Unblinking

by Lenzo, Lisa;

I asked Lorelei if she wanted me to call someone for her.

  “No,” she said. “I’m just going to get out of these clothes and into the bathtub.” I noticed then that the front of her blouse had a wet streak. “You go on and wash up first,” she said, pointing me toward a door next to the kitchen.

  The sink and toilet didn’t look as dirty as my own sink and toilet sometimes did, which is not a testament to Lorelei’s house-cleaning habits as much as a mark against my own—if I’d inherited any Italian cleanliness genes from my Grandma Zito, they apparently were recessive. I washed my hands and dried them on the thighs of my pants instead of the hanging towel, in case Lorelei was vomiting due to some intestinal bug. Then I returned to Lorelei and again asked if she wanted me to call anyone. I felt bad leaving her, sick and alone.

  “No, I’ll be all right,” she said.

  “You don’t need your daughter or son to come over and help you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  I patted her shoulder and told her to take care. Then I went back out to my bus, where wide-eyed Bart and Liv were still waiting to board. After they were settled and I had driven off, I thought of my dad. He’d suffered from Parkinson’s for over a decade, and in the past couple of years he had grown significantly worse. But unlike Lorelei, he received round-the-clock care, from my mom and home-care aides who cost far more than Lorelei could afford.

  ⊙

  After that day, Lorelei was less surly with me. I had softened toward her, too, and one day when I picked her up, I asked her how old she was. “Just turned eighty,” she said proudly.

  “You’re the same age as my mom,” I told her.

  But my mom walked without a walker or even a cane, she did yoga almost every day, and she’d never smoked. She was perpetually exhausted from taking care of my dad, it was true, but if she deteriorated or faltered, she’d have all the health-care professionals she needed plus me and my four brothers and sister to rely on.

  I knew that both Lorelei’s son and her daughter lived in nearby towns, and as I drove, I asked Lorelei how often she saw them.

  “Now and then,” she said. “It depends.”

  “And besides your granddaughter in Fennville, do you have any other family close by?”

  “No,” she said. “My brothers and sisters are all back in Arkansas. But we don’t get along. They didn’t even call me when our ma died, so I missed the funeral.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “Other than them, my only family was my husband—I used to be married, a real long time ago.”

  I had Johnny Cash on the CD player, turned down low, singing about someone’s blue eyes he couldn’t forget. Lorelei said, “One night my husband was walking home from the bar and he got runned over.”

  “Did he get badly hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “He got dead.”

  “Oh,” I said. Her matter-of-fact tone stopped me from saying I was sorry.

  “That was the best-est day of my life,” Lorelei said.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I stayed silent.

  “He used to beat the crap out of me,” Lorelei said. “That’s why I took up smoking. I was so nervous, waiting for him to get home. I knew what was coming.”

  Her husband died when their children were young, Lorelei told me, so she got a series of factory jobs and raised her children without anyone’s help. “I was a good-looking woman,” Lorelei said. “I could have married again. But I wasn’t taking no more chances.”

  I’d never considered whether Lorelei was good-looking or not—either currently or when she was younger. She did have pretty hair, long and white and still fairly thick, with a bit of a curl. And if I ignored her stained clothes and focused on her face, it was pleasant enough. As a young woman, she wouldn’t have had the exaggerated bags under her eyes that she did now, or the sagging cheeks and wattled neck. Looking past the dirt and the years to her high cheekbones and wide blue eyes, I saw that she had likely been quite beautiful once.

  ⊙

  Weeks passed, then months. Lorelei bought a car, and I only saw her if she happened to be outside when I was driving through Ridgewood Oaks to make another pickup or drop-off. Then one snowy day in early March, she was back on my bus. Car trouble, I guessed, but she said no, there was just too much snow on her car windows for her to wipe off. I took her to the store, and later I picked her back up. She wasn’t in a wheelchair—she was using one of those walkers fronted by a large, flat shelf good for carrying groceries, handbags, and other items. A store employee helped carry Lorelei’s groceries onto the bus and set the bags on the floor. He put a gallon jug of milk on the shelf of Lorelei’s walker, but I didn’t notice that at the time.

  When I pulled into Ridgewood Oaks, even though I took the first, tight curve at only a few miles per hour, Lorelei’s milk jug slid from her walker shelf and hit the floor. I turned around at the sound. Milk was leaking from the gallon jug. I shifted the bus into park, got out of my seat, walked back to the jug, and stood it up on the floor. Next I grabbed the roll of paper towels and mopped up the spilled milk. But the milk kept flowing; the side of the jug had split. I picked up the jug, walked with it down the steps of the bus, and set it on the snowy pavement.

  I’d been told by the dispatcher to pick up a passenger at Building C, and red-haired Rochelle, who tends bar at the Cove, was outside waiting to board. “Want me to get a plastic bag to put that milk in?” she asked.

  “That would be great,” I said, and Rochelle hurried back into her building.

  While I mopped up the rest of the milk, Lorelei apologized. “I should’ve known that jug wouldn’t stay where he set it. Now I made a mess on your bus again.” I told her not to worry; it was no big deal. I was happy to be dealing with good, clean milk rather than vomit, and grateful that Rochelle was helping to solve the problem.

  Rochelle came back out with not one but two plastic bags, put the jug inside them, and handed the jug to me. “I noticed it’s only split near the top,” she said. “So it won’t leak too much more.” I thanked her and set the jug on the floor.

  After returning to my seat, I pulled the bus around to Ridgewood G. As Lorelei rode down on the lift, holding the handles of her walker, she apologized again, and I assured her again that a little spilled milk wasn’t a problem.

  ⊙

  Later, another driver told me that Lorelei said I’d been so nice to her that day. I shook my head, smiling to myself and thinking: vomit . . . spilled milk . . . what next? I considered stopping at Lorelei’s car and sweeping off the snow so she could drive it—and therefore not ride on my bus again right away—but we no longer kept brooms on our buses. And I had plenty of other things to attend to, at work and in my spare time, besides clearing the snow from Lorelei’s car.

  Still, I thought about Lorelei’s situation, and I worried a little. It occurred to me that my dad would look like Lorelei did if he had no one to give him baths, wash his clothes, change his diapers, and dress him. Lorelei was more mobile and independent than my dad, but she obviously needed more help than she was getting. Once, stepping onto the lift with her walker, she sighed and said things were getting to be too much for her and she was thinking of moving into a nursing home. And so one day soon after that, when Lorelei rode again, I asked her if she had looked into any nursing homes and if she was still thinking of living in one.

  “I was in one before, for a couple of weeks,” she said. “But I didn’t like it.”

  “Why? Didn’t they feed you well?” I asked, my voice warm and kind—I’d grown fond of Lorelei. Between the vomit and the spilled milk, we had bonded. And although I didn’t always approve of what she said, I liked that she spoke her mind.

  “The food wasn’t a problem,” Lorelei said. “I didn’t like the physical therapist.”

  Again my voice was kind, almost caressing, as I asked, “Did she work you too hard?”

  “It wasn’t a lady. It was a man.”
She paused. “And he was black.”

  I smiled and sighed to myself. My voice still sweet, though a little less gentle, I asked, “Was that a problem?”

  Now Lorelei sighed, out loud. “I’m just not used to it, Annie,” she said, with a note of pleading in her voice. “I’m from the South. We don’t mix down there like you do up here.”

  I was trying to think of how to respond, so I didn’t answer her right away.

  “When I was growing up,” Lorelei said, “we didn’t have any blacks at all in our town. They weren’t allowed to live there, and if they came around to fish, we’d shoot their boats out from under them.”

  I stifled a surprised cry. Then I pulled out of Ridgewood Oaks and cruised down Maple Street. I still hadn’t thought of what to say to Lorelei.

  “I’m just not used to being around black people,” Lorelei said again.

  I gathered my thoughts, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to speak succinctly and clearly about such a complex and charged subject. But finally, I gave it a try: “Where I grew up, in Detroit, there were a lot of black people,” I said, “and they weren’t too different from white people. Some were nice, and some were mean.”

  Lorelei was quiet. Then she said, “Well, where I’m from, the black men were always trying to get with the white women.”

  Again I searched for something to say that would make a difference. As I was trying to frame an answer, Lorelei said, “At least, that’s what they told me.”

  Ah! I thought, happy that she doubted what she’d been told, that there was at least a crack I could work to widen. “Well,” I finally said, “some black men want to get with white women, and some white men want to get with black women.” And then I rambled on about how there were all kinds of ways for black people to be, just like white people. I might have also said something Rodney King–like about how we should all try to get along.

  Lorelei didn’t respond right away, so I asked her what town in Arkansas she was from.

  “Little Rock,” she answered.

  “Little Rock!” I exclaimed. “That’s a big city! And Clinton’s from there, and he gets along great with black people!”

  “Oh, he gets along with anyone who will sleep with him,” Lorelei said with a smile in her voice.

  “He gets along with black men, too,” I said, “and he doesn’t sleep with them. Don’t you know they call him the first black president?”

  Lorelei laughed. “And I guess if his wife gets elected, she’ll be the first black lady president.”

  We both laughed.

  After a pause, Lorelei said, “I wouldn’t have minded too much having a black therapist. Except that he was flirting with me.”

  I considered this possibility and dismissed it, if only because of the disparity there would have to be in their ages. I had pulled up to a stop sign. I turned around in my seat. “I bet he wasn’t really flirting,” I said. “I bet he was just trying to be friendly. Trying to get you to smile and be nice.”

  Lorelei laughed, and I saw what looked like delight in her eyes. Then she smiled down at her lap and said, “You might be right.”

  ⊙

  Over the next few months, Lorelei continued to ride my bus. I was always happy to see her. She still grumbled and complained, but I could tell she was pleased to see me, too. One Friday afternoon as we were saying good-bye, she said, “Next time I call in to the switchboard, I’m going to ask can you come to get me.”

  “You can try,” I said. “Though it’ll depend what else is going on—where the other drivers are, and where everybody has to go.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll ask for you and hope I get you.”

  Before I drove away, I happened to look at Lorelei again. She was staring off into space, and something about her eyes and the set of her face made me think of the word regal. As I continued to watch her, I noticed the deep lines crossing her cheeks. She looked dignified—and, yes, like some sort of queen. I knew she’d been beautiful once; now I realized she was beautiful still. I doubt it was the first time she’d looked that way. But it was the first time I saw it.

  ⊙

  The following Monday, I pulled into the Ridgewood Oaks complex to drop a passenger and saw a cluster of emergency vehicles parked outside Lorelei’s building. There were four of them: an ambulance, a fire truck, a police car, and a first-responder van. Immediately I thought of Lorelei. Then I thought of Ira, our other elderly passenger from Building G. I hoped both were all right. But all the emergency vehicles were silent, their flashers were off, and the two responders walking between them were moving slowly. There was, all too clearly, no need to hurry.

  The next day, I learned Lorelei had died. I heard conflicting stories from my coworkers and her neighbors about what had happened and when: she’d had a heart attack; no, she had fallen and hit her head. She’d been found on Sunday by her son; actually, her body hadn’t been discovered until Monday evening, which was when I’d seen the emergency vehicles gathered outside.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I questioned my other passengers, but even those who lived in Lorelei’s building didn’t have more information about her. One of my coworkers and I searched the papers every day, and we looked up the local funeral homes online. I wanted to learn more about Lorelei: the names of her son and her daughter, how many sisters and brothers she had. I thought I would go to the visitation or the funeral. But we found no mention of her.

  ⊙

  Months have passed since I last looked for Lorelei’s obituary. But I still think of her when I pull my bus up to her building. A new passenger has moved into Lorelei’s old apartment, and last night for the first time I carried in her groceries. I looked around as I set the bags down, as if I might somehow find a trace of Lorelei remaining. The apartment was crowded with furniture and knick-knacks. It looked wholly unfamiliar, and it also seemed smaller, as if the walls had shouldered in closer and the ceiling had dropped down. I felt a pang of regret and dismay, and a flutter of sadness. There was nothing of Lorelei left. I wanted to ask the new tenant, Do you know anything about the woman who lived here before you?

  I wanted to say Lorelei. I wanted to hear someone speak her name.

  Note to the New Owners

  Look for morels the first week in May, near the three white pines to the west of the house. Morels are supposed to grow near apples and oaks, but I never saw any until I planted these pines. Sometimes they’ve appeared right under the pine trio, pushing their way up like small ghosts through the brown, fallen needles.

  Fronting the barn are gooseberry bushes. Pick their fruit for jam in mid-June, when they’re light green like grapes, with just a few turning rosy.

  Most of the pond will be gone by late fall, but don’t worry—in spring, at its fullest, water will cover the roots of the willows.

  Turn on the light in the pump box when the forecast calls for single digits. If you forget, and the pump freezes up, don’t panic! Set a small space heater in the box, and the frozen water will quickly thaw.

  I hope you enjoy your new home!

  If you don’t like morels, or want to sell some, let me know.

  ⊙

  My mom started this note, and then she put it in the recycling, but I took it out and up to my room so I could finish it and leave it on the kitchen counter for you.

  I’m eleven and the daughter of the house. I make dolls out of cloth. My best doll is Josephine. I am taking her with me. I’m leaving Esmeralda for you, and also so she can watch over the house. Please take care of her. She likes to sit in the deep nook above my chimney.

  This house has lots of great nooks and crannies, but mice live on the other side of the miniature door that leads to the other attic. Just open it once, so you can see what’s over there: boards slanting up, holding the roof, and lots of insulation and dust and tiny mouse turds. Then latch that door and leave it closed, and try not to think about how it’s dark there and dirty and mice run loose all over. Stick to the finished part
of the attic, where I lived, under the slanty roof. It’s so cold in winter I had two goose-down quilts covering me and so hot in summer I kept the fan running all day and all night. But it’s the best room in the house, with four windows and a pine floor with a braided rug made by my mom.

  I’m taking the rug to my new bedroom, which is a totally boring box on the first floor. We’re moving in with my mom’s friend. I’m not sure that’s the greatest idea. I’ve lived with my dad part of the time ever since I was six, but my mom is used to living with no one but me.

  We’re leaving here because my mom got sick of spiders spinning webs in every corner, poison ivy creeping up onto the deck, coyotes howling and yipping in the yard, raccoons pressing their faces to the screens on the porch. Also groundhogs chewing on the foundation and burrowing into the crawlspace, and don’t forget the neighbor boys climbing up onto the roof and trying to take the cover off the chimney—don’t ask me what for. We’re moving onto a real street in Royal Oak, which is just north of Detroit. My mom says we’re moving back into civilization.

  I will miss the country. The owls calling at night and the coyotes, too, the tree frogs trilling like birds, all the night insects at the end of the summer, like tonight, right now. My mom says she’ll miss the morels that show up every spring just in time for Mother’s Day and the sandhill cranes flying overhead in the fall like pterodactyls. And she’ll miss the three pines she planted for my sister, who died when she was just a baby. My mom says she’ll plant a new grove at the new house, in the backyard, but they can’t be like these pines are right now, so big that birds have built nests in their branches, and you can climb them if you’re light like me and look inside to see the eggs.

  Once, back by our pond, we saw something really sad but also kind of cool: a frog whose belly got bit by the smallest snapping turtle you ever saw. The turtle hung on, and the frog kicked and kicked, trying to swim away from the turtle’s clamped mouth, but the turtle wouldn’t let go. Finally, the frog gave one last kick and tore away from the turtle, tearing open its own belly, spilling a stream of frog guts behind it in the water as it glided. We knew the frog would die. My mom said it was a lesson in biology and survival and I tried not to cry. That night after supper, I picked black-eyed Susans for the frog and laid them under the pines.