Never Too Late for Love (29 page)

"I see a lovely, beautiful woman, a desirable woman,
an exciting woman."

She felt a strange flowing inside of her, a life force, an
aliveness that she had not felt before, ever.

"I'm an old lady," she protested.

"Will you please stop that?" he said with some
authority. He had a sense of command about him, she observed, and she suddenly
reveled in the idea of obeying him.

"All right," she said.

"Besides," he said, "I don't feel like an
old man. Not when I'm around you. Not when I'm thinking about you."

She observed him in detail now, her eyes exploring his
face. There was definitely a youthfulness about him, she decided. It was the
hair, tight, curly, white. It was lovely hair. He must have felt her looking at
him. Then he moved his other hand to her upper arm and applied pressure.

"I don't think I'm more than seventeen right
now," he said. "I feel so damned good."

"Maybe eighteen." She felt quite good herself.

"Listen, I'm here with a sixteen-year-old."

"I'll be sixteen next month."

"So you're going to let me rob the cradle?"

It was madness, sheer madness. Suppose someone saw them.
What was she doing here? Why was she liking it? She suddenly was frightened and
stepped away from him, disengaging.

"What's the matter?"

"Suppose someone should see?"

"So they'll see."

"I can't believe this is happening," she said.

"Believe it."

"I really better be going." Her fright was real
now.

"So, when will I see you again?"

"I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't." Who is this
talking? she wondered.

"Look," he said, moving toward her, holding her
arms again. She did not try to disengage. "Meet me tomorrow night."
He looked toward the edge of the road. "Over there," he pointed.
"I'll be in my car. About eight-thirty. OK?" He looked directly into
her eyes. "Please."

Tomorrow night, she was thinking. Wednesday. That was
Jake's gin night. "I'll see," she said after a long pause, but she
knew he had taken it as it was offered, an assent. He released her, and they
stood there for a time. She was happy, yet she wanted to cry. There was no
making any sense about it.

Finally, she turned, feeling her heart pound heavily as she
moved more quickly than usual. It was not until she put the key in her
apartment lock that she remembered that she did not even know his name.

"So early," Jake asked, when she stepped inside
the apartment.

"I had a headache. So I decided to come home for a nap
instead of playing.

She went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed, but she
could not calm herself. What has come over me? she wondered, touching those
places on her arm that he had touched, reshaping his face in her mind. It
wasn't until she lay there a long time that the sense of guilt intruded. How
can I do this to Jake? she thought. But it did not linger long. After all, she
had been a good and faithful wife for nearly fifty years and soon they would
put her in a box and lower her into the ground. Surely, she must be allowed
one, just one, different experience with another man, before they closed the
lid. It wasn't the first time she had thought about it, she admitted. But it
hadn't been for years, many years. What woman of her generation had not
wondered the same thing?

Getting through the night and the next day was a chore. The
hours dragged on, despite her determination to keep busy. She spent the day
rearranging her closet, cleaning out the refrigerator, redoing her drawers,
most of which was purely make-work.

"You're certainly ambitious," Jake observed. He
spent the day dozing on the couch and reading the papers. Occasionally, he
would watch television. She made an elaborate dinner, including a stuffed roast
chicken and a big salad.

"I ate too much," Jake said, pushing the plate
away after his second helping. She had barely eaten.

"Every time I eat too much, I lose," he said, as
he kissed her on the cheek, and went out of the apartment to play gin. Quickly,
she cleaned the kitchen and took a shower, poured on her favorite perfume,
carefully combed her hair and made up her face.

"Some old lady," she thought. She put on her
white slack outfit and let herself out into the soft night. She was too
agitated to walk swiftly, afraid that she would perspire if she moved too fast.

The car was there, idling softly, and when he saw her, he
opened the door. When she got inside, he turned off the motor and slid closer
along the front seat.

"I was frightened that you wouldn't come."

"I'm here."

"And I'm happy you're here." His fingers crept
along the back of her neck. She did not stop him, savoring his touch.

"There was something I wanted to ask you," she
said.

"Ask, I'll tell anything."

"A small thing." She looked at him. His white
hair seemed to glow in the dark and she had the urge to touch it, but she
resisted. "Like your name."

He laughed, his fingers gripped her neck now. He bent over
and kissed the side of it.

"You're beautiful," he said. "And I'm a
complete ass. I'm Milton Sussberg." He held out his hand, which she took
in hers, their fingers entwining.

"Pleased to meet you, Milton Sussberg. I'm Rose
Lefkowitz."

"That I know."

"You're a regular yenta."

"I know where you live. I know your husband's name. I
know you have three children, six grandchildren and you used to live in
Bensonhurst."

"You are a yenta."

"And this Sussberg has a wife named Elaine, three
daughters who all live on Long Island. I worked as a housing inspector for the
city of New York for thirty years. I was in World War II. And that's all I got
to tell."

He bent over again and nibbled at her neck. She lay her
head on the backrest.

"And I think you're cute," he whispered, his lips
moving near her ear. She could feel the warmth of his breath.

"And I think you're crazy."

"I like necking in cars," he said. "I never
necked in a car before."

"Who had cars in those day?" she said, his lips
moving lightly over her cheek now, finding her lips, pressing against them. She
felt her heart lurch as she returned the pressure and moved into his arms. Her
hands caressed his hair now. I am dreaming this, she decided, not caring how it
was happening, except that it was happening. Maybe it is a reincarnation. Maybe
I am sixteen again.

"You're the most delicious thing I ever tasted,"
he said, his hands moving over her body, touching her breasts. He reached into
her blouse and caressed her nipples over her brassiere. She felt them grow
erect. Just this once, she repeated to herself. Just this once.

His hands reached behind her and he tried to undo her
straps, but they were complicated, with at least six hooks fastening them
together. She undid them herself, letting her breasts fall free, suddenly not
ashamed of their sag. His lips caressed her nipples, and she felt excited at
her body's response. And she continued to caress his hair.

"You're crying," he said suddenly. Tears of
happiness had spilled over her eyes and down her cheeks, His hand had felt the
moisture.

"I don't know why."

"Sixteen-year-old girls do strange things."

"Will you respect me?" The words had jumped out
of her, dredged up from some long-forgotten pool. She giggled.

"Respect you?" He hadn't understood.

"Well I am sixteen," she said. Then he kissed her
breasts again and she felt him moving her hand down to his crotch, and she felt
his hardness.

"And I'm seventeen," he said, unzipping his pants
and putting his erect member in her hands. It had been a long time since she
had felt something like this. He was bigger than Jake, and she caressed the
soft skin. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark and she had the odd
desire to look at it, something that she had never been curious about with
Jake.

"You're not disappointed?" he asked, obviously
noting her curiosity.

"You are seventeen," she said, kissing him again,
continuing to caress him, feeling her own response as he fumbled with the catch
and zipper of her slacks. She looked about her for any sign of movement, but
the road was completely deserted.

"Maybe we should go in the back seat?" he
suggested, and they quickly moved to the back. Then she removed her slacks, and
he had pulled down his pants. They kissed again and what had briefly fallen
rose again to her touch. It was all so strange, an odd fulfillment of an old
wish. And she had not resisted, not in the slightest. The space was tight, the
movement of their bodies awkward as they joined and she felt the opening of her
body meet his member as it had never happened before, not with Jake, the only
man in her life. There seemed an instant reaction as her body lurched and she felt
her pleasure come instantly. My God, what is happening, she thought, feeling a
wave of pleasure pound inside of her as she let out some odd primitive sound
that she had never heard before. He too moaned briefly, and she knew he felt
his own pleasure.

They lay joined for a longtime, then he was the first to
untangle himself and pull up his pants. She dressed again, too, feeling a
strange contentment. Now I know, she told herself.

"It was wonderful," she said, when they had
zipped themselves up and rearranged their clothing. She leaned back in the
crook of his arm and, turning her head slightly, looked out of the window into
the canopy of stars, clear and sparkling in the moonless night.

"I can't believe this happened to me," Milton
Sussberg said.

"You're not a big philanderer?" She had not
really confronted the question before. It was just another aspect of her
curiosity.

"Me?"

"You mean you don't ever write notes like that to
other strange ladies."

"Never in my life. I swear it." He kissed her
forehead. "I saw you, found the courage and did it. That's all there was
to it."

She wondered if she should believe it. But then, she wanted
to. That would fit nicely. She was still happy, very contented now.

"You're quite a woman, you know," Milton Sussberg
said. She lifted his wrist and focused on his watch.

"I better get going," she said, moving her hand
to the door latch. Outside, he stood next to her. She looked up, directly into
his eyes.

"It was wonderful," she said again, and he
gathered her in his arms.

"When will I see you again?" he whispered.

"Again?" She was suddenly confused.

"Of course," he insisted.

"Why, never," she answered. "I'm a married
woman. You're a married man. This is a small community. Surely, you didn't
expect..." Her voice trailed off and he moved her away from him to get a
better view of her face. He is very cute himself, she decided, reaching out and
touching his hair.

"But I thought you said it was wonderful," he
said. There was a note of pleading in his voice.

"It was."

There was the sound of a motor. A car was coming, and they
stepped backward into the shadows. She bent over and kissed his cheek. Then she
turned and moved quickly away. She did not look back, although after a while
she heard the engine of his car start. When she reached the court where her
apartment was located, she paused and looked up at the sky. Every star in the
firmament seemed to be looking down on her.

"Wasn't I entitled to just once, God?" she
whispered. She was not a religious woman but she felt, for the first time in
her life, some connection with the universe. She held up one finger toward the
sky.

"Just once," she said, like a child begging with
all its charm and persuasion for a special favor. "Just once," she
whispered again. She stood there, waiting, watching the stars.

Then she sighed, took a deep breath and, with a big smile
on her lips and a great wave of happiness in her heart, she let herself into
her apartment.

It was not that Molly Berkowitz was intolerant of other
people bragging about their children. She always listened patiently, with
attentiveness, hiding her heartache and pain. Invariably, the braggarts talked
endlessly about their successful children--doctors, lawyers, captains of
industry, daughters who had either married well or made it big in the business
or professional world.

She imagined that she hid her desperation well. What use
did it do to trample on someone else's joy because of her own pain. In that
sense, she felt herself wise. Besides, she was a widow and to criticize what to
many was the single crowning glory of their lives might jeopardize her
friendship with the group. And the life of a lonely, friendless widow in Sunset
Village could be a true purgatory. So she held her tongue and bore her
heartache as she listened to her friends recount the victories and glories of
their children.

"My Barry opened another store last week. He called me
and sent me another hundred dollars as a good-luck gift. He now has fifty
stores." It was Emma Mandel talking, a never-ending avalanche of braggadocio.

"How wonderful," Molly Berkowitz would respond.

But Emma's story would set off a chain reaction as, one
after another, Molly would be treated to a hurricane of repetitive
one-upmanships from her group.

"My Joycie has become a full professor," Helen
Goldstein would say smugly, tipping her nose skyward in a pose of superiority.
You can't buy intellect with money, she seemed to be saying, requiring a
blatant response from an unabashed materialist, usually Dolly Cohen, who, along
with Emma, was one of her closest friends.

"My grandson Larry got his car last week, a
Mercedes," she would say smugly. "All my grandchildren get a Mercedes
when they pass their driver's test."

"How wonderful," Molly would respond, forcing a
smile of shared joy.

"And when they're twenty-one, they get a trip to
Europe for three months."

"How wonderful."

"And when they marry, my Bruce gives them a house in
Scarsdale and sets up a trust fund for their children."

"Do they have children when they get married?"
one of the women would interject, winking at the others, breaking the tension
in Molly.

"They don't have children," another wag among the
yentas would wisecrack--usually one of the other women who also bragged about
her children. "They buy their children in Saks." Then, after a pause:
"In the section next to better dresses."

"Wait. Wait until they get old. They'll have
everything. There'll be nothing to look forward to."

"When their teeth go, they'll put in a false set with
diamonds, so when they smile people should know how much they got." The
women laughed.

"I couldn't picture anyone with diamond teeth."

"What's wrong?" Emma said. "If you've got
it, flaunt it."

"Really, girls," Dolly Cohen would admonish them,
although she was obviously secretly proud to emphasize Emma's point."What
is my Bruce going to do with it? Take it with him?"

"He might give it to you," someone said.

"I wouldn't take it," Dolly Cohen insisted. Pride
was the only thing that made the bragging palatable, a vindication. Molly knew
what pride meant. It was the source of her pain. Her children could hardly be
bragged about. They were total failures, economically, and, it seemed,
emotionally. Her daughter, Alma, was in the throes of a bitter divorce from her
third husband, and her son, Harry, was a taxi driver in New York, scratching to
make a living, not even owning his own cab.

Many a night she had cried herself to sleep thinking of
their condition, wondering where she and Al had gone wrong. We worked day and
night in the grocery store, she would rationalize, wondering if that had been
the real reason, knowing in her heart that it couldn't be. They had always been
present to provide advice and love to their children, who also helped in the
store. What had they done to make their children turn out so badly?

Her mind spent hours dwelling in the past, groping through
the early days, sifting and evaluating decisions that might have pointed them
in the wrong direction. Where had Al and she gone wrong? They had always
stressed education, and though they had been foreign-born, they had forced
themselves to improve their English so that their children might not be ashamed
of their accents. Al never did succeed in eliminating his, but that was because
he arrived in America as a teenager, when his speech patterns were already
fixed.

Al, a good man, devoted husband and father, was fifteen
years older than she. She bitterly regretted not having been more forceful when
Harry wanted to quit high school--at least that was the illusion she liked to
live with. Actually, she had raised hell and invoked every tactic of persuasion
she knew--hysterics, guilt, dire warnings, threats.

"Without education, you're a nobody in this country, a
nobody," she had cried. And when that admonishment had no effect, she used
other tactics.

"You're breaking my heart," she said, meaning it.

For Harry, the die was cast and Vietnam came as a welcome
relief for him. He enlisted against her wishes. Molly could never erase that
time from her consciousness, as if it were a trauma. Harry had gone to Vietnam
and, although he was a military policeman and generally in the rear of the
combat zone, she worried about him constantly. Perhaps, she thought, it was her
worrying about Harry that started Alma down the wrong path. She had been a
pretty little thing with genuine reddish-blonde hair and green eyes and a
figure that had matured earlier than her mind. She had, Molly knew, mistaken
lust for adoration, even love, and no amount of explanation ever managed to get
that point across.

It came as a shock to her to discover that her daughter was
not a virgin at fourteen. It was during the war--Harry had been overseas two
years by then--and Alma, a freshman at Erasmus Hall High School, seemed a
normal adolescent. She would kiss her mother and father every day before she left
for school, warming their hearts. She is a good girl, a wonderful girl, they
told themselves proudly.

The explosion of that illusion seemed to mark the sealed
fate of her hopes for her children. She had been busy with a customer when the
telephone call came, the ring persistent from the back of the store. Surely a
customer, she thought as she excused herself and rushed to answer the phone. An
angry voice screeched into her ear.

"Am I speaking to Mrs. Berkowitz?" the voice
snapped.

"This is Mrs. Berkowitz." Her heart lurched. She
thought perhaps it was someone with word about Harry.

"Will you keep your whore away from my daughter?"

"What?" Molly was confused, yet relieved to find
it was not about Harry. Obviously, this was the wrong number.

"I want you to keep Alma away from my daughter."

"Alma?"

"This is Mrs. Kugel, Marilyn's mother."

Of course, Marilyn, one of Alma's friends. She would
remember what came next for the rest of her life.

"I work all day. Today I came home sick. I found them
in my apartment. They were in bed with boys."

There seemed no logic in the conversation, in the
revelation. Her Alma? There must be some mistake. Her tongue froze in her
mouth.

"She has ruined my daughter. I saw them. I nearly
vomited."

"You are mistaken," Molly managed to whisper.

"I saw them!" the woman shouted. Molly felt weak
in the knees. Cold sweat poured from her armpits. Her little girl? It was
impossible. Then Mrs. Kugel hung up.

The confrontation with Alma was the first of many, the
beginning of an endless chain, always accompanied by tears and hysterics and,
when Al was alive, with threats of "telling your father." Always, the
confrontations ended with confessions, tears, and exhaustion.

"But why?" To Molly, this had always been the
central question, eye of the enigma. Was it something we have done? she
wondered.

"I don't know, Ma."

"Is there something wrong, something missing?" It
had seemed such a monumental sin in those days, and she had concluded that the
sense of right and wrong was somehow missing in her daughter's make-up.

"I don't know, Ma."

At great expense, she had taken her daughter to
psychiatrists, thinking she was being very modern and understanding, but it
hadn't helped. Nothing helped and, as her daughter's promiscuity advanced and
she became the talk of her school and the neighborhood, Molly had no choice but
to accept the fact of her daughter's behavior.

What it had led to was three broken marriages, although she
was happy that one of them had produced a lovely grandchild, a beautiful boy,
gentle and polite, whom she had practically raised. And yet, despite all the
heartache and disappointments and the obvious failures of her children, she
still loved them and they still loved her. An emotional upset, invariably
involving some man, always brought Alma running home to her mother. She was in
her mid-forties now and although the cute little figure had thickened and the
blonde hair now required the help of dyes, she still retained, Molly thought,
vestiges of attractiveness.

"I've botched things up, haven't I, Ma?" she
would say when she had settled in at her mother's condominium after the drive
from up north. Molly sat beside her on the couch holding her hand.

"You're still my daughter, Alma."

"Thank God for that. I'm gonna change, Ma. I'm gonna
put it all behind me now."

"I know, darling."

"No. Really, Ma. This time I'm going to get it
together." She would look at her mother and tears would begin to flood her
eyes. "We haven't made you very proud, have we, Ma?"

She could remember then, the pain inflicted by her friends.

"Your kids are just a couple of losers," Alma
would say, wallowing in self-pity, searching for the needed kind word.

"I have two of the sweetest children in the whole
world," Molly would respond, watching the words soothe, like medicine.

"And I have the most wonderful mother."

It was, of course, her secret pride. And while she would
not dare confess it to her friends, she knew that, despite their failures, her
children still came to her for emotional repair. My children still need me, she
told herself proudly.

Harry would visit her every few months, taking the bus from
New York. He always arrived exhausted, more tired than the visit before,
although he tried to put on a brave face. He was over fifty now, paunchy and
bald, with deep black circles under his eyes.

"I look like hell, don't I, Ma?" he would say, as
Molly watched him eat the chicken she had roasted in anticipation of his visit.
His wife, Natalie, never visited, nor did Molly ever inquire why. Harry had
enough troubles, she thought.

"A few days in the sun and you'll feel better."

"I wish could I live here permanently, Ma," he
would confess, biting into the chicken like a man assuaging a terrible hunger.
When he had finished the meal, he would light a cheap cigar and stretch out on
the couch in the living room.

"New York's a jungle. I was robbed three times last
month alone. Pushing a hack is like riding around in hell."

"You should do something else."

"What the devil else am I good for? I've got no
skills. No education. And no luck. Ma, if Natalie didn't work, I couldn't make
it. How's that for laughs? Some reward, eh? I fought for this goddamned country
when they needed me. And now all I get is a good swift shove in the butt."

"Maybe you could find a job down here," Molly
would say, searching for ways in which to comfort her son.

"Are you kidding?" he would say, closing his
eyes. "What the hell would I do for a living?"

Before he left, Molly would always thrust a handful of
money into his hand.

"What's that for?" he would say, staring dumbly
at the bills.

"I can't give my son a present?"

He would put the money in his pocket and shake his head.

"I'm an old woman, Harry. What does it matter?"
He would take the money, perhaps out of superstition, as if it represented some
talisman, something to renew his hope.

She never complained of her children's failure to her
friends, although she felt that they did surmise her pain and that their
knowing did not prevent them from bragging about their children's success. Nor
did it interfere with their friendship. Widows at Sunset Village had a great
deal in common, besides the loss of their mates. They needed each other to ease
the loneliness and help ward off the occasional bouts of despair.

One night, the telephone in Molly's condominium angrily
intruded on her sleep. With a pounding heart and shaking fingers, she reached
for the instrument and, gasping, mumbled into the receiver. There was no fear
greater than a telephone call in the night with its urgent message of disaster.
My children, she thought, and was secretly relieved when she heard Emma
Mandel's frantic voice.

"Please, Molly. You must come," she cried.

"What is it?"

"Please, Molly."

Throwing a housecoat over her nightgown, she rushed out of
her condominium and walked quickly to Emma's place in the next court. The night
was warm and humid and the effort caused a thin film of perspiration to gather
on her upper lip. A brief glance at the clock in her bedroom had told her it
was three a.m. She was not surprised to see Dolly Cohen rushing from another
direction, and they converged at Emma's front door. They nodded at each other
and Molly knocked lightly. The unlocked door gave way under her knock.

Emma was seated in the living room, her ample body paunchy
in its old-fashioned satin nightgown. A single lamp threw a yellow light over
the room, dominated by an oil painting of her son and furnished with expensive
antiques that he had sent her from all parts of the world. They knew the
history of each item. It had been drummed into their brains through repetition.