Gussie stared at her feet and the cone in her hand leaned perilouslyto one side. He hadn’t meant to upset her and certainly didn’t want his reprimand to become a lasting memory. Isaac reached out, righted the cone, touched Gussie’s chin.
“Sorry, Gus.” To Anna, he shouted, “Do you want a cone?”
She shook her head no.
“See, she doesn’t want one.” Gussie seemed satisfied, so he asked, “Do you want to get a chair? Sit for a while?”
Gussie made slow progress as she followed Isaac onto the sand and toward a row of canvas-clad beach chairs. The custard was melting fast in the hot sun, and she stopped every few feet to lick the cone and her own hand clean. Isaac had rented two chairs and pulled them close together by the time Gussie caught up with him.
“Sit,” he said, reaching for his handkerchief. He wondered if he should wait until she was finished before allowing her to mop herself up with it. If he had been more gracious to Anna, she probably would have managed the cleanup. He looked behind them. Anna had remained on the Boardwalk, where she stood leaning against the railing, as watchful and rigid as an egret in the marsh grass of the Thorofare.
There was no good way to tell her, Isaac decided. Whatever he said was sure to break her heart. “Gus-Gus, I’m going to go away soon.”
Gussie stopped working on her cone and looked over at him. “Where?”
“Florida, probably.”
“Florida,” she repeated—the word almost a question but not quite.
“You’ve never been there but it’s very pretty. And hot.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Awhile.”
“How long?” she asked again. Isaac stared at his daughter. She could scarcely wait for the first day of school, her birthday, or the Easter Parade. Time moved slowly for a girl of seven. Weeks felt like months, months like years. Could she even comprehend real years? That enough of them, when strung together, made up a lifetime?
“Maybe a year, or a little longer.” He added, “It could be a very long time, in fact.”
“What about the baby?”
What could he say? That he wouldn’t meet the baby? She’d never understand. “I think you’ll be a very good big sister. You’re such a big help and so very kind.”
Gussie didn’t answer, didn’t arch her back into the compliment, the way she often did when adults said something nice about her. In fact, Isaac might have wondered if she’d heard him at all but for the fact that she had stopped licking the custard. She leaned forward in her chair, holding the cone away from her body, and for several minutes, both of them watched in a kind of quiet torpor as the treat dripped down her hand and onto the sand. Isaac held his handkerchief at the ready but didn’t hand it to her, not until the mess had congealed into a thick pool between them.
When they arrived back at the apartment, Joseph asked Anna to look after Gussie and led Isaac into the kitchen, where he’d spread out several pieces of paper, neatly typed.
“What’s this?”
“Everything we discussed last night.”
Isaac whistled. “You had a longer night than I did.”
“Aaron Wexler drew it up this morning.”
Isaac sat down in a kitchen chair, picked up one of the documents, and began to scan it. “You don’t trust me to stay gone?”
“I think, with something this sensitive, it’s better if we spell out the terms.”
Isaac tried to focus on the small type.
“The terms are the same,” said Joseph. “Aaron recommended we add something about divorce.”
“Divorce?” It hadn’t occurred to Isaac that he and Fannie would divorce.
“It just says that if Fannie ever wants one, you’ll grant it to her.”
“And if I want one?”
