“And, you, Mr. Pine,” Marcy said, “I’d love it if you’d take this jacket of my father’s. Louise said you so like his other one.” She handed you a black leather jacket, this one a bomber style, not quite as dated as the brown one.
You replied to Marcy, “Why thank you. It’s quite lovely. But I hope your mother-in-law is feeling okay. Isn’t Vera joining us for dinner tonight?”
Gradually, the faux pas were not just verbal. You spoke less, staring off into the distance during dinner, no longer part of our conversations. I had to remind you to lift your glass, to wipe your lips. You’d been wearing paper diapers for some time, as you could not reliably remember to get to the bathroom. Depends, they were called. In the apartment, there were other kinds of accidents and they began to get more serious. You burned yourself one night, not wanting to wake me when you wanted tea. You’d long before forgotten how to work the fancy espresso machine, crying with frustration when you bungled the job. But now, even the electric kettle proved too difficult to manage. You also left the tap on in the sink once, causing a flood in the kitchen. The wood floor had to be replaced. After you were found wandering the hallways a few times, I tried staying awake at night to watch you. When I was unsuccessful, I began to lock the apartment door from the inside with a key that I kept hidden.
One afternoon, there was a knock on my door.
“It’s me, Judith,” Dolores called before I could even ask.
“Be right there, Dolores,” I said, getting the key and unlocking the door. “Would you like something to drink?” I had been reading the manuscript out loud and was still holding a few pages in my hand, but you’d put your head down on the couch and were lightly snoring.
“Maybe just some water. What’s that you’re reading?” Dolores asked.
“Oh, sometimes I write stories.”
“Stories? What kind of stories?” Dolores asked.
“About Elliot and me. Our lives. I read them to him. He likes it when I read aloud.” I put down the papers and went to the kitchen to get the water.
“Do you think he follows the story?” Dolores called after me, staring at your long torso spread out on the couch.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said when I came back into the living room. “Sometimes I think he does. They’re about things he knows. Or used to.”
“What are you going to do, Judith?”
Of course I understood what she was talking about. I’d been waiting for her question. “When it’s time, I’ll know, Dolores. I think we’ve got more time.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Judith, sometimes it’s hard to be objective when it’s someone we love.”
“I’ll know, Dolores,” I repeated more firmly. Just then you opened your eyes and looked over at the two of us talking.
“What a wonderful sight to wake up to,” you said, more words than you’d spoken all day. “Two such beautiful women.”
Dolores and I looked at each other. She smiled. “Elliot, you are such a charmer,” she said.
Soon you got clumsier. You’d been such a graceful, elegant man, but now seemed unable to calibrate the distance between pieces of furniture. One day you tripped over an ottoman and fell against the large china cabinet in the living room. Glasses flew everywhere, and before I could get to you, you began to pick up the shards. There was a great deal of blood and you needed stitches. And this was the sign that living in the apartment was no longer working. As I’d said to Dolores, I’d know. But first I had to talk to our table, for I was sure that the other two women would want to be included in the decision.
We came to dinner the night after your tumble with a thick gauze bandage wrapped around your hand. Adelle and Louise looked at both of us with what could only be compassion in their eyes.
“He fell,” I explained. “Against the shelves in the living room. There was broken glass everywhere. It was a terrible mess. He tried to pick up the pieces. The nurse took seven stitches to close the cut.”
There was no question, Adelle and Louise agreed, it was time.
They helped me pack what you needed to move into your room in the Memory Care Unit. Then the three of us squeezed into the back of the golf cart, while you rode in front with the driver. It was a sunny day, about fifteen months after you had arrived in California. We must have made quite a sight, three old ladies packed onto the back of a golf cart. We laughed at ourselves a little, making dumb golf jokes, each of us clutching something special for you, an orchid, a box of candy, an expensive leather shaving kit (which would have to be kept at the nurses’ station). A staff member tapped the numbers onto a keypad and we were let into the locked unit. We found your room easily. Dolores, in her usual competent way, had made all the arrangements. Your name, Elliot Pine, was already stenciled onto a large card and affixed to the door. We’d brought only a few suitcases, so everything was put away into the dresser and bathroom far too quickly. Mrs. Rosen and Mrs. Block and I looked around the room, then watched you, already dozing in the comfortable reclining chair near the window. Sunshine poured in through the glass onto your untroubled face. There was nothing else to put away.
I sniffed the air. It smelled fresh, nothing objectionable to my discerning nose. There were no bunnies or nursery characters on the walls. It was a well-appointed room, even tasteful. Adelle and Louise glanced at one another. They kissed me on the cheek and then, ever tactful, left, linking arms, saying they’d walk back together. It was such a beautiful day. They’d see me at dinner that night.
I wanted to sit on your lap, put my head on your shoulder, but I knew I’d startle you. Lately you’d become distressed and agitated when awakened suddenly. How lonely I would be in the apartment without you. I lay down on the neatly made bed and stared at your handsome profile. Despite the diminishment of your mind, your beauty never faded. Asleep, Elliot, you resembled a dignified college professor, your temples finally graying a bit, your hair a bit thinner. I closed my eyes for a moment, tired to the bone from the nights over the past months when I’d remained sleepless, hypervigilant, listening to you roam the apartment. When I awoke, the sun outside your window was much lower in the sky. I felt you close beside me, curled up against me. It was only a narrow, single bed in this new room of yours. I touched your familiar hand, the one without the bandage, and noticed that there were now a few age spots on your once unblemished skin. I brought your hand to my lips and kissed it gently.
This love for you, Elliot, was a story of my own telling, a tale more monologue than conversation. Perhaps it was not always wise, but I loved you completely. In the end, and probably the end would come soon, there would be no regrets.
“Read to me,” you said.
“Of course. I know just the thing.”
Acknowledgments
When you begin to get serious about your writing in late middle age, there is the sense that time is precious. But not only time makes a book and a writer; the support of friends and professionals also guides the way.
Thank you first to my supportive family—my four children, Alexis Rains, Gabriel Engle, Hannah Klasson, and David Klasson—who understood my passion and sometimes my distractedness.
To my dear husband, David Wong, and to my late husband Bill Klasson, there are not enough words. Both of you, in your own way, said, “Stick to it.”
To my cousin Blair Jackson, who showed me there are many paths to Rome.
To Mary Henry and Veronica Schindler, who read and read and read. And commented with support and love. There will never be another group like our Palo Alto trio.
To the sisterhood that assembled in my living room and listened to chapter after chapter, giving feedback with love and laughter and tears: Eleanor Intrator, Rhonda Lappen, Marie Rector, and Jan Schwartz. Your friendship has kept me upright.
To early readers Kendra Schwartz Poster and Beth Gutcheon, and later ones, Stacey Swann and Jo Ariko. Every note was taken.
To the Villa Montalvo Artists’ Residency in Saratoga, California, and Hedgebrook Wri
ter’s Colony on Whidbey Island, Washington: your places of refuge nurtured and encouraged me.
To Lynn Stegner and Rusty Dollemann, teachers extraordinaire. And friends as well.
To Pamela Long: I never knew what an editor was until you touched this book.
To the sisterhood at She Writes Press. Not all authors are as fortunate as we are to have the comfort of other women writers at every stage of the process. I especially thank fellow SWP author Lisa Braver Moss.
To the indefatigable Brooke Warner, who created this innovative publishing model and who sustains and is a cheerleader to so many of us.
My deepest gratitude.
Questions for Discussion
1. The author tries to analyze the factors that make us love the people we do: Beauty, Consolation, Magic, Insanity, Being Seen, etc. Do you agree that these qualities make us love the people we do? Can you add others to this list?
2. In what ways do the views of people important to us in childhood and adolescence remain important to us our whole lives?
3. How do the people that surround us during our childhood and adolescence mold the adults we become? Can we ever break free of the roles and identities we were given in these formative years?
4. How are Judith and Elliot right for each other? In what ways are they wrong for each other?
5. At Camp Avodah, when Judith and Elliot are sixteen, she thinks, about Elliot, This is what love feels like. For all her life, Judith says, Elliot was “the man by which I measured all other loves.” Has there been anyone in your own life who was that person?
6. Judith asks herself what her devotion to Elliot has cost her in terms of her other relationships. What do you see as the price of this loyalty to Elliot?
7. If we do not feel the Sensory Fulfillment (touch, smell, etc.) that Judith describes as important to her, can we still love someone?
8. Why does Elliot, time after time, not choose Judith?
9. In terms of power in relationships, is a relationship possible if the power balance is not equal? Would you like to be the one holding the power? Or the one who is less in control?
10. How and when does the power shift between Elliot and Judith?
About the Author
© Mike Mesikep
Elayne grew up on the Northside of Chicago. She went to university and graduate school in the Midwest—Ohio State University and the University of Michigan where she earned a Masters of Public Health and then a PhD in Psychology. She lived in Barbados, West Indies, working as a health care consultant with Project Hope in the Caribbean; then, several decades later, returning as a writer and columnist for the Barbados Daily Nation. Her professional career has largely been in academia at San Jose State University, with her research and clinical area of expertise being the severely mentally ill. A recent transplant to the Santa Ynez Valley, near Santa Barbara, she is a popular lifestyle newspaper columnist there. Elayne has also appeared on San Francisco public television as a restaurant critic. She’s been awarded several writer’s residencies, including Hedgebrook Writer’s Colony on Whidbey Island, Washington and Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California. She daily walks her young dachshund and aged fluffy white rescue through nearby vineyards. She is married to David, a scientist. Between them, they have five children, all grown.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
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Love Is a Rebellious Bird Page 33