The Leisure Seeker

by Michael Zadoorian

  I open my eyes a little after six, finally giving up on sleep. This crushingly bright California morning, I am feeling so weak I can barely hold my head up.

  John is snoring. During the night, he pulled an afghan over him and it almost covers his entire head. I check to see that he hasn’t wet himself. He hasn’t, but he’s getting ripe again.

  I try to pull myself up from bed and don’t quite make it. I consider rolling out, but fear that I will roll right onto the floor. I remember that I’ve left one of my little blue pills in my sweatshirt pocket. So I plunge my hand into the folds of my clothes, sift through the balled-up Kleenexes, finally locating the pill at the bottom. After I gather as much saliva as I can in my mouth, which isn’t much, I swallow it. This will either put me back to sleep or allow me to actually get out of bed, one or the other.

  When I wake up at 8:30, the discomfort has mellowed. John is lying next to me with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the van. I can’t tell if he’s lucid.

  “John? You awake?”

  He doesn’t say anything at first and I think for a horrible moment that he is dead and I’m alone.

  “John?”

  He turns and looks at me, matter-of-factly. “What?”

  “I was just wondering if you were awake.”

  “I’m awake.”

  “Good. I don’t want to be alone.”

  He puts his hand on the back of my head and strokes my head and neck. His hand feels wonderful, the way it used to feel, but different. I think it’s because my hair is thin now. He used to do this all the time when we were younger, then I started wearing the wigs and he mostly stopped, except when we were home and by ourselves.

  “You’re not alone, sweetheart,” he says.

  “I don’t want us to be apart, John.”

  “We won’t be.”

  He looks around at the inside of the van. I think maybe he’s going to ask if we’re home, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “This is a good old camper.”

  “Yes, it is,” I say. There is a long time where we don’t say anything, but John looks at me so tenderly that it helps me to forget all the bad things. It’s a look that makes me feel that everything that’s going to happen will be just fine.

  I smile at him. “Your hair is sticking out like Bozo.”

  He smiles back at me, but I can see his eyes start to mist over, dissolving back into the gray. I start to talk faster, more than I can get out at once.

  “Are you ready for Disneyland?” I say, more loudly than I mean to. “Remember, we’re going today. It’s going to be really fun, John.”

  I scare him a little, but I’m trying to pull him back to me. I don’t want him to go away yet. I want him to understand.

  “We are?” he says.

  “Yes, John. This is the last leg of our vacation. It’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

  He doesn’t know what to say. He just nods along, caught up in something he doesn’t really comprehend.

  “It’s been real good,” he says.

  I place my hands on John’s face, my fingers over his lips. His cheeks are coarse with hair, but I don’t care. I move my thumb over a bump on his lower lip.

  “It’s all been real good,” I say.

  “I’m glad we’re going away,” he says.

  He’s confused. I think he thinks we’re heading out on vacation right now. I could correct him, but don’t.

  “Me, too” is what I say to him. “Me, too.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to visiting the park today, ma’am?” says the young man driving our shuttle van.

  I want to say, No, goddamn it, I’m not at all up to it today, but I’m going anyway. But what I say is, “Oh, I’m sure we’ll manage.”

  “They have motorized wheelchairs you can drive around in, might make things easier.”

  “Really?” I say, curtly. “Well, I don’t like wheelchairs. I don’t think we’ll need that.”

  He looks in the rearview mirror at me and my You-Go and doesn’t say a thing.

  Soon as we drive up to the place I see that he’s right. Everything looks so much more spread out than twenty years ago. You know how when you visit a place from your childhood as an adult, everything looks so much smaller? Well, revisiting a place as an old person is the opposite. It all looks goddamned enormous.

  Still, I am determined to do this. We have to take a tram just to get from the parking lot to the ticket office. I have a hell of a time just getting on the thing until some considerate young man gives us both a hand.

  By the time we get to the ticket line, I’m already exhausted. We get the “One Day–One Park” tickets and they cost a fortune. I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point. I put it on the charge card along with everything else.

  “Do you have any of those motorized wheelchairs?” I ask, now realizing that there’s no way either of us will be able to get around this place, especially as weak as I’m feeling today.

  “They might be all rented by now,” says the unrelentingly cheery young woman at the ticket booth. “You’ll need to talk to the cast member there. The wheelchair rentals are on the right, past the turnstiles.”

  “Rentals? I was told they were free.”

  “It’s thirty dollars for the electric ones. With a twenty-dollar deposit.”

  “Je-sus Christ.” I look at John and he just shrugs. I don’t remember Disneyland being such a gyp joint.

  As I stop to catch my breath, I glance upward to watch the monorail glide above us.

  “Get a load of that! Gee whiz!” says John, pointing in the air, thrilled at the sight of the sleek orange-striped airtrain. The transformation is complete. He is a child again.

  I watch the tail slither into the distance. It still feels to me like a vision of the future. Except now, it’s a future that I’m too tired to imagine.

  When we pass the turnstiles, I head on over to the rental stand with John in tow. He’s already looking disoriented from all the activity.

  “Are you here for an ECV?” the tidy young man says to me. I’m not so used to a southern accent coming from someone who looks Chinese.

  “A what?” I say.

  “An electronic convenience vehicle. An ECV. That’s what we call these.” He points to the two remaining scooters.

  “I guess we are.” I get out my charge card.

  He gives me the fifth “Aren’t you a cute decrepit old lady?” grin I’ve gotten since we arrived at Disneyland. They like to smile at you here while they stick their hand in your wallet.

  “Come on, John,” I say. “We’re gonna drive around this joint.”

  John brightens at the word drive. “Can we get the van in here?”

  “No, we’re going to drive one of those.” I point to the little blue scooters.

  The young man explains the controls on the chairs. I am leery at first, but after a quick supervised spin around the room, I’m pretty sure I can handle it. John, as usual, warms right up to anything he can drive. In no time, he’s scooting around like crazy.

  “I don’t want you to go far away from me, John,” I say, stowing my purse in the front basket. “You hear me?”

  No, he can’t hear me because he’s already taken off.

  HERE YOU LEAVE TODAY

  AND ENTER THE WORLD

  OF YESTERDAY, TOMORROW

  AND FANTASY

  That’s what the sign says as we pass beneath a bridge into the park. It’s dim and crowded as we walk through, and it makes me glad we’re on the scooters. We are stable on these buggies and can’t get pushed over, a good feeling for a change. As we emerge on the other side, I am amazed to see that Disneyland hasn’t changed much, although it’s certainly more crowded than I remember, especially for 11:45 in the morning. I hate to think what this place is going to be like in four or five hours. We’ll be long gone by then.

  There are families everywhere, flocks of strollers, two and three abreast. I see a herd of what must be three hundred kids all wearing the same nav
y blue T-shirts. There are children running around, screaming bloody murder. As we tool down Main Street U.S.A., I’m a little overwhelmed. An old horse-drawn streetcar passes by; behind it a flivver honks at us, a rude ow-ooh-ga. Behind me, I hear the clang of a steam locomotive, a brass band playing a Sousa march. People are yelling to the left of me. A group of seven or eight young kids come up quickly on my right side, laughing and screeching. I make sure my purse is secure in the basket. Suddenly, John has disappeared again. I look to my left, to my right, but I can’t see him anywhere. I start to get a little frantic.

  I don’t know exactly what happens then, but when I finally look straight ahead, I see that I’m about to run right into a giant Winnie-the-Pooh, who has appeared out of nowhere. I panic and forget what to do to stop this thing.

  “Watch out!” I yell at his furry orange back. At the very last second, he turns. I look into Winnie’s mouth and see a flash of panic in the eyes of the person in the costume. I hear him say “Oh!” just before he jumps out of the way.

  I finally release my death grip on the accelerator and the scooter stops on the spot. All I had to do was let go. I yell my apology to Winnie-the-Pooh. He waves, but inside that costume, he’s probably giving me the finger.

  John scoots up next to me, laughing. “You almost ran over that bear,” he manages to croak out between guffaws.

  “Just about gave me a heart attack,” I say, starting to chuckle myself. I’m sure it was quite the sight.

  Main Street U.S.A. is like an old town square. We scoot around for a while, looking at city hall, the movie theater, the penny arcade. We roll past a little café, half indoor and half out, where a man is playing old ragtime piano. We zip in and sit awhile. When a waitress approaches we tell her that we just want to sit a little and listen to the music. She says we have to order something, so we both get Cokes. The man at the piano plays “I Don’t Know Why” and “California, Here I Come.” It makes me wish we could have brought the kids and all the grandkids here, but considering nobody even wanted us to go on this vacation, I guess that probably wouldn’t have happened.

  We are outside “The Enchanted Tiki Room” when it happens. One minute I was in line, listening to the birds sing “In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room,” the next minute, I’m on the ground flanked by Disneyland paramedics and surrounded by onlookers. I have no idea what happened.

  “Who are you?” I say to one of the young men, who’s just put an awful-smelling inhalant under my nose.

  “How do you feel?” he says to me.

  “I feel a little woozy, that’s all.” I don’t mention the screaming discomfort in my side where I must have fallen, or the fact that my entire body feels like a sack of potatoes that’s fallen off the truck and rolled seven blocks.

  “We’re taking you to the hospital, ma’am,” he says to me, all muscles and confidence and conked blond hair. He must be a weight lifter. His head is connected directly to his shoulders. I look for his neck, but it’s nowhere to be found in his paramedic jumpsuit. He reminds me of Jack LaLanne, only bigger and stupider.

  I have a gander at the other guy, an older black fellow on the heavy side. He says nothing. I turn back to Jack LaLanne.

  “You’re not taking me to the fucking hospital,” I yell.

  I hear a collective gasp around me. All these fine Disney citizens, indulging their morbid curiosity by rudely standing around watching the old cow passed out on her keister, are simply appalled by my language. I look up to see a gigantic Mickey Mouse. He ratchets his head around at the kids present, then holds his hands up over his giant mouse ears.

  “We have to, ma’am. It’s Disneyland protocol.”

  I pull my arm away from him. I try to sit up, but he holds me down. I don’t put up much of a fight because everything discomforts so bad.

  “I don’t care what it is, I’m not going,” I say. “I’m fine. I just got a little dizzy. I’m not used to these contraptions of yours.” I don’t see John anywhere. “Where’s my husband?”

  Jack LaLanne looks at me like, she’s going to be trouble. And he’s right. I’m not going to any hospital. I am done with hospitals.

  “He’s over by our ambulance,” he finally says. “He seems disoriented. Does he have Alzheimer’s, ma’am?”

  “He has a little dementia,” I say, one of my biggest fibs yet this trip. Saying John has a little dementia is like saying I have a little cancer.

  I’m getting mad now, and I get even madder when I see someone come up with a stretcher. “I’m not getting on that goddamn thing!” I yell, not even knowing where I get the strength to scream like that. All the people around us look alarmed, but not as much as Jack and his pal.

  I know once they have me on that, all is lost. They will take me to the hospital, and this trip will not have its proper close. I don’t know where I pull it out from, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that they are ones I can hold on to.

  “If you put me on that, I will sue Disneyland for a million dollars.”

  There’s nothing like a look of fear on the face of a heavily muscled man.

  “I will do it, so help me God, you put me on that thing.” I cross my arms and try to keep from wincing. I narrow my eyes at him. “And it will be your fault.”

  Jack waves off the stretcher for the moment. “Ma’am, there’s something wrong with you,” he says, voice straining. “We need to find out what it is.” I can see a hint of true concern reveal itself across his lantern jaw, but I don’t care. I will play this hand to the end.

  “I know what’s wrong with me and I don’t need to go to any hospital to find out. I’m fine. Just help me up, get me back on that cart, and we will get out of Disneyland. You won’t have to bother with us ever again.”

  He’s weighing his options now. He takes a breath, glances over at his partner, exchanges a look, then turns back to me. “We’ll have to have you sign a complete release, saying that you refused all medical assistance.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll sign whatever you want. Just get us the hell out of here.”

  “Fine,” says Jack LaLanne, brusquely. He’s disgusted.

  Of course he’s disgusted. I won.

  After the cab drops us off at the Leisure Seeker (a first if there ever was one), I take my very last two little blue pills, give John a Valium, and we both sleep for a long, long time. The discomfort nudges me every so often, so I drift in and out, dreaming of my children, of vacations we have taken together and of some that we haven’t. I dream of Kevin, the sadness always present in his eyes, the sadness to come. I dream of Cynthia, how she will be the strong one, bearing whatever happens, just like she always has. They will be fine, my dream self tells me. They know that their mother and father have always loved them, that whatever happens at the end of a life does not represent the entire life.

  When I awaken, the discomfort is still there, but a bit more tolerable. The alarm clock in the van reads 8:07 P.M. The place is stuffy and sick-sweet smelling. It doesn’t take me long to realize that our little fridge has conked out.

  It’s dark in the van, so I decide to put on a light. I had the presence of mind when we went to bed to bring our battery-powered lantern. As I lean over to reach for it, I almost lose consciousness again. I sit and pant for a minute or so before I can reach the lamp. I wipe my forehead. I click it on and the bulb winks, then slowly shudders as a brownish dim barely illuminates the room. The batteries are going, but it is the perfect light level for my eyes. I lie back down, still winded, but less so now. My body has taken a surprising amount of abuse this trip, more than even I thought it could take, certainly more than my doctors could have suspected.

  It was all worth it. This trip, despite all that has happened, was well worth it. I’m sorry if I worried the children, but I have spent all of my adult life worrying about them, so I’m just going to call it even.

  Beside me, John’s snoring is like the sound of ragged sheets being ripped. After every third or fourth snore, the
re is a long period where his breath seems to suspend itself. It is after one of these that he snorts so loudly that he wakes himself. John rouses and searches my face with his eyes. I don’t think he quite recognizes me at the moment.

  “Is this home?” he asks, his voice grainy with sleep.

  I nod my head.

  I check and see that he must have wet himself a little, but it does not upset me, not tonight. I decide that while I still have the strength, I will clean him up, change his underwear. Every mother’s car accident rule. I unbuckle John’s pants and attempt to yank them out from under him. For once, he cooperates and lifts his bottom. I pull his pants down, shorts and all, but even with him cooperating, they don’t come off easily. I soon find out why. John has an erection like I haven’t seen on him in many years.

  “Well, look at you!” I say. “You old dog.”

  I’m still not sure he recognizes me, but he smiles at me, a smile I recognize.

  I pull off his shoes, strip the pants off him, breathing through my mouth, trying not to look at his underpants for it would surely ruin what I’m feeling right now. I hide it all in a storage area near the foot of our bed. I take out his wallet and toss it onto the table. I turn off the lantern.

  There is a catch in John’s breath as I touch my hand to his penis, and I realize that I had forgotten that sound he makes. It makes me smile and pulls me away from this ancient faltering body of mine. I look at his eyes, dreamy half closed, but locked into mine. I wonder if this could possibly work, I think to myself.

  Why not? I think. Why not?

  The twinge of desire I felt days before when John touched me as he helped me into the trailer, I feel it again, only more so. I feel it through the pain, through the bruises on my body, through my shrugging flesh, my vast life scribbled upon it. I feel it through my nausea, through my will to die.

  “Ella,” John says to me as I continue to stroke him, the skin dryer now, his eyes clearer. “Ella.”

  I can’t think of anything I would have wanted to hear more right now than my name. My husband looks at me, pulls himself up, moves toward me, over me.