Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 Read Online Free

through the water toward us. "Look
out," my sister Evvie whispers. "He's got a new joke."
    I groan.
    "Hey, Gladdy." I try to move out of his path, but I'm not
fast enough. He punches my arm. He always punches my arm. He makes me
black and blue. "Didja hear this one? Didja? I got it off the Internet
on my e-mail. Six old guys"--they're always about old guys--"are sitting
around the old folks home, smoking stogies and drinking schnapps when
Sexy Sadie comes by batting her eyelashes at them. She holds up her
pocketbook and says, 'If you guess what's in the purse you get free sex
tonight.' One old guy says, 'Ya gotta elephant in there?' She bats her
eyes again. 'Close enough.'"
    Hy screams with laughter at his joke. "Didja get it,
didja?" It's in incredibly bad taste. But then, so is Hy. I paddle away
and he heads back to Lola, delighted with himself.
    Evvie shakes her head. "Meshuggener. That man is an
idiot."
    I sigh. "But he's our idiot."
    Francie points. "And here comes the other one."
    "Hell-o, here I am." In yet another of her hundred
color-coordinated garments--lemon yellow this time with a matching
parasol to ward off that nasty sun--wiggles our beloved Sophie. Just in
time for the rest of us to get out of the pool and head for the
showers. . . .

    Years ago, when a group of us were sitting around and
kvetching about our troubles, wise old Irving said, "Go ahead, everyone
put your pains on the table and pick up somebody else's. Believe me,
you'll take back what belongs to you." When I look around at the
denizens of our phase--Enya from the concentration camps; Millie with
Alzheimer's, and Irving's anguish; Esther in a wheelchair; Harriet,
lonely; and all the women, now widows, left to cope as best they
can--Irving was right.
    Little did we know the troubles soon to come would be
shared by all of us.
----
4

    The Designated Driver
    I am in my apartment, showered
and dressed and waiting for the others to get ready to go out for our
typical late morning errands. And the phone rings.
    "It's a matter of life and death. I have to get to
Publix. I'm out of everything." This in a panicky whisper from Bella,
she who has enough food in her pantry to feed all of Miami.
    I reassure her, yet again that, yes, we will stop at
Publix. I barely get the phone back on the hook when the next country
is heard from.
    Sophie, the fashion maven, sighs when I pick up. "Oy,"
she says, dropping one of her many philosophical malapropisms, "when
did my wild oats turn to kasha?" I wait. She reveals that she has to
drop off thirty or so garments at the cleaners. Of course I'm
exaggerating. But only slightly.
    Next. Evvie reminds me that she needs to deliver her
latest review for the Lanai Gardens newspaper, which my sister started
twenty years ago with a group of frustrated ex-New Yorkers who loved
movies, plays, and all the arts. Everyone reads the
Free Press,
the pulse of Lanai Gardens, listing its Hadassah meetings, club
activities, religious holidays, etc. The biggest draw is Evvie's famous
movie reviews. We girls go to the movies every Saturday afternoon and
afterwards Evvie goes home and dutifully comments on them. She has a
big following.
    Ida, cranky as usual, phones in, and in that imperious
voice of hers, says she must go to the bank. Sometimes I think that
tight bun of hers cuts off the air to her brain. She always goes to the
bank on Fridays, and she knows I always make a stop there, but she will
call to remind me--the Phone God must be served.
    And
everyone
has to go to the drugstore for the
usual assortment of prescriptions that have to be refilled. Not to
mention vitamins and Dr. Scholl's foot pads and Ex-Lax. Francie has all
of us on some herbs called Brain Pep. She swears that
Ginkgo biloba,
gotu kola, and Schizandra (I did not make this up) will save our
memories. It obviously isn't working for me.
    Gentle Irving now phones to ask that I please not forget
the items on his shopping list. Things his Millie needs. As if I