“And sent it to the apartment?”
“Isaac delivered it.”
“Maybe he misplaced it?” Esther suggested, as gently as she could.
She had always hated refereeing the girls’ arguments but never more so than now, with one precious girl unable to defend herself and the other frightfully unaware of her own advantage. What Esther wouldn’t have given for her daughters to have been close. When they were young, they had done all right together, despite the seven years that separated them. But something changed as they grew older. By the summer Fannie met and married Isaac, the girls might as well have been two planets orbiting different suns.
It was the same summer Gertrude Ederle traveled to Calais to swim the English Channel. The coverage was extensive, even with so little to report in the days leading up to the big swim. Both Florence and Esther had scrambled to read Joseph’s paper when he was through with it; the two might as well have been reading about Greta Garbo or John Gilbert. Trying to predict the Channel’s tides proved to be every bit as exciting as trying to figure out which movie stars were in town for premieres at the Warner Theatre, where they were staying, and whether someone from their party might pop in for a sweet bun at Adler’s. Esther would tsk over Ederle’s photographs as if she were the girl’s matchmaker: “She really is a rather homely girl. How will she marry?” Florence, only twelve but already old enough to enjoy goading her mother, said slyly, “Maybe she doesn’t want to.”
Fannie rarely stuck her head into the living room, much less the newspaper Esther and Florence clutched between them. She had begun seeing Isaac, whom she’d met while working behind the counter at Adler’s, and in recent weeks, Isaac had made enough trips to the bakery for challah bread that it would have been safe to assume he was saying the HaMotzi every night of the week and not just on Shabbos. Isaac had called at the apartment a handful of times, awkwardly sitting in the living room until Joseph—out of discomfort more than anything else—granted the couple permission to stroll the Boardwalk without a chaperone, provided Fannie was home by nine o’clock sharp.
Nearly six weeks to the day after their courtship began, Fannie arrived home from one such walk and announced that Isaac had askedher to marry him. Esther had long anticipated the engagement of her daughters and expected such news to leave her feeling euphoric. But instead, she found that Fannie’s announcement discomfited her.
Isaac was six years older than Fannie but not so old for their age difference to matter. He was a quiet sort but Esther knew many good and quiet men. Isaac was poor but Esther reminded herself that Joseph had been poor when she had married him. They had built Adler’s together, which had been half the adventure. No, there was something else—something more unsettling than Isaac’s age or income or even his loquacity. She heard it in the tone of his voice. A belief that he was owed something. Esther did not think it unusual for a man to be dissatisfied with the circumstances into which he’d been born but she had no patience for a man who did not believe in the transformative powers of his own hard work.
There had been no good way for Esther to convey her concerns to Fannie without pushing her away. So, when Fannie had stood before Esther and Joseph in the living room, waiting anxiously to hear what her parents thought of the match, they had stuck to practical questions of common concern. Esther asked when the couple intended to marry, and Joseph wanted to know if Fannie planned to complete the second year of her secretarial degree. Florence took the opportunity to ask whether she should begin to call Isaacbrother. “Isaac should suffice,” said Esther, without taking her eyes off her older daughter. It was much later that night, after the girls had gone to bed, that Esther realized she’d failed to give Fannie her congratulations.
By the time Ederle was ready to enter the Channel waters, Fannie’s wedding preparations were well under way. Joseph insisted they hold the ceremony, which would be a small affair, at Beth Kehillah. There was some conversation about a luncheon at The Breakers, but Esther decided a hotel reception would be ostentatious and potentially uncomfortable for Isaac since his family was not of means. She insisted that there was nothing the matter with holding the luncheon at home and that the gefilte fish they’d buy at Casel’s was every bit as good as what they’d find on The Breakers’ menu. Esther could tell Fannie wasdisappointed but she cheered considerably when Esther suggested that they take the train to Philadelphia to purchase Fannie’s wedding dress at Wanamaker’s.
Ederle landed on a small beach a few miles north of Dover, England, at approximately half-past nine on the night of August 6, and the wires lit up as scores of American journalists transmitted news of the accomplishment back to a country that had been collectively holding its breath. Florence had been glued to the radio all day, yelling updates from the living room as they came in. Eventually Esther stopped pretending to attend to her daily chores, found some socks that needed darning—usually a task she saved for the evenings—and joined her.
Europeans, asleep in their beds, had to wait until morning to learn that the Channel had been conquered by a woman but, in Atlantic City and elsewhere in the United States, Ederle’s accomplishment made the evening radio programs.
When the news broke, Joseph was home but Fannie was out running errands. She arrived back at the apartment to find the family exuberant but gave them only the briefest of greetings before hurrying back to her bedroom to get ready for an evening out with Isaac. Esther watched Florence thump down the hallway after her: “Fannie! Trudy did it! She made it!” From where Esther sat on the sofa, she could hear her elder daughter reply with a brief, “Yes, I heard.” Something about the emptiness of that response made Esther’s chest begin to hurt.
Within two weeks, Fannie was married and had moved into Isaac’s apartment. Esther told herself it couldn’t be helped—the slow dissolution of the girls’ relationship. Fannie was busy learning to make a home, and after she had Gussie, learning to be a good mother. Florence was years away from any of that. She was still young enough to love being at home with her parents, to ask for penny candy after dinner, and to treat the Ambassador Club swim tryouts like they were preliminaries for the Olympic Games. Esther had told herself that one day, when the girls were older, their age difference would matter less. Florence would get married and have children, and Fannie would be there to offer advice on the best way to burp a baby or remove a stain from a shirt collar.Maybe, eventually, they would rediscover each other. She pictured two old women, walking the Boardwalk arm in arm. That they would never get the chance to come back to each other, to start again, was inconceivable to Esther, even now.
Gussie and this new baby would also be seven years apart in age. Was it an unlucky number? As Esther stood in a hospital room, watching her elder daughter seethe with resentment toward a sister who could neither make amends nor fight back, she prayed that Fannie would be able to knit her children’s lives together more neatly than Esther had managed to.
“Have you been to the beach much?” Fannie asked Gussie, obviously trying to change the subject.
Gussie looked at Esther.
“Not much,” Esther said. “It’s so crowded this time of year.”
“Anna goes,” Gussie offered.
“To the beach?” Fannie asked.
“I suspect the girl’s trying to teach herself to swim,” said Esther. “She won’t confirm it. Just lurks about.”
“That’s not true,” said Gussie.
“What’s not?” said Fannie.
“She doesn’t lurk. And she’s not teaching herself to swim.”
“Then what’s she doing?” asked Esther.
“Stuartis teaching her to swim.”
Esther started to say something, then realized she didn’t know what to say. Stuart? Really?
“Why wouldn’t she just ask Florence to teach her?” Fannie asked Esther. “Are Stuart and she an item? Doesn’t Stuart have a thing for Florence?”
Esther flushed. She could feel herself losing control of the conversation, of Gussie, of the secret.
“I couldn’t say,” said Esther, trying her best to look not only uninformed but uninterested. She stood up and grabbed for her handbag. “What I can say is that I need to get your daughter home to her lunch. Gussie, give your mother a kiss good-bye.”
