The Sunset Gang

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With time running short, these intrepid residents of Sunset Village in Florida continue to thirst for life and love.

THE HOME

Sophie Berger's troubles began when she slipped on the bathroom floor and broke her hip. The pain was excruciating, but she managed to drag her body to the telephone in the living room and call her daughter in Miami Beach.

"Sandy, I'm lying on the floor in the living room. I fell in the bathroom and I think I broke something."

"My God, Mama. Hang up and call an ambulance. I'll be right over."

She called an ambulance, which arrived a half-hour later. She also called her two best friends, Mildred Klepkes and Suzy Friedken, who ran over quickly. They were dressed to go out to the movies, an event for which Sophie Berger was preparing at the time of her accident. The two friends eased her to the couch and put a housecoat over her naked body. Then they gave her three aspirins, which helped Sophie a little, but she could tell from the swelling near her hip that something had definitely broken.

"They'll put me in a home now," Sophie cried, knowing that her tears were not necessarily a result of the pain of her injury. She could live with that, she knew.

"Don't be morbid, Sophie. It's probably only a sprain," Milly said, shaking her gray curls and tightening her lips.

"I know it's a hip," Sophie said. "So it's a hip," Suzy Friedken said. "Sally Moskowitz broke her hip. And she's fine now."

"She was in a walker for six months," Sophie said.

"But she's fine now."

"She had a husband," Sophie said, hearing the familiar sound of the ambulance's siren, the Sunset Village anthem.

The attendants put her gently on a stretcher and began wheeling her out. She felt a needle prick on the side of a buttock. 

"Call Marilyn and Leonard," she said to her friends. Then she looked up at the attendant and asked. "Where am I going?"

"To the Poinsettia Beach Memorial Hospital."

"Where else?" she whispered, feeling a softness descend as they put her into the ambulance.

She had been right in her self-diagnosis. It was as if years of hypochondria had prepared her for this moment. When she awoke the next morning, she learned that they had put a pin in her hip and she would have to be in the hospital for ten days. Sitting beside her, silhouetted against the bright Florida morning sun, was her daughter Sandy, who lived in Miami Beach. She vaguely recalled having seen her the night before as they wheeled her into the operating room.

"You feeling okay, Ma?" Sandy asked. Sophie felt her lips. They had taken out her false teeth and she imagined what her face must look like.

"I'll live," she answered, feeling the bare gums, hearing with distaste the slurring of her words.

"It's very common," her daughter said, moving out of the sun's stream, revealing her worried look, the brave-martyr expression on her face.

Sophie knew how she felt, pain and love and guilt all mixed up. She is thinking about the home, Sophie thought, understanding.

"It's a vulnerable point in the anatomy for old people. But today with modern methods they do wonderfully. Really, Ma. You'll see."

"You got in touch with Leonard and Marilyn?"

"Of course. They're both very worried. I told them I'd call as soon as I spoke to you this morning."

Mother and daughter talked for a while, mostly about the daughter's three children. Sandy's husband, Arnold, was a dentist and they lived in a fine house on Di Lido Island in Miami Beach. Closing her eyes, Sophie remembered the details of the house, the large swimming pool, the sound of the children running through the house, Sandy's voice screeching after them while Arnold watched the football games. At first they had invited her for dinner every Sunday and she had dutifully gone, hating to hurt their feelings. They would drive nearly two hours to pick her up, then two hours back. Mostly she would sleep over until Monday when Sandy would take her back to Sunset Village.

After a while it became a big schlep, an annoyance that made her cranky and upset, although she tried to hide it from her daughter. I love them all, she told herself, but I have nothing in common with them. By then, of course, she had made friends and would much rather have spent the day sitting by the pool or playing cards or going out to dinner at Primero's.

"This is too much," she said to Sandy as they came through the gates of Sunset Village one Monday. She had wanted to say: "Really Sandy, I am bored by this. I don't want to come. It doesn't mean I don't love you all. But you have your life and I have mine."

"Really, Ma, it's no trouble," Sandy had said.

"Maybe once a month. And you can always use the telephone."

"Are you sure, Ma?"

Sophie could see a hopeful glint in her daughter's eye.

"I'm fine, really." There was, she knew, a hint of whining in the way she said it, but she could not help herself. She could see her daughter was troubled, but what could Sophie do? She was what she was.

The result was that her daughter called her every day, sometimes twice a day. But Sophie was relieved from the Sundays. Now she came only for birthdays. On Passover holidays she flew north to Leonard's house in Scarsdale, splitting her time between his and Marilyn's place in Greenwich. Apparently, her daughter Marilyn and her son's wife didn't get along. Not that anyone could get along with Leonard's wife and visiting them, even on the holidays, was a source of terrible tension between her son and daughter-in-law.

"Why do you invite me if it creates problems between you and your wife?" she would ask when they were alone, which was often, because Leonard's wife suddenly became a beehive of activity whenever she arrived.

"You're my mother. I don't think any further explanation is needed." Leonard was a lawyer. He had always been very methodical in his habits and his language. Sometimes he talked too much.

"But if your wife doesn't like me, why punish yourself?"

"It's not you she doesn't like. Not you per se. It's merely her way of getting at me."

"And what about her parents?"

"I detest them." He paused. "Actually they're not half-bad, but as long as she treats you that way I'm going to treat them that way."

She would look away from him in disgust-not that she didn't love him.

"Young people are crazy."

"I'm forty-eight."

"I only wish."

After twenty-four hours in Leonard's house, she became restless and, although none of the tension erupted and her daughter-in-law would address her politely, she had no illusions about what disruption her presence was causing. Actually, her being in Florida had hardly changed anything, since she'd always spent Passover at Leonard's house, even when Ben was alive. What she dreaded most about visiting Leonard was the time of parting, when Leonard would attempt to foist a fistful of money into her hands or her pocketbook.

"I don't need it. I don't want it. You have your family . . ." she would protest.

"Ma, the inflation. You could always use the extra money."

"Absolutely not."

She had the social security and Ben's small pension from the firm, and they had saved a few dollars, which were in a Savings and Loan. It was enough. Besides, it was important to be independent.

"You're being stubborn."

She sensed, too, that she might be being cruel to him, knowing he was tortured with guilt over the way his wife felt about her. What can I do? she thought, folding the money and firmly putting it back into her son's hands.

"Ma, please."

She would see his tears, remembering the small boy's eyes and the fear of the dark.

"I'll keep the lamp on," she would whisper, holding him in her arms and kissing him on the cheek. He would nod and turn away, embarrassed by his tears.

But if being at Leonard's house gave her spielkiss after only twenty-four hours, she began to feel her irritation the moment the door opened in Marilyn's huge Tudor-style house, in Greenwich's fanciest section. Marilyn was the dominant one in her home, overbearing actually. Although her husband Marvin was one of the merchandising world's most powerful executives, in his own house he was constantly subjected to her daughter's withering criticism.

She liked Marvin more than Marilyn and it upset her to see him being treated with disrespect. But Marilyn always had had a big mouth and had always been argumentative, surly, and obnoxious.

"I'm a bitch, huh, Ma," she would say after some set-to with Marvin.

"I don't know how he stands you."

"I can't stand myself." She always wore loud, flashy clothes with heavy helpings of jewelry and make-up, even in the house. Her children, of course, also thought her ludicrous. Sometimes Sophie would have to act as arbitrator in her daughter's domestic riffs.

"So I'm having this party on the eighth." Marilyn was always having parties. They were sitting in the dining room. The maid had just cleared the soup dishes.

"Now," Marilyn said, both hands thrust out in front of her, the forefingers and thumbs set in a circle, "why do I have to invite the Schwartzes?"

"Because they're my friends, that's why," Marvin said, his face flushing.

"They're tacky and boring, and after two drinks she thinks she's a femme fatale and starts pushing her boobies around."

"But they're my friends."

"Children," Sophie interrupted, suddenly discovering that she had become a kind of conduit for their communication.

"Why must I have to invite people that make the party miserable? They are two disgusting mockies."

"I grew up with Harry Schwartz. He's my friend. And that should be enough for you."

"All right then, I'll invite Harriet Silverstein."

"That whore?"

"See. See." Marilyn looked at her mother for confirmation of Marvin's hypocrisy. Sophie remained deliberately impassive.

"You forget we nearly had a divorce on our hands. We found her in our bedroom making love to Sam Weintraub one Saturday night."

"Sam Weintraub would screw a wall. At least Harriet's amusing and intelligent."

Every meal at Marilyn's house progressed that way and caused Sophie's digestive system to run amuck.

"Sometimes she's impossible, Ma," Marvin would tell her when Marilyn was out of earshot, which was not often. Even when she was, her voice reverberated throughout the house like a stereo system.

"Thank God she grew up and found you, Marvin."

"I don't know where it comes from."

"Occasionally Ben lost his temper." Sophie knew that Ben had been placid, a giving person. She had worn the pants. What can I say? she told herself. She was of an age when she accepted her faults, surrendered to them.

"I loused up your visit again, right, Ma?" Marilyn would say, kissing her mother on both cheeks. Sophie knew she would be called four or five times a week to settle some dispute between them, although she rarely took sides and rarely, if ever, gave advice.

"Mama also thinks you're wrong," she would hear her daughter say at the other end of the phone, despite Sophie's scrupulous neutrality.

Sandy came to the hospital three times during the ten days she was there, but called frequently, as did Leonard and Marilyn. Her friends called her daily, and even though she felt the swelling go down and took her first hesitant steps in the walker, she worried about her future.

Sometimes they put her in a wheel chair and rolled her around the hospital corridors. It was a gruesome sight, the half-dead and the walking and rolling wounded. Many of them she knew by sight from Sunset Village, and she nodded to them as she rolled past.

Sometimes she would see a casual friend come by on the way to visit a patient. Others she would deliberately avoid, like the henna-haired Molly Fine.

The hospitalization seemed excruciatingly long and she grew discouraged as she contemplated her future. Yet, she tried to assume a brave face. They must not think I am helpless, she thought, disgusted that she still had to use the bedpan.

When they brought her back to her condominium, Sandy insisted on living with her, sleeping on the couch. She filled the refrigerator and patiently, with an air of mock cheerfulness, waited on her mother hand and foot. Sophie tried with all her strength to get out of bed alone, but it was futile to try to do so.

"Go home, Sandy. You've got a family," Sophie would plead.

"How can I leave?"

"Through the door."

Sophie could see she was torn and, pretending to be asleep, would overhear her whining into the phone, insisting to her husband that it was impossible for her to come home. A week after she had returned to Sunset Village, Sandy announced that her brother and sister were coming to visit for the weekend. Ordinarily Sophie might have felt elation, but this time news of their coming only fueled her anxieties. She thought to herself, They are coming for a convention to decide whether they should put Sophie Berger in a home. She knew the procedure well. The children would come down filled with remorse and guilt that could be seen like chocolate on their faces. They would have interminable conversations about the future, even drive the victim out to see the home and meet the director. Most times they would succeed in their ploy, the victim would disappear into the home, never to be heard from again, and they would put the condominium up for sale. Never, Sophie vowed. She redoubled her efforts to get out of bed by herself, impatient at the slowness of the old bones knitting. In addition, she had learned at the hospital that she was developing a cataract on her left eye, but she kept this condition secret. That would cook my goose for sure, she thought.

The couch in the living room opened up into a double bed where both Sandy and Marilyn could sleep. They had borrowed a cot from Milly Klepkes for Leonard. She could tell they meant business by the fact that no one had planned to go to a motel for the night. She confided her fears to Milly while her children talked among themselves on the screened porch.

"They're going to try and put me in a home," she whispered.

"They'll never get me into one alive," Milly Klepkes said. There was a tendency to think first of oneself in Sunset Village.

"I'll take poison," Sophie Berger responded, which was enough to shock Milly into facing her friend's immediate problem.

"I'll be glad to help if you need me, Sophie," her friend said with feeling.

"Don't worry, I'll holler."

On the first night of their arrival, the children of Sophie Berger sat around in her bedroom talking. It was the first time in years that they had been together, just the four of them, and despite her fears she felt good about that. But Ben should be here, she thought.

"If only your father were alive." She sighed. "He'd be so happy seeing us all together."

"Daddy is with us," Sandy said. She was the youngest and had been very attached to her father.

"At least he could protect me from the wrath of you women," Leonard said.

"You never had it so good," Marilyn said, sticking a finger in her brother's chest. She smiled at him, always the big sister. "If only you hadn't married that bitch of a wife. We could have been friends."

"Leave Cynthia out of this."

"Don't worry."

"She always does this, Ma," Leonard pleaded.

Later, after they had reminisced and discussed their childhood, which had been a happy one, Sophie believed, they broached the heart of the matter. She was ready and waiting, although the reminiscing had lulled her into a false state of security. The opening shot came from a predictable source. Her eldest.

"The question, Ma, is what do we do with you?"

"With me?" Sophie asked innocently, feeling a sudden sharp twinge of pain in her hip.

"We can't put all this burden on Sandy just because she lives in Florida."

"Really it's no burden," Sandy said, a moment too fast in her response.

"Don't be ridiculous. You have a family, a husband."

"Mama can live with me anytime she wants," Sandy said, kissing her mother's cheek.

"She can live with me, too," Marilyn said. "Ma, anytime you want you can live with me and Marvin. We'd love to have you, you know that."

"You make it sound as if I don't want her," Leonard said, taking his mother's hand.

"You think she would be happy living with that bitch you married?" Marilyn shouted. "I wouldn't have my mother degraded."

"She's got to stop about Cynthia, Ma. She's my wife and I want her respected."

Sophie listened, waiting for the ultimate suggestion, holding back her tears. She cursed her frail body, felt its humiliation. She had once been a big woman, a strong woman, the last to tire.

"I don't know what you're all worried about. In a few weeks the hip will be good enough. Then I'll throw away the walker and start with a cane. The doctor said it's a long process, but you know seventy- four is not exactly ancient. Not in this place."

Marilyn looked at her and shook her head.

"Seventy-nine, Ma."

"Who said?"

"Ma, this is Marilyn. These are your children. We know your age."

"You saw my birth certificate?" She had been so used to lying about it that the truth escaped her. She nodded her head, suddenly feeling old, but refusing to surrender. In six months she'd be eighty. My God, eighty. Her mind was young. Her heart was young, she told herself.

"There are people here living alone in their nineties," she said proudly. They looked at each other, shrugged. Then Sandy bent over her and patted the pillows. They each kissed her in turn and left her in darkness.

But the way the condominium was constructed and the thinness of the walls made it possible for her to hear every word despite their whisperings. She listened, alert to every sound, every nuance.

"For sure she can't stay here," Marilyn said, her voice urgent. "Maybe the hip will heal faster, but then what about the cataract." So they knew about that? "We'll worry ourselves sick."

"Look, she's a proud woman," Leonard said. "Maybe she should stick it out by herself for a while until she finally comes to the realization on her own."

"It's okay for you to say," Sandy snapped. "You're up there. I'm down here. I'm the one that will have to suffer for it. Already my husband is threatening me with divorce."

"Don't exaggerate, Sandy," Marilyn said. "We've had our problems, too." Sandy sniffled loudly. "Shut up. You'll wake Mama."

She heard someone tiptoe into the room and stand silently in the doorway for a moment, then leave and close the door softly behind them. How could she blame her children? She thought of them when they were young but could not find any relationship between the little faces of their childhood and the reality of their adulthood. They were middle-aged now. Marilyn was well over fifty. Who were those people out there in the living room deciding her fate? Were they the screaming babies that she had once suckled at her breast, the helpless lumps of flesh that greedily took sustenance from her? They were definitely not the same people, she decided. And the woman who suckled them was a different woman. Her mind searched back to herself in that time, the tall buxom woman with the tight skin who could feel and enjoy the strength of herself.

"You work too hard, Sophie," Ben would say, planting the idea of tiredness.

"Who will do the housework?" she had always responded, the martyred woman, knowing now that she did not deserve her martyrdom. She had had the strength to endure. It was Ben who faltered. Ben was the weak one. But the voices persisted as her attention drifted back to them.

"She's going to have to face it sooner or later," Marilyn said, with a tone of finality.

"The problem," Sandy said, "is an immediate one. She can barely make it to the bathroom, and only with my help. I have to help her out of bed. Can she go shopping? She needs help when she dresses."

"But surely she'll recover from the hip," Leonard said.

"You got a guarantee?"

Perhaps it was the reference to the bathroom that triggered the sense of her own indignity. In the hospital, they had viewed her body as an inanimate object, something to be pushed around and her private parts exposed, even explored by indifferent fingers. They had finally put a little sitting potty by her bed and watched her as she performed, like a child. But in her own home? How dare those people discuss her personal toilet problems. Over my dead body will anyone ever take me to the toilet again, she vowed, feeling the full impact of her indignation. She wanted to rush out of bed and into them screaming with both barrels blazing. Gripping the sheets, she balled the material up in her fists and calmed herself, listening again.

"If we can just get her to accept the idea," Marilyn was saying.

"Marilyn and her big mouth," Sophie hissed into the darkness.

"Look, we can afford the best there is. They're waited on hand and foot. We're not talking of a charity case. I think if we approach it right and not make her feel that we're putting her in a prison, she could be persuaded to accept it."

"Wonderful," Leonard said, his sarcasm obvious. "Who is going to tell her?"

"You're the son," Sandy said.

"Did that ever mean anything in this family? You've all always treated me like some sort of bric-a-brac. When did I ever have any authority in this group?"

"You should tell her, Marilyn," Sandy said. "You're the strongest."

"Since when?" Marilyn said.

"Well, you have the biggest mouth," Leonard chimed.

Sophie smiled, enjoying their discomfort. "You know just because I have a big mouth it doesn't mean I'm the strongest.

You know how it is with Mama and me. If I say black, she says white. Marvin has more influence with her. Sometimes I wonder if she actually likes me."

"Mama?" Sandy said.

"What's the rule," Marilyn said, "that says a mother must like a child?"

"She loves you, Marilyn. She loves us all."

"Equally?" Marilyn wondered aloud.

"I never thought about it," Sandy said.

"Leonard was always the favorite," Marilyn said. "My Leonard this. My Leonard that. Little Lord Fauntleroy, Leonard Berger."

"You're exaggerating," Leonard said.

"Deny that you're the favorite," Marilyn pressed.

Sophie heard the long pause.

"See?" Marilyn said.

"Well, I was the boy," Leonard said. "I was the minority."

"She still favors you," Marilyn said. "You can see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. My Leonard. My wonderful Leonard."

If it was just up to me, she could live with us," Leonard said. "You both know that."

"With that bitch you married? I think she might wish she were dead," Marilyn said.

Sophie thought she was certainly right about that.

"She could live with me, too," Sandy said. "She knows that she's welcome in my house."

"Oh she's welcome, but I don't think she'd want to be bored to death."

"Bored? In my house?"

"Bored, Sandy. Bored by your boring husband and your boring children. What do you want her to do, sit in the corner and twiddle her thumbs?"

Sophie smiled again. Marilyn might have a big mouth, but she knew how to put her finger on a situation. My poor Sandy, Sophie thought. Poor, boring Sandy.

"Am I glad I live in Florida and not near your big mouth," Sandy fired back.

"I didn't mean it," Marilyn said, her contrition filtering through the thin walls. "I was exaggerating to prove a point."

"Well, it's no exaggeration that Mama would not want to live in the immediate vicinity of your fishwife mouth."

"That I know," Marilyn said. "God, I'd love her to be near me. But she'd have a nervous breakdown in a week."

"That's for sure."

"So what are we going to do?" Leonard said.

"We could get her a maid, a companion," Sandy suggested.

A keeper, Sophie thought. Never. She would be the laughing stock of Sunset Village. That was worse than a home, she felt. She wanted to shut off her hearing now, to tell them all to go away. Who needed them? Lifting her arms from under the blanket, she pressed them against the sides of the bed, straining against the mattress to raise the upper part of her body. The gasping of her breath drowned out the sounds of her children's voices as she raised herself with effort to a sitting position and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. Pausing, she caught her breath, gathering her strength and searching in the darkness for the sight of the walker, the outlines of which she could make out at the foot of the bed. Pressing down on her palms, she tried lifting her torso, moving sideways, inching her way in the direction of the walker. It took all her strength. She felt her heart beating in her chest as she strained the muscles of her upper body, compensating for the pain in her hip and the weakness of her legs. Sweat poured down her back as she paused to recover her energy. She heard the voices again.

"Look," Leonard was saying, "she is an intelligent woman. She knows the realities, the burden that she is putting on the three of us."

"Play to her guilt, right, Leonard?" Marilyn said with contempt.

"Well, she plays to ours," Sandy said. "That's why we're all here."

"Guilt?" Marilyn said. "I thought it was love."

"Are you saying that I don't love Mama?" Sandy asked, the pitch of her voice rising. "Who do you think has been taking care of her?"

"I didn't say you didn't love her." Marilyn turned to Leonard and said, "She's so damned sensitive."

"If you went through what I went through in the last few weeks, you'd be sensitive too."

"I didn't say you didn't love Mama," Marilyn said, her voice reaching the fringes of gentleness, but proceeding no further.

"I love her more than you do," Sandy said.

"I doubt that." The attempt at gentleness was gone.

"We all love her equally," Leonard said.

"What the hell does that mean?" Marilyn said.

The strain of her movement made Sophie gasp again. The voices became incoherent. Her progress was slow as she moved her body to the foot of the bed, every tiny progression taking a major effort and with it all of her resources. When she felt her endurance slacken, she rested, waiting for her heart to slow, her concentration to clear. I must not be discouraged, she told herself, taking comfort in even the most minuscule progress. She had, after all, traversed nearly the entire bed by herself. She suddenly thought of the story of the tortoise and the hare, which she had read to them when they were children, feeling elation now as she looked sideways to measure the distance from her pillow.

"Well then, it's decided," she heard Leonard say. "We'll suggest it together, a kind of unanimous committee decision. Then we'll make arrangements to take her out for a visit. The one in Lauderdale, the Seaview. It's the best in the area, I'm told. And she'll still be close enough for Sandy to visit and we'll promise that we'll visit her at least three times a year. At least that."

"More," Marilyn said. "It's three hours by plane. No big deal."

Sophie had reached the foot of the bed, reaching out with her hand for the walker, gripping its cool metal, then drawing it as close to the bed as possible to insure a firm grip. The crisis would come at the moment when she had to pull herself up, when for a second her arms had to support her full weight. She waited quietly in the dark room, her body poised at the edge of the bed with both hands on the metal frame of the walker. She knew that if she did not make it, she would fall, and they would hear the sound of her helplessness confirming their worse fears. Her hands tightened on the metal frame as she closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts, and willed her aging body to give her this one victory. She tightened her eyes, feeling the backwash of tears and the quickness of her breath, a signal perhaps that her body was rejecting her will. Then suddenly the will exploded and she felt her arms tighten and her body lurch upward. There was a brief dizziness, a momentary faintness, and then she was standing, proudly standing. She stood there for a long moment, catching her breath and listening to hear if they had heard the inner explosion, the gasping breath, the beating heart.

When she realized that they had not heard, she arranged the walker before her and calculated the distance to the door. They would hear the light thumping, but she hoped that they would not notice until she had opened the door, an exercise that she knew she could perform. Pausing, she listened again.

"It's the only logical solution," Leonard said. "Otherwise we'll drive ourselves crazy with worry. We must make her see that."

She moved cautiously, lifting the walker. She felt the strength return to her arms as she slowly moved forward, but had to ignore the twinge of pain in her hip.

When she opened the door, the light momentarily blinded her and she squinted into the room where they were sitting.

"Mama!" Sandy cried. "My God, you'll fall."

"Go on talking," Sophie said, taking a step, feeling her energy surge, the power of her victory. "I'm just going to the bathroom."

She felt their eyes on her as she quietly, but slowly, opened the door of the bathroom, maneuvering the walker ahead of her. When she was fully in the room she pushed the door closed behind her, extracted herself from the rails and slowly moved her bottom to the closed seat of the toilet on which she sat for an appropriate time, smiling to herself, not listening to their voices anymore. The flush of the toilet when it came sounded like music to her ears.

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