Fannie felt a great tenderness for her father, who she knew did not approve of the reportage of sensational stories and who certainly did not believe it necessary for newspaper editors to devote multiple column inches to the daily activity of five infants—quintuplets or not. Of course, Fannie already knew about the radium treatment. Bette continued to bring her clippings, although they were hard to read in the dark of her room. “Dr. Rosenthal says radium can cure anything.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, not anything. But lots of things. Not me. And not Hy—” Fannie stopped herself. Why had she done that? Bringing up Hyram when she was so close to going right back into that same delivery room. She kept one hand on her stomach, feeling for the slightest indication that another contraction was imminent.
“Fannie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot this summer. I think we did the wrong thing with Hyram.”
“The incubator?”
“No, the burial. We should have buried him at Egg Harbor.”
Halakhah was clear. There were no burial rites or mourning traditions for babies who died before their thirty-first day of life. Despite Fannie’s pleadings, her child had been buried in an unmarked grave.
Fannie felt her face grow hot, her eyes well with tears. “I thought you said Rabbi Levy wouldn’t allow it.”
“I should have pushed harder,” said Joseph. “Insisted.”
“You quoted Maimonides to me.”
“Maimonides lived seven hundred years ago. What does he know? He didn’t see the way you loved that baby.”
On the day Hyram had slipped away, the nurses at the incubator exhibit had called Fannie at home and told her to hurry down to the Boardwalk. By the time she arrived, they had transferred her baby to an incubator in the back, out of view of the mobs of summer tourists that snaked around the perimeter of the exhibition hall. She had hoped to catch her son’s last breaths, to feel the grip of his tiny finger as he touched the edges of the next world, but he was already gone when she arrived.
“Mother said it was frivolous to name him.”
“What did either of us know about losing a child?” said Joseph. “We should have said Kaddish, observed Yahrzeit.”
Fannie had known, sitting in front of that incubator, that there would be no funeral, that they would not sit Shiva. In lieu of a funeral prayer, she issued an apology to her tiny son. “I’m sorry for not taking better care of you,” she whispered.
That memory, which was usually so vivid, grew blurry as the baby inside Fannie tugged hard at her insides. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and dug her fingers into the hospital mattress. As the pain subsided, Fannie reminded herself that this baby did not care that the one before it had not lived.
“Should I get the nurse?” her father asked, already halfway across the room.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly a quarter after two.”
A half hour had elapsed since her last contraction. She didn’t need Dorothy Geller to tell her that she had a long way to go.
“Let’s wait a little longer.”
Joseph returned to his chair and slowly lowered himself back into it.
“Thank you,” said Fannie. “For what you said about Hyram.”
“Sometimes I worry, Fan. That I got so caught up with turning Florence into a champion swimmer, I forgot to ask what you wanted out of life.”
“Oh, Pop. I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
“Being a wife is obviously very important,” said Joseph slowly, “but I don’t think it’s the only thing.”
“What else is there?” She had meant to pose the question sarcastically but it hadn’t come off that way.
“I see Mrs. Simons, at the plant. She has a husband but is also a skilled secretary and an extremely competent logistician. She seems happy. Or maybe fulfilled is a better word.”
Had Fannie ever felt fulfilled? Perhaps that first day she had held Gussie in her arms. Most days she hardly felt anything at all. It had gone on like this for so long, even before Hyram’s death, that she had forgotten there was any other way to feel.
“Once this baby is a little older,” said Joseph, “I wonder if you might want to come work for me.”
“At the store?”
“No. In the office. At the plant.”
It was a thrilling idea in theory but in practice it might be a great deal more discouraging. “Alongside Isaac?” she asked, trying to imagine how she’d navigate her marriage if there were no natural boundaries, no quiet places to seek refuge. She pictured packing two lunch pails each morning. At midday, when they took their break, Isaac would eat his pickle and hers, too.
“Perhaps.”
“I wonder if Isaac would like that?”
“Does it matter?” her father asked quietly.
Fannie didn’t have a quick answer to that. Nothing witty or sharp. She certainly couldn’t act taken aback, not when they both knew that Esther was turning over every stone in Atlantic City, looking for her husband. She wished her mother had come to the hospital first. Fannie might have given her some places to look. Or told her not to bother.
“You’re a smart girl. Always have been,” said Joseph.
Truth be told, Fannie didn’t even really know what people did in offices. In secretarial school, she had learned how to write memorandums and business letters and how to answer a phone but she had quit before they’d gotten to anything very tricky.
“I don’t know anything about business.”
“You’ll learn.”
Joseph
When Dr. Rosenthal returned to check on Fannie at a quarter to three, Joseph stood and excused himself. “I’ll wait in the corridor,” he said, although he wasn’t sure either of them heard him.
He worried he wasn’t doing a very good impression of Esther, who would—were she here—know what questions to ask Dr. Rosenthal and what to say to reassure Fannie. Both his girls had been born in the apartment over the store, and on each
