​Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.

                      THE SCHMITT TURKEY FARM
 
​
          The week before Thanksgiving Day, the Schmitt Turkey Farm near Pennsylvania Amish country was in a dither. Everyone from Mama and Papa Schmitt, the fourth generation who owned this most profitable and bloody of enterprises, down to their three children knew exactly what was expected of them.
          The cheerful sun entered their large clapboard house at six in the morning, but by then, Mama had their breakfast spread out on the white linen table cloth.
          “Sure is good, Mama,” said her husband in his blue overalls, as he sopped up the blueberry flapjacks with cornbread. “Ida May, you’re gonna make sure the milk machines is workin’ all right.”
          “Yes, Papa,” said the blond pigtailed little girl.
          “What you doing there?” Mama said to Richie.
          He looked up at her guiltily, with a sly look at his father.
          “Uh, Carolyn doesn’t like blueberries, so I’m pulling them, uh, out of her flapjacks.”
          “And wasting them!” cried Mama.
          “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m gonna feed them to our fish in the aquarium.”
          “My land!” cried Mama. “Now I’ve heard everything.
          The seventy turkeys had been shooed from the pasture where their low contented sounds – they were talkier than Aunt Martha - could be heard in the house. The whole family would gaze lovingly upon them – the children loved their wobbling wattles beneath their chins – as the birds ate just about everything the pasture had to offer: the smooth green tips of grass, insects, baby birds, and the gravel the Schmitts had sprinkled over the grass to make sure their gizzards could digest the food.
          Mama refused to eat any of the turkeys or make turkey soup, complete with gizzards and livers, until Thanksgiving was over and all the hired hands had been paid and fed.
          The turkeys made quite a procession to their new outdoor enclosure. The family always wondered what they knew. They were pretty damn sure they sensed trouble as they were especially talkative and collected in small groups, like gossipy women, though these were all male. The females looked over from the pasture. Not to put too human a perspective on the little ladies, they did seem rather sad.
          Richie would brag to his friends at the one-room school house that his father had hired “cowboys” to help out. The other children begged Richie to come over and see them. Richie was sorry to inform them his father had so “no.”
          “And when Papa says ‘no’ he won’t change his mind, no matter how much I promise that I’ll work harder than ever and give him my second tooth when it falls out, saving him a quarter from The Tooth Fairy.”
          The turkeys walked carefully into their new enclosure, like women in high heels. Though automatic feeders and watering machines were now all the rage, The Schmitts kept to their old-fashioned methods – hand-feeding an bowls of fresh water – and had people coming from miles around for their famous fowl. The Action News Channel had interviewed the family several times over the years and proclaimed the product “Second to none. Tender, flavorful, and juicy.”
          All the children, with one exception, loved the traditional turkey dinner. They were joined by some customers they befriended over the years.
          Carolyn had celebrated her fourth birthday. She loved nothing more than Mama to read to her at night. She loved animal stories. Life on the Farm. The Little Moo-Cow. Poky the Puppy. An obedient little girl, she hated when Papa got mad. His face looked like a red-faced dragon to her, so she never disobeyed. Or rarely did.
          The night before the turkey sale would begin, Carolyn peeked out her upstairs window. All was quiet as if the snow had recently fallen. Autumn leaves were shaking on the trees and then whirling to the ground. She walked slowly down the stairs so as not to waken the others and went outside. She shivered in the evening chill.
          The turkeys were asleep. She had no idea what she was going to do but found herself opening up the gate. At first the turkeys did nothing. Then with a great burst of noise, they began running from the pen. Freedom! They had no leader so they ran in different directions. Some headed for the house, where the family would feed them table scraps. Others ran for the pasture where the females made a joyful noise and raced toward the doomed birds.  
          In all the chaos, little Carolyn, in her blue flannel nightgown, had been knocked down by the turkey stampede, and lay on the cold ground.
          By now, the household was roused.
          “Good God almighty!” shouted Mr Schmitt. “Our lives are ruined. What are we gonna do?”
          “Hush up,” said his wife. “We’re gonna round them all up, that’s what we’re gonna do.”
          They phoned the hired hands who drove right over from their hotel rooms. The turkeys were loaded onto cars, Jeeps, backhoes, every type of vehicle on the farm. One or two could fit into outstretched arms. Carolyn was lifted up, hugged, and carried a fat one back to the pen.
          At 10 am when the Schmitt Turkey Farm unlocked the front gates, Mr. Schmitt, in his overalls and straw hat, was waving in the customers. Each turkey had been  slaughtered in the barn, the Kosher way, causing the less stress possible, making for the tenderest and juiciest turkeys this side of Ohio.
         
                                                          T H E   E N D        
         

​Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.

 

​                                              THE DUSTER  
 
He was invisible. He made a point of arriving at his job an hour before the museum opened. They trusted him with the keys. A small, bent-over black man with a bad back, he carried the cleaning supplies in a huge crinkly bag that read “Target” on the front. He would let himself into the high-ceiling rooms, and take out the cleaning supplies from the bag. Groaning with pain, he checked the entire museum to make sure nothing had been disturbed during the night.
          Sometimes while he dusted he thought about his life as a child growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Most of the southern family were as dead as boll weevils in a sack of cornmeal.  A smattering of relatives found the means to migrate to Philadelphia, as racist a town as any in the south.
Mostly, though, he concentrated on removing the dust and grime from the city of brotherly love from beneath the tiny cracks and crevices of the one hundred and eighty figures designed by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. He didn’t much care for the The Gates of Hell right there on the front door, put him in a bad mood to see what became of sinners in Hell – who knew where he and his late wife would end up? They were quick to argue.  Why didn’t you meet me in church? You seeing that hussy again you claim is your niece from Clarksdale? Yet he dusted The Gates of Hell with love and care.
          Balzac was his favorite. The towering Balzac wore the cloak in which he composed his thousand and one characters, most of them mischief-makers. It cast a spell over him. The Duster hadn’t much money but at home he fashioned, piece by piece, a black cotton cloak like Balzac’s. With his wife’s sewing needle and small spools of thread, the cloak grew bigger day by day. He would hold it up to the light and smile. Patience, he’d counsel himself. The Lord hadn’t made the world in a day.
          As the buds appeared on the trees in the spring, he slipped the long, flowing cloak over his stooped-over body and rode the bus to work. Stares greeted him as he boarded the bus. He jingled the keys as The Gates of Hell grinned at him as he unlocked the door of the museum
Wearing the cumbersome cloak, he checked to make sure everything was in order for the hundreds of visitors – many of them foreigners – who would visit today.
          When the director walked in, he strode over to The Duster and bowed before him.   
          “Why Balzac!” he said with incredulity. “You’re alive!”  
          The Duster nodded his head and smiled. The biggest smile since he’d eaten sweet potato pie with whipped cream back in Clarksdale.
 

​Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.

​                      THE DOCTOR IN THE BIKINI
 
          “Your panties? They’re in the top drawer, next to the Gideon Bible.”
          She laughed. “This is the first time I’ve put anything in the drawer. And definitely the last.”
          Jenna Kirkpatrick got out of bed and reached into the drawer. Was the Gideon Bible frowning at her? She stood on one foot, then on the other, as she slipped her pink lacey panties onto her beach-tanned legs.
          “Think I’ll wear my new sundress,” she said, removing it from a hook in the bedroom on the third floor of Watson’s Regency Hotel, a short walk to the boardwalk at Ocean City, New Jersey.  
          She twirled around in her pink sundress, with its pattern of swirling circles, before her newest lover.
          He whistled.
          She went over to him, as he lay in bed, tousled his dirty blond hair, and whispered in his ear.
          “Pardon me, love. But I’ve forgotten your name.”
          He jumped up and laughed.
          “Pierre,” he said. “Just call me Pierre.”
          They had until noon. The brightly lit digital clock read 9 am. They would stroll along the board walk, get a cup of coffee at Ocean City Coffee Shop and then he’d report for duty. He drove the power boat for one of the parasail companies.
          As they strode up the ramp to the boardwalk, Pierre asked if it were normal for a psychiatrist to be “on the make,” as he phrased it.
          “Normal for this one,” she said. “My therapist told me to join Saint Augustine Fellowship, which is a nice way of saying Love and Addictions Anonymous.”  
          She pointed at the waves on the ocean. “Would you mind if we said hello to the ocean? It’s one of my better addictions.”
          Jenna removed her sandals and watched her footprints as they sunk into the warm sand. Then she broke free and ran to the ocean, its sound like a thrumming Beethoven symphony. She walked in up to her ankles, then knees, and finally her waist. She laughed as she felt the cold salty water soothe her unquenchable heart.
          “Okay,” she thought. “So I’m messed up. But I’m still a good psychiatrist.”
          Pierre came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, lightly touching her large spongy breasts, that poked prominently from the pink sundress. She turned around and they enjoyed a long delicious kiss.
          Hand in hand, they walked back to the boardwalk, and strode onward until they came to the coffee house.
          They positioned themselves by the self-serve section and viewed the varieties of coffee, both regular and decaf. Pirate’s Coffee (strong Costa-Rico and Columbian); Ocean City Blend; Raspberry; French Roast and seven other varieties.
          Jenna chose a 20-ounce white cup, squirted some Raspberry into the bottom and filled it with French Roast. She sniffed it and offered Pierre a smell.
          “Very nice,” he said.
          “What’ll you have, love?” she asked. “My treat.”  
          “Can’t drink while I’m on the boat. Gotta concentrate on the riders two hundred feet off the ground. Can’t be worrying about taking a leak.
          She laughed.
          They sat down on a bench facing the ocean. At nine in the morning tourists were already marking off the spots where they would spend the day. Colorful umbrellas were twisted into the warm sand, blankets set down, then the coolers came out, while gray and white sea gulls swooped low with their practiced “Feed me! Feed me!” cries.
          “I love it here,” said Jenna. “It’s the only time I feel free.”
          She sipped through a tiny opening on her hot coffee.
          Pierre watched the breeze blow her long black hair. With his fingers, he combed it across her shoulders.
          “Beautiful woman,” he said.
          “Well, my patients like me anyway,” she said and brought her iPhone out of her pocket.
          “Not a single call,” she said. “Not yet at least. They have no idea where I am or what I do in my spare time.”
          He asked what she did other than screw total strangers.
          She explained her reading habits: psychiatry journals, which she found “absolutely fascinating,” a dose of crime fiction such as the Jack Reacher novels and was impressed to find Pierre had read every single one of them (she hadn’t) and a selection of literary novels, like Gone Girl, if she could get through them.
          “Start and stop, that’s me. I just don’t care if I pick them up again.”
          “Sounds a lot like your Saint Augustine friends.”
          “Aren’t you the smart one?” she laughed.
          The July sun was getting hot. A few fluffy white clouds passed leisurely by, as if out on a Sunday stroll. Jenna explained she’d rent one of the blue and white striped umbrellas, lie on her blanket in her two-piece bikini, and let the sun melt her cares away.
          “Speaking of the devil,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her blue iPhone.
          Without hesitating, she pressed a button and said, “What’s going on Mr. G?” She walked away from Pierre so he wouldn’t hear her confidential discussion.
          She listened a few moments and nodded. “Tony, I know how hard it is, I really do.” She walked on the boardwalk, staring at her blue-painted toenails. “If you were to jump off that little bridge, you wouldn’t die. You’d lay there on the rocky bottom in more pain than you’ve ever had in your entire life. Do you hear me?”
          He mumbled a yes. He was a good looking Italian man around forty years old. Women loved him but it didn’t help.
          She had a knack for helping her suicidal patients. She had made two half-hearted attempts to end her own life.
          “Tony, I just had an idea.”
          She paused and took a sip of her coffee.
          “Would your dad let you buy a dog?”
          “Yeah, why?”
          “Well, go to the SPCA and buy yourself a dog. You need someone to take care of other than your old father.”
          “You think?”    
          “Yes, I’m positive, Tony. And you call me when you’ve gotten the dog. And give him a good name.”
          “Sure, Dr. Fitz,” he said.
          She walked over to the bench where Pierre was conversing with a young woman on the next bench, who held a big white tub of Johnson’s Carmel Popcorn. She patted the iPhone in her pocket and immediately forgot about her patient.
          Pierre handed the woman a business card that read “Best Shore Parasailing.” He had launched into a promotion of what it felt like to soar above the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps to spot a couple of dolphins or even the long fins of the sharks, who at this very moment in July, were tasting human blood in North Carolina.
          “Yes,” said the woman. “I saw it on television. What’s going on?”
          “Sharks are unpredictable,” said Pierre. “Often times they think a person is an enemy. They have poor eyesight so the swimmer might be making similar movements to the fish they like to eat or could even have an open wound or wear something shiny, like the skin of their prey.”
          The woman shivered and crossed her arms over her chest.
          “Shall we walk?” Jenna interrupted.
          “You think about it, ma’am, and get back to me if you’re ready to have the best experience of your life.”
          He doffed his Yankees cap. He and Jenna walked on the old wooden boards as bicycles of all sorts whizzed by, some with bells warning pedestrians they were coming by.            
          On they walked, passing a raft of women’s clothing shops that had Jenna craning her neck to see what was in the window.
          They also passed “Shore Paintings” fifty percent off. Leaning against the door way were colorful paintings – “Museum Quality” screamed a banner – and a couple walked out with a painting under each arm.  
          “This so-called sex addiction of yours,” said Pierre.
          “You know what?” said Jenna. “I like you but this is something I do not discuss.”
          “No prob,” he said.
          “And don’t get mad if I bring up someone else to my hotel room. It’s the way I am. It makes me happy.”
          Pierre nodded.
          “I think you’d really love to parasail. What do you think?”
          Jenna said she would try it the next day, which was her last in Ocean City. She had patients to see on Monday morning at her office in Philadelphia.
<> 
          After a refreshing sleep, Jenna awoke alone and changed into her two-piece bikini and pulled a white beach dress over it. The digital clock read seven a.m. She thought about Jack Reacher, who had an internal clock that never failed him.
She’d always been an early riser. She was the oldest of six children, evenly divided between boys and girls, from an impoverished Catholic family in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia.
          To wake up was to hear her parents yelling at one another, pounding the kitchen table, her mother throwing bacon grease in her father’s face, the father slapping his wife until she got welts on her cheeks.
          Then, “You brats!” her father would call at the foot of the stairs. “You lazy goddamn brats. Sleeping your lives away, are ya? Get down here for breakfast or I’ll take the strap to ya.”  
          Jenna felt guilty when she prayed every night that her father would meet a horrible demise, maybe be burned to death like the saints, but apparently his mean temper kept him alive.
          She rarely thought of her childhood any more except when a memory pushed its way up from some corner of her brain – the frontal cortex and hippocampus, she learned in med school – and now, as she readied herself for the boardwalk, a memory escaped. Jenna found herself in shock, holding her hands over her face.
          Father had seen her new Cinderella lunch box that she’d traded with a classmate in first grade.
          “Where’d you git this?” he yelled, as she prayed he would drop dead.
          “I…. Mary Ann didn’t want it,” she stammered.
          “And neither do you,” he said, throwing it onto the kitchen floor with a clatter, then smashing it with his work boots.
          “Oh, go away!” Jenna said aloud in the hotel room. “I’m glad you’re dead, you goddamn bastard.” The ultimate analyzer, she tried to think what triggered the memory.
          Nothing came up.
<> 
         
          Under the blue sky with its slow-moving clouds, Pierre adjusted Jenna’s life jacket over her blue and white bikini. He could smell her sun tan lotion and watched her black hair sway in the breeze on the boat. God, she was lovely, he thought. He reached into a box on the boat and brought out a small elastic band.
          “Tie your hair back with this, Jen,” he said.
          He helped her into a swing, fastened all the straps and cords, and then told her that as he drove his power boat, a huge parachute would open up, trailing her in the swing, and upwards she’d glide.
          She nodded her head.
          “I won’t be killed,” she stated matter of factly.
          “Do you think I’d let anything happen to my beautiful Jenna?”
          She smiled and then cleared her throat a few times, as he climbed over to the bow of the boat and fired up the engine. As the boat sped away from the dock, she jerked in her seat and all thoughts vanished as the ocean spray drenched her and she shot upward into the air.
          “I’m flying!” she screamed with joy.    
          What a view she had! It was better than sitting motionless in an airplane because now she was a part of the flight. She kicked her legs and waved her arms as she viewed the rippling gray Atlantic below. Pierre aimed his boat away from the shore. He wanted her to see the “pod of dolphins.” The wind was strong, whipping her ponytail back and forth, as she tried to distinguish shapes in the water.
          At first she thought they were sleek gray barrels rolling in the sea. But, no, barrels couldn’t leap and dance and play and barrels didn’t have the blue-gray sheen and snouts that poked upward as if they were praying to God almighty.
          She clasped her hands to her chest and shouted, “Thank you Lord. Thank you for keeping me in this world for thirty-four years.” Her words fled into the air. Filed away in God’s filing cabinet. Pink, she imagined.
<> 
          Of course, it was the nuns that saved her. Sister Marcella, in particular. They knew what went on at home. Sent Father McGarry to talk to her parents. Wise old white-haired Tom McGarry knew it wouldn’t do a lick of good, but he must try.
          Seated on the green davenport in the living room, where there wasn’t a mote of dust or a crumb on the floor, the priest had brought Sterling and Dorothy Fitzpatrick a gift of flowers in a milk-white vase.
          “A cup of tea, Father?” asked her mother.
          “I’d like that,” he said, holding his hat in his hand.
          “Sterling, may I call you that, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
          “If me own priest can’t call me by my first name, I don’t know who can, then,” he said, never looking up at the priest.
          “You’re a machinist, then, Sterling?”
          “The finest,” he said. “They made me foreman. I can sure get those lazy bas… oh, excuse me, Father. Sometimes my men would rather talk than do their God-given work and I’m known for carrying the whip, as they say.”
          With a clatter, the pot of tea and tea cups arrived on a silver platter, along with some cookies for dunking.
          “Nice to have a little party during the day,” said Dorothy, who had a bruise near her eye, which could not be covered up by make-up.
          The priest explained that the school at Our Lady of Lourdes enjoyed all six children – Albert, Anthony, Dorothy, Sterling, and AnnaMaria – but were especially impressed with Jenna, “a very bright, pleasant child.”
          “Oh, we’re well aware of that, Father,” said Sterling. “Always wanting to go to the public library, wanting to stay up late studying, which of course we don’t allow.”
          “Marvelous cookies, Dorothy,” said the father, after dunking a powdered sugar cookie into his tea.
          “Thank you, Father.”   
          “Let me come to the point,” he said, looking at each parent.   
          Dorothy put her tea cup down on the little table with trembling hands.
          “I’ll say it for you, Father,” said Dorothy.  
          Sterling looked at her and raised his right hand as if to hit her.
          “My husband here is a good man but has a nasty temper. Occasionally he gets the strap out and I’m sorry to say he, uh…..”
          “Oh, for Chrissakes, my love,” said Sterling, standing up and kissing his wife on the cheek.
          “Once, maybe, or twice, I do admit to getting the strap, just like when I was a lad back in County Cork. Did me good. I minded my manners just as I expect my own brood to do.”
          “It’s not easy raising six children,” said the priest. “And the two of you are to be praised for doing your best. But I want you to think of something.”
          The priest took another sip of tea, looked at Dorothy and then at Sterling.
          “Remember how Christ was lashed before they laid him on the cross?”
          There was silence.
          “Before you take your strap, Sterling Fitzpatrick, I want you to imagine that you are lashing our own Jesus Christ the Savior.”
          Both Dorothy and Sterling gasped.
          “Father!” they both cried in unison.
          Father McGarry took his leave, hoping his intercession was of some use.
<> 
          Pierre slowed down “The Higher Power” and pulled her over to the dock. Jenna lay exhausted with her eyes closed. He kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry, ma’am. ride’s over.”
          “May I keep this as a souvenir?” she asked, as she undid the borrowed elastic band.
          “Sure. You may also keep me as a souvenir,” he said.
          They laughed and agreed to have dinner, after dark, and to meet at a new restaurant “The Big Fish.” For a few weeks, an airplane had flown low over the beach with a sign for “The Big Fish” at Eleventh and The Boardwalk.
          Jenna was sipping on iced coffee when Pierre entered the restaurant, dressed in khaki shorts and a button-down blue shirt. She lifted up her head for his kiss.
          “I actually ordered some wine,” she said, “but I forgot you’re dry around here.”
          “After we eat – and I am star-ving – I’ll tell you a bit of history of our enchanted city.”
          “I know a little,” said Jenna. “Started as a religious colony….
          “Four Methodist ministers, the Lake Brothers and one William Burrell, in 1879 brought forth onto these lands a Christian retreat and camp and forbad the public drinking of alcoholic beverages, hence we buy our liquor at Roger Wilco when we’re coming from Pennsylvania or at Roger Wilco when we’re coming from New Jersey. The New Yawkers have their choice of booze on every street corner in their city.”
          A waitress arrived at their table.
          “Hi, I’m Annie, and I’ll be your server tonight,” said a small attractive woman in black with a white apron.
          They ordered their fresh fish.
          “Annie,” said Pierre. “I’d like a cup of black coffee right now. Thanks, dear.”
          Candles glowed in the center of the table and they had a view of the ocean, barely visible under a moonless sky.
          Over dinner, Jenna said, “Pierre, tell me a little about yourself. You are such a clever fellow.”
          “What do you want to know?”
          She explained that one of her jobs as a psychiatrist was to do a “psychiatric evaluation” the very first time she and the patient met.  “I ask all sorts of questions, like what’s your relationship with your family and siblings – we call them your ‘family of origin’ – if you’re able to work – who you live with – and what your goals are. If you’re living the best possible life you can. And then I tell them I’ll help them achieve their goals, little by little.”
          Pierre held up his fork with the crab-stuffed flounder. “This is very good, by the way,” he said. “But, are you, my dear, living the best possible life you can?”
          “Aha,” said Jenna, pointing her finger at him. “You’re trying to get out of answering the question, but I’m calling you on it.”
          “Not really,” he laughed.
          “Not really has no meaning,” said Jenna. “It means ‘yes.’”
          “Of course I want to talk to you,” he said. “Our relationship, such as it is, goes two ways. I know so little about you – except you love having orgasmic experiences – and so do I. In fact, for, oh, about eight years or so, I was hooked on about every drug you could think of and served jail time.”   
          He speared a french fry. “I had a great counselor when I got out – Dr. Leah Goldman – who told me to replace pot and cocaine with risk-taking behavior that created its own adrenaline high.”
          “Very smart,” said Jenna. “I’ve gotta remember that.”
          He explained he was a Jersey guy, raised on a farm with horses and chickens and cows – he did a marvelous low “mooo” – and was so “goddamn bored” he started snorting and inhaling and “enjoyed it to the max.” Until his parents turned him in.
          “Oooh!” said Jenna.
          “I know,” said Pierre. “But they did the right thing. I never would have stopped or would have died of an overdose. When I got out, they loaned me the money to start my own business. Besides, I’m in love with the shore, just love it and can’t live without it, so, for now, this is the place where I belong.”
          They lifted up their glasses and clicked them together.
          That night they went to Pierre’s apartment.
          “Why, it’s like a college dorm,” said Jenna, as she slipped off her sandals. There was a desk piled high with papers and magazines and a reading lamp with a swivel neck like a goose. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor and a drying rack held his wet swim trunks and shirts from “The Higher Power.”
          Though they were both exhausted, they made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms. Jenna murmured, “Thank you for one of the happiest days of my life.”
<> 
          Jenna unlocked the door of her office and flung her backpack on her desk. She liked to get there early – before 7:30 – before her secretary came in – and get ready for the day. She raised up the white blinds and looked at the view from the fifth floor of The Melrose Park House, ten miles south of Philadelphia. Islands of greenery swam into view as did the huge swimming pool, for this was an apartment complex with offices inside. The console telephone on her desk was already blinking and she scrolled down to see who had called.
          Odd, she thought. There was a call from Lainie, the Dutch partner of Sheila Newman. Wonder what she wanted. The call could wait until the doctor got situated and Marna came in to make the coffee.
          Typed on a white sheet and waiting in the middle of her desk was a list of the patients she would see today. Marna would pull their charts from the pink file cabinet in the adjoining room. Occasionally Jenna didn’t have time to review the patient’s chart and had trouble remembering what had happened the last time. For example, Shelly, a beautiful forty-year-old woman who was hopelessly in love with a married man, had had surgery. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if it was for a cracked elbow or cracked wrist.
          She loved each and every one of her patients. She knew this to be a truth. Love – call it “agape” - must radiate from one to the other or else healing was not possible. She especially looked forward to couples counseling this very day between Howard and Rebeccal, who were engaged to be married. As this was the second marriage for both of them, they didn’t want to make the same mistakes. Jenna had won a prestigious award in Philadelphia Magazine for being one of the Top Couples Counselors in the city.  
          “Hello! Hello!” called Marna as she let herself in the front door. “How was your vacation,” she said, as she entered the doctor’s office.
          “As wonderful as can be expected,” said Jenna. “I even met a guy. And I got you a little present,” she said, handing her a pound of Ocean City Coffee in a beige-colored bag.
          “I’ve heard this is the greatest,” said Marna, tossing her shoulder-length auburn hair. “How about if I make it right now?”
          “Up to you, love. Or you might save it for home and use our Starbucks Breakfast Blend.”
          “It’ll be a surprise,” said Marna.
          Jenna smelled the delicious aroma and turned on her messages.
          Sheila Newman, a woman she’d been seeing for six years, seemed to be in terrible trouble. Jenna dialed the phone number of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her patient, she learned, was in a diabetic coma and wasn’t expected to live.
          Jenna crossed herself and went over to the window. “Dear Father, please help our darling Sheila, and if she must die, make it a merciful death.” She wiped her eyes and went in for her first cup of steaming hot coffee.
          “The cure-all,” she thought about coffee, not for the first time. That and Skinnygirl pinot grigio, which was at home in the fridge of her condo.
          She put a call in to Tony, who had been thinking of jumping.
          “Glad to see you’re still with the living,” she said.
          He gave a slight laugh and said he was going with his old dad to the SPCA to find a dog.
          “I’m proud of you, Tony,” said Jenna. “In time these feelings will pass.”
          She was lying and they both knew it. As a man with Asperger syndrome, he had never felt at home in his body. He was the consummate outsider, the man looking through the window while everyone else was having a life. For some reason, he had been born in the wrong body, they both knew it, and her job was to keep him alive and involved in life as long as was possible. She prayed for him every night, as she did her other patients.
          She attended the funeral for Sheila Newman in Bensalem. As a lesbian, she had been married to Sheldon Newman, a tall, stately, gay man who came to the funeral with his lover. Sheila and Sheldon, who apparently never had sex, had adopted two boys. Jenna knew all about them and was pleased, at last, to make their acquaintance: Dov, the fun-loving ne-er do well, whose wife adored him and was happy to support him – why not, thought Jenna – and Saul, the doctor, with his shaven head, his wife and two little boys.
          If a funeral can truly be a “celebration of life,” this was a first-rate gala. Several tents had been set up, with wonderful food from Jewish delis, coffee to soothe everybody’s nerves, and the knowledge that all the supposed “enemies” were simply regular folks, doing their best to be cordial and accepting of the highly unusual relationships in the Newman family.
          In the open casket, Jenna viewed Sheila for the last time. No longer would she see her every Monday afternoon at five p.m., her last patient. She looked peaceful, this huge woman, with jowls like a mastiff dog, wearing one of a half-dozen button-down shirts she bought in six different colors in an online catalog. The color blue was very becoming and Sheila looked as if she found peace at last. With her bipolar disorder, she spent too many energetic days and nights when she couldn’t stop herself from her “manic buying sprees,” as they were called. And around her neck was a gold chain bearing the name “Lainie Ponsen,” her lover of over ten years. And a woman who kept Sheila as tranquil as possible.
          As Jenna was biting into a pastrami sandwich, she heard bickering under a maple tree. A fight had broken out between Sheila’s former husband and Lainie about where to bury Sheila. Each claimed sovereignty over the departed. Sheldon wanted her buried right here in Bensalem, even though he resided in Long Island. Lainie wanted the casket of her lover transported to Rainbow Village near Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the first gay and lesbian retirement communities in America. Lainie, a retired anthropology teacher, would move to the home, now that Sheila had passed.
          The argument continued at Saul’s home.
          “Reminds me of the wisdom of King Solomon,” said Saul, who, like the rest of his family was a religious Jew. “Two people are fighting over a baby, each claiming to be its mother. One woman announces she’ll give up her rights to the child, proving to the wise king that she indeed is the mother.
          “As her son and executor, the casket will be shipped to Rainbow Village in Cincinnati. It’s not that far. A nice day’s drive.”  
          When Jenna returned home to her condo, her head was spinning. She flopped into bed where visions of the day twirled in her head like a kaleidoscope.  She looked at the huge cuckoo clock on the wall. Nearly midnight. Then, for the first time in the day, she remembered Pierre.
          Should she? Was it too late? She realized she missed him. That was a first.
          “Darling,” she said, after he answered his phone. “Sorry to call so late. Did you miss me?”
          “Of course I missed you,” he said in a sleepy voice. “I’m counting the days until you come back down.”
          “Would it be all right if I came down every weekend in the summer?”
          “You know where to find me,” he said. “When you come again, I’ll have a surprise for you.”
          “A surprise? Oh, tell me what it is. I can’t stand waiting.”
          “You’ll wait. It’s good for you.”
          He paused.
          “Pierre will be no more. You’ll learn my real name.”
          They were quiet.
          “And,” he added. “I hope you like diamonds.”
          

​Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.

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​                    AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY
 
          He was a man who loved women. His ease in finding them was as natural as the moon shining on his back yard deck in northeast Philadelphia where he and his fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny sat, heads tilted upward, watching the thousands of fireflies blinking in the night sky.
          “Do you think Mommy sees them back in Kingston,” she asked.
          “I believe she does, sweetheart. It was only her disease that kept you apart.”
          “Do you think I’m too old to catch the fireflies?”
          “Hardly,” he said, getting up from his lawn chair and going into the adjoining kitchen. She heard his slippers slosh over the floor and open a cupboard and then slam it shut. He presented her with a glass jelly jar with a metal lid.
          “Promise you won’t let them die?”
          “Oh, no, Daddy. When their blinking slows down, I’ll send them back outside.”
          Mark Eisenberg’s used-car business had done well the year he’d traveled to Jamaica on vacation. He met a beautiful Jamaican dancer at Alfred’s Pelican Bar. Watching her dance with a variety of black-skinned men right there on the beach, he sipped his Rum and Coke, then put down the drink on the high table, and danced right up to her.
          “May I?” he smiled into her eyes.
          She was a few inches taller than Mark, but was impressed by the way he held the small of her back and guided her across the floor.
          Nuzzling her head next to his cheek, she whispered, “You a good dancer, Mr. White Man. How long you down here?”
          They continued their conversation in his motel room, where they didn’t get much sleep. In the well-stocked mini-refrigerator, Mark brought them Coors Beers, explaining to Naisha that it came from the mountain waters of Colorado.
          “One of the most beautiful places on earth, Naisha, but not so beautiful as your body,” he said, filling her face and body with a million kisses.
          “You take me there, my white boy?” she asked.
          “Sure, I take you there, my African princess.”
          When he went back to Philadelphia, he had her name – Naisha Radcliffe – and address and sent her a postcard, thanking her for the wonderful memories, and wishing her “best of luck” at Alfred’s at Pelican Bay.
          One night after coming home late from his used car lot, the answering machine was blinking in his lavishly furnished Philadelphia row house. Making himself a cup of coffee, he sat on his red leather sectional, pulled off his shoes and socks, and listened to the message machine. Naisha had called him three times and left three urgent messages to call back.
          She was pregnant. Yes she was sure it was his child. How did she know? It had been nearly a year since she had been intimate with a man. By the sound of her voice – tear-filled, frightened, excited – he was certain she was telling the truth. As a car salesman, he had a knack of knowing people, whether they could afford, say, an old Cadillac Fleetwood with fancy fins, or a fairly new BMW sports car going for thirty thousand dollars. This knowing of people, he would tell his mother, isn’t something you can learn. “It just is, Mom. It’s been with me since I was a kid and little Stevie Vetter tried to con me out of my baseball cards, remember?”
          She did. She remembered everything about her son.
          Naisha wanted to have the child. And Mark knew he would take responsibility. Living expenses were cheap on the islands, so every two weeks, he would send her a cashier’s check for $500, which was enough for obstetrical care and the upcoming birth and maternity expenses. Naisha didn’t seem to mind that Mark had no intention of coming down, nor did she seem to mind asking for more money as her pregnancy rolled on.
          “Oh, honey, you know, I need some new maternity clothes. I want to go shopping where white folks go.” Then after a pause, she added, “You know, our baby going to be half white anyhow.”
          Was she taking advantage of him, Mark wondered. Probably. He’d have to sell more cars to keep up with her demands. He arranged for his friend, Larry Kirschner, a well-known videographer, to film a television commercial, touting “Mark’s FairShare Auto Mart” right next door to Church’s Fried Chicken and down the road from Einstein Medical Center, right on Broad Street. A smiling black-haired Mark Eisenberg, wearing a suit jacket and no tie, walked around the lot, which flashed with tiny attention-grabbing silver flags.
          “Look at this beauty!” he smiled, crinkling his blue eyes. “You come in here and make me an offer on this practically brand new Cadillac Escalade Truck and you’ll drive it home.”
          The television commercial worked. Business picked up and Mark was once again moving cars. His pal, Stephen Johnson, from the neighborhood wrote up the orders in his cubicle, offering customers bottled water or coffee.
          Sitting at home after work and looking at television, Mark mused about his child’s birth. Should he go down? Nah, unnecessary. Naisha didn’t need him. She had more relatives than there were beaches in Jamaica. Why, then, was he looking on the Internet for plane tickets from Philadelphia to Miami to Kingston?
          The hospital where Naisha gave birth, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was nearly as modern as an American one. The men’s room was not as clean and the air-conditioning left much to be desired but his woman was in safe hands. Nurses walked around in crisp white uniforms and peaked caps. Soul music was piped into the waiting room, where Mark sat among a sea of black faces, men and women and children, all awaiting the birth of a new family member. A water cooler gurgled when a child poured himself a drink.
          “Mr. Eisenberg?” called a nurse.
          He jumped up and walked toward her.
          She smiled, touched him on the shoulder, and asked him to follow her.
          Naisha lay in bed, her face shiny with perspiration, and in her arms, was the tiniest baby he had ever seen.
          “Meet your new daughter,” said the nurse.
          The baby was quiet. A white cap rested on her head, as Mark first kissed Naisha on the lips and then turned his attention to their daughter.
          The baby’s blue eyes stared silently ahead as if reviewing her long journey from conception to life in the dark but noisy womb, filled with all sorts of music and voices and laughter and that one particular voice that was always there, whether she was eating her crunchy fish and chips for breakfast or dancing to the Righteous Brothers in her tiny living room.  
          Selling a Porsche was nothing in comparison to meeting your own flesh and blood, through the graciousness of a woman he hardly knew, a perfect stranger, who had incubated this miracle and now brought her forth as if she were the long-awaited heiress to a throne.
          He held the newborn in his arms, surprised at how natural it felt. He told no one about his feelings, but his heart was singing a triumphant melody, as his eyes filled with tears.
          “You done good,” he said to Naisha. “You done us proud, Mama.”
          “I don’t want her. I feel like killing her. You take her away so I don’t kill this baby of mine. You hear me, man?”
                                                          *
          Naisha never saw Jenny again. She had no interest in writing or in getting letters from her daughter. Mark promised his daughter that some day they would make the trip. In Jenny’s bedroom, she had a map of Jamaica on the wall, next to posters of Bob Marley and The Red Hot Chili Peppers – the famous one where their penises were encased in socks - and on her bureau, a framed black and white photo of her mother.
          From the deck, Mark watched his slender daughter balance carefully over the railing while she scooped up fireflies into the jelly jar and then quickly screwed on the lid. Then she descended into the back yard. The grass looked black in the night but Jenny fairly glowed holding the flashing glass jar as she skipped across the back yard, which still held her old swing and sliding board.
          “So like Naisha,” he thought, not for the first time, as he watched her partially blond dreadlocks sway down her back.
          Mark was a man who could not keep away from women. He conducted all of his affairs away from home. He preferred wealthy women, who he dreamed would lift him up from what he told his mother, known as Bubby Eisenberg, was his “penniless pauper” status.
          “Oh, Markie,” she remonstrated. “Always so hard on yourself. You know, if you need a loan, Bubby will be there to provide.”
          Not on your life would he take money from his mother. She was a stingy bitch and used her wealth to lord over him.
          He and his lovers would meet at their homes or in motels. Making love was a fine affair. But none would make a suitable live-in companion that he cared to introduce to Jenny. One day his daughter surprised him.
          “Daddy,” she said. “I don’t mind if you come home smelling like perfume and the inside of a woman, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if you brought these ladies home to meet me.”
          Mark turned red.
          “Sorry, Daddy,” she said, “I didn’t mean to….”
          “I’ll tell you something, kid. Now that you’re fifteen, what would you think if Daddy brought home a stepmother? Of course, I have yet to meet her.”
          Jenny said she’d like that.
                                                          *
          His friends, the Truby family who lived across the street in the rowhouse whose every outside stair featured a huge planter of brightly colored flowers, had tried to fix him up with a Chinese woman. Mark had balked. Yet another ethnicity to deal with. His Jamaican woman had wanted to kill their baby. His Jewish mother used her wealth to control him. Chinese women had a reputation of being cold, unaffectionate. It was once frowned upon for Chinese women to hold hands in public or engage in intercourse before marriage. Reluctantly, one night after work, he knocked on their door.
          Sitting on their plastic-covered blue couch with his legs crossed, he listened as they pleaded the case of their dear friend, Yinlin.
          He nodded his head. “Can we call her right now and set up a date?”
          “You will love this woman,” said Albert Truby. “There’s absolutely nothing not to like about her. Dear, can you get the phone?”
          Mary Truby went into the kitchen and brought it out.
          “Put it on speaker, dear,” she said.
          After dialing, the answering machine came on.
          “Ms. Yinlin will call you back at her earliest convenience,” said a voice who was decidedly not Ms. Yinlin.
          “That’s her secretary or should I say,” and he laughed, “her administrative assistant.”
          “Jesus,” Mark mumbled under his breath.
          A week later Mark drove a late model red Porsche to the new Lafayette Arms Hotel in downtown Philadelphia and handed over the car keys to the valet. Smoothing down his black hair, he walked into the hotel and made a right into Hunan Gardens and scanned the room for a lone Chinese woman. When he didn’t see her, he told the female maitre’d to seat him.
          He ordered a red wine and sipped it while watching the door. He looked at his huge Timex watch, no one could tell it was a cheap watch, and saw that it was ten past seven. She was ten minutes late. He drummed his fingers on the table and read everything in sight: the wine menu, the dessert menu, propped in a trifold on the table, and the specials on a blackboard. He couldn’t concentrate on what to order, he was so worried she would stand him up.
          “Oh, you’ll love her,” he heard the Trubys’ voices echo in his ears.
          And there she was, checking in with the maitre’d and in fact, taking his  hand in her own.
          “So sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Eisenberg,” she said, as the maitre’d pulled out Yinlin’s chair.
          Mark smiled a weak smile.
          “Not at all,” he stammered, as he stared at this woman it was impossible not to love.
          Her face was certainly kind looking. And her black eyes shone. But the woman was, well, just plain ugly. Homely. With her long face that didn’t fit with her trim body, she looked like a standard poodle. Mark found himself speechless. “Calm down,” he told himself. “I’ll eat and run.”
          “Might I order for you?” she asked.
          “Of course,” he said.
          “Well, that wine of yours is all wrong. I’m Chinese, you know, plus this is my restaurant, so we’ll start from scratch.”
          She summoned Zhang from across the room.  When he arrived she spoke quickly to him in Chinese – they sounded like two songbirds - then pressed his hand, and said laughingly in English, “We want to impress my new friend, Mr. Eisenberg.”
          “Oui, Madame, we certainly will,” said Zhang, looking over at Mark.
          Over spring rolls, she quizzed her new friend like a detective. Yes, he did amazingly well at his used car lot on North Broad Street, making more money than he knew what to do with; he was raising his fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny; and his hobbies were many, although he couldn’t think of a single one he was so nervous.
          “And you,” he said, after the new bottle of wine had been deposited on the table. “You, Yinlin, I may call you that, perhaps?”
          She nodded.
“You were born here or in China?”
          She explained that her parents had sent their little Yinlin over all by herself during Mao’s “brutal cultural revolution” and she stayed with family in Philadelphia. She attended business school at Wharton College and went into the hospitality business.
          “We opened Lafayette Arms four years ago,” she said in her high-pitched musical voice, “and of course I have rental properties all over Center City.” She laughed. “Such a funny name for the downtown district. Never could get used to it.”
          “Does your business consume you?” he asked.
          “Oh, certainly not. There’s nothing I love more than going to the movies, especially with a man on my arm,” she winked. “You know, snuggling at the theater while we share a box of buttered popcorn.”
          Mark tried and failed to imagine himself and Yinlin at the Ritz Theater, fingers intertwined.
          “Of course,” she winked at him, “no one wants to go out with me because of my looks.”
          The room went quiet. They heard the rhythmic chatter of others in the dining room and background piano music.
          “Your … looks!” Mark whispered in her defense.
          “Oh, Mr. Eisenberg, don’t think me naïve. My condition is called ‘acromegaly’” and she spelled it for him. “My anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone and all that. Happened at puberty. Beauty changing into the beast,” she laughed.
          “I don’t accept that at all,” said Mark. “The first thing I noticed about you was the kindness of your face, and if you don’t mind my saying, the sensuality of your body.”
          “Mr. Eisenberg, I’ve never gotten this close to a man for him to actually think of my whole being, instead of this blasted face of mine.”
          Mark picked up her hand and kissed it. And before he knew what he was saying, he blurted out, “I want you to come over and meet my daughter.”
          They both looked shocked, as they picked at their chicken and cashews and crunchy Peking duck in pineapple sauce.
          “Mr. Eisenberg,” she said after dinner. “You may think I’m being forward – and I am – but would you like to see where I live before you go home to your daughter in your Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse?”
          How, he wondered, did she know he lived in a humble rowhouse? And that pack of lies he told about his used car lot. She’d checked up on him, of course. He blushed as he realized she knew his so-called “net worth.” These business magnates – and she was certainly one of them – commanded power and were to be obeyed. He admired her and knew that to be with her he would have to tame her.
          With Mark’s arm looped around her shoulders, they walked to the elevator and she pressed the button for the penthouse suite on the twentieth floor.  She removed her red high heels and left them in the carpeted hallway. He did the same. Jingling the keys, she unlocked the door. Music greeted them.
          “Smetana’s Moldau,” said Mark. “You like classical?”
          “Love it,” she said. “Let me get you a drink.”
          “No, no. I’ve got to drive home.”
          They toured the six-room suite. Piano in the living room, original artworks on the walls – she was a patron of Fred Danziger, she said, and bought his paintings at the Rodger Lapelle Gallery here in Center City – then told him, “let me show you the breeches of William Penn.”
          Taking Mark’s hand she steered him into a high-ceilinged study where the drapes opened up to a spectacular view of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall. Mark stood at the window looking out at the night sky at the world-famous steel-gray statue of the man who had given Pennsylvania its name. A Quaker, he befriended everyone including the trusting native Americans, who, after his death, were painfully evicted from their lands.
          “You are really something Yinlin. Really something.” He moved toward her and took her face in his hands. “I’d like to get to know you better.”
          “We haven’t finished our tour,” she said and led him into a room in the rear with an eggshell-colored carpet and walls. A sense of peace fell over the two of them.
          She was a tigress in bed. She told him she had had many men in her youth and two abortions.
          “But, never, Mr. Eisenberg, have I found the one man to love.”
          “Perhaps you have now,” he whispered.
          “Perhaps I have,” she responded.
                                                          *
          Jenny and Mark decided to prepare barbeque when Yinlin visited. They met her out front when the driver of her Lincoln dropped her off.
          She kissed Jenny on the cheek and said she was even more beautiful than she had imagined.
          “And, you, Mr. Eisenberg, look adorable in those shorts,” and kissed him on the lips.
          They ate on the backyard deck. The ribs were messy and delicious with Mark’s home-made sauce. The salmon had been cooked on a charcoal-broiled plank and was done to perfection. Corn on the cob had been roasted inside aluminum foil and was served piping hot with butter.
          “Food,” he whispered to Yinlin. “Next best thing to having sex.”
          Her tinkle of laughter seemed to float across the darkening yard.
          “Jenny,” he said, “you’ll excuse us if we make a toast in front of you, sweetheart.”
          “Sure, Daddy,” she said.
          Mark went into the kitchen and got some pinot noir and ginger ale from the refrigerator, as well as three long-stemmed glasses.
          Putting them on the glass table with a clink, he carefully poured the wine into the adult’s glasses and the ginger ale for Jenny.  
          “I propose a toast,” he said. “To the two most enchanting women of my life. My darling daughter Jenny, and my new friend Yinlin Li.”
          They clinked glasses and sipped slowly, meeting one another’s eyes.
          Mark washed his hands off on the moist towelette on the table and walked over to Yinlin, who wore a low-cut gray sundress that showed the rise of her breasts.
          He got down on one knee.
          “My darling, wilt thou marry me?” he asked.
          “Of course I will, Mr. Eisenberg, of course I will. If it’s okay with Jenny.”
          “I’ve never been so happy in my life,” said Jenny, standing up to hug Yinlin.
          “Please, may I call you mother?”
         
         
         
         
          

​Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.  

 

                                            THE FINAL RESTING PLACE
 
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            This is the place where I’m supposed to live for the rest of my life? I won’t have it. I’ll think of something. I’ll trick them. How, I do not know. I hate it. I hate it every single day I’ve lived here. The Presbyterian Village. And, no, don’t tell me I’ll get used to it. You have no idea how I feel.
          You’re a prisoner here. They spy on you. They make sure I take my heart medicine. Knock on my door every morning to make sure I’m alive.
          If you asked me which I miss more, my old house or my late husband, Izzy, I wouldn’t even have to think. Izzy made a nice living as a podiatrist, but a proper marriage we did not have. His office was attached to our beautiful stone house in Abington. I’d look out the upstairs window and see all the cars parked in the circular drive. I could even hear him chatting up all his patients, laughing with them and telling them it wouldn’t hurt a bit as he sliced their corns off with a drill I could hear upstairs in my art studio. A sign in the waiting room read “Proud Supporter of the American Diabetes Association.”
       And then I’d hear his footsteps, encased in the comfortable shoes he espoused for his patients, fairly trotting up the stairs, a man of endless energy.
I’d always have his lunch waiting for him on the kitchen table. On Fridays, I’d make my special chopped liver, from a recipe of my mother’s, with schmaltz and red wine.
            I’d watch Izzy swoon over it, looking up at me and smiling. But did he talk to me? Lunchtime and dinnertime this man read newspapers at the table.
          We led separate lives. My home was an extension of me. He gave me free reign to do as I pleased. The kitchen was a brilliant sparkling white I painted myself. Wore a cap on my head so I wouldn’t spatter my own black curls with white polka-dots. Where did I buy my good China? Aschenbach from Bavaria. White with an edge of blue triangles on the rims. I don’t even remember now, forgetful octogenarian that I am.
          An announcement comes through the loudspeakers in the hallway at the Presbyterian Home. “Lunch is now being served.”
          I cover my ears and scream. “I can’t stand it! Stop telling me what to do!”
          I’m losing weight the food is so bad. What a cook I was back home. Famous for my mouth-watering rib-eye steak and carrot-beet salad, not to mention my caramel flan. When I told that to one of the girls I eat with – girls! – shrunken old women with false teeth, one with a flat chest since her breasts were lopped off from cancer – one of the smelly old ladies said, “For godsakes, Sadie, grow up! You can buy a flan mix nowadays right in the pudding aisle. Why would anyone but you bother to make it yourself?”
          This is what goes on at our table. We sit over by the window, like prisoners who catch a glimpse of the sky and the trees. They cup their ears when you talk to them or lean forward as if I want to see what they look like up close. Oh, I so hate old people. This flock of old people – with their bent-over-double backs, their canes and walkers, their white listless hair – is as foreign to me as walking out of my apartment into a sea of penguins.
          My husband got me in here by pure trickery. I’d spent the afternoon in my art studio, which was once the bedroom of our daughter Chrissie. With a number two pencil, I laid out the outlines of a large abstract of a mother and child, then bid it adieu while I went in the kitchen to make supper. Dinner was superb: roast juicy chicken, brown rice and buttered Brussels sprouts.
          Izzy had gotten up to wash the dishes.
“I’ll take my Decaf into the living room, dear,” I said when I was overcome with such a severe headache I thought I’d go blind.
          “Uh,” I said, trembling, and sitting back down at the table, spilled my coffee all over myself and the floor. “I feel awful, simply awful.”
          Okay. So I blacked out. Big deal. And ended up in intensive care at Abington hospital right down the street. When I opened my eyes I was told I’d had an aneurysm, bleeding in the brain. Lucky to be alive and all that, they told me. For my rehabilitation, I was taken, by ambulance, to the Presbyterian Village’s Rehab. They loaded me, a helpless baby, into the back of the ambulance. And there I stayed at the Rehab Center, and then on into Brookside Building, while Izzy lived all by himself in our beautiful house I yearned for.  
          One day my Izzy, who, I believe was in his late seventies at the time, was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He didn’t merge quick enough and was hit by a mean, roaring, smoking tractor-trailer.
Dead on arrival.
          Why attend the funeral? His patients loved him, I did not. I sat in what passes for living rooms in the Home – can you imagine a room as big as your coat closet? – while I looked out the window and fretted and reminisced while eulogies were being delivered at Goldstein’s.   
          Do you believe the Home had the gall to send a rabbi to see me?
          I opened the door a crack, I don’t let just anyone in here, you know, asked what he wanted, and slammed the door in his face.
          Standing at the window, which gave onto a courtyard filled with red cutleaf maple trees and an assortment of summer flowers, I remembered when Izzy and I took one of our cruises.
          Just like the people at the Home, you were stuck with your tablemates, whether you liked them or not. Whether they picked their noses at the table or coughed up mucous into their napkins or had dandruff on their shoulders. While we sailed the Mediterranean, Izzy and I met Jerry and his wife Dora, an unhappily married couple who lived in downtown Philadelphia.
          Can you guess what happened? Jerry and I became lovers.
          After the funeral, my daughter Chrissie called to tell me how nice it had been. She and her son Adam had flown in from Florida to bid their father and grandfather goodbye.
          I was almost hungry when I sat down in the Greenbriar Room for dinner, resting my cane on the back of the chair.
          They all looked up at me.
          I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
          “Good heavens!” said Bea, in her ill-fitting false teeth and laughingly fake jet-black hair. “The woman loses her husband, and she can’t face the facts. You are really something, Sadie.”
          “It’s my business,” I said, thumping my fist on the table.
          The girls looked at each other, the girls I would be spending the rest of my life with: Bea; Dolly, who was no Dolly Parton, believe me; slumped- over Helen, and me, Sadie, slowly losing my marbles day by day. We had already lost Betty, who was on the dementia unit, and Joan, who didn’t answer the door one morning when the aide knocked, and was dead on the cold bathroom floor.
          Chad came over to serve us that horrid chicken cordon bleu everyone thought was over the moon. And Brussels sprouts that tasted like rotten garbage.
After he left, slumped-over Helen rose in her chair to say, “I was buying coffee this morning when I heard one of the colored girls say she was applying for welfare. Said she doesn’t get enough support from the father of her children.”
          We all shook our heads in disbelief.
          “I think we should all pitch in and give her a little something,” I said.
          “Not a good idea,” said Bea. “Then she’ll be expecting us to give her more money. Who knows? She might even come into our rooms.”
          We agreed to hold onto what pittance our children doled out to us.
          “Sadie, are you joining us in bingo?” asked slumped-over Helen.
          “Bingo? A game I played when I was five? Count me out,” I said, rising from my chair and grabbing my cane. I took the elevator up to my room, where I spend most of my time. Don’t tell anyone but I couldn’t remember what floor I live on, so I got on and off a few times until I recognized the aquarium at the end of our hall and then let myself into my room.
          I do admit I had a good cry. Where was my lover Jerry when I needed him? Izzy could go to hell but Jerry and I had a loving relationship for twenty years. Once a week we’d meet at the Holiday Inn where we signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Hollander. And one day when I drove over there in my green and white Oldsmobile, and waited in the lobby, he never showed up.
          From my bed I noticed there was a Bose radio on the nightstand. I wonder how that got there. It sat next to a glass of water in a beautiful crystal glass. I took a sip. Room temperature the way I like it. On the walls were beautiful paintings I had never seen before. I roused myself from the bed to look at the paintings. Flowers, portraits, and smiling children holding balloons. All signed by Sadie Rothman.
          I laughed.
          “Now you’re really getting bad,” I thought. “Is someone fooling me into thinking I had made these paintings?”
          The days continued, endless days like waves upon the ocean. One day, when I entered my room after lunch, my clothes were packed and placed in see-through plastic bags.
          Was I moving out? Had my dream come true?
          Hannah, a nurse I was fond of, told me I was moving into Reflections, a unit at the Home that I would absolutely love. No longer would I have meals with the meanies at my table who didn’t know what to do with a woman of artistic sensibilities.
          And Hannah was so right. No longer do the loudspeakers tell us what to do. I hear classical music all day long on a Bose radio that’s in my room. My friend Natalie brought me a red amaryllis which is blooming away on the windowsill.
          And the food! Magical. Chicken cordon bleu like you’d get at a five-star restaurant. My daughter Chrissie flew up from Florida to say hello and have me sign some papers.
          “Sign these, while you still can, Mom,” she said to me.
          She also told me the Philadelphia Inquirer had called. When people get older, and I certainly do not feel old and have no idea how old I am, they write an obituary. Here’s what mine said.
          Sadie (nee Silverman) Rothman, beloved wife of the late Isaac, mother of Christine Connor, grandmother of Adam Connor, died peacefully at the Presbyterian Home in Rydal, Pennsylvania. Ms. Rothman was an award-winning painter, whose work is on display at the Michener Museum in Doylestown, Walker Museum in Minneapolis, and in private collections around the world. She was on the board of the Barnes Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her weekly column, “You’ve Got to See It!” ran for many years in the Philadelphia Bulletin and then Art Matters. Donations may be made to The Alzheimer’s Association.
         
          I didn’t understand a word of it, but Chrissie assured me it was a beautiful tribute to me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I smell the aroma of our lunch wafting into my room. Best guess? Eggplant parm.