by Joan Barfoot
But it’s clean and bright. No doubt the care is excellent. Aggie would be fine here. Look at all the people — and she must get lonesome, after so many years of women popping in and out of the bakery.
The dining room is filled with long tables, with straight-backed chairs with seats covered, inevitably, in plastic.
“What about meals? What sort of food do they get?”
“The best. They’re designed by dietitians in our head office; they do complete monthly menu plans particularly designed for the elderly, and we stick right to them. You’d probably also like to know that besides government inspectors, the company sends around its own, so even if we wanted to, which of course we don’t, there’s no shirking in the care.”
“But visitors can bring food in too, can’t they? My mother has quite an appetite, quite a sweet tooth.”
He frowns dubiously. “As long as she can manage it on her own, I don’t expect that’s a problem. But it isn’t necessary, you know. As I said, we provide adequate, healthy meals, and snacks, too, in the evenings — cookies and fruit juice. Now,” he moves on, “there’s also a general-purpose and meeting room. Ministers and priests come in and hold services, and sometimes there are concerts. School children and so on. And once a week we have a crafts instructor. We do encourage people to be active and take part in things.”
Just about what she’d expected; but even seeing the place, it’s hard to picture Aggie squeezed into the television lounge, overcrowding it all by herself, or bent over some creation in yarn or clay. “Mostly my mother likes to read.”
“Well, that’s fine. Active minds are just as important as active bodies.” He’ll get no argument there from Aggie.
“Now you’ll want to see the rooms.” Actually, she pretty well has seen them. All along the hall, not one door was closed. She has seen something like a dead man, lying fully dressed on a bed, eyes closed and hands folded across his chest. Also a woman curled up in a ball, her dress hiked around her hips, thighs showing. June is permitted to stare as if they were paintings, or sculptures.
“Why are all the doors open?”
“Mainly for supervision, so staff can keep a quick eye that nothing’s gone wrong. It’s a safety thing.”
“Don’t they mind?”
“Who? The residents? Oh, I don’t think so. I expect they know it’s for their own good.”
“My mother is quite a private person.”
“Well, you know, for private things, like a doctor’s visit, the door’s closed, of course.” But surely privacy is more than that.
“Now, as you see, we have several types of rooms. There’s the single for just one person, fairly expensive though. Then a semi for two, that’s the most common, and what we call a ward, for four.”
Each room has a large window and a narrow bed, or two, or four, with metal sides that can be drawn up, like cribs. Each bed has a white curtain that can be drawn around for privacy of sight, if not of sound. The walls are light yellow. There is a small closet for each person, and a plastic-covered chair beside each bed. There are bedside tables, and bureaus, and people’s faces staring out from photographs on walls and tables. These must be reminders of those who have been loved, out in the world. Does it help to have those faces handy, or would it hurt?
“It can’t be quite like home, of course, but we’ve tried to make it cheerful and bright, and, as you see, residents are welcome to bring small things with them. Photographs or knick-knacks, nothing big, naturally, but those small things can be so important.”
What would Aggie bring? A picture of Frances. Books. A small refrigerator full of food. An oven, perhaps. Her own bulk would fill a room.
“There are a couple of things to consider when you’re deciding what type of room your mother might prefer. The costs, of course, and I’ll give you a brochure when we get back to my office about all that, and also some photographs, so you can show your mother. And then what kind of person she is. If she’s someone who likes to be alone and you can afford it, a private is something to think about. On the other hand, if she’s gregarious she might prefer a ward. Mind you, it’s possible to change if one arrangement doesn’t work; there are also internal waiting lists. It may be that when a bed does come up it’ll be in a ward, and if that isn’t what she prefers she’ll be able to move as soon as another type of room is available. You see?”
“Yes.” But what’s best for someone both private and inquisitive? “I would guess a semi-private,” June says, but realizing it is only an unhappy compromise. Aggie will not fit so neatly. Bathrooms are shared. Aggie, who likes to read on the toilet, would find this yet another irritation.
It’s a funny thing about revenge: here are all sorts of possibilities, and here she is, horrified. Maybe it’s the thought of outsiders that offends. It has always been the two of them, and something is broken when others come into it.
“Now let’s go back to my office and I’ll give you those brochures, and you can ask any questions you may have.”
Heavens, it’s expensive. “The government pays a share,” he explains. “And there’ll be her pension. Still, that will leave a certain amount for you to pick up, depending on the type of room.”
“It’s a lot for a bit of a bed and meals.”
“Oh, but it’s much more than that, after all. I always think it’s worth a great deal to know that the people you love are getting the best possible care and that they’re safe and well supervised. And, too, it’s not all expenditure, if you think solely of costs. You’ll have fewer expenses at home, and when you add in the value of having the total burden of care taken off your shoulders, well, that’s just incalculable.”
True enough. Priceless, really.
“Now,” he says, closing files, “have you decided if you’d like to put her name on our waiting list? I should warn you, there’s a steady demand. It’s best to move quickly, although I wouldn’t want to rush you or your mother into anything. It’s just that even with her name down, it could be several months. Or it could be only days or weeks. You understand, these things are somewhat unpredictable.”
So this is it. How stupid, to hesitate. After all, she can put down Aggie’s name and it doesn’t mean much, until the time actually comes. She tries to recall the anticipation of freedom. It only needs a signature to step toward it.
She thinks, walking home, they will both adjust. It’s only that she would have expected to feel lighter, not this weight.
Oh, but she would hate living in that place herself. Being called dear, and wheeled around willy-nilly, handed a book, or not, at the whim of someone busy with other things. Maybe being fed unnecessary pills, and sleeping too much. Aggie would get hungry just knowing there was a limit to her food. It would make her crazy, not to be able to go into the kitchen to whip up muffins or a pie. She would flail and curse; maybe they would tie her down and muffle her.
June shivers. What if this is also her own future? What if she falls and breaks a brittle bone, or the car she imagines comes swerving around a corner now? To be crippled, or hurt, and suddenly old. But that doesn’t bear thinking about. Everyone adjusts. Either you die or you get old, and the latter requires certain adjustments, and that’s all there is to it.
She can just hear Frances. “It’s awful, Mother,” she will say. “It’s a terrible thing to do to her. She’ll hate it.” She will be perfectly sincere, of course, reflecting on its awfulness, but she will not say, “I’m strong, you’ve done your part, I’ll come back and take care of her.” Sacrifice, even for someone she no doubt loves, is not one of Frances’s gifts.
Certainly she won’t lift a finger for June herself, if that time comes. Frances will be ruthless. She will point out what her grandmother has taught her: that she has her own life, and must get on with it. Uncomfortably, June can also hear her saying, “After all, Mother, I know it isn’t perfect, but you’ll get used to it, you’ll adj
ust.”
“You’re late,” says Aggie, who has, for once, made supper.
“I told you I was going to see the nursing home.”
“So you did. I’d forgotten.”
Liar. Eyes don’t lie. Aggie’s features may be set in nonchalance, but June detects fear somewhere in the eyes.
She sets her own face to oblivious cheer. “You really should go. I was impressed. It’s clean, and you’d like how bright it is, and there are no end of things to do. You can tell they take good care of people, too, and the administrator is really very nice.”
“Do you remember, June, in India years ago, and then in the States, when protesters would just go limp and police would have to carry away dead weights? Totally peaceful, but so effective.”
June had decided not to tell anyone about putting Aggie’s name on the waiting list. She needs time, but she’s sure that once she’s accustomed to the idea herself, she will find it a precious and powerful secret, something like a pearl in her dealings with her mother.
“And that’s what I’ll do,” Aggie is saying. “I’ll just lie down on the floor and you’ll need a crane to move me.”
It’s hard to keep a secret, though. It’s such a big thing, this impending freedom, and confusing too. So many things are unspoken; and might they not become more real and less disputable if they were said? There ought to be somebody she could talk to, she should have someone to whom she can tell secrets.
Aggie, across the supper table, is looking at her defiantly. Apparently, she has made some point, which June has missed.
“Anyway, Mother,” she says, “I wasn’t going to mention it yet, but I put your name on the waiting list while I was there. You have to do that because there are people lined up waiting. We can still talk about it, but I had to put your name down.”
Later, they go upstairs together to get Aggie ready for bed. June, walking slightly behind, her hand on her mother’s elbow, steadying her in the cautious ascent, is surprised at how bent Aggie has become. Maybe she doesn’t usually look too closely.
But tonight she sees the dimples of fat beneath the material of Aggie’s dress. This newly noticed slumping of her mother’s shoulders may be partly because of weight and age, but may also come from years spent leaning over things: June, the bread that had to be kneaded, the batter in bowls that had to be mixed, the tubs of washing that had to be scrubbed, and all the lines of print she has pursued. As well as Frances. All that has combined to bend her somewhat.
When June was in her gawky adolescence, Aggie used to say, “Stand up straight, for heaven’s sake. Walk tall.” June would like to say now, “Straighten up, Mother.” Because this is no time to look at her and see frailty, or any sort of caving in.
It occurs to June that weakness could, in some instances, be a more powerful tactic than strength.
In her bath, when Aggie is in bed, she considers her own body. She dislikes waste, including flesh, and there is no waste on her, but something must be shrinking, because her skin seems to be coming loose in places. On her breasts and her stomach and her thighs, and on the undersides of her arms, there are little pluckings of skin that don’t appear to be attached to anything. Aggie may bend, but it is June who is shrivelling, like those old people in the nursing home.
NINE
Waiting list, shit. Lying in bed, Aggie once more listens from a distance to the too-quick thumping of her heart.
One fast way for it to end, a pounding and, presumably, a stab of pain, and then — what? A dead weight, as threatened, for June to deal with.
It’s a good thing only the aging, the old, know they may die at any moment. If the young knew, they would spend their lives in terror, paralysed. Like Frances, who hasn’t learned yet that any step, one wrong move, may be fatal, so she can still dance off in all directions, trying variations. This is something Aggie taught her. She takes credit for her daring. When Frances was just a baby, Aggie would lean over her as she tried to lift her head, or roll over, or crawl, and then walk, and say, “Come on, you can do it, keep trying,” and eventually Frances would. And when she was learning to talk and count and read, Aggie would tell her, “Come on, you can say it, you can figure it out,” and now Frances can, and does, say anything. Now the situation is a little reversed, and she teaches Aggie words.
June nags Aggie about her food, and Frances about her smoking. Frances says, “Oh, Mother, leave me alone. We’re all entitled to some sins, you know,” and grins. Aggie says, “Good God, June, a diet would kill me. I’d go into shock,” and laughs.
Maybe June likes telling people that they’re going to die, and that somehow they will deserve it, having brought it on themselves. How did she learn to be so cautious and afraid? Surely, Aggie tries to recall, she must have told June the same things she told Frances: you can do it, try again. Certainly she told June no end of things when she still had her inside her body.
Too bad it isn’t still possible to pray. But she realized years ago that prayers have a nasty way of being granted in ways that aren’t at all what a person had in mind. She decided, when she gave them up, that whatever God there might be must have a devious and peculiar sense of humor.
However, the alternatives, wishing and hoping, appear in these circumstances to be flimsy tools.
Somewhere out there tonight is her name on a waiting list. Just that, her name written down, is a theft of sorts. Bits and pieces of her seem to be escaping.
She cannot, looking down her body, see beyond her chest, home of the heart; great lolloping bosoms, as they used to be called, drooping, a little painfully, one to each side. Beyond, further down, must be the tricky unpredictable part that is no longer holding its own.
Once, she looked down her body with pride. Well, she’s still proud, but of different things. Then, it was round breasts that would fit nicely into a cupped hand, if there had been a hand willing to cup them, and a trim brown torso, a gentle little belly and such strong thighs — not long legs, but sturdy, compact ones.
But if the teacher was, for one thing, a man who didn’t like shit on his boots, he was also a man who preferred darkness to light, and whose desire was for order. He was a teacher, but only in the classroom, no longer in a kitchen.
(“He was,” she said another time when Frances asked, “a man who arranged all his books in alphabetical order. By author.”
(“Yeah,” Frances nodded, “I see.”
(“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked June. “What’s wrong with that?”)
Who, Aggie wondered, among the people she later came to meet, was out watching in the dusk the evening they arrived, weary in the cool air, after a long, peculiar day, the first one of their marriage? Sullen and hungry, they drove along the dusty streets, passing red-brick houses with their broad verandahs, where people were sitting out watching the sun go down, drinking lemonade or tea and chatting. Did they know it was the new teacher and his new wife passing by? Did they think, “What a nice-looking young couple,” or “My goodness, there’s a pair of thunderclouds”?
Aggie sat up straighter in the buggy. Odd, to live in a place where houses were separated only by strips of lawn, not acres. Odd, too, that when they stopped, it was in front of a house not distinguishable from the rest: another two-storey red brick with broad white-painted verandah, stone walk, and small front yard. Except that it was empty, a little overgrown out front, and curtainless. She pictured wandering into the wrong house by mistake, coming home from shopping.
While he unhitched the horse and handled the bags, she stood in the front hallway alone.
The place had a dry and dusty, closed-up smell, and yet it wasn’t dusty; someone, it seemed, had come in and swept. A mystery intruder had also, she discovered in the kitchen, left eggs, milk, cheese, and fruit in the ice-box, which held a fresh block of ice, and bread and a cake in a cupboard. The banister going upstairs felt smooth and solid. The whole pla
ce seemed smooth and solid. Someone had also made up the bed in the largest of the three bedrooms. All this was very kind, and it occurred to her that she would have really been in trouble if there’d been no food tonight. And it would have been an effort, in her present mood, to do the little chores, like making up the bed.
She made sandwiches and sliced the cake and wiped the fruit.
Back of the kitchen, a trapdoor led to the cellar. She tugged it up and here, where no one had looked, balls of dust went rolling. Peering down the steps, she glimpsed cobwebbed shelves that would eventually be lined, she supposed, with her preserves. At the moment, it was musty and damp. She wondered if many houses here, well-kept and prim on the outside, were like this in the hidden, indoor places.
Tomorrow she would give it a good going-over. She might not feel at home yet, but that would come. Things bubbling in the kitchen would help, smells she knew, and daylight.
There was a small barn at the back for the horse, and an outhouse. Also, there were two large maple trees hanging heavily over the house, and she wondered how much light the kitchen would get. She could see the teacher out at the back, unhitching the horse, pumping water for it. More slowly, she went through the place again. Even lighting oil lamps, she wondered at its darkness.
The trouble was the colors. The walls were painted heavy greens and blues and browns; the linoleum was a brown-and-yellow pattern, dulled and old; the furniture was brown, too, and the baseboards, stairs, banisters, and doors were all dark wood. The place seemed muffled by darkness. It might be better once it was thoroughly cleaned, not merely wiped. She, no doubt, would be better with a meal and a good night’s sleep. What was dark, she could brighten.
“Where’d the food come from?” he asked.
“It was here. Someone must have brought it in.”