Larry responded well to her instruction and the correct relationship of master and dog was established. If only training Larry had been as easy!
Laura despaired of his garrulousness. She’d ask him the time and he’d give her a lecture on clocks; mention how pleasant the day was and be treated to a spiel on weather; and a casual pleasantry on one of Larry’s rugs would lead to a travelogue on the Orient. Occasionally there was a nugget of interest in something he said – the addition of tanks to Afghan rugs after the Russians invaded the country, for instance – but these were rare, and the time came when Laura could take no more of his detours.
‘Larry! Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?’
Larry looked at her surprised. ‘No, I don’t think anyone ever has,’ he replied carefully. ‘I’ve always found that people enjoy my conversation. Everybody likes to learn something new, especially if it’s an interesting fact.’
‘Well, believe me, Larry, they don’t! I’m as bright as the next person and there are lots of things I don’t want to know about. Everyone is different. What interests you might well not interest another person – any other person. You can’t bulldoze things into a conversation that don’t belong there just because you happen to find them interesting. It’s not polite and people don’t have the time or patience for it. You’re a nice man, Larry – and I’m telling you this as someone who cares about you – but your conversation puts people off!’
Larry’s blinking intensified and he tugged at one of his long ears. He was genuinely shocked by what Laura told him. Surely she was confusing him with another person? She had to be! ‘I… I think you’re wrong there, Laura,’ he stammered.
‘Okay then, name me three friends!’
‘Friends of yours?’
‘No! Your friends! Tell me the names of your three best friends.’
‘Well, there’s…’ He paused for a moment and stroked his beardless chin. ‘There’s Clive,’ he continued, ‘and the Head of Department… and I think I’ve already told you that I hit it off with Frank.’
‘Forget Frank, Larry: you only knew him for two weeks! When was the last time you saw Clive or the Head of Department? And the mere fact that you refer to him by his title rather than his name indicates that the two of you aren’t particularly close. And who’s Clive?’
Larry swallowed hard and decided to answer the easier question first. ‘Clive’s a janitor at the university… and the Head of Department, well, he has to keep his distance for professional reasons. I think he looks upon me as a friend, though.’
‘And the last time you saw them?’ Laura pressed, unwilling to give up on the issue having come this far.
‘About two years ago,’ Larry confessed. ‘But they both came to my leaving do.’
Laura showed no sign of triumphalism and was careful to ensure that Larry’s crest didn’t fall too sharply. ‘Okay then, Larry. Today we start afresh. Today is the first day…’ She stopped mid-sentence. She hated that cliché, couldn’t believe she’d been about to repeat it. ‘Today you start a new life,’ she started again. ‘When the time’s right I’ll take you and Moses to a dog park I go to and introduce you to some people there. But you have to take what I’ve said seriously. You have to watch what you say and for how long you say it, and if I think you’re talking too much I’m going to tell you. And believe me, the people in the park won’t be shy of telling you this either. Tell them about yourself and spare them the facts and figures, and ask about them and listen to their answers.’
That particular conversation had taken place three weeks ago, and although Larry had taken it to heart its message sometimes had difficulty getting through to his head. He did, however, now start to notice the expressions and body language of the people he talked to – as much in the hope of disproving Laura’s theory as to confirm it – and on the occasions he did discern any discomfort in his audience immediately pulled the plug on himself. It was growth of a sort, even though the shoot was small and its colour a pallid green.
‘Now where’s Miss Laura got to?’ he asked Moses. ‘She should have been here half an hour ago. She’s showing me how to trim your toenails tonight – have I told you this already? That’s something else we have to do regularly. At this rate I’m not going to have any time to look after myself!’ He laughed at his joke and Moses gave a short bark. ‘You think I should call her, Moses? Make sure she hasn’t forgotten? You do?’
When the intercom buzzed Laura was deep in thought, chewing the end of a ballpoint and staring into space. ‘It’s Larry MacCabe on line one, Ms Parker. Do you want me to put him through?’ Laura glanced at her watch. Shit! Six-thirty! She’d forgotten all about Larry. ‘Tell him there’s been an emergency at the home and I’ll be there Friday, will you?’
To the receptionist’s request for a fall-back date should Larry be busy that evening, Laura replied tersely that the chances of that were non-existent. She then replaced the phone in its cradle and continued to stare into space. There was indeed an emergency at the home, and one that struck at the very heart of her care philosophy: command of the television controls.
Laura Parker had come to care administration by way of a degree in anthropology – which was no suitable avenue for earning a living – and a Master’s in Business Administration, which was. She’d grown up on a small dairy farm in Windham County, Vermont, and life there had been uncomplicated. People milked cows and that was about it. She came from a large family, three brothers and one sister, and until their deaths her grandparents had also lived close by. When she was fifteen, the family was informed that a distant relative had been taken into care in Brattleboro and asked to visit. ‘Who the heck’s Elizabeth Longtoe?’ her father had wondered out loud. ‘I don’t think she’s from my side of the family.’
It emerged that Elizabeth Longtoe was the first cousin of his wife’s mother. Grandma had never mentioned her by name when she’d been alive or even alluded to her existence, and so it was with more than a hint of curiosity that the family descended on Brattleboro one Saturday afternoon.
‘My oh my,’ Laura’s mother said on the return journey. ‘Who’d have thought the family had a skeleton in its closet? That poor old soul!’
‘Well, she’s a skeleton in a care home, now,’ Laura’s father replied. ‘She must have more years to her age than she does pounds to her body. She has Grandma’s hair, though, doesn’t she? Looks like someone stuck a big ball of cotton wool on a knitting needle.’
‘Can’t she come live with us, Mom?’ Laura asked. ‘It seems, like, well, you know, just cruel, leaving her there like that. And she is family, isn’t she? And that place stinks, I mean, really stinks. I can still smell the pong, can’t you? God! I think I’m going to gag. Dad, roll down the window, will you?’
‘It’s true she’s related to us, Laura,’ her mother replied, ‘but we don’t know Aunt Elizabeth from Adam, and I’m not sure your grandma would have approved of her living with us. Besides we have enough on our plates and I don’t want the added responsibility of having to look after her. No, she’s better off where she is. We’ll make a point of visiting her when we can, but the idea of Aunt Elizabeth moving in with us is out of the question.’
The family did visit occasionally, more out of duty than love, but never spent more than an hour with her at any one time. To all but Laura, Elizabeth Longtoe remained a distant, and therefore unimportant, relative. Laura, however, was intrigued by her great-aunt. For Vermont, Elizabeth Longtoe was an exotic.
‘Me and your grandma fell out over a boy,’ Elizabeth laughed. ‘Your grandpa, believe it or not! I dated the man once and I think he always had a soft spot for me, but it was no skin off my nose when the two of them got engaged. Your grandma was jealous of me, though. Stopped talking to me and didn’t even invite me to the wedding. I was the only one in the family not to be invited. Pure silliness! What did she think I was going to do? Drag the man f
rom the altar and run off with him? I ask you, who in their right mind would have done a thing like that? Besides, by then I was already seeing Steve.
‘I hadn’t told anyone about this because most people in those days used to frown on white girls dating Indians, and my Mom and Dad would have had a fit if they’d known. But the time came when me and Steve thought we should get married, and the day I told my parents was the day they showed me the door and told me I wasn’t a daughter of theirs anymore. And Steve’s parents were no better. I learned then that prejudice runs both ways.
‘Steve was an Abenaki, and the whole tribe had to agree to our marriage before we could go ahead with it. He went home and told his dad to stick a pole in the ground – that was their way of deciding things in those days: if no one knocked it down then it was okay for us to get married. But his father said no, said there’d be no point because he’d knock the damn pole down himself. He told Steve he didn’t want any son of his marrying into white trash. That was hurtful to hear.
‘Anyway, our minds weren’t for changing and so we went ahead and got married, and when his people heard about it they came to our door and told Steve he was no longer an Indian – that was the worst thing an Abenaki could say to another member of their tribe. So it was just me and Steve against the world after that, but there’s never been a day in my life I regretted marrying him. He was the handsomest man I’d ever met, big as an ox and just as strong, and he had long black hair that he tied back in a ponytail. He was good-hearted, too. If you got paid money for being kind, that darling man would have been a millionaire!
‘We were comfortable for a time. Steve got a job in the slate quarries over in Rutland County and we didn’t want for anything. But then he went and did something to his back and that was that. It was hard for him to earn a living after that. I got work when I could; minimum wage jobs mainly, most of them in laundries. I think that’s where my arthritis started. Have you seen my fingers? Crooked as a Virginia fence, aren’t they? I pay them no mind, though.
‘The important thing is that me and Steve grew old together and stayed happy. The saddest day of my life was the day he got killed. He was out hunting in the woods and got struck by lightning. Can you believe that? An Indian struck by lightning!
‘I was in the kitchen, washing up, when I got the news. A flock of crows had just flown over the house and two minutes later there was a knock on the door and a sheriff standing there. I don’t know if the crows were a sign or not… Steve would have been able to tell you.
‘Children? No, we weren’t blessed that way, dear. It wasn’t meant to be. And maybe that was a good thing, because there were times when we couldn’t even afford to put food in our own mouths. I know what you’re thinking, though. You’re thinking that if we’d had children I wouldn’t be living here now, aren’t you? You’re thinking that I’d be living with them. No, I wouldn’t have wanted that, dear. You don’t give life to a person just so you can suck it out of them when you get old. They’d have had lives of their own to live, children of their own to look after and there’s no way I’d have wanted to burden them. I’m an invalid, Laura. It wouldn’t have been fair.
‘This place? It’s not all that bad, and it’s better than living on the street. I have company here and you come visit me. Sometimes it does get a bit strange, the screams in the night and strange people coming up to you and shouting at you as if you’ve done something wrong to them. But we’re all God’s creatures and I try to remember that. I count my blessings that I’m not like them, at least not yet. Oh well, there’s no point dwelling on these things…
‘Why don’t you tell me something about yourself, Laura? How are you doing in school? Have you got a boyfriend?
‘No, of course I won’t mention this to your parents. If that’s the way you feel then you have to follow your heart. That’s what I did. People frowned on me, but I didn’t care. It was my life, not theirs. Nowadays people don’t blink an eye when they see a white girl with a Native American and nor should they. And the time will come when they won’t raise an eyebrow when they see two girls together, or even two boys for that matter. You have to be true to yourself and be proud of who you are. I’m proud of you, Laura, and if Steve were alive today he’d be proud of you, too. The only advice I’d give you is not to let your girlfriend work in a slate quarry.’
Three years after entering the nursing home, Elizabeth Longtoe died. She bequeathed her entire estate to Laura, and Laura spent the forty dollars on books about Abenaki Indians. A year later, and inspired by her reading, Laura enrolled in college and took a major in anthropology. She read about primitive societies and extended families, and started to wonder why the ties that bound them had become so unfastened in her own world. Surely a society that dumped elderly and inconvenient family members on the doorstep of others had questions to answer. Laura had crossed one such doorstep and been appalled by what she’d seen. There had to be a better way, and she decided that it was up to her to find it. She owed it to Aunt Elizabeth – and to all the other Aunt Elizabeths in the world.
On graduating from college Laura studied for an MBA and then registered for a postgraduate diploma in healthcare administration. Over the next fifteen years she climbed ladders, worked in three different states and four different care homes. Eventually, and in her opinion not before time, she was appointed manager of a struggling care facility in the historic neighbourhood of Washington DC’s Georgetown. It was privately owned and enjoyed a poor reputation; a home of last resort. Laura’s brief was to turn it around, give it competitive edge. She asked for, and was given, the resources to engineer such an outcome and was then left to her own devices. It was the opportunity she’d been striving for: the chance to put her own ideas into practice!
She started by dismissing those employees she deemed unsuitable, there for the sake of employment – often on minimum wage and with no real command of the English language – and replacing them with fully-qualified care assistants, professionals who were motivated by kindness and consideration. Next she got rid of the smell, an unpleasant potpourri of harsh disinfectant, overly-boiled vegetables and body wastes, and replaced the worn carpets and chairs that the odour had permeated. She contracted a local florist to deliver and maintain large plants and vases of flowers, and paid an electrician to take out and replace the harsh strip lighting.
The home was reborn, and the task now was to bring the residents back to life.
Laura encouraged her team to spend time with the residents and not restrict themselves to simply taking care of their physical needs. And she led by example. Rather than shutting herself in an office, she spent two hours of every day chatting to the people she now described as clients. It was their home away from home, she told them, and it was for them to help make the rules. Even though they were now living in a community, they were still individuals and their opinions mattered. The administration, she said, would listen to them, take on board their concerns and try to implement any suggestions they might make. Together, she told them, they would make a difference! (It was a slogan she’d unashamedly plagiarised from a garage forecourt.)
The fortunes of the care home turned: it filled to capacity, there was a waiting list, and its standing in the local community zoomed. It also attracted the interest of a journalist and Laura’s interview appeared in the local paper.
‘We focus on the dignity of souls rather than the physical and mental indignities that encase them. We treat every person as an individual, allow them choice and encourage independence. We are also conscious that the vast majority of our residents are here not by choice, but by courtesy of infirmity, despairing families or legal rulings. This is their last stop in life, and it is therefore our duty to make this stop as comfortable and enjoyable as is humanly possible.’
It was a mission statement that had read well on paper five years ago, but Laura was now increasingly aware of its gloss. She had, in fact, written the declaration fi
fteen years prior to coming to Georgetown and solely with Aunt Elizabeth in mind; more importantly, she had also written it well before the white horses of dementia had started to ride into town and trample the increasingly ageing nation underfoot. (Growing too old was now a problem in itself.)
It was idealistic, she now realised, fit more for a retirement centre than a care home. Independence? Choice? Who had she been kidding? For the practical running of the home and the residents’ own safety there were too many turnings in the road where the administration had to roadblock choice. The residents had to get up at a certain time, eat their meals at given times and retire to await the next day at an appointed time. They weren’t allowed to leave the building and wander the neighbourhood, and neither could they choose not to take their medicines.
And how could a resident be expected to live an independent life on the inside, having already failed to do so on the outside? And did the residents really want to make their own decisions? The experience of the last five years told her no: choice only confused them, made them anxious. The sad truth was that the only vestige of choice and independence left to them was ownership of the television remote control, and because it was such a sad truth and her idealism reduced to such an absurdity, it became a point of principle for Laura to uphold at all costs: a line in the sand she was unprepared to cross. But then came violence – and then death.
Despite the daily activities organised by the carers, and the entertainers they brought to the home, the focal point for the residents remained the television. It had a soothing and distracting influence on them and they would sit transfixed and becalmed by the changing and colourful images that appeared on its giant screen. They watched films they didn’t understand and programmes they couldn’t follow. It mattered little if the channel was changed before an item finished; the residents would simply adjust to whatever new programme replaced it and return to their own jumbled thoughts without so much as a skip of a beat. But because television was so central to their lives it became of paramount importance to Laura that they should have the right to control it.
Larry & the Dog People Page 4