The Sunset Gang (14 page)

"You must be very busy, Mrs. Klugerman," he said
suddenly, looking about him. "In this place. All of us alte cockers."
He knew he was leading up to something. He wanted to know why she did it.
"I appreciate it," he said, wondering if that was what he really
meant.

When she had left, he discovered that his depression had
dissipated.

"You think I should go outside and sit?" he asked
his wife, who secretly marveled at his sudden change of attitude.

"Mrs. Klugerman made you better?" She felt a
sudden elation within herself. Was such a thing possible? When she telephoned
her friends that day, she felt the hollowness of her own insistence on the
extent of her troubles. Could Max be really getting better?

The fact was that Max did, indeed, show signs of getting
better and despite his own lingering fears about his condition, he was able to
take walks about the house and had begun to sit outside in the morning sun.
Mrs. Klugerman's visits came toward evening now. He was no longer in bed, but
sitting in the living room when she arrived.

"I'm not coming tomorrow, Mr. Shinsky," Mrs.
Klugerman said.

"You're not?" He felt his heart lurch, but there
was no pain.

"You're not sick anymore, Mr. Shinsky." It seemed
a confirmation of his new-found strength.

After a while she got up and he walked her to the door,
holding out his hand, which she grasped. He felt the parchmentlike skin and the
hand's strength that belied the little bent body and the piano legs. As he
watched her, she seemed to walk directly into the blood-red sunset, a tiny
figure disappearing.

She is more than what she says she is, he thought,
wondering if it would seem childish to articulate his feelings, especially to
his wife. But as he grew in physical strength, he pondered the riddle of Mrs.
Klugerman. Occasionally on his daily walks he would see her from a distance and
would wave, but she did not seem to notice. Perhaps her eyes were failing, or
had she forgotten who he was?

But the idea that she was somehow responsible for his
recovery persisted in his mind and, although he resisted giving it expression,
he could not subdue its power. He wanted to know more about Mrs. Klugerman and
began to ask questions of others who had been sick and who had received her
visits.

"She has no permanent friends?" he might ask,
casually, hoping his curiosity would not seem blatant.

"Nobody knows."

"Has anyone ever seen her place, been inside?"

"I never heard of any."

"And you say you were very sick?"

"Like a dog."

"She came early in the morning?"

"At first. Then later and later."

"And the last time?"

"At the end of the day. Like I was being released from
her custody."

"You felt that too?"

It was as if the idea of her strange power was floating
through the soft tropical air, hovering near the surface of the minds of all
those who had been sick and visited by Mrs. Klugerman. Not that the jokes did
not continue--but only among those who had not been sick. The healthy ones
actually laughed as they saw her plodding along on her daily rounds, clutching
her pocketbook filled with cellophane bags full of candy.

"There goes the Angel of Mercy."

"Who?"

"Oh, the local ghoul."

But Max Shinsky continued to wonder and ask questions. Once
he even rang Mrs. Klugerman's bell, but no one had answered. The venetian
blinds had been drawn and he could not see inside her condominium, although he
knew from the way it was situated that it was the smallest one they had built
at Sunset Village. Finally he began to follow Mrs. Klugerman around, always at
a distance, dallying about innocently while she made her daily visits, amazed
at her energy. He was convinced, after a series of confrontations, that she had
forgotten who he was.

"Where do you go on those walks, Max?" his wife
would ask.

At first he had ignored her questioning, but one day he
responded directly: "I'm following Mrs. Klugerman around."

"You keep doing that you'll have her visiting you
again." She lifted her arm and made a circular motion with her finger at
her temple.

"I wouldn't dare repeat what I'm finding out to anyone
but you." He felt the chill along his spine and goose pimples pop out on
his flesh. "She's not just Mrs. Klugerman."

Mrs. Shinsky squinted into her husband's eyes, sighing, convinced
that her troubles were multiplying again. Heart, I can understand, she thought.
But the mind--God forbid.

"It sounds crazy, right?"

"Right."

"Then how come some of the terrible sick cases she
visits, people they have given up, like me, suddenly recover?"

"Not everyone she visits recovers," Mrs. Shinsky
said.

"That's right," he said. "It is as if she
chooses who will live and who will die."

Mrs. Shinsky stood up, her lips trembling with anger and
disbelief. "Now I got a nut on my hands," she said.

"You're not going to say anything about this?" he
asked, ignoring her outburst. She was a peppery woman, and he had been prepared
for her reaction.

"Believe me," she cried, "I'm not as crazy
as my husband."

At that point he decided to refrain from airing his
suspicions. Especially now, when they were, at least in his own mind, confirmed
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Sometimes he would make discreet inquiries about patients
Mrs. Klugerman had been visiting.

"She was so sick I thought she would never see the
light of day."

"And now?" he would ask.

"It's a miracle."

Which was a word he had refused to voice, especially to
himself. Whenever he saw or heard about a new sick patient that Mrs. Klugerman
was visiting he wondered: Will she choose to make that person live? Or die?

Finally he found he could not keep on following her on her
daily rounds. Instead, he took to hanging around the court in which her
condominium was located, sitting on a bench and observing her door, waiting for
her return. Occasionally he would engage a neighbor in conversation. They were
all very pleasant, very polite, even talkative, but what he learned could be
put into a thimble.

"You know Mrs. Klugerman?"

"I say hello."

"She has no friends?"

"I never see anybody come to her place."

"Children?"

"I don't know."

"How old?"

"Mister, in Sunset Village that's the one question you
don't ask."

"When I was sick she visited me."

"That's her business."

"A business?"

"I don't mean a business business."

He learned nothing, but, nevertheless sat watching her door
and the windows with the drawn blinds to which she rarely returned except,
surely, to sleep. But by then he was long gone.

One night he awakened with a start and turned to his wife,
who was a light sleeper and woke the minute he moved.

"How did she know I was sick?"

"Who?"

"Mrs. Klugerman."

"Mrs. Klugerman again?"

"Did you send for her?"

Mrs. Shinsky shrugged. "Why would I send for
her?"

"Then how did she know?"

"How does she know anything?"

In the morning he called the Poinsettia Beach Memorial Hospital, but no one on the staff had ever heard of her. If this was so, how
then was she able to know the discharge date of each Sunset Village patient? He remembered that he himself had not known when he would go home until the
morning of his discharge. And she had arrived almost immediately upon his
return.

He wanted to confide in his wife again, to reiterate his
suspicions, but he dared not. It wasn't only fear of ridicule, he decided.
She'd already rejected the idea of it. He imagined that he might hear her as
she busily called her friends on the telephone, voice lowered, conspiratorial,
as she was when she had something to impart about him and his illness.

"Max thinks Mrs. Klugerman is really an Angel from
Heaven."

"You're kidding."

"He really believes it."

"Are you going to see a doctor?"

"I'm afraid if I mentioned it, he would have another
heart attack."

As a result, he became more secretive, more inhibited about
his confidences, more cunning in his subterfuges. At times, walking in the
bright sunlight, breathing in the heavy tropical scents of the planted
shrubbery, he mocked himself for his childish suspicions. It did not seem
possible in this peaceful sunlit world, where everything was clearly defined.
But at night, observing the mystery of the stars, a canopy for the universe, he
felt the pull of other forces. The literal observations dissipated. There was
more, much more, out there than met the eye and could be logically explained.
Sometimes, sitting outside near the rear screened-in porch, looking upward into
the eternity of the twinkling sky, he felt a strange elation, as if someone had
entrusted him with knowledge that he could not define or articulate. At these
moments, too, he might argue with himself, or, more precisely, two parts of
himself would debate the question.

I'm a reasonable man, one part of him could testify. A
practical man. A shoe salesman, after all, must be particularly practical. As a
boy I went to shul. I was bar mitzvahed and, today, if I am not overly
religious it doesn't mean that I don't think there is a God. I accept
that--even if I don't indulge in heavy intellectual activities on the subject.
I am not superstitious. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't get frightened at
horror movies. And I am convinced that the supernatural is ridiculous. And
yet--

How come I lived? How come Mrs. Klugerman knew when I got
home from the hospital? How come she knew exactly when to stop coming first
thing in the morning? How come nobody knows anything about her early life? How
come I am thinking what I am thinking?

Sometimes his more practical side would win out, and he
would go for days without giving Mrs. Klugerman much thought, spending his time
by the pool or going to the clubhouse at night to watch the entertainment.

But the idea always hung over his mind like a morning mist,
and when he heard of a death, read about it, or felt an occasional twinge in
his chest, it reminded him of his own mortality, and he would believe
absolutely in the miraculous force possessed by Mrs. Klugerman.

Sometimes, after a particularly disturbing night of doubt
and debate with his more practical self, he would rise early and rush to find a
vantage point near Mrs. Klugerman's condominium, and post himself there to
await her exit. At precisely seven he would see her open the door and leave--a
tiny bent woman plodding along the neatly trimmed path while the dew still
glistened on the tips of the grass. Her eyes were always slightly lowered, and
if she saw him, she never acknowledged it.

As the months wore on, and his less practical self became
more ascendant, his morning assignations increased until it became a kind of
ritual in his life.

"Where do you go every morning?" his wife would
ask.

"I love the mornings," he would respond.
"Walking in them refreshes me."

His wife would shrug and turn her back to him as he sat on
the bed putting on his shoes and socks.

It was only natural in a ritual so precise and rhythmical
that the least disruption could become a major source of anxiety. It had, of
course, been the moment he most dreaded: when Mrs. Klugerman would prove to him
her vulnerability, her mortality, evidence of which he feared as much as death
itself.

When she did not leave her condominium precisely at seven
one morning, he knew that the moment of truth had indeed arrived. He had, of
course, shaken his watch to be sure of the time, reassuring himself by the
position of the sun that the hour had come and gone. But even then he could
think of many reasons for some delay, since even in his wildest musings he had
invested the Angel of Mercy with human raiment. Whatever she was, she was still
encased in a decrepit body, one in which the aging joints and muscles might
interfere with the plans of the spirit, her spirit. He gave such a possibility
the benefit of his growing doubt. As the morning wore on and the sun's heat
became a hardship, he moved to the feeble shade of a palm tree. The morning
progressed. People moved past him, eying him curiously as he leaned against the
back of the bench concentrating on his vigil. As always, nothing stirred behind
the drawn venetian blinds. And while he was tempted to ring her buzzer, he
concluded that she might have left before he arrived. Perhaps an emergency case
had intervened, he thought, leaving his post by the palm tree after being convinced
of this assumption by his more practical self.

But when he arrived earlier the next morning, and still
Mrs. Klugerman did not appear, he began to lose faith in that assumption.
Finally he gathered the courage to ring her buzzer. There was no response, nor
could he see anything through the drawn blinds.

When he returned to his own condominium, he decided to
enlist the aid of his wife, who, through her network of yentas, could be relied
upon to ferret out all sorts of surreptitious information.

"I think Mrs. Klugerman is sick," he said
casually, feeling the tension build in his chest and throat.

"That's funny," his wife replied.

"Funny?"

"Mrs. Zuckerman had a gall bladder and Mrs. Klugerman
was paying her visits. Then two days ago she stopped coming."

"Stopped completely?"

"Mrs. Zuckerman decided that she was getting
better."

"Was she?"

"Not really. I think the gall bladder was just a
boobimeister. I think she's sicker than that."

"Something is definitely wrong with Mrs.
Klugerman," he said aloud. He could feel the panic grip him and a cold
sweat begin to drip down his back and under his arms.

"You're pale as a ghost, Max," his wife said with
some concern. "Do you feel okay?"