Recessional: A Novel (9 page)

She then explained the pricing policy for Gateways: “We’re like every other retirement area in the country. We hand-tailor our pricing structure to fit the needs of the individual couple. First option is the one that made the first retirement areas famous. Up front you give us all your assets plus your retirement income, including pensions, and we undertake to care for you for life, at the end of which your estate gets nothing back. An enticing deal in the early years, until places like this found that with good health care, a dietitian’s dinner each night and no worries, people lived longer than expected and the centers started going broke. Old people found themselves out on the street. I was employed by one of those places and it was a tragedy. So now we offer three standard deals. In each of them you start by paying two hundred fifty thousand dollars up front for the deluxe suites, less for the one-roomers. Then you pay a substantial monthly sum—say, eighteen hundred dollars every month—till you
pass away, when we give back to your estate eighty percent of your original investment. Great for residents with children and grandchildren. Plan two, same initial payment, but a smaller monthly rental and fifty percent return at your passing. Fair all around. Third plan, same quarter of a million deposit, a much lower monthly rate and twenty-five percent back at the end.”

“Which is best for us, best for the client?”

“We never use that word ‘client.’ Too legal. Doctor, I assure you they all work out to be dead equal. We’re like the insurance company. Unless we conform to the statistics of the American Actuarial Tables, which report the longevity of American men and women, we go broke. How old are you? Thirty-five? You have a predicted longevity of 39.7 more years, so if you entered the Palms today as a paying resident, which we wouldn’t allow because you’re much too young, we could arrange a very attractive deal for you, because you’re going to be paying us for each of those thirty-nine years.”

She looked at Zorn as if weighing whether he was bright enough to understand, then laughed: “In the old days when it was ‘Give us everything and we’ll take care of you for life,’ there used to be a saying: ‘What we’re looking for is old folks who enter when they’re in their healthy sixties, so their medical bills won’t be high, then have the decency to leave us when they’re eighty-two so we can sell their room again.’ ”

“What would you say was the optimum now?” Zorn asked, and she had an immediate reply: “I like to see them come in at age sixty-five so they can enjoy the place and say their farewells at about eighty-eight before they begin to accumulate huge medical bills.”

“Sixty-five seems awfully young,” Zorn said, but she countered: “Ask our people. Many of them tell me: ‘Roberta, my husband and I should have come here ten years earlier. The only sensible thing to do.’ ” She laughed, her bright eyes showing that she was giving only a partial report: “Of course, I’m forgetting the couples who try us out for a month or two and then flee, with either the husband or the wife vowing: ‘I’ll never again move into one of those jails!’

“But seriously, Doctor,” she concluded, “I can think of a dozen or more couples who were originally savagely divided on the issues but who now confess that it was the best thing they ever did.”

As she was about to leave the office with her formidable armful of papers summarizing the finances of the Palms, Zorn interrupted:
“Please stay with me a few minutes longer, Miss Foxworth. And Ken, would you mind giving us a moment alone?” When Ken had stepped outside, Andy smiled and asked: “Suppose you, with all your figures and knowledge, were in my position with no dumb men telling you what to do? What moves would you make to turn this place around, red deficit into black profits?”

Pleased to have at last been consulted as an equal, she looked down at her hands, leaned back and reflected, then said: “I’d do everything possible to fill the Gateway apartments, but that’s not your real problem. You’ve got to get more beds filled in Assisted Living. That’s where the profits are hiding. Extended fills itself.”

“So how do I get the extras for Assisted?”

“I really don’t know. Advertising won’t do it. We’ve tried that. But I do know this. Favorable comment, of any kind, makes an immense difference. So you’ve got to get this place talked about. You’ve got to do things that attract attention.”

“Like what?”

“That’s your problem.” She smiled: “That’s why Mr. Taggart gave you that sixty-five-thousand-dollar salary.” She smiled a second time when his jaw dropped: “And hopefully, from what Chicago tells us, you’re the man to swing it, Dr. Zorn.”

When Krenek returned to the office after her departure, he deemed it appropriate to let Zorn know that he, Ken, appreciated the accountant: “She’s a wizard with figures. Made a study of our hundred and eighty-six residents one year and calculated how many deaths would occur statistically in each month of the next three years. She kept careful records and told me in October of that year that she was right on target, but November proved an unusually healthy month and at Thanksgiving her figures were badly askew because nobody had died. But several residents apparently overate seriously at our big turkey festival, and on both the twenty-ninth and thirtieth someone died unexpectedly. On the first of December she appeared in my office triumphant with her scorecard: “We made it, just as the figures predicted.” But did you notice, she never uses the word ‘die.’ They ‘leave us’ or ‘they pass on’ or ‘God sent his angels for her.’ ” At this he snapped his fingers and asked Zorn to phone Foxworth’s office and tell her to bring her Johnny Carson video with her. “You’ll enjoy this. Superb comedy.” Andy protested: “I don’t have time for a half hour of comedy,” and Krenek explained: “It’s only a few minutes.
Extremely relevant to our work in this place. Provides a sense of balance.”

When Foxworth slid her tape into the video machine, Zorn saw on the TV screen a fine image of Johnny Carson in one of his famous skits. He was the editor in chief of a publishing company that specialized in a massive thesaurus containing a prodigious number of synonyms for any word. Dressed in funereal black, Carson was addressing his fellow editors: “We have come here today to pay our last respects to one of the finest editors we’ve ever had. Gregory left us last night. He passed over. He expired, drew his last breath, went to his last reward, headed for the last home.” He continued with fifteen other graceful euphemisms and then moved on to the vernacular: “So good old Gregory croaked, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, cashed in his chips, turned up his toes” and numerous other country phrases. Just as Zorn supposed the litany was ended, Carson moved on to robust jokes his staff of writers must have had a riotous afternoon devising: “So, as I say, our beloved Gregory has taken his ride in the long black, he is wearing the white satin vest, he is helping to push up the daisies, his toes are digging into the dust, he is paying Charon with a plugged nickel, he’s crossing the river where he pays no tax, he is gone from us, he is kerplunk.” It was a bravura performance, one of Carson’s best, and Zorn told Miss Foxworth: “Don’t lose that video. We might need it if things get too sticky around here.”

As Miss Foxworth started to leave the office, a huge black woman whom Zorn had not yet met, but whom he could guess to be the head nurse, Nora Varney, arrived. As the two women passed, the nurse edging aside, for she knew that both of them could not pass through the doorway at the same time, Andy had the distinct feeling that these two women actually liked each other and that they were true partners in the Palms enterprise.

She accepted the chair that Dr. Zorn offered her and looked at him with the steady, warm gaze so appreciated by the residents. In that moment Zorn realized that he had as his main associate a woman who was born to be a nurse and comforter: “They tell me you’re the soul of this establishment, Nurse Varney. I’ll need your help, because I’ve been sent down by Mr. Taggart to bring this place up to running speed, and I won’t be able to do it without you and Mr. Krenek and Miss Foxworth giving me cooperation and guidance. Tell me a little about yourself. Where did you grow up?”

“Little town in Alabama.”

“And you studied to be a nurse where?”

“Larger town in Alabama.”

“How’d you get down here?”

“We were led to believe the streets were paved with rubies. I got on a bus and came down to see.”

“I don’t see any rubies on your fingers.”

She laughed easily: “They’re here, but I haven’t found them yet.” As they continued to talk Zorn was increasingly impressed by her humor and articulateness. If one looked only at her ample face, one might have expected her to speak in a typical black dialect, but there was no trace of one and he was so interested in her that he dared to ask: “Did you consciously learn to speak without an accent?” and she explained: “When I came to work in Florida thirty years ago, white people visiting from the North thought it was colorful when I spoke with a heavy Alabama dialect, and I had one of the best. Still do. But I soon learned that as long as I clung to it, I was accepted only as a back-country servant, colorful but not to be taken seriously. So I taught myself to eliminate the ‘Yassuh, master’ nonsense and converted myself into a real head nurse.” She broke into laughter, her wide face gleaming with mischief: “Sometimes strangers coming to inspect the place,
they
speak to me in black dialect, to put me at ease. I never scorn them, but I do answer in complete sentences with an accent just like theirs, and they’re smart. They get the point, especially if they’re going to live here and discover that much of what they want they will get through me—we get along fine.”

She considered this for some moments, then added: “But at night when I’m with old friends or family I can talk Alabama with the best of them. And often during the day, to make a point, I’ll revert without embarrassment, but I didn’t waste those years in night school getting my degree.” Then, apparently aware that she might be talking too much about herself, she added: “But I still cling to one phrase used in our family of eight. It sounds right to me, because my mother taught me so much about human beings while using it: ‘Nora, you gots to learn that all peoples gots their own way of doin’ things. Respect ’em, don’t fight ’em.’ I continue to preach from that text: ‘All peoples gots their own way.’ It’s my tie to home.”

“Keep it. Now, what advice can you share with me to make my job easier?”

“In my work I hear the complaints of the residents, and the thing
they will not tolerate is bad food or bad service in the dining room. Remember, Dr. Zorn—”

“Mrs. Varney, you’re old enough to be my mother. Name’s Andy.”

“Remember, they’re in the dining room only once a day, most of them, and it’s a big occasion. If you allow the cooks and waiters to mess things up, you’re going to have a very unhappy group on your hands.”

“And—?”

“The part of the building we call Assisted and Extended, and don’t you ever call it the hospital, is my responsibility. It’s where we earn our big money, so if I come to you and say ‘Dr. Zorn, we ought to repaint the hallways in Assisted Living,’ don’t dismiss the request out of hand. I won’t be thinking of my own desires. I’ll be thinking: ‘The last two visitors who came here to see if they wanted to put their mother in with us noticed the shabby wainscoting and turned away.’ I may really need that paint job, but I won’t expect you to give in right away. But do study it, take a look for yourself, and try to find the money somewhere.”

He asked her what other friction points he should be aware of, and she surprised him by saying: “You have to be very diplomatic with our house medical adviser, Dr. Farquhar. The relationship between you two men has never been spelled out neatly, not here or anywhere else. He’s tremendously important and extremely helpful, but he is not at your beck and call. He is not to be treated as if he were your paid employee. He’s more like a trusted lawyer who is on what they call a retainer. Consult with him, don’t try to give him orders, because he won’t take them, and if he turns sour on this place, he can destroy us with the rest of the medical community. You don’t have to be nice to me or Mr. Krenek, but you must be nice to him, because he can be of terrific help to us, smoothing the way with the hospitals, referring people to us and keeping the place in good running order. Let me put it simply, as head nurse I could exist if you and I despised each other, but I couldn’t keep Health prospering if Dr. Farquhar decided it was inferior.”

“Is he the best man possible for the job?”

“He’s a saint. Temper as smooth as apple butter. Very good doctor, and a man you can trust.”

When it looked as if the interview was coming to an end, Zorn, unwilling to lose the insight of such an interesting woman, suggested: “Perhaps I’d better see your domain, with you as my guide,” and they
walked together down the hallway connecting to Health. When they reached the second floor, Andy could see that Nurse Varney was in command, but in a benevolent way, for as she passed through the corridors she spoke in a supportive way to the nurses, introducing them to the new manager and encouraging them in their work. At the door to most of the rooms she was able to stop, look in and speak to the occupant, using his or her name. It was obvious that she knew her hall and was well acquainted with its problems.

But when she and Zorn reached the third floor, Extended Care, Andy sensed a much higher level of tension, exemplified by the nurse in charge, a white woman named Edna Grimes who had a combative air as she moved along the corridors almost as if she were a warden in a jail. Zorn whispered: “She doesn’t seem to like her job,” but Nora replied: “She’s extremely capable. I can rely on her to get things done.” Zorn thought that perhaps this type of personnel was necessary, for here the illnesses were more severe and the patients more testy. He caught a good example of this, and the different ways Nurse Grimes and Head Nurse Varney handled difficult cases, when they heard a rather loud rumpus, and looked into one of the rooms to which Nurse Grimes had hastened at the first signs of trouble.

A Mr. Richards, eighty-eight, and weighing not much over a hundred and fifteen pounds, was having a tantrum and making a good deal of disturbance for his size. Nurse Grimes was tugging him about but Nora stepped between them and said rather roughly: “Hey! Brother Blowhard! What’s all the racket?”