She wanted to nod her head but it took so much effort.
“Helen, get the curtains. Make the room as dark as you can.”
Fannie heard the heavy whoosh of the curtains closing out the sun.
Dr. Rosenthal put a hand on her back and steadied her. “You have to breathe, Fannie. You understand?” he said.
She couldn’t.
“Did you get bad news?”
She nodded her head, tried to speak. “My sister—”
He moved his hand to her shoulder, squeezed it tight, and whispered, “I know.”
“She, she, she left for France without saying good-bye.”
Dr. Rosenthal removed his hand from Fannie’s shoulder. “Right,” he said as he busied himself monitoring her pulse and taking her blood pressure. Finally he sat down on the bed beside her. “Fannie, your numbers are very high. I’m tempted to induce your labor right now.”
The threat shocked Fannie back into her own consciousness. “It’s too soon.”
“Well, then, listen to me. I don’t give a damn whether your sister is swimming around the horn of Africa, and, from this point forward, neither do you. Your only concern is this baby and carrying it safely to term. Do you understand?”
Fannie couldn’t make so much as a word in response.
“Do you understand?” repeated Dr. Rosenthal.
She nodded vigorously.
He removed the extra pillows from behind her back, told her to lie down, and then, perhaps thinking better of his directness, added “please.” As she did so, he scribbled something on a small piece of paper and handed it to the nurse. “Will you get this?” he asked, quietly. “A hundred milligrams.”
When Fannie was flat on her back, staring at the dark ceiling, he spoke again. “Here are my new rules: No daylight, no getting out of bed. Helen is going to give you something that will help you relax, and we’re going to see if you can get your blood pressure down on your own.”
“And if I can’t?”
“I think you can.”
The nurse hurried back into the room, carrying a small tray. She set it on the table beside the bed and asked Fannie if she could roll over onto her side.
Fannie did as she was told and a moment later, she felt the pinch of a needle in the soft flesh of her backside. As the nurse pushed the syringe down, Fannie imagined its contents spilling throughout her body, enveloping the baby, touching all the neglected parts of her. The baby kicked. I’m here with you, Fannie thought, though she had never felt so alone.
Joseph
On the day his younger daughter would have sailed to France, Joseph found he was too distracted to get much of anything done.
“Mrs. Simons, is that pair of binoculars still around here somewhere?” he called from his office as he searched his desk for his keys.
Joseph pulled the car around the front of the building and was about to turn onto Mediterranean Avenue when he noticed a man, dressed in a seersucker suit, walking toward him. The man was almost directly in front of the car when Joseph realized he was Stuart. He rolled down his window and called to him.
Stuart looked relieved to see him and doubled back to talk to him through the open window. “Good to see you, Mr. Adler.”
“No bathing suit?”
“Day off,” he said. “Since I was paying you a visit, I thought I’d put on real clothes.”
Joseph liked the boy’s sense of humor, always had. “Did you hear from the coach?” Joseph asked.
“I did,” he said, reaching into his pocket for an envelope. “That’s why I was coming to see you. Burgess enclosed a check for the entire deposit.”
Stuart handed Joseph the airmail envelope, and he took it, studying the return address, the French stamps, the Calais postmark.
“He said he was very sorry to hear the news.”
“That’s kind of him.”
“He’s known for being tough to deal with, so I was a little surprised he parted with the money so easily.”
“What are you doing this morning?” Joseph asked.
“Coming to see you.”
“Do you want to take a drive? I can have you back in Atlantic City by midafternoon.”
A look of surprise came over Stuart’s face. “Sure,” he said.
Joseph patted the exterior of the car’s door. “Get in, then.”
Stuart hurried around the front of the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “Where are we headed?” he asked, when the door was closed behind him.
“Highlands.”
Stuart nodded his head, as if he understood perfectly. When a few long seconds had passed, he asked, “Why Highlands?”
“You’ll see.”
Joseph crossed the Thorofare and eventually the marsh, then traced the coast. “Have you ever been to Highlands?” he asked Stuart when they were on Highway 4 North, the car beginning to pick up speed.
“Once, to Highlands Beach, for a lifeguard competition.”
Joseph wondered if Florence had tagged along. Last summer, when she’d returned home from school, she’d scarcely ever been at the apartment. It had been difficult to keep up with her whereabouts—she’d spent so much time training for the Absecon Island swim. “Did Florence go?” he asked.
Stuart shook his head no. “It was three summers ago.”
Joseph didn’t have anything to say to that, could hardly remember what any of them had been doing three years ago.
The two men fell quiet, listening to the steady rush of air that whipped around their heads and beat against their eardrums. Out their windows, New Jersey’s coastal plains passed by. Joseph hadn’t laid eyes on the ocean until, at seventeen, he had boarded the SS Frankfurt in Bremen. Now he couldn’t imagine living somewhere where he couldn’t see the sea.
“Did you know Trudy Ederle was from Atlantic Highlands?” said Stuart. “Or at least she spent her summers there.”
Joseph did remember that. Half the news stories had claimed she was a resident of Manhattan, where her father owned a butcher shop, but the other half had claimed she hailed from Highlands, where her parents had a summer cottage. Highlands Beach was where she and her sisters had learned to swim. Joseph was sure that, if he wanted to
