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                                                           THE PERFORMER

 

     "Start a belly dancing career at seventy-five?" Herbie gasped.

      Her fork poised over blintzes, Minna patted her dyed red curls, her pale brown eyes squinting. "Why is it only young people got dreams? she said. "Sol Mankowitz, a professional, would play his portable keyboard. Besides belly dancing, I'd sing and tell jokes..."

     Her husband, frowning, reached gnarled hands toward the sour cream. "And how would our grandchildren feel, seeing you--an old lady--making a fool of yourself?"

     "Please, Herbie, all my life I wanted to entertain again, like with my parents in Vaudeville when I was five. But right after high school, Les swept me off my feet. A bartender don't earn much so I worked as a bookkeeper. After poor Les passed away from cancer, may he rest in peace, thank God I met you, but we had daughters to raise." She paused, glancing at the wall plaques of Flamenco dancers. "With your heart bypass, you needed me, so I waited again. Then, the children got married and I babysat. And I waited. Now, finally, everybody's settled. So, Herbie, don't say no."

     He pushed aside his plate, and stared at the oaks and flowering dogwood outside their Sheepshead Bay co-op. "Suppose nobody hires you?" he said finally. "You're not so thin anymore and you've got some wrinkles--"

     "Since my eyes were done, you said yourself I look maybe sixty!" She rose and poured fresh-perked coffee. "If I smoothed my neck, I could look even younger."

     "So why not stay younger by playing golf with me?" He gulped down his coffee and rose.

     Minna followed him to the living room door. "Herbie, please think it over. We get enough from your post office pension and social security, but performing in nursing homes pays fifty dollars an hour!"

     He glared at her. "Shimmy and wiggle in front of people our age who feel lucky to just stand up? I hope you realize how foolish belly-dancing sounds!" The door slammed shut behind him.

     Minna kept busy. She changed the tablecloth, stacked the dishwasher, and wiped the checkered wall tiles until the kitchenette shone. Herbie could be stubborn... Last summer, instead of Las Vegas, they'd again vacationed in the Catskills to play golf. She hated golf. Fortunately, she'd discovered belly-dancing classes there. Yet, for over forty years, she'd been content with Herbie who'd adopted her daughters and worked hard. She shouldn't hurt him. She shook her head. But why couldn't she belly dance?

     In the cheerful bedroom with its white French Provincial furniture and May breeze ruffling the curtains, she telephoned Sol, home on Sunday, practicing. His wife, Jodi, called him to the phone.

     Minna sighed. "Herbie said no, but I want to rehearse anyway. Sol. Maybe your apartment?"

     There was a pause. "If your husband objects, I don't think..."

     "Herbie's a good man," Minna interrupted, "but haven't I the right to follow my heart?

     "Well..."

     "Sol, I wish to God I was still young like you, only fifty-eight. But the years fly by so fast. One year you're twenty, the next week you're forty, and two days later, you're seventy-five. Don't put off anythink you want to do, or you might never do it."

     There was another pause.

     Sol said, "Suppose Herbie finds out?"

     "Should I wait until he dies--God forbid! Anyway, as long as we work outside Brooklyn, he won't know. The other boroughs are like different countries. But maybe you hesitate because I'm not good enough?"

     "Oh, Jodi and I enjoyed your singing at my grandson's birthday party last Wednesday. You've got a nice soprano voice, tell funny jokes, and your belly dancing is graceful. We'd have a classy act."

     Minna smiled. "Thanks, Sol, I won't let you down."

     She hung up and practiced, "Bei Mir Bis Du Shane," on the living room piano. Sol had exciting Arabic cassettes for belly dancing, but she needed to buy more sheet music for songs.

     The door latch clicked. Herbie entered, exclaiming, "See? Already people will know you're old. Who cares about songs from World War Two."  

     Minna jumped up. "That's how little you know about show business. Bei Mir Bist Du Shane is almost the Jewish national anthem!"

     She escaped to the bedroom. Sitting by the windowsill's potted geranium he'd bought for her, she gazed at the distant Sheepshead Bay and soaring apartment buildings beyond. She'd always loved the peaceful, landscaped grounds with mowed grass, benches, and flowering dogwood surrounding their building, but lately it had begun to resemble a graveyard. Maybe that's why she felt restless, wantng to accomplish something before she died. Herbie got prejudiced from television--where anybody over forty was treated like a clown. But with hard work...

     LIVE ON STAGE: THE ONE AND ONLY MINNA LIEBOWITZ!

     Except, of course, she'd changed her stage name to...Sarita! How the audience had clapped at her singing and dancing...a tiny redhead! Well, maybe it was a foolish dream from long ago and she was a foolish old lady, like Herbie said. Her gaze veered to the nightstand book: HOW TO BREAK INTO SHOWBUSINESS. She sighed. It wasn't right, taking lessons behind his back, lying about canasta. If only he'd agree to her career. She didn't want to ruin his retirement by making him unhappy.

     The following day she prepared to rehearse at Sol 's. She headed for the door, lugging a shopping bag stufffed with sheet music, filmy red and gold harem pants, a midriff blouse fringed with beads, and a fringed headband.

     "What kind of beef should I buy?" Herbie said, and she paused to listen. He shrugged. "I don't know exactly what you want."

     "Herbie, suddenly you're helpless? Just follow the list on the coffee table, like always."

     "Yeah, all right..."

     As he paused, she ran over to kiss his gaunt cheek, and he surprised her with a hug.

     "I just don't want you to be hurt," he said, his watery brown eyes looking sad.

     She nodded and rushed downstairs to the waiting taxi. Later, at Sol's fourth-floor walk-up, she remembered how she and Herbie had fallen in love at the singles dance. Mama and Papa, may they rest in peace, had labeled Minna and Herbie a perfect couple: slim, attractive, and excellent ballroom dancers--so different from her marriage to Lester. Was stardom worth losing Herbie's love? 

     "Minna, I asked if you want a chocolate cookie?"

     Startled, Minna waved a hand at her hostess setting foamy cappuccino on the scarred coffee table. Jodi's plump jowls munched under the blonde upsweep. "Please, no cookies, I'm dieting," Minna said. She paused. "I was remembering when I met Herbie, a bachelor with good skin. All the women crowded around him when he arrived at the dance, but he spotted me wearing a tight gold jumpsuit and right away we knew it was love..."

     Sol sipped cappuccino, the cream outlining his thick gray mustache and goatee. "Minna, if you'd reather not perform..."

     "No! I'll persuade him somehow."

     The rehearsal went well. Jodi, sitting on the faded sofa, acted as audience. In the musty room crammed with performance mementos and wall photographs, Minna told jokes, waiting for Jodi's laughter. She sang while Sol played the keyboard resting on his lap.  Then, changing into costume in the cramped bedroom, she emerged to belly dance to an Arabic cassette. Finished she looked at Jodi.

     "I still like it!" Jodii exclaimed, clapping. She suggested shadow pants under the harem outfit so the girdle wouldn't show.

     "I don't look foolish?" Minna disliked fishing for compliments, and wished Herbie could have seen it with an objective eye.

     Sol shook his head. "It's subdued, yet interesting. We'll rehearse again next week. I already booked the Arabella Home in Queens for July. It's easier getting jobs with a singer and dancer."

     Minna nodded excitedly and hurried to the bedroom to don navy slacks and pink overblouse. Athough the dresser mirror reassured her that she'd slimmed from size eighteen to fourteen, her stomach still bulged; she must wear harem pants at her waist to cover the girdle, not below the navel like professionals. But her bust fillng the midriff looked sexy, not matronly. She smiled.  

     Later, idling the car below Minna's apartment buildng, Sol studied her on the sidewalk. "I'll talk to Herbie," he said through the open window. "It'll work out."

     Minna nodded. "I hope so."

     In the columned lobby, she hesitated at the elevator, then climbed the stairs instead. She panted as she lugged the heavy shopping bag to the third floor. She returned to the elevator, but decided to climb the stairs every day for the next month. She'd increase the flights gradually to the seventh floor.

     Herbie was napping in the bedroom and she didn't disturb him. She practiced breathing exercises while peeling potatoes for beef stew. He'd stored the groceries in the wall cabinets, wiped the stove, and mopped the kitchen linoleum. He usually helped with housework to spare her the physical labor. He really was a dear. Maybe her dream was selfish... Sighing, she sauteed onions. Death would come soon enough. Better to enjoy life while she could.

     For the big evening at the Arabella Nursing Home, Minna arrived early with Sol to accustom herself to the stage. She unpacked in the tiny dressing room, and donned a loose blue gown for the main performance. Then she timidly glanced from behind the stage drapes at the auditorium filling with the elderly, many younger than she, leaning on canes or arriving with walkers or in wheelchairs. A good thing Sol hadn't revealed her age!

     After several announcements, petite Mrs. Greenfield introduced her with: "Now, let's welcome Sarita with a big applause!"

     The audience clapped enthusiasticallly in the brightly-lit room. Minna stepped out onto the stage, and surveyed the mostly white-haired seniors eyeing her eagerly, probably yearning to forget illnesses, and she calmed. She nodded at Sol, who played the keyboard while she sang into the microphone, her fingers snapping. "Bie Mir Bist Du Shane..." 

     At the vigorous applause, shes smiled and bowed. Gaining confidence, she told jokes and flushed with wamth at the loud laughter.  She sang more songs, her confidence growing. Near the performance's end, Minna changed backstage while Sol inserted a cassette into the recorder, and Arabic music wailed.

     An eerie hush pervaded the room, as if the audience awaited the unusual. Wearing her bellydancing ensemble, Mnna slowly emerged from backstage to dance, her eyes peeking out through the headband's fringes. The audience watched silently, as if mesmerized while her arms snaked about her body, the blouse's fringed beads bobbing against her bare midriff as her stomach undulated to the haunting music swirling around and through her--as if she'd been trained since childhood to dance for a Moroccan king. 

     Finally, the music stopped. She bowed during the uneasy silence, hoping she hadn't made a fool of herself as Herbie had warned.

     Suddenly, "Bravo!" echoed from the rear, followed by clapping and shouting, "More! More!"

     "Thank you very much," she said, her heart flooded with gratitude. 

     "More! More! shouted from the audience, and now she spotted Herbie in the last row as he jumped to his feet, and shouted again, "Bravo!"

     Sol must have told  him.

     She smiled. "Thank you. Thank you..."

     Daubing at tears, she changed backstage into slacks while the wheelchairs echoed across the hard wood floor as the audience left. Re-entering the now silent auditorium, Minna hurried with her shopping bag toward Herbie, Sol, and Jodi waiting for her near the arched entrance. "You liked it, honey?" she asked as Herbie, grinning, reached out both long ams toward her.

     "You were sensational!" He hugged and kissed her. "Now what kind of lamb did you want for dinner?"

                        

                                                                               THE END