MANNY AND BELLE
by Bernadette Miller
When she was eighty five, Belle entered a nursing home, and abandoned Manny, her neighbor in the Lower East Side apartment building. At first, Manny, ten years younger than Belle, continued running errands for other tenants, mostly elderly widows. He’d refused to share his studio apartment with his only remaining relative, a widowed sister, who shouted at him, “Like I always said, still Mister Selfish - looking out for Number One!” In a burst of usefulness after her stinging insult, he bought groceries for Gussie in 312A and read to Flo, his blind next door neighbor. But he still lingered awhile outside Belle’s apartment; for so many years they’d chatted and joked.
Belle’s short, fat body was always stuffed into a house dress, the once naturally red hair now gray, the lively, self-assured voice eternally offering food.
“Manny, try my chocolate cake. I baked it fresh today.”
“No thanks, I already ate.” His mother had instilled in him the virtue of not imposing. Pushing up his shirt sleeves in the overheated room, one arm featuring an anchor tattoo, he leaned back on the green sofa, protected with plastic, like the opposite sofa and armchairs. The plastic squeaked when he moved, as if protesting any invader, and he scanned the immaculate apartment: the lace-covered dining table with cake plate; the spotless end tables with filled candy dishes, the clean green carpet. His blue eyes watered as his thin mouth twisted in a grin. “Belle, when’s the unveiling? Your place is spic and span; you don’t need to hide the furniture.”
Ignoring his remark, she wagged a fat finger at him. “Okay! So you’d rather eat Gussie’s cake, but everybody knows mine is the best!”
He laughed, his face scrunching up until his eyes almost disappeared in the pouches. “You know I always eat at home.”
“Yah.” Shrugging, she entered her tiny kitchenette, and soon emerged with coffee and onion cookies, which he refused.
“Belle, too much sugar’s making you fat. You need vitamins and minerals.”
“I’m not hungry for a regular meal,” she mumbled between bites. “Besides, if I’m not a beauty anymore, what’s the big deal? After poor Arnie died from Parkinson’s and I struggled to raise Irv by myself, a husband now I don’t need.” Her pale brown eyes narrowed with worry. “But, tell me, is your cataract ripe yet for an operation?”
He gazed at the family portraits dotting the freshly painted walls. “The doctor’s all the way out in Brooklyn and I hate to ask my sister to go with me.”
“What’s the problem? I’ll go.”
“I. . .don’t know. I still might not see too good.”
“Manny, if your right eye needs an operation, don’t make excuses. Otherwise, maybe you’ll have no eyesight at all. Make an appointment right away and I’ll take you.”
He nodded, and watched as a neighbor arrived to examine clothes that Belle sold for Hadassah. Though it was voluntary, Belle worked hard selling sweaters, tee shirts, scarves, and blouses from shopping bags stored in the closet. Eager to help struggling Israel, she bulldozed potential customers into sales.
“Please, Gussie, I can’t believe you won’t buy that sweater. Look how nice it covers your hips. You look like a movie star!”
The tall thin woman with long pinched face and cropped gray curls studied her reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door. “Well, I don’t like purple, and all those stripes...” A hand fisted on hips, she leaned on her cane, and turned for different viewing angles.
“Gussie, you’re a knockout! Buy it, all the mensch will chase you. It’s so cheap, practically free.”
“Okay!” Gussie nodded, and left with the sweater folded in tissue paper.
Manny laughed. “I don’t know how you do it, Belle.”
“It’s for a good cause - helping hungry children.”
They chatted some more and he left just before bed time, as usual.
Two weeks later, on a cold, wintry Monday afternoon, Belle accompanied him to the Brooklyn doctor. Bundled up in a heavy coat and scarf, her arm through his, she escorted him past treacherous snow mounds and onto the D train platform, then walked the few blocks to the medical building in Brighton Beach. She waited outside the office until he finally emerged. Reaching up on tiptoe, she anxiously studied the bandage over his right eye, and said, “So, how was it?”
He shrugged. “I’ll live.”
“Not bad then?”
He laughed and took her arm. “Why are you worried? I can see better with one eye then you can with two!”
“What a schlemiel!” she said, but she smiled, looking relieved. She helped him with his jacket, and guided him to the subway.
When it was time to remove his bandage, she again accompanied him to the doctor’s .
As their relationship continued over the years, Belle began staying home every evening. Or she’d tape a note to her front door, explaining where she was. Manny didn’t discuss their aging, but he walked more slowly because he still didn’t see so well.
Belle continued joking and cajoling him about food, but sometimes she stared at the family portraits as though seeing something else. And she began dropping things: papers, buttons, forks, and finally dishes. She bought plastic plates.
“Belle, what’s wrong?” he finally asked.
She shrugged. “I’m getting old.” Smiling then, she extended a filled plate. “How about prune humantashen-just baked?”
One day her son called to tell Manny that he’d taken Belle to a hospital. “My mother’s becoming senile - forgets where she is. It’s very hard to take...”
Manny reassured him. “She’s not senile! Just old. I’ll visit her.”
After hanging up, he took a bus to the hospital, while he told himself that Belle would get better. “Forgetfulness isn’t serious,” he said aloud.
In her room, she turned from the window and smiled when she saw him enter. “Manny! How’s your eye?”
“Okay. Why’re you here, Belle?”
She watched him pull aside the bed curtain and sit near her. “I don’t know,” she whispered, leaning toward him. I had a blackout, didn’t know where I was, and where the time went. I woke up in bed one afternoon with my clothes on. The grocery bag was still on the floor. The milk was spoiled. I can’t remember nothing too good. So I called Irving.”
“Do you remember two nights ago what we talked about?”
“Your sister?”
“Yah!” He smiled with relief. “You’re okay. A little run down because of your age. You’ll be home soon.”
But weeks passed and she didn’t return home. Manny finally called the hospital doctor who said Belle had been transferred to the Zuckerman Home for the Aged, near Grand Street.
Manny hurried to Flo’s, who knew what had happened.
“Irving took her,” the frail, white-haired woman said in the darkened kitchen while Manny unloaded groceries he’d bought for her. A veined hand groped on the tiled counter. “Belle told me she don’t remember anything and cries all the time.”
“Cries all the time?” Manny stared at Flo who stared back but couldn’t see him. “Why didn’t she tell me something was wrong?”
“You know Belle, poor all her life but always helping others. She hates bothering people, but finally she told me she forgets what day it is and it depresses her.”
“It’s just her age! They put her there because she’s forgetful?”
After leaving Flo, he walked to the nursing home, sniffing the spring air. “Thank God Belle won’t have to return home now in cold weather,” he said under his breath. He found her upstairs in “Recreation,” a short narrow room lined on both sides with patients. The only recreation was the corner television with fuzzy reception that nobody seemed to be watching. At the far wall, near the bank of windows, a patient sat buckled in a wheelchair, heavily sedated, head drooping as she stared at the floor. Another woman cleaned and recleaned a tv table, endlessly rubbing it with her hand. The woman beside her folded a napkin into ever smaller pieces.
Belle sat near the door, staring at the patients, but smiled at seeing Manny.
“Ah, look who’s here! Sit beside me, Manny.” She turned to the patient on her left. “My son comes to visit. “
“Son?” Manny said.
Belle looked confused, then grinned with toothless gums, her cheeks sunken. “Ach, you know I like to joke. Like you, right?”
He nodded, and patted her plump, freckled arm. “Belle, where’s your false teeth?”
She shrugged. “I lost them, and the ones Irv bought don’t fit so good.”
“So let him get another pair.”
She nodded, then whispered, “Lately, I forget names of relatives. I forget where I am and who lives next door. Why can’t I remember?” Her palm struck her forehead. “Stupid... stupid...”
“Ah, it’s this place!” He frowned, hunching his thin body in the padded chair. “You don’t belong here! Tell your son to hire an attendant and take you home.”
“Okay...” She smiled at the lady in the wheelchair, and leaned forward. “Manny.”
“I’m here, Belle,” he said, and touched her arm.
She turned toward him. “I know that!” She reached down past her huge house dress and touched her walking shoes. Mechanically she patted the thick treaded soles and unfastened and refastened the large velcro straps - like the lady rubbing the tv table.
“Manny, bring me chocolate cake,” she said looking up suddenly. “The nurses won’t give me any.”
He tried to smile, thin lips broadening in a forced grin. “No, Belle, cake makes you too fat. See how skinny I am? It’s from meat and vegetables!” He patted her soft, wrinkled cheek. “I’ll make you eat right - for a change.”
“I eat right, but I like cake.” She stared at the wall, and mumbled something.
Manny leaned closer to hear. “What did you say, Belle?”
She continued staring. “My husband is home from work and I have no food to give him. I bought groceries yesterday but he didn’t come, and now -”
Manny patted her hand. “It’s okay. You don’t need groceries. I’ll take care of you, Belle.”
On the way home to Pitt Street, Manny dropped by Gussie’s apartment to ask if she needed anything. When her married daughter suddenly appeared to cook for her, he dropped by Flo’s, but she was visiting her son. In his apartment, Manny shoved aside his plate of hard boiled eggs. “Why can’t Irv let her come home?”
During the following weeks, he visited Belle every day, after a meager breakfast of orange juice and coffee.
In Recreation, she said eagerly at seeing him, “So, Manny, tell me the news.” But when he started talking, she leaned toward a patient and said, “Manny.”
He sighed. Her attention span was shrinking to brief sentences; she couldn’t concentrate on a normal conversation. One evening, after being assured by a nurse that it was okay, he finally joined Belle for dinner in the dining room downstairs, the corner plastic-covered table with her name on it, and escorted her back to Recreation. She waddled, carefully putting one foot before the other as if trying to remember how to do it. Manny shook his head. If Belle were back home, she’d get well instead of getting worse!
Before leaving, he said, “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.” She nodded, smiling, and he walked the few blocks home.
In his apartment he stared through the window at Pitt Street bathed in dusky shadows. He’d quit reading to Flo; Gussie was away. Below tenement apartments, the Spanish stores sprayed with graffiti were closed by heavy metal grating to prevent nightly burglaries. Cars drove past playing rock music. He sighed. It don’t seem right, Irv depriving Belle of her apartment just because of forgetfulness. “I could buy groceries for her, clean, and read the newspapers aloud. She’d be happier.”
He tried explaining that to Irv the next time they visited Belle in the room she shared with an older, wheelchair patient who sat beside her bed and stared at the wall.
“So, Irv, selling a lot of fabrics?” Manny said, trying to be friendly before pleading his case.
“Just scraping by.” Irv’s lips pinched together. “My mentally-retarded son’s in a home, and now my mother.”
Manny nodded sympathetically and watched Belle waddle toward the bathroom. When she closed the door, he turned toward the slim, middle-aged man sitting beside him. “Listen, Irv, not being a relative, I don’t like butting in, but why not get a home attendant for Belle? She’s not happy here.”
Irv sighed deeply. “Before we took Ma to the hospital, my wife found matches in the oven and silverware in the refrigerator. It’s not safe to leave her in the apartment. She wouldn’t know what to tell the attendant. She might set the place on fire, injure herself. I’ve been tormented about it, but the doctor said her mind will continue deteriorating. There’s nothing anybody can do.”
“But I’d look after her,” Manny said. He leaned forward eagerly. “I’d be there all the time, like I’m here! So, Belle’s forgetful - who isn’t?” He scratched his thinning white hair. “I hardly remember some things, myself. I remember growing up in Lithuania, and coming to the States and joining the navy during World War Two, and going back after the war to look up relatives. Most of them died in concentration camps - some things you never forget. And I remember working in the leather factory on Delancey, and my pretty wife before she died years ago, when I was still young. I remember my sister - but her I don’t want to remember. I forget things, like Belle does. Who can remember everything?”
Irv’s dark eyes dampened. He hesitated and said, “Manny, it’s worse than forgetfulness... The doctor said she’s partly brain dead -” He broke off as Belle staggered from the bathroom, her dress hiked up to her waist. He rose from the chair and straightened it. She immediately hiked it up again. “Ma, don’t do that, please. Leave the dress alone.”
She paused, scanned the room, and began mumbling. She sat down at Irv’s coaxing.
“Belle, what do you want?” Manny said helplessly.
She looked bewildered, pale brown eyes vacant, then finally focused on him. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
Irv touched Manny’s veined arm. “Ma told me during a lucid moment that she enjoys visitors. Thanks for coming.”
“She’s not as bad off as the others,” Manny said, grizzled jaw thrust out determinedly. “She should be home.” He rose, hands jammed into baggy trouser pockets, and stared through the window at the budding trees shading the benches across the street. He turned to Irv. “I’ll be back tomorrow. You know, she’s my best friend. Took me all the way to the Brooklyn doctor when I almost lost my sight. Now she needs me.”
Irv said softly, “I know, Manny, but you can’t devote your life to her.”
“She needs me,” Manny repeated and smiled at Belle who smiled back, then looked at him vaguely, as if she might have forgotten who he was.
The next morning he breakfasted with her. After he helped her to sit, she stuck her hand in the fried egg and tried to lift it to her mouth.
“No, Belle, use the fork.”
She stared at him, not comprehending.
He fed her, and she didn’t protest. After that he fed her at every meal. He sliced the roast beef very fine 80 she could chew it, mashed the vegetables, poured sugar in her tea and stirred it. If she remained still, staring at the wall, he urged her to eat from the spoon he extended.
“Have some vegetable soup, Belle. It’s good for you.”
She nodded and occasionally smiled, as if she appreciated his efforts but couldn’t express herself. Then, he helped her upstairs to Recreation and talked to her, gossiping about the neighbors. Sometimes Belle whispered so softly he bent close to hear, but in time she shocked him by babbling intimate details: during her Polish childhood a Hebrew teacher touched her where he shouldn’t and she never wanted to get married--stories she hadn’t reveled during their twenty-five-year friendship.
He finally told Irving about the teacher during the son’s Thursday visit.
Irv had brought his mother outside after dinner that warm summer evening, and they sat on a bench across the street from the nursing home. Birds on overhead branches chirped; the flower beds smelled fragrant with carnations, azaleas, and sweet pea; the mellow sun warmed bare arms-everything fine, as if the world hadn’t turned upside down.
Manny, shaking his head at life’s contradictions, sat beside Belle. “Irv,” he said, “the love between me and Belle isn’t in a romantic way, like husband and wife. We were just good friends who looked out for each other. And now...”
“But you’ve got to accept her condition.”
“I can’t...” Manny stared at the sidewalk. “Without Belle, it seems like I got nothing to look forward to.”
Irv nodded and rose. “Thanks for being so good to my mother,” he said, voice faltering.
They chatted and walked Belle around the block, and back to the nursing home lobby. Irv hugged her and kissed her cheek. “’Bye, Ma, I love you. See you next Thursday.”
She nodded with a vague smile.
After he left, Manny escorted Belle into the elevator. She walked laboriously, clutching his arm as if terrified of falling. She’d gained more weight--probably due to lack of exercise. Upstairs, he embraced her thick waist and eased her into the chair.
“That’s right, Belle, sit down, right here. Easy does it...”
She stared vacantly.
“Don’t you know me?” he said, and waited for her scolding to such a silly question.
Instead, she replied, “Irv, why didn’t you visit yesterday?”
“Belle, it’s me, Manny. Not your son. Manny!” he shouted, and stopped, but the other patients ignored him.
“Sit down, stop shouting,” Belle said, suddenly coherent, as though her condition weren’t abnormal and she was home. She patted the empty chair. After he sat, she leaned toward him. “Manny, don’t think I forget everything, but sometimes it’s hard...” She looked toward the windows. “I was in his class for Hebrew lessons,” she said abruptly.
He sighed deeply. “Belle, tomorrow we’ll walk around the block a couple of times. You need exercise. Then, we’ll have lunch in the dining room and take another walk.
nice, we’ll sit awhile on a bench under the trees. You’ll like that because you can watch people pass and it’s good to have something to think about. And then, it’s dinnertime already. And after that we’ll catch a little television, and before you know it, it’s bed time and I’ll go home.” He smiled, brightening. “Little by little, Belle, time will pass.”
