Never Too Late for Love (11 page)

"You didn't go to the pool?"

"I had a little headache."

They gossiped a little, talked about last night's canasta
and "The Tonight Show."

Then Frieda asked the question. "You know the
Feinsteins?" She paused. "The ones in number six?"

"I know them to say hello. Why?"

It was always the "why" that she waited for, planning
a strategy to deflect the skillful yenta probings.

"My daughter's cousin by marriage, Phyllis, is named
Feinstein and she says they're in Sunset Village."

"She's from Chicago?"

"No, Phyllis is from Boston."

"These Feinsteins are from Pittsburgh. He's eighty
years old, in a wheelchair."

After some more small talk, she left, satisfied that she
had made only the most casual inquiry, an important consideration in a world of
yentas that had to know even the most minute detail of every personal
transaction.

It took her three hours to track down the second Feinstein,
who lived in the fancy four-story elevator condominium. She actually parked
herself on a bench in front of the elevator shaft watching for movement from
number twelve, which was on the third floor just off the corner and clearly
visible on the open balcony-corridor. She had, of course, checked the name
plates on the mailboxes. "Harvey Feinstein" was clearly marked.
Seeing it caused her heart to lurch. A widower, she thought, hoping that
perhaps today was the day her horoscope predicted something of value in her
life. The sun was hot and soon she could not bear it on the bench, nor could
she bear the curiosity.

She noticed a magazine addressed to H. Feinstein on the
shelf for publications above the mailbox. Scooping it up, she proceeded to go
up in the elevator and, without giving it much thought, pressed the buzzer of
number twelve. She put her ear against the door, heard stirrings, and then her
anxieties began because she had not really figured out a cover story. She heard
the door click, then open, and a small man in bathing trunks stood before her.
She towered over him and looked at him, perhaps with contempt for his smallness
and his not being
the
Harvey Feinstein.

"Mr. Feinstein?"

"Yes."

"I found this outside the door."

"They didn't put it in the mailbox?"

"How should I know?" she said. Then she went down
the elevator, found her tricycle and peddled home.

She was sticky from perspiration when she got into her
condominium. She also felt silly and decided that was enough looking for one
day. She took the addresses, put them on her dresser, changed into her bathing
suit, and went off to the pool, where Dotty and their friends were sitting
around squinting under big hats, talking about their children and
grandchildren. She lay back and dozed. Their words floated repetitiously in the
air.

When she opened her eyes again, the sun had shifted,
throwing long shadows across one half of the pool. Occasionally, an
announcement of someone's name would blare over the loudspeaker system. They
only allowed one announcement per person per day to cut down on the cacophony.
Rising, she went to the edge of the pool and dipped her feet into the water,
now warm from the intensity of the sun.

Her eyesight was remarkable considering her years and,
being slightly farsighted, she had a longer range of vision than most of her
friends. That was why from her vantage point, she was able to see the faces
across the pool with uncommon clarity. Again she imagined, since she dared not
believe it was actually him, that she saw him, full-face now, squinting into
the sun, which was coming over her shoulder. He was standing, flaying his arms,
in some personal form of exercise, a common sight.

She felt the blood surging in her heart, the beat amplified
in her chest as she lifted her feet out of the water and circled to the edge of
the shadows to observe the man more closely. He was bald, gray--where there was
still hair. His skin was not quite tan enough to be the badge of the longtime resident,
but in the way he moved, despite the thickness around his middle, she detected
a familiarity, even an intimacy as she mentally stripped him of his bathing
trunks and visualized the still-familiar outline of his rump and what hung in
front of him. She looked around her to see if anyone had read her thoughts,
then walked slowly toward the pay telephone. She found the quarters she kept in
the pocket of her bathing suit and dialed the Sunset Village Clubhouse.

"Will you page Mr. Harvey Feinstein. He's out by the
pool."

In the pause that followed, she closed her eyes tightly,
wishing, hoping it was him, trusting in the vividness of her memory. It was,
after all, more than half a century since she had seen him last. Then the name
blared over the speaker system with a grating, tremulous, unmistakable sound.
She saw him stir suddenly, then look about him and upward in the direction of
the sound.

A woman who had been reclining near him also stirred,
sitting up abruptly, a trace of fear in her face. At their stage of life, with
their progeny spread all over the country, every telephone call brought a stab
of anxiety. The man looked at the woman and shrugged, then searched, a hand
over his eyes to shield the sun, for the phone box, which, coincidentally, was
next to Frieda. She turned slightly, hiding her face, pressing downward to
break the connection. Her knees shook as she felt his presence, so close that
she imagined she could smell the scent of his body, another lingering memory.

"This is Harvey Feinstein," he said into the
phone, the intonation clear as it was in her memory.

"Hung up, you say. Did they leave a message?"

She turned only after he hung up, watching the familiar
walk or the familiar walk that was encased in an older man's body. He once was
slender, lithe, had youthful energy. But it was him, unmistakably--Harvey
Feinstein. She felt a gasp in her throat as if deep within her she was
hungering to reveal her presence.

"It's me, Frieda," she wanted to cry out. When
she got herself under control, she went back to where her friends were sitting.

"Who did you call?" Dotty asked.

"The dentist," she said, barely audible.
"I've got a toothache."

"Frieda, you're becoming a kvetch," Dotty
laughed.

But she had lain back and put a straw hat over her face,
through which, between broken straws, she could view Harvey Feinstein with more
leisure. He was sitting at the foot of the beach chair on which the woman had
been reclining, talking to her and looking at the phone. His wife, surely, she
thought, as she tried to gather a more complete picture of the woman, a
bleached blonde with a fair figure. When she stood up, Frieda could see that
her thighs were starting to widen, an image that, despite her
self-admonishment, gave Frieda pleasure. She did not admit, even to herself,
that something else had given her pleasure, a quiver in another place, down
there. The signs were quite physical, rather frightening in a woman of her
years, although, from the talk of the yentas, she knew that the yearnings were
still active, even actively pursued and proudly acclaimed.

"My Max, you'd think he was fourteen years old. He
won't let me alone."

"You're lucky," some widow would invariably say.
"Stop complaining."

"Who's complaining?" the lucky one would say.

"If he has any left over, I know somewhere he could
use it."

"It's all right. He knows where his bread is
buttered."

When she came back from the pool, she looked at her body in
the full-length mirror, something she had not done in years, and surveyed what
time had done. There was a roundness to her belly and hips, and her breasts,
although pendulous, still retained, in her view, at least, a certain fullness
around the nipples, which she was surprised to see were erect. There was
cellulite around her thighs, but considering the shape of her peers, the only
logical yardstick of comparison, she might still consider herself womanly.

The next day, she was up early and off to the bank, where
she withdrew $1,500 from her $6,000 savings account and took the Sunset Village bus to the Poinsettia Beach Shopping Center. There, she bought three new
dresses, two pantsuits, and a whole different line of make-up, the use of which
was patiently explained by a blue-haired older woman with two-inch eyelashes.
Then she went to the beauty parlor and had her hair dyed as close to its
original color as possible, a kind of chestnut. The hairdresser frizzed it
around the edge of her face, insisting that she looked twenty years younger.

"You couldn't make it thirty?" she joked.

"Got a young boyfriend?" the hairdresser minced.

"Seventeen."

"Sounds divine."

That evening, after she ate a salad and was feeling quite
good about her willpower, she fiddled with the contents of the vials and tubes
and pencils, put on her new make-up and carefully did herself up, satisfied that
she had done the best she could with what she had--which wasn't much after
sixty-eight years. But she did feel girlish. She felt young, and that was the
important thing. She put on her new pink pantsuit over a new girdle that held
her in, a little too snugly she realized, but soon her diet would be working
and it wouldn't be as uncomfortable.

"Miss America," Dotty said, when she saw her.

"I'm changing my image."

She watched as Dotty surveyed her.

"Be honest," Frieda said.

"You look terrific. If I was a jealous woman, I'd be
jealous."

"But you are a jealous woman."

"Then I'm jealous."

On the way to the clubhouse, they sat on the little
open-air shuttle bus and she could feel Dotty's eyes on her.

"You're looking for a man, aren't you, Frieda?"
she asked gently.

"What makes you think that?"

"My eyes."

Under her make-up and tan, Frieda knew she was blushing.
She groped for something to put Dotty off the scent.

"I'm in my second childhood."

"One step from the home." To them the
"home" was the next stop on the road to oblivion.

In the clubhouse, they found their usual card table and the
canasta game began. She knew she couldn't concentrate. She surreptitiously
searched the huge room, seeking out the face of Harvey Feinstein. Twice in the
first hour she got up on the pretense of going to the ladies' room, conscious
of the eyes of the men who turned her way, or so she imagined, since her new
outfit, make-up and hair job made her somewhat of a central figure among her
widowed canasta friends. She knew, too, that they were talking about her,
probably discussing her strange behavior as a sign of senility, not uncommon in
this place.

There was no sign of Harvey Feinstein or his
bleached-blonde wife in the card room, in the lobby of the clubhouse, or in any
of the special club and hobby rooms that lined the corridor adjacent to the
card room.

When she came back after the second time, she said, "I
really can't concentrate tonight, girls. Something I ate." She lifted a
palm to her chest in a gesture to validate her imaginary heartburn.

They grumbled, of course, and she could see Dotty's lips
tighten though they called after her to feel better. But she wasn't listening.
Her eyes were like two searchlights scanning the crowd. It had never occurred
to her how much older people looked alike and how difficult it was to find one
particular person in this sea of tanned faces and bright clothes. She waited in
the outer lobby of the auditorium, where some live show was going on, peeking
inside when someone would open the door on their way to the bathroom. She
calculated that she would have to wait until the show was over before she could
make a proper inspection.

There was, she knew, always the possibility that the
Feinsteins had chosen to stay home that night, and she was tempted to find
their place and peek in the windows to make sure and save her all this energy.
Walking into the quiet, gently warm night air, thick with the scent of tropical
flowers, she moved around the back of the clubhouse to the shuffleboard courts,
which were heavily in use, even at this hour. It was odd, she thought, how some
people pursued their leisure as if it were hard work. She hated shuffleboard
and couldn't understand why people, men and women both, were fascinated by it.
She planned to ignore it, giving the players only the most casual glance and
deciding in her own mind that such an occupation would hardly be worthy of
Harvey Feinstein--when she saw him.

Calm down, Frieda, she told herself. Her objective was
becoming quite clear to her. Her heart beat faster and her knees felt a bit
unsteady as she walked toward the court on which he was playing, determined to
display herself, to catch his eye, to insist that she be noticed. Pausing, she
looked at her face in the hand mirror under the floodlights used to light the
shuffleboard courts and proceeded to a place that would put her in contact with
his vision. There was a bench directly behind the court on which he was
playing. Moving toward it, she slowed down so as to catch his eye as he turned
to prepare himself for his shots. Across the court she could see his
bleached-blonde wife, moving awkwardly as she attempted a shot in her husband's
direction.

Coming closer, she saw him turn and momentarily focus his
eyes on her face, then move back to concentrate on his shot. He saw me, she
assured herself, feeling fluttery and deliciously girlish, although she did not
see any flash of recognition.

"You're terrific, Harvey," she heard the bleached
blonde call. "Like you played this game on cruise ships."

So he was not called Heshy anymore, Frieda thought, proud
of her special knowledge. She stood behind him now, imagining that she appeared
intent on watching the game and wondering quite seriously if there was such a
thing as telepathy so that she might will herself into his thoughts. As she was
thinking this, he turned, and she forced herself to smile slightly, a gesture
miraculously returned by him but so casual as to indicate his non-recognition.
His partner was a fat woman, whose chins shivered as she expended energy on her
shot, her big hips and behind shaking visibly beneath her slacks.