We are young, in our mid forties -semi-retired snowbirds in Lake Worth, FL. It is going to take effort, patience to fit in, meet new people, bend over backwards to be congenial, establish new friendships.
Mickey and I have joined the Worth It Club. He is set with a 13 golf handicap from up North and is quickly accepted into the bi-weekly tourneys. However, I am not a golf, swimmer, tennis player. Aerobics and I are strangers. There is a bulletin board in the ladies card room where I post my name for a weekly Canasta game. ‘ Excellent player. We can set our own rules or not. Snowbird. Available Tues. and Thurs. Contact Bev. 213-5605.’ No calls come. There are no notes asking for fill in players. Mickey suggests I take golf or tennis lessons. I laugh at the suggestion. He should know after 20 years that I am not an athlete.
Instead, I enroll in art class at the Norton Museum. My talent consists of drawing stick men and mountains that look like ice cream cones. Fortunately, the course is about art, not doing it. Martha and Blanche sitting beside me in the giant auditorium are new here too. A miracle happens. Their husbands are golfers, pars near Mick’s and they belong to the league. I like them and am anxious to give Mickey their husband’s names. They already gave me their phone numbers. This may be a start. And it is. Before long we are turning down dinners, luncheons, shows.
Five years fly faster than Hurricane Gilda did. Mickey and I are having a small cocktail party to announce we are no longer going to be snowbirds. We sold our house up north. Mickey has retired from his family’s firm and we are free, full Florida citizens. We are happy for a while, a few months at most.
I begin noticing changes in Mickey’s routine. He doesn’t get out of bed the moment he opens his eyes, stays longer in the bathroom. There is a slowness in his walk. His urge to play better golf is diminishing. Still he seems happy, contented with our lives. We seldom argue except when he keeps me waiting. That new quirk drives me nuts. Last night I was dressed for dinner with the Foxes and waited at the door for Mickey for ten minutes. My temper was about to blow. ‘What’s taking you so long, slow poke?’ I yell. There is no answer. I look down the hall to the spare room/office and there he is, standing at his desk, feeling every one of his pockets, even inside his jacket. ‘What’s keeping you, Mickey. I’m at the door.’ A rough voice, unlike him, yells back. ‘Leave me alone. I’ll be there when I get there.’ I am enraged, wait another five minutes and look again. Mickey is sitting at his desk, opening drawer after drawer, taking out nothing, just opening and closing each again and again. ‘Either we go now or don’t go at all. Our reservation is gone.’
Mickey calls, ‘Have you seen my Schwab June statement? ‘ ’No, Mickey, not this year or last. Do you need it now?’ My husband sends black darts into my heart and chills through the rest of me. I go into the garage, just in case Mickey comes out. I find his car keys in the ignition, take them inside and hand them to him. I see his hand form a fist and I step back. ‘Why did you hide them, Phyllis? No wonder I didn’t have them.’ Realization starts to set in. Mickey is in trouble and if he is, so am I.
We fly north to Hopkins. There can’t be many tests Mickey doesn’t have. Need I tell you the arguments he and I have, how he threatens divorce? He is fine. I am the one who needs a doctor, he says. There are medical conferences, and agreement. Mickey has a brain tumor that the doctors think cannot be cured. His health worsens. I sit by his bed and we cry to each other. Mickey refuses, no matter how I plead, to go thru surgery.
In the apartment we rented, so unlike the beautiful home we sold up north and the happy, but now vacant Florida house, Mickey makes an effort to teach me how to keep records, when to pay bills, what important papers are in the red carton. His words don’t register as he skips from one subject to another before I grasp the first. When he talks of cotton candy, alley fights, his parents, our wedding, I have to work to bring him back to reality.
Tears flood my eyes, run down my cheeks. He doesn’t notice.
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