In Reach

by Pamela Carter Joern

  “Nellie, how’re you doing today?” That’s Iris. Hazel humps over her mop in the bathroom.

  “Not too bad.” Nellie’s voice ripples like water when you throw a stone.

  Hazel peeks around the corner of the bathroom and sees Iris fluttering around the room, working while she talks. Iris sprays window cleaner on the windows.

  “My goodness.” Iris again. She never shuts up. “These windows are a fright. Doesn’t anybody ever wash them on the outside?”

  Later, when they’re sitting in the staff room over a cup of coffee, the nurses sucking on cigarettes, Iris brings up those windows. Hazel never sits at the table. She parks in a chair by the wall reading a book. Iris laughs with Barbara and Lucille.

  “Mabel’s back.” Lucille says this. She’s got short brown hair, full lips. She’s been called perky. Hazel hates perky.

  “I don’t think she’ll go home this time.” Barbara Harris, red-haired and aging.

  “I’ve got to go and see her,” Iris chimes in. “Mabel was one of my hostesses years ago. She used to have two or three parties every year. We had so much fun. Once we walked down to the North Platte River and went fishing. We didn’t catch anything, but when we got back, Barney had a fish fry going for all of us. Catfish he’d caught the day before.” Iris’s hands fly while she tells this story about her life as a Tupperware dealer. Barbara and Lucille eat it up. Iris must be past sixty. She dyes her hair, anyone can see that.

  That afternoon, Hazel putters around the operating room while Iris fills buckets of sudsy water and carries them outside. Using a long-handled mop, she scrubs the windows. Then, Iris climbs on a stepladder and rubs each pane dry with a cloth. She goes around the entire hospital while Hazel vacuums the carpeted visitors’ lounge and the five carpeted rooms.

  When Iris is outside Mabel Becker’s room, Hazel can see her from the lounge. Iris paints a smiley face on the glass with her mop and suds, then knocks on the window and waves at Mabel. Mabel raises herself up on a thin arm. She makes a shooing motion at Iris and laughs.

  Hazel moves slowly behind the heavy vacuum cleaner. She sweeps it back and forth, monotonous motion, the roar wrapped around her like a cocoon.

  Iris is a regular Mrs. Clean. She insists on corners and cobwebs that Hazel has ignored for years. She drags her cheerfulness around the hospital like a pet on a leash. Lucille and Barbara and Jerry, the hospital administrator, act like she’s God’s gift. Hazel has been doing the dirty work for twelve years without so much as a thank-you, and now they fall over each other dumping praise on Iris. Barbara brings oatmeal cookies with raisins for the coffee room. Nellie Watkins goes home earlier than expected, and Iris gets credit for it. Hazel finds it harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning.

  Mabel Becker’s condition grows worse. She’s entering that phase when cancer patients turn on those they love. They shut the door on them. Hazel remembers how her mother did that. Couldn’t stand the sight of her. Mabel’s husband still sits with her every day, but even he can’t take too much of it. Iris chats him up, too. She explains how Mabel isn’t turning her back on him, it’s the cancer.

  Later, Reverend Fowler stops Iris in the hall. Hazel flips a feather duster over the framed posters hanging in the hallway, insipid pictures of children and angels and kittens. She’s at least two rooms away from the pastor and Iris, but she hears everything. They take no notice of her. She might as well be a potted plant.

  “Some of us are coming to lay hands on Mabel, Iris. We hope you’ll join us.” Reverend Fowler, a weasel-faced man, speaks in a grating nasal voice. He’s decent, everybody says, but no one can stand to listen to him preach for long. He knows it, though, and keeps his morning messages mercifully short.

  Iris leans on the handle of her dust mop. Her head wags up and down, a signal that she’s giving the pastor’s request serious thought. “Reverend Fowler, do you mean to pray for a cure?”

  “Of course. God can heal anything, if we only ask.”

  “Mabel’s dying, Pastor. She’s dying of cancer.”

  Hazel moves toward Iris and the pastor. She’s already dusted the frames going that direction, but no one knows that.

  “Nothing is too big for God, Iris.”

  Iris chews on her lip for a moment. She lifts her chin. “No, Pastor. I can’t do that. I can’t go and lay hands on Mabel and ask God to make her well. But I will go and see her on my own. I will do that.”

  Hazel sees that the pastor is none too pleased. A smirk grows at the corners of her mouth. So, finally, someone else has run headlong into Iris’s stubbornness. Iris of the last word. Iris who knows the right thing to do. Iris, the caller of shots. Iris, Iris, Iris. It’s enough to make Hazel puke.

  Hazel moves through the rest of the day thinking about Iris. Hazel never would have figured her for the cynical type. She could see Iris leading the march on poor Mabel Becker. Cheer up, Mabel, make us all feel better. Thank the Lord, Mabel. God, heal Mabel, amen, amen. Hazel hears the echo of dirt falling on her mother’s coffin. After her mother’s death, she smelled guilt seeping from her armpits, her groin, the bottoms of her feet. She prayed and prayed, thinking her lack of faith had killed her mother, until that Norcroft woman. After that, she gave up on God and learned how to take care of herself.

  Later, in the afternoon, Mabel Becker’s husband rushes into the coffee room. He bursts through the door where patients aren’t supposed to be, his face red and scared.

  “Somebody help me. I don’t know what to do with Mabel. She’s all upset and crying.”

  Lucille and Barbara stub out their cigarettes, reach for stethoscopes, and smooth their white shifts over their hips.

  “It’s the preacher. He says he’s going to lay hands on Mabel, and she’s fit to be tied over it.”

  Lucille and Barbara stop, frozen like comic book characters. Hazel watches all of this from her perch in the corner.

  “Iris, maybe that’s your department,” Lucille suggests with a raise of her eyebrows.

  “He’s your pastor, isn’t he?” Barbara says. She’s practically panting, she wants out of this so bad.

  Before Iris can get to her feet, Hazel shoves herself up, grabs a broom, and moves down the hall to the empty room across from Mabel Becker’s. She busies herself in the doorway, jabs at corners with the broom. From here, she can see everything.

  “What’s the matter, Mabel?” Iris walks right over to the bed. She takes Mabel’s withered hand in hers and wipes her eyes with a tissue.

  “I don’t want them coming here. I don’t want them praying over me.” Mabel gets this out in fits and starts, hiccuping and blowing her nose. She’s got tubes here and there.

  Iris glances at Mabel’s husband, the one who said he couldn’t live without her. Now, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head like he’s dealing with a two-year-old having a tantrum. He backs away, one step behind the other, until he gets to the doorway, where he bolts. He mutters something about going downtown to Baxter’s for a beer. Hazel watches him lurch down the hall. He stops twice and leans against the hallway, but he keeps on walking out the door.

  Mabel has calmed down. “I’m not getting well, Iris.”

  “I know,” Iris says matter-of-factly. She could be talking about the weather.

  “Nobody will talk to me about it. They all want to pretend it’s not happening.” Mabel’s voice is so weak, Hazel can hardly make out what she’s saying.

  “They’re afraid, is all,” Iris says. Hazel almost snorts.

  “I suppose they are.” Mabel’s voice has fallen. Hazel moves forward a step or two. “They’re not the ones dying, though.” Mabel and Iris chuckle a little. Iris pats Mabel’s hand and pulls a chair close to the bed.

  “Do you believe in heaven?” Mabel asks.

  Iris nods. “I was raised on it,” she says. “Mama died when I was young. Daddy not much later. Now, Pete’s in heaven, too. I wonder sometimes what it will be like.”

  “My sister’s gone. I lost a baby on
ce. Died with whooping cough.”

  Mabel rests, quiet for a while. Hazel thinks maybe she has fallen asleep when she opens her eyes. “Thank you, Iris.”

  Iris starts to stand up. Mabel needs her rest, but she has one more thing on her mind. “Tell the preacher not to come.”

  Iris stands by Mabel’s bed. “Mabel, people love you and don’t know how else to show it. Why don’t you let them come? What can it hurt?”

  Mabel smiles a little, then nods. As Iris moves away, Mabel shoots out a hand and grabs her arm. “Barney . . . What will become of Barney?”

  Iris covers Mabel’s hand with her own. “Barney will manage, Mabel. But he’ll miss you.”

  That night, Hazel moves restlessly around the living room of her home. She picks up a magazine and lays it down. Once she trudges to the kitchen, slices a piece of chocolate cake, and pours herself a glass of milk. She turns the TV on and off. Finally, she gets herself ready for bed.

  In the bathroom she looks at her heavy face in the mirror. Glasses, brown hair. Her eyes dark and saggy underneath. Never was a looker, no sir.

  She puts on her striped pajama shirt and drawstring bottoms. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she picks up the card from Mabel’s husband. Her feet flop up and down in her slippers, beat a pattern on the carpeted floor. She flings her glasses onto the bed and digs at her eyes with her hand. Then, she rubs the back of her neck. She wishes she had soaked her feet, all day on them and her new shoes chafe.

  Glasses in place, still restless, she pulls open the top drawer of her nightstand. She takes out a small stack of photographs and clippings. The top photo shows a mom and dad and a boy about twelve. He’s the kid died last year from a rattlesnake bite. Freak accident, out riding by himself, got down to open a fence. The horse returned to the ranch, but by the time they found the kid, he was too far gone. The next is a clipping, obituary for a woman who had a stroke. Another photo, this one of a husband, wife, and a newborn who lived only six days. Hazel works partway through the stack, recalling each room, each diagnosis, until she grows impatient and throws the whole lot on the bed. She reaches again farther back in the drawer and closes her hand around the beads of her mother’s rosary. She lifts it from the drawer and holds it across both palms. She feels no heat, even though she knows her mother fingered the black beads every day. She drapes the rosary over the lampshade, stuffs the clippings and photos back into the drawer, climbs into her bed. As she reaches to turn out the light, she turns the dangling crucifix to the back of the lampshade. The last thing she wants to see is a mangled body on a cross.

  The next day, Reverend Fowler shows up with his little band. They stand around Mabel’s bed, lay hands on her, and ask God to heal her. Barney stands by her head, both hands cradling Mabel’s face. Mabel bucks up for their performance, smiles and thanks them.

  Three days later, Mabel dies. Iris and Hazel are cleaning out her room, sanitizing it for the next patient.

  “Cancer is a hard way to go,” Iris says.

  Hazel does not respond.

  “She’s better off, poor soul. I always say I don’t fear death, but I don’t look forward to the dying.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?”

  Hazel turns from her mopping. She feels herself growing large, but she can’t help it. Iris looks confused, unfocused. Hazel hardly blames her, the shock, the giant has spoken.

  “I can’t stand your constant chatter. You never leave alone a single second of silence.”

  “I’m sorry.” Iris turns red, stammering. Hazel thinks she ought to be enjoying this more than she is.

  “You don’t live in reality, you know that? All your yammering about heaven. You think people are just stacked up over there, like airplanes on a runway?”

  Hazel pauses, surprised to discover she wants to know what Iris thinks. Where is my mother, she wants to ask. She waits, but Iris says nothing.

  “Well?” she prods.

  “What I believe is my business.”

  “You make it everybody else’s business.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Hazel sees how it is, then. Iris won’t tell her. Not her.

  “I’m sick to death of your smiling face,” Hazel says. Her eyes sting. She needs to get out of here, and fast. Turning, she throws one more line over her shoulder. “I got along fine before you came.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  Hazel stops still. She draws in a ragged breath. She grinds her teeth and hardens her face before she turns to face Iris.

  “So, that’s what Barbara and Lucille said?”

  “It’s all over town. No one can stand to work with you. You drive everybody away.”

  Hazel clings to the handle of her mop. She’s afraid if she lets go, she’ll fall down.

  “You don’t care about anyone but yourself,” Iris says, her voice trembling and high. She’s flailing a feather duster when Jerry rushes in.

  Younger than either of them, up to here with administrative hassle, Jerry all but shouts at them. “What the hell is going on in here? We have patients in this hospital who expect a little peace and quiet.”

  “I can’t work with her,” Hazel says.

  “Fine.” Jerry’s hands land on his hips. “Then quit.”

  Hazel turns her back on him. She blinks hard and stares at the blank white wall. She tries to think what else she might do, but comes up with nothing. This job is all she has. She’s never had to quit before. The others have always quit.

  She turns around slowly. Jerry and Iris are talking softly. She doesn’t need to hear the words to know that he’s taking Iris’s side.

  “How about if we divide up the work?” Hazel makes this offer. She might as well be throwing every nickel she owns into a poker pot. “Maybe different shifts? I just don’t want to be in the same room with her.”

  Jerry studies the floor for a minute. He scratches at his head. Then, he turns to Iris.

  “That all right with you, Iris?”

  “Fine.” Iris sets her lips in a prim line. Hazel studies her. She’s not going to back down, and Hazel likes that.

  “All right.” Jerry lets exasperation show in his voice. “I’ll see what kind of schedule I can work out. Until then, you think you can manage to get the work done?”

  When Jerry is gone, Iris and Hazel look each other over.

  “If you want to go on, I’ll finish up this room.” Iris, for once, doesn’t smile.

  “No, you go. I’ll do it.”

  “Suit yourself.” Iris shrugs and moves off.

  Finally, with the room to herself, Hazel begins to relax. She moves around the periphery, thinking about Mabel Becker. She remembers Mabel had a role once in the town melodrama, played the heroine who gets tied to the tracks. She had pretty gold hair then. Hazel sits on the edge of the bed and runs her hands over the pillow. There are one or two cards left. Hazel reads them, sentimental drivel, drops them in the wastebasket. She opens the drawer of the bedside table and takes out the copy of the Bible provided by the Gideons. Inside the front cover, where she saw Mabel tuck it one day, she finds a photo of Mabel and Barney. Both of them smiling, their heads tilted together, in front of Mount Rushmore. On the back, in Mabel’s handwriting, 50th anniversary trip. Hazel studies their faces, memorizing Mabel’s, then slips the photo in her pocket. I can’t live without you, Barney had written. But he would.

  Redeeming the Time Being

  Emily and her mother face each other across a narrow table in a foreign café. Annie, who never drinks coffee, has taken to it here in Spain, orders café manchado, a shot of espresso with milk and sugar. She says she likes that it’s served in a tiny ceramic cup, not in a 14-ounce cardboard container like the lattes she’s tried back home in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  They don’t look alike, this mother and daughter. Both are tall and thin, but Emily has the androgynous figure of a teen model, all legs and no hips. Annie’s short, gray-peppered hair waves away from her face. Emily’s blond hair stand
s up a half-inch long, a new style she hoped would shock her mother. Instead, Annie can’t stop talking about how gorgeous Emily looks, how the buzz cut plays up her eyes.

  “What shall we do today?” Annie peers over the brim of her coffee. Her hands cradle the cup, evenly trimmed nails on long fingers.

  “I don’t know, Mom. What’s left to see?” Emily doesn’t mask her annoyance.

  “How about your new apartment?”

  “I don’t think so. Bea and Nieves are both gone over the holidays. I hardly know them. I don’t feel right about going there.”

  “Can’t we just peek in? I’d like to be able to picture you there next semester.”

  Emily shifts in her chair. Bites her ragged fingernails. “If I’m here.”

  “Of course you’ll be here. We’ve been over this.”

  “You’ve been over it.”

  “It will get better. If you leave now, you’ll miss out on the best part of the year.”

  They sit without speaking for a few minutes. Emily’s foot jostles up and down under the narrow table. She hates it here. She’s staying at a hotel with her mother during the Christmas break because she moved out on her host family. She couldn’t take the blaring television, the old man and woman yelling at each other, the grandbaby crying. They gave her their best room, clean and Spartan, with a little girl’s pink bedspread, a framed photo of Monica the saint, their previous exchange student who did nothing but study all day. Emily made herself eat disgusting food, jamón and something that tasted like bacon fat. She didn’t know until two months into her year abroad that other Spaniards eat vegetables. She tried once to buy a tomato from a street vendor, but somehow purchased a postcard of the Virgin Mary. There are Virgins everywhere, garishly painted and plastic, some with blinking neon eyes, others spitting water from kewpie doll lips. One, in the doorway of a shoe store, holds out supplicating arms.

  “Emily. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Sorry.” Emily presses her hand on her knee to settle her leg in place. She studies her mother, the familiar face, little makeup, softening skin, intelligent eyes. “Do you think about him?”