Never Too Late for Love (10 page)

"Do I always have to tell you what to do?" He
imagined he heard her voice, listening closely for any additional advice. Then
the phone rang. It was Minnie Schwartz...

"I'm willing to forgive and forget," she said.
"For the time being..."

"Good" he said. "I was getting hungry."
He heard her mumble something, then the phone clicked dead, and he sat on his
chair waiting for her to arrive.

She had first noticed him from across the huge card room of
the main clubhouse, a side view, faintly familiar, but it did not cross her
mind again until she sat at the little dressing table in the bedroom of her
condominium rubbing off her make-up. She had always mused, daydreamed,
fantasized in front of the mirror while putting on her make-up or taking it
off.

Sometimes she would suddenly make a wrong dab, which would
recall her to herself. That was what she did that evening, as she rubbed the
cleanser a little too vigorously and got some into her eye. It was then that
she realized the connection between the profile in the card room and her memory
of Heshy Feinstein. The shock of recognition made her hands shake briefly and
she found she could not continue efficiently with the removal of her make-up.

She looked at her face, ravaged by age--by living, she told
herself. But she could not identify it at all with the vivid image of Heshy
Feinstein in her mind. For this memory of Heshy was not at all lost in the mist
of more than fifty years. It had been retrieved so often, an oasis of joy in
the arid desert of what her life had become, that it still had retained its
shimmering intensity. Heshy Feinstein! He had been the one unalterable
condition of her inner life, her secret life--although once she had confided to
her daughter, Helen, that there had been a man, a boy really, who had made her
body ache with longing for him.

She could remember exactly because, at the time, they were
sitting shiva for Herman, only seven years before. Herman with whom she had
spent forty-five faithful years of marriage, of coldness, too, although her
children would never ever know that. Only Herman knew, because he suffered from
her indifference since the first night of their marriage, from the moment of
her hysterical exaggeration of her simulated virginity. What an act it had
been. "It took me three days to get married," Herman had always told
their friends with a laugh, although she had known in her heart that they were
never really married, not in that way at least.

"I have always been a good and faithful wife,
Helen," she told her daughter, who by then was impatient to get back to Chicago and her life there.

"Sure, Ma."

"Your father was a good man, a wonderful person."

"You think I don't know that, Ma? He was lucky to have
such a terrific woman."

"I feel so bad for him," she said, but her
meaning, she knew, was lost to her daughter. Their marriage bed had been as
cold as ice. She hadn't even done her duty by him and she hoped in her heart
that he had found someone to relieve his needs, some woman somewhere who could
get rid of his tensions and send him back to her.

"I was not a good wife, Helen," she said. Her
daughter merely nodded. They had been sitting shiva for four days and it was
boring Helen, she was sure, hearing all those reminiscences of a long marriage.
What else was there to do but talk about the dead father, the dead husband, and
their memories of him? She dared not say to her daughter that Herman was
quickly slipping from her memory, and if it wasn't for the picture of him on
the piano to remind her of his features, she might not have been able to
assemble them in her mind.

"Once, there was another man," she said.

"You had another boyfriend?" Helen seemed
interested as they sipped coffee.

"He was absolutely gorgeous--a marvelous, brilliant boy."

"You're kidding, Ma."

"Heshy Feinstein."

"Heshy?"

"In Brownsville, in those days, the Yiddish and
English was totally mixed up. His name was Harvey but no one called him Harvey
except the teachers at school. He was six feet tall when he was seventeen years
old and I was sixteen. He was going to Boys' High School and I was going to
Girls' High School and we used to take the subway together. He lived behind us
on Douglass Street, and I knew him since we were eight or nine. But it wasn't
until I was sixteen that we discovered each other."

"My God. My name could have been Feinstein," her
daughter said.

She ignored the remark. Her own name had been Goldberg.
Frieda Goldberg. At least Herman brought her the name Smith, though God knew
where that came from.

"His father wanted him to be a doctor. He was
excellent in science, always doing experiments on his back porch."

"Did he become one?"

"I never found out."

"You haven't seen him since?"

"Not once. We moved to Eastern Parkway. It was only a
few miles away, maybe four, five subway stops. But I never saw him again."

"Weird," Helen said.

"Heshy's father owned a grocery store and he wanted
him to be a doctor."

"Do you ever wonder about him?"

"Not often," she lied, knowing that it had been
the single obsession of her life.

Naturally, she left out all of the important parts,
although she would have loved to confide in her daughter. But she worried that
her daughter would hate her for what she did to her father. I feel so sorry for
Herman, she told herself often. Even now, before the mirror, as her mind
searched its secret screen for pictures of Frieda Goldberg and Heshy Feinstein.

He was shaking the pear tree in his father's yard and
gathering the pears in a bucket for Mrs. Feinstein to make stewed dessert. She
watched him from the little rusty swing in her own yard, making fun of his
efforts, especially when one of the pears hit him on the head.

"It's not funny. It hurts like the blazes."

"Poor Heshy."

He walked over to her and nodded his head and she looked
into the shiny curly sweet-smelling hair. He took her hand and put it on the
lump that was growing there and she felt it gently.

"That doesn't tickle," he said. Yet she knew, at
that moment, as her finger touched the hard nub of that lump that something had
passed between them, and nothing was ever the same from that time on. She
opened the fingers of her hand and moved them like fish in the bulrushes of his
curly hair, feeling goose flesh rise on her hands and legs and a strange
feeling deep inside her and in that place between her legs. It was odd how that
memory never dimmed the first signal that something was happening between them,
and yet there were things that happened only yesterday that she had trouble
remembering.

Was it really Heshy Feinstein she had seen in the card
room, or some apparition? It would not have been the first time that a
stranger's face would loom out at her suddenly in a crowd and she would wonder
if it was Heshy's face. Sometimes she would hide. Other times, she actually
followed the person, until she discovered her error.

She could also recall, dredge up from her memories, the
first sensations, the feelings, the kisses, the delicious gropings, and, of
course, that first time on the old couch on her own back porch in the middle of
that hot summer. It was the great mystery of her life why she could never,
after Heshy, experience such sensations, that joyous release of feelings that
came from somewhere deep within her. Why had it disappeared so completely when
she left Brownsville? It was as if a dark curtain came down on her life and she
experienced all the physical joy of a lifetime in a single year.

She could even remember the tension of their subterfuge,
the ruses and, as they became more intimate, the agony of worry over the coming
of her period. Heshy was as paranoid as she was, even though he was always sure
to carry protection in his wallet. But even these anxieties would never
interfere with the greed for each other, the joy-giving of their lovemaking. It
was, of course, more than just the physical thing, and they could not hide
their love from their parents, to whom it became a terrible source of concern
and alienation. The harassment was bitterly frank, opening deep animosities
between the families.

"My Heshy's too young," his father would
remonstrate as Frieda's parents sat together watching the man's growing anger
and his wife's less articulate bitterness.

"So is Frieda."

"It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. It will ruin my
son's medical career if he has to worry about supporting a wife and maybe
children. There has got to be an end to this."

They could hear their parents clearly through the vents in
the cellar, where they had fitted themselves out a place among a suite of
cast-off furniture. The cellar had a back door that led to the yard, and above
them they could hear every movement and sound, every creak of danger in the
house.

"At it again," he said, but she was not
listening. Instead, she was concentrating on the joy that was spilling over and
trying to be silent as she bit her fist and felt the suffusion of her inner
pleasure and his own climactic movement. Even in the afterglow, they could not
escape the sounds of their parents' bitterness.

"Somebody has to move away," Heshy's father
shouted. "I can't. I have a business."

"Well, I like it here," her father yelled.

"Just keep your son away from my daughter!" her
mother screamed. "She's too good for him anyway."

Whereupon they would shut out the sounds with the palms of
their hands and proceed again to reach out for this mysterious thing that had
brought them together.

They were, of course, being young, hardly interested in
consequences. They felt they could continue to be clever in their subterfuge,
and even her mother's hesitant probings about the state of her virginity were
deflected, leaving her mother in little doubt that she was still intact.

"Surely you trust your own daughter. You think I'm
going to jeopardize my life?" In those days, an unwanted pregnancy was a
stigma from which there was little recovery. Not even a lifetime could erase
the damages it would cause, and this scared them the most, especially when they
knew they had tempted fate.

"I want you as close to me as is humanly
possible," she cried more than once, slipping off his condom.

"My sweet, beautiful, wonderful, darling love."

But what might not have been seen was sensed, and her
father soon announced that they were moving to Crown Heights, a neighborhood
about ten miles away.

"It just can't go on like this, Frieda. You're too
young. He's too young. Mr. Feinstein might be a horrible person, but he's
right. Maybe if we moved away and you saw him less often. Maybe then."

"I won't go!" she cried.

"You'll go."

"I'll run away. We'll elope. I'll get pregnant."

She could see her father's face flush a deep red, which
frightened her because she truly loved him, a gentle man who, when risen to
anger, could be irrational and sometimes violent.

"I don't really mean that, Papa. Don't think what
you're thinking." That calmed him. Heshy was far harder to placate.

"When are you moving?"

"Tomorrow."

"The bastards. They wouldn't even give us time to
prepare."

"Prepare what?"

"To get the hell away from them. To get married. You
think I can possibly live without you?"

"And me without you?" She remembered her
shoulders suddenly shaking hysterically and his valiant efforts to soothe her
until he too was crying, their tears mingling. Even now, she could taste the
salt in them, a taste never to be duplicated in her lifetime. In the cellar,
they clung to each other. They went so far to risk exposure that
night--miraculously, or so she believed--they stayed together without discovery
and were back in their respective rooms by morning. It was a night whose pain
was to remain with her, a kind of symbol of the highlight of her life. In the
aridity of her later years, she marveled at the sheer physical wonder of it,
those hours together, intertwined, never uncoupling, as if a moment apart would
destroy them both. They had long since explored the mysteries of themselves. No
secrets of their bodies or minds escaped their mutual probings.

"I will love you forever and forever and
forever." She could still hear the sound, the rhythm and timbre of his
voice, strong and assured, as it thrilled her, promised her.

She had said, "They will never tear us apart. No one
will ever tear us apart."

And, in a way, they hadn't because the memory never
disappeared nor lost its magic, even now, as she looked into the mirror
detesting the sagging lines of her face, the drooping skin around her eyes, the
jowls, though she liked to think that she looked ten years younger than her
sixty-eight years.

She got into her nightgown without a glance at her body,
which also had run to sag and flesh, but because it was of little interest,
except for the state of its basic health, she didn't care. She flicked on
"The Tonight Show" and when she grew drowsy, she flicked it off again
and slipped into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

But the next morning, after she dressed, made her
breakfast, and cleared away the dishes, she remembered her brief recognition.
When the telephone rang, she knew it was Dotty, who was wondering when she
would be ready to go to the pool, their daily ritual.

"Not today, Dotty," Frieda said.

"You don't feel good?"

"I have a headache." Poor Herman, she suddenly
thought, remembering the thousand times she used that excuse.

"You always have a headache," he said angrily as
he tossed in the bed, turning his back to her.

You give me a headache, she wanted to say, but to her
credit, she never said it. Not out loud, at least.

When she was sure Dotty had left for the pool, she went
outside and, taking her tricycle, pedaled to the management office to make the
inquiry that she knew was inevitable. Might as well get it over with.

"There are three Harvey Feinsteins," the
middle-aged shiksa clerk with the blue-gray hair said. Her harlequin glasses
hung on a jeweled chain around her neck.

There were always more than a dozen Harvey Feinsteins
whenever, in weak moments, she was tempted to find him again. But she had never
wished to intrude on that vast forest of Harvey Feinsteins. She jotted down the
addresses and cycled over to the nearest one, where she had a card-playing
friend, Toby Schwartzman, another widow. The widows held the clear majority and
were a constant source of humor among the marrieds and themselves, which they
bore, but privately resented. She knocked at Toby's door, three doors down from
the first Mr. Feinstein. Toby was eating pistachio nuts and listening to Oprah.