Tomorrow's Vengeance

by Marcia Talley

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ I whispered to Naddie, and scooted off.

  ‘… take a taxi?’ Christie was saying to Richard as I crept up casually behind them, feigning fascination with a game of hearts going on at a table in a nearby corner.

  ‘Cab? You’ve got to be kidding, Christie. I walked the queue, took one look and said no way. Decided to get a rental car. All the cabbies at BWI are Muslims.’

  ‘Surely not!’ she chirped.

  ‘It’s the same in New York. I’ll bet you didn’t know that they come to the U.S. to work as cab drivers for a year so they can get enough money to blow themselves up.’

  I turned away from the card game in time to see Christie shove Richard’s arm playfully with the flat of her hand. ‘You!’

  ‘There goes one now,’ Richard said. ‘Halloween must be coming early this year.’

  He was obviously referring to Safa Abaza, wearing a pale blue hijab, who had paused in front of the reception desk to hand an envelope to the receptionist. Richard stared with obvious venom at Safa’s back as she disappeared through the doorway of the memory unit.

  ‘Don’t be ugly, Dickie,’ Christie chided. ‘She’s really a nice woman. Volunteers with the dementia patients, which is more than most people would do.’

  ‘You can’t trust any of ’em, not even the children.’ His voice broke. After a pause, he cleared his throat and continued, ‘Let’s just say it’s my first amendment right as an American to hate anybody I want, even Muslims.’

  One of the hearts players had a gold-knobbed walking stick propped up against his chair. I felt like grabbing the stick and using it to clobber the Islamophobic jerk, but I was saved from a life sentence for murder when Richard reached over and picked up Christie’s hand, clasping it in both of his own. ‘I was an army medic in Afghanistan, Christie.’

  Christie stared at Richard for a moment as the significance of his statement sank in. She withdrew her hand from his and pressed both her palms over her ears. ‘Stop. I don’t want to hear it.’

  Richard ignored her. ‘I was in a convoy when it was halted by an IED up ahead. While we waited for our guys to move the wreckage off the road, our Jeep was rushed by a crowd of kids – seven, maybe eight years old – begging for candy. I was tossing out strawberry Pop-Rocks when they swarmed over us, and one of them cut my buddy’s neck with a knife. I did everything I could to stop the bleeding, got him on the helicopter and out to the hospital in Bagram …’ Richard paused and swallowed hard. ‘He … he didn’t make it.’

  Christie’s hands came down. She’d been listening after all. ‘Eight years old?’

  Richard nodded. ‘If that.’

  ‘Bomb ’em back to the Stone Age,’ Christie chirped. ‘That’s what Colonel Greene always says.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Richard said. ‘They’re living in the Stone Age.’

  I was observing the couple openly now, but they were so engrossed in their own conversation that they didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘My skills as a medic went way beyond your average Afghan doctor,’ Richard said. ‘You know what they do for wounds?’

  Christie shook her head.

  ‘Slop red dye all over it and hope.’

  ‘Did you have to treat the locals, too?’ Christie asked.

  ‘Damn straight. But even when they’re shot up or sick you can’t be sure they’re not wired up with explosives.’

  Christie mewled. ‘It must be nerve-wracking to risk your life trying to save the life of someone who woke up that morning planning to kill you.’

  ‘That’s my point, Christie. The fewer Muslims there are the better it will be for the world.’

  ‘So you’re back now?’ Christie asked. ‘For good, I mean.’

  ‘I’m at Walter Reed,’ Richard began, ‘in the …’

  ‘Hannah? Hannah Ives?’

  A pleasingly plump woman wearing a peach-colored suit and a nametag that read ‘Elaine Broering, Supervisor, Memory Unit,’ appeared at my elbow and introduced herself. ‘The receptionist pointed you out.’

  My mental gears ground from fast forward into reverse as I tried to push Christie and Richard’s conversation out of my mind. ‘The man’s good,’ I said, referring to the pianist who had segued neatly from Perry Como and ‘Papa Loves Mambo’ into Leslie Gore’s ‘It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To.’

  ‘I agree completely. That’s Charlie Robinson. He volunteers here every Thursday afternoon. In his regular life he’s a building contractor, although you can sometimes catch his act out at Nordstrom, particularly during the holiday season.’

  ‘Love the tie,’ I commented. Robinson had shifted slightly on the piano bench and I could see that the red tie had Scottish terriers on it.

  ‘He has quite a collection,’ Elaine told me. ‘Last week he showed up wearing a tie that looked like a whole fish. On the Fourth of July it was the Statue of Liberty. The residents love it. The ties entertain them almost as much as his music.’

  ‘I’m getting a kick out of the couple on the sofa,’ I said, bobbing my head in their direction. ‘She plays the piano rather well, too.’

  ‘Ah, you must mean Jerry and Nancy – two of my favorite people. Hard not to smile when you’re around them. Until a month or so ago Nancy was on a walker, in physical therapy every day.’ She chuckled. ‘Don’t know why we bother with the PT now. Jerry seems to be just as effective.’

  Charlie Robinson, flashing a Liberace-esque grin, segued into a hopping rendition of ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.’ As we watched, Jerry sprang to his feet with a spryness that surprised me, hitched up his pants, straightened his bow tie, grabbed Nancy by the hand and led her onto the dance floor. Soon they were jiving like arthritic teenagers. When the tune changed to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ the couple barely paused, continuing a careful, but surprisingly sprightly two-step all around the lobby.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid they’re going to fall and hurt themselves?’ I asked.

  ‘Hah! I can see his obituary now: Jerry Wolcott, age eighty-eight, collapses and dies while doing the boogie woogie at a local retirement home. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Welfare Fund for Aged Bankers.’ She snorted softly. ‘Frankly, I hope I go that way.’

  ‘Me, too, but I’d go out discoing to something by the Bee Gees.’

  ‘Chubby Checker, for me,’ she said, swiping her bangs out of her eyes. ‘Doing the twist.’

  While I wondered whether Richard Kent was likely to be at Walter Reed as a patient or if he actually worked there, Elaine took me to her office, where she explained the typical duties of a volunteer, gave me background information on some of the residents, and a consent form to sign that said, basically, that if any of said residents decided to hit me over the head with a bedpan I was shit out of luck, lawsuit-wise. After a trip to Human Resources where I had my picture taken and was given a laminated clip-on name badge that identified me as an official volunteer, I was escorted back to the memory unit and given the combination to the door – 1632, the year Maryland was founded.

  The memory unit was smaller and more intimate than the grand expanse of the main lobby, but handsome enough to qualify for its own spread in House Beautiful. There was nothing depressing about it. To my right was a small dining area that could seat a dozen diners; to my left, a comfortable lounge where several residents now sat, their backs to me, watching a rerun of I Love Lucy on a large, flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. A long corridor extended from where I stood near the entrance of the unit – which was secured with a push-button combination lock – to a double door at the far end. The corridor was carpeted with a short-napped broadloom with a unique design woven into the nap outside each resident’s door – flowers, stars and geometric shapes.

  As I watched, a man emerged from his room and shuffled down the hallway, talking to himself. He let himself out through the double door at the opposite end.

  I tapped Elaine’s arm. ‘He’s going outside.’

  ‘Not to worry
. There’s a walled garden out there. Residents like to come and go as they please. He can’t stray far.’

  We poked our heads into the lounge, where Elaine introduced me to one of the uniformed aides who was dressed in pale yellow scrubs stylish enough to have been designed by Ralph Lauren, if only his logo had been embroidered on the pocket. The aide was filling a bowl from a family-sized bag of Hershey’s miniatures. ‘Help yourself,’ she said after formal introductions were over.

  I selected two semi-sweet chocolate bars and tucked them into my pocket. ‘Thanks.’

  The familiar theme song for Gilligan’s Island drew my attention to the television and I noticed that the couple watching TV was Nancy and Jerry, who’d been tripping the light fantastic in the lounge only a couple of hours before. He kissed her cheek. She giggled.

  ‘Sweet,’ I whispered to Elaine. ‘I hope Paul and I will be so happily married when we’re that age.’

  ‘Oh, they aren’t married,’ Elaine explained. ‘At least, not to each other. Nancy has a husband up in Baltimore, but because of the Alzheimers and all he rarely visits anymore. Damn shame, really. He says, “What’s the point?” Tells us he’s “moved on with his life.”’ She drew quote marks in the air with her fingers and snorted her disapproval. ‘Jerry’s family is more attentive, but then they live right around the corner on East Lake. As I may have mentioned before, Jerry’s a retired banker. He’s been widowed for years.’

  As I watched, feeling like a Peeping Tom, Jerry tipped up Nancy’s chin and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Doesn’t her husband mind?’ I asked.

  ‘He knows. Whatever keeps her happy, that’s what he tells us. If he doesn’t mind, I don’t know why anybody else should.’ We walked a bit further, heading for the room of a woman named Lillian Blake to whom I was supposed to read. ‘In nursing school,’ Elaine continued, ‘we learned that touch is the first sense to develop in the womb, and the last one to go before death. We can all benefit from a loving touch, no matter how out of it we appear.’

  ‘I saw Jerry and Nancy in the main lounge a couple of days ago, too,’ I said. ‘She was playing the piano, so I’m quite surprised to find that they live here, in the memory unit, I mean.’

  ‘We like to integrate our resident population,’ Elaine said. ‘Staff are always out there to keep an eye on them, just in case, but we keep it as unobtrusive as possible, very low key.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid your residents will wander away?’

  She smiled. ‘We used to, until we got the special shoes. There’s a GPS tracking device imbedded in the heel. If patients assigned to the memory unit wander outside the specified area, an alarm goes off. Using the GPS, security can quickly track them down. Unless they take their shoes, off, of course, but that rarely happens. It’s usually hard for dementia patients to manage the laces.’

  A resident marched crisply down the hall, a stopwatch in his hand. At the end he stopped, clicked the watch and shouted, ‘Ninety-two seconds! A new world record!’ He paused for a moment, as if to acknowledge silent applause, then headed back in our direction, his eyes glued to the stopwatch like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said as he breezed past.

  ‘Can’t stop now,’ he said without looking up, ‘or I’ll be late for the train.’

  ‘Pete worked for Norfolk Southern.’ Elaine grinned at the man’s departing back then turned to me, her light brown hair swinging just clear of her shoulders. ‘Here we are. This is Lillian Blake’s room. It’s such a nice day, you might want to sit out in the garden.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Lillian’s practically blind, I’m afraid, and she isn’t able to feed herself very well, so she spends almost all her time here in the unit. Getting a little sun will be good for her.’

  Lillian’s room was the size of your average college dorm room. A double bed stood against the long wall, covered with a handmade quilt; in the center lay a life-sized plush cat surrounded by more than a dozen other stuffed animals. The headboard, bedside table and dresser were made of matching honey-colored oak. Placed at an angle to the picture window was a loveseat upholstered in green and gold-striped silk; two lipstick-red pillows were plumped up and resting against the armrests. An afghan, neatly folded, was draped over the back.

  Lillian waited for me on the loveseat, smiling, her hands folded primly in her lap. She was a sunny, apple dumpling of a woman dressed in a 1950s-style cotton housedress imprinted with white roses on a black background. Her feet were clad in bright red socks and laced up in sensible black oxfords.

  Displayed on a coffee table in front of her were several large picture books: Cameron’s Above Washington, a National Geographic encyclopedia of animals, and Star Wars: A Galactic Pop-Up Adventure. I had to laugh, but, hey, you’d have to be dead not to be a Star Wars fan.

  ‘Lillian likes poetry,’ Elaine said. From a bookshelf next to the dresser she extracted a book and handed it to me: Robert Lewis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses with the classic illustrations by Mary Hallock. The cover was worn, and the spine mended with two kinds of plastic tape.

  With Lillian clinging loosely to my arm we shuffled down the long hallway, out of the door and into a glorious secret garden. Paved paths wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair meandered among beautifully maintained beds of marigolds and hibiscus. Rows of perennials stood tall along the fence – I recognized rhododendron, yarrow and spiderwort – while ground ivy elsewhere provided a blanket of green. Several wrens and a fat robin were busy at a birdfeeder shaped like a pagoda that was under-planted with ferns and hosta. Somewhere a wind chime tinkled.

  After Lillian and I got settled side by side on an old-fashioned glider swing, I opened the book and began to read. ‘“In winter I get up at night, And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see …”’

  Lillian grabbed my wrist and squeezed, hard, harder than I believed possible for anyone so frail. ‘They can’t make me go to bed before dark,’ she said, her pale blue eyes fixed so intensely on me that I imagined my cheek starting to burn. ‘I’m a grown-up, you know.’ After a pause, she said, ‘I thought you were going to read.’

  So I finished the poem. ‘Should I read another one?’ I asked, turning the page.

  She nodded and began to hum tunelessly.

  ‘“How do you like to go up in a swing? Up in the air so blue …”’ I read before the humming stopped and her hand tightened around my wrist again.

  ‘They make us go to bed early. But, sometimes I go visiting after dark.’ She smiled mysteriously.

  I lay the book of poetry, still open to the poem I’d been reading, in my lap.

  ‘Where do you go, Lillian?’

  ‘Oh, out and about. Out and about.’

  I doubted if memory unit residents were allowed the same freedom to roam about the premises at night, when staffing was at reduced levels, as they did during the day. ‘What is there to do at night?’ I asked her, not really expecting an answer.

  She pressed an index finger against her lips then poked me with it. ‘I look after my babies.’

  ‘Your babies?’

  ‘I have lots of babies,’ she told me. ‘Lots of babies!’ She began humming again, rocking from side to side to a rhythm only she could perceive. ‘Do you have babies?’

  ‘I used to,’ I told her. ‘One, but she’s all grown up now.’

  Lillian nodded sagely. ‘One, that’s good. So much easier. If you have too many babies they squabble all the time.’ She paused and looked directly toward a tree whose magnificent branches overhung the wall at the far end of the enclosed garden. ‘I hear them, making noises.’ She stared at it for a good few seconds then leaned in closer to me and started rocking again. ‘Or they’re whispering behind your back, cooking up mischief.’

  Perhaps because we’d been reading classic children’s verses I had to smile, picturing Lillian as the old woman who lived in a shoe, the one who had so many child
ren she didn’t know what to do. ‘My daughter is named Emily,’ I said. ‘What did you name your babies?’

  Lillian stopped rocking and frowned, as if giving my question serious consideration. ‘There’s Princess,’ she said, touching the tip of one index finger to the other. ‘And Spot. And Freckles.’ She scowled, her index finger hovering. ‘I forget the rest.’

  Dogs? Lillian’s ‘babies’ were dogs?

  ‘I don’t see very well,’ she confided after a bit, ‘but I can tell your trousers are red. I like red.’

  ‘I like red, too, Lillian.’

  In a seat under an arbor up which tendrils of wisteria had already started to climb, a woman in an orange sweater with an untidy mass of white hair sat in a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette. She inhaled and held the smoke in her lungs for so long that I was having flashbacks to 1967 and the Summer of Love. Then she exhaled slowly with obvious pleasure.

  On the opposite side of the garden, under a plexiglass kiosk that looked for all the world like a bus stop, an even older man sat, his bald head encrusted with scabs, legs stretched straight out in front of him, his head thrown back and his mouth open. I worried for a moment that he had died, but then he snorted, started, looked around in confusion, checked his watch, shrugged, and then carried on with his nap. After puzzling over it for a moment I realized the kiosk was a bus stop, advertising posters and all. I smiled. All the comforts of home without going anywhere.

  Next to me, the humming abruptly ceased. Lillian reached for the book in my lap, quickly flicked forward through the pages, then back, then forward again. She stopped, squinted and tapped the new page. ‘Read this one,’ she instructed.

  As I did so, she leaned her head against the back of the seat and recited the poem along with me from memory, softly, barely moving her lips. ‘“A birdie with a yellow bill, Hopped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: Ain’t you ’shamed, you sleepy-head.”’

  ‘I like that one, too,’ I told her.

  ‘More, please, lovey,’ she said.