Getting Old Is Criminal (9 page)

“But he did come and say good-bye to me and that he hoped I was okay after my close call with the pervert.”

Gone. I can’t believe it.

I walk outside, head down, lost in my troubled thoughts. Where did Jack go? Maybe to finish an unfinished romantic vacation on some other beautiful island with someone else? What was my crime? That I ruined our vacation? Wasn’t I just as frustrated as he was? So I worried about my girls.

Thanks a lot, Jack, for being so understanding! I’m so mad I want to spit.

“Gladdy?”

Startled, I look up and Jack is standing there.

Right in front of me. Dressed for traveling. With a suitcase. For a second I think I’m hallucinating.

But, no, it is him.

I try to cover my astonishment. “Coming or going?” I say sarcastically.

His eyebrows rise and he stares at me for a moment. “I’m going away for a few days. I came back home to pick up a couple of things first.”

He doesn’t offer to tell me where he’s going and I’ll be damned if I’ll ask. “I was interviewing Dora.

About her Peeper.” God forbid he should think I was there looking for him.

Even though I really was.

8 0 • R i t a L a k i n

“Come on up,” he tells me. “Let me drop my suitcase and I’ll make us a cup of coffee.”

I am torn. What should I do? Play hard to get?

Indifferent? Show him how upset I am? Or just see what happens?

He doesn’t wait for my answer. He assumes I’m following him, that egotist! What am I having de-bates with myself for? I came here to see him and here he is. Huffing and puffing, I hurry after him up the stairs.

*

*

*

The few times I’ve been in Jack’s apartment, I’ve never felt at ease. I’m still not comfortable even though it’s a pleasant place, tastefully done, definitely with a woman’s touch. His late wife, Faye’s.

And I know he’s uneasy for the same reason. As he makes coffee, I glance yet again at the family pictures of earlier times. Jack and Faye smiling up at each other with Morrie and his sister, Lisa, looking like the happy kids they were. Jack and Faye’s wedding photo. How young and lovely they looked. How adoringly they gaze at each other.

Jack serves me the coffee just as I like it, one sugar and very little milk.

I thank him and he says, “You’re welcome.”

And here we are. I’m balanced on the very edge of the peach floral couch. He’s perched on the rim of the matching armchair that faces it.

“So . . .” I’m the first to break the silence.

“So, what?”

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 1

Oy, enough already. “Sew buttons.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what my mother used to say when we kept saying ‘so.’ ” At Jack’s puzzled look I bat my hand at him. “Don’t bother trying to get it. It’s a non sequitur.”

“Oh. So. Sew buttons. I get it.”

I’m running out of repartee. “Jack. Where are we?”

“In my apartment.”

“Funny.”

He finally smiles. I do, too.

“I’ve missed you,” I admit.

He doesn’t comment. I want to reach out and touch his hands, which are folded on his lap. They are only inches away. If I touch them, he’ll touch me and we’ll be all right again. I can’t do it and he won’t. His hands might as well be back in Pago Pago. The chasm between us is too deep.

As if reading my mind, he moves his hands to the arm of the chair. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking . . .”

I don’t like the way that sounds. Come on, let’s kiss and make up. I want to say it, but first I need to know how he feels about me.

“And . . . ?”

“I think we need to separate for a while.”

Separate? I feel my body stiffen and my eyes widen in shock. “Why?” I blurt.

“Because you’re not ready for me.”

I stand and pace around the room. “Just because I told Bella where we’d be? I was committed 8 2 • R i t a L a k i n

to you. Didn’t I fly for sixteen uncomfortable hours to run away with you? I was as upset as you were that we were . . . interrupted.”

He stands, too, looking eager. “All right. I already have a packed suitcase. I’ll just grab my passport. Let’s go back to your apartment and you pack a quick bag and leave a note. We’ll go to the airport and hop onto the first flight going anywhere.”

I automatically take a step away from him. “Wait.

What’s the hurry? We don’t have to rush off.”

“Why not? What if I say, we’ll find the first judge, or a rabbi, if you insist, and get married.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t we tell our families and friends first?”

“We can inform them afterward, when we get back, and then we’ll have a big party.”

I don’t know how to respond. My mind is running in a dozen directions.

“Glad. Do you see what you’re doing? You keep stepping backward. Not forward. Not to me.”

I stop in my tracks. I suddenly realize that I’ve moved halfway across the living room away from him. “You’re confusing me. First you’re angry and you are ready to leave without telling me where you’re going. You don’t call. I worry myself sick wondering where you are. Or if you’ll ever talk to me again. Now I accidentally run into you, and you’re racing me out the door to the nearest altar.”

“And what’s so bad about that?

“I need to think.”

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 3

“About what?”

“I don’t know. This is too fast.”

“What are you waiting for? When we get to be ninety?”

I find myself shouting. “I don’t know!”

He’s shouting, too. “Gladdy. What will it take for you to be ready? What will it take to make you sure? What do I have to do?”

I keep shaking my head as if to clear the cob-webs. Why can’t he understand?

Now his voice gets lower. And he is shaking his head, too. “I’m sorry. I can’t make us work. To paraphrase the poet, ‘she who hesitates is lost.’ ”

He strides out the door and leaves me standing there.

A moment later, he sheepishly walks back in. “I forgot. I live here.”

With that I race past him and slam the door behind me.

TWELVE

R AIN AND PAIN

Ihurry back to Phase Two. I walk fast and I talk out loud to myself. I feel crazed. What did I do?

I’ve lost Jack again. What’s wrong with me?

What’s wrong with him? What was so terrible if I didn’t want to run away with him and elope that very second? Wet, sloppy tears run down my face.

Huge wet tears. Then I realize it’s raining. That’s rain pouring down my face. Big sloppy tears of rain. The rain is crying with me. It’s a typical Florida instant downpour. It feels like tons of water drowning me. Drowning me and my sorrow.

Why did I think I could ever find love again? It’s too hard. It’s too much . . . what? Pressure? Is that what I feel? Why can’t Jack understand how much my girls mean to me? How much we’ve all needed one another and helped one another through the G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 5

years? I just can’t abandon them. He acts as if it’s so simple. Let’s just run off. But life is more complex than that.

A few people run past me hurrying for shelter. I don’t want shelter. I want to drown standing up. I want to keep running in this downpour forever.

“That’s it!” I scream to the skies. “I’ve had it!

How dare he tell me I’m not ready? How dare he make me move to his time clock? And what about all those beautiful words he said to me that first night in the Greek restaurant? It doesn’t matter how much time we have left. A year. A month. As long as we’re together. What happened to those sentiments? He’s dumped me again!”

Someone passes me, looks at this crazy, drenched woman screaming to the skies. She pauses. Thinks maybe I need help, and then another cloud bursts and she runs to the nearest sheltered area.

“That’s it, Jack Langford. Forget it. I’m done.

Not one more tear will I shed for you. Not one more thought will I give this stupid relationship.

I’m through! I’m going to get on with my life. I was fine before I met you, Jack Langford, and I’ll do very well without you, again!”

*

*

*

The first thing I hear when I reach our club room is Tessie saying, “Let’s kill all the doctors.”

Ida says, “That’s supposed to be lawyers.”

8 6 • R i t a L a k i n

“Them, too.” Tessie sees me before the others do. “Look what the cat dragged in!”

I am totally soaked and my teeth are chattering.

The room is filled with women now staring at me. They are seated in a huge circle, sewing. Then I realize, it’s the monthly Hadassah meeting.

Lola jumps right on me. “You’re too dumb to come in out of the rain?” She takes after her husband, Hy, quick with the unkind cuts.

I see my girls and instantly realize that Bella, Ida, and Sophie are sitting next to one another as usual, and Evvie is seated as far away from them as possible. I guess the feud is still going strong.

Evvie jumps up and runs over to me. She takes her sweater and wraps it around me.

“Florence Nightingale, she thinks she is,” says Sophie snidely. Evvie shoots her a dirty look. The girls won’t be quick to forgive Evvie for grabbing the plum role of being my partner when and if we go to Wilmington House. More aggravation. Just what I need.

Ida yells, “Someone turn the air down or she’ll get pneumonia.” Nobody moves quickly enough, so she turns the thermostat up herself.

I am still shaking. But I don’t know if it’s from the rain or shock or just plain rage. I try to calm myself. Sophie hurries over and offers me some hot tea. She avoids looking at Evvie.

“We got caught in the rain, too,” Irving says.

He’s with Millie in her wheelchair, seated near the door. Of course, Yolie is there with them, holding G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 7

Millie’s hand. All three look bedraggled. Irving waves to me.

“Come see how we’re doing,” Mary suggests, holding up the square she’s working on. Their Hadassah chapter’s good works project is making quilts for underprivileged children. The colors are bright and the patterns cheerful. This was Ida’s idea.

Someone pulls a chair over for me, and one of the members who had come in to the meeting directly from swimming offers me her towels to dry myself.

Sophie informs me that they were in the middle of an important discussion. Doctors. “Of course, I was bragging about my darling Dr.

Friendly.”

Ida shoots me a look of resignation. “As if we could shut her up.”

I think dismally to myself, it was Sophie’s “condition” that brought me to my current misery. But I can’t blame sweet Sophie; I can only blame myself for causing it to happen. If only I could have . . . I stop myself. Woulda coulda shoulda . . .

Sophie has a real problem and my feeling sorry for myself won’t help her. I think about Sophie and her pills and wonder if Esther Ferguson took pills, too.

Maybe too many? Or maybe Romeo fed her pills along with romance. But I can’t think now. My brain feels too fuzzy.

“We were also sharing war stories. Of some of the terrible experiences people have had with 8 8 • R i t a L a k i n

doctors and hospitals,” Mary informs me as she offers me a cookie. Mary used to be a nurse and she ought to know. “My poor cousin went to Mexico for a cure for her MS. I warned her not to go. They injected her with bee venom and charged her twenty thousand dollars. They almost killed her down there.”

Tessie says, “I was telling them about my niece who went into the hospital for a knee replacement and they replaced the wrong one.”

The women continue sewing while they talk.

From what I can tell, they are already at the piec-ing process where they sew all their small cotton fabric patches together to create the pattern of the top half of the quilt.

I should take part in this discussion, but I don’t want to. I let myself lean back against the wall and close my eyes and allow the pleasant hum of words to wash over me.

“Well,” Chris Willems, from Phase One, comments, “I hear hospitals now write on the leg in ink saying ‘cut this one.’ ”

“It’s about time,” adds Jean Davis from Phase Four.

“I had a doctor tell me I had something called fi-bro myalgia. Which I didn’t have. And later on I found out he told all his patients the same thing.

Maybe he owned stock in Celebrex.” This from Tessie.

“Maybe he was just lazy,” comments Bella.

“Well, things like that wouldn’t happen with my G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 9

GP, Dr. Friendly. In fact, I think he’s found a cure for Alzheimer’s.” Sophie announces this with great pride.

Ida reaches over and pokes her. “Don’t talk stupid. No one has such a cure.”

Sophie pokes Ida back, barely missing her with her embroidery scissors. “And how do you know he doesn’t?”

Evvie glances over toward Irving, who’s sitting with Millie, listening to this. She whispers to Sophie. “Miss Insensitive, be quiet.”

“What are we supposed to do? We’re old and helpless.” Ellie Fisher, in her nineties, from Phase Three, says this in a small, frightened voice. “Our lives are in their hands.” She puts down her sewing to dab at the tears in her weak eyes.