by Celia Laskey
* * *
• • •
“DID YOU HEAR Henry Plummer moved to Denver?” says my roommate Shirley, sitting on her bed and flipping between a daytime talk show and a soap opera. “That’s why that new guy has been inspecting the food here.” Shirley is the queen bee of Manor Pines. Her social status is mostly due to the fact that she can still walk, and has a long mane of soft white hair that she sweeps into an opal barrette. “I suppose Henry was so disgraced by his lesbian wife that he had to leave town,” Shirley goes on.
I roll my eyes. “Maybe he just wanted a fresh start.”
“That’s not what I heard,” she says, puckering her mouth in a self-satisfied way.
“If I believed everything you heard, I’d probably be one of those crazy conspiracy theorists by now,” I say. I used to confide in Shirley until I realized her interest in my life was really just an interest in gossip. Now I strategically control the information she spreads about me. Sometimes, when I hear her coming back to the room—because you can always hear Shirley coming—I pick up the phone and pretend to be talking to Kyle or Jillian. Oh, a promotion? I’ll say. That’s wonderful. Or, Thank you for the gift, it was so thoughtful, or I miss you, too. I’m sorry you can’t get any time off from work.
“I have to do something to keep myself entertained in this place,” Shirley says, hoisting herself off the bed. She stands in front of her closet, thumbing through a rainbow of cardigans. She must have a different color for every day of the month. She lays a beige cardigan with pink buttons on the bed, then places a pair of pink capri pants next to it. Shirley is obsessed with matching. Sometimes she even coordinates the beading on a blouse to the flowers on her brocade socks. “They canceled current events class today, so I have nothing to do until arts and crafts at four.”
“You could read a newspaper.”
“I don’t go for the news, Elsie,” she says, like this would be a ridiculous reason to go to a current events class.
I don’t go to many of the activities, myself. I used to garden, but I don’t have the mobility now. I asked for wheelchair-height planting beds, but that kind of thing costs a lot of money, so I don’t blame them for not following through. Jillian sent me some potted herbs for my birthday, but they’re already drooping and paling. Plants aren’t meant to live inside, just like humans aren’t meant to live in places like Manor Pines.
Jillian loves to tell a story about how I once made her weed the whole front yard on a scorching summer day. I had asked her to weed a portion of the garden, and she didn’t pull any of the weeds up by the roots—just picked off the leaves. After I must have explained to her half a dozen times that if she was sloppy about it, the weeds would grow back. “But new weeds will just take their place,” she said. “What’s the point?” Ten years old and already such a nihilist. She claims her punishment for not properly weeding the garden was to weed the entire front lawn. She says it took her all day, and she had to miss Peggy Larson’s birthday party, and she had such a bad sunburn on the back of her neck that her skin peeled off in a bubbly sheet. Her most ridiculous claim is that she passed out from dehydration because I wouldn’t let her come inside for a drink. I don’t remember any of that. Probably we’d fought about the weeds in the garden and then she stayed outside all day, sulking and giving herself a sunburn to make me feel guilty.
* * *
• • •
“WAS YOUR MOTHER mean to you?” I ask Harley as they wheel me around the short path that makes a figure eight behind Manor Pines. Harley and I always roll our eyes at the name—the only pines to be found in the whole place are a sad single line that barely hide the truck route on the other side. You can hear the big rigs revving and popping at all hours, billows of dark gray smoke rising over the tops of the trees.
“Oh, sure,” says Harley. “Especially when she was trying not to drink.”
“What would she do?”
“She’d yell at me for the smallest things, like forgetting to clean my hair out of the shower drain or leaving a dirty napkin on the table. Once, I accidentally left a big Tupperware of chicken soup sitting on the counter and it went bad. She made me eat a bowl of it and I was up with diarrhea half the night.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah, but you know, I never forgot to put food away after that.”
“And you still went to take care of her in her last days.”
“Death is the great equalizer,” says Harley.
Maybe that’s what I need to do, I think. Die, so my kids will forgive me for God knows what sins I committed against them. It might happen soon. Two months ago, my legs started to swell. Now they’ve ballooned to double their normal size. I couldn’t fit into my pants, so Harley had to bring me long skirts from Walmart. I’ve tried four different kinds of diuretics, compression stockings that made me feel like an overstuffed sausage, and even switched my heart medication, all to no avail. The nurses talk around it, but I know the swelling is because my heart is failing, and I know my heart is failing because it’s been broken by my children.
* * *
• • •
“ANNABELLE IS WALKING now,” Kyle says on the phone from Detroit. He calls every other Monday evening at seven o’clock, like I’m a chore to be checked off a to-do list. Annabelle is Kyle’s granddaughter, which makes her my great-granddaughter, although it feels strange to call her this when I’ve never met her, and probably never will.
“When did that happen?” I ask.
“Last weekend,” he says. “Would you believe she did it while Patti and I were visiting? Like she’d saved it for us.” Kyle has gotten sentimental now that he’s a grandfather—everything is kismet, a blessing, a celebration.
“Or maybe she just felt like walking that day,” I say.
“Everything okay, Mom? Did that new diuretic help?”
“What new diuretic? The one they put me on two weeks ago? It did nothing, just like all the others.” I reach a finger into my pot of herbs and poke at the soil. It feels moist but not too moist, the way soil should feel. But the plants still look sad, their stems spindly and their leaves wilted. Harley even brought me some organic fertilizer, but it didn’t seem to do a thing.
“Can they try another?”
“There are no more to try,” I say. “We’ve tried them all.”
The clacking of a keyboard comes through the phone. Kyle spends half our conversations googling things, like the internet knows better than my doctors. “You tried Diuril?”
“I can’t remember all the names, Kyle.”
He sighs. “Did Harley talk to the doctors? I know it’s hard for you to take in all the information.”
“Harley’s leaving soon. So I can’t depend on them anymore.”
“Leaving?” His voice goes up an octave. “Where is she going?” I used to correct Kyle about Harley’s pronouns, but after a while it became clear it wasn’t an accident. I let it slide so he wouldn’t have an excuse not to call.
“The task force was only supposed to be here for two years, and their time is almost up. They’re all leaving. Harley’s moving to San Francisco or something like that.”
“Well,” he says. “That’s too bad.”
“Yes. But I can’t blame them. Who wouldn’t want to go to California?”
* * *
• • •
I THOUGHT ABOUT leaving once. I was home with the kids on one of those endless afternoons when they were small and Phillip was gone all the time, traveling around the state selling encyclopedias. I heard something on the front porch and peeked out the window to see a man in a suit taping a piece of paper to the front door. When he looked up and saw me, he scurried back to his car. I waited until he drove away, then opened the door to read “FORECLOSURE” printed across the top of the paper in bold capital letters. I ripped it off and crumpled it into a ball, hoping none of the neighb
ors had seen.
When Phillip came home two days later, I set the crinkled paper down next to his plate of spaghetti. He glanced at it and nodded matter-of-factly. Lit a cigarette and took a few slow drags. “We’ll probably need to move,” he said. I took the cigarette out of his mouth and stubbed it out in a meatball. It took days to find out what had really happened.
He told me the encyclopedias weren’t selling, which didn’t make any sense, because a few months back he had gotten a best salesman award. After he left for another trip, I searched his office and discovered a false bottom in one of his desk drawers. Inside, there was a manila folder full of bank statements from an account I didn’t recognize. My hands shook as I scanned a statement: monthly payments to a mortgage company, a gas and electric company, and a Chevrolet dealership, all based in Wichita, where he frequently went for work. A large charge at a store called Toy Emporium. Heat flushed through my body. I grabbed the trash can under Phillip’s desk and vomited. With Phillip gone at least half of every month, of course I wondered if he strayed. But in my head, it was always one-night stands with call girls or women he met in bars. I had decided I could live with that and kept it closed off in the back of my mind. I never imagined there could be someone serious. Someone like me, with a house and Phillip’s children to take care of. Someone who probably had no idea about me, either.
I would leave him. Take the kids and go to California, where it’s always warm. Find a job as a secretary and rent a small apartment. The kids could take the bedroom, and I’d sleep on the couch. Maybe we’d be able to see some palm trees from the window. My mind went down this road for a day or so, until Faye said to me, “Oh, honey, they like their secretaries young and single over there. Future wives, not former.” Then the doubt started creeping in. I had never had a job. Never had any money of my own. What if no one would hire me or rent me an apartment? What if I left only to find myself worse off? So I never said a word to Phillip, afraid he would leave me for his other family. After the foreclosure notice, we moved to a smaller, shabbier house. When he’d come home from one of his trips, I’d kiss him on the cheek and set a plate down in front of him. When he wanted to have sex, I stared at the ceiling and projected Jillian and Kyle’s future onto it. They would go to college, get jobs that made them happy, start their own families that would be better than ours. I never said a word to the kids about what I’d discovered, either. I didn’t want to ruin their idea of our family, since it was already so fraught—better for them to think I was angry and distant for no reason. I stayed with Phillip until he died of a heart attack six years ago. Then, when Jillian and Kyle became convinced I couldn’t take care of myself after a few minor falls in the house, they wrote a check and I came here.
* * *
• • •
OUTSIDE MY ROOM, the bottom of the sun touches the tips of the dark pine trees. A light orange creeps onto the edge of a white cloud, then the color spreads outward until the whole cloud is blazing orange. The sun set an hour ago in Detroit, and has yet to set in Seattle, where Jillian lives. Kyle and Patti are probably watching TV; Kyle loves those reality shows like American Pickers and American Restoration, anything with American in the name. Jillian is probably packing up from a catering event, putting leftover mini-quiches on a tray to bring to the homeless shelter. She thinks of the homeless, but not me, stuck in this place watching the sun set because there’s nothing better to do while I wait for someone to help me to the bathroom. Then, like she heard my reprimand, Jillian calls. I never call Jillian because I like to see how long it takes her to remember—this time it’s been a month since we last spoke.
“Sorry it’s been a while,” she says. “We just got back from . . .” Her voice is garbled, cutting in and out. Jillian always calls me on speakerphone from the car, an excuse to keep our conversations short when she reaches her destination.
“Got back from where?” I say. “You know I can’t hear you when you call from the car.”
“I’ll call you some other time, then,” she says.
Some other time meaning another month from now. “Never mind,” I say. “Where were you?”
“Alaska,” she says. “On that cruise.”
“Another cruise? You never told me.”
“I’m sure I did, Mom.”
Through the phone, a motorcycle revs, then fades away. “I don’t know how you stand being cooped up on those little ships.”
“It helps that it’s free.” Jillian’s husband works for Royal Caribbean, and she claims every vacation they take is on the company’s dime. They’d come visit me, she says, if only they had the money. Manor Pines isn’t cheap, she says. Managing to guilt me about how they pay for a place I don’t want to be while also getting out of the one thing she knows would make me happy. “We saw a glacier so blue it looked like it had been dyed with food coloring,” she says.
“I thought glaciers were white.” Traveling, seeing things you didn’t know existed—it must be nice.
“Some are white, some are blue,” she says. “The funny thing is, glaciers that look blue to us have actually absorbed red and yellow light, and the blue is just what’s reflected back to the human eye. I learned that from a tour guide.”
“So the color it is isn’t the color we see?” I say, more impatiently than I meant to. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Never mind, Mom.” She audibly sighs. “How are you? Kyle told me Harley is leaving soon. That’s such a shame.”
“Yes,” I say. “I doubt I’ll have any visitors now.” I rub a basil leaf between my fingers and, to my surprise, it easily detaches from its stem. Barely visible white lines squiggle across its surface: leaf miners. I’ll have to ask Harley to bring some insecticide.
“I’m sure they’ll assign you a new volunteer,” Jillian says.
“I don’t want a new volunteer.”
“Maybe I can get out there sometime in the fall,” Jillian says. “If I can get the time off. It’ll be so much easier when I’m retired.” Maybe, sometime, if. Such tenuous words. She won’t be retired for another three years, at least. I shiver, wondering if I’ll even be alive then. “I’m at the grocery store now, so I’ve got to hop off. I’ll talk to you soon, Mom.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN KYLE WAS FIVE, we got separated in the grocery store. I had warned him to stay close to me countless times, then he wandered off to the snack aisle to salivate over the cookies. Always such a sweet tooth, that one. Most of his teeth are fillings now. I stood at the top of the aisle, watching him pick up packages of marshmallow sandwiches and Oreos and hug them to his body, then I continued on to the produce section. He would be scared when he looked up and didn’t see me, and that would teach him not to run off again.
When my cart was filled with everything to make celery trunks and melon ball cocktail for the party later, Kyle still hadn’t found me. I went back to the snack aisle. He wasn’t there. Panic pinged softly in my chest. I walked-ran to the meat department at the other end of the store, looking down each aisle, then back to the produce department. He knew better than to go off with a stranger, didn’t he? An image flashed by—Kyle in the passenger seat of a run-down car, a box of cookies on his lap, munching away happily. What had I been thinking? How would I explain to the police how we got separated? Then an announcement rang through the store: Kyle’s mother to the front desk, Kyle’s mother to the front desk. I rushed over to find Kyle sitting on a pregnant woman’s lap. When he saw me, he blinked in recognition but didn’t move.
“I saw him wandering around all by himself,” the woman said sharply.
“Thank you for your help,” I said. “You know little boys, always running off.” I held my hand out to him. He reluctantly got up and waved goodbye.
“You should really keep a better eye on him,” she said, rubbing her hand over her rounded stomach.
“Is that your first?” I
asked.
“Yes.” She smiled serenely.
“You’ll see,” I said, walking away, Kyle following closely behind.
* * *
• • •
HARLEY COMES FOR their last visit. They bring a chocolate cake with pink flowers made out of frosting, like it’s a celebration—or a funeral. Today Rose’s daughter is giving her a pedicure, using an emery board to buff away a callus on Rose’s big toe. The fine white dust of dead skin drifts to the floor.
“Do you think there’s such a thing as a truly selfless act?” Harley asks after we’ve discussed this week’s episode of Looking for Love.
“Sure,” I say. “And my shit doesn’t stink.”
Harley laughs. “People tell me I’m selfless, because I went to take care of my mother, and because I came here with the task force, and because I hang out with you.”
“People say the same about motherhood. But if you resent having to be selfless, is it still selfless?”
Arturo Garcia deals cards for another round of rummy as his son Miguel lectures one of the employees about Arturo’s clothes going missing in the laundry. Shirley heard that Miguel hadn’t wanted to put his father in a home, but Miguel’s partner had insisted after Arturo had a second stroke.
“If children only call or visit or take care of their parents because they feel guilty, is it still love?” Harley asks.