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MEMOIR PERFORMANCE!!!

"Don't you dare let Flora come here to entertain," Eva said.

"Me?" Jenny raised her eyebrows. "I have nothing to do with it. She's on this entertainment roster that services senior centers, retirement centers, nursing homes. That's what she told me. I've never seen her perform, have you?"

"Yes, God help me. I'll be embarrassed to death if she shows up here. Though there are always people who think she's terrific--the kind of people who think Howard Stern is terrific."

They were seated in the shade of the awnings outside the dining room at Eva's residence, close to the swimming pool, empty at this early morning hour. Eva was neatly put together, as usual, though her hair looked a little funny. The hairdresser had left a hole with pink scalp showing through the thin white strands. Eva had been taken off the steroid that made her incoherent and ballooned her face, which in this new incarnation was so thin that nose and ears looked enormous. Jenny remembered an item in de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age. It seemed that the ears continued to grow as long as one lived. Perhaps even in the grave, like hair and nails?

"Maybe because we're sisters we can't really appreciate one another," Jenny said, thinking more about herself and her chosen career than about Flora. "Because she's different, we . . ."

"I'll say she's different. God spare me. Wait till you hear that poem of hers she reads about the sexy grandma. She throws in all those words, clitoris, penis, orgasm. She doesn't care what she says." Eva shook her head in disbelief. "And the audience eats it up."

She looked hard at Jenny and took her sister's hand in the still-strong grip of her long, elegantly manicured fingers. Jenny noted that she had covered her liver spots with makeup.

"Yes, Jenny, you're different too, but we appreciate you, believe me. We know that what you do isn't a trick. She's all tricks. You're genuine. We're all proud of you. Even Flora, even though she's jealous, she can't help being proud, you should hear how she talks you up to other people when you're not around. But that's enough about Flora anyway. What about you? What are you doing now? How are things going? What are you working on? I loved that article you did in the New York Times about Emerson being Jewish--not really Jewish, you know what I mean, the way you linked him up with the Talmud, that was terrific. But how is everything, how are you getting along? Do you need money? Are you managing okay? I'm sure your children are always a comfort. How are they? How are they all? I'm so glad you came down, it was so good for Naomi to have you there with her for the operation, it's so good to see you. It's so hard, with Mama and Papa gone, and the boys, the boys all gone, it's so good that you're here, little Jenny, little sister Jenny. Whatever your accomplishments, you're always my baby sister, God bless you, it's wonderful to be with you."

And wonderful for Jenny to be with an Eva restored to her usual self. A kind of peaceful content Jenny rarely experienced loosened her guarded speech. She talked about herself; she babbled; she didn't worry about what she was saying or how she was saying it; she relaxed in the warm bath of Eva's love and emerged ready for the ordeal of Flora's show that afternoon.

Flora called the show "MEMOIR PERFORMANCE!!!" With three exclamation marks. She had had flyers xeroxed, and with Jenny's help she had tacked them up in the lobby of Miami Beach's oldest Jewish nursing home, in South Beach. It was not in the heart of the trendy new international hot spot, "where the action is," as Flora kept saying, but Ocean Drive was near enough.

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