The Smell of Time
Cottle, Thomas J
THE SMELL OF TIME PORTRAITS OF THE AGING THOMAS COTTLE My work with poor Jewish families began six years ago. It began merely as visits to the homes of people willing to speak with me; it...
...Upstairs, there's a family...
...Somewhere else, maybe not the same spot, maybe not the same words, but it goes back, with the swastika...
...Wait, I'll warm it up...
...Does he get any of the blame for us living in those small, dreary places we lived in all our lives, apartment hotels...
...I also feel myself running away from many of their accounts, and from some of the people as well, as though I had no space in me for their stories or experiences, or them...
...He played little games with her and they went on walks and had their secret adventures...
...Should a man of that age do so much heavy lifting?' He'll say, 'Millie, are you mischuga...
...We won't mess up their master plans for us...
...Ask the ambulance men, they heard him...
...You close your eyes you see the grey hair, and the person hunched over a little, and the mink coat, the too much make-up hiding the years that grow in the skin and stay there like little signs telling everybody this is an old lady...
...I went once a week, religiously...
...Don't stand around with us...
...No, she did...
...He told me not to worry, that he wasn't going to die, that he felt weak, that was all, that I shouldn't call you and Linda, and that I shouldn't forget to call the Budwigs to say no cards on Thursday night...
...Maybe she wasn't only ashamed she had poor parents to show off to the girl friends, maybe she was ashamed for getting the little bit extra we could give in those days...
...She didn't like the food I made, or how I kept the homes she grew up in, she didn't like the clothes we got for her, so it was me, / was the bad guy...
...So Martin, how's the business...
...Please, Mama Rose...
...Years ago, I think I was more concerned with where we lived...
...Anyway, we're recovering from that shock when it's Beverley Cohen's mother, a beautiful lady in her eighties...
...Tell me, do I look like I belong somewhere else...
...Such a passion, and how she talked about it...
...It's like being clinically dead, is that it Doctor...
...I wish this one was alive...
...Her father didn't pretend with me, with her he did...
...Can you imagine...
...Maybe all the costumes and the white boots and the black boots and the food that was there every night and her having her own room when her own parents didn't have their room was the real pretending that's made her unhappy...
...You think she gave me cooking lessons...
...I don't know anybody who thinks that way...
...You'll see...
...Not as much as when they were younger, but something...
...Five years ago, in the stretch of six months, I lost three of my closest friends...
...What's left in the world besides warm banana bread and milk, and a forshtunken apartment somewhere in this city which is waiting for two old Jews and their lousy few cartons...
...They play with them, dress them up, bathe them, put them to sleep...
...To the kosher bakeries...
...When your brain goes with a stroke and you begin to lose, like you said, all your body functions, isn't one of the most serious of these when you can't control your bladder...
...The poor Jew is a sign the man can't take...
...You drink tea...
...Millie, however, felt the same way, as I would learn one late afternoon when Jacob was out of the house running an errand...
...Orders, we take orders...
...Why is it only me...
...So let's pick them up and keep them all together...
...Who slept in the bedroom...
...Who knows, if you're young, you may have a chance to get rich...
...But how do they know / want to live only around Jews...
...It's always just around the corner...
...He knows that it's only his success that keeps him where he is...
...All right, they had money, but I could have done a lot of things, plenty of things without the money...
...That's the way it was, what am I supposed to do about it...
...A son plays it, tries to play it...
...You get sick of fighting, you know that...
...Around the corner...
...Only people who aren't old would say that...
...Not her father...
...If you talk to my husband, he'll tell you, Jews are supposed to be bright, rich, successful...
...Orlovsky," is all the doctor replied...
...They don't want you, not even to babysit or fix a skirt maybe, or bake something...
...There's not that many, they think, but they're here and there, spread out on every block...
...Jacob's right...
...Because they never educated me properly...
...Why am I still in the Spanish-American war...
...Even me, what have I got now...
...The brain isn't working, people have begun to lose or have already lost their fundamental capacities...
...You hear this all the time, even from people who wish we were dead...
...I didn't take good enough care of him in her eyes...
...It's like the person who gets no mail...
...Not one...
...We asked no one, not once at any time for a loan, a handout...
...That's why I'm angry with her...
...In my way, I had to be such a grown up so soon, I never bothered to ask her about it...
...So you tell me now, doctor that my husband was clinically dead when he said that...
...Sylvia Mann, a doll, made banana bread and her husband brought it all the way over here on his way home from work...
...She was looking toward the window and nodding...
...They'll be happier, we'll be happier...
...I'll tell you, I would have loved to be rich...
...You brush your hair, go to sleep, that's it...
...Maybe when you're lying in a hospital ready to die that's all you think about, but that sure isn't me...
...So there she is in her little apartment, the grand total of thirty minutes away by bus, because her rich husband just sold his car ten weeks ago, but she's going to carry on the pretending that it's different now than it used to be, all different...
...Maybe she just never went anywhere without it...
...He had suffered both a stroke and heart attack...
...Can you imagine how many people, and there's some in this neighborhood with the numbers tatooed on their arms, people who remember more than they want to, can you imagine them getting a notice they have to move...
...I just try to make sure there are no might-have-been's attached...
...When people don't care if you live or die...
...Mother, this year the children wear black boots, not white boots...
...I know from the black notes and the white notes...
...What do they want to do with a bunch of old Jewish people who've never had a damn thing but wishes...
...I'm sitting here talking to a doll...
...You try to imagine what I'm saying you'll see I'm right about this...
...Isaac lay here invisible...
...My mother could have arranged for piano lessons...
...It is for Jacob...
...Then Rose stopped and turned toward the doctor...
...They've asked too much of us...
...You know what that is...
...We never travelled, we never went anywhere...
...Make me the experiment...
...They get frightened...
...That's for people approaching the latter years, not for people smack in the middle of the end, or closer to the end than they even know...
...They knew what was right, even in those days...
...Does it say on my back, 'Ship her to somewhere else?' You know what it says on my back...
...I'm living in such great wealth now she thinks when he died I took all the money and gave her nothing...
...It means when you've lost everything, the people you love, and the little bit of hope like a fool you kept every day of your life...
...Go, anywhere but go...
...Moving at fifty, sixty even, that can be done, but at seventy...
...He'll tell you...
...There was never any talk of, someday we'll have money and we'll move and travel...
...But the men, no...
...But Jacob's right...
...I was the one who was making us poor, because I did the shopping and the cooking and cleaning...
...When I began to laugh, Millie held up her hand as if to say, 'don't because that would be even more disrespectful than my imitation.' But at the same time she gave me a look that said, not such a bad imitation, eh...
...I ask myself, Millie, if you had the chance to be rich or young, what would you pick...
...So they pushed, pushed with the religion...
...I can still count...
...Jacob will be pushing cartons...
...A girl friend comes over after school, and she's embarrassed because I didn't push our bed up inside the closet, so the girl friend has to know we sleep in the living room...
...His hands, they want, but him they have no use for...
...But think only about my memories...
...They did all they could...
...My mother never got over it, I suppose...
...All the school, all the plans, nothing...
...Jacob's giving up...
...But a man can't stand someone coming to his house and seeing he hasn't got money, or whatever he has he bought on somebody else's money...
...Why don't you ask Mr...
...Then we won't bother you anymore...
...If they make a law I can't hang, I'll let go...
...Every morning up goes the bed, every night, down comes the bed...
...Offer me a million and I'll take it, but I still know I'd look silly being rich and old...
...I'll tell you something, we did hide our situation in those days...
...And tell me, if we had what I wanted six days a week would I not be angry with her for not having them on the seventh day...
...Maybe she would have thought better of me if once I had said, all right, we're stopping the pretending...
...Black people would want to come over here, what, so they can be close to the shul...
...You'd go crazy if you lived like that...
...Jackson if my husband was so clinically dead when they carried him out this morning...
...She wasn't asleep...
...Oi, what am I talking about cookies, I got banana cake from last night...
...The inside and the outside have to change places...
...they relate to right now, today, this morning, maybe as far back as yesterday...
...You ask him if my husband didn't say to him, 'I'd like to know your name...
...The bedroom is for parents...
...And us they couldn't care what happens to because all we're doing is using up good space and good air...
...And they had enough of the right things around...
...Her husband, Leonard, calls her from his office, the maid says she's asleep in the chair...
...Jews contributing so much...
...Thomas J Cottle is Visiting Distinguished Professor of Psychology al Amherst College and Lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School His most recent book...
...Whose is it, anyway...
...He was so clinically dead he remembered his appointment and wanted to make certain I called Mr...
...And tell me this, after seventy years of thinking about all this, why am I still fighting all these battles...
...Menachim was pleased that the doctor had not patronized his mother-in-law...
...The people feel dependent on anybody, so they tell you they're like babies...
...A warning, a sign, a look, a something that says, watch out...
...It's just like they always say, the good fighter goes to the end fighting, but the great fighter knows when to give up...
...Nurses and doctors seemed to be flying by them...
...Did she look him up and down like me...
...Why am I angry...
...Still, there's always a little bit of time left for them to make a change here, a change there...
...We'll go home now...
...His death was very hard on her...
...I wish I were rich...
...Did we...
...Believe me, that's all...
...You'll forget it all by tonight, but you'll excuse an old lady for rambling on...
...Maybe moving's a reminder of that too...
...Budwig...
...It's not that...
...How do you like that...
...You want to know, really, doctor, what clinically dead means...
...Not now," I protested mildly...
...But now it's too late for that...
...No make-up, no fancy clothes, and no handbag, she sat up straight on the sofa, her left hand holding tightly to a piece of facial tissue, her right hand on the armrest, her small thin fingers spread open...
...I think, how I'd love to be able to play the piano...
...I knew this...
...They showed me nothing of the world...
...Without...
...So, they'll try to make it better for us...
...All my life I got hand-me-downs from people I didn't know...
...Don't stay angry...
...The ambulance had come during the night and he was now in the hospital in critical condition...
...Who can figure it...
...Come on...
...What for...
...At this point in our lives, I think it's harder on the men...
...I watched her, I learned a little...
...And don't let them move you around...
...But where were the chances for me...
...We'll talk to a lawyer, you'll talk to a lawyer, we'll fight it...
...Youth is no guarantee of anything...
...You got a right to be angry but don't hang on...
...What a gift to give to your children, something, music, or dancing, or painting...
...Are these might-have-been's...
...My mother's dead almost fifty years and I'm still angry with her...
...All right, she forgets my birthday...
...we have to begin to do without...
...Her husband Isaac, who everyone called Zick, had been taken seriously ill...
...Nobody wants Jews near them...
...I wish that one was dead...
...What's going to come up in the future...
...She went to school, had new shoes, new clothes, she would never go hungry, people didn't know what our situation was...
...You want another piece of cake...
...It's not for you, the tea...
...Let it all go...
...But does anybody think, are these Jews happy with all they contribute...
...Why all the fuss...
...They're going to let somebody else live here...
...I'll tell you what clinically dead means, doctor," she went on...
...It says: 'A good Jew is a dead Jew.' You remember on Kuyper's wall, on the Avenue side, the sign, with the swastika...
...Then if they want, they can tear down the building and bury me in the couch, on the couch, with the couch...
...Is this what you win wars for, so people you never meet can send their representatives to tell you where you're going...
...Now the pretending gets in the way of her seeing the truth that she also disliked her father because he pretended...
...I wasn't left out, but she was never the same with me...
...There was nothing the doctors could do, Rose was told...
...I'll heat it up...
...One bedroom, then a living room and a kitchen...
...If he was clinically dead, doctor, then how come he spoke to me so clearly...
...I'll tell you now, if I had money it wouldn't go to her and that husband of her's who's always got such a wonderful deal he's cooking up...
...So few of them, but who's like them...
...When she had finished she turned the glass about in her hands...
...You know what I wish...
...It's so much nonsense...
...Jacob,' I'll tell him, 'on your next birthday you're going to be thirty-six years old...
...They don't sleep on the streets, for God's sake...
...But he worried while the doctor spoke that perhaps Rose still wouldn't understand...
...Someone comes and gives us money, I'd give it to her, but I'd make her promise the pretending's finally over...
...People can get their priorities mixed up, especially old people...
...I don't blame you, doctor, I just want the respect that all people should get, whether they come here in an ambulance or a cadillac with a chauffeur, a mink coat or a cloth coat...
...What's he got to be so miserable about with all his millions...
...It's never been any different...
...Give up...
...He should worry more what's in the heart, less what's in the closets and drawers...
...Two babies died...
...That could be...
...But no, they have to pretend...
...Then one day, she gets a letter and it says everybody she knows is dead...
...They can't grant us one little wish at the end of our lives...
...All of Mark's things are gone.' It's never right who we are, what we have, where we're living...
...If I want to lift cartons, I'll lift cartons.' He'd say it just that way too...
...The answer is obvious, be young...
...That's crazy...
...I heard him speaking to me, and he spoke to one of your own ambulance men too...
...Together Menachim and Linda picked up Rose and raced to the hospital where Zick Orlovsky lay on a cart in a hall ten feet inside the door to the emergency station...
...Even at my age, people have these little wars, not such big ones, but they're going on...
...There has to be a change, and it has to come soon...
...It might have been nice if someone could have come over yesterday like they promised...
...Not even want you dead...
...Maybe in all your wisdom, some doctor will find a drug to stop us...
...They say old people do nothing but think about the past...
...All right, so she's ashamed, but how long is this supposed to go on...
...I was the only child...
...And not a warning...
...You want to know why I'm still angry with my parents...
...What a feeling...
...Naturally...
...Was that the symbol of her dignity...
...So now that that's off my chest, so where's the man with the million dollars...
...Isn't that a shame...
...At my age, you don't wonder about the might have beens...
...They'll tell us where to shop, we'll shop...
...Now the house is all he has...
...I want someone to explain what that means, clinically dead...
...I want it from her, I want it for her...
...Nonetheless he lay by himself, untreated, for over an hour and a half before receiving medical attention...
...And I'll tell you something else...
...Don't give me not now...
...No, all they can do is move me to another neighborhood...
...But visiting is what matters, and more than visiting, I need honesty...
...But from where...
...Stay in your house and tell anybody who wants to throw you out, wait, just wait...
...They still have opportunities left, but they see now how the opportunities get fewer and fewer...
...Ginsberg is a wonderful surgeon, but what a miserable man...
...It's a silly sight, an old rich lady...
...She can't tell anybody how angry she is, so she takes it out on me...
...I was going to have you investigate it for us...
...But once in her life, did you think she ever judged her father...
...You say, take off the mink and the fancy earrings, give her a simple dark dress, broken shoes and the thick stockings, right...
...His ulcers and his headaches keep him where he is, that and his surgeon hands, or his dentist hands, or his lawyer hands...
...My daughter was very involved with her father, like a lot of daughters...
...But now it's ten years since he died, so how long does it have to be before we can get a little closer...
...The phone rings, Esther is gone...
...I wish, I wish that was the case...
...I used to know a little...
...He was dead then...
...Do you honestly believe that people like us think we get the same treatment as rich people...
...I saw Rosie Cohen in that home...
...Listen, he'll have a heart attack from lifting, and when they send in some strong kid to do all the lifting, that will break his heart too that .he's too old to do that kind of work...
...That's all...
...Do they come and ask me anything...
...Jacob goes around the house fretting...
...Not because I'm drowning without it, but what else have I got...
...But when do you get old enough that you face up to what you have and what you don't have and what you'll never have...
...My husband played cards every Thursday night, doctor...
...The successful ones, they don't know that people don't like them and they'll never be real members of this country, real citizens...
...They're cutting back on overtime pay...
...We go to that funeral, sit shiva with the family, all of them wealthy except for poor Esther...
...I'm over seventy...
...BEATRICE WEIN Seventy year old Beatrice Wein put her plate down and drank the last bit of milk in her glass...
...But a poor woman, that we're used to...
...At two o'clock that afternoon, Isaac Orlovsky died in a room off the main hall of the emergency station...
...Every week they brought her into this room, and there she was dressed up with beautiful clothes, matching shoes, and always carrying a handbag...
...You know these people who say, 'Millie, a million dollars here or there, it wouldn't have changed you.' Oh, no...
...But as a man, who wants him...
...I'm not asking for a change...
...How much future, after all, is there...
...Out of the blue, no warning, nothing...
...Isn't the man's name Jackson...
...Try me...
...ROSE ORLOVSKY One morning before Menachim Kanter left for work, a phone call came from Rose Orlovsky, his mother-in-law...
...You can't do it...
...All right...
...Or it comes in a letter that says, Move...
...My husband and I lived in an apartment smaller than this for years...
...His voice was soothing...
...That's all the bad news...
...She dressed herself, or someone else dressed her, maybe her daughter arranged for all that...
...Any might-have-been's I think of now don't relate to the past...
...Just as often, I will tell myself, "You know, you don't have to think about these people all the time...
...Age has nothing to do with it...
...I'm still angry with her...
...Six months ago...
...What is this nonsense about being thirty-six?' So I'll tell him, 'If I reminded you that you're going to be seventy-two you'd be furious.' 'I don't need people to tell me how old I am...
...At least I should be in World War I. It's time for that, isn't it...
...You take what life has to offer and you stop punishing yourself...
...I'm staying here...
...Leonard says, don't disturb her, I'll be home late...
...It takes too much energy...
...This doesn't say it all in no words better than I could say it in a million words...
...I'm talking about people not caring...
...And if nobody does, we'll do it ourselves...
...One day fine, the next day dead...
...How can either of us win with this housing program they have for us...
...People hang on to things, whatever is there...
...That mattered a great deal to her...
...Am I a college professor who goes and figures things like that...
...What are you fretting so much?' T can't find anything of Mark's...
...Maybe his wife had a little put away somewhere, which is what all men joke about and wish for but die when they find out it's true...
...What the Jews have been through, they shouldn't ask this of us anymore...
...You'll join me...
...And even while I'm laughing at it, and maybe feeling a little sad with all these memories, I'm still angry...
...There is no way to characterize the hundreds of hours of conversations with these people, many of them elderly, except to say that each conversation teaches me something about my friend, and somehow too, about myself, and evokes in me a barely describable range of feelings...
...It might have been nice if they didn't want to come, or couldn't come, they could have sent a message...
...She's nothing but a doll...
...We had a desk in there for her to do her homework and she had her own closet and dresser and bookshelves...
...Is that what you mean by clinically dead...
...All the same, we seem to have ended up here with very little...
...Don't get old, or find a better way of doing it, or don't tell people you're Jewish...
...Look how fantastic they are...
...She didn't bring me nice clothes...
...Who knows, maybe the reason no one came to Isaac was because someone like me was complaining to the doctor...
...We get our lives too mixed up with things...
...Ginsberg's mother never gave birth to him...
...We're Jews...
...So it was my mistake...
...Often when I leave the homes of these special friends, I ask myself, "All right, what really have you learned...
...Maybe if I'd done that I'd have set a pattern she could have followed...
...Who knows, maybe she thinks that way...
...You don't ask for changes like these, but you stay angry...
...Other families pushed...
...Menachim asked, with terror in his voice...
...I don't think that way...
...Please, Rose...
...Isn't that supposed to be what happens...
...Kanter," the doctor replied quietly...
...No...
...So why did he say to me when he was lying in this hall where I stood with him for over an hour waiting for someone to do something, why did he say, 'You know, Rose, the worst problem I have now is I have to urinate and there's no place to do it.' Is that what you mean, doctor, by losing your body functions...
...It means you size up his pocket book along with his medical problems when you make your decisions about what to do, isn't that right, doctor...
...I'm sorry about that...
...When did we have anything that all of a sudden we had to learn to live without...
...Sit still, I'll be two seconds...
...We aren't home practically from the funeral then Barbara, her daughter, dies...
...Every day, the same thing: No mail...
...Like Jacob would say, 'Believe me, they're laughing.' "But Jacob, moving for him is like torturing him...
...They're probably laughing...
...Every day I look into the mirror I see my old wrinkled punim and I say to myself, 'Oi, Millie Portman, is it really you...
...In the end, maybe I write about these people, like the four who appear below, not merely to record and preserve their stories and experiences, and to remind others of the presence of these people, but to keep time from running on so quickly...
...What have we done that's so bad...
...Millie Portman was alive now in a way I had never seen...
...All right, let some of it go...
...Does that make us rich...
...So if my husband was clinically dead, wouldn't he have lost that function...
...They did what they could...
...Don't patronize me, doctor, with words like clinically dead...
...That's your clinically dead...
...You know, people say, look at the Jews...
...He'll say no, I'm not going to, but he'll push...
...It's got black notes and white notes, right...
...It's like we had two worlds in that apartment hotel, her world and our world, and / was the reason our world looked so bad...
...I could blame my husband but then I'd be making the same mistake she, poor thing, is still making, to this very day...
...Even cooking...
...People who wonder how it might have been, they're beginning to see the years slip away...
...It's like what is outside should be inside and what is inside should be outside...
...They had their little something between them like a lot of fathers and daughters...
...That girl was very well taken care of when she was a child...
...Very dangerous...
...Then finally, I feel time running out, on all of us, but especially on them, the elderly ones, who surely wonder whether their hours with me in conversation are wisely spent...
...That's the kind of thing that might have been nice...
...You pay someone and they make these old people look like movie stars...
...He won't lift cartons not because he's too old, but because we're too old to be forced to go through this...
...I'm sorry, Mrs...
...She probably hated the uncle...
...You're busy doctor," she said abruptly...
...That's a good Jew is a dead Jew said with nice manners...
...I'm angry because she didn't take me to things when I was small, like plays or concerts...
...Besides, the government doesn't move rich ladies in their seventies, especially into some apartment house that isn't even finished yet, probably...
...But for the daughter, you do everything...
...And for that I blame me...
...You put your finger on the truth and the door flies open and there's a man with a million dollars...
...Me, I get warnings every other minute...
...Time me...
...You want some advice...
...After a while, every person has to realize they got a little bit of war going with their parents, their children and themselves...
...Not a warning...
...You didn't think I had it in me, eh...
...A single sentence can arouse anger, sadness, guilt, shame, a feeling that I am trusted, that I am doubted...
...I tell him...
...And she's still hiding...
...Why all of that...
...She resents me, maybe, for his dying...
...Rosie looked foolish being rich, but the men in that house didn't...
...She's not poor anymore when she looks in her closet and sees ten dresses instead of nine...
...But she died, like I said, in her sleep...
...Learn to do without, she didn't hear the words...
...I still have a daughter, thirty minutes from here...
...Perhaps the word that best captures this range of feelings is running...
...So, now she's getting even with me for all those years...
...Don't play games with us...
...In the living room inside a closet was a fold-down bed, that's where we slept...
...It even says please, let us know if we can help...
...If I had a wish for my own daughter, I'd tell her, don't fight the little war...
...She has to clear her throat more frequently, but the voice is rich, her way more assured, as if in hearing her own words she transcends any doubts that may linger...
...The mix-up was unforgive-able they agreed, but even the best of medical attention could not have saved her husband...
...A Good Jew is a Dead Jew...
...He made money so it didn't matter how much...
...What did it cost...
...It's the priorities...
...I hate to be carried out of my own house by a nice strong man who I don't even know.' And the man said his name was Jackson...
...He'll drag the cartons or he won't drag the cartons...
...I always knew it would be...
...Five more minutes of this and I'll be a rabbi...
...So with all her hating, she did a good job teaching me to hate it...
...I feel myself running after the people, barely able to catch their stories, and their spirit...
...To show the world we won't be pushed around...
...Do I look like at any time in my life, for a week even, I was rich...
...He was already clinically dead," Rose Orlovsky was muttering...
...Children judge you...
...They don't have mpn-ey, but they got a piano...
...They do not...
...That's exactly what we would say, Mr...
...I'm just too ashamed...
...She hid behind his pretending, my pretending, her pretending...
...In fact I don't know what has to do with it...
...Isaac Orlovsky was a man, not a medical case...
...That's clinically dead, doctor...
...we go get black boots, like we had money to burn, huh...
...Maybe she thinks I wasn't the world's greatest wife or housekeeper...
...Petrovsky...
...He's one of yours...
...Barbara Cohen's mother, Rosie Cohen, she felt she had dignity...
...If you can breathe, you can make things better...
...Everybody knows what goes on in families, and what doesn't go on that's supposed to be...
...And why at this time in history do a bunch of sick old people suddenly have to fight...
...She gets no warning and she's dead...
...the insurance benefits are going down, the prices are going up...
...She hated the streetcar, going places...
...They'll tell us where to go to temple, around here, somewhere else, we'll do what they say...
...It means," the doctor started kindly, "that while the heart is still beating, the body is not functioning...
...Here I am, at this age, and I still remember all of this...
...Maybe the state paid, or a rich relative...
...This order from the government, from people we've never even heard of, this isn't a reminder of what I've been talking about...
...We never went shopping that I can remember for penny candies even...
...They should have pushed...
...You know what gets me more angry than anything else...
...But money, there's a guarantee...
...Do I make myself clear...
...Jackson about talking with my husband...
...They were stunned and deeply angered by the news, although during most of my visits to their home only Jacob revealed his feelings...
...It's when you got nothing at all...
...Stingy, conceited, unfriendly...
...They put her in the home, and even with her deteriorating she had dignity...
...They couldn't let me just die on the couch...
...But me, I pick rich...
...Wishes...
...I'm not drowning...
...Why can't they give up all the pretending...
...With milk and sugar...
...they don't ask it of you...
...At age seventy...
...It's every day...
...Fifty nine years old, everything to live for...
...You can believe him...
...Besides maybe around the corner is another lady, waiting for someone to come to her husband...
...My daughter, all she uses her brain for is pretending...
...Call the police," Menachim ordered, frightening his wife Linda...
...I'll go to my grave fighting all the little wars...
...I pretend I'm rich, money coming in, me giving it away, Jacob running around telling me I'm too loose with it...
...But might-have-been's in my entire life...
...With the move he began to give up...
...Was she at the hospital now...
...It means that when a man like my husband, Isaac, is brought into this hospital by ambulance from a poorer neighborhood in this city and is taken to emergency instead of to an operating room directly, people know he's not a rich man, so he doesn't get a rich man's medical attention...
...I tell you, we were crippled by a shortage of money that began when we were children and keeps going, to this day...
...Who knows, maybe that was the real mistake...
...I'll never know...
...Old people are like dolls to those nurses...
...When they take your hope away from you and rub it in the ground right before your eyes, like they were putting out a cigarette...
...Who had with all those years...
...They got a piano...
...I'm invisible to you...
...Isaac Orlovsky was fifty-nine years old when he died...
...They got it off, but it goes back on...
...Rose had stopped, and was leaning on Menachim...
...ELLA CROWN Seventy-five year old Ella Crown has a voice that gets stronger as she speaks...
...But she hated that place...
...I wish I could play the piano...
...He was clinically dead already, Mama," Menachim said over and over again...
...I'm too ashamed," Rose wept into the telephone...
...She's not poor any more at dinner like she was when her lousy old mother used to make such terrible meals...
...Menachim asked...
...I'll be dead soon enough, you can have the whole damn thing then, for free...
...What did he say, Rose...
...The pretending doesn't go on without a big price being paid, by all of us...
...You really think we're that unintelligent that we don't even know what we're missing out on...
...You know what it is...
...She wanted a family, that's fine...
...She has said on many occasions that at her age it makes no sense to wonder how things might have been...
...Ginsberg but they also wish Dr...
...I hang on to this place...
...They've always asked too much of us...
...Because an old lady has no more skin left on her legs, just veins, and mess up the hair so people think she's been working, that's what an old lady's supposed to look like...
...Until then I hang on...
...Before you speak, I want to tell you one other little thing about being clinically dead...
...But does anyone ever want to know how / think about it, how / hated living where we lived, barely making it month by month...
...We're getting along, not as good as we want, but we're also not in the gutter...
...We wish you all the luck in the world...
...People say, sure Dr...
...Rose, asked weakly...
...What do they want from me...
...Because I liked some kind of pudding or cookie or something, who can remember now, and we didn't have it often enough...
...No, no, no, not for me...
...Oi,' he'll say, 'a Jew that's poor, a Jew that's a failure, a Jew that's a nobody, who can figure it...
...Why not...
...Come on, have a little more cake...
...It's the first time I saw him this way...
...I'm truly very sorry...
...Essentially he was dead when the ambulance men picked him up early that morning...
...Because when there's a warning it means other people know something lousy's about to happen...
...I loved it, but she hated it...
...That's what clinically dead means...
...Thank God she died in her sleep, which is what we all pray for...
...At my age, they wouldn't even want my body if I donated it to a hospital...
...Who knows...
...Neither does not having money...
...But does he get blamed for barely earning enough money, having no good insurance, not putting anything away for us when he died...
...But I always say, there's always one more thing in the family besides the people, it's the honesty between the people...
...Children in Jail, was published by Beacon Press in November 1977 MILLIE PORTMAN For twenty-one years, Jacob and Millie Portman lived in the same small but comfortable apartment...
...The old lady lived out her last days in a lovely house...
...How they've treated us," she resumed slowly...
...He went out every morning to his job, so it couldn't have been him who was at fault, so it must have been me...
...The doctor said nothing...
...I couldn't bear to go in the ambulance with him and I don't have any money in the house...
...The family has money, they didn't forget her...
...He taught her how to pretend, so now, it looks like she taught her husband the same game...
...A brain hemorrhage...
...But she's still angry with her father, because of the money that was never there, and maybe, you know, because of the money that was there...
...refuse warm banana bread, with a glass of milk...
...No, these are were's, things that really happened...
...I think about being rich and being old and being Jewish, and I can't make these things come together...
...Or only around no Jews...
...I began to give up five years ago...
...Maybe they wouldn't go to anybody but Dr...
...They're just keeping their heads above water...
...That they have to move from here to there...
...Why a handbag...
...They judge these things, you know...
...Not every day, but every week...
...You want some cookies too...
...What are they going to do with all this anyway...
...The Portmans never imagined they would move, never wanted to move...
...Oh, no, you don't do that, because I'm the failure, I'm the one didn't meet her idea of what a good wife is...
...Two gorgeous grandchildren, an active husband...
...Menachim seemed eager to know...
...But why didn't she do that...
...Jews, Jews, fantastic...
...The room, the bed, the cover for the bed, the desk, her own bookshelf...
...We talk too much, us old ladies, a lot of nonsense...
...She was forgotten all her life, but she never complained...
...Is it the old Millie Port-man?' And I say, 'Is it ever the old Millie Portman!' Then I think, how come I've changed so much over seventy years that even / can barely recognize myself, and nothing else in the world has...
...Moving doesn't either...
...Then without warning the Port-mans, in their seventies, received a letter notifying them that their building was being torn down and that new housing would be found for them in a community several miles away...
...But she had a bed, with a cover on it, that she picked out, and the dolls and the stuffed animals...
...Where's the guarantee...
...No, I'm a nothing, and nothing's don't go and figure things like that.'" It could have been Jacob speaking...
...Need you...
...Maybe the big mistake was not saying, look Marilyn, we love no one more than you, but you sleep in the fold-down bed...
...Don't forget to ask that Mr...
...I told Jacob, let him look into it...
...Suddenly they have such a taste for matzah they're insisting they have to live here...
...We used to go on a streetcar, that was supposed to be the big adventure of the month, to visit an uncle way out somewhere...
...But I never saw her without thinking, this is a big show...
...It was always, how much do we have left...
...And you think they'll send people over here to help us...
...That wasn't bad, but where was the rest of it...
...To prove we're strong...
...I kept my promise to her daughter, but she hated the place...
...So how can I win...
...No," Rose answered...
...He was perfect...
...At least a little something...
...Don't forget the cloth coat set, doctor," Rose whispered as Menachim helped her to her feet and turned her in the direction of the waiting room...
...Her bearing had changed until she achieved what I believed was the dignity she had perceived in Rosie Cohen...
...Ginsberg's hands they'll take, but my body...
...We never even had a dream...
...Jacob had his job and I had my job, but in the house he was willing to go along with what I wanted...
...I'll tell you what's he got to be miserable about...
...Instead of drop dead, the letter says, why not move, you're only seventy one, your whole life lies before you...
...That quiets him...
...I'm afraid so," the attending doctor answered softly...
...If they want you dead it means in some sick way you mean something to them...
...it continues now in much the same manner, except that all of us are older...
...You ask yourself, can you imagine an old rich Jewish woman...
...need to do something else but sit here and talk...
...They send a message I'm supposed to go four blocks away to the temple so one of their representatives can tell me, not ask me...
...I'm not going on forever, neither is my daughter...
...He was not dead when he left his house this morning...
...No, why should she blame him...
...Bad enough how I look without being rich...
...This isn't a real person...
...But Rose Orlovsky understood every word...
...And what, my daughter married such a rich man...
...It's like I tell Jacob, how bad can this move be, they gave us a very long warning...
...Money doesn't make it easier to be honest...
...We've gotten so used to living this way, we don't think about how other people are living...
...I'm giving up...
...Not me...
...No one has it all good with their families, even after your parents are dead decades, decades, and your children are so old they don't need you anymore...
...In four years of visiting the Portmans, I had never heard this tone, nor witnessed such energy in her: "No peace even after seventy," she kept repeating...
...Nothing I say will bring him back...
...It's hard to believe but it's true...
...A woman yes...
Vol. 3 • March 1978 • No. 4
