by Dyan Sheldon
Claudelia shuffles along beside Georgiana. “Can’t we go a little faster? I’m getting a cramp in my calf.”
“You go on. You don’t have to stay with me.” Georgiana waves her ahead. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“I got that part,” says Claudelia. “If you went any slower we’d be going backwards. But I thought you start your community service this afternoon. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”
“Why not?” Georgiana would like to be so late she never shows up. “What are they going to do? Fire me?”
Claudelia laughs. “Holy Mother, don’t tell me you’re still moaning about your placement.”
Georgiana looks over at her, her mouth in a knot. “Yes, Claudelia. I am still moaning about my placement. And I intend to continue moaning about it until I’ve put in my twenty hours of penal servitude and don’t have to go any more and can forget about it for the rest of my life.”
“You’re going over the top, as usual,” says Claudelia. “It’s not that big a deal.”
Georgiana, of course, has already had this pointed out to her. More than once; and by more than one person. “That’s what everybody says.”
“Well, everybody’s right. Quit acting like you’re going to your own hanging. You’re just going to sit and talk to some old lady for an hour. There’s nothing hard about that. Pretend she’s your grandmother.”
“You mean already dead?”
Give me strength, thinks Claudelia. Aloud she says, “You don’t have a grandmother? Not even one?”
Georgiana comes to a complete stop at her locker. “No grandparent of either sex.”
“Not ever?”
Georgiana rolls her eyes. “Um-duh, Claudelia. Obviously my parents didn’t just drop out of the sky. But their parents all passed away before I was born. Except one grandmother.” With the attention of someone defusing a bomb, Georgiana turns the dial on her combination lock. “But I don’t remember her. She died when I was little.”
“OK, but it’s not like you’ve never seen a grandmother. You’ve met other people’s. You’ve met mine. You talked to her all right. You said she was awesome.”
“Claudelia…” Georgiana yanks off the lock. “Your grandmother isn’t a wrinkled old bag who doesn’t know what day it is. She runs her own company and she goes hunting. She is awesome.”
“She’s still my grandmother. And she does have wrinkles. Plus, it’s not a big company and she’s not that good a shot.”
Georgiana takes her jacket from her locker. “You know what I mean.”
“And you know what I mean,” counters Claudelia.
The locker door bangs shut. “Yeah. Be more like Marigold.”
Despite the fact that Georgiana has a better chance of becoming a prima ballerina than a twin-soul to Marigold Liotta, she does try to improve her attitude before she arrives at St Joan’s. It can’t hurt. Georgiana knows that she can both overreact and exaggerate. Even her father, who is very fond of her, has been quoted as saying she could make the Andes out of a pebble. She also knows that if she continues to wind herself up like this her skin will break out.
As she drives, she thinks about what she’s been told. Maybe Will and Claudelia and everybody else she’s complained to about the placement (which is just about everyone she’s seen in the last week, including Mr Malachay at the gas station and some woman who had the misfortune of stopping Georgiana to ask for directions) are right after all and St Joan’s isn’t going to be as bad as she imagined. Maybe there will be young people and middle-aged people and people who are totally healthy except they broke something or had a stroke and have to learn how to walk again. Besides that, it’s not solitary confinement, is it? They don’t lock them in tiny, dark cells and shove a tray of food through the door three times a day. So there probably will be lots of different things to do. Georgiana can’t play the violin, but she can play tennis, dominoes and bridge. She’s also a pretty terrific square-dance caller. And maybe Will is even right about some old people being interesting and cool. It’s not impossible. It’s not just ordinary, boring people who get old – celebrities get old, too. As for the inmates at St Joan’s who are doddering around in that space between life and death, someone with special skills will be taking care of them. They’re not going to be left to the care of a high-school student who doesn’t even iron her own clothes. They won’t be roaming through the corridors on their walking frames either. They’ll be tucked up in their rooms, safe and sound. Which means that, statistically, the chances of Georgiana being present when someone does fall over and/or die are so small as to be non-existent.
Georgiana turns off the main road, slowing down when she sees a large sign that says ST JOAN’S NURSING CENTRE.
Nursing Centre, thinks Georgiana, Centre, not Home. So far, so good…
It takes no time at all for her to spot some differences between the centre Will described and what she sees looming at the top of the circular drive. For starters, the grounds don’t look like a private park. There are a few trees the bulldozers missed, a small, defeated lawn and a few hardy shrubs but no sign of gardens, lakes or fountains – and nowhere to put them if there were. Ocean View, where Will’s sister worked, was once the mansion of a wealthy railroad man; St Joan’s was once an elementary school.
As Georgiana approaches the main building, a middle-aged woman and an elderly man come through the door. He has yeti eyebrows and leans on a cane, wobbling noticeably and walking as if he’s paying for each step. The woman has an arm through his, and is talking to him in the sticky-sweet voice some people use with very young children. He can’t fall, she’s holding on to him, Georgiana tells herself, and puts on a Marigold Liotta God’s-in-His-heaven-all’s-right-with-the-world smile. The woman ignores her; the old man starts coughing. Georgiana hurries past them; she doesn’t want to see him hit the ground.
It’s a busy afternoon at St Joan’s Nursing Centre. The desk plate says that the receptionist’s name is Alice Einhorn. Alice is on the telephone; another telephone is ringing. From somewhere come the sounds of music (not the violin) and TV voices. It could be someone on the television, but Georgiana thinks she also hears sobbing. A nurse hurries past looking worried. Another rushes by from the opposite direction, talking into a cell phone. White-haired people shuffle along the hall – some in robes and slippers, some dressed as if they have somewhere to go. A woman with a walking frame comes towards her, singing in Italian.
In the blink of time between putting down one phone and picking up another, Alice Einhorn looks questioningly at Georgiana.
Georgiana ups her smile. “I’m Georgiana Shiller? From Shell Harbour High? I’m here to start my community service placement today?”
Alice holds up one hand. “St Joan’s Nursing Centre,” she says in a voice intended to inspire confidence. Your aged relatives are safe with us. “How can I help you?” The other phone starts ringing again.
The person Alice is talking to has a lot to say. She covers the receiver and whispers to Georgiana, “Our administrator will see you as soon as he’s free. He likes to induct the volunteers himself, but he’s in a meeting.” She waves her hand. “Why don’t you just wait over there?”
“Sure,” Georgiana whispers back. “Thanks.”
But “over there” is not the waiting area of chairs and a table full of magazines that she expected. “Over there” is a wall. Georgiana props herself against it – under a sign that says No Cell Phones In This Area – smiling as if she’s the welcoming committee.
People come and go. Except for the staff in their uniforms and soft-soled shoes, and the visitors in their hats and jackets and looks of somewhere else to be, everyone Georgiana sees is really old. Clapped out. Decrepit. If they walk, they walk slowly. Stooped. Shaking like leaves in a slight wind. Hair from which the years have sucked all colour and skin as wrinkled as a raisin. She can tell from the way they look at her that it’s been a long time since most of them saw a teenager. Can they even remember what a teenag
er is?
The phones keep ringing. An ambulance pulls up and the crew jumps out, urgently pushing a stretcher. Georgiana flattens herself against the wall. Somebody’s died, she thinks. And I only just got here. Two grim-faced women come in, wanting to pick up their mother’s things. Their dead mother’s things. An elderly man in a golf cap shivers up to the desk shouting that there’s something wrong with his phone – it never rings. “Mr Maisel, I told you,” the receptionist shouts back. “We checked it. Your phone is fine.” His friends are probably all dead, too. A couple walk past, tense as a tightrope. “I can’t stand to see her like this,” says the woman. The man takes her hand. “It won’t be much longer.” Because soon she’ll be dead. The ambulance crew leaves, now carrying what is obviously a corpse. Good God, are they keeping them alive or killing them here?
The administrator of St Joan’s is Mr Papazoglakis. Mr Papazoglakis is tall and solidly built. His hair is dark and thinning and flecked with grey; his skin so pale you’d think he must live underground. Georgiana has witnessed a second ambulance’s arrival and departure, and the sudden collapse just inside the entrance of an elderly woman returning from a walk with her daughter before Mr Papazoglakis finally emerges from his meeting. By which time Georgiana has almost forgotten why she’s there.
Mr Papazoglakis has a green folder in one hand. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he says. “And you are–” he peeks into the folder – “Georgia. Georgia Shiller.”
“Georgiana,” she corrects him.
“Most people call me Mr P, Georgia.” He says this without disturbing the even features of his face with a smile. “It’s easier than trying to remember all those consonants.”
And most people call me Georgiana. It’s easier than using someone else’s name.
“Georgiana,” she corrects once again.
Mr Papazoglakis takes her on a tour. They go to the dining hall, the common room, the guest lounge with its almost-comfortable chairs and vending machines, the auditorium, the activity room (which, to Georgiana’s amazement, includes a row of computers) and the gym. He points out the therapy rooms, kitchen and swimming pool and the corridors of private rooms, and introduces her to several reassuringly cheerful-looking people in white uniforms whose names she will never remember even though they wear ID cards around their necks. They don’t go above the first floor; the second is only bedrooms and the third is a locked unit for those who “don’t really know where they are”. Georgiana doesn’t ask for details.
While they walk, Mr Papazoglakis explains that the main concern of St Joan’s Nursing Centre is quality of life. Dignity. Respect. Comfort. Security and safety.
“We here at St Joan’s believe that a person’s last days should be as pleasant as possible.”
“I thought a lot of people are here for other reasons than because they’re going to die,” she says. “You know, like recuperation and stuff like that.”
“We are, of course, an excellent care facility with very high ratings, but we do deal primarily with the elderly.” Mr Papazoglakis’s shrug is so slight it’s barely a twitch. “And everybody does die eventually.”
This is when Georgiana realizes that what Mr Papazoglakis in his dark suit and sombre expression most reminds her of is an undertaker. He may smell like Armani and not embalming fluid, but he looks as if he was born to sit behind the wheel of a hearse.
“Well, yeah.” She giggles nervously. “But not all at once, right?”
“Of course not.” Mr Papazoglakis still doesn’t smile, but he does make a sound that could be the first half of a laugh. “We’re a nursing centre, not a plague hospital.”
Georgiana nods. Well, thank God for that. So she won’t have to help dig any mass graves.
What she will have to do, Mr Papazoglakis explains, is socialize. She’ll be given a resident to visit regularly. She can read to her, play a game or even just talk. Do the little things she might not be able to do herself – thread a needle, iron a blouse, change a light bulb. Take her for walks. Do a little shopping. Depending on her limits and abilities, Georgiana may even be asked to accompany her on a short outing. The centre’s staff is overworked as it is; they have no time for any of the extra niceties.
As they come back to the reception desk, Mr Papazoglakis opens the green folder. “Now, let’s see what we’ve fixed up for you.” He runs one finger down the page. “Ah, yes.” He looks up, his face still an undiscovered land as far as emotion is concerned. “We’ve given you Mrs Kilgour.”
“Mrs Kilgour,” parrots Georgiana.
“Mrs Kilgour doesn’t have any family,” says Mr Papazoglakis, “so her visitors are few and far between.”
Georgiana guesses that this means she has none.
He looks back at the folder. “Room 10a.” He points to the left. “Just down that corridor. Come with me. I’ll introduce you. Naturally, she’ll have been told that you were coming. I’m sure she’s been looking forward to it.”
Room 10a is a cheap envelope of a room with a bed, a night table, a small dresser, a chair that belongs somewhere larger and homier – somewhere with knick-knacks on the mantel, a rug on the floor and a cat – an ancient television set, which is on too loudly, and a window, which is closed. There is a folded wheelchair in one corner and a four-footed walking stick next to the chair. The floor is linoleum and the walls are painted a sad shade of blue. The window looks out on a paved courtyard and a few dead pot plants. The only personal touch is the photograph on the dresser of a youngish woman in a long, flower-print dress holding a bouquet of roses and smiling as if she invented happiness. If this room were a person it would probably run away.
Mrs Kilgour is slumped in the armchair in front of the television, with her head on her chest and wearing only one slipper, looking like an abandoned doll. She is sound asleep.
“She’s a very interesting woman,” says Mr Papazoglakis. “But, like many of our residents, she does have a tendency to live in the past.”
Georgiana glances at the room. And who could blame her for that?
“Mrs Kilgour.” Mr Papazoglakis taps her arm. “Mrs Kilgour. You have a visitor. You remember the young lady from the high school was coming today?”
Mrs Kilgour mumbles something unintelligible, but doesn’t open her eyes.
“Mrs Kilgour. Have you forgotten you were having a visitor today? This is Georgia.”
“Georgiana,” whispers Georgiana.
Mrs Kilgour mumbles again, her eyelids closed.
Mr Papazoglakis’s phone hums softly. “Now what?” He pulls it from his pocket. “I’m afraid I have to go,” he says. “I’m needed elsewhere. She does have a touch of narcolepsy.” Which sounds like she takes drugs to Georgiana, but apparently means suddenly falling asleep. “Don’t you worry, though, these spells never last very long. She’ll wake in a few minutes. She does know you’re here.” He extends a hand for shaking. It’s as warm as a can of soda out of the fridge. “Good luck.”
Georgiana stands staring at the old woman in the chair for several minutes. If walnuts wore fuzzy pink bathrobes and had hair dyed a red normally associated with circus clowns, Mrs Kilgour would be easy to mistake for one. Georgiana is repelled by Mrs Kilgour. By her lined and sagging face. By her mottled, bony hands, the skin like crumpled tissue paper. She sniffs. Even the air in Mrs Kilgour’s room smells like it’s rotting. If anyone is going to suddenly drop dead, that anyone is sitting right in front of Georgiana with her mouth slightly open and her glasses askew.
She holds her breath, waiting for Mrs Kilgour to wake up as Mr Papazoglakis said she would, but she doesn’t. Exactly what is Georgiana supposed to do? Throw cold water on her? Or just stand here, like a peacock stuck on a desolate marsh? She knew this wasn’t going to work out. Didn’t she say that? Didn’t she say it was a bad idea? Everybody said she was wrong. Too negative. Too pessimistic. But she wasn’t. She was right. She’d much rather be fishing paper cups and food containers out of the shrubs in the park. If it were Dr Kilpatiky a
sleep in that chair, Georgiana would be very tempted to push her through the window. Not for the first time in her life, Georgiana wonders why she’s always being punished for things she didn’t do.
As she stares out of the window, her last bit of optimism dissolves like sugar in water. It’s now that Georgiana might think of the words of Dante Alighieri describing hell. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
But she doesn’t. She’s thinking that, on top of everything, there’s no view of the ocean, either.
Chapter Eight
Asher Is Dragged Away from His Career Strategy with Something of a Vengeance
Albert Grossman likes to boast about his son. There are no concerns about sex or drugs or rock and roll where Asher is concerned. No teenage inertia or teenage angst. No moodiness or sullenness. No plummeting grades or dropping out. Albert never worries about where Asher is or what he is doing. He knows where he is: working. He knows what he’s doing: more than anyone else. “He’s a chip off the old block,” Albert Grossman always says. “Being a high achiever’s in his genes.” This is an understatement. If achievement were a mountain range, Asher reached the summit of the lowest mountain when he took his first summer college course in seventh grade. And never looked back. Five years later, Asher has a 4.0 GPA, is president and will be valedictorian of his senior class, and is involved in enough extracurricular activities to keep six-normal achievers busy, including fencing, archery and martial arts. (Albert Grossman, who was once attacked by an investment banker, learned the hard way that even a corporate lawyer has to know how to defend himself.) Saturday mornings, when other boys are still sound asleep, Asher has his kung-fu class. After today’s class he has his first session at the community centre. You couldn’t say that he’s looking forward to it.
Right now, the high-achiever is sitting in his car in the small, potholed parking lot behind the centre. Or, as Asher thinks of it, the supermarket. Asher is preparing himself. Mimicking a crane hasn’t given him quite the physical and spiritual strength he needs to meet the do-gooders and the do-nothings of Queen’s Park, so here he sits, sipping black coffee from an insulated mug, feeling sorry for himself and running through a mental checklist to make sure he has everything he’ll need to get him through the next hour and a half.