“Mother, where are your manners? Take Mrs. Crowley into the front room while I do a little tidy…while I make some tea.”
“I loathe tea,” Grace said. “Would you like a drink?” she asked Mrs. Crowley, but the scotch bottle seemed to have disappeared.
Mrs. Crowley bestirred herself. “I think it is time we had at least a conversation,” she said. For once Grace didn’t detect unctuousness, or the superciliousness that she had long ago discovered was the voice used mostly to address the old: the old as stubborn, offensive in their very existence, newly stupid, ineffective and always helpless, too close to death to be bothered with except as packages to be bathed and humped around in wheelchairs.
“At just what point did I stop being a human being?” she inquired.
Karen said quickly, “Mother! No one said…”
Grace had managed to get to her feet, Karen apparently not having noticed what she was trying to do and therefore not helping, and Mrs. Crowley watching her again with that expression of neutral interest, as if they were not two people standing a few feet apart in the same room, but that Grace was only a bloody – what was that? hologram – as if Grace was only an electronic projection of her former self.
“Have you been smoking again?” Karen asked, trying but failing to sound neutral as Mrs. Crowley seemed to do with such ease.
“I never stopped,” Grace said. She was moving past the two women toward the door into the hall. She found that, although she was fuming, as she always did at being told what to do by people less than half her age, she was curious to see what her front parlour looked like these days. It had been months since she had last seen it. She felt as though she were visiting childhood friends, filled with curiosity to see what time had done to them, but hugely disappointed to discover they were still the same bloody people.
Somebody had covered the furniture with old sheets. She tried to throw off the one covering the brocade loveseat but lost her balance and would have fallen if Mrs. Crowley – “Please call me Toni” – hadn’t caught her.
“Never mind. Let’s just sit,” Mrs. Crowley said. The woman plunked herself down on the sheet-covered parlour chair across from Grace, set her overly-large purse on the rug, opened it and pulled out some sort of electronic gizmo – an electronic notebook, it would seem, as she began to write in it. Although Grace’s hearing wasn’t at all good, she could hear crashes and bangs coming from the kitchen and the clashing and ding of pots. This meant that Karen was furious at the mess and was letting her know.
“She wants me to move immediately into a nursing home…a…an assisted living place, whatever that is.”
Mrs. Crowley said, “I expect you know perfectly well what that is.” She smiled at Grace as if her tactics were amusing. “I deal exclusively with the old and while all the usual applies, I find it kind of fun to watch you all use the same dodges when it suits you: I’m old, you can’t expect me to know that; I’m old, you do it” – here she switched tones – “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I can’t look after myself.”
In spite of herself, Grace laughed. “Well, you can hardly blame us,” she said. “We have so few options left.”
“You still have your brain.”
“Of course, I do, although my children think I’m far gone into senility.”
“Children often confuse perceptual difficulties and the new slowness of mental organization for a damaged brain.”
“Also, any sense one maintains of one’s right to autonomy.” Grace huffed this out furiously.
“They do want you to move, and I am pretty convinced, now that I’ve met all three of them, that they really do have your welfare at heart. They really do not believe you to be capable any longer of taking care of yourself. They are truly afraid for you.”
“I notice you didn’t say, ‘They love you.’”
“Don’t you believe they do?”
“Actually, no. They used to, but that dwindled and died as the years of my recalcitrance extended themselves until you find me as I am now. Just a bloody, old nuisance. And they are bound by now-worthless family ties to keep an eye on me. This does not include caring about what I want.”
“That’s a harsh judgement on your own children.”
“They cannot even begin to imagine themselves old,” Grace said, and heard the querulousness in her own voice, heard even the edge of despair, which served only to further infuriate her.
“They believe that when their time comes they will manage things much better,” Mrs. Crowley suggested. “That they will never find themselves in this position.”
“What, you mean alive? And with a will? When she gets finished in there I won’t be able to find a damn thing,” she said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “I need a cigarette.”
“And that’s another thing. They think you will burn the house down with yourself in it.”
“And still I want a cigarette.” Grace fumbled around in the pocket of the apron she seemed, inexplicably, to be wearing, and lo and behold, found a squashed pack of cigarettes and a small box of matches. It was like magic, and she held them up to show Mrs. Crowley, who leaned forward to help her light a match and held it to the end of the cigarette as Grace puffed on it.
“You want me to agree to leave.”
“In lieu of that, to agree to a home-care worker coming in each day to make sure you are safe and have had a hot meal. Or Meals on Wheels could come every day. Maybe that would be better. But first and foremost, why do you refuse to move to a safer, warmer, more comfortable place?”
“I can’t believe you are even asking me that question. I was born here and have lived here almost all my life.” Her cigarette seemed to have gone out, in fact, had disappeared, but there was a scattering of ash on her apron’s lap.
“No,” Mrs. Crowley said. “That’s a fiction, although you have lived here many, many years, even when you were a child. But frankly, between you and me, I don’t quite believe that’s what the obsessiveness is all about.”
Grace studied her carefully. “I had certainly never imagined that you might be interesting.”
“Are you afraid of dying?”
“Of course, but then, also, not a bit.”
“I mean, are you afraid that if you move, you’ll die.”
“There’s no question about that.”
“Is it – I think I’m getting it – is it just that old question of making your own decisions about your own life?”
“Wow!” Grace said. “I bet you went to graduate school.” There was a silence. A thin stream of smoke from a newly-materialized ashtray curled upward beside Mrs. Crowley’s elbow. Hmm. So that’s what had happened to her cigarette. She considered lighting a second one, just to show that she could, but it seemed too much trouble. “And also, they want me – Steven especially – to sign a power of attorney document. So he can sell this place out from under me and force me into moving.”
“He will have to go to court to get that from you if you refuse to give it,” Mrs. Crowley said. She sighed. “He needs lawyers and doctors to certify your inability to look after yourself …” She let her voice trail away. “He will do it, you know. I suspect the very fact of your extreme age will guarantee his success. He has been holding off in hope that you will consent on your own to a move and a sale.”
Grace said, “I wish for a drink. I need a drink.”
“Not wise, under the circumstances,” Mrs. Crowley said.
“I hurt all over,” Grace said, that querulous note returning to her voice. But it was true.
“They’ll give me strong drugs for the aches and pains, but I can’t have a goddamn drink? What’s the matter with them? Do they think my heart might stop?” She had been yelling. She knew this because there was Karen standing in the door, carrying a tray with the teapot and teacups on it.
“Mom,” she said. “Please.”
“It’s all right, Karen,” the social worker said. “We are doing fine.”
Grace wanted to tell them
both to get out right now, but her mouth was suddenly parched for tea, so she held back the stream of invective she had been hoarding.
“There is also the route of getting the house condemned,” Mrs. Crowley was saying. “City inspectors and all that.” But just as her daughter set down the tray on the small table between them, Grace realized her apron was on fire, and already the social worker was pushing past Karen, nearly knocking her over, and had grabbed at the apron, tearing it off Grace, rolling it into a ball and stomping on it.
“You see!” Karen shouted. “Mother? Do you see?”
Having tidied the parlour, taken away the tea things, and seen her settled with a small salad and a chicken sandwich on white bread at her kitchen table from which Karen had cleared away the mayonnaise jar, the ketchup bottle, the jar of mouldy raisin chutney, the raspberry jam and saucer of honey, the leftover bread crusts from a day or two before, the stack of old magazines, and whatever else had been sitting there within handy reach, the visitors prepared to leave. “Susan will come by in the morning on her way to work,” Karen said. “She’ll get you a hot breakfast. By the way, the grocer left your box of supplies on the verandah. I brought it in and put the things away. And…” Grace’s heart sped up, pattering away lightly low in her throat. “And Mrs. Crowley and I are getting in a home-care worker to give you a bath.” She held up a hand shoulder-high, palm first. “Mother, you smell of urine. A bath and clean clothes.”
“Just how do you propose I get upstairs to the bathroom?” Grace asked. She used the toilet off the kitchen and, as far as she could remember, bathed in the kitchen sink.
“She will bathe you down here in the kitchen where it is warm. I’ve brought some clean clothes for you.” Not waiting for her to wind herself up to rage again, her daughter and the social worker said a cheery, “See you soon,” and were gone.
She was amazed to find herself hungry, the sandwich was delicious and she savoured every bite, although it was, of course, too much food for her. Then she lay down on the sofa wedged into the corner of the room and on which, years before, the family dog and occasional cat usually slept. There, she fell asleep.
She must have been dreaming, because a voice had been shouting in her ear, “Watch out! Pay attention!” She opened her eyes and saw that the room had darkened; it was twilight, she must have slept all afternoon. On a previous visit, Karen or Susan or possibly even Steven had moved a standing lamp to the end of the couch where she placed her head and now, sitting up, she clicked it on and studied the room in which she found herself. Still the kitchen, no flame burning on the stove, no smoke rising from anywhere that she could see, no tap gushing water, and on the table only one pretty little mouse chewing away at the remains of her sandwich.She could see Reuben sitting across the room from her, in the shadows in the corner where there remained an old wooden kitchen chair that she had once used to stand on when she needed to reach things high in the cupboard. She couldn’t quite make out his face, but it was her second husband all right, wearing his baggy, dirt-smudged, denim pants, that he used when he gardened and his faded plaid flannel shirt over a worn-out blue dress shirt. She had always liked him best in that outfit for some reason. So masculine, so earthy, or something.
“What do you want?” she inquired, as if she were annoyed by his constant neediness.
“The rhododendrons need cutting,” he said. “And somebody should fertilize the rose bushes.”
“Those bushes are dead,” she said, and then, maybe a trifle plaintively, “aren’t they?” The chair creaked as he stood. Now she could see his face; how lined it was, how cheerful his expression. “My girl,” he said, tenderly. They both laughed. Then he was gone.
Once she had seen a bird that way: some bird she didn’t recognize, in fact doubted even existed so strange it was, and when she glanced down for an instant to see where her feet were, the bird had vanished, just as Reuben had vanished, but both had left behind the same absence. Not as when things just weren’t where you thought they were – your car keys, your glass of gin, your hairbrush – but when the absence itself becomes a thing. Very well, the bird, the man, both had come from another reality and when they had gone back to it, the space between the two realities didn’t close right away. You could still see it. How wonderful that was. What unexpected, vast hope that gave her.
But, oh dear, Grace thought. Something is definitely up. A voice inside her head said, They will now turn off your gas and electricity and your water. They will say it is because your house is unsafe. They will take you out when the wrecking crew arrives. There was no bloody way she was leaving until they hauled her out as the house came down around her. At this, it occurred to her that her mother, exquisitely brought up as she was, would be angry with her for making a spectacle of herself. For giving up her dignity.
Steven, she knew it, would be along soon, probably as soon as she was bathed and in clean clothes. He would bring that lawyer again; he would bring documents for her to sign and if she refused, and they all knew she would, he would return with the lawyer again and two medical doctors and they would take everything away from her.
“I am clinging to my very soul right now,” she cried, raising a fist and looking up to the dingy ceiling where cobwebs hung down and dead flies stuck to years-old flypaper turned in the golden light from the lamp. How beautiful they were, transparent columns of light, her ceiling a glinting, shimmering, speckled garden. “I am clinging to my very soul.” Whispered, this time. “Mother,” Steven had said patiently to her. “You cannot fall again; your bones are too fragile; if you fall again, you will…”
“You bring death with you,” she said. He had begun to cry. I have come to this, she thought, I have made my children cry; I have made my son cry.
It was very dark outside now, probably past midnight, and the dawn would bring her end.
That was what Reuben’s visit was all about; it was to tell her she had reached the end of choice. She could feel her heart squeezing and releasing in her chest. Was it her imagination, or was it weaker and slower than usual? Well, why not? she asked herself. I’ll soon be one hundred years. By using the chair on one side of her knees and the thin wooden column of the lamp on the other, she managed to stand. The back of her skirt felt warm and she recognized that she had wet herself. She would not allow herself to think again.
She was so very stiff from lying down all the afternoon, but by pulling herself along from piece of furniture to piece of furniture, she made it to the sink, which she grasped and held onto, thinking she would perhaps boil the kettle again and make herself a nice, hot cup of tea. But Reuben had returned, not that she could see him, but she could feel him around her, warm and loving as he had usually been, or was at his best. Scrabbling about on the counter she found the stack of magazines that Karen must have forgotten to take with her. She pulled the stack toward her, fumbled in her pocket, and when she found what she wanted, knocked the magazine on top of the pile over toward the sink. It fell half in and half out, spreading its pages awkwardly. She pulled two pages off, the ones that had refused to lie down neatly, and with her other hand, opened her package of matches and extracted one. This, she saw at once, would fail; she would only fall down or do some other such stupid thing of the kind she had found herself doing over and over again the last few months. Or was it years?
But somehow or other the burner was on, the blue and yellow flames warming her and lighting up even the dark corner where previously Reuben had sat. She sighed, gazing into the darkness out the window one more time, although she could see only the wrinkled visage of a very old woman, and then put the magazine’s pages to the fire. When they caught and flamed high in her hand, she managed to reach up and over to the grimy curtains that framed the window, pushed the flame toward them, and waited. In a moment, the cheery red and orange flames had chased each other up the cloth and now, the bent and stained ceiling panels were beginning to smoke.
Satisfied, she found the bottle of scotch – how had it gotten there
? – poured herself a drink, and sat down on her sofa to savour it while black smoke began to roll down from the ceiling and the fire grew, all the while, noisier and noisier, whistling and crackling and whooshing in a satisfying way.
ELEPHANTS
Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, 1927
She had become aware of a high-pitched whistle, startling her out of her reverie. It was the gallery’s alarm; she must have been standing too close to the painting. All of them were familiar to her in reproduction but here, in real life at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Emily Carrs were even more stunning in their richness and their brilliant simplicity; so direct, yet the pictures’ – ‘stories’ – nearly swamped with a vast mystery, one, she thought, unknowable to us settlers. Maybe unknowable to First Nations people too, although like all of us poor benighted souls, they also think they’ve got life and death figured out. Although all roads lead to Rome, Dick the Anglican liked to say. How wonderful if the First Nations people were right, and truth lay in nature, in the earth. But she lived in a high-rise in the city now; it had been a couple of years since her feet had touched grass; what they (the First Nations) thought was truth was, sadly, nothing much to her any more.
She moved to the next painting – lots of totem poles in this one. She let her eyes move down first one, then the next one, and the next, studying the carved figures: ravens, bears, killer whales, even eagles, all the most striking creatures of the west coast realm. In a burst of playfulness, she tried to imagine giraffes, tigers, rhinoceroses carved on such poles, but couldn’t think how such bulky and odd-shaped animals could be made to fit into so firmly, even ritually a defined space. Or hippopotamuses, or elephants. All of which brought her once again to the elephant still, after more than sixty years, in her possession.
Season of Fury and Wonder Page 3