Without meaning to, Fannie began to cry. She cried so often these days, it was sometimes difficult to isolate the trigger.
“Fannie, dear.”
“I don’t know what’s come over me. I think it’s just being tucked away in the hospital like this. I know I’m missing all the fun out there,” she said, waving at the window and all that the outside world contained.
Esther walked over to the bed, sat down heavily, and wrapped her arms around Fannie. She spoke softly into her daughter’s hair, “You’re missing nothing that won’t wait.”
By the time Esther left the hospital, the sun was beginning to go down. Out Fannie’s window, beachgoers were heading home to their dinners, and in another few hours, the Boardwalk would come alive with revelers. Fannie let out a long sigh, knowing it would be at least the next afternoon—if not longer—before she saw Isaac or anyone else for that matter.
On one hand, her hospital stay was a nice reprieve from domestic life. Fannie hadn’t cooked or cleaned or shopped in more than two weeks. She’d read three books, all of them titles she’d been meaning to read since the previous summer.
On the other hand, Fannie didn’t feel as if she were in control of her own life. The hospital staff poked and prodded her without approval or apology, she ate when her tray was brought in, and she saw her family and friends when they saw fit to visit. Then there was the biggest anxiety of all—that this hospital stay would do nothing to prevent another early labor.
Fannie strummed her fingers against her stomach. She might feel helpless but there was one thing she could do right now. She could settle this business with Florence.
Fannie’s relationship with her sister had never been easy, not with seven years separating them. She had worked hard to be a good big sister but it often felt, to Fannie at least, as if she and Florence had had almost entirely separate childhoods. By the time Florence entered grade school, Fannie was through with it. By the time Florence was chasing the Pageant Cup, Fannie had quit swimming competitively. And by the time Florence had catapulted herself to Wellesley, Fannie felt even further away from her sister than the three hundred miles between them. She imagined how dull the details of her life must sound when Florence read her increasingly infrequent letters.
It wasn’t just that Florence and Fannie were far apart in age. It was also that, by the accident of birth order, they had received two very different sets of parents. In 1907, when Fannie was born, Joseph and Esther had been busy trying to get Adler’s Bakery off the ground. Josephwas always at the store, and since he could scarcely afford to pay himself a salary, let alone pay for staff, Esther was frequently behind the counter. Fannie spent her early years in the kitchen of Adler’s, trying her best to stay out of the way of hot pans and scurrying feet. When Joseph began to hire bakers and bakers’ assistants, one of their unacknowledged job duties was to keep his only child entertained. They’d give Fannie a small ball of dough and a rolling pin and put her to work.
Florence found a very different scene when she arrived in 1914. Esther was overjoyed at her arrival, having long given up the idea that she might conceive another child. The bakery was doing well, and with the exception of the year Joseph fought with the Allies on the Western Front, he encouraged Esther to remove herself to their upstairs apartment, where she could properly enjoy her daughter’s infancy. Fannie would rush home from school to find Esther feeding Florence banana in her high chair or rocking her to sleep, and she’d join in wherever she could—remarking on Florence’s squishy baby thighs or allowing Florence to gnaw on her own small fingers. Even now, at twenty years old, Florence was very much the baby of the family. If her mother had already sided with Florence, Fannie knew there was very little she could do to sway her. No, it would be better to sort this out with Florence directly.
Fannie threw back her blankets and got out of bed. For a moment, she felt light-headed—how many hours had it been since she’d stood up or moved around? She steadied herself, placing the palm of her hand flat against the mattress. When the spinning feeling stopped, she moved slowly across the room to the dressing table, where Dorothy had unpacked her belongings earlier that morning. She found her stationery and fountain pen in the top drawer and made her way back to the bed.
Fannie chewed on the lid of the pen for several minutes before she began.
Dear Flossie,
It seems odd to write a letter when you’re not away at school, but already back in Atlantic City. I thought about wandering down thehall and asking to use the telephone but I’m not sure I trust myself to get this out properly.
Your wanting to swim the Channel and my wanting to deliver a healthy baby are not the same thing, and it hurt me tremendously when you compared the two the other day. I know that they’re both things we want very much, but you must understand that if you fail to accomplish your goal, you hop in a boat and come home. If I fail, I will find myself holding another lifeless child in my arms.
Fannie replayed their fight in her head. She had practically demanded, like a petulant child, that Florence remain at home until after the baby was born, and when that hadn’t worked, she’d made the mistake of reminding Florence that, by the age of twenty, she’d been a married woman—somebody’s wife.
“And look how well that’s turned out,” Florence said in a biting voice. “Your marriage isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the institution.”
Fannie’s pen hovered over the page. Should she try to defend her marriage? Fannie’s family had never warmed to Isaac, even in their very early days together when he had tried harder to impress her parents and sister. Fannie weighed her words, then decided that, maybe where Isaac was concerned, it was best to say nothing at all.
If swimming the Channel is what you want, then I want that for you, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t more generous when you visited. Punish me if you must but don’t stay away too long. There’s something about being tucked away inside this hospital that wears on me—it’s as if I’m trapped in another world. I can see the ocean out my window but I can’t hear or smell it.
Your Loving Sister,
Fannie
When she was finished writing the letter, Fannie read it through twice, then she folded the pages and stuffed them in an envelope. Justas she did, Dorothy came in with her dinner tray, so she addressed the envelope in a flash—Florence Adler, Northeast Corner of Atlantic and Virginia Avenues, A.C.
“Dorothy, I wonder if you might be able to help me find a stamp?”
By half-past ten, Fannie had given up on Dorothy. Nurses who worked the day shift clocked out at seven o’clock, and she had likely gone home for the night. Knowing her, she had put Fannie’s request out of her mind the moment she’d left the room.
Fannie was awake, and a stamp was as solid an excuse as any to take a little stroll. The nurses tsked when she got out of bed, so she didn’t try to make a habit of it, but it did feel good, every now and then, to stretch her legs. Fannie retrieved her slippers and robe and made her way out of the room and down the hall. She’d try the nurses’ lounge, see if anyone had a stamp, and maybe take the newspaper if the women were finished reading it.
The obstetrics ward was quiet, save for the occasional sound of a baby’s cry, and dark. The only source of light came from the end of the hallway, where the nursery and the nurses’ lounge sat opposite each other.
Tonight she heard several hushed voices coming from the lounge. Was it a bad time to ask for something so immaterial as a stamp? Fannie hated to interrupt if there was important hospital business that had stolen the women’s attention. She started to turn to go back to her room, but then she heard one of the nurses say, “It’s just about the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard.” Fannie stopped cold and listened harder, “Can you even imagine being the one to have to tell her?”
The quintuplets. Fannie hurried to the door of the lounge and peeked her head around the corner. “Is there any news?” she asked in a panic. Three nurses sat huddled together on a mohair sofa, smoking cigarettes. Fannie knew the names of two of them—Bette and Mary—and she’d seen the other one walk quickly past her room from time to time, always with what Fannie imagined to be great purpose. Perhaps sheworked in the delivery room or the operating theater. All three women looked startled to see her. Bette balanced her cigarette in the ashtray the women shared, and jumped up to take Fannie’s arm, “Are you all right? Why are you out of bed?”
Fannie thought she noticed the purposeful nurse dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “I thought I might borrow a stamp. Is there any news—”
