by Bill Hayes
He doesn’t remember any of that now—one of the blessings of dementia, I suppose. Instead, we talked about paratrooper training at Fort Benning and some of the jumps he’d made during the Korean War. Even after being blinded in one eye from a combat injury, he continued to make jumps—night jumps—into enemy territory. We also talked about swimming, something I’ve taken up with a great passion—Oliver and I swim together two or three times a week. I guess I’m more like my old man than I used to think. “You were on the swim team at West Point, weren’t you?” I asked.
“Captain of the team,” he said dully, then added, “I think.”
As we talked, another resident wheeled up to the table where we were sitting. She sat there for a moment regarding us like weeds in a garden, and then asked, “Who’s this?”
Dad didn’t answer.
“I’m John’s son,” I said.
“You’re my son?” Dad said. “You’re not my son.” Suddenly he looked confused and suspicious.
“Right. Yeah, we were in the infantry together,” I told her, correcting myself.
He nodded and his head dropped and he fell asleep.
I rolled Dad over to the TV area, where one of the aides, Cassandra, was sitting with Sophie and others, desultorily watching “Jeopardy.” Cassandra told me to roll John next to her. I did, but she grabbed the arm of his wheelchair and brought him even closer in. This woke him. She looked deep into his eyes, as if she were reaching some part of his brain deep, deep inside. “John?” she said. “How many children do you have?” She spoke very clearly and calmly and smiled at him.
Dad thought for a moment. “Six? I have six?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said, smiling, holding that gaze. “And how many boys and how many girls?”
“Four girls, two boys.”
“How many, John?” She took his hand and gazed with such benevolence.
“Five girls, one boy.”
Cassandra smiled. Dad smiled. “And what is your son’s name?”
“William,” Dad said, “William.”
I put my arm on his shoulder and leaned over and kissed his head. He gave me a look like, “What the heck are you doing, kissing me?” He offered me his hand, and we shook—soldier to soldier. I said goodbye.
“See ya later,” he said.
End of the Day
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
3-2-14:
I lay on the couch reading the newspaper, not really aware of the time, not in a rush to do anything, as O practiced the piano. I put down the paper a few times and closed my eyes and just listened. I love hearing him play, hearing him hum along to himself deafly. He came over at one point and leaned over the couch in that way that he does, and touched me, in that way that he does, as if I were an animal in a zoo—his hand reaching through the bars to pet me (or is it the other way around—is he the animal, caged, pushing his snout through the bars, or his trunk or a paw, to feel me?).
“Come here, Beautiful,” I finally said, grabbing O by the hand and pulling him toward me.
_____________________
5-2-14:
The sun was setting, it was getting dark, when I popped my head in to Ali’s this evening to say hello.
He held out his hand and we shook: “My friend,” he said.
We stepped outside. We talked about the endless, noisy construction on Eighth Avenue: “Nine times I see it, they tear up this street,” Ali said.
He told me that the owner of the smoke shop had bought the stationery supply store next door. Now he owns three shops on the block.
“The King of Eighth Avenue,” I said, kiddingly.
Ali nodded.
“But you’re still the mayor.”
Ali pointed out shops across the street—three of them had For Lease signs in their windows. The organic bakery had just closed. “It was a good neighbor, they were here many years.” He paused. “Fifteen people lost their jobs, too, when he had to close the shop—fifteen people who will have a hard time getting another job.” He pointed out that most of them were students or undocumented workers. He shook his head. “It’s not right.”
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6-3-14:
Sunday, O nuzzled his nose, dog-like, into the side of my head, brushed it up and down and back and forth against my buzz-cut hair (“It’s like a meadow,” he said) and then he did so with the top of his head.
“Now, why does one do that?” O said, suddenly the scientist in him coming out.
“Because it feels good,” I answered instantly.
He laughed; it was such a simple and seemingly simplistic answer.
“But that’s very interesting,” O said, picking up this thread. “Does feeling good—does feeling—influence all of our choices as animals? Something feels good, so we do it again—this is how we learn about pleasure. Or it doesn’t feel good, so we learn that it carries a risk, a danger …? Are our lives ruled by feeling?”
“Mine is,” I responded.
He didn’t seem to hear me.
“Do plants feel?” O said.
He looked at me like I held the answer, but continued on: “Certainly they do, but they cannot respond to feeling as quickly as we. Plants are rooted in the ground. They can move, yes, but not at the speed that an animal can. It may take years for a tree to grow, days for a flower to bloom. Is it speed then that differentiates us—this capacity for speed? You could do time-lapse photography of a vine crawling and see that it does, indeed, move, but one would have to speed it up a thousand times to match the speed with which an animal can react to threats or changes in the environment the way a human can.”
O tilted his head, seemingly focusing on a corner of the room. “Yes, perhaps speed is at the essence…”
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6-15-14:
O: “I like having a confusion of agency, your hand on top of mine, unsure where my body ends and yours begins…”
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7-22-14:
I was standing in the kitchen last night making dinner for the two of us and a thought came to me: This is the happiest I’ve ever been.
I stopped myself: Is that true?
I kept doing what I was doing, making dinner, sort of testing the feeling; O was talking all the while; and I thought, Yes, yes, it is true.
PART III
HOW NEW YORK BREAKS YOUR HEART
Couple Under Glass
MY AFTERNOON WITH ILONA
I rang the bell for Ilona’s apartment at exactly three o’clock, the time we’d arranged for my visit, and she buzzed me in. “You’re almost there,” she called from up above the stairwell when I’d reached the second floor. Her building had no elevator. At ninety-five years old, Ilona goes up and down the three flights several times a day—“Keeps me young,” she had told me.
Ilona had called me a couple of days earlier, saying she wanted to give me a gift—a thank you for the photographs I had taken of her and the prints I’d given her. “It will only take a half hour,” she had said.
The door to her apartment was open just a crack, and she peeked out, her face like a bouquet of oranges, blues, and greens, a ribbon of red at the lips. “Come in, come in, make yourself at home.” I squeezed through the narrow opening; the door was open just a crack because it could only open that far—stacks of things behind it prevented the door from opening fully.
Ilona had told me her place was very tiny—like herself (she stands about four foot ten, and weighs no more than ninety pounds). She added, “Don’t be surprised by anything you see,” which sounded at once like a warning and an invitation.
Even so, I was taken aback: the room was tinier than I could have imagined—just one small room, with a half bathroom to the right; no kitchen; and a single window. There was a double bed raised high off the floor to the immediate left, just after the door. Stacks of things—books, magazines, boxes—towered. Opposite the bed was a small chair surrounded by more stacks—I can’t even quite say what all these t
hings were—creating a kind of island with just a narrow moat around it. The walls were lined floor to (almost) ceiling with more—boxes, books, clothes, and paintings—colorful canvases of landscapes and portraits. The wall opposite the door was mirrored, but the mirror was only visible at the very top, for it was covered up three fourths of the way.
By my description alone, one might think this tiny space was the home of a hoarder. But that would mean I am giving the wrong impression. Even though this small room was extraordinarily packed, there was no whiff of madness, of decrepitude. Things were colorful and soft (fabrics, clothes, hats). It smelled nice, clean. Everything was within reach; I supposed she needed nothing more. This was simply the home of a small person who had lived here for sixty-six years, and had sixty-six years’ worth of things.
“I’m glad you could come,” she said in a sweet, gracious way.
I was still dazzled, as if adjusting to bright sunlight after coming out of a tunnel. I thanked Ilona for having me and, with her permission, put my camera, bag, and jacket on her bed.
Ilona was dressed more casually than I’d seen her before when taking her picture in the park. She wore a brown caftan with some sequins at the neck, a blue visor in her bright orange hair, and she was barefoot. She had her extraordinary eyelashes on, inch-long eyelashes she makes out of her own orange hair.
She quickly got down to business. I was here for a reason, not just a social visit: She told me she was going to make a drawing of me. “You took my picture, now I’m going to make a picture of you. Let’s have you sit here”—she gestured toward a chair in the island right next to the bed—“the light will be better.”
I smiled to myself; there was literally no other place I could have sat, except for on top of the bed.
I asked if I could help, but she insisted, No. I watched as this very small woman moved things from the chair so I could sit there, in the process creating a new stack. Her movements were slow and tremulous—Ilona has a sort of Parkinsonian tremor—but deliberate. “Here, try that.”
I sat. Ilona frowned. “Too high. I’m very short, you know.”
I chuckled and nodded.
I stood. She took more things off the chair—more books and magazines that had been stacked atop it. “Okay,” Ilona said, “I think that should be good.”
I sat down. She appraised me, narrowing her eyes. “Okay, we’re almost ready,” she said in her sweet, cheerful voice.
Ilona sat opposite me, our knees nearly touching. She had positioned a stool to the right and in front of her. I rested my left foot on the bottom rung. Ilona studied the crowded shelf to her left and, after some deliberation, chose three pencils and placed them atop the stool. From some other compartment, she selected a single, small sheet of thick paper, about four by six inches. She took up a small spiral-bound pad and placed the piece of paper on top.
“Okay, now get comfortable, just relax.” I sat back a little bit.
“No, really relax. Shoulders down.”
“Like this?”
“Yes, that will be fine. But you have to take off your glasses. Now, don’t look out the window. You must look at me. I am drawing your eye.”
“You’re drawing my eye?”
“Yes, dear!” She said nothing more. My eye? Just one? I somehow imagined this meant something other than it did.
Ilona picked up a pencil, then studied my face for a long while. I stared into her eyes. Because of her tremor, her body moved slightly, her silver hoop earrings gently swaying. And then she looked down at the paper and began making some marks. She looked back up, staring seriously.
“You don’t need to wear glasses to see well?” I asked.
“No, sometimes for reading at night I use some, but otherwise no. I had cataracts removed seven years ago, and since then, no.”
“How long have you been drawing?” I asked.
Ilona looked up, put down her pencil, and gave me a patient smile then said quite firmly, “I can’t talk while I work. We can talk later. You talk; I want to hear about you. At this moment, you are the most important person in the world.”
I was a little startled and very moved by her words. Truth is, I had been feeling vaguely badly, badly about myself, for several days—a common condition for me. So, to find myself in a small chamber with a very small, very old artist just inches away from me, who was devoting a half hour, maybe more, of her limited time entirely to me—well, I was touched. You are the most important person in the world, I thought.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome,” she answered cheerfully. “Now, tell me about yourself.”
So I did. I told Ilona about where I’d grown up, in a small town in Washington state, about moving to New York after my partner died, about my books and writing, and how I started taking pictures a few years ago. Sometimes she asked brief, simple questions with genuine curiosity (“What are the books about?” “Where does your family live now?” “How did Steve die?”), but mostly she just listened and worked on her drawing as I talked. I’m almost never a talker, usually.
I tried hard to stay very still and to gaze directly into Ilona’s eyes, even as I spoke. She appreciated this. “You’re a very good model,” she told me at one point. “You don’t move.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” Ilona replied. She was very courteous, but her manner remained serious.
I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see well what she was doing, plus, she sometimes held the pad in one hand as she drew.
“Sometimes I squint my eyes,” Ilona explained, “so I can get the general picture.”
She made more marks. “Nature is so extraordinary—no two eyes are exactly the same,” Ilona observed. She told me that she only does this—drawing someone’s eye—for special friends. I broke the rule and asked her how long had she been making these drawings? “At least fifty years,” she answered.
I nodded, but this was almost beyond my comprehension. She told me she’d drawn Tennessee Williams’s eye once.
“You have very beautiful eyes; I didn’t know, because of your glasses.”
I listened and gazed at her.
She continued to draw as she spoke. “I see intelligence, and behind the eyes, a great probing.”
I nodded slightly. This is a reading too, I began to understand.
Ilona worked in silence for a while. She squinted. “There is amusement in your eyes, but also … concentration, great concentration. Intensity, tremendous intensity—I’ve hardly ever seen anything like it.”
Did she say the same thing to everyone who sat for her? I didn’t care if she did.
I wondered if she’d say she saw sadness, loneliness, how I sometimes feel. But then again, at that moment, in that quiet chamber with the ninety-five-year-old artist, I didn’t feel lonely. I felt like the most important person in the world. I told Ilona that my mother had been an artist, and she used to do sketches of my five sisters and me.
She looked up and smiled. “That’s very nice.”
“She was wonderful,” I said dreamily, “I was lucky.” I told her that the whole basement of our house was like an art studio.
She asked if my mother was still alive. I said no, and she nodded.
I told her that my father had been very different—a military man, a war vet, a drinker, a gambler, an Irishman, tough—but also a provider, a word not often used anymore. He went bankrupt twice, but … he provided for us, put us all through school. I was lucky there, too, I thought to myself.
I thought about asking Ilona if she had been married or had kids, but I stayed quiet. One day, I’d take another picture of her, and I would ask her to tell me about herself.
Every now and then, Ilona would put down her pencil and smudge a line with her finger, or take a small eraser and erase something. The pencils were all in shades of orange, lighter versions of the color of her hair and eyelashes.
“I’m almost done,” Ilona said. I remembe
red how she’d told me on the phone that it would take twenty minutes, a half hour at most, and I noticed the green digital clock near her; indeed, about twenty minutes had passed.
She stopped, put down her pencils, looked at it carefully, smiled and nodded. “Here,” Ilona said, “your eye,” turning the drawing so I could see it.
I reached for my glasses and put them on. I felt speechless. Not only was it an accurate depiction of an eye, it was very clearly my eye—I recognized it—and although there was only one eye on the small piece of paper, it was as if the rest of my face were somehow there too: I could see my whole face in that one part of my body. I could see myself.
I admit, I was surprised. I hadn’t known what to expect, I hadn’t known if she could even draw; but indeed she could draw very well—and with delicacy, sensitivity.
Ilona could tell that I was pleased. She clapped her hands together. “Marvelous!” She turned the drawing back in her direction. “Isn’t that the most beautiful eye!” she exclaimed. This wasn’t meant as self-praise but instead as an appraisal of the eye itself.
I chuckled with embarrassment. “Thank you,” I said, “what an amazing gift, I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re welcome, thank you for the gift of your photographs. I’m happy we are becoming friends. Now,” her tone changed, “I must spray it, so it doesn’t smear.” She handed me a can of varnish. “Can you shake that? You’re much stronger than me.”
By Ilona Royce Smithkin
I stood and began shaking the can, a familiar sound—the steel ball inside clattering—reminding me of all the cans of spray paint and varnish lined up on a shelf in the basement of my childhood home. I felt enormous standing next to her, not only hugely, comically muscular—like a wrestler in the ring on TV—but tall, which I’m not—I am only five foot seven.
“That’s enough!” she cried above the racket—I’d gotten carried away, lost in my reverie—and I handed the can of varnish back to Ilona. She squeezed through the crack out into her hallway, sprayed the drawing, and returned. “It has to dry for a while. Now, shall we have something to drink? Coffee or vodka? Those are the only two things I know how to make.”