Exit Lines

by Joan Barfoot

  When whatever will happen has happened, Sylvia and Greta are to wheel George back to his room and roll him into his bed. He’ll be the one practically guaranteed to fall fast asleep, they assume. Sylvia and Greta may or may not have words to say, such as “Oh my,” or “Good night,” and they may or may not care to touch each other’s warm, living skin before they head to their own suites, where they will begin learning to believe whatever they’ve done and not done.

  They will have left Ruth’s door open. She likes to keep it ajar anyway so she can overhear passing conversations, random bits of gossip: aides speaking of how best to handle certain residents, their complaints about strict management, meaning Annabel Walker, their romantic evenings or difficult marriages, conflicts and triumphs with parents or children; passing residents, too, confiding feuds, alliances, judgments. “I have no idea what she’s doing in a place like this,” Ruth has heard, presumably not about herself. “She should be in a nursing home, she’s a real ding-a-ling.” The words have been life floating in mildly interesting fashion into Ruth’s ears; but in the morning her door, with a different purpose this time, should stand open; an invitation to discovery—avoiding delay is the goal.

  In their suites, Sylvia and Greta will close their own doors behind them. They do not expect to welcome disturbance.

  Will they go directly to bed? Will they sleep? Awake or asleep, will they prefer to leave bedside lights on? Will Sylvia sit with a glass of wine in her chair by the window, staring out into darkness?

  What will they see in their minds’ eyes? If they sleep, of what will they dream? This is all, as Greta has said, fantastic to contemplate. Fantastic: so extreme as to challenge belief, as well as bizarre or grotesque.

  It’s too bad, although nothing new, that the innocent are the ones who most often suffer for others’ decisions. At some moment as morning lights are flipped on, as pots and pans start clattering in the kitchen and breakfast dishes are laid out on dining-room tables, as residents are rousing themselves or being roused from another silent sleepless or wakeful Idyll Inn night, one unlucky staff member will walk through Ruth’s open door. She will call Ruth’s name softly, then a little more loudly. Perhaps she will reach down, gently shaking Ruth’s shoulder. Once she catches her breath she’ll hurry off to alert Annabel Walker, and immediately the usual process of doctor-calling, followed by corpse-whisking-away, will kick in. “Just make sure before you leave me that I’m wearing a peaceful expression, okay? No pop-eyes or dropped-open jaw.” Which came out less lightheartedly than Ruth intended; in fact, caused a brief silence during which each mind screened a picture of terrified eyes, and limbs strained from fighting a losing, last-minute battle against the hands of her friends.

  “Won’t happen, though. Nobody’ll notice a thing wrong, including the doctor. If I were eighteen or forty there’d be an autopsy and questions, but I’m not, so there won’t be.” Ruth has done her best to comfort and assure. She’s a kind woman, if a deadly one.

  Whereas blunt Sylvia said, “What you mean is, if you’re old nobody’d even imagine noticing you’ve died for no obvious reason. Or you can kill somebody. We could do anything.” As if she had something further in mind? Or more likely had just had at least one drink too many.

  They’ll all be entirely sober come morning. No matter how shocked or unshocked they are, they’re bound to fall asleep eventually—“We’re old,” as Sylvia says. “We nod off”—which means they probably won’t make it to breakfast, and will miss all the coming and going. By some means, however, they’ll learn that Ruth’s gone. How will this happen? “I bet Annabel Walker would come tapping around, since she knows we’ve been friends. For that matter, she’ll wonder why we all slept in, if that’s what happens.”

  Well, it’s a challenge, trying to account for every eventuality. “You could put it down to the mystical. That without knowing what’s happened to me, you must have fallen into an extra-deep sympathy sleep.” Another of Ruth’s failures to amuse on the subject. “Or seriously, you could say I wasn’t feeling well and you all sat up with me till quite late, which is why you slept in.”

  “And we didn’t call anyone to say you were sick, and you didn’t either?” Sylvia frowned. “Irresponsible, surely.”

  “No, you’d say it just looked like an upset, nothing particularly concerning. Honestly, nobody’ll have any real questions.”

  “Still, we’d be pretty horrified.”

  “I expect you should look as horrified as you can manage, in any event. If nothing else, that should get you all sorts of special treatment. Look on the bright side, maybe Annabel will order you up a late breakfast in bed. Let you loll around all day in your housecoats without nagging. You can probably milk it for quite a few days.” Such merriment. What an extraordinary conversation, making these plans, examining multiple possibilities for the hours after she would no longer exist. Real plans for unreal circumstance.

  The only sensible, sane approach.

  Whatever works.

  What does work? Not George’s call for “duck” tape, or his fist-pounding “Yes, yes, yes”—that couldn’t be called a proper argument; unpersuasive even to Greta, but then why has Greta arrived here at Ruth’s middle-of-the-night bedside, with her frailties of the heart but also her necessary strong hands? Still, or awkward, waters evidently run deep. Perhaps now it’s just a matter of in for a penny, in for a pound, not that Greta would know the expression, but how to account for the penny to start with?

  Gratitude. Loyalty. Desire. One would have to know more about Greta than Ruth does, or Sylvia, or even George. One would have to know about shame, as well as the weight and longings of years as a foreigner and a stranger—loneliness, although that is a word too hard and sad to speak—and a redemption found here. Redeem: save or rescue or reclaim; fulfil. One would have to know the force of will, and feel the full, unexpected beneficences of the Idyll Inn.

  There is a life-saving debt owed to Ruth. There is, then, this debt to them all, and a payment Greta can make that no one else swiftly and mercifully can.

  If she can. If she is called to.

  It is Sylvia who is to remove the carefully folded dry-cleaner bag from under the belt of her robe, Sylvia who is to hold it up between her knobby, outstretched hands, ready, but it is Greta who is to help Ruth raise up her head so the plastic can slip smoothly over it, Greta who is to reach for the roll of duct tape with its end already folded back so there’s no fumbling, Greta who is to quickly, as smoothly as she can, wind and wrap the tape around and around, pinning plastic to throat.

  As George keeps watch in the doorway, ready or unready to warn of intrusion, it’s to be Greta and Sylvia hovering right over Ruth, witness to the whuffing in and out of the plastic, the O of last breaths, the brief but bound-to-be-frantic struggle. It’s Greta, when the room is still again, who is to finally take the small pair of scissors from the pocket of her robe and snip carefully through the tape. Sylvia will raise the plastic away. Then they will see—what? Ruth’s terminal hope, or terror, or peace, or for that matter an entirely unanticipated future coming to view? Or nothing at all.

  That’s the plan. “Don’t be surprised,” Ruth has advised, “and remember, don’t leave me looking surprised, either.”

  Then there’s the other plan.

  “No guarantees,” Sylvia said. She has her own brand of chin-up courage, it seems to Ruth, and has learned from tough experience, as people either do or do not, to stick by nearly every one of her words. None of them can save anyone. Sylvia couldn’t even save her own daughter, if Nancy were in real trouble. “That’s the most helpless I’ve felt in a long time,” Sylvia said, “and I’m more than furious that almost every damn thing that matters in this world is out of our hands. This is one thing that isn’t. Whatever anyone says—lawyers, doctors, governments, religions, all those nincompoop moral busybodies that float around like weed seeds—we should be in charge of our own selves. Even if we hardly ever are.” And so here she is. Standing besid
e Ruth’s bed in her cream-coloured, ankle-length chenille robe, with two plastic bags, one for real, one for spare, carefully folded and tucked under its belt. Proving that her mind is with Ruth; but hearts do not always—do not often—naturally and automatically follow minds. Ruth’s own great struggle has been to align determination of mind with the terror and grief of the otherwise empty heart. What can she expect of these others?

  Sylvia lowers herself with some caution and difficulty to sit on the bed. It’s easy to forget that she’s in fairly severe pain a lot of the time. She’s a prideful person, even with herself. Ruth, for one, finds that invigorating, reliable and even contagious, although it’s obvious that some people are put off by a stiff upper lip, assuming it marks the absence of an equally strenuous heart.

  “What time is it?” Ruth whispers.

  “Five after three. Do you mind if I turn on the bedside light?”

  Oh, five after three. Minutes dissolve, sugar in water. How many did Ruth calculate she has wasted over her years? Did she think to multiply and divide time into minutes or did she stop at the hours? What if in every single minute she’d seen people surrounded by colours in the shape of electrical arcs, and she’d smelled every scent as if it were her mother’s bath powder or Bernard’s aftershave? What if so many moments hadn’t slipped past, a regiment of grey shadows? “Sure, go ahead.”

  In this light, which is not pink, translucent or especially dim, features come instantly clear. George is drooping but Greta looks alert, fearful and tense; as for that matter Ruth must as well. Whereas Sylvia—Sylvia’s smiling. Not broadly, but how can she smile at all, what’s the matter with her? Now she’s reaching under her robe. For the dry-cleaner bags—is she that keen to get this over and done with? No, for something else: a slim packet of paper. Now what?

  “Here’s the deal. We’re here and we’ll do our best if we must, but we’re not going down without one more fight, and neither are you. Okay? Got that?”

  So brusque. As if Sylvia and not Ruth is in charge. As is the case at the moment, given Ruth’s supplicant position. She has spent months, weeks, days and hours, right down to these last minutes, inching her way up to this high, breathtaking ledge, nearly ready to jump—and now they want to tug at her sleeve, grab her belt, one more time? There can’t be anything fresh to be said, any new argument to be made, any remaining qualm to surprise—unless there’s a last-minute, queasy qualm when fingers touch plastic and skin; there’s always been that possibility. “How can you do this to me now?”

  Greta looks stricken. Too bad. “We are sorry.” She too sits beside Ruth, across the bed from Sylvia. “But we thought this could be a time when you would hear.”

  “You mean, when I’d be vulnerable?”

  Sylvia frowns. “Well, admit it, that’s partly why you picked this hour: because it’s a tricky, unreal time for doing tricky, unreal things. You’re right, we knew this could make you angry, and as Greta says, we’re sorry about that, but occasionally making a friend angry is among friendship’s jobs. Now just listen. Listen to this.”

  Outrageous, bargaining right to the end.

  The paper Sylvia’s produced from under her belt is newsprint—Ruth’s own weapon turned against her once more? Now Sylvia’s going on about some kid who, having seen a TV documentary on child slaves used for mining diamonds, harvesting coffee, providing sex to old men—children are useful for many purposes, as Ruth already well knows—this boy now travels the world speaking to governments and international organizations and schools, visiting hard-pressed villages and destitute orphanages, giving over his adolescence, as he will, he says, his adulthood, to shaming and improving, if not humanity, at least a portion of its malevolence. “See?” Sylvia says.

  See what? “He’s young. The young are optimistic and fit, they can do that sort of thing.”

  “I’m way ahead of you on that. So here’s a ninety-four-year-old named Lily Meisner—obviously a good deal older than any of us—who’s damn near blind but still writing politicians and religious types and everybody else she can think of, campaigning for absolutely-no-cost-to-anyone birth control. In every place on earth, mind you. She says that’s the basic way to make women free, and she’s pushed for it all her life and isn’t about to stop just because of a bit of old age and blindness.”

  “Well, bully for her and her letters, and much good may they do her or anyone else. But I expect if she’s such a fan of freedom, she’d be bound to agree to mine, too.”

  “Maybe, but I bet she’d have some alternative suggestions as well. And you’ll notice that even though it’s an utterly hopeless cause, she’s never given up hope. She keeps trying.”

  “Very inspiring.” Ruth too can be dry when she needs to be. “And no doubt you’re making a point?”

  “It’s George’s, really.” At his name George raises his head, his eyes flying open. No, nothing happening yet. “It’s what he keeps reminding you: that there’s always good news. I admit I had to scrounge and scrape to find it, but look at that boy, and old Lily Meisner—we’re a funny bunch, humans, is all I mean. A more mixed bunch than it’s always easy to bear in mind. And whatever we’re doing, whoever we are, most of us don’t care to quit.”

  Not fair to pull out an apple-cheeked do-gooding boy and an ancient sight-losing zealot when Ruth is waiting in her nice new nightgown to be dead—dead! What will that be? What will it not be?—within the hour. A waste, too. There’s nothing new about what Sylvia’s saying except in the particulars, and of course in her uncharacteristically chipper view of the nature of humans. Nevertheless a show of temper wouldn’t be smart. It’d be easy for them to turn on their heels, and then what would Ruth do?

  “We’re interesting,” Sylvia is saying, with, Ruth admits, an interesting passion. “We’re good and bad and everything in between and we’re always finding fresh ways to show it. Whatever else that is, don’t you find it absorbing? Just look at us—how fascinating is this, even if we can only be here right now because to anyone but ourselves we’re about as transparent as four very old crystal balls.” Albeit, Sylvia adds, “four crystal balls somewhat fogged up in our own minds when it comes to the future.”

  Not really. That’s not been Ruth’s impression, but then her view of the future has been limited to this very hour.

  “I mean, never mind longing for this and that, aren’t you still at least curious? Don’t you want to know what happens next? I realize we’re all bound to be cut off in the midst of something suspenseful, but don’t you want to know who wins and loses different elections, and how wars are going, including the war on the planet you’re so worried about? Don’t you want to know whose house gets built or burned down, or which local rapscallion is selling drugs or making fake money? How about whether that Diane you’re so fond of makes a go of it with her boyfriend, or another crazy geezer starts waving knives in the kitchen? And look, what about tomorrow, aren’t you even mildly interested in whether it’s snowing tonight, and what the sunrise will look like when the light hits the river?” Sylvia must be desperate; it’s not like her to go soft about sunrise.

  “There’s us, too, don’t you care about us? Because if we go through with this, nothing could be as enormous for any of us ever again, and the end of enormity would be an awful thing to get used to. You should want to save us from that. And we’re your friends, you know—wake up, George—so we’d also like you to take into account that we’d miss you, very much.”

  They’ve said that before, too; but “Miss, miss,” cries George, jolting upright.

  “Shhh,” Greta whispers. “We must be quiet.”

  There’s a great deal for George to be quiet about. Greta herself is his secret, he believes, one that’s such a long-standing habit it’s lodged in his brain like a nut in the throat. Quiet, she says. What’s going on? Still nothing, it looks like.

  Oh. Ruth. “Miss,” he repeats softly. It’s hard to let go of people a person’s got used to. “Fond,” he says.

  “Thank
you, George. I’m fond of you, too.” So why’s that not good enough? It’s a sad thing, not being enough in the eyes of a woman. Maybe he’s not the man he once was, but then again, look, not every fellow his age has three women caring about him, and even caring for him just about every day. “Miss,” he sighs one more time; now meaning something complicated about four that would be different if they were three. The whole bunch of them could fall apart, and then what would happen to him?

  Does Alice get lonesome, does she feel adrift with no daughter or husband holding her hand? He can see, right now, how she might. She was a good woman, by and large. Like Ruth, as a matter of fact, at least in the way of being small and mostly meaning well. Not so demanding, though. That’s why they’re here, because of Ruth being demanding.

  Still, he’s trusted to be here. Alice is in a locked wing at the nursing home, since some people—not her any more—are likely to wander away. There are numbers to push on a lock to get in. He has no idea now what those numbers could be, but somebody’d probably help.

  It’s not nice hearing a door lock behind you. There’d be the problem of getting out, too.

  “If I had not met you first here, Ruth,” his old, once-upon-a-time Greta is saying, “I would have been frightened, and I might still be alone. I, too, wish you will see that it is possible to make new things to be interested in. It is not possible always to be having new friends, however.”

  Surely that’s Greta’s problem, not Ruth’s. Ruth will have no need for anyone, old or new, so what does she care about gratitude, or whatever struggles and disruptions she leaves in her wake? She’ll be dead and untouchable.

  How cold. It’s one thing to be empty of desire, but it would be…unworthy…to leave cold-hearted. That would be a failure of character. Ruth reaches for Greta’s hand and finds hers painfully clasped. Greta’s hand is large, which is good, and hot, which is distressing. “I’m sorry,” Ruth says.