by Jon Cohen
“Listen to you,” she had said, when Arnie came whistling into the kitchen. “I didn’t even know you knew how to whistle.”
“Morning, Iris, my love.” He leaned over and kissed her on the top of her head.
My God, Iris thought.
Arnie stood in the middle of the kitchen, eyes closed, and whistled a few more emphatic bars. “Jeepers,” he said when he finished, “I haven’t thought of that song for years.”
“That was a song?” said Iris. “I thought a deranged canary had gotten loose in our house.”
“‘Don’t Sit under the Horse Chestnut Tree with Anyone Else but Me,’” sang Arnie. “Now that’s when songs were songs.”
“I believe it’s ‘Apple Tree,’ not ‘Horse Chestnut.’”
“Yeah? That right?” said Arnie, grinning at her. “Well, one of them damn trees, anyway. It’s still a hell of a song.”
“If you say so,” said Iris, returning to her oatmeal.
Arnie peered over her shoulder. “What you got there? Oatmeal?”
Iris looked down at her bowl of oatmeal, which was about the most unmistakable and clear-cut bowl of oatmeal on the planet Earth, then up at her father. “Arnie, what is the only thing I have eaten for breakfast for the three years I’ve lived here with you?”
“I don’t know, girl. I haven’t paid much attention. It’s either oatmeal or the stuff I feed Duke. Well, no oatmeal for me this morning.” He began to open and close cabinet doors. “I’m in the mood for something different. You know how that strikes you sudden-like, the mood for something different?” He turned and looked at her, at her oatmeal, then back up at her. “Hmm. Maybe you aren’t familiar with that mood.”
“Don’t make a mess in here,” Iris warned him.
“Bac-O-cheese waffles!”
Iris grimaced. “What the hell’s gotten into you this morning, Arnie?” She regarded him suspiciously with her nurse’s eye. When patients’ behavior patterns suddenly changed, it always meant trouble. Arnie was reminding her of the ones she’d seen lying there for weeks who one day snap awake with this crazy look on their faces, sit bolt upright in the bed, yell something incomprehensible, then fall back onto the mattress dead. Arnie had been moping around for months, since Krupmeyer; well, for years really, since LuLu died. But he’d been particularly mopey since Krupmeyer, and now this: whistling and Bac-O-cheese waffles. Contradictory behavior. Not good. She wouldn’t be surprised to see him suddenly keel over on the linoleum floor.
“Arnie,” she said, rising. “Why don’t you sit down? You’re making me nervous. I’ll cook something for you.”
“Not something. Waffles!”
“Okay, okay. Waffles.”
“Bac-O-cheese.”
“Right, right.”
She assembled things while Arnie gave Duke a long scratching with his hook. He hummed “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” over and over as he worked.
“You came in pretty late last night,” Iris called over to him.
He cocked his good ear in her direction. “How’s that?”
“Late last night. When you came in.”
Arnie smiled instantly. “Sure did,” he said. “How about that? What do you know, eh, Duke?”
“I was getting kind of worried.”
“I’m over sixteen, ain’t I?”
“Way over. Which is why I was worried.”
“There been some kind of problem with old men disappearing on the streets of Waverly?”
“No, but…”
“Thought I’d run off?”
“No.”
“Or died?”
“Well…”
“Bingo!” said Arnie.
“Hey Arnie. I’m a nurse. All I see is people dying.”
“It’s tainted you, girl. I’m alive and well and expect to outlive you by forty years.”
Iris looked him over as she held the waffle batter and stirred. “Didn’t you tell me just yesterday how your body was going on you? How you were falling apart, starting with your teeth and ending at your toes?”
“I come to life.”
“Tell me about it.”
Arnie rose from his chair and headed for the back door, ignoring her. “Come on, Duke. What are we doing in here wasting this May morning? Let’s go.”
“Hey Arnie. Hey,” Iris called after him as he cut through the neighbor’s hedge. “What about your waffles?”
“You eat ’em,” he called back. “You’re the one who needs a change.”
That was it, that was what brought her across Waverly and plunked her down in front of Louis Malone’s house—the need for a change. She’d fretted for four days about going to visit him. Visit him? she’d say to herself. Since when do I visit people? And not just people—a man. What moved me to suggest such a thing? Well I’m not going to do it, she decided for several nights running, tossing and turning, twisting herself in her nightgown and among the sheets, I’m not going to make a fool of myself, or of him. He doesn’t want to be seen by anyone; he’s stayed in that house for, what did he say, sixteen years? But he did say yes, didn’t he? He said, When could you come? Maybe he felt sorry for me. Who does he think he is? she’d wonder, and frown into the dark. In the mornings, though, she knew. He doesn’t feel sorry for me, and he knows I don’t feel sorry for him. She would put her coat on and start for the door, ready to go to him, but something stopped her each time. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t know how. What’s the matter with you, Iris? she’d think, her hand sweaty on the doorknob. He’s a patient, you’re the nurse, go attend to him. Iris, the visiting nurse. But she couldn’t trick herself. Yeah, sure. Like I’ve ever visited a patient’s house before. Well, it’s what you got, Iris, and you better fly with it, or you’ll stay the way you are forever.
She chickened out every time, though. Until this morning, standing in the kitchen with a bowl of waffle batter in her hands. She saw then how utterly pathetic she was. “You’re the one who needs a change,” Arnie said. That he understood eating a waffle would represent significant change in her life, that it was so simple and obvious to him, sent a rush of panic surging through her. She set the mixing bowl on the counter before she dropped it, and stared with moist eyes at the lumpy batter. I can do better than waffles, she thought, gulping back the sadness. She looked up and saw herself reflected in the window above the sink, saw the close-set eyes and the thin hair, the colorless cheeks, the chin that sank into the fat of her neck. You have nothing to offer, less than nothing, but he has seen you and he’s asked you to come. So, go to him. Go now. Go.
She went. Right straight out of the kitchen, and when she touched the doorknob on the front door she turned it, fast and hard, without considering the times she’d failed at this exact point. She got the door open and practically ran across the yard to the sidewalk, her hand outstretched before her like she was turning doorknobs to innumerable unseen doors, opening them and letting them close behind her as she rushed onward.
People moved out of the way as she approached, her stubby legs pumping up and down, her low body as intent as a bulldozer. Dogs barked and nipped at her heels, one or two kids called out names as she passed, ready to run if she gave chase, but she didn’t hear a thing. On the corner of Park and Yale she stepped into the street without looking, and Jim Rose, driving the hearse that bore the body of Big Bill Rose, had to slam on his brakes, which set more brakes in motion, most not in time to avoid a fender bender, along the long line of cars in Big Bill’s funeral procession. Iris didn’t stop even then, although she did look over her shoulder briefly at the sudden commotion of darkly clothed mourners erupting from their cars, pouring out onto the street like agitated black ants.
She didn’t slow down until she turned onto Amherst, the street where Louis lived. She knew where he lived because she’d looked on his chart in the Emergency Room. Thirty-seven Amherst Avenue. She paused at number Forty-five to catch her breath. She saw then what she hadn’t seen before, as she dashed from her kitchen and along
the streets of Waverly: She was still wearing the apron she’d put on to make Arnie’s waffles, and her chubby arms were dusted with flour. Look at you, Iris, going out of your way to make yourself appear ridiculous, more ridiculous than you already are. She slapped at the flour on her arms, and quickly pulled off the apron. What’ll I do with it? She checked up and down the street, then pushed the wadded apron between the branches of a lumpy hedge. Had Iris stepped back a few feet, she might have noticed that the lumpy hedge was actually a large green bear, one of Bev and Bert’s cherished topiaries. Iris had pushed her apron into the bear’s stomach, where it was to sit undigested until the early summer when it would be discovered by Bert, in a rage, during one of his periodic hedge inspections.
Iris’s activities did not go unnoticed. Across the street from Bev and Bert’s, standing behind a white column on her front porch, Francine Koessler stroked Minky’s fur and watched. She didn’t recognize Iris, because Iris wasn’t wearing her nurse’s uniform. This was not surprising, because as Iris had learned, out of uniform she was invisible, or at least transformed. She’d long ago decided this was a defense mechanism, that people needed to pretend that outside the hospital, nurses, and the often embarrassing medical details they knew, did not exist. So what Francine saw was an unknown short and toady-looking woman littering in one of Bert’s silly animal hedges, which suited Francine just fine. Ordinarily, she’d have gleefully leapt off her porch and rebuked, admonished, and upbraided the wrongdoer, because Francine was lonely and bored, and such a confrontation would have been a release for her, a chance for conversation, however one-sided. But this time she stayed put, happy to have the litterbug (and Iris really did look like a bug to Francine) spoil Bert’s beautiful yard. Francine was still angry at Bert, in a snit because of the way he and Carl had hauled her out of the Emergency Room and away from the most exciting thing she’d been a part of in years: The materialization of Louis Malone, the recluse of Waverly.
Iris smoothed her dress and brushed at another dusting of flour she found on her sleeve. Jesus, I probably got it all in my hair, too, and boogers in my nose, and food stuck between my teeth. She fidgeted and arranged herself there on the sidewalk. Hidden, Francine watched, wondering if Iris had worms or something. Iris advanced a few steps, then stopped. Maybe she’s retarded, thought Francine; she’s sure something. It took Iris almost as much time to travel the final one hundred yards to Louis’s house as it had to make the entire journey across Waverly to Amherst Avenue. At last, pacing her final steps to the rhythm of her powerfully beating heart, she found herself standing before the Malone house. She closed her eyes and almost hoped that when she opened them again she’d be at home in her kitchen clutching her mixing bowl. She had been safe there, with her oatmeal and the routine of her days. Not once in her life, never had she offered herself, in full friendship or love, to another human being. It had never occurred to her to do so. She opened her eyes now and saw where she was and what she was doing. She stood very still for a moment, then took a deep breath and started up the front walk, gave herself this one chance, prepared to make her offer.
When she reached a tulip bed, just to the right of the walk and in front of the house, she stopped. The tulips were in disarray, some supported by garden stakes, others beginning to go brown where they lay in the soft dirt. Iris looked up to the second floor and he was there; the man in the window gazed down at her, then lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers in shy greeting.
Kitty Wilson, on her daily walk, saw Louis from across the street, saw him clearly and in plain view, waving to a woman she didn’t recognize. Hot tears of envy sprang to her eyes. All the years, she thought, staring, all the goddamn years I spent looking at those windows hoping to spot him, to catch a glimpse, to see a tassel on his scarf even, and now here he is revealing himself to the first strange woman who strolls up his walk. She raged again under her breath. I should’ve yanked his scarf off when I had the chance. I should have snatched the ungrateful monster’s hat right off his ugly head.
Louis had been watching Iris from the moment she turned onto Amherst. Unlike Francine and Kitty, he recognized her immediately even though she wasn’t wearing her nurse’s whites. He could tell from the way she walked that she was very nervous. He’d learned to gauge people’s moods that way, from a distance, noticing details that would have escaped him had he participated fully in the world. He was the exact opposite of a blind man, whose four remaining senses sharpen; he could only see, little else filtered through his windows, could not smell or touch or taste, and usually could hear through the window glass only muted sounds. What he had were his eyes, and memory, and imagination. He drew Iris toward him with his eyes, willed, he imagined, her faltering feet to move one before the other. Having seen her approach, he would not let her go. As he had compelled Ariel Nesmith, his first young love, to leave so many years ago, he now compelled Iris to come. Sometimes he would see the shimmering footprints Ariel, in flight, had left behind. He saw them now, for the last time, as they faded and disappeared as Iris, yielding, took the steps that brought her closer.
He stood at his window for a moment longer after she had returned his wave and given to him what his injured lips had been unable naturally to give her, which was a smile. He stood, and maybe she realized what it meant for him to stand there in the open, what he bestowed upon her by lingering there. She must have—the smile that tried to light her face was as uncertain and unpracticed as his body was, revealed before the curtainless window. What a desperate pair we must be, he thought, to exchange such rare and difficult presents: a smile and a moment at a window.
He looked down at Iris. Here at my window balcony, he wondered, dreamy with unknown possibilities, am I Juliet to your Romeo? Sleeping Beauty to your Prince Charming? Who is it who has come to my rescue, to slay the fiery dragon coiled around my feet? Louis had a vision then of Iris in her nurse’s uniform transformed into a shining white knight bent on his rescue, charging up and down the streets of Waverly in search of him.
Below, beside the tulip bed, Iris began to fidget, her smile fading. What was he doing up there?
Rescue me from what? Louis thought. He caught his reflection in the glass as he stared down at Iris’s lumpy presence. I’m no Sleeping Beauty. There are no beauties here. Look at her. He grasped the windowsill for support. Look at her. Look at me. My God. Ariel. But Ariel was gone. Then he mouthed his own name. Louis. But the Louis he called for was gone too, sixteen years a memory. Gracie, there’s someone at the door. Make her go away.
“Gracie.” He turned and waited for her reply. None came.
“Gracie, please. There’s someone… here.”
He remembered. The man who wandered in last night. The burglar called Arnie. He’d come and taken Gracie for a morning walk. The burglar had stolen his mother. Louis tried to catch his breath. Gracie, I need you. They’ve taken you, and now me, they’ve come for me. Louis rushed over to his bed and curled up on it. His mending arm throbbed inside the heavy cast.
When Louis disappeared from the window, Iris assumed he was coming down the stairs to open the door. She tugged at her dress, and sniffed quickly at her armpits, and licked her lips anxiously. A minute passed. She stepped up onto the front doorstep, then stepped down again. Another minute passed. Maybe he’s combing his hair or something. No, he always wears that baseball hat. Well, maybe he’s changing to a fresher hat. When yet another minute went by, she said, “The hell with it,” the color deepening in her fat cheeks. “I mean really. The hell with it and goddamn it, too,” and spun around on her short legs, and stomped down the walk toward the street.
Francine watched, craning to see from behind her white porch column. Kitty, in her own yard next door, poked her head up from between the branches of an overgrown azalea for a better view. She smiled. The intruder woman had been thwarted. Bev and Bert, driving home from the grocery store, spotted Iris too, and slowed down to see what there was to see. Even Carl, whose house was right across the street, took
notice. He’d been watering out back, and now he was in the side yard giving his newly transplanted laurel bush a good soak. He just about drowned the thing while he pondered Iris.
There was a lot to ponder, too. Iris, who looked unstoppable as she charged down the walk, suddenly jerked to a halt and did a pirouette, like she was on a rope and somebody gave it a quick yank, wheeling her around. She stared back at the Malone house, and all the neighbors, from their various hiding places, stared with her, wondering what it was she saw.
What she saw was her last chance, which also happened to be her first and only chance. Iris, she said to herself, you got to press this thing harder, you got to take it further, because after this, there’s nothing else, not one thing else. The man in there issued you the only invitation you’re ever going to receive; he said come, and now you’ve come, so you got to see him, at least once. You got to look him in the eye.
Iris marched right back up the walk to the house. Francine’s head poked up from her hiding place. Iris chugged up the three steps of the Malones’ front porch. Bev and Bert’s car pulled over and stopped. Iris banged on the Malones’ door. Carl forgot he was holding a hose and watered his foot. Iris banged again, then opened the front door.
One yard over, Kitty scrambled out of the azaleas. She was shaking her fist, her face was contorted. “Hey! Hey, you can’t do that. You can’t go in there!”
Iris turned and watched Kitty’s lurching approach. This woman’s been drinking, thought Iris. When Kitty was less than ten feet from her, Iris lifted one of her meaty arms and raised her hand. “Stop!” she commanded. Kitty stopped dead, as if the hand had thumped her on the chest.
Iris glared down at Kitty from the porch steps. “Lady, I’m his nurse, and I’m going in.”
“But—but,” Kitty stammered. “Nobody goes in. Nobody gets to go in and see him.”
Now Iris stepped through the doorway. She began to close the door on Kitty. “It’s happening now. Lady, I been invited.” The door clicked shut.