After Visiting Friends

by Michael Hainey

  But the only sound she hears is my grandmother’s distant crying. My mother calls the night nurse, who goes to my grandmother’s room and calms her, puts her to bed. The nurse tells my mother that my grandmother is suffering through something the doctors call “sundowning.” She says it means old people with what they call “memory issues” fall apart at sundown. “There’s something about the creeping darkness that triggers it,” the nurse says. “We think the darkness reminds them of the enormity of what they no longer can remember. It overwhelms them.”

  A few weeks later, my grandmother is transferred to the Special Care Unit, a.k.a. the Nursery.

  #

  I was in New York during all of this, getting updates from my mother. The weariness in her voice crushed me. She’s always had a complex relationship with her mother. Now it’s one more chapter. I can be there for her. But I also know she has to go through this as we all must—alone.

  #

  I return home. On the flight, I resolve to talk to my mother about what I’ve learned about my father. Not just come clean with her, but see what she knows about him, about that night.

  I land at O’Hare, turn on my phone. She’s left a message while I’ve been in flight: “Meet me at Resurrection. Gramma’s here. I don’t know what’s going on. Central Baptist said she was nauseated. That she wasn’t eating. So . . . I don’t know. Okay? Bye.”

  I find them in the emergency room. There’s my grandmother, all eighty pounds of her, lying on a big gurney inside a room with white curtains for walls. My mother sits on a plastic chair, clasping her purse. I bend down to kiss her.

  My grandmother’s eyes are closed and the sheet is pulled to her chin. Only her white-tufted head peeks out. I walk to her and whisper in her ear, “Gramma, I love you.” Her eyes open and she smiles—or tries to. They’ve taken her dentures.

  “Ohhhhh . . . ,” she says, lifting her hand from beneath the sheet and touching my cheek, “there’s my little boy.”

  All night, they push my grandmother from curtain-walled room to curtain-walled room. In each, a different machine. MRI. CT. Others, I don’t know. When I ask a nurse what they’re doing, she says, “Imaging. We need to see what’s inside her. We do it to everyone.”

  Later, a woman tells us my grandmother’s been admitted. That there’s nothing for us to do. That they won’t know anything until the morning.

  I sense my mother’s relief at being given permission to leave.

  I take her to an Italian place near Resurrection. We eat without speaking. This is our language. This is us, communicating.

  Over her shoulder, I can see the TV. The White Sox are on. Home game. A line of men struggle to pull a flapping black tarp across the bright green field.

  “It’s raining on the South Side,” I say.

  She says nothing.

  “Probably coming our way,” I say.

  A few minutes later, a flash of lightning. The sky opens.

  “Great,” my mother mutters.

  “What?”

  “My sump pump’s going to be running all night.”

  #

  The next morning I find my grandmother asleep. Room 462. Some sort of cloth/plastic material is lashed once, twice around her thin wrists, then to the bed rails.

  “She needs to be restrained,” the nurse tells me before I can say anything. “She pulled out all her IVs in the middle of the night, screaming that she wanted to go home.”

  She looks at me, looking at my grandmother.

  “It happens,” the nurse says. “We call it hospital dysphasia. People her age—is this your . . . ?”

  “My Gramma.”

  “People your grandmother’s age often lose their bearings when they come for care. The familiar has been taken away. The restraints are for her own good. We believe restraints help people remember where they are.”

  She’s a butterfly, pinned in a box.

  #

  I sit with her all morning. She sleeps.

  Everything in this room, the color of veal. The linoleum. The bed frame. The walls. The garbage can. The tray table. The blinds. The IV stand. The curtain that pulls between her and the other lady over there who keeps coughing a cough that makes me wince. Even the faded Palm Sunday fronds tucked behind the plastic crucifix that’s screwed to the wall—veal, too. The only color here, except for the TV, a big black square bolted high on the wall, and the plastic blue buckles on my grandmother’s restraints.

  Late morning, the nurse returns and tells me the tests are inconclusive. She tells me there’s a theory my grandmother may have “a blockage,” so they’re not going to give her anything by mouth. Just IV.

  “This way,” the nurse says, “we can see what happens.”

  It’s afternoon when Gramma wakes. I lean in to her good ear. “Gramma,” I say, “it’s Michael.”

  I watch her eyes, watery and swollen, try to focus. I can feel her mind trying to put the pieces together.

  She jerks her face to the corner of the room and says, “Who’s that little guy over there?”

  “Gramma, there’s no one there.”

  “When my momma died, a fireman came to our store. He goes into her bedroom and then he says, ‘Your mother’s dead.’ I was ten. What’re you gonna do? My father buried her the day before July Fourth. You weren’t there. Were you? Independence Day. Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  She pulls the edge of the blanket toward her mouth.

  Or tries to.

  She can only raise it a bit before the restraints go taut. To her, it’s like there’s something wrong with her arms. She lifts her head from the pillow and inches it toward the blanket. She looks like an old tortoise craning its head out from its shell.

  And then, finally, she bites the blanket.

  “Hey,” she rasps, “this watermelon is dry! Smoky Joe sold you a bum melon.”

  She drops her head back and closes her eyes. Every time she closes her eyes, I think, This is it. I watch her chest now, thin as a balloon and exposed by her veal-colored hospital gown, to make sure she is still breathing.

  Her eyes flick open.

  “My whole life, I was afraid I was going to be alone. Then your momma was born. The nurse brought her in and gave her to me and I pulled the sheets over my head and held your momma and I cried and cried.”

  After a moment, she says, “Let’s go to Carson’s. I need a new coat. Winter’s coming.”

  She looks around the room. Her eyes lock on the high corner where the window meets the wall.

  “I got two kids waiting for me at home! I gotta go home. Let me outta here!”

  She jerks her wrists against the restraints. The pale blue buckles slide tight.

  I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb, the way I remember her always doing to me. “Gramma, you have to stay here until you get better.”

  Not even a hint of recognition. She looks through me.

  “Let me out of here!”

  Her voice is shredded and shocking in its volume, the way a baby’s screech never fails to startle me. She heaves again against her restraints, each wrist pulling. A diminished Hercules. She writhes, but no pillars crumble.

  “My kids are all alone!” Then her eyes lock on me. “Hey, what El line do we need? Which way?”

  “Gramma, do you know where you are?”

  “Hell yes. State Street.”

  “So—”

  “—sew buttons on your underwear, zippers aren’t in style!”

  “What?”

  “Is that a hickey on your neck?”

  “No.”

  “I’m observant, aren’t I? You look ninety percent like your father and ten percent like your mother.”

  “What’s the ten percent?”

  “Your smile.”

  I smile. She closes her eyes. The restraints go slack.

  Above her bed, two pieces of paper are taped to the wall. The first: THIS PATIENT IS NPO. (For the Latin Nil Per Os—nothing by mouth.) The second: THIS PATIENT IS DNR. (For the Englis
h Do Not Resuscitate.)

  I watch her sleep. Her mouth drops open. A hole. Agape.

  Agape. From the Greek: filled with love.

  #

  I return to New York. Two days later, my mother calls, tells me she’s been released. A full recovery.

  “So what was it?” I ask.

  “Dehydration. That’s what the doctors say. But she’s better now.”

  9

  TWO STEPS AHEAD

  It was a few weeks before Christmas now. My father was dead longer than he’d been alive, and I’d spent years searching for an answer. For the truth. A lead here, a stray thought there. Then, I was at work one afternoon when Lynne, that woman from Thorek Memorial’s records department, calls. She tells me, “Mr. Mike, I found your father’s emergency room admitting form for that night.” She says, “It was just one lonesome old piece of paper and it had slipped between two file folders. I looked in that cabinet three times. And yesterday I got to thinking I wanted to help you, so I went back one more time, went through that file cabinet like I was looking for a winning Powerball ticket, and Lord, there it was.”

  “Lynne, you are the best! Thank you. Can you mail me a copy today?”

  “No, honey. Not without authorization from my supervisor.”

  #

  I call the supervisor, tell her what I need. The supervisor says, “And you are next of kin?”

  “I’m his son.”

  “And his wife is deceased?”

  I consider telling the supervisor my mother is dead. But that lie terrifies me. Magical thinking, I guess.

  “No. My mother? No. She is alive.”

  “Well, you’ll need to have her send a signed letter requesting the file. We only release files to next of kin.”

  #

  It’s 1973. My mother deletes her “r.” It’s morning. Kitchen table. She’s reading the Sun-Times, skimming “Kup’s Column” for people she knows. I’m eating Kix. Drowning it in sugar, trying to make it not taste like packing material. I ask her if she can sign my permission slip for our class field trip to The Field Museum. She picks up the blue Bic pen, the one for working the crossword. Signs, Ms. Barbara Hainey.

  “What’s a Ms.?” I ask.

  “ ‘Ms.’ is a new word,” she tells me. “That’s what I am now.”

  “But aren’t you always a Mrs.?” I ask.

  “I’m not a Miss and I’m not a Mrs. I’m a Ms.”

  I’ve seen these Ms.’s. They have long straight hair and wear aviator glasses and tight shirts. I see them in the paper, carrying megaphones. I see them on TV, calling men pigs. They don’t need anyone, they say. The whole thing is too much for me to grasp. A total rebellion. If she is no longer a Mrs., how can she be my mother?

  #

  The next day, I send the supervisor a letter requesting my father’s records, signed by me, Ms. Barbara Hainey.

  Forgery. To forge ahead. The American Way. Daniel Boone. All that.

  # # #

  Christmas comes.

  I find my grandmother in the cafeteria. All the residents are seated around a woman at the piano singing carols. A few sing along.

  She’s next to the piano, asleep. Her head, flicked back on one shoulder, as if her neck muscles have been unhitched. I know she’s asleep, but each time I reach out to her, I’m prepared for her not to wake.

  As I walk through the room, I feel the eyes of the residents upon me. They make me aware of my outsiderness. Of my ability to exist in a world beyond this room.

  I touch her thin shoulder.

  Nothing.

  “Gramma, it’s me.”

  Her eyes open, just a slit. She looks at me for what seems like forever. Then, “Are you married?”

  “Not yet.”

  She closes her eyes, whispers, “Only when you’re away from me do I know where you are.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  I wheel her to her room and ease her into a chair. Her eyes close immediately. I look out the window. Some snow-rain falls, blown slant by wind I cannot feel. A young oak stands quiet, its bark wet and black against the low gray sky.

  “Gramma, I love you.”

  She opens her eyes.

  “Where’s Momma?”

  “Home.”

  She closes her eyes again.

  On her table is a palm-size cardboard box from Carson Pirie Scott & Co. The corners are split, held together with masking tape that’s cracked and dried. Inside I find two tiny prayer books, the kind with thin metal latches on them, both in Polish. There’s a rosary and a crucifix of wood. And there’s a piece of faded paper. Years ago, she wrote her inventory: FIRST COMMUNION ROSARY. CRUCIFIX FROM MOM’S CASKET.

  I kneel down in front of her. I take her hands again in mine. She does not open her eyes, but she pinches my hands with her thumbs and index fingers, moves her hands over my hands. A slow, soft circle. This goes on for ten minutes, maybe more. I am not sure if she is sleeping or in some sort of fugue state. I do not want to wake her.

  I lean close to her good ear.

  “Gramma, what are you doing?”

  Her eyes do not open. “Making a pie,” she says. “Gotta pinch the dough just like this. Gentle-like. Get it right against the dish. You want apple or pumpkin?”

  “Apple, Gramma.”

  “Apple’s good. I got nice ones for you. I had a dream about you last night. You were walking somewhere with Bob. He was holding your hand. You were a little boy and he was talking to you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘You know what to do.’ ”

  “What was he talking about?”

  “That was it,” she says.

  “And what happens?”

  “He’s always there. He never goes away. He was a good man.”

  And then, for a moment, she opens her eyes, looks at me.

  “You should stop kneeling.”

  She closes her eyes. Her hands go on.

  # # #

  In the mail there is a large envelope from Thorek Memorial. Inside, a lone piece of paper. A grainy photocopy of EMERGENCY ROOM REPORT AND CHARGE NO. 38562 filled out by Nurse Gray in perfect Palmer Method penmanship.

  Under PLACE OF ACCIDENT, she writes 3930 North Pine Grove.

  Under PATIENT BROUGHT TO HOSPITAL BY: CPD.

  Under DIAGNOSIS: D.O.A. (5:07 a.m.)

  Under TREATMENT: Coroner notified by police officers.

  And finally, under STATEMENT OF PATIENT OR INFORMANT, Nurse Gray writes, Found in living room, apparently dead, by Roberta Hess—Fire Dept inhalator (Amb #6) at scene.

  #

  Roberta Hess. 3930 North Pine Grove.

  There it is.

  A friend, visited.

  #

  I Google ROBERTA HESS CHICAGO SUN-TIMES and find her obituary from the San Francisco Chronicle dated Wednesday, November 5, 2003, headlined, BOBBIE HESS—VETERAN S.F. JOURNALIST.

  What crushes me is the date. She died a month after I began this search.

  #

  I read her Chronicle obit.

  As a newspaper editor, Bobbie Hess went after the truth of world events with the fierce tenacity of a general mobilizing for battle.

  On her own time, she was a generous soul who baked thousands of batches of holiday cookies and gave them away, stitched needlepoint Christmas stockings for scores of nieces, nephews and friends, and still had time to track every move of her beloved Ohio State Buckeyes and Chicago Cubs.

  Ms. Hess, who held many positions at the Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner over the past 26 years, died of pneumonia during the weekend in her apartment on San Francisco’s Russian Hill. She had been a newspaper editor for most of her 58 years, most recently as a copy editor in the Chronicle’s Date-book section.

  She was “a damned good newspaperwoman,” said recently retired newsman Larry D. Hatfield, a colleague of Ms. Hess throughout her time in San Francisco. Chronicle Executive Vice President and Editor Phil Br
onstein said the paper was mourning “a fine professional and a truly fine human being.”

  Born and bred in the rural town of Tiffin, Ohio, Ms. Hess grew into an amalgam of her roots and aspirations—part small town, part urban sophisticate and world traveler. She doted on her family back home but adored San Francisco, along with London and its royals.

  Journalism was her lifelong love. She was the first female editor of both her high school newspaper and the Ohio State University Lantern.

  Two days after graduating from Ohio State in 1967, Ms. Hess plunged into the mostly male world of big city newspapering, taking a job on the Chicago Sun-Times copy desk. She was a small blonde sprite invading a bastion of hard-bitten, cigar-chomping men who didn’t really want her around.

  “She was a pistol. She was young, brash and eager to get ahead, very serious about her work, anxious to do a wide range of jobs,” said Paul Berning of Alameda, who then worked with Hess at the Sun-Times.

  She proved her mettle and was lured away by the Examiner in 1977.

  In her new position, too, she was a pioneer, the “first of several women we hired on the copy desk in an attempt to end its long-time status as an ‘old men’s club,’ ” recalled Jim Houck, then Examiner news editor and now city editor of the Visalia Times-Delta.

  Quickly promoted to national and foreign editor, Ms. Hess served as the newspaper’s filter on Washington and the world, strategizing coverage of the Falklands war, presidential campaigns and the Iran hostage crisis.

  “She was great on a big story,” Houck said. “She was a ball of fire.”

  Never was she better than on Jan. 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated and Iran was releasing the U.S. hostages—both events happening right on the 8 a.m. deadline for the Examiner, which published in the afternoon. Ms. Hess kept a phone line open to the Tehran airport, refusing to run a story saying the hostages’ plane was in the air until she confirmed it for herself, all the while supervising coverage of the Reagan inauguration. Her efforts paid off. A less thorough wire service reported the plane had taken off, then had to retract the story when the plane turned out to be a decoy. The Examiner’s story got it right.

  Ms. Hess threw the same energy into covering the 1984 presidential campaign. She served as Bronstein’s editor on his reporting trip to the Philippines, offering him advice on what to expect. “She saved me from being naïve,” he said.