The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (59 page)

This is true.

He puts his hand on top of his only wife’s head like a cop handing a prisoner into a patrol car and thus he relinquishes her, perhaps releasing all of them. It’s raining too hard for Bill even to hear the farewell words that ambush him as the nurse takes his wife, his only love, and leads her inside.

—
The Yale Review
, 1996

Old Soldiers

It’s supposed to be pretty in the place where Jane’s grandmother lives; it says so in the Palmshine brochure. The pages are filled with photos of nice old ladies in the bright Florida sunlight, laughing and flirting with spunky old men in airy rooms. The sun is always high when Jane goes to visit Gram, but shadows fall as soon as she walks in the front door.

She’s here because her mother can’t bear to come. If Jane asks why, her mother starts crying. She says, “She isn’t who she used to be,” but that isn’t the real reason.

“She isn’t dead either,” Jane snaps. “Oh, Mom, it is so awful there.”

“Don’t say that! It’s the best we could find.”

“I just wish we could …”

When her mother’s lips tighten like that she looks a lot like Gram. “Well, we can’t.”

Palmshine Villa should be sunny and bright inside, after all, this is Florida, but no matter how fast Jane strides along the halls, at her back she hears the rushing shadows. She comes so often that she knows the regulars, although none of them knows her. Does being old make you forgetful or is it that when you’re their age all people Jane’s age look alike?

In the brochure everything is supposed to be nice. On the surface everything is. The coiffed and rouged wheelchair patients playing nerf ball in the lobby are smiling, but from the remote Extended Care wing, a voice so old that Jane can’t gender it cries out.

She should be used to it by now but she whirls. “Ma’am,” she says to the nearest aide. “Ma’am!”

Oblivious, the aide trots on. She is carrying the richest lady’s Shih Tzu; every day Kiki and its owner frolic on the kingsized bed in the Villa’s best room. Once when Jane begged she brought the dog into Gram’s room and put it into Gram’s arms. It licked her face. She was so happy! Jane said, “Will you bring it in sometimes, when I’m not around?” She already knew it was money that made these things happen and Gram will never have enough.

The aide is Barbie perfect, buff and agile; the rich lady who owns the Shih Tzu is old. Unlike Gram and the others, who have fallen away, the rich lady has
hung on to both her money and her flesh—did money make the difference? Pink, powdered and sweetly rounded, she stays in bed because her knees can’t support her weight. Even though she’s rosy and better dressed than the others, she is just as frail. With her firm butt bouncing, the aide walks into her employer’s room. Doesn’t she notice the disparity? The diamond rings embedded in the fat fingers and her fleshy, entitled smile say no. Roiling shadows collect on her ceiling just the way they do on Gram’s, but the rich old lady doesn’t see; she never looks up.

Nobody here can afford to look up. For all they know, the place is lovely and everything’s fine.

At the nurses’ station a covey of early risers leans on walkers, waiting for the balloon lady to come. In the breakfast room five women warble, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” while the recreation director beats time. Four old ladies with Magic Marker red mouths sit around a card table, waiting for the attendant to deal. Cheerful enough, Jane supposes, considering they’re all going to die soon, but she can’t afford to dwell.

Instead she hurries because she can’t shake the idea that something new has entered the place. Jane is aware of some new element, a difference in the air. She’s almost used to the shadows but today, there’s something more—an extra density that makes her eyes snap wide. She imagines it taking shape.

Has death come to visit? If only. But no, she thinks. Just, no. It isn’t the cumulative pressure of old age that makes her twitch and it isn’t the sound that time makes when God pulls the plug. There is a difference in the shadows that drift in the sunlit building and come rushing in her wake.

She passes the old lady whose vocabulary got away, all but one word. “Good morning,” Jane says to her even though it won’t make any difference.

When she turns at the sound the old lady’s eyes are leached of light. “Dwelling, dwelling, dwelling, dwelling,” she says in conversational tones, inching toward the dayroom in her flowered muumuu with the pastel webbed belt. Her leash is attached to the rail the management put in so old people who tip over won’t fall far.

She used to be somebody, Jane thinks. They all did. It makes her move a little faster because Gram’s failing. Every time she comes into the room at Palmshine Villa she comes wondering how much of her grandmother is still left.

In the room across the hall from Gram the old soldier shouts. He’s been shouting for years.
Harmless
, the nurses said when Mom begged them to move Gram to another room so she wouldn’t have to hear. They looked condescendingly
at Gram.
Remember, he doesn’t have a nice family like Mrs. Trefethen here. Do they, Gram?
Gram smiled, happy as a dog at the pound, eating its last meal. Mom protested. “But he scares her.” Gram wasn’t scared, Mom was.
Paraplegic
, they said,
even if he wanted to he couldn’t hurt a flea
. “He’s making threats.”
No he isn’t, he’s fighting Nazis. The war
, they said. They said,
So sad. Nobody comes even at Christmas, nobody phones and they never come
. “That’s not my problem,” Mom said, “it’s his problem.” They said,
If your mother isn’t happy here you can always …
Jane’s heart leaped up but Mom recovered in a flash. “Oh no,” she said in that tired, tired voice, “This is perfect. Everything’s just fine.”
He only shouts when he hears you coming
, they said.
When you’re not here he’s quiet as a clam.

Even though Jane tiptoes he knows. The dry voice cracks the air above her head like a whip. “I know you’re out there. Come here!”

This is what she hates most about these Sundays. “Oh, please. Not today.”

God damn you God look what you’ve done to me, me in the bed and Vic dead and I can’t get out until I find out who. Vic is dead God damn you. Dead and nobody will help.

It is in the building now.
You

“Who killed Vic?”

“Oh, please.” Jane looked in once and saw a sheaf of white hair, a profile like the face on a medal. He heard her breathing and turned, a blur of red rage—a glaring mouth with that savage flash of teeth but his expression was both so blind and so angry that she fled before she could find out whether he saw her and if he did, whether he knew who she was. That day she closed Gram’s door as nearly as she could and leaned against the inside, terrified that he’d lurch into the wooden panels in his rage and send her and the door crashing into the room. Today his dry, hard voice knifes into her. “Who killed Vic?” This is how it always begins. Once he gets started the shouter will rant for hours. “Come on, you bastard bastards, who did it?”

Half of Jane wants to confront the old wreck and shut him up, but she’s afraid to go in. “Shut up.”

“It had to be one of you.” His shout cuts through everything. It’s like being within range of a heat-seeking missile. It doesn’t matter who you are today. It wants to find you and destroy. As she dives into Gram’s doorway the accusations follow. “Now, God damn you. Who?”

“Beats me,” she says and dodges into the room.

Odd. Behind her, something in the shadows stirs.

The room is nicely kept and so is Gram, but she’s always anxious, going in. What does she expect to find in the sweet little room with its ruffled bed, a lipsticked skeleton? Gram gone, with the bed stripped and her belongings rolled on top like the bedding of an army moving out? Or is she afraid of Gram rising out of her velour recliner to scold her for being late, the way she did when Jane was young.

The old man isn’t done. “God damn your shit,” he cries. “Tell the truth or I’ll eat your face and spit out the teeth.”

“Gram, it’s me.”

Never mind, Gram is glad to see her. Gram is always glad to see her, it’s a given that when Jane walks in the old lady’s smile lights up the room. She knows her granddaughter, too, it’s not like she forgets. “Jane,” Gram says with that smile that the complications of old age can’t turn off and not even pain can dim.

She flinches. Is Gram in pain? Gram won’t tell her or she can’t tell her, so Jane has never known. She still has words, but a lot of important ones have gone away.

“Smear your shit in your eyes,” he howls. “Now, tell.”

“Hello,” she says, bending to kiss that transparent cheek. “Hello, Gram.”

She looks so sweet sitting there in the recliner where the aides put her after they sponged the oatmeal off her mouth and dressed her for the day; Jane thinks Gram is in fact sweeter than she ever was in real life. Something in the water, she wonders? Something they give her at night? Or is it just that Gram has finally let herself lay back and let go? After a lifetime of keeping a perfect house, washing and ironing for a family that she controlled and fed for years, along with the multitudes, after all that
taking care
, she’s on vacation from her life.

“I brought blueberry muffins, Gram.”

“Of course you did.” That smile!

“And the shit in your eyes.” So loud, so ugly.

Jane gestures in the direction of the shout. “Oh Gram, I’m so sorry about that.”

Gram smiles and blinks politely the way she always does when she doesn’t understand, which is most of the time lately. Age has left her with a few macros—boilerplate speeches that kick in whenever Jane says anything but she knows who Jane is, she does! “You were lovely to come.”

Does it hurt, Gram? How much does it hurt?
She wants to ask but Gram looks so happy that she’s afraid to bring it up. She responds by rote, “Lovely to see you, Gram.”

The television is going—it always is—Sally Jessy, Oprah, Rosie, Ricki, makes no difference, the daylight voices are interchangeable. The psychic Muzak and emotional screensaver supply everything Gram needs now that she’s lost everything else. Jane is grateful that the old lady’s lost it, so she doesn’t know how awful this is. She may not know she’s in this pale blue room in this pretty place in her oversized aqua recliner because this is the bottom line. Gram isn’t getting well. She’s here for good; except for her birthday and Christmas, when an ambulance brings her to her daughter’s house for dinner and takes her away before the pie, she is going to be in this chair in this room in Palmshine Villa for whatever’s left of her life. It’s good Gram likes
TV
so much. Good thing poor Gram’s protective mechanism kicked in when her hard disk overloaded and crashed.

Gram looks nice in aqua: aqua muumuu, fluffy aqua robe. It complements the chair.

Gram looks nice and the room is nice but the words barreling in from across the hall are ugly and sharp. “And sleep in your shit because you won’t tell me who killed him.”

Oh stop.

“Oh, look,” Gram says. “Doesn’t Rosie have on a pretty red shirt today.”

But she can’t drown out the old soldier. “Who killed Vic? Was it you?”

“And doesn’t she dress the child nice,” Gram says because he can’t drown out her sweet voice.

This is her life now, these daily
TV
people are closer to Gram than her family, Jane realizes. She’s a little hurt and at the same time happy for Gram, who looks frail but clean and pretty and well taken care of, with her white hair nicely waved and a bobby pin with a blue butterfly clinging to the spot where the pink scalp shows through. “Nice, Gram. It’s a nice color. Would you like me to get you one like that?”

He is still shouting. “Was it me?”

“Don’t worry,” Gram says, beaming. “Just get me the box tops. I can always send away.”

“Help me,” he screams. “I have to find out.”

I don’t know who did it but I may, he is lying dead somewhere but if I can get back the memory I may find out. Solomons I was fighting on, or was I at Tobruk?
Was that Vic running along beside me, did I push him ahead and did he take the bullet that was meant for me, is it my fault he was killed in the first wave? Is that what happened to you, old shitface, is it my fault you got blasted out of your life?