The woman is walking fast toward him, her head slightly down, avoiding his gaze, clutching a shopping bag. He positions himself slightly in front of her and that movement makes her look up. She is startled.
Is she afraid? He marshals a steadiness in his voice that is pure make-believe. “Twelve thirteen U Street?”
He hears the sharp, quick intake of breath at the question. This close, she has to look at him. And he sees her full on. Asking her was not accidental. He assessed the quality and cut of her tan linen suit, the leather bag on her shoulder, and the colorful, designer shopping bags she carries. All that told him she would be the one to help him. He has chosen well, he thinks, for he has always been good with people, intuitive and knowing. Mercer signs the contracts, he seals the deal, ropes the client in. The woman is attractive, her skin flawless, her brown eyes curious and confident. If he was not looking for Wallis. If he didn’t need to find Mercer … The train of thought, barreling down the tracks of his mind stops, as he understands the look on her face.
There is a pause as those wide eyes narrow skeptically and then she laughs. “That’s a long way from here.”
Her laughter relaxes him. But her look turns, despite the laugh, into a trap and she moves a few feet aside from the entrance to Ruby Tuesday and he follows her. Now they stand encased in their own bubble.
“Are you lost?” she asks, placing her hand on his arm. The question sounds sincere but does not calm him. He hopes she has not felt him flinch at her touch.
“Twelve thirteen U Street.”
She is looking at him more closely now. Now he is being examined and he wishes for the return of the smile but knows he will probably not see it again.
“That’s a long way from here,” she tells him again. “That’s in D.C. You could ride the Metro but you should probably take a taxi. Are you sure you’re not lost?”
The concern on her face could prevent him from finding Wallis and Mercer.
“Wallis … Mercer will … I need to …” This explanation, so clear to him that it has taken all his remaining strength and belief in this adventure to say, seems only to confuse her. He spoke slowly, calmly, willing the upheaval inside to subside. But he sees the alarm on her face.
When the woman puts her shopping bags on the street beside her, reaches into her purse, takes out a square, pink object and puts it to her ear as she looks around, he knows it is over.
“Just a minute. I’ll find a policemen who can help you.” As she looks away from him, likely trying to spot a policeman right here and right now, he walks fast through the crowd, bumping into people, not pausing to say “Excuse me,” when he sideswipes and nearly knocks down a woman eating an ice cream cone.
Walking fast, hearing the calls of the woman, breathless and terrified. The woman who wanted to call the police reminds him that he is not really free.
Whatever triumph he has felt in leaving Somersby is temporary and he knows it cannot last. Even if he finds Wallis. Even if he finds Mercer. A block away from the woman with the phone, he slumps onto a cement bench in front of a row of restaurants. He is hungry. He is thirsty. But now he is afraid to speak to anyone. For now he fears that they will all see in him what that woman saw. His hands fumble in his empty pockets. Sweat congeals in his armpits, warms his back and neck and mats his shirt to his skin. He smells the sweat and the terror inside it.
He has no money but he can still get a taxi to take him to the office. Mercer will pay for the cab when he gets there. He cannot allow himself to sink back into pity and despair. He cannot, because Wallis is waiting for him. She would want him to find her. So he stands up and walks to the corner of Georgia Avenue, past the windows of restaurants where he sees people eating and drinking, happy and laughing. Through those windows he sees a world he wants to live in. With Wallis and with Mercer.
On the corner he hails a taxi and once inside, he tells the driver, “Twelve thirteen U Street,” and settles back into the seat, safe for the first time that day. Refreshed and soothed by the air-conditioning, Gregory relaxes, closes his eyes. He remembers waking up that morning and looking for Wallis. They always met at breakfast. At night, she came to him, though sometimes, he went to her. When he walked into the dining room this morning and did not see her sitting at “their” table, he asked where she was. Lynette told him Wallis was sick.
“Remember? I told you yesterday she had to go to see the doctor but that she would be back soon.”
In Wallis’s room he found her bed empty, unmade, as though she threw off the covers, walked into the night, and disappeared. As though there had never been any Wallis at all. The nursing assistants found him lying beneath the sheets on Wallis’s bed and escorted him back to his room.
He struggled in their steely grasp and demanded, “Where is Wallis? Where is Wallis?”
“She’ll be back soon. She had to go to see the doctor,” they told him, but he did not trust them. Wherever they had taken her, Wallis was waiting for him. Expecting him. Just like Mercer.
He has thought often of how he and Wallis could escape, and when he met Wallis and knew he would not have to be alone when he left, he began to routinely linger near the exit of the memory care unit and watched staff members and visitors punch the pad on the wall. Their fingers, like a magic wand, unsealed the door. Fingers placed inside certain squares made freedom possible. He watched as though he was not watching. In time, he knew where to place his fingers.
One afternoon, in the deserted hallway, he risked a trial run, his fingers quivering as they raced over the face of the pad. Then he heard the click of the lock.
This morning, after they told him Wallis was hospitalized and made him leave her bed, he heard them say that she had been taken to Holy Cross Hospital. After he lay in his own bed, he dreamed of escape. Later, he entered the hallway and found it empty. Unseen, his fingers punched in the code and unlocked the door securing him in the memory care unit.
When the taxi stops, he does not know where he is and he tells the driver the address again. “Twelve thirteen U Street.”
“Mister, this is the address.”
Where, Gregory wonders, are the cranes looming over the dirt-filled, dug-up streets, nearly impossible to navigate as the city builds a subway system atop the decade-old ruinous decay left from the riots? The street is crowded with people. A CVS stands where his favorite bar is supposed to be. There are no empty, boarded-up storefronts but a profusion of shops large and small, new apartment buildings, people lined up in front of the box office of the Lincoln Theater, which is supposed to be shuttered.
“No, this isn’t it.”
“Look, mister, this is where you told me to bring you. I want my fare.”
Ignoring the driver’s belligerence, Gregory opens the door and stands before the place where his office should be, a building that is now a restaurant. The driver has gotten out of the taxi and is nearing him.
He enters the restaurant and knows he is lost. He has never seen this many white people on U Street. A young girl with pink hair and dressed all in black asks him if she can help him.
“Mercer,” Gregory shouts and then he is stunned by the brusque grip of the driver on his back attempting to turn him around. When they are face-to-face, he punches the driver, collecting in his fists all his bewilderment and rage.
There is a scream and chairs scraping the floor and before he can turn around to look again at those happy, laughing people, living the life he wants to live with Wallis and Mercer, two men whose faces he cannot see are grabbing him and he is pleading, “Wallis … Mercer …”
The squad car pulled up to the entrance of Somersby just as darkness was falling, and two female police officers helped Gregory out of the backseat. After the altercation at the restaurant, Gregory was taken into custody and traced back to the Silver Alert and then Leah Temple was called. Bedraggled and sweat-soaked, Gregory shuffled past Diane, Sean, and Lauren, who stood, relieved, in the lobby.
“I know you all want to be with him,
but let us check him out first, make sure there are no injuries, that his temperature and heart rate are okay,” Leah says.
Half an hour later, Leah rejoined them and said they could see Gregory. Lauren rushed into the room and hugged Gregory, Sean fell to his knees and held Gregory’s hands tightly. Diane stood behind them, the impact of the day washing over her, blinking back tears at the sight of Gregory staring at them all with a distant, benevolent curiosity. Gregory wore clean clothes and his hair had been combed, yet Diane could see that his body was tense with the static of longing and dissatisfaction.
Sean tapped Diane on the shoulder and said, “It’s been a long day, Mom. We’ll leave you two alone.”
Diane kissed Sean and Lauren good-bye then turned to Gregory. “You went to find Wallis, didn’t you? And Mercer?”
Hearing those names, Gregory’s eyes grew bright and he grabbed Diane’s hand, pulling her onto the bed beside him. His adventure in the day’s virulent sun had left his skin burnished with a sheen that countered the weathered, solemn gaze on his face.
The weight of the day, the force of the nine hours during which she had intermittently imagined and beaten back the worst possible outcomes, had chipped away at her strength. Even as her hands, like the fingers and palms of the blind, confirmed Gregory’s face and body, his substantial, definite presence, Diane grieved. For the tight weave of the life they had once shared was now unalterably frayed and tattered. Never had she felt so close to Gregory as today, when scenes from their past constantly erupted, invading and skewing her thoughts. He had been brought back, returned, but not to her. Never again to her.
He had walked out of Somersby, strode through the front doors unaccompanied, back into the world looking for Wallis. All day, Diane had thought Gregory’s absence had existed as an affront, a potential tragedy, a betrayal of her faith in the staff of Somersby, a wound. But this day had been about one simple desire: Gregory wanted to find Wallis. And this act, which Diane now considered more brave than foolhardy, confirmed that forward was her only destination. He had gone looking for Wallis. She had it in her power to reunite them.
As they drove to Holy Cross Hospital, Gregory sat mumbling, muttering to himself fragments of what sounded like the long remembered, recalled, savored, and hallowed conversation with the mayor on the day that Gregory and Mercer inked the deal for their first building for the city. At a desk in the lobby, the receptionist directed them to Wallis’s room, and Gregory reached for Diane’s hand as they walked down the hallway beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.
Wallis lay asleep in the room, whose medicinal, antiseptic smell was a presence all its own, as were the snores of the woman in the bed on the other side of the partition. At Somersby, Wallis reigned like an enfant terrible, but here, Diane saw her for what she was—a tiny, fragile, elderly woman. She was connected by tubes to machines purring as they provided oxygen, hydration, and life. Gregory leaned into Wallis, peering at her closely, his trembling hands smoothing the lightweight blanket beneath which she lay. There was nothing for Diane to say or do, save witness this, the fierceness of life.
A nurse bustled into the room and greeted them with a gracious smile. “Are you family?”
“Yes, yes we are. How is she doing?”
As the nurse checked the intravenous fluid drip, she said, “She’s doing quite well. She should be able to go home soon.”
Wallis opened her eyes, blinking groggily. When she turned from Gregory and saw Diane, they darkened with suspicion.
As the nurse pulled out a thermometer and softly asked Wallis how she felt, Diane, feeling more and more like an intruder said, “I have to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” Instead, she stood outside the room leaning against the wall. Her cell phone rang and Lauren asked where she was.
“I’m with your father at Holy Cross Hospital. I brought him here to see Wallis.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain it to you tomorrow.” She could not tell her daughter at this moment the strange, replenishing, liberating emotions she felt, so she said, “It’s Wallis now that he needs, it’s Wallis that he loves.”
When she returned to the room, she found them both asleep—Gregory dozing as he clutched Wallis’s hand. Waking Gregory gently, Diane told him that it was time to go, assuring him that if he wanted, she would bring him back to see Wallis tomorrow.
Back at Somersby, Diane helped Gregory undress and get into his pajamas and then she sat by his bed in the half-light and watched him fall asleep.
Walking toward the exit, Diane passed Wallis’s room. She opened the door and turned on the light. Shelves of Styrofoam heads—white, dark brown—and frozen mannequin faces with bright red lips and thick black brows, exaggerated eyelashes, frightful in their blankness, gazed out into the limited horizon of the room.
Hats were everywhere, some on the heads of the mannequins, others on the shelves. There was a black silk, broad-brimmed hat with a veritable garden of white lilies and black feathers that arched several inches high; a red wool felt hat with a purple veil; a hat like the one made famous by Princess Diana, ivory straw with a large bow in the back; a hat bold and startling, made of two wide open funnels joined by a large black ribbon of bibbing.
Diane stood in the midst of forty years of the precise and artful work of Wallis’s hands. For the first time, Diane wondered who Wallis had once been, how old was she when she made her first hat and knew that there was no going back. She stood in the small space, surrounded by all of Wallis’ history and her yearnings, and was silent and shamed by the extravagant display of beauty she never would have imagined Wallis capable of.
Overcome, overwrought, flush with a fever-like fatigue, Diane remembered the day, months ago, when she and Wallis found themselves alone in the hallway outside Gregory’s room:
“Leave him alone. He’s my husband,” Wallis had said. “I waited all these years for him and now he’s come. Come for me. Come to me.”
Chapter Twenty-three
JULY 2016
“So how is Master Daniel Burris Stone?” Alan asked as Diane lay next to him in bed.
“Still the world’s best baby. Lauren says he sleeps through most nights.”
“Congratulations, Grandma. How’s the father taking it?”
“He comes over a couple of evenings a week after work to help out. He’s in awe of his little boy and against all claims to the contrary, he was ready to be a father.”
“All I know is, circumstances can make you ready. Have you decided about Somersby?”
“There’s no sense moving Gregory anywhere else. The trauma of separating him from Wallis might induce a setback from which he’ll never recover. I’ve formed a committee of resident relatives that Leah has agreed to meet with regularly about any concerns, from security to laundry.”
A late-night talk show host was five minutes into his monologue on the plasma TV, and Diane yawned, stretched and sprawled, burrowing into Alan’s side. There was the warmth of Alan’s lips on her face and then the question.
“Where do you see us going, Diane? I want us to be together. I want—I need you to be my wife. You’re my solid ground.”
Staring at the ceiling, she said nothing as the question ballooned in the room, swelling like a bruise.
“My heart’s on my sleeve,” Alan said. “It’s been there since the beginning of this. You had to know how I felt, how I feel. I know it’s been less than a year, but—”
“Alan, I care for you deeply. But I could never divorce Gregory. I just couldn’t do that.”
“Even for a new life?”
“I have a new life.”
“One of your own choosing.”
“I chose you.”
“You’ve chosen part of me.”
“What do you want that I haven’t given you?”
Alan reached over and turned on the halogen lamp on the night stand. In the muted, shadowy flush of light, Diane was prickly with exposure and pulled the blanket up to cover her chest.
“A life that belongs to us. I want to be your husband.”
The word husband severed her heart, and Diane touched Alan’s broad, trusting, open face.
Removing her hand, she said, “I can’t give you that.”
“I know it wouldn’t be easy.”
“That’s not even an option for me. I’ll never divorce Gregory. You’re being unreasonable. Unreasonable and selfish. This is the life I have. I can’t change it. I can’t give you a do-over. I can’t give you a happily ever after.” The words charged into the still, small space between them. Words that were muscular, brutal, a bulwark that offered her shelter.
“I know of cases where spouses have divorced their mate who had Alzheimer’s and …”
Sitting up on her elbow, she said, “Don’t say it, Alan. Please don’t tell me that lie. Maybe if I’d been miserable with Gregory or considering a divorce before the disease struck. And even then I’d feel I owed him some kind of guardianship. But I had a good marriage. I’m not living on memories. I’m not tied to the past. Even if Gregory dies before me, there will be no other husband for me. I know that now. I couldn’t improve on what we had. I wouldn’t even try. I can’t be your wife.”
“I want to give you a life, a real life.”
“If this was any more real, I don’t know what I’d do.” Diane turned away from Alan and stared again at the ceiling. He slumped onto the bed and burrowed beneath the covers, turning his back to her.
Rising from the bed, she took refuge in the bathroom, locking the door behind her. If he’d known her at all, she thought, sitting on the rim of the bathtub, he would have known what he asked was impossible. Yet as she sat on the tub shivering with anger, Diane knew she was angry because she had considered a life without Gregory. A life free of Somersby, of Wallis, with memories of their marriage, memories of Alzheimer’s just that, memories.
The Wide Circumference of Love Page 23