The Girls (12 page)

“Naomi was in love with that guy, and he wasn’t part black, you just made that up to excuse her.”

“I don’t need to make up anything to excuse Eva and Naomi. I don’t consider they committed any crime. And I didn’t mean that part about him being black the way you took it.”

“It’s a crime. Abortion’s a crime. Rabbi Shulman said so.”

“Well, let Rabbi Shulman try having a baby at a terrible time in his life when he can’t cope. Let him try it.”

“Rabbi Shulman is a wonderful man nearly ninety years old, Jenny, so show some respect. And you’re telling me that Eva, safely married—because she had to be if you were old enough to know about it—that Eva chose to have an abortion instead of a baby?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Jenny said, worn out but dragging herself through the proof. “She left the kids for the weekend, and it turned out that what Eva said was poison ivy was really the measles the kids were sick with, but she couldn’t tell Mama the truth, and we took care of them for her. We played checkers, slap the jack, and go fish till we were ready to drop. You remember. She came to pick them up looking so white and sick I was terrified for her. Mama said, ‘What kind of weekend at the beach you come back paler than you went?’ and Eva told her some cockamamie story about it raining the whole time. I thought they messed up some way, those awful doctors. Back then, they botched up horribly. I was sure she had been harmed. She looked awful.”

Flora burst into tears. “All you remember are the bad things.”

“Dammit, don’t start crying again. That wasn’t bad,” Jenny pleaded. “We helped. We loved them. We worried. It was dangerous, they had to have guts to do it, and we were good to them, both of us. We understood. You helped as much as I did.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Flora said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jenny said. She was very tired.

“It does matter. You twist everything around. Now suddenly you’re the broad-minded worldly person who knows all about sex, when you’ve always been a goody-good puritan disapproving of everything I did, jealous of all the men I had and acting superior about everything.” Flora was working herself into a fury. “And another thing. You never had a man I didn’t get for you. I introduced you to both your husbands. Without me you never even would have had a man.” Then, fiercely, “When was the last time you had sex anyway?”

Jenny thought,
Why am I answering her?
“A long time ago. The year before Paul died. He was too sick that whole year before he died.”

“For God’s sake, Jenny, that was almost five years ago. You mean you haven’t had sex in five years? And you dare to act as if I’m some kind of backward ignoramus and you’re the liberated enlightened—”

Now it was Jenny who burst into tears and Flora who took Jenny in her arms and rocked her back and forth, soothing and smoothing, pledging over and over that she would never hurt Jenny again, saying, “Sorry sorry sorry,” and then, “But what did I do, what did I say, I didn’t mean anything, if I did do something wrong I didn’t mean to, I love you, you came as soon as I called, I’ll never forget that. There are only the two of us left now, let’s help one another, Eva and Naomi are on the downslide, it’s only a matter of time with them, soon there will only be us left, no one else to depend on but us, let’s lean on one another.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t mean to cry,” Jenny answered. “I’m tired, I’m upset, we’ll do better tomorrow. Time to go to bed now, call it a day. Let’s call it a day.”

T
HE EVENING OF THE
day of Naomi’s operation, Jenny made the mistake of taking a bath instead of a shower. She had always loved baths, running the hot water until it foamed with good-smelling oily bubbles, resting there for a solid hour if it pleased her. And it did please her, even in the stained, too-small tub of her oceanfront room, until it came time to get up and out and she couldn’t. Get up or get out. She couldn’t. She couldn’t haul her body up and out of the tub, which, as if cursed, had been transformed into a loathsome tomb holding her fast.

Grabbing the sides of the tub and pulling herself erect didn’t work. Her body, the tub, the water were all too well oiled. She twisted, tried getting on one knee. She slipped and slid, hurting her back. She tried other positions, straining every muscle. Nothing worked. She would die in Miami after all, trapped in a bubble bath. She lay back, gathering strength, quieting her racing heart, forcing herself to think.

If she emptied the bath water, ran fresh water over herself and the tub? Worth a try. Removing all traces of the oil took a long time. Impatient, she made several attempts to pull herself up during the process, but couldn’t. She laughed at the ridiculousness of her predicament, saw the scene as from the outside, then cried, sorry for this poor old body stuck in a bathtub. In a tremendous last-ditch effort she managed to kneel, and with another great effort stand up and miraculously step out of the tub. She felt as if she had won the lottery. Shaking, crying, laughing, she toweled, powdered, put on a gown, and got into bed, more exhausted than she had ever been in her life.

The day had been a mess. She had been alone in the mess, Flora busy with arrangements for her upcoming performance. Jenny had hired a medical van to get Naomi to the hospital, and once there, she had wheeled Naomi from station to station, filling out forms, endlessly waiting. The forms and the formalities completed, she wheeled her sister to a section of the hospital where Naomi was prepared for the operation by way of a long, mysterious process that took more than two hours, from which Jenny was excluded. Naomi described it to her later as mostly more waiting, though there had been some measuring, some X-raying, some marking of the groin.

Jenny waited. And waited. She waited in differently decorated locales, waited longest in a brilliantly green gardenlike room resembling a TV sitcom set. She leafed through magazines, reading a few lines of many different articles that blurred before her senses. Whether the journalists wrote of high events or low, the words all turned to nonsense in her head.

In between wheeling Naomi about and carrying papers and X-rays to various locations, she talked cheerful nonsense to ease Naomi’s depressed panic. At last they arrived at what seemed to be the final waiting room, soberly done in brown and gold, filled with patients and their caretakers marking time in the dull air of preoperative tension. It was there that Jenny learned Naomi was in an outpatient operating facility where the ill were cut up, allowed to recover for a few hours in still another crowded waiting room, and then sent home. In the brochure this procedure was described as a great new innovation that did the patient much good.

Jenny threw a fit, causing consternation among the nurses, attendants, and clerks within a bustling enclosure at one end of the room. She threw it quietly, not to disturb Naomi or the other patients. Nobody outside the enclave paid attention. All those waiting inside seemed to be afflicted with a numb, sickly despair.

“She’s ninety years old,” Jenny repeated in a strong whisper. “She lives in a residence, in a room. Alone. She’s alone. There’s no way I’m going to take her back to her residence right after the operation. You’re keeping her here, in the hospital, where she belongs, where she can be taken care of.”

“It’s not
right
after,” a clerk said. “We keep them here for a number of hours until they’re able to—”

“You’re out of your mind,” Jenny said. “She’s ninety years old. You might as well tell her to get up out of her wheelchair and run around the block. I want to speak to her surgeon.”

“We carefully explained the procedure to the patient, and gave her a brochure.”

“Wonderful,” Jenny said. “Tell the brochure to take her back to her residence, because I won’t. She needs to stay in the hospital after an operation. She’s ninety years old.”

It became Jenny’s litany. She intoned it to more clerks, more nurses, then interns, anesthesiologists, doctors, and finally to Naomi’s surgeon, a sixtyish handsome man, all charm and reassurance. Naomi would be kept in hospital care as long as needed. One night certainly, two or three if necessary. All this brouhaha Jenny managed out of hearing of Naomi, who complained of Jenny’s desertion.

“I thought you came to be with
me
until I go under the knife. Where do you keep disappearing to? I know I’m a terrible bother, but please stay with me, Jenny, I’m really nervous. I know you love to talk to people, but please …”

Jenny stayed. She was given permission to stay through all the preliminaries, through the nurses’ questions and routine examinations. She hung on through the move to a large open room like an emergency or intensive care division, she tied and retied Naomi’s flowered hospital gown, she watched a nurse help Naomi into a gurney bed, she stayed and smoothed the covers. Naomi’s serene, amazingly young head remained itself in this alienating setting, though her clear hazel eyes continued to plead.
Stay with me.
Jenny stayed. She held Naomi’s hand, she made little jokes. One bed was empty. Five others were occupied by patients in varying stages of sedation. Doctors and nurses ran in and out. Little bells rang. Buzzers buzzed. Beepers beeped. Another long wait made Naomi fret. She was hot, cold, thirsty, dyspeptic, her legs ached, she had a stitch in her side, and from time to time she whimpered, “Don’t let them hurt me, Jenny.”

A breezy young nurse deftly set up an intravenous through Naomi’s papery skin. A breezy young doctor joined the nurse, blocking Jenny’s vision. Naomi accused Jenny when they left: “That hurt, they hurt me.” Soon she was under sedation, rambling happily out of the hospital world into a warm place of love and laughter. She told an incomprehensible joke. She sang, “‘It’s a long road to Tipperary, it’s a long road to home.’” She giggled and sang, “‘Ain’t misbehavin, I’m savin my love for you.’” She raised Jenny’s hand to her lips and kissed Jenny’s fingers. “My baby sister, my dear baby sister.” She was smiling, happy. Jenny kissed her on her fine, clear forehead.

There was no place for Jenny to sit, but she thought she’d better not create another disturbance by requesting a chair. As long as they let her stay. She stood. Her legs ached. Her feet burned. She stayed. Naomi fell asleep. Jenny considered searching for a comfortable chair, a toilet, a cup of coffee, but what if Naomi woke to find her gone? She stayed. Naomi did wake when she was wheeled away, woke to smile and reach out a hand to Jenny to come with her, but Jenny was briskly told to wait in the outer room; it would be a matter of a few hours, the surgeon would come to speak to her after the operation. And then, more kindly, by the same breezy nurse, she was urged to relax, get something to eat, take a little walk, not to worry.

It was too hot to walk very far. She meandered along the paths of the huge complex of structures, walkways, parking lots, building names, the Sol and Minnie Rosenblatt Center for Psychological Disorders, the George P. Isserman Eye and Ear Institute, the Florence Cohen Brown Dentistry Center, in and out of the shade, dizzy from the heat and anxiety for Naomi, among plantings of deep green shrubs and banks of impatiens. It was a little like getting lost in the Maine woods, where the massive tree you’ve just encountered looks a lot like the one you left behind some time ago, and is in fact the same. All medical buildings loomed alike, whatever the donors’ names attached.

Impatiens everywhere. Jenny loved impatiens, used it herself in her window boxes at home, but was learning to loathe the innocent blossoms in Miami. Odd that it was called both impatiens and patience—or had she got that wrong, along with her other late, faulty knowledge of the botanical world? She found herself turned around, directionless, in a blazing hot parking lot where an American black man and a Latino were having a repetitive two-sentence dispute.

The black man had his hand on the door of an aged Mercedes Benz in excellent shape. “I heard what you said,” he shouted. “I know what you meant.” He was large, bearded, bald, dressed in pressed chinos and a white top that said “Tommy” in large blue letters in front and “Hilfiger” in large black letters in back. “I heard what you said. I know what you meant.”

The Latino, equally large but smooth-faced, wore blue jeans and a navy blue cotton V-neck that said “Syracuse” in white stitching across the center of a large orange-and-white S. “Wad I say? Wad? Wad I say?” His wife, or girlfriend, a pretty young woman in shorts and a yellow flounce-collared top that said “Romantique” in a wavering script of pale multicolors, wasn’t paying any attention to the exchange, though her guy kept appealing to her as much as to the black man, throwing out his arms and putting on a face of exaggerated innocence. “Wad I say? Wad?”

Jenny moved on into the shade of the nearest building and ducked inside. She had entered the very heart of the medical industry, the general hospital. The lobby was alive with activity, as crowded and noisy as an airport. She breathed easier in the cool of the air conditioning and managed to claim one of the black Naugahyde attached-to-one-another chairs that had emptied at that moment. Surely in this place of business there must be a satisfactory lavatory and cafeteria, perhaps even an upholstered chair with arms. She rested in the bustle of moving bodies, beepers, loud talk, announcements. Somewhere in this industrial complex Naomi’s life was being saved or ended or prolonged into intervals of better and worse while the immense machinery of health care went about its lucrative business. Jenny hoisted herself laboriously to her feet. Ladies’ room. Cafeteria. To pee. To comb her hair. To eat. To keep going.

The ladies’ room was fine, clean and properly stocked, but the cafeteria was overwhelming, an enormous space, entered through the serving area, redolent with warring food smells. Overflowing bread baskets, overflowing salad bar, fresh fruit bar, freshly made sandwich section, hot food—Cuban, Chinese, Southern fried chicken, vegetarian, pasta with varied sauces—low-fat low-salt health stuff, refrigerated cases of desserts, juices, sodas, tables of hot coffee and tea, regular, decaffeinated, and herbal. In a nostalgic rush of longing for her dead husband, Jenny joined the Cuban line, waiting her turn to order a meal she couldn’t finish, could hardly begin on, actually, when after negotiating the long lines of receiving and paying and beverage getting she finally seated herself in the huge dining area and studied her plate: Cuban thin steak covered with wilted onions on a bed of shredded lettuce, white rice and black beans, side of
plátanos maduras,
and the white melon-textured vegetable whose name she had forgotten but had requested from the server by pointing. The food conjures up her husband, young, grinning at her, teasing. “You’re going to eat all that? Never.” A young Jenny smiles too. “Don’t rush me. Pig. You’ll get the leftovers when I finish.”