Richard redirected his attention to the woman on the couch. Generally Francine needed assistance in standing. So Maria would come, place one white-panted knee between the woman’s legs, then boost her up by the armpits. But today by pressing with both hands against the wooden arm of the couch, Francine managed to get herself in an erect position and totter toward him. He felt her grab onto then push the handlebars of his chair.
The old man with whom Richard had felt some kinship proved to be no friend. He lifted both the brakes off Richard’s chair so Francine was able to push his bare legs against the scratchy wool of the couch. Then with a jolting, jerking motion she turned the chair around and began pushing him toward the hall. He was certain when they passed the information desk that Vernice or some other person in authority would stop them, but no one did. Richard could hear the woman wheeze as she wheeled him. Apparently she had emphysema. At first he felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, but he became calmer as they approached his room.
However, instead of taking him into it, Francine pushed the chair in a wide looping arc and forced him into her room. The sister was right. There was underwear on the floor. Richard stared at one of the elasticized front-seamed garments and felt lucky to have been born in the era of control-top panty hose and front-hook bras. Removing a woman from one of these waist-cinching garments must have been a real test of manhood. No wonder males of that era had died young.
Francine picked a long vinyl jewel box off her dresser, then sat on the bed with it. She began dumping jewelry in his lap: a long string of red plastic beads, an ornately jeweled spoon and knife pin set, an enormous flesh-colored brooch. The sister was right again. Nobody would want this stuff. Next Francine pulled out an assortment of rings. She was breathing more regularly now. The wheezing had stopped. “You need,” she said, “a ring for your wife.”
That was a fact. But these massive dinner rings she was producing were all wrong. Cheryl was already thoroughly weighted to earth. She needed jewelry that was dainty and light. Out of the rhinestone creations on his lap, he picked up a small red stone in a gold setting, guarded by two tiny diamond chips.
“Garnet,” Francine told him with no particular appreciation. “Take it. I have no use for it.” He was tempted to accept her offer, but what if later she accused him of thievery. Then he realized there was little chance of that. He could not navigate his own chair. Even if she accused him, no one would believe it. The bedgowned bandit—it would be a joke to the staff. He was a threat to no one.
He jammed the ring on the tip of his left pinkie. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He was not sure what to call her. Using her first name sounded presumptuous.
It did not matter. She had her back to him and was staring into her closet; maybe she was picking out a dress for his wedding. Richard supposed since she had supplied the engagement ring he and Cheryl would have to invite her.
He remained still as a stone, waiting for her to wheel him back to the lobby. He glanced at her window. It was paneless and uninteresting. Besides, for the last couple of days he had abandoned his preoccupation with windowpanes and numbers. His brain was acting like Heinz let off the leash—running full tilt with all sorts of unrelated observations passing through. Right now he was thinking about God—that the Almighty had to be like a player in a Monopoly game. When one of His pieces got a go to jail card, he would grieve but be powerless to change the situation.
Richard waited a few more minutes, then craned his neck to see if Francine was still at the closet. She was not. All he could see of her bed was a bit of fringed black afghan, but he could hear breathing. Soft and rhythmic. She must have lain on her bed and fallen asleep. So much for his chauffeur. He lifted his foot pedal and with much toe action and several collisions managed to maneuver his chair into the corridor. The last physical therapist had told him to lead with his good knee. But the motion kept plunging him into the hall wall.
Finally Vernice spotted and rescued him. “Sugar! We been looking for you. It’s time for lunch.” She wheeled him into his room, then pushed his chair over the bar in his bedside table. Besides confining him, such positioning made him feel like a diner on an airplane. (He disliked airplane food and was always amazed at his teammates, who could ingest enormous quantities of the unidentifiable dinner.)
Vernice uncapped his plate. Fish—greasy vile-smelling flounder. “I don’t want it, Vernice. Take it away, please.” The fumes from the fish caused his stomach to heave upward like a Frisbee thrown skyward. “Please take it away, Vernice.”
“Try a little bit,” she answered, and left.
Hot tears, unwilled as a sneeze, rolled down his cheeks. The tears angered him more than the unwanted fish. With a gentle flick of the wrist he pushed the tray off the table and watched it fall. The cup slid off the saucer, rolled to the far wall, then broke. His action, he knew, would not endear him to the staff, but what difference did it make? He was getting married and moving out soon anyway.
Richard stared at the window, endowing each pane with a word, instead of a number: An amateur Christian, altered by circumstance, with unbendable knees … Doubting his poetic prowess, he switched to the traditional Our Father. He had not completely accepted his own theory of an unobtrusive God and still thought God the Father, the Field General, could occasionally intercede in an emergency. Richard was now praying that the circumstances involving himself and the redhead would improve.
CHAPTER FIVE
She felt like the child at the dinner table, a difficult child at that. One who at any moment might blurt out a statement both distressing and embarrassing. Cheryl knew she should not feel that way. She was in her own home at her own table and was serving an appetizing Easter dinner to her mother and stepfather.
And Al, as usual, was eating and drinking daintily—a sliver of ham, a spoonful of salad, a splash of wine. That was what infuriated her so—his damned daintiness. The man’s neck was nearly as thick as her mother’s waist. The cords in his arms bulged like mature carrots. Just to maintain his frame, he must eat like a horse, and yet at her home he picked. He was dressed casually in a short-sleeved, red knit shirt and slacks of shiny blue material. He must not have gone to Easter services. Cheryl supposed she should not be so judgmental about that since she had not been to Mass herself. But she knew her mother had. Rose, dressed in a beige suit and brown silky blouse that harmonized nicely with her short dark hair, was more angularly attractive than pretty, but she had absolutely beautiful feet. They were long, fine-boned, and perfectly shaped to fill the expensive, narrow Italian shoes she always wore. Today the shoes were two-toned—chocolate-colored on one side and creamy beige on the other—with slender straps around the side and back. But Cheryl could no longer admire them since they were completely hidden under the massive pine dining table.
“We are having,” Rose was saying, “different people come in at school and speak on their careers. Mostly civil service employees, because they get time off from work. But one of the fathers, an accountant, came in and, Cheryl, I was wondering if you could get away?”
“I kind of doubt Mr. Derrigo or Raymond would go for it.” She might have been able to take an early lunch, but Cheryl had no desire to speak to children about secretarial careers. Her mother would not understand. Rose in her own small world was an authority figure, whereas a seasoned secretary whose bosses have not yet arrived for the day, when questioned “Nobody in yet?” will say “That’s right,” barely conscious of the slight. It was not a career about which she wanted to proselytize to schoolchildren. But to admit such feelings would wound her mother, so she quietly got up for the key lime pie. In deference to Al, she did not say “Dad’s favorite.”
Rose knew anyway. On this as on all holidays, Cheryl was very conscious of her father’s absence. George Farrell would have bought them both orchids. He also would have been wearing his three-piece suit. George Farrell always wore a suit coat and vest, had even died in one, four years before on a train bound for New York. His d
eath had delayed the commuters on the New Haven line a full half hour; it was the first time her father, a charmingly shy, overweight man, had ever inconvenienced anyone.
When she set the pie on the table, Rose shook her head emphatically. “None for me, dear. We have to go eat pasta at Al’s mother’s house yet.”
So that was it! They were eating so sparingly because they were bound for an Italian feast. Cheryl carefully carried the rejected pie out to the kitchen, then filled three large coffee mugs exactly three-quarters full, hoping precision would prevent her from exhibiting her hurt feelings. But when she brought in the coffee, Al, who found sweets sickening, said, “If you’re still offering that pie, I’ll have a piece.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Looked real good.” She might have believed him, except that he ate the lime pudding and baked meringue morosely, making small sniffing noises as if performing some sort of public penance. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “Why don’t you come to Mom’s with us? She always makes about fifty times too much.”
Cheryl hesitated. Just as she was about to say okay, her mom shot Al a look of extreme gratitude, and she knew she was not part of this family and never would be. It was so unfair. Al had a mother of his own; why did he need hers?
“Thanks, but I have plans.”
“What plans, hon?”
She sometimes thought her mother had an aversion to using her first name. The name had obviously been her father’s choice. Her mother was too sensible to have named a child Cheryl Farrell.
Cheryl hesitated. She had not expected to be questioned and had no ready reply, but then she thought of Richard Olsen. “I visit a stroke patient at the nursing home.”
That was only partially true; because Vernice, who had suggested she come, now suggested she not come. “He’s getting too attached and calling you his girlfriend.” Though the harm in that had not been apparent to Cheryl, she had forced herself to do the right thing and had stopped going. Now she wished she could quit letting people bully her so. She had allowed her mother to talk her into accepting this condo when she would have been far better off, socially if not financially, remaining in her efficiency apartment, surrounded by other singles. And she had allowed Vernice to prevent her from seeing Richard, who wasn’t so appalling to talk to. He generally listened, depending on the degree of his own physical discomfort, which was about as much as you could ask of anyone.
Rose looked surprised but satisfied with Cheryl’s excuse. “That’s lovely of you, dear.”
When they had gone, Cheryl took the lily her mom had bought out to the car. At 2:15 she signed in at the main desk of the Michael Keep Home. Though it was a holiday, only two visitors’ names preceded hers. On her way upstairs in the chilly elevator Cheryl realized she had come close to losing the perfect friend, one who was always available. She passed the third-floor nurses’ station quickly and with head down, just in case Vernice was watching.
Though Cheryl could not keep herself from peeking into patients’ rooms, she tried not to dwell on what she saw. To fully acknowledge the white-haired, moaning woman or the old man exposing a gray, limp penis was to admit life was an uncontrollable mess. She began to hurry down the corridor. Her vinyl-soled shoes made sighing, squishing noises as they hit the green tiles. She wondered how Richard existed day after day in this depressing place. Perhaps he had been waiting these last two weeks for the sound of her feet. The thought made her flush and walk even faster.
She made an abrupt right turn into his room. “Richard,” she said before noticing that the bed was empty. Not just empty but completely made and covered with a plain white spread. The room had a sterile, unoccupied look. Even Richard’s plastic garbage can had no liner. Cheryl was afraid to set down the lily. The room seemed so funereal. What if …? She walked slowly back to the nurses’ station and whispered “Richard Olsen?” to the volunteer on duty.
“In the lobby.”
Cheryl’s eyes followed the woman’s finger. Though she was relieved Richard was still alive, seeing him sitting up was a terrible shock. He had his back to her and was leaning forward in his wheelchair, like one of those plastic toy birds that bends down and drinks water from a glass. A white sheet was tied around his middle to secure him in place. When she approached from the side, she could see his eyes were vacant, his mouth hung open, and he was drooling. Something terrible had happened to him since she had last been there. Always before he had been unseeing and stubborn, but had never worn this slobbering, lobotomized look. The only explanation was that he had suffered another stroke.
Cheryl set the plant on the floor beside his chair and began rubbing his cold, bent left hand. “Aw, Richard, aw, Richard,” she said softly as tears began rolling down her cheeks. She watched his yellow slipper as it rhythmically tapped against the floor. Then the floor motion became more agitated. When she looked up, Richard was crying, too. On her first visit his tears had terrified her. But now she was enormously relieved by them. His mouth had straightened, his eyes had focused and he was trying to say something. “I, ah, uh. I, ah.”
Cheryl noticed there was a picture window in front of them and a half circle of old people in wheelchairs, staring not out the window but at them. She stood, hiked up the elasticized waistband on her dirndl skirt, then pushed at his chair, intending to take him someplace private. When the chair did not budge, she knelt down again, embarrassed that she cared what these old people were thinking. Both Stu and Al considered her childish and superficial. Maybe they were right.
Richard took one last jagged sigh, shook his head savagely, then said, “I prayed you were safe and coming soon.” He shook his head again. “You didn’t come.”
His intense reaction to her absence required a lie. “I was sick. But I’m okay now.”
Richard straightened his back, then leaned down and pulled toward him a gray plastic-coated lever on the right side of the chair. He gestured for her to remove the brake on the left side. Then he commanded, “Take me to my room, Cheryl.”
The dramatic change in him amused her. “Yes, boss.” She placed the plant in his lap, and he grasped it with his good arm. This time the chair moved easily. Richard was wearing a pale blue bedgown with a gaping neckline that revealed the freckles on his back. As soon as they were in his room, she took the plant, moved the restricting sheet, pulled a robe from the closet, and draped it around his shoulders. “Better, Richard?”
“Mmm,” he mumbled with little conviction. Then he pulled something off his left finger and thrust it at her. Before she could grasp it, the small object fell from his hand and rolled toward the wall. Halfway to his window, she found a small gold ring. “Where did this come from?”
“They tried to take it from me. I thought it was them that wouldn’t let you come anymore.”
He was smiling tightly, close to tears again. Cheryl calmly repeated, “Where did it come from?”
“The old woman. We’ll have to invite her.”
She had no idea what he was talking about but was reluctant to question him. All that mattered was that he had missed her.
“Okay.” Cheryl slipped the ring on her right hand.
“Other hand.”
Feeling reprimanded, she handed the ring back to Richard, who carefully threaded it on her left finger. “I think we should kiss now,” he said in the same tone her mother had once used to say “I think you should shake hands now” when introducing her to a blind child.
They kissed solemnly and Cheryl knew she was committing a rash, impetuous act. But this was the way it always happened in the novels.
CHAPTER SIX
At first Richard thought the man was a musician. The curly hair was deceptive. And his speech was slow and metered. His fingers, with their well-manicured nails, held an expensive silver pen. There was a spiral binder open on his lap.
“Richard, could you name the first president of the United States?”
“George Washington.”
“Can you name any of the si
gners of the Declaration of Independence?”
Richard had almost decided the guy with the curls was a history major turned reporter when he asked, “Since the onset of your illness, has any of your family been to visit you?”
“My mom came once.”
“Just once?”
“She doesn’t like being around sick people.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
That’s when he knew his companion was some sort of psychiatrist. Richard shrugged and looked at his window longingly. He could start counting in increments of something easy like fifteens and tune this guy right out.
“Do you have any other visitors?”
Richard redirected his attention to his visitor. This shrink was administering some sort of test, and until he knew its purpose and consequences he had better keep alert.
“A woman named Cheryl comes.”
“Your fiancée?”
“Yeah.”
“And what do you expect of this upcoming marriage?”
“To care about somebody. To have somebody care about me.”
“Do you expect it to restore your health?”
Before he could give the correct, the reasonable answer, the orderly came in, put a hand behind his sweating back, and swung him into a sitting position. Visitor or no, it was ten o’clock in the morning and time for him to get up. The nursing-home schedule never varied, except today Vernice had skipped his bath, and he missed that. The ministrations of a warm, wet rag limbered his legs immensely. Now he was dizzy and his legs felt like breaking popsicle sticks. The orderly steadied him on the edge of the bed while Richard stared down at his own bare feet. “Need my slippers,” he told the Indian. But the orderly paid no attention and in his hurry to depart he slammed him into the wheelchair like a billiard ball sunk into the pocket. He left without ever speaking.
The Way It Happens In Novels Page 4