Never Too Late for Love (27 page)

"I will not."

"Yes, you will." She stood for a long moment, the
daughters as well.

"We'll discuss this later," she warned, finally
sitting down, the daughters obediently aping her action.

"You don't think they'd miss a meal, do you?" one
of Harry's sons said.

"You see. You see," Gladys shouted.

"I'm disgusted with all of you," Lily said.
"Monsters, the whole lot of you." She looked at her own sons.
"Brothers? Some brothers. If I would have known how you both would turn
out, I would have drowned you at birth."

"That's a disgusting thing to say," Gladys said.

"I know," Lily continued. "Look at my
family, my wonderful family. Not one ounce of pleasure have I ever gotten from
any of you. Not one ounce. Even on my fiftieth anniversary."

"Please, Lily," Bernie said.

"How can I leave this earth knowing that my children
hate each other?"

She looked into the faces of the Solomon brothers.

"Why can't they be like you two. Brothers who love
each other." Her eyes searched the faces of her own sons. "Why is it
that you can't be like them? Devoted. Loving. It's a pleasure to watch them
together. And you two together are like animals, animals."

"They're not such great examples, Ma," Harry
said.

"Not now, Harry," Sam pleaded.

"Somebody's got to tell them."

"Let it be someone else then."

"Why?"

"Come on, Harry. It'll only make things worse."

Both Solomon brothers had turned white. But Lily was
ignoring her son's exchange, not noticing the increasing tension.

"I always dreamed that my sons would be together,
through everything, helping one another." She looked at the Solomon brothers.
"Like Mark and Isadore."

"They're gay, Ma. Fags. Fagales, Ma," Harry
cried.

"Why can't you shut your fucking mouth?" Sam
shouted.

"They're fags, Ma," Harry repeated. He seemed on
the verge of hysterics. "And I'll be willing to bet they're not brothers."
The Solomon brothers turned ashen.

"Not brothers?" Lily said, confused.

"Worse if they're brothers," Harry said.
"That would be incest on top of it." He turned to the Solomon
brothers. "Tell her, for chrissakes."

The Solomon brothers exchanged pained looks. Then Isadore
Solomon shook his head and turned toward Lily and Bernie.

"We feel so bad for you both," Isadore said, with
dignity.

"You're not brothers?" Lily asked.

Everyone in the room grew silent waiting for Isadore's
answer.

"If you mean are we siblings," Isadore said, his
voice wavering, but his dignity intact. He looked at Mark. "But we are
brothers in spirit." Mark smiled and nodded agreement.

"And body," Harry said smugly.

But Isadore was not finished.

"Enough, Harry," Lily said, turning to Isadore.
She nodded toward Isadore and he continued.

"We have been brothers in the truest sense for nearly
as long as you both are married. We're friends, good pals and, most important,
we love each other. We also respect each other, trust each other and depend on
each other."

Mark nodded as Isadore spoke.

"I am sorry to say this but there is more love and
brotherhood between us than can be found in this room." He turned to Lily
and Bernie. "I don't mean you, Lily, or you, Bernie. And don't blame
yourselves. There are no signs of brotherly love here. Your children are
strangers to each other. They hate each other and their spouses and children
hate each other."

"Advice from fags we don't need," Sam sneered.

"We came here for your sake, Lily and Bernie. You are very
brave to believe in the fantasy that siblings must love each other." He
looked at Mark and smiled. "We feel more like siblings than they ever
will. And we choose to be recognized as brothers, the Solomon brothers."
He sucked in a deep breath and sighed. "Thank you for inviting us."

They started to move out, just as the anniversary cake with
fifty lit candles was being wheeled into the dining room.

"No, wait," Lily said to the Solomon brothers, as
she took Bernie's hand and they stopped before the cake. "Help us blow out
the candles," Lily said to the brothers.

They stood around the cake and blew out the candles. Then
they all exchanged kisses and the four of them together left the room.

"Did you make a wish?" Isadore asked, addressing
his question to Lily and Bernie.

"We always make the same wish," Lily sighed.

"As you can see it never came true," Bernie
shrugged.

"So I made a new one," Lily said, squeezing
Bernie's hand.

"Me, too," Bernie said.

"I hope I'm in it," Lily said.

"Who else?" Bernie chuckled. "I'm in yours,
aren't I?"

"For a change," Lily said. "For a
change."

The shuttle bus meandered slowly through the main avenue,
halting at the stop stations to pick up other passengers. Rose sat in the first
section, just behind the driver, and she could hear the motor cough and sputter
as it revved up for movement. It was the principal form of transportation
within Sunset Village, a godsend for those who didn't have cars and needed to
get around.

She was off to the clubhouse for her Wednesday Mah-Jongg
game and she had taken out her knitting, mentally counting the knits and purls
for the beige socks she was knitting for her grandson, Kenny. It was hot, she
would remember, although the movement of the shuttle bus created a light breeze
that gently stroked her cheeks and rustled her hair.

The little folded note, on white paper, seemed to flutter
to her lap and, looking up to see how it got there, she had seen his face,
tanned, with a shy smile. The shuttle bus moved on, and, she remembered, she
had turned forward with some embarrassment after she had observed what she
imagined was a wink, as he stood where he had apparently stepped off the
shuttle bus, looking after her. Perhaps it was a trick, she thought, looking at
the folded note on her lap, then turning again to see his figure in the
distance still rooted to the spot where he had disembarked.

Replacing her knitting in the bag, she fished for her
glasses, found them, perched them midway on the bridge of her nose, because
they were half-glasses just for reading, and opened the note. She read the
words, gasped lightly, then looked around her to see if anyone had noticed what
had happened, or was looking over her shoulder. It was purely a reflex, as the
shuttle was half empty and the occupants seemed absorbed in their own thoughts.

"I think you're cute," the note read. She read it
again, turned it over, as if searching for more words, then looked back to that
spot where the man had been. But the shuttle had already turned into the broad
street leading to the clubhouse, and another row of condominiums blocked her
view of where she had seen him last.

"I think you're cute," she repeated to herself.
"Cute?" Either the man had mistaken her for someone else or he was
simply crazy. Some of these old men reverted to childishness as they grew
older. She had heard enough stories about that and had observed some strange
goings on to be able to dismiss such silliness as sheer senility.

"Me, cute?" she thought. She couldn't wait to
tell the girls at the Mah-Jongg game. But when she got to the card room and
slid into her seat at the table, she could not bring herself to say a word
about the incident. Maybe it would be better to remain silent, she decided,
although she made a mental note to tell her husband, Jake. But she could not
get it out of her mind.

"You're not concentrating, Rose," Dotty Cohen
said with her usual haughtiness. She was all business at the Mah-Jongg table
and could tolerate no bad moves by others.

But the admonishment didn't help Rose's game. Her mind kept
wandering, reconstructing the man's face, which was fading quickly from her
memory. All except the wink. No, she decided, it was definitely not a tic.

She didn't tell Jake either, and when he dozed off in his
chair in front of the television set, she looked at the note again. She had
refolded it and put it in her change purse. Her fingers shook as she opened it
and read the words again. She wondered what it meant.

Later, as she creamed her face in the bathroom, her eyes
lingered over her image in the mirror. The lines spread out from the sides of
her eyes and, despite the best efforts of her various pre-bedtime moisturizers,
her facial skin seemed to her like the hide of an elephant.

"You're an old lady," she whispered to her
reflection, although she admitted to herself as a sop to her vanity.
"Maybe you don't look sixty-eight. But you also don't look cute."

She smiled, showing the evenly matched front capped teeth
attached to the back bridge, which she removed and put into a glass, poured in
the cleaning fizz and put it into the medicine cabinet for the night.

But when she got into bed, she still could not put the
incident out of her mind. Years ago, in public school, they would pass little
puppy love notes between them. There was a fat boy in the back of the classroom
who dropped tiny folded papers on her desk; on them, in bad penmanship, were
written what were gigglingly referred to later as professions of love. "I
really like you," they would invariably read, under which would be a long
uneven line of X's and one big "smack," which was the blockbuster
kiss symbol in those days. She would show the note to her girlfriends after
school, many of whom had received the same missives. She couldn't remember the
fat boy's name.

She hadn't thought about that part of her life for years
and was surprised to discover how detailed her recall was. It was nearly sixty
years ago, she thought, proud of her memory and warmed by the recalled images.
She imagined that she could even smell the pungent ink that half-filled the
little inkwells while the faces of her childhood friends floated in her mind.
Finally, flushed and happy that she was able to remember such pleasant things,
she slipped into sleep.

She was still happy in the morning, feeling an uncommon
lightness within herself that she could not understand. The apartment looked
particularly cheerful to her, the furniture, the drapes, the little
knick-knacks that were scattered on tables and shelves, well-suited to their
environment. Even the pictures of her children and grandchildren scattered
throughout the apartment seemed to reach out, triggering even greater pride
than usual.

The toast seemed crisper, the butter more delicate, the
soft-boiled eggs perfect and the coffee the most delicious she ever tasted.
Even Jake noticed.

"You're singing," he said, watching her move
about the little kitchen.

She hadn't realized, putting her hand over her mouth to
stifle an eruption of giggles.

"So I am," she said, not understanding how the
tune had slipped into her mind. She had been singing "I'm in Heaven,"
repeating the phrase over and over again and humming the rest of the tune.
After a while, she began to sing again.

"There you go," Jake said.

"I guess I just feel good," she said, kissing him
on the forehead.

Later, when she went outside to sit on the lounge chair
behind her apartment, she found herself breathing deeply, savoring the perfumed
smell of the tropical flowers, flavored with the morning moisture. Even the sky
looked incredibly blue to her. She resumed her knitting, but her mind wandered,
and she found her thoughts again telescoped to her girlhood.

She met Jake while she was still in high school, Girls'
High, taking a business course. Jake worked at his father's delicatessen,
standing behind the counter in a big white apron that was stained with all the
colorful residues of the appetizer section.

He was a born kibbutzer and flirted outrageously with the
female customers. She remembered how important he looked behind the counter.
The raised floor walk made him seem especially imposing. Their first date was a
Sunday afternoon in Prospect Park. He took her to the zoo and they went rowing
on the lake. She remembered that Jake had rolled up his sleeves, showing off
his large biceps, which he seemed to be flexing perpetually. In those days, big
muscles were supposed to devastate young ladies.

She was already in love with him by the end of the day, and
she let him kiss her lips when he took her home, a very daring action, because
even at sixteen she believed that girls could get pregnant if a man kissed
their lips. One of her girlfriends assured her, however, that if you kept your
lips closed tight--which is what she had done--nothing would happen. The idea
of it provided much humor in the family for nearly fifty years, the telling and
retelling of it, already passed down through two additional generations.

But she never told about other intimacies. They seemed so
benign in today's world, she thought, reveling in the idea of her early
naiveté. Once he had cupped her breast and she had been moved to near
hysterics, frightening him, as if she had cried rape.

"You won't respect me," she whimpered.

"I love you," Jake assured her.

"You'll think I'm a loose woman. Then you'll lose all
respect for me."

There was something magic in the concept of respect, she
remembered.

One didn't discuss such things with one's parents in those
days, especially hers. Her father was a tailor who took piece work home and
worked on his sewing machine every night. Sometimes, in the night, she could
still hear the whirring of the wheel and the staccato movement of the needle.
And her mother was always cooking, cleaning, washing, sweeping, rarely stopping
until she fell exhausted into bed. Sex, as a topic of conversation between
parents and children, was unthinkable.

"I was dancing with Jake last night," she said to
her friend, Helen, who lived in the next apartment. "Why does he have to
carry such a big pen in his pants?"

"A pen?"

"I felt it rubbing against me. He got real mad when I
asked him what it was. He said a pen. I wanted to ask him what he needed a pen
for when we were dancing, but I didn't."

"You should tell him to leave it home."

"I did. I was real mad at him. I even told him he
smelled of pickled herring."

"And what did he say to that?"

"He said what else was he expected to smell from,
considering where he worked all day." She had lived with Jake nearly fifty
years and, although he had not worked behind a delicatessen counter for ten
years, he still smelled faintly of pickled herring.

They went steady for nearly a year before she learned what
she thought then were the facts of life. A girl at school, Milly Katz,
unraveled a bit of the mystery.

"They have this thingie between their legs."

"A what?"

"A thingie."

"Oh. You mean what they make number one with."

She had, after all, two younger brothers and she had seen
them naked on numerous occasions, especially when they were babies.

"It gets hard sometimes."

"So?" That, too, wasn't much of a mystery. She
had seen her little brother's thingies get hard sometimes, when they woke up in
the morning. Theirs had poked out of their pajamas.

"Well, when they put their hard thingies in the place
where we make number one, you have babies."

"Without kissing?"

"I think so."

"It sounds so yukky."

"I know." Milly made a face. "It's getting
me nauseous just to think about."

When she realized that kissing alone would definitely not
make babies, she and Jake spent long hours on the porch hugging and kissing and
staring into space. She even let him put his hands on her breasts over her
dress. Occasionally, she would see his pants bulge, which she thought
disgusting. By then, she realized that he was not carrying a pen in his pants.

They were the first of their friends to get engaged. But
even after he had given her a ring and she finally let him put his hand inside
her dress, but over her brassiere, she still had only the vaguest idea of what
sex was all about.

There was a battered musty smelling couch on his parents'
front porch and after a walk, or a movie, they would come back to her place and
lie together on the couch, hugging and kissing. A couple of times, she felt him
shudder and moan and he had jumped up with embarrassment, telling her a quick
good-bye and going home.

"Don't you feel well?" she would ask.

"I have to get up early," he would say, bending
over awkwardly and kissing her on the cheek.

She, too, experienced strange and oddly pleasant feelings,
especially when they were together and she found herself developing a
compelling curiosity about what he had in his pants. By then, her friend Helen
had gained greater knowledge and was able to provide additional information.

"White stuff comes out," she whispered to Rose
after Rose had expressed some curiosity about what happens when the thingie
goes into her.

She had already discovered the place with her fingers,
although she couldn't believe anything thicker than a finger could go in there.

"That's what Kitty told me." Kitty was one of the
Italian girls in her class. "She knows a lot about boys."

"You mean it comes out in a stream, like number
one?"

"And Kitty says they feel a thrill when it comes
out."

"Did she ever see it?"

"Plenty of times, she tells me." She put a hand
over her mouth to be sure that no sound escaped. "She said she can make
the boys do it by holding it in her hands and rubbing it. Up and down."

The idea of it excited her curiosity, and the next time she
was with Jake the back of her hand felt his thing over his pants. He moved
away, quickly mumbling something about "after we're married." It was
then that she realized that marriage meant being naked with each other and
doing things. After that, knowledge came swiftly as she questioned some of the
older girls she knew, one of whom had recently gotten married.

"It hurts like hell," Harriet Marks told her.
"Especially the first night when he breaks the hymen."

Hymen, she thought. She had an Uncle Hyman and, although
she had a clear picture of what occurred, she was still confused about what she
was supposed to do and what was supposed to happen.

They spent the first night of their marriage at the Prince
Georges Hotel in Brooklyn, and she stayed in the bathroom for nearly an hour
before she found the courage to come out. When she did, he was on top of her in
less than a minute, trying to get his thing into her. It hurt like hell, just
as Harriet Marks told her, and she was sore for the next three months. Also,
the mystery was solved and it was no big deal, she decided. Later, after they
had been married a few years, it got a little better in that department. Occasionally,
she even felt a thrill herself.