Helen Yglesias - The Girls

Intent now on climbing out of the hole she had helped dig for herself, Jenny plunged into the gaiety of the scene. She began a game with herself. Pick out the male most unlikely to be Jewish, check out the back of his head. Yarmulke. Was she glad? Sorry? Did she give a damn who was or wasn’t militantly Jewish? Which blessed Jew would pass Flora’s eligibility test? Was pure enough? Including herself?

Including herself. Married a Jew the first time. Had two Jewish children. Married the love of her life the second time, a second-generation American of Spanish-Cuban derivation. Nonreligious, as she was. Had her third child. Also Jewish by Israeli standards, son of a Jewish mother. All three children did seders, did Christmas, did Chanukah. Did it all, loved it all. Why not? The more mixed the better. Mush up everybody in the world, all races, all religions.

What did her sister want of her anyway? What did she want of her sister? Why was she fighting with poor old Flora? Habit of a lifetime. Anguish at being cast as the outcast, Sister Jenny as Shabbes goy, the unbelieving lout called in to do the menial work forbidden to the faithful, an unfeeling hunk of ice who could kill her sisters, conscientiously following Dr. Maypole’s astonishingly cool prescription. All because she had learned to govern her emotions, because she had worked to earn a Ph.D., because she taught literature and read criticism and wrote reviews and books, all because she had married her beloved Paul, because she had learned to wear mostly black and to speak in cadences no longer tied to the Bronx, because she had chosen to live in a wider world than Flora or Eva or Naomi.

Hitler would not have agreed with Flora’s distinctions, of course, but she was not about to bring up Hitler, God help her, not in the present setting of lively Jews happily jogging, strolling, sitting, chatting, laughing on the charming boardwalk under the sculptured blue-skied white-clouded dome of heaven over blessedly sunny Miami Beach.

How did these children of the holocaust breathe this holiday air while it stuck in her throat? What magic did they work to dispel memory? Especially the old. Unthinkable to think of the old and their memories. And the young, suckled on bitterness. The pretty young mothers and formal young fathers steering their broods, the little girls in their expensive custom-made matching gowns and hats and the little boys in their dark suits and fedoras. And as if in a Spanish paseo, the march of the muscular single young men and the lovely young women, eyeing one another, longing to be absorbed into one another and into the life they had resuscitated with such energy, and yes, faith. Where did they find faith, of all impossibilities, faith, in this faithless, faithless world.

She breathed deeply. French fries. As if she had actually eaten some, a painful heartburn seized her chest. She fumbled for a Tums in her bag, but the bag dropped from her fingers, scattering change, cosmetics, a comb, her senior citizen card in its little leather case, a pen, and a mess of pills. A clutch of athletic fellows instantly came to her aid, bending to pick up the mix of small things, their yarmulkes ringed in a choreographed effect at her feet, as if in a scene from Fiddler. She thanked them.

And then Flora was at her side, Flora in her tacky khaki and orange outfit, tearful, pulling at Jenny’s arm.

“Jenny, Jenny, how can we be fighting at such a time? Oh, Jenny, let’s not fight, I can’t bear it.” Her wild black eyes melodramatized the plea.

The truth was that Jenny couldn’t bear it either.

“Okay, okay, forget it, let’s forget it. The whole thing.” Again her voice didn’t sound like her own. She was miscast, all around, in this drama not of her making.

Flora said, “You want me to apologize? I apologize, I apologize. Though God alone knows for what. But we have to have peace between us. There’s too much we have to do. We have to get through this somehow, Jenny, please, please.”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “No, no.” And then, after another deep breath of hotdog (kosher) sea air, she managed to say, “It’s okay, Flora, I’m just upset, give me a couple of minutes, I’ve got this awful heartburn, just forget the whole thing, I can’t do it, we’ll work something else out, okay?”

“Oh, thank God, thank God we’re not arguing anymore. There are other ways. The hospice people are wonderful, someone told me. We could look into hospice.” Flora once again energetically in charge.

“Yes,” Jenny said. “In a minute. Right now I need a couple of Tums.”

“You need something a lot stronger than Tums,” Flora said. “Your doctor is giving you Tums? Have you tried Xanac? Maybe you need to see another doctor. Or is it Xanax? I’m always mixing those two up.”

“In a minute,” Jenny said. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

And pleaded in silence for no more talk.

NAOMI’S RESIDENCE WAS CLOSE to the Fontainebleau. It had been built in the twenties, and became a gathering place for jazz musicians. A little of that period remained in the splendid glass-splintered chandelier of the lobby. Otherwise it was seedy, though the broad terrace overlooking the wide beach and the sea sported a decorative circular bar under a palm-thatched roof. Nearby was a pitifully tiny mango-shaped pool in which three swimmers would have been a crowd. No danger. One resident in her eighties paddled around at the shallow end every morning before breakfast in a ruffled flowered suit and water wings. And a misshapen skinny man of indeterminate old old age swam an astonishingly perfect crawl every afternoon before dinner.

“Show-offs,” was Naomi’s dismissive judgment. “Ridiculous show-offs.” She also didn’t like the fact that the woman who swam dared to wear red high-heeled shoes when she dressed for dinner. She certainly skittered around the dining-room floor dangerously, but then, it was a tiled floor.

Naomi was still pretty, in spite of ninety years, in spite of cancer of the breast metastasized and spreading throughout her body. She was elegantly costumed, in a full skirt mixing flower patterns with bold geometrics that should have clashed but didn’t because of the rich meld of colors, a white satin blouse with a cunningly crossed collar that sheltered her ruined neck, and a silk jacket that picked up on the vibrant subtleties of the skirt. Her hair was still black, cut short in a twenties kind of bob (to match the twenties kind of residence?). Her brows were naturally black too, and beautifully arched, without the crazy outcroppings many old people sprout. With the late afternoon sun directly on her pale face, her hazel eyes shone almost clear green. She wore little makeup, a bit of face powder and a light lipstick where the offending spot, which according to Flora periodically spouted blood, showed slightly darker on the upper lip of her charming mouth. Her happiness at Jenny’s arrival was pure and childlike. She reached up from her wheelchair and pulled Jenny’s face close to hers.

“My baby sister,” Naomi said, and kissed her. Her breath held a faint sour odor that Jenny forced herself to meet smilingly. “Do you remember,” Naomi went on, caressing Jenny’s hair, “do you remember how I always gave you shampoos when you were little? Do you remember? When poor Mama was so busy helping Papa in the store she had no time for you?” She rested her cheek against Jenny’s in a silence filled with shared losses.

Jenny stroked her sister’s smooth, rounded brow, noble under the silky hair swept away from the innocent part. The sweet parting of the hairs of their heads, Dr. Maypole’s and Naomi’s. Jenny was supposed to kill this darling sister?

Suddenly Naomi pulled away to vent her annoyance that Flora was off talking to the other residents. “She acts like a social worker. So false. What does she do for them? Nothing. It’s all talk. Anyway, she’s here to see me. Why is she talking to them?”