-month union meetings but those, too, were part of the regular routine.
Mildred was crazy she decided. My Nat, a philanderer? It was an absurdity. Yet
the idea persisted.

Finally, one night in bed, she became mildly aggressive,
moving toward his sleeping body and attempting a furtive caress. It was, of
course, contrary to all the tenets of her upbringing. A woman waits. A woman
submits. Nat merely gulped, shrugged her away and continued his snoring.

"He rejected me," she told Mildred the next day,
having been up the rest of the night, turning a bleak future over in her mind.

"I think you got trouble, Sarah," Mildred
responded, the hint of dire foreboding in her tone. She crossed her fat arms
over her ample bosoms, clucked her tongue, and shook her head from side to
side. Nothing more needed to be said. Sarah was an object of pity.

"So what should I do?" She felt the tears well in
her eyes, and Mildred's bulk swam in the mist.

"Talk. You got a tongue," Mildred scolded, her
disgust at Sarah's passivity and helplessness unmistakable.

"And suppose it's true?"

"You'll cross that bridge when you come to it."

That night after she had finished the dishes and her son
sat down at the table to do his homework, she went into the living room and
shook Nat awake. Startled, he opened his eyes and looked at her, first with
annoyance.

She must have seemed compelling, because his attitude
quickly changed to alertness.

"I want to talk to you, Nat," she said, standing
over him, rubbing her moist hands along the sides of her flowered housedress, stained
with the recent soap suds.

"Now?"

"Now."

"So talk."

"What's going on?" She felt her courage leaving
her as she assessed what she thought was guilt in his response. Maybe she
should leave it alone, she thought, but the image of Mildred and her remembered
sternness persisted. He didn't answer and turned his eyes to the ceiling in an
attitude of exasperation.

"I'm pooped. I worked hard all day. Goldstein was a
son-of-a-bitch. The patterns were two inches off. I don't need this
aggravation." It seemed an overreaction at first. After all, no
accusations had, as yet, been made.

"Something's going on," Sarah probed, wishing
Mildred could see her, feeling her strength gather.

"There's nothing going on." He had answered too
swiftly, she thought. Then he paused, looked quizzical. "What should be
going on?"

"You know." She imagined her gaze was
intimidating, the rebuke forbidding but clear.

"What do I know?"

"You think I'm stupid, huh Nat? Dumb stupid Sarah.
That's what you think." Her hands were on her hips."Well, I got
eyes." She pointed to her eyes. "I got ears." She pointed to her
ears. "I got instincts." She pointed to her head. Then she drove her
finger into his chest.

"You think you're fooling me?"

The finger pressed hard into his chest and he winced.
"Whaddymean fooling?" He was being defensive now, and she suspected
now that he was hiding something. "A woman knows," she said. It was
Mildred's line, almost Mildred's voice.

He pushed her finger away and stood up, pacing the floor,
moving his fingers through his hair. She recognized the gesture. My God, I
think Mildred was right, she thought, her heart sinking. It had gone too far.
She watched him pacing the floor.

"All right," he said finally. "So it's
true."

"Its true?"

She could not reconcile his admission to her expectations.
She was prepared for a denial. It wasn't possible. She felt her knees grow weak
and the blood drain from her head. It was one thing merely to suspect. But to
know was hell. He looked at her and opened empty palms, a picture of abject surrender.
"I hadn't meant it to happen."

"I don't want to hear it."

"You don't think I'm ashamed?"

"It's too late."

"Too late?"

"How can I live with it?"

"What can I say?"

Her strength was returning, but on waves of self-pity,
white caps of anger. "I've been a good, a faithful wife. A good mother. I
worked hard. I kept a clean house. I cooked. I saved." Her voice rose. Nat
put a finger over his lips, his eyes looking toward the kitchen. "You
disgraced me. You disgraced your son," she hissed.

Their son, hearing the raised voices, had come into the
living room. Nat turned to him and pointed, in the direction of the kitchen.

"Go do your homework. We're having a discussion."

"You're making too much noise."

"Go ahead. Tell it in front of him. Sure. Talk in
front of him. Why not? Let him know what kind of a man his father is."

"Go back to your homework," Nat pressed their
son.

"No. Stay here," Sarah shouted. "Listen to
your wonderful father. Let him tell it in front of you about his
escapades."

"Would you please go back to your homework?"

"Don't. Stay!" Sarah screamed.

It seemed to go on interminably with the son looking
bemused, rotating his gaze from mother to father, like a wind-up toy, fixed in
one spot, with only the head being able to pivot.

"If you don't go, I'll go," Nat finally said. The
boy stood rooted. Finally, Nat stalked off to the closet, got his hat and coat,
and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him, shaking some
bric a brac off the shelves.

"See," she said. "That's the kind of man
your father is." Then she burst into tears and the confused boy went back
to the kitchen.

She stayed up all night, listening for his footsteps in the
hall. But they never came. Once, she put on her coat over her nightgown, went
downstairs and stood in the vestibule watching for him. The streets were empty
and soon the cold seeped into her bones and she went upstairs again.

"You have your pride," Mildred said the next
morning. Sarah's hands shook as she lifted the coffee cup to her mouth.
"Believe me, I know my onions when it comes to men." Her round fat
face seemed to glow with satisfaction.

"Now what?" Sarah asked. She was totally
disoriented. It was the first time since her marriage that her morning had any
break in its normal routine. Her ears were still turned to the hallway. She
dared not think where he had spent the night.

"He'll come crawling."

"He will?"

"Wait."

"And then?"

"Then you let him crawl. But not right away. He's got
to suffer first."

"Suppose he doesn't."