They fought every day of their thirty-two year marriage, but not for a minute had my father considered leaving my mother. Remnants of love, habit, her ageless beauty (she must have made a deal with the devil), and maintaining the status quo each played their part to keep my father in apartment 2B on Yellowstone Boulevard in Queens. Everything changed when my mother left him and moved in with their friend Sheldon. Sheldon bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Pillsbury Doughboy, but made piles of money in Laundromats. I knew my mother had been searching for a wealthy replacement for my father. The fact that Sheldon was married to her friend Charlotte was of no consequence to her.
After a year of living alone, my father decided to leave New York. The apartment was downright depressing and his job in the garment center far too taxing for a man of sixty-two. Perhaps even more devastating was his belief that everyone, including complete strangers he passed on the street, knew all about how my mother had humiliated him. Fort Lauderdale seemed the perfect antidote.
In no time, he had a bevy of old beauties tempting him with homemade casseroles, club house movies, danish and coffee at the monthly dances, and invitations to early bird dinners for which he offered to split the tab. He enjoyed Florida so much, he bought the condo he’d been renting. My father had the life: pool and tennis days, a different woman each night. Decades late, he was catching up with the sexual revolution.
He took a part-time job at the King of Poultry. Amidst the matzo balls and stuffed cabbage, against a never-ending soundtrack of Elvis’s greatest hits, was a surplus of lonely female shoppers eager to get to know the store’s silver-haired, handsome new clerk. The better looking women found a little something extra in their shopping bags—a slice of noodle pudding, a piece of derma, a couple of turkey meatballs—and he got a date for that evening. He sold a record-breaking number of barbecued chickens his first year there, keeping his boss happy and his libido rejuvenated. Abe Klein, owner of the Poultry King as well as president of the local Elvis fan club, was even considering making him a partner.
But trouble was afoot. My mother had not fared well in Manhattan since Sheldon’s untimely death two weeks shy of their wedding day, and decided to test the Florida waters. She was determined to win my father back or, better yet, live in his condo while she searched for viable husband prospects. She flew down and called him on the phone from her room at the Holiday Inn.
“Hello, Sidney. Is that you?”
“Rose?”
“It’s me.”
“You sound like you’re right around the corner.”
“I am.”
“What do you mean? What are you doing here?” He looked anxiously over at Colleen Thompson, a petite blonde Presbyterian who sometimes got a yen for kosher food. She was placing the tuna casserole she prepared with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and topped with Chinese noodles on Sid’s small Formica dinette table.
“I’m thinking of moving down. I hear you love it.”
“It’s okay. Not for everyone though. Look, Rose, you caught me in the middle of something. Give me your number. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
My mother was disappointed, but still confident that he wasn’t over her. She gave him her phone number.
“Speak to you tomorrow, Sidney,” she said, hanging up the phone. Sitting on the faded, frayed bedspread, she surveyed the generic room. It was a world apart from the posh hotel suites she and Sheldon enjoyed before his sudden death, brought on by a life-long affinity for brisket with gravy, mashed potatoes and custard éclairs.
She stood up and walked into the bathroom. “No problem,” she said, smiling at her recently resurfaced face in the mirror. “He won’t be able to resist me.”
* * *
Never dreaming my father would be anything but alone, my mother awoke early the next morning, allowing herself ample time to dress and make-up. Pleased with the results, she went downstairs and got into a taxi for the short ride over to Horizon Condo Village. Driving past man-made lakes and buildings distinguished from one another only by their number, my mother was not impressed. For now, however, she could not be choosy or she’d risk using up her dwindling savings.
She walked the two outdoor flights up to number three hundred and ten in building twenty-five and rang the bell. It took a few minutes, but then she heard footsteps approaching the door.
“Who’s there?” Sid asked, evidently annoyed.
“It’s me, Sid. Rose.”
He opened the door a crack. “What are you doing here? I just woke up.”
“That’s when you used to like it the best. Remember, Sidney?”
“Jesus, Rose.”
She pushed the door open and walked in.
“Not bad,” she said, looking around. “Could use a woman’s touch though.”
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