Never Too Late for Love by Warren Adler Page A

the first night of their marriage, from the moment of
her hysterical exaggeration of her simulated virginity. What an act it had
been. "It took me three days to get married," Herman had always told
their friends with a laugh, although she had known in her heart that they were
never really married, not in that way at least.
    "I have always been a good and faithful wife,
Helen," she told her daughter, who by then was impatient to get back to Chicago and her life there.
    "Sure, Ma."
    "Your father was a good man, a wonderful person."
    "You think I don't know that, Ma? He was lucky to have
such a terrific woman."
    "I feel so bad for him," she said, but her
meaning, she knew, was lost to her daughter. Their marriage bed had been as
cold as ice. She hadn't even done her duty by him and she hoped in her heart
that he had found someone to relieve his needs, some woman somewhere who could
get rid of his tensions and send him back to her.
    "I was not a good wife, Helen," she said. Her
daughter merely nodded. They had been sitting shiva for four days and it was
boring Helen, she was sure, hearing all those reminiscences of a long marriage.
What else was there to do but talk about the dead father, the dead husband, and
their memories of him? She dared not say to her daughter that Herman was
quickly slipping from her memory, and if it wasn't for the picture of him on
the piano to remind her of his features, she might not have been able to
assemble them in her mind.
    "Once, there was another man," she said.
    "You had another boyfriend?" Helen seemed
interested as they sipped coffee.
    "He was absolutely gorgeous--a marvelous, brilliant boy."
    "You're kidding, Ma."
    "Heshy Feinstein."
    "Heshy?"
    "In Brownsville, in those days, the Yiddish and
English was totally mixed up. His name was Harvey but no one called him Harvey
except the teachers at school. He was six feet tall when he was seventeen years
old and I was sixteen. He was going to Boys' High School and I was going to
Girls' High School and we used to take the subway together. He lived behind us
on Douglass Street, and I knew him since we were eight or nine. But it wasn't
until I was sixteen that we discovered each other."
    "My God. My name could have been Feinstein," her
daughter said.
    She ignored the remark. Her own name had been Goldberg.
Frieda Goldberg. At least Herman brought her the name Smith, though God knew
where that came from.
    "His father wanted him to be a doctor. He was
excellent in science, always doing experiments on his back porch."
    "Did he become one?"
    "I never found out."
    "You haven't seen him since?"
    "Not once. We moved to Eastern Parkway. It was only a
few miles away, maybe four, five subway stops. But I never saw him again."
    "Weird," Helen said.
    "Heshy's father owned a grocery store and he wanted
him to be a doctor."
    "Do you ever wonder about him?"
    "Not often," she lied, knowing that it had been
the single obsession of her life.
    Naturally, she left out all of the important parts,
although she would have loved to confide in her daughter. But she worried that
her daughter would hate her for what she did to her father. I feel so sorry for
Herman, she told herself often. Even now, before the mirror, as her mind
searched its secret screen for pictures of Frieda Goldberg and Heshy Feinstein.
    He was shaking the pear tree in his father's yard and
gathering the pears in a bucket for Mrs. Feinstein to make stewed dessert. She
watched him from the little rusty swing in her own yard, making fun of his
efforts, especially when one of the pears hit him on the head.
    "It's not funny. It hurts like the blazes."
    "Poor Heshy."
    He walked over to her and nodded his head and she looked
into the shiny curly sweet-smelling hair. He took her hand and put it on the
lump that was growing there and she felt it gently.
    "That doesn't tickle," he said. Yet she knew, at
that moment, as her finger touched the hard nub of that lump that something had
passed between them, and nothing