Read Never Too Late for Love for Free Online

said,
continuing to speak in Yiddish.
    "I can't stand this," Mimi shouted, standing up.
She put a hand over her throat as if she were in agony.
    "See what you're doing to her," one of his
daughters said, holding her mother's free hand.
    "She's only acting," Velvil said. "Can't
they see that?"
    "They know it," Genendel said. She stood up.
    "Where are you going, Mother?" Genendel's
daughter shouted.
    "That bitch. That whore," Mimi shouted.
    "Who are you calling a whore, you fat pig?"
Genendel's daughter said.
    "They're a low-class family. Pigs!" one of Velvil's
daughters shouted.
    "A whore," Mimi cried, forgetting about her
assumed frailty, pointing her finger at Genendel, then at her husband.
    "Rot in hell. Both of you."
    "My conscience is clear," Genendel said quietly.
    "We can still make the Cycling Club, Genendel,"
Velvil said quietly.
    "A wonderful idea," Genendel responded. She moved
toward him, reaching for his arm. They stood now together at the end of the
table, looking at the faces of their families.
    "Please," Larry persisted. "If you will all
sit down..." But neither of them was listening.
    "Who are these people?" Velvil asked, as they
turned and proceeded toward the door, arm-in-arm.
    "I guess some people we used to know," Genendel
said, as they walked out of the room.

YOU'D BE SURPRISED HOW WE'RE RELATED
    "Cousin Irma," Sarah whispered, as she looked
again at the signature below the message on the New Year's card, tapping her
finger on the edge of her coffee cup. "Who is Cousin Irma?"
    She studied the card, the postmark, "New York City"
in the center of the canceled imprint and the name "Mrs. Nathaniel Z.
Shankowitz" with her Sunset Village address. She searched through the
imaginary archives of the family tree, both on her and her ex-husband's side,
finally shaking her head in defeat.
    "Do I have a Cousin Irma?" she asked herself. It
was a mystery.
    When her son called from Connecticut on the Jewish New
Year, she quickly disposed of the amenities and asked him the question that was
on the surface of her mind.
    "Do I have a Cousin Irma?"
    "Who?"
    "That's what I said. Your Uncle Eddie has Rebecca and
Arthur and my father and mother, your grandmother, had no other relatives in
this country..." She paused, shook her head and shrugged. She emitted a
sigh of surrender.
    "Maybe it's the wrong address?"
    "No." She paused again. "Did your father
ever have a Cousin Irma?" Even twenty-five years of divorce did not temper
the unmistakable acid tone. After the divorce, Nat had always been "your
father," the tone heavy with sarcasm as if he were some terrible obscenity,
which he was, of course, in her mind.
    "Not that I remember," the son said. He was used
to such inferences and let it pass tactfully, a posture that always annoyed
her, triggering old insecurities and suspicions.
    "What would you know about him anyway?" she said,
feeling her own crankiness emerge. Since the divorce, he had only seen him a
few times and that was soon after he had left the house. She sensed his
annoyance and knew that she had, as always, gone too far.
    "Well, it's not important" she said finally.
"Look, I'm grateful you called, darling. Happy New Year and send my
regards." The implication was clear. His wife wanted no part of her, an
old divorcée with an only son. Who could blame her? She understood and was
happy to get his periodic calls.
    Now that she got her son's call, she would be able to
report that fact to the yentas around the pool and the pity would pass on to
some other poor woman whose ungrateful children hadn't called on New Year's.
    "Your Barry didn't call?"
    "He called last week."
    "He didn't call on New Year's?"
    "They had company. Her people came all the way from Chicago."
    "That's an excuse?"
    It was a form of torture she really did not like to hear.
It was bad enough that she had been a divorcée. Even at sixty-eight, such
status had its special distinctions in the pecking order of the Sunset Village yentas. A married woman