The Wide Circumference of Love
Page 18
She retired, was living on Social Security and her savings. Then she began to yearn for who she used to be. She’d get up in the morning, and after her coffee, her bowl of oatmeal, orange juice, and her pills, she would spend an hour or more picking out just the right dress, shoes, and hat. Satisfied with the ensemble, she’d spray her neck and arms with a mist of Jean Naté and, giddy with a sense of purpose, lock the door behind her and go out looking for her life.
But the city had been turned upside down. Made her feel like she was Alice in Wonderland. Nothing was where it used to be. She never forgot her address. She always knew where she lived. She just had no idea where she was going. She’d ride the bus she thought was headed to Georgetown and ring the bell to disembark, and stand on a street in Brookland. Sometimes she left her apartment without her wallet. Twice, a stranger, finding her sobbing on a street corner, flagged down a police car. When the police officers escorted her into the lobby of her building she felt famous.
Her nephew Kevin took over her finances and her life and brought her here, he said, so she would be safe. So he would always know where she was.
Now, opening her eyes in her small room every morning, she sees the beautiful hats lining the shelves. Hats she had made. Hats born of her hands. Hats that were her assignment from God. More and more she cannot remember who she made the hats for. Every hat always had a story but the stories are beginning to fade.
She loves the Bible study with the cheerful blonde lady who always remembers everyone’s name and asks them to fill in the missing word when she reads phrases from the Bible. Wallis can still recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. She has prayed all her life and her prayers became more fervent after no one wanted to buy her hats, and there seemed nothing left in this life or this world to do, except to wander. She still knows how to pray. And she knows God has answered her prayers because of this man who roams the halls naked at night, as though dropped from heaven.
“I didn’t eat when I came here at first either,” Wallis says quietly to Gregory in the dining room. “But the food isn’t bad.” She gently pushes his plate closer to him. There is something in this movement that sparks a feeling in his stomach beyond hunger.
His plate is closer to him now. Although the people around him look healthy, he cannot be sure what the food will do to him. I want to eat, he thinks, looking into the sturdy face of the woman. He lifts a forkful of green beans into his mouth. The food does indeed taste good.
Gregory feels suddenly and deeply the hunger he has denied satisfying during the time he has been here, and before he knows it, his plate is empty. Wallis beams at him.
Fortified by the meal and this woman’s smile, he announces “I can fix this place” and takes her hand. They rise from the table, and Wallis grips his arm, entwining her fingers through his. They walk down the hall to the library, the one place he has found peace. He opens the French doors and they walk to the bookcase where Gregory pulls a tube of paper from a space between the bookcase and the wall. He removes a rubber band from the papers and then slowly spreads them out on the long mahogany table in the center of the room.
Gregory feels Wallis lean closer, surveying the papers, her hands, her fingertips outlining the lines he knows that he had made. Lines that signify something bold and wondrous that he had once done. He hears Wallis whisper, “We both like beautiful things.”
The receptionist was not at the front desk, so Diane took this solitary moment, which felt stolen and illicit, to breathe in deeply. Her closed lids nonetheless, sheltered the image of Gregory’s face, the last time she’d seen it over her shoulder as she ran from his room. She inhaled deeply, courageously opened her eyes, and walked past the elevator and punched in the code that admitted her to the memory care unit.
Once there, one of the nursing assistants told her that Gregory was not yet available for a visit. He was taking part in a memory stimulation exercise, but she could sit and watch. She walked down the hallway and found the residents gathered in a large, open room adjacent to a kitchen area. The fifteen residents sat in a circle as Lynette quizzed them gently about their careers before coming to Somersby. One woman sat stylish and alert, dressed in a tailored red power suit as though waiting to convene a board meeting; a dark-skinned woman who sat assessing those around her as though she was in imminent danger wore blue jeans and a T-shirt; a man sat next to her in a gray running suit, his lips moving in a private, rumbling conversation that evoked in him ripples of laughter, which he abandoned in order to tell Lynette that he had been an accountant for D.C.’s office of management and budget.
“I kept the books. I kept the money safe,” he said proudly.
Gregory sat placid and expressionless.
“I was a teacher,” said a slight woman whose formerly blonde hair was now a dull white. She clutched a cane that she wiggled beside her chair. “I taught history.”
“Do you still teach history?” Lynette asked.
“I have a class when this meeting is over. We’re studying the American Revolution.”
The woman sitting beside Gregory radiated a nearly crackling energy. Her hair was a curly mass of gray, white, and brown. In a riotously colorful blouse, floor-length black skirt, and large dangling hoop earrings, she looked like she was dressed for Halloween. The woman rocked back and forth in her chair, restless, shifting, impatiently awaiting the chance to talk.
“I was a milliner. I made and designed hats for Woodward and Lothrop,” she announced, then pointed to a woman across the room “Ask Bonnie. I made her a hat last week. Didn’t I, Bonnie?”
“I don’t know,” the woman replied irritably, waving the words away with a dismissive sweep of her hand.
Nonplussed, the woman sat back in her chair, turned to look at Gregory next to her. She smiled and patted his hand then before throwing her arm across his back and hugging him.
At least he has made a friend, Diane thought.
Lynette announced the end of the session and the residents drifted off down the hallway to their rooms. Diane nervously stood up and prepared to walk over to Gregory, straining to gather the flailing loose ends of her emotions.
The woman who had been sitting next to Gregory was now standing, hovering protectively over him. As Diane neared them, she extended her hand saying, “I’m Diane, Gregory’s wife.”
“I’m Wallis. He’s my friend,” she said with childish glee.
“Yes, I see. Hello, Gregory,” Diane offered tentatively, flushed with discomfort.
“Hello.”
Lynette approached them and led Wallis away. Diane could hear the woman muttering her resistance as she continually gazed back at Gregory over her shoulder. Diane sank into the chair that Wallis had occupied moments before and, now that she was closer, drank in the sight of her husband. Despite that now permanently indifferent, jittery gaze, there seemed to be more of him.
They walked down the hall to Gregory’s room, Gregory loping quickly ahead of her, out of reach. Diane longed to touch him, to hold his hand.
In his small room the request was simple: “Want to go home …”
“I can’t, Gregory. This is the best place for you now. For a while anyway, until you get better.”
Stalemated, they sat on the bed. Diane inquired about the food, the other residents, how he felt, all questions he left unanswered. Gone was the courage she had mustered. She was deflated, minuscule in the presence of this man, her husband to whom she was a mere visitor, someone making a foray into his world from a distant galaxy, a planet beyond his comprehension.
Gregory bounded from the bed and rifled through the papers on his desk. He returned to sit beside Diane and showed her a series of crude drawings of Somersby, the interior and the exterior. As he shuffled through the drawings he pointed to each one and told her, “I have to fix this place.”
“You’ll do a fine job. I know you will.”
“I was an architect.”
“Yes, you were. You were one of the best.”
Diane approached Gregory, stood beside him as he watched the scene.
He turned to look at her and said calmly, “You’re Diane. Diane. That’s your name.”
Never had her name sounded so sacred. Months had passed since he had last spoken the word. Diane. Her name. Cradling his face in her hands, Diane kissed Gregory on the lips.
“Thank you,” she said, whispering this, beating back the crushing rush of her heart. Stymying the rise of the one thing so hard to hold on to, hope. That he might say her name again. That he would remember her name. That he would never forget it.
“I was … I was …” he began.
“You were a father. You were my husband.”
A good visit was one in which Gregory talked, though usually the words were a mantra: “Go home … want to go home.” Diane was the conversationalist, telling Gregory about her last months on the bench, Sean, Lauren, and gossip about friends Gregory no longer remembered. On weekends, Margaret, Bruce, Lauren, Sean, Valerie, and Cameron often joined Diane and Gregory at a restaurant or for walks. During a walk along the Mall, the weather chilly, brisk, Diane walked with Lauren behind Margaret and Gregory, Margaret’s arm entwined in Gregory’s, both of them walking slowly, as Margaret whispered stories in his ear of childhood exploits, stories of his father.
At Somersby, Wallis Peebles was Gregory’s shadow, scurrying away from him when Diane neared or sometimes refusing to leave them alone, forcing Diane, in exasperation, to find one of the nursing assistants to lead her away. Diane would arrive to find Wallis and Gregory making crafts, hiking the hallways for exercise, or sitting together eating popcorn in the theater. Increasingly, upon Diane’s arrival, Wallis’s hostility grew. Wallis was a blast of rolled eyes and pursed lips. Once, she was certain that as Wallis stalked past her, she heard her whisper, “You, bitch.”
Regardless, Diane befriended the certified nursing assistants. There was Angela from Jamaica who had left a son and a daughter behind in Kingston, in the care of her mother, until she could get a visa to bring them to the US. Angela’s Jamaican lilt soothed Diane, especially when she called her sometimes “my lovely,” the nickname growing familiar as they grew closer. It was Angela who told Diane that Gregory wasn’t drinking enough water and risked dehydration and a urinary tract infection, who revealed that in the first weeks of his residency at Somersby, Gregory had roamed the halls at night, attempting to punch codes into the security system. And it was Angela who said of Gregory and Wallis, “They’re right good friends. It’s good, you know, that they have friends.”
Chapter Eighteen
NOVEMBER 2015
Diane stood in a virtual sea of food. The number of choices in the Whole Foods café was sumptuous and intimidating. A stand that held a dozen trays of different types of olives, another laden with cheeses from around the world. A fifteen-tray stand with familiar and exotic vegetables, fruits, toppings, and condiments for salad. She stood at the hot tray stand, trying to decide between deep-fried Brussels sprouts; stir-fried quinoa with shrimp; meat loaf; braised, locally grown beef floating in a bed of carrots, onions, and potatoes; herb-roasted chicken; and other dishes whose aromas tugged at her, making this one of the most difficult decisions in a day filled with hard choices. She had finally decided on the meat loaf and deep-fried Brussels sprouts when she felt someone’s eyes, someone staring at her, as though she had been physically touched.
When she looked up, on the other side of the food stand stood Alan Rich.
“Hello, Mrs. Tate.”
“Mr. Rich, I had no idea …”
“I’ve been staring at you for a while now. It was interesting to see a judge who couldn’t make up her mind.” His smile roused a tiny dimple she had not noticed when they’d met at Westminster Church. Had it been a year and a half or two years ago? However long it had been, Diane was flushed with unexpected pleasure at seeing him.
“Well, as you can see, I finally made my choice,” she said, tipping her brown carton toward him.
“Me, I’m a quinoa man, myself,” he said.
A tall, red-haired woman in a stylish hoodie and yoga pants reached over Alan to fill her carton with herb-roasted chicken, nudging him aside with a smooth yet definite shove.
“Okay, lady, the food’s not going anywhere,” he snapped. “This isn’t Somalia.”
“And this isn’t your kitchen counter,” she muttered.
Diane laughed and exchanged an amused glance with Alan, who moved away from the woman and came to the other side where Diane was standing.
“I was going to go home and eat,” he said, “but would you like to join me upstairs? If you have the time, that is.”
A torrential, freezing rain battered the streets outside. Between the rain and the wearying day she’d had on the bench, Diane had convinced herself not to go by Somersby on her way home. She’d pick up something to eat, shower, microwave her store-bought dinner, and eat in bed. That was the evening she’d had planned.
“Certainly.”
“Great. Give me your carton and I’ll pay for us both. I’ll meet you upstairs in the dining area.”
Diane saw Alan’s dark, olive green trench coat stained by rain flow behind him as he hurried away toward the cashier. Giddiness flooded her at the thought of sharing a meal with a man she did not know, but wanted to.
Alan found her wiping a table near a window that showcased the bleak sky outside. She had placed napkins and plastic cutlery for two facing one another. As Diane sat down, he said, “Hold on,” and strode over to the watercooler and came back with two cups of filtered water.
As they opened their cartons and took the first bites of food, Alan asked, “How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you, your friend, or your husband at the church. Naser Abadey turned it out last week. I sometimes go on Monday nights when it’s blues night.”
Diane took another deep breath, again summoning guidance from a faithful, clearly inexhaustible supply of courage. “Alan, my husband Gregory has Alzheimer’s, and he’s living in an assisted living facility’s memory care unit. He’s been there for about two months.”
“Oh, I’m …”
“Please, Alan, please don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ I know you are. I assume you are. It can’t be helped. That night at Westminster, I was still learning how to own it and not melt down, like saying it was an admission of guilt or a failure.”
“My mother died of complications from Alzheimer’s. Caring for her tore our family apart. I know you’re tired of hearing it, but I’d still like to say, I’m sorry, and I want you to know that’s neither a platitude nor pity.”
Diane hoped that her smile expressed all the gratitude she felt for his words.
“So, you’ve been shopping,” she said pointing to a bag from a chain bookstore.
“Yes, for my nephew’s son. He asked for a couple of those Diary of a Wimpy Kid books but I also got him an atlas and a dictionary.”
“Do you have children?” Diane asked.
“No, and I’m divorced. Do you have grandchildren?”
“Not yet. My daughter is pregnant, though.”
“Congratulations.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t everything? Hard day?”
“Yes and yes and no. Did you read or hear about that case last week where a woman high on PCP killed her boyfriend?”
Alan nodded.
“A real tragedy. She was a senior at the University of the District of Columbia. Had never used any drugs before, got in with a drug-using crowd, and the very first time she uses PCP, goes on a violent rampage and kills her boyfriend in front of her three-year-old son. Stabs him to death.”
She paused and moved the Brussels sprouts around the carton, took a tiny bite of the meat loaf and a sip of water. Then sh
e looked again into Alan’s horrified gaze.
“She had worked hard to pull herself out of and away from a very dysfunctional family but now she’s in jail facing murder charges and her son is under my watch in protective custody. He was placed with a foster family that we’ve had problems with in the past, so the child’s lawyer and I were going back and forth today trying to find a more suitable home.”
“The child has a lawyer?”
“A guardian ad litem—to protect his interests as he goes through the system.”
“So mother and child both have lawyers?”
“Uh-huh. And she’s probably lost that child for good. So it was a real hard day.”
This was how it used to be with Gregory, she thought—sifting through the remains of the day over a meal, the dinner table a confessional. Simply eating, an act that bound them always one to another. Her heart throbbed with regret. Then she stifled the onslaught of these overly familiar emotions and decided to look at Alan Rich. She wanted to be here, not back there where she could never be again. She silently commanded her thoughts to attention. Look at this man. Really look at him. What do you see? What she saw was the ease with which he occupied his body. The slightly chapped lips, the clipped moustache flecked with gray.
“Since I retired, I’ve been working with a nonprofit that mentors ex-offenders returning to the city after they’ve served their sentences. We work with them on everything: getting a degree, dress, tutoring, interviewing, and getting a job.”
“So we’re both in the trenches.”
“Well, yours is a lot deeper than mine. You know, I play at Westminster sometimes. The piano. I’ve got a quartet I perform with now and then.”