by Joni Cole
In my real life (over four-hundred miles away from Garden Spot), I have been married for more than two decades and not once left the bathroom door open for my husband to see me on the toilet. If he’s in the next room, I run the faucet so he can’t hear me peeing. Who am I trying to kid? This is the man who stood at the foot of the bed when I gave birth to our two daughters.
But at Garden Spot all pretense is gone. Most of the residents wear diapers and terry cloth bibs referred to as clothing protectors. On a regular basis, any one of them is likely to let out a string of curses at a visiting family member, weep uncontrollably, ramble on about some ancient wrong, or idly diddle themselves while shuffling down the hallway. I am a married mother of two children. Yet all of these behaviors I could easily imagine myself doing countless times throughout the day, save for my tenuous hold on decorum. Oh, to be able to simply let go.
My dad’s room is furnished with a single bed with rails. His comfy, overstuffed recliner has automatic controls that ease him not only backward but forward, so that the aides don’t have to strain their backs during transfers. Happy things are everywhere—a clock with postage-stamp sized pictures of family members designating each hour, a tin watering can bursting with silk sunflowers, and a top dresser drawer stocked with Hershey Kisses and Cup O’ Soups for visitors, amid the support socks to prevent blood clots. At Garden Spot, you may be old and infirm, but you never have to worry about Death catching you unprepared.
My dad, who lives here because he suffered a massive stroke, dozes in his recliner while he receives his breathing treatment through a plastic mask propped over his nose and mouth. When the respiratory therapist first arrived at my dad’s room this morning, I asked him if I could have a breathing treatment, too, but he acted like I was kidding. The apparatus makes a soft, pleasant hiss, and I imagine the treatment is like getting a hit at one of those oxygen bars that were trendy a couple years ago, or may be still trendy for all I know. I’ve always wanted to go to one of those bars, but I live in Vermont, where the oxygen is outside and most people aren’t willing to package it for you. If you want to breathe where I live, you’re on your own.
I relax in my dad’s wheelchair watching a Murder, She Wrote rerun on the television. The main character, Jessica Fletcher, is a sixty-something mystery author who lives in a small coastal village in Cabot Cove, Maine, and happens to stumble upon a murder once a week. Jessica doesn’t know how to drive, but she gets around plenty with just her bicycle.
Wouldn’t I love Jessica’s two-wheeling lifestyle? I think. It seems like I spend half my life in a car, carting one kid or another here or there, despite the fact that I hate to drive and that I’m not very good at it. My tendency is to either speed or crawl; my emotions constantly flip-flop from road rage at all the other drivers as incompetent as me, and sudden panic at the notion that this is just one more way I could die a violent death. Worse yet, I’m constantly aware of the possibility of involving my daughters in an accident en route to their piano lessons or basketball practices or jewelry-making workshops, thus cutting short their over-scheduled young lives, not to mention making them late once again.
Murder, She Wrote ends and is followed by another Murder, She Wrote. In this episode, Jessica’s niece (Jessica herself is a widow and childless) is accused of doing away with an old boyfriend, and needs her aunt’s help in finding the true killer. During a commercial, I flip to the television listings on the Guide Channel, and discover that the station is airing a Murder, She Wrote marathon! Twenty-four hours of Murder, She Wrote!
You cannot imagine my happiness. Given the long-running popularity of the show, I have years and years of Murder, She Wrote to catch up on. Years I was distracted after college by random jobs (loan collections, bartending, copywriting), then trying to land a husband, then going to graduate school, then more attempts to start, or at least find, a fulfilling career as a writer, then having babies, then juggling work and motherhood and essentially multitasking but somehow underachieving my way through years and years of life, while never catching up on all the things I have to do, or should be doing, or would rather be doing, such as watching back-to-back episodes of murder in a charming small town in Maine.
Stacey, one of the aides I met during my last visit to Garden Spot a few months ago, pops into my dad’s room to check on him. “You’re Myles’ youngest daughter!” she announces with enthusiasm. Like most members of the nursing home staff, Stacey makes me feel special for no other reason than just showing up. If only the people in my real life—my family, my friends, the editors I work with—shared these minimal requirements for appreciation. Stacey removes my dad’s breathing mask and perches his glasses on his nose, even though his stroke rendered him virtually blind.
“Aren’t you the writer from Vermont?” she asks me.
I lower the volume of the TV and shake myself out of my Murder, She Wrote stupor. Yes, I nod, I am indeed the writer from Vermont, though it has never occurred to me to frame my life in such romantic-sounding terms. I picture myself at work, not at my desk that overlooks the trash on the back porch, but cozily curled up in a hand-hewn rocker by a roaring fire, penning Frost-like thoughts in a cloth-bound journal.
“Myles, hon?” Stacey interrupts my fantasizing, and adjusts my dad’s fleece blanket with the image of a howling wolf. One of the volunteers at Garden Spot gave it to him, and it is the only blanket that seems to keep him warm. “Do you need me to take you to the bathroom?”
At noon, I wheel my dad to lunch in one of Garden Spot’s spacious dining rooms. En route, I hear a woman’s feeble voice call out, “Help me. Help me. Help me.” When we pass her room, I peek inside. She is sitting up in bed, her white hair as wispy as the contents of a milk pod. Her eyes stare vacantly at the wall, and she clutches a baby doll under her chin. “Help me. Help me. Help me,” she repeats tonelessly, patting her baby doll’s back. The chanting and patting seem to soothe her.
I once skimmed an article in a doctor’s waiting room, advising readers to come up with a mantra to help them meditate or simply do nothing. Who has time to do nothing? I thought with resentment, but now I knew the answer. If I lived in Garden Spot, I would have a mantra. And I’d bring my favorite doll from childhood. Her name was Baby Drowsy and she wore pink, polka dot pajamas. Baby Drowsy was soft and squishy and always made me feel better, even when everyone else in the world was mean to me.
My dad and I arrive at the dining room, resplendent with planters of fall mums and miniature pumpkins adorning each tabletop. The seasonal decorations remind me that I forgot to take my daughters shopping for their Halloween costumes, which will be less than a week away by the time I return to Vermont. This means that they will once again have to choose from K-Mart’s decimated racks, reduced to a mish mash of Disney’s least popular characters, gory masks with no strings, and molting feather boas. I also remember that I forgot to return the girls’ school picture forms, which are likely buried amid the stack of unpaid bills, expired coupons, and flyers for swing dance lessons that I have been collecting off and on for decades.
Muzak plays quietly in the dining room. My father sits at his reserved table for four, joined by Agnes, who is beautifully dressed but skeletal, and her husband, Michael, who looks relatively robust with his shock of steel-grey hair and raptor-like, black eyes. Another resident, Walter, is missing, though a table-top placard with his dietary restrictions—no liquids, no dairy—holds his place. At Garden Spot, there is no pressure to make small talk, or even stay awake for that matter. Agnes dozes in her wheelchair, while Michael concentrates on navigating his unsteady fork to his mouth.
So much food! And none of it prepared by me. Ham steak today (solid or ground), mashed potatoes, fluffy white rolls and butter pats, broccoli, carrots, fruit cup, milk with or without thickener, and coffee. And for dessert: white-frosted cake with sprinkles, or a non-dairy ice cream treat.
At home, meal preparation—breakfasts, packed lunches, dinners, breakfasts, packed lunches, dinners—fe
els never-ending. It is also made worse by the fact that the school guidance counselor persists on sending home handouts about the benefits of the family meal, reportedly a cure-all for everything from poor grades to teenage pregnancy.
The problem, however, is that no one in my family will eat the same thing. So most of our family meals are frozen dinners. We sit down together at the table. The microwave beeps. It’s time to stir someone’s Stouffers Swedish Meatballs and reheat for three minutes. We sit down again. The microwave beeps. Someone else’s macaroni and cheese is still frozen in the middle, or their Boca Burger is overcooked on the edges. How in the world does my daughter’s guidance counselor expect me to prevent teenage pregnancy when microwave cooking times are so uneven?
My dad declares that he is full after I feed him his ground ham and fruit cup. I know the dietary consultants here assess the food left on every resident’s plate, in order to make sure they are taking in enough calories. But what harm, I think, in eating my dad’s cake with sprinkles? Like a luxury cruise, the food at Garden Spot is included in the package price, so why should it go to waste?
After I wheel my father back to his room, another aide, Tony, appears to help him settle in for his afternoon nap, leaving me to take a leisurely stroll through the facility. Gone is my usual “Impatient Mommy” speed-walk, typically with one arm extended backward toward a trailing kid. I know just what I look like as Impatient Mommy because my daughters have learned to mimic me to perfection. At home, I am always in a hurry, rushing from somewhere to somewhere else, consistently seventeen minutes late. But at Garden Spot, I am free to lollygag. Why hurry, after all, when the days here go on and on, defined only by mealtimes and medications?
I stroll past residents’ rooms, reading the nameplates along the way—Cora, Earl, Verna, Ruth, Grace. Despite my own encroaching menopause, the old-fashioned names make me feel young, even youthful again, like somebody’s granddaughter, or great granddaughter.
Eventually, I exit the automatic doors of the skilled nursing unit and enter the carpeted thoroughfare of Garden Spot’s assisted living facility. The “Jolly Trolley” putters around me in the wide hallway, tooting its horn in a friendly heads up. Its driver stops a few yards ahead to allow a stooped man in plaid golf pants to hobble aboard. The Jolly Trolley is even better than Jessica Fletcher’s bicycle, I think. You don’t even have to pedal.
Here, everything you could possibly want or need is within comfortable walking or wheeling distance: an information desk with free coffee; a beauty parlor; a computer center; a lending library; a Gift Shoppe; an elegant gathering room with a grand piano and fancy coffee table books on subjects from Dolly Parton to Victorian tea services.
Near the entrance to the solarium (home to thriving exotic plants, two caged cockatiels, and a fountain with cherubs) is a floor-to-ceiling aquarium built right into the wall. Inside the tank is a small man in a wet suit who is polishing the interior of the glass. I finger wave a hello, wishing a small man in a wet suit would come to my house to clean. At Garden Spot, everything is kept sparkly bright. I could happily live in any one of the ladies’ restrooms, which are tastefully appointed, and regularly deodorized with automated puffs of floral air freshener. And in every stall, an emergency pull cord!
When I return to my dad’s room in the skilled nursing unit, he is again reclined in his comfy chair, covered, as usual, in his fleece wolf blanket. His eyes are closed. Murder, She Wrote is still on the television, but the volume is set on low. “Daddy,” I whisper, “Are you awake?” He doesn’t answer, but his breathing is even.
I decide to catch up on some work. In fact, I have brought my laptop with me to Garden Spot for this very reason. The writer from Vermont, after all, has deadlines and professional obligations. I settle into my dad’s wheelchair and open a blank document. Maybe I will start by writing something new.
The room is warm; the thermostat is set in the high seventies to accommodate my dad’s poor circulation. I stare at the blank computer screen and my own reflection stares back at me, older than I imagined. In my mind, I see myself as a tired twenty-something, but the creases from my nose to my mouth remind me otherwise. I am getting old. I don’t have a real job with benefits or a pension. I don’t know which haircut is right for my face shape. I am equally self-centered and insecure, and my daughters will have to go trick-or-treating in gory, age-inappropriate masks with makeshift strings.
“What should I write about?” I ask my dad. The writer from Vermont is overwhelmed.
“Big plans for your escape,” he responds. Since his stroke, my dad’s consciousness drifts from sleep to wakefulness, from befuddlement to lucidity. He has been like this for years, but it still gets to me, these moments when his mind resurfaces, reminding me of the father he used to be.
“Are you planning your escape?” I ask. The mid-sun cuts through the window beside his recliner, illuminating his skull beneath his sunken cheeks, and his yellow, nursing home pallor. He doesn’t answer. That quickly, he has drifted back to sleep, or to somewhere else. I shut down my computer and wheel myself closer to my dad’s recliner. Even through his heavy wolf blanket, I can feel his bony wrist, the looseness of his skin.
Help me. Help me. Help me, I think, patting my dad’s useless left arm. At Garden Spot, I have time to meditate, or simply do nothing. Help me. Help me. Help me.
This is a rest home. I close my eyes. Here I have permission to rest.
The Boy of Summer
The summer before my junior year of high school, I divided my time between working the counter at Willie’s Meat Store and hanging out at Skyline Swimming Pool. At the meat store, my boss kept the calf livers in a bucket in the walk-in cooler. Thirty years later, I can still bring back the sensation of reaching into that cold, wet pile, groping through the organs, feeling the heft of each liver in my open palm. Maybe because I was sixteen at the time, in the throes of some stage of sensual development, that experience felt a lot more pleasurable than it probably sounds here.
Equally enduring from that summer was another sensual memory, this one involving me and my teenage heartthrob, Dale Zug, at Skyline Pool. The entire interaction between us lasted only thirty or forty seconds, but that was plenty of time for it to become imprinted on my brain, specifically on the part where certain physical encounters, however fleeting, are processed and re-imagined as soft-core pornography in my head.
Dale Zug was a year older than I, new to our high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from some place with Southern accents as warm as pulled taffy. I remember him as lean and easy-going in his Levis 501 jeans. Like all heartthrobs from the ’70s, he wore his dark hair longish and parted far to the side, with a sweep of bangs across his forehead. He wasn’t among the most popular boys at our school, not a jock or the life of the party. He struck me as deep, but not brooding; different, but not weird. He had a great smile. A really great smile.
Dale Zug and I never had a conversation; it’s unlikely he even knew my name. Sometimes our paths would cross accidentally, but more often I simply tried to be where I thought he would show up. This would have been a lot easier if I’d had any musical or acting talent because Dale Zug sang in the choir, and had a small part in the school play. Even these extra-curricular activities fed my attraction, offering more evidence of an artistic soul.
Here, I should disclose that, for the sake of discretion, I have invented the name Dale Zug, though I have tried to assign him a fake name with a comparable quirkiness. This too contributed to the real Dale Zug’s charm, the way his first name and odd last name created an intriguing dynamic. To me, he was never just Dale. Always Dale Zug.
“Don’t you think Dale Zug is the cutest?” I asked my friend Patty whenever she and I talked about boys, which was pretty much all the time. Patty was the only person I eventually confided in about my secret crush, and one of my few friends from high school with whom I have kept in touch. In fact, the last time I asked Patty this question we were in our forties. I was staying at her hou
se after doing a book event near her town, and we were looking through our high school yearbook, gabbing about old times.
“I guess he’s all right looking,” Patty said dismissively. In his senior photo, Dale Zug wore an Irish Fisherman’s sweater with a tie. Granted, this wasn’t his best look, but seeing that sweep of dark wavy hair still made me sigh with romantic longing. Patty’s lack of enthusiasm about Dale Zug’s cuteness did nothing to deter my own. Her judgment had long been suspect ever since she revealed her own teenage crush on John Davidson, an entertainer whose renowned dimples did nothing for me.
“John Davidson,” I’d scoff whenever Patty brought him up. “Why don’t you just make out with a baby’s bottom?”
The summer I worked at Willie’s Meat Store, I was the youngest and hence lowliest employee, so my boss scheduled me to work the hours no one else wanted, mostly evenings and weekends. That was fine by me because I needed to keep my weekdays free. It was important I hang out at Skyline Pool to do the following:
Watch and wait for Dale Zug.
Fry myself in baby oil.
Force myself into the pool inch by inch because I didn’t like the shock of cold water.
Avoid the deep end because I couldn’t swim.
Comb my long, wet hair.
Comb my friends’ long, wet hair.
Play Bloody Knuckles, a card game that is as violent as it sounds.
Feel self conscious about my body in my blue-striped bikini.
Now when I look at photographs of myself at age sixteen, I can see my size and shape were well within the normal range, with certain body parts even showing some signs of promise. That said, if you went by the recurring comments from some of my friends’ mothers, you would think I was the stilt-walker at the fair.