Comfort

By Marcy Sheiner

Bernie

Today is no different from any other day. My wife Lil sits, same as always, in front of the TV, wearing a flowered housedress and a beat-up pair of fuzzy slippers, her hands bent on the aluminum tray in front of her chair. I put a scrambled egg and orange juice on the tray, I go out for the paper, I come back and putter around, I put a sandwich on the tray, I go down to the pool and kibbutz with whoever's around, I come back and put tea on the tray, read my Tom Clancy, order in Chinx excuse me Chinese food, put sweet and sour shrimp on the tray, we eat, we watch Seinfeld and LA Law and the news, we go to sleep in separate beds. Lil never talks to me anymore and a few months ago I stopped trying to get her to.

The only thing about Lil that's still lively is her hair, a halo of silver curls, each one perfectly shaped and sprayed to last a week. The fagelas excuse me hairdressers are trained to create curls that will last exactly seven days, no more no less. Every Friday Lil has me drive her to the beauty parlor and wait in the car till she's finished. God forbid I should drop her off or even wander across the street to Publix, she'd panic. So I sit in the car, in plain view of Lil and all the other alter cockers, reading the newspaper. The Florida sun can be brutal in a parked car, let me tell you. Sometimes I run the engine for the air conditioning, thinking how Annie would yell at me for polluting. But I don't even tell Annie that I wait outside for her mother. She thinks the fact that Lil still gets her hair done is "a good sign."

Annie and the doctors are always looking for "good signs."

The doctors have a name for Lil: agoraphobic. A fancy word for a simple problem: she's afraid to go outside. For awhile they gave her pills to shut out the noise and colors that upset her any time she stepped out the door. But she said the pills made her sleepy and she stopped taking them and anyway why go out she said, it's only noise, filthy air, and schwartzes.

I know what I know. Five years ago Lil was knocked down by two teenage boys one block away from our building at 3:00 in the afternoon. They took her purse and left her lying on the sidewalk with a bruised hip and a broken elbow. And they call it agoraphobia.

Like I said, every day since then has been pretty much the same--except for the few weeks Lil was on those pills, and the Friday hair appointments.

Until yesterday. Yesterday was different.

I was sitting down by the pool with the boys the same as always, Manny, Abe, Dave, and that new fella Lou who wears a lot of jewelry. This was the first time Lou ever sat with us so we were watching ourselves a little, you don't want to give the goyim nothing to whisper about in the halls. So we're talking about Medicare and what's gonna happen with Clinton's health plan. Lou says what do we think about that Hillary acting like she's the one who's president and Manny makes a stupid comment, who even remembers what, Manny says so many stupid things especially about women. All of a sudden this voice yells from down the other end of the pool, "Give it a rest fellas."

We all shut up and turn our heads in the direction of the voice. It's the lady from 4B, Sadie Nussbaum, sitting on a chaise lounge in a black strapless bathing suit, rubbing lotion up and down her long legs, legs as smooth and slender and tan as a girl's.

"That Hillary is doing a terrific job and if you boys weren't so full of yourselves you'd know it. She's one classy dame. A real lady."

Manny snorts and shakes his big head. "No lady tries to look smarter than her husband."

Sadie turns her head so we can see her face. I can tell she thinks we're the biggest fools on earth. "You should talk, Manny Weinberg," she says. "Your wife doesn't even have to try." And then she slaps her thigh and lets out a horsy laugh that echoes off the walls of the tennis courts next door.

Manny rises, his face beet red. Abe pulls him down. "Relax, Manny, she's only kidding around."

Me and the other fellas are trying not to laugh along with Sadie, who's still chortling happily as she picks up her magazine.

Of course I've been seeing Sadie for years, like I see everyone in the building. At the socials or card games she's usually in the center of the group, telling funny stories, dressed to the nines, wearing a skirt slit up the side to show off her legs. Rumor has it she's 87, but I figure early 70s. Other rumors say she's had six husbands, she ran a speakeasy during Prohibition, she's addicted to the track. Not that I've given Sadie all that much thought, but living in a building for fifteen years, you hear things.

After our little ruckus with Sadie, me and the fellas move on to the daily Israeli bulletin, the part of our talks where everyone gets the most fershtugener .Manny's yelling how Rabin sold out the Jews and Dave is arguing that a two-state solution is practical and Lou is keeping his mouth shut like he knows what's good for him. In the middle of all the yelling Sadie comes tripping by on high-heeled sandals, dragging her towel like some kind of trophy. "Don't stay out too long fellas," she says. "You might get sunstroke." And she laughs that big horsy laugh again and sashays on inside.

What made yesterday different is this: as I watch Sadie Nussbaum walk by, I get an erection for the first time in eight years.

Later Lil and me are eating take-out from the kosher deli and watching Dan Rather, and I'm thinking about this new development and right away I feel guilty. I glance over at Lil, innocently chewing on a drumstick, and I feel terrible having such feelings for another woman.

Not that I've been a hundred percent saint all these years. In the fur business you can't avoid pretty girls, plenty of times I was tempted, believe me. Once I even took a secretary out to dinner, but I felt too guilty to go any further and I never again came even close to being unfaithful--unless you count fantasies.

Now I am having fantasies about Sadie Nussbaum. I'm thinking about dancing with her and feeling those long legs against mine. I'm thinking about taking her for a drive along the beach with the sunroof open, talking to her about books and movies. Her scarf will blow in the wind and she'll put a hand on my knee and squeeze.

My pipick comes to attention again and I'm flooded with shame. But Lil is still chewing away, her eyes glued to the TV screen. Would she care if I had an affair?

Do 82-year-old men have affairs? Ridiculous.

Well, Sadie Nussbaum must have radar, because the very next day she starts dogging me, I mean dogging me like a young girl. Everywhere I turn, there is Sadie Nussbaum. In the elevator, by the pool, in the rec room, she's always there and she's always talking to me.

Oh Bernie," she says, "I hope you didn't mind what I said the other day at the pool. It was only Manny got me steamed, not you. You've always been a perfect gentleman."

I mumble something like I'm accepting the apology if that's what it is and then I get off the elevator on the wrong floor. The next time I see Sadie she's on to bigger and better topics. First it's the weather, then the building association's new rules about bathing suits in the lobby, and then she's talking about the track and this bar and that restaurant and I can see where this is heading. But I play dumb like I don't know she wants me to ask her out. Because what am I gonna do? Am I gonna leave Lil sitting in front of the television while I run around with Sadie Nussbaum?

The boys notice what's going on right away. You get Sadie in the sack yet? Abe asks. Manny says don't go near that castrating bitch, words in my opinion that should never pass through the mouth of any decent man. I play dumb. Meanwhile Sadie is parading by and giving me the eye and it's all I can do not to ask her to go for a drive.

So what would be so terrible if I did? Lil wouldn't even have to find out. She never leaves the apartment except to go to the beauty parlor. Her girlfriends stopped coming by years ago, and she doesn't talk to anyone except Annie. She'd never have to know.

What's to know anyway? A drive in the car, a cup of coffee at Pumperniks, a drink at Friday's? Big deal. Every man needs female companionship, and I haven't had any in years. Aren't I entitled to a woman's company now and then?

I look at Lil nodding out in her chair, and I feel guilty. I'm doing what people always do when they're about to do wrong: building a case. It isn't Lil's fault she is the way she is. Hard to believe now, but she was once the life of the party. Bernie and Lil, they loved to see us dance. Such a beautiful girl she was, such a good wife and mother. To hurt her now...no, Miss Sadie Nussbaum will just have to find some other sap whose life she can go and ruin.

I wake Lil and help her into bed, then get into my pajamas and take out my teeth. I stop and examine myself in the mirror: thin white hair, tan wrinkled skin, liver spots on my hands. I look just like every other 80-year-old man in the South of Florida. What does Sadie Nussbaum see in me?

Sadie

Lemme tell you something. In all the years I been runnin' around with fellas not once did I go out with a married man. Plenty of guys would ask me out and later I found out about a wife, I gave them a piece of my mind and it was all over. People called me a lotta things when I was younger cause I liked a good time, but one thing they could never call me was a homewrecker.

It makes no sense to go out with a married man. What are you gonna get out of him? A coupla dates maybe? I should know, I was married not once but three times, and every one of my husbands tried to cheat on me. Moe, my first love, he stepped out once and I packed my bags. Packed up and went home to Mama until he came crying, begging me to come back to him. Never cheated on me again.

Then Jakey, that bum. I didn't find out until years later and then there was no more Mama to go home to. So I moved into the guestroom and didn't talk to him much less sleep with him until I was good and sure he'd learned his lesson.

Then there was Henry. Who would've thought he had it in him at his age, but he managed to start up with someone right here in the building. I put a stop to that one real fast, this time by going to the woman. All I had to do was tell her about Henry's condition and she was gone.

Look, everyone knows it's the nature of men to want more than one gal. And I'm not bragging when I say that the reason I've been able to control this nature is cause my fellas are always crazy about me. It don't take a genius to look around and see how I compare to other women. Not just in the looks department, either, I'm talking personality. The fellas like me cause I'm always up for a good time.

So you tell me: what am I doing with Mr. Bernie Solomon, a married man if ever there was one? That's what my niece Jean asked me right from the start. Aunt Sadie, she says, what are you doing with a married man?

This fella Bernie, I tell her, this fella's different. This is a whole different situation.

Jean knows the situation as well as I do--her girl Lorette cleans for the Solomons, and she says that Lillian hardly gets out of her chair all day, that Bernie has to do everything for her.

We all knew something was up with Lillian after the mugging. Suddenly she don't talk to no one at the beauty parlor, and we don't see her around the pool anymore either. But Lorette told us it was worse than we thought, even worse than what I went through with Henry--and he had an excuse, he had cancer.

That Bernie I told Jean, he's a little meshugganah from taking care of the zombie. I feel sorry for him

You're rationalizing, said Jean.

Jean goes to lectures by Leo Buscaglia and reads all the new psychology books. Rationalize is one of the words she learned from the books. Agoraphobic is another, she explained to me all about Lil. I don't know I said, sounds like a fancy word for lazy. No, Jean says, Lil's sick. She gave me the book to read but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

But this is two, three years ago already. Now Jean accepts the situation like everybody else. Bernie and Sadie, we're a real item around the building. I gotta laugh: who would have thought that at this stage of my life I would be an item?

But I wanna tell you, it's been a terrific three years. Once Bernie let himself fall for me, he fell big. Oh sure he feels guilty about Lil, but the way I see it, he's not hurting her. He's still there for most of her meals--we only go out to dinner once or twice a week, when he has a nurse come in which he says Lil don't even seem to notice. Most of the time we spend together is the afternoons when he used to hang around with his cronies at the pool. The fellas complain plenty. But the zombie, she's no worse off than before.

As for me, I went into this with both eyes open. I didn't think of Bernie as someone who was gonna take care of me--thank God Henry left me all right in the money department. I just wanted Bernie for fun, and lemme tell you, fun I got. In the first coupla months he was so excited he'd open up the sunroof of his little Toyota, put on a Frank Sinatra tape, and we'd drive all the way down to Collins Avenue. Then he'd take me into the Fountainbleau for a drink, parading me around like a trophy. Or we'd walk barefoot on the beach and Bernie'd take off his shirt. I love to see his arm muscles shining in the sun. You'd think we were a couple of kids in love for the first time.

Yeah, that's exactly what it's been like, even after three years. Bernie makes me feel like I felt with Moe way back when. He makes me laugh, he makes me cry. He tells me stories from his life and how bad he feels for Lil. He listens to my stories and always says when I'm done, "Sadie Nussbaum, you are an amazing woman." A funny thing happens to me then--I feel amazing. I feel like, yeah, I've lived a pretty wild life for a kid from the Bronx.

It's how I feel when my niece's daughter Beth comes to visit. Beth wants to hear all about "the old days." How did you and Uncle Moe start a speakeasy? she wants to know. How come you were never arrested when he was? What did you wear when you went to court? And she goes through the photo albums and says we looked just like gangsters. She says gangsters the way most people say the Queen of England. Beth makes my life seem exotic.

Jean kept after me about sex, hinting and asking if we do it, but I don't care to discuss private matters. Then Beth was visiting and came right out and asked. I said to both of them, look, I'm not dead yet. They both stared at me, waiting. Do I have to draw a picture, I said. When you're as old as me you still do it. You just do it earlier in the day.

They thought that was a scream.

The only one who don't know, besides Lil, is Bernie's daughter Annie. She comes over every Sunday, and after she leaves we always go to Friday's for a drink.

I wanna tell you, the way he talks about that kid it could break your heart. She never gives up on her mother, he says, she tries to draw Lil out, brings her presents, begs her to do things. Every week the kid says Ma, you wanna go for a walk? How's about a trip to Neiman Marcus they have these nice new pearl earrings, you always loved pearls. You wanna go to a movie, there's a new Shirley MacLaine out. But Lil don't respond.

Well lemme tell you, after Annie's visits my Bernie is like a wet dishrag. So I wring him out and fluff him up and send him back to the zombie good as new.

He wants to tell Annie about us. He says that she would like me. But I say you never know how she'll react. She might get mad. She might tell Lil. Let sleeping dogs lie.

I see Annie coming and going. She's in her 50s, one of those gals who wear jeans and sneakers all the time, no makeup, short hair, nice figure. Always in a rush like the kids are these days, always looking worried. No Bernie, I said, don't tell her. She's got enough on her mind.

*********************************

It's been a crazy week. I buried a mother, a brother and three husbands, but I never been through a week like this.

It started last Sunday, a coupla hours after I left Bernie. I'm in my robe and slippers watching Angela Lansbury and the phone rings. Can't be Jean, she never misses the show. Maybe it's Henry's son, I dunno. I pick up the phone and I hear Manny Weinberg.

"Sadie?" he says. "Sadie, is that you?" Like somebody else would be answering my phone.

Right away I know something's wrong. I mean, Manny Weinberg hardly talks to me when we're in the same room, now he's calling me on the phone?

"Sadie, Bernie was just taken to the hospital. He had a heart attack."

Still I don't say nothing.

"Sadie? Are you there?"

"Yeah," I finally say. "What happened?"

So Manny tells me that Bernie came to his place after he left me to borrow something a hammer or pliers I forget what, and as he walked out the door it fell out of his hands and then he fell down and Manny called the ambulance.

"Do you want me to take you to the hospital?" says Manny.

So I get myself all dressed again, and I meet Manny in the lobby. The place is packed, everybody standing around talking. Some of them are in bathrobes. It turns out that not five minutes after the ambulance came for Bernie, the President of the Building Association, Barry Kaplan, had a heart attack too. So naturally with all the sirens and excitement everyone has to get into the act.

They all look when they see me and Manny. Everyone gets real quiet and they make a path for us to walk through. A coupla the girls pat my arm. You'd think I was the wife.

What about Lil, I ask Manny when we get in the car. Somebody called her nurse, he tells me, and she came right over. And by the way, he says, you better be careful at the hospital because Bernie's daughter will probably be there. He says it nice, like he's concerned, like maybe he even approves of me and Bernie.

In the middle of being worried sick, my little brain is scheming away. I'm thinking: if Annie's there, I'll pretend I'm visiting Barry Kaplan. The two of them had heart attacks at the same time, they gotta be near each other. Barry's a widower, maybe I can pass myself off as his wife.

When I tell Manny this, his big round face breaks into a grin. He shakes his head and pats me on the shoulder. You'd think we were the best of friends.

When we get to the hospital, there's Annie in the waiting room. She's hunched over a cup of coffee wearing a turtleneck, jeans, and sandals with no socks. Her hair's sticking out all over the place. Manny goes over but I hang back like I didn't come in with him. I stare at the coffee machine, reading all the different choices: with milk and sugar, milk no sugar, sugar no milk, decaf, hot chocolate, chicken soup even. From the corner of my eye I watch and try to listen to Annie's whispers. I gather that Bernie had a pretty big one. Annie says he's stable now but they're monitoring him closely. They're afraid he might have another one.

I stop listening. I know all about heart attacks, I don't need to hear this. Jakey died three weeks after he had one and they said his was minor. They told me he'd be up and out in a week. Hah! One day I walked outta the hospital and the next day into a graveyard. So I don't need so-called facts, I just need to see my Bernie.

Annie gets up and goes through the swinging doors. I look at Manny, my face a big question mark. He shrugs and holds up his palms like he's stuck in a situation he'd rather not be in.

"She's going to say goodbye to him so after she leaves you can maybe go in."

Sure enough in a minute Annie comes out and she's crying. She hugs Manny and says goodbye. She don't even notice me.

Nobody else notices either when I go through the doors, so I slide right in to the room and look around at all the alter cockers hooked up to machines. First I see Barry Kaplan. Next to him is Bernie.

He's asleep, hooked up to wires and tubes. He looks so, I dunno, fragile. If there's one word I never would have used to describe Bernie it's fragile, but that is how he looks now. I go over and touch his hand. I just stand there, looking at him, feeling like I'm gonna cry--but I've never been able to cry in front of people. A coupla times the nurses see me but they don't say nothing, they must figure I'm the wife. I realize that this could get sticky when Annie's here, so I tear myself away and go over to Barry Kaplan. He's awake. He looks much better than Bernie.

"Hiya Sadie." he says.

"Hiya Barry. How ya feeling?"

"Arggh," he says, the way men do when they wanna forget about something, and he waves his arm like he's swatting at a fly. "I'm fine. It was nothing, in fact I think it was indigestion from some junk chocolate candy. But him." He nods towards Bernie. "He hasn't woken up since I'm here.

I guess my face shows how I feel because Barry grabs my hand.

"Sadie, I'm sorry. He'll be okay. I didn't mean to upset you."

I pull myself together, just as a young nurse comes over. She saw me holding Bernie's hand just a minute ago and now here I am holding Barry's.

"Only family is allowed in the cardiac unit, Mrs. -----?" she says, raising her eyebrows. I'm about to open my mouth when Barry jumps in. "Mrs. Kaplan. This is my wife, Sadie Kaplan. Don't go flirting with me when she's around, okay?"

The nurse laughs but she looks confused. She says she's glad to meet me and rushes off.

I hafta laugh. I try to keep it down, but I feel like I'm gonna be hysterical the way sometimes people get at funerals.

"So she'll think I'm your husband and Bernie's your boyfriend," Barry says. "I bet it's not the first time you've created a scandal."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I say.

"It means, Miss Sadie Nussbaum, that you are a very attractive girl. Besides," he says, "the kids think it's cute when we do stuff like this."

And so that's how it goes all week. I go up to visit Barry Kaplan every day. If Annie's not around I sneak over to see Bernie. If she's there, I stay with my new husband.

On the second day Bernie's awake. When I walk in he takes one look at me and his face changes from sick and depressed to healthy and in love. For that look I would've crawled across the whole state of Florida.

I bring him presents--a book, one of those new Walkman things so he can listen to Sinatra, even food I sneak in. I bring Barry Kaplan presents too.

I see the nurses looking and whispering and I wonder what they think. Barry says he heard them talking and it's just like he said--they think whatever's going on, it's cute.

Back at the building the girls come by with homemade cakes and I make coffee and they sit with me. Everybody, even the janitors, ask me how's Bernie and is there anything they can do for me.

We don't hear much about Lil. Bernie asked Manny to check on her and he says the nurse is staying and everything's fine. She don't even know he's gone.

Yesterday Bernie says he wants to tell Annie about us. All this sneaking around he says is no good for his heart. It's true she almost caught us once, I had to make a quick move over to Barry's bed and Annie looked at me real funny. I've been introduced to her as Mrs. Kaplan.

So I told Bernie, do what you wanna do, she's your daughter.

But I'm not too thrilled with the idea.

Annie.

I'm sitting shiva with Ma, but I might as well be doing it alone. I told her a dozen times in as many ways I could think of that Pop is dead, but so far there's been zero response. I wonder if she understands. I wonder if she gives a shit. I get the feeling she's only upset because I won't put on the television.

In a way it's as if I'm sitting shiva for both of them. I mean, I'm gonna have to put Ma into some kind of home. But I can't think about that yet. I have enough to think about.

Like, what the hell did Pop want to tell me just before he died? What was so godawful important that he called to be sure I was coming the next day to the hospital? I came early to find out--but when I got there, the nurse stopped me in the hall.

The minute she told me Pop was dead, it was as if I'd known all along it was coming. It's funny, because when he had the heart attack I didn't once think about him dying. When she told me, I got this dull pain in my chest that slowly moved down and kept on moving, till I hurt in a place I never even knew existed. Even the back of my neck got shivery, like the chill of death was creeping over me.

For the next few days I walked around with these weird physical sensations trying to be mature and make arrangements for Pop's funeral, but I was a wreck. If it hadn't been for Manny Weinberg I don't know what I would've done.

The funeral was five days ago. A lot of people came. I wasn't surprised--Pop was probably the sweetest guy on the face of the earth. When I was in my twenties and thirties and in therapy, I blamed Pop for a lot of my problems. But with all the stories you hear now about fathers molesting and God knows what else, I started to see that Pop rated pretty high on the fatherhood scale.

Isn't it a bitch? Men get points just by comparison to each other.

But sitting here with Ma hour after hour, day after day, I'm starting to think that Pop really was some kind of saint. This situation could drive anyone up a wall. I'm getting real depressed, and it's not just normal grief--believe me, with half my friends dead from AIDS, I know about grief. But this is something else. It kills me to think that Pop spent the last years of his life in solitary confinement with this...this...well, this zombie.

How did he stand it? What did he do for conversation? I guess he had Manny and his other friends, but still. He and Ma were always so close, it must have been like losing your best friend. Like she died. Even worse, because he couldn't mourn and be done with it. He had to take care of her.

I guess she can't help it. I guess she's sick like they say, but I watch her sitting there catatonic and I feel like shaking and strangling her. She didn't even come to the fucking funeral. I hate her for that. I can't help wishing she would've died instead of him. And of course that makes me feel guilty.

So did Pop want to tell me some dark family secret, the proverbial skeleton in the closet? Well, I've gone through all the closets, literally, and not a skeleton has turned up. Just the same old photo albums and home movies I've been looking at all my life, full of me and my happy cousins, and Ma and Pop adoring each other. Except for the baby boy that was stillborn before me, we were the most trouble-free and well-adjusted family in the state of New York.

I thought maybe there was something more about the baby, like maybe it was aborted, not stillborn--but I even found the birth and death certificates in the bottom of a box of old lace handkerchiefs, stuck together back to back, a biography in two yellowed pages.

******************************

On our last day of shiva, I'm up with the sun. Ma doesn't wake up till eight or nine o'clock, so I go for a walk on the beach. Lots of old people, their wrinkled skin burnt like leather, searching the tide for seashells. They look at me wistfully. I wonder if they realize I can see my future in them just like they see their past in me.

The clean salty air and the foamy rush of the ocean lifts my spirits, but as soon as I turn around and head back to the condo, depression settles around me again.

Except for my walk, today is no different from every other day this week. Ma sits, same as always, in front of the tv, wearing a flowered housedress and a beat-up pair of fuzzy slippers, her bent hands resting on the aluminum tray in front of her chair. I put a scrambled egg and orange juice on the tray, sit down and stare at her. This was Pop's life.

I can't stand to think about it.

I guess tomorrow I'll start calling nursing homes. I guess I should put the condo up for sale. I gotta do all this alone, make all these decisions. Shit, this is sure one of those times I wish that baby boy had lived. I sure could use a big brother right about now. Or a big sister. Or even a little one. Anyone.

Just as I think this there's a knock on the door. I jump up and look through the peephole. It's Manny Weinberg.

Manny's big-bellied self in a bright turquoise polo shirt seems out of place in this gloomy apartment. When he sits down next to my pale wispy mother they look like cartoon symbols: life and death. I make him a cup of decaf and open the blinds for the first time all week.

"How ya feelin' Lil?" he asks, patting her blue-veined hand with his brown beefy one. She doesn't even blink.

"How's she takin' it?" he asks me.

I shrug. "I don't know if she understands that he's dead."

Manny shakes his big bald head. "A shame," he mumbles.

For a few minutes the only sound is the clinking of the spoon against the cup as Manny stirs sugar into his coffee. I feel a moment of panic: what will I talk to him about? I'm terrified that we'll just sit here for half an hour, or until Manny feels he's performed his duty and politely excuses himself. Beads of sweat pop out on my forehead.

As I'm searching my brain for something to say, it suddenly occurs to me that he might know what Pop wanted to tell me. After all, they talked every day. Of course, their generation doesn't share too much personal stuff. But hey, what have I got to lose?

"Manny," I say, "do you know of something my father might have wanted to tell me just before he died? Was there anything you can think of that was important to him that I didn't know about?"

Manny's round face looks like a red-tipped paintbrush is spreading over it, up his double chin, across his apple cheeks and wrinkled forehead, turning his brown skin to burnt sienna. His big belly gives a little jump. "Huh?" he says, shaking his head back and forth. "Something he wanted to tell you? No. Uh uh. Not me. Sorry."

Well! What the hell is this all about? Manny sure knows something.

I decide to play it straight. "The night before he died," I say, "he called and asked me to come to the hospital early the next morning. He said he had something important to tell me."

Manny's belly stops twitching but his face shows he's struggling with something.

"He did?"

"Uh huh. Honest." I try to keep the desperation out of my voice. "I wouldn't make up something like that."

Manny stands and walks over to the balcony. He slides open the screen door, and gestures to me with his head. I go outside and we sit down on the white plastic chairs. Manny looks straight ahead and says to the universe in general, "Your father was having an affair with a woman who lives in the building."

"He was having a what?" Pop? I cannot grasp this. The man was madly in love with his wife. He was the most honest, loyal person I ever knew. Besides, he was eighty-two years old.

And then I remember the night Pop had the heart attack, and Manny brought a woman with him, and that she was there almost every day. And I know that what he's telling me is true.

"Now now Annie," Manny is saying, his upper lip perspiring, "Don't be too hard on your dad. With your mother the way she was, he was lonely, you know. He never hurt her, though, he always made sure she was taken care of. She never even knew."

I stare straight into Manny's brown eyes and say, "I want to meet her."

Sadie.

It's seven days since Bernie died. Pretty soon shiva will be over and life will go back to normal. Except it'll be life without Bernie.

I wanna tell you, with what's doing in my apartment you'd think I was the widow. Gutenyu. They don't leave me alone for a minute. Day and night somebody's here, with food, with liquor, playing cards, talking, not talking, crying. And all the old ladies just have to tell me about their dead husbands.

When I saw what was gonna be I figured, well, I might as well sit shiva. I covered up the mirrors and hauled my coffee urn out of the closet. Jean went out and got me a wooden box to sit on. I haven't had a minute to myself. Which means that I haven't been able to cry. Not even at night when I go to bed--I'm too tired from all the company. That's why we have these customs I guess--so you can't get too blue. But to tell you the truth, I could use a good cry.

With the doorbell ringing every two minutes, I don't bother to look through the peephole anymore. So when I opened it up this afternoon and saw Bernie's daughter Annie standing next to Manny Weinberg, I nearly fell down.

"Come in," I said, even though I was scared to let her see the sympathy cards, the baskets of flowers and fruit. Rosie and Jenny from down the hall suddenly remembered they had an appointment, dropped the Kentucky Fried Chicken they were chewing on, and ran out the door. Somehow Manny managed to sneak off with them, leaving me alone with Annie.

What could I do? I offered her fried chicken.

No thanks, she says, looking around the apartment.

How's your mother, I ask. She shrugs. Look, she says, not a minute to waste, Manny told me.

I don't say nothing.

He told me, she says, about you and Pop.

What can I say? I'm sorry? Forgive me? What does she want from me?

You wanna sit down, I ask her.

She shakes her head no and then, before I know what's happening, she takes my hand in both of hers. They're warm and gentle, the way Bernie's hands were. I just came down to tell you, she says, that I wish I would've known. I wish I would've known that Pop had found happiness these last few years. Then she kisses me on the cheek, opens the door, and leaves.

For a minute I just stand there, stunned. Then I start cleaning up the apartment. I throw out the rest of the chicken. I empty the fruit from the baskets and put it in the fridge. I wash out the coffee urn and put it back in its box behind the vacuum cleaner. I make a pile of all the sympathy cards and put them in the box with all the cards I got for Moe and Jake and Henry.

The last thing I do is unveil the mirrors. I notice that my eye makeup's smudged and runny. I guess I've been crying.