In the Palomar Arms

by Hilma Wolitzer

  Mrs. Feldman is changing. She’s become less fastidious about herself, and has let some of the plants in her room languish for want of water. Once she confessed to Daphne that she was afraid she was losing her “flair.” She no longer expresses curiosity about the outside world. And the soap operas and quiz shows that once gave her so much pleasure have become difficult to follow. But Mrs. Feldman turns the volume of her television set as high as she can, to drown the other woman out. “Lower that! I’m too old!” Miss Crane cries. A man in the neighboring room bangs on the wall with his cane.

  Daphne considers this slow, merciless death of self even worse than the body’s death. Yet it seems more within the realm of her control, and she is reassured by that. In the first lonely days after her breakup with Kenny, she found herself going frequently to the mirror, not out of sudden vanity, but to say, see, I’m still here. She contemplates the idea of loving without giving up the onliness of the person in the mirror.

  And now she has company at her apartment. A few days ago Margaret came down from Seattle to visit. But she didn’t come for the change of scenery their mother had indicated in her letter to Daphne. Yesterday, in the morning, Daphne accompanied Margaret to an abortion clinic, where a two-month pregnancy was terminated. Daphne stayed in a small waiting room, trying to read an article on trout fishing in Sports Illustrated. She exchanged awkward glances with the only other person there, a middle-aged man who looked at his watch every few minutes, as if his train were late. After rereading the same paragraph three times without making any sense of it, Daphne offered the magazine to the man.

  She remembered taking Margaret to kindergarten for the first time and leaving her, tremulous, on a sunny threshold. Idiotically, she regretted being her little sister’s first sexual informant, as if that made Daphne guilty of corruption or collusion.

  When the operating-room door opened and Margaret came out, she seemed a little pale and shaky, but she was smiling.

  “Are you okay?” Daphne asked, and Margaret said, “Sure.” In the car she leaned back and said, “Get me to a nunnery.”

  The night before, they’d stayed up very late to talk. “Wouldn’t the parents die if they knew about this?” Margaret said. “Daddy kept saying, ‘Just don’t drive over the limit in California, miss.’ Mom made me pack an umbrella.”

  Daphne said, “I thought you told me you were being careful, Mags.”

  Margaret merely lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

  Daphne sighed, hearing a frightening echo of her mother in that sigh. “Doug or Randy?” she asked.

  Margaret looked perplexed for an instant. And then she said, “Oh. It was Scott.”

  When they were undressing for bed, Margaret asked, “How about you? Are you still involved with Mr. Mystery?”

  Daphne thought then that the word “involved” should be struck from the language. It was an evasive word that denied the memorable specifics of love. “No,” she said. “That’s all over.” She waited, holding her nightgown against her breasts, for the inevitable wash of pain. It came on schedule, making her totter a little.

  Margaret is at the apartment, resting, an alphabet of vitamins and minerals hastening her recovery.

  Daphne is at work. Summer school is over, and she has given Mrs. Shumway notice. In two weeks, she’ll be going to San Francisco to look for a new job, for a different kind of life. She’s asked that her transcripts from U.C.L.A. and Ventura College be sent to San Francisco State. A high school friend from Seattle lives near the bay, and has offered to let Daphne stay with her until she can find a place of her own.

  She knows that she forms quick and lasting bonds with people and places, and that this makes separation very difficult. The Palomar Arms would seem to be an exception. Working here had only been an insane accommodation to her affair with Kenny. From the beginning, the place depressed her and made her uneasy. The underpaid labor of menial service, and the tragedies of aging and of ultimate desolation. No more microwaves to zap me, she tells herself. No more of Shumway’s dirty looks, and Monica’s cynicism, and Styrofoam, and that smell.

  And yet there are friendships to be severed, and a further loss of what has simply become familiar. Mr. Axel, who is starting to eat fairly well, with Daphne’s assistance, may lapse into his old apathy, that slow suicide of starvation. She’ll write to him, although he won’t he able to write back. Daphne won’t be here to witness Mrs. Feldman’s continuing disintegration, but it will continue, anyway.

  She knows that flashbacks of this place will occur in dreams and when she’s awake, just like the ones she has of Kenny. These are usually from their early, best times together. She wonders if she must go through the whole chronology of their relationship until she comes to the moment of parting, and is done.

  On her supper break, Daphne asks a question she’s always meant to ask. “How did this place get its name?” she says. “I mean, it’s pretty far from Mount Palomar.”

  Evita explains that “palomar” is Spanish for “bird shelter.” “You know,” she says, “for little doves—las palomas.”

  “And for pigeons,” her sister adds.

  Daphne thinks that it’s sadly appropriate. Then she remembers that Kenny had once promised, while they lay entwined under her starry ceiling, that he would take her to Mount Palomar someday, where she could get a glimpse of the real heavens.

  Miss Nettleson says, “I’m on the Lady Godiva set, but there are no cameras, no other actors. The scenery is very beautiful, but flat, because it’s scenery. When I touch the trees, their green comes off on my hand.”

  Mr. Brady says, “After watching Kung Fu, I want to kick up my heels!”

  Feliciana says, “Estas triste, querida?”

  Mr. Axel says, “Tastes something … like food.”

  Kenny says, “You smell lovely everywhere. I’d like to keep your smell on me all day.”

  Miss Crane says, “Leave me alone, you! I’m too old!” Margaret says, “This place is a fucking cage. That fireplace gives me the creeps. Do you want to go out for burgers and fries? As soon as I stop staining, I’m going to get a coil.”

  41

  NORA IS DRESSED WITH great ceremony. The women make a noisy fuss about it, shaking out the few dresses in her closet, exclaiming over them.

  “Oh, not black! It’s all shiny, anyhow. She’ll look like an old black crow.”

  “Well, the moths got this one. It’s air-conditioned.”

  “Should have called her family, asked for something new.”

  “Put polish on her nails.”

  “Lipstick.”

  “Hardly any lips.”

  They slide garments over her head, and with each one she’s caught for an instant in the odor and texture of rayon or cotton, in the pebbled darkness of black crepe, or the miniature garden of a floral print. Long, cold stockings on her legs instead of the fuzzy ankle socks. But first they trim her toenails; the thick parings click into a basin like shelled peas.

  “Jewelry!” someone cries.

  Has she lost her wedding ring? She reaches for it and it’s there, loose on her finger, and then caught on the swollen knucklebone.

  Her hair is combed and crimped. They use an iron. She knows that scorch of curls, that fading heat against her forehead and cheeks.

  She is being dressed like a bride. Something old—herself. Something new—the stockings. Everything else is borrowed: the strongly scented lipstick that makes her feel she’s just kissed another woman on the mouth—“Now you’re pretty, Mama!”; a heavy necklace of bright beads; a soft shawl that wafts across her shoulders. Something blue is the sky suspended over the lawn where the party will take place. There never was a bluer sky.

  A corsage is delivered, and pinned in place, dragging down the rayon flowers of her dress.

  Her wheelchair is festooned like the float for a princess in a parade. Crepe-paper streamers catch in the wheels. When she looks over the side, the spokes are too brilliant, reflecting light like a baton you
can’t really watch in its ascent toward the sun.

  “Put her here.”

  “No, here.”

  They settle on a shady spot, under a tree’s leafy shelter, and then they leave her alone.

  Daphne tries on several shirts before she remembers the sweater at the bottom of her bottom drawer. When she takes it out and puts it on, Margaret whistles. “Where did you get that?”

  “I lifted it from a swanky boutique in Beverly Hills,” Daphne says.

  “Oh, sure.” Margaret touches the neckline of the sweater. “You look sort of naked in it,” she says.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t wear it.”

  “If you don’t, I will. Anybody under ninety going to be there?”

  Brady is humming “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” as he shaves. Joe watches in wonder at his enthusiasm. “Like parties?” he asks.

  “Breaks it up, kid,” Brady says.

  The band arrives as the sun starts to go down. Feliciana looks out of the lounge window and admits that her lifelong dream has been to sing with a group.

  “Why don’t you?” Daphne asks.

  “Because she can’t sing,” Evita says. “She can’t carry a tune in a suitcase.”

  Monica and Jerry and Lucille come in, all dressed up. Jerry looks uncomfortably formal in a jacket, shirt, and tie. When he comes closer, Daphne sees the pattern of high-kicking chorus girls on his tie. She introduces Margaret, and when she says, “My kid sister, visiting from Seattle,” Margaret rolls her eyes and pretends to suck her thumb.

  Lucille touches Daphne’s sweater. “Where did you get this?” she asks.

  “She ripped it off,” Margaret says, and everyone laughs.

  “Here’s Mkabi,” Jerry says. “We can start.”

  “Start what?” Daphne asks.

  “Close your eyes, Daphne,” Evita tells her.

  “What for?”

  “Just do it, okay?” She pushes Daphne into a chair.

  “Okay, now open them!”

  There is an elaborately gift-wrapped package on the table in front of Daphne. “What’s this?” she asks. “It’s not my birthday.”

  “Going away,” Feliciana tells her. “We figured, kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Don’t kill this bird,” Jerry warns them. “She looks good enough to—”

  “Children present!” Monica says. “Watch your filthy mouth.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything. What was I going to say?”

  “Open your present,” Mkabi tells Daphne. “We have to get downstairs soon. They put Mrs. McBride outside already.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done this,” Daphne says, and means it. The greeting card she takes out of its envelope is thick, brown, and multifolded, and has an endless message in verse. Once she starts reading it aloud, she’s committed to finishing it. The theme is Goldilocks and the Three Bears—how she tasted their porridge, and broke the baby’s chair, and slept in his bed. When the whole thing is opened, it rattles and collapses back onto itself, and is too clumsy to handle. Evita helps Daphne straighten it out so she can read the last line: “But we can’t BEAR to see you go!”

  Everyone applauds, and Jerry stamps his feet and whistles with two fingers in his mouth. All their names are scrawled at the bottom of the card—this way and that. A few handwritten messages have been added. Good luck. We’re going to miss you. To a really nice person.

  Jerry takes a bottle of bourbon from a cabinet, and some of the little pleated paper cups used to give pills to the patients. He passes the cups around and fills them brimming. They toast Daphne’s health, and Mrs. McBride’s, and the Pope’s, and the President’s, and their own. Then they urge Daphne to open the gift, and her hands tremble as she pulls at ribbon and paper.

  “Do you like it?” Evita asks, even before the layers of tissue have been lifted to reveal what’s under them.

  Maybe they bought this before she told them she wasn’t getting married after all, and then they couldn’t return it. Final sale or something. Because it seems like a trousseau gift, something purchased at a bridal shop. Daphne pulls out the lacy white confection, and there is a sigh of appreciation around the room.

  “Put it on, put it on,” they call, with the chanting insistence of a crowd urging a stripper to take it off. There is nothing to do but stand up and let them help her into it.

  They lead her to the mirror near the coffee machine so she can admire herself. Perhaps she should have been wearing this peignoir when Kenny came to say goodbye, instead of that shapeless smock and those paint-stained jeans. The frilled cuffs, the cascade of white silky folds mock a glorified vision she once had of herself, like the crudest parody. Daphne imagines that she looks exactly like her mother’s dream of a virgin daughter, and she remembers a line of Keats from Allen Burdette’s telephone courtship: “Thou still unravished bride of quietness.”

  They wheel her out from under the tree. “Say cheese, sweetheart. Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!”

  A woman shouts in her ear. “To what do you owe your longevity, Mrs. McBride?”

  Nora thinks, and before she can answer, an interpreter says, “Why have you lived this long?” They are different questions and now she’s confused.

  Reenie brings a white satin Bible and a few of Nora’s great-great-grandnieces, in patent-leather shoes and hair ribbons. The little girls are made to kiss her for the photographers. Another round of Catherines and Agneses. They spin out of her arms like dervishes.

  The band isn’t very good, but they’re loud. Even the deafest patients will be able to pick up some strains of the old favorites. As people stream into view, Joe keeps looking for his own family. Sandra and Bud are still traveling on the other side of the world, but the grandchildren said they’d try to be here. Invitations went out to all the relatives. Brady’s ex-wife has shown up, which doesn’t seem to surprise Brady. “She always liked a party, too,” he says, before she wheels him away in the direction of the music.

  While Joe waits, there are plenty of children to please his eye. The paper lanterns are lit over their heads, and he remembers putting the big lights on at dusk in the store. Children used to come in when he still had the ice-cream freezer up front. They’d slide the glass top open, letting vapor escape like genies, and take half the summer’s night to choose a flavor.

  In the elevator, Margaret says that you don’t have to touch the buttons to make them light. Since they’re activated by heat, you only have to breathe on them. She demonstrates. With one quick hot breath she turns a dark plastic circle bright orange.

  “Hey hey!” Jerry says, holding the doors open with both arms.

  Evita giggles. “Maybe you can use your tongue, too,” she says.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Monica asks.

  “Do it,” Daphne tells Evita, and she obliges, lighting another circle.

  They ride up and down a few times so that everyone can take a turn. They use their breath, tongues, elbows, knees, and chins. Feliciana says that men can do it one more way, and everyone is convulsed, except for Evita, who says now she has to wash out her mouth.

  Above them, someone is banging for the elevator, so Margaret pushes a button the conventional way. They rise from the basement to the main floor, and wander out into the party.

  Jerry asks Daphne to dance. He holds her very close, crushing the chorus girls between them. There’s a wooden platform set up for dancing, and Daphne can see Mkabi and Darryl on the other side, with Bobby hanging on to their legs. Jerry is a good dancer, although he hums at the same time, like a mosquito circling her ear. Margaret is dancing, too, Daphne sees, with a sinister-looking older man in a dark suit. “Who’s that?” she asks Jerry.

  “That’s Rauscher,” he tells her. “You mean you never saw him?”

  The song ends, and Daphne waits for release from Jerry’s grasp. The band immediately swings into another tune, and she’s off again across the boards in his embrace. After the third number in a row, she begs time out for some punch.<
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  They pass Mrs. Shumway, who’s standing with folded arms near the snack table, guarding the cardboard baskets of Cheezbits and pretzels. Her face is oven-red, and she looks like the chaperone at a church dance.

  As Daphne and Jerry approach the punch table, she sees Mrs. Feldman sitting in a circle of visitors. “Excuse me,” Daphne murmurs to Jerry, and walks away from him across the grass. “Hello, Mrs. Feldman,” she says. “Are you having a nice time?”

  “Very nice,” she says. “But my heart isn’t in it.” She introduces Daphne to cousins and nephews. One of them, a tall man in a blue shirt, asks her to dance. “So you’re the one,” he says, when they’re turning on the wooden floor.

  In the midst of everything, she’s dozed off, and even dreamed a little. The dream was of a white winter, so it’s hard to come back again to the muggy summer air, to where this is. A voice is coming out of the heavens, booming and receding, calling her name. “NORA Elizabeth McBRIDE!”

  “Jack?” she asks anxiously.

  “CONGRATULATIONS on … HUNDREDTH! NANCY and I are … WARMEST wishes … HOPES FOR … and BLESSINGS … REAGAN.”

  Baseball fans are cheering, and then there’s music putting out all the other sounds.

  He hardly recognizes them until they’re very close, and calling, “Poppy, we’re here!” Deborah and her husband; Daniel and his oldest daughter. Daniel’s wife had assured Joe after the girl’s birth that she’d been named for Adele, but her name is Melissa Jane.

  “Kiss Poppy,” she’s commanded, but she turns away, holding her nose and covering her eyes.

  “Kevin?” Joe asks, and they hesitate, looking at one another, and then they tell him that the dumb kid’s had himself transferred to Fort Bragg. He’s decided to become a paratrooper.

  Richard helps Daphne serve punch to the patients. When he tries to give a cup to Miss Crane, she says, “Go away, I’m too old.” Daphne is ready to explain, but he seems to understand what Miss Crane means. “I’m very sorry,” he tells her, and hands the cup to someone else.