The Way It Happens In Novels

by Kathleen O'Connor

  When they got to the top of the stairs, Rose peered wistfully into her old master bedroom with its huge walk-in closet. The room was unused now; Cheryl had chosen to remain in the small bedroom. Giving her daughter the condo had been a foolish, emotional gesture. But Rose had been so grateful to Cheryl for hosting a shower and supervising the wedding arrangements. Cheryl had just been deserted by Stu at the time, and Rose had thought in wonder: she must love me; she really must love me to be doing this. But after going to that farce of a wedding at the nursing home, Rose realized it was just the ceremony itself that her daughter loved.

  Cheryl’s bedroom set and desk were yellow. Her chair was a high-backed wicker throne. All the furniture was built on a preteen scale that made Rose feel like an Amazon. She carefully lowered herself into the wicker chair while Cheryl slumped on her bed. Rose eyed the frilly coverlet and thought: well, at least she made her bed today.

  Cheryl pointed to the bulging envelope purse on the dresser next to her mother. “Pass me a cigarette.”

  Rose lifted the purse and fished out the cigarettes. As she passed them over, she noticed the stack of romance novels on the bedside table. Cheryl had obviously spent her day reading British fiction about poor shopgirls who drank tea, smoked fags, and married well. Rose slumped back in the wicker chair and gripped the armrests. There was a very sick boy downstairs. If her daughter ever needed to deal with reality, now was the time.

  Cheryl grabbed the dime-store glass ashtray from her desk. “Gosh, Mom. I don’t know what to do. Richard’s regressed to the way he was when I started visiting him. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t talk. I can’t keep a nurse’s aide because he gets so nasty.”

  So that explained her retreat into fantasy. The important thing was to be sympathetic and not make her feel defensive. “You’ve taken on an impossible job. The boy needs constant care. The nursing home might be able to better provide—”

  “Boy!” Cheryl half stood, half slid off the bed. “Just because Richard is ill! He’s twenty-nine, Mom. He’s an adult; he’s a man. And that nursing home packed up his belongings in a garbage bag when he left. He had to leave with a black garbage bag. I will never send him back there.” She started to cry. First there was an artificial sob, and then she managed to squeeze out two real tears. “Being sick from a stroke is just like being a secretary. You cease to be a person, a grown-up. I’ll have my girl call your girl.”

  Oh, Lord, Rose thought, here she goes. She could never understand why Cheryl did not return to school and train for something else if she found her job so demeaning. But George had brought her up to believe she was a princess—that all good things were her birthright. She didn’t know how to work for anything. There I go blaming George again. It’s my fault, too. I never understood what she needed.

  Rose remembered a six-year-old Cheryl standing by her side and wailing “I haven’t got anything to do.” At the same age Rose had loaded up all her dolls on her big brass bed, looped a rope through the headboard, then drove her covered wagon through hostile Indian territory. And she had lined up the dining room chairs and pretended to be a train conductor. When she had suggested similar pursuits to Cheryl, the child constantly wailed “What do I do next? What do I do next?” Rose had not known how to entertain a child with no interests and no imagination.

  Cheryl stood. “Shall we go check on our men?”

  Rose had been a teacher for too long to react to childish outbursts. “Okay. I need to refrigerate that casserole, too.”

  She thrust the dish into the refrigerator, then stared in amazement at the mess on the kitchen table. It looked as if her entire class of kindergartners had been let loose in the kitchen. There was an oversize dishpan full of scummy water with shaving cream heaped on one side. Beside that was a mirror, a razor, a comb, a glass, an uncapped toothpaste container, a toothbrush, and a kidney-shaped bowl.

  Al and Richard were back in the living room in front of the TV. Rose followed her daughter into the room. “You made a mess,” she told her husband. Then realizing she had not yet acknowledged Richard, she smiled and said, “How are you? Been watching TV?” Richard smelled of lime shaving lotion and looked more emaciated than ever.

  Neither question was very original, but when he did not answer, she flushed and turned to her husband with a pleading look, meaning: can we soon get out of here? She felt too tall, too awkward, too unwelcome. And then from behind her a deep voice said, “Situation comedies mostly.” Startled, she turned and stared at Richard, who was giving her a dazzling smile. From his wheelchair he had gallantly rescued her from feeling ugly and unwanted, and for a moment she half understood why Cheryl had married him. He looked so boyish and hopeful that she was reluctant for their conversation to end. “You didn’t have a TV at the—” She flushed, then tactfully substituted hospital for nursing home.

  “No.”

  He was still focusing his celebrity grin on her, and Rose smiled back in gratitude. “Did you forget what it was like?”

  “Yeah, but it comes back fast. Sort of like the scent of cheap cologne.”

  What an apt analogy. Rose turned to see if Cheryl was appreciating it, but she wore a cross, petulant look. He won’t talk to me. He’s talking to my mother.

  I’d like to get him out of here, Rose decided. Take him to our place for a while. Al could nurse him. I could get him books from the library. He and I could talk. Then suddenly Richard was tired. His mouth sagged; his eyes rolled. Cheryl’s sullen expression changed to fright.

  Al put his hand on the boy’s back. “Tired?” he asked kindly, then lifted Richard back into bed.

  Rose, embarrassed by her son-in-law’s near-nakedness, pretended to be fastening the decorative buckle on her clog. When Richard was comfortably settled, Al looked at her and stated without his usual hesitancy, “We better go.” Al was more decisive around Richard, which confirmed that her decision to bring the boy home would benefit everybody. Then Rose looked at her still-frightened daughter and thought: what am I doing? How could she think about taking over her daughter’s husband? It was sick. She glanced at the hospital bed and the enormous metal device the nurses’ aides used to lift Richard. It was all sick. Some unfortunate marriages might end in this state, but she was sure no other had started this way.

  She strolled over by Richard’s bed to wish him good night, then bent down as if picking up a tissue and ran her hand down the wall above the baseboard. Memory served her well. There was a telephone jack just behind the bed. I will have a phone installed there tomorrow, she decided. I’ll call it a belated wedding present; then I’ll coax Al into going away for a week. She had amassed twenty-five years of devoted service at the Ridgely school system and knew the principal wouldn’t begrudge her some extra time off. She and Al might drive up to Cranberry Lake. Al could fish. And Cheryl, when forced to deal with this situation alone, would realize how impossible it was. The plan sounded logical and less harsh than letting a dangerous situation continue. Besides, if things got too bad during that week, Richard could always make a phone call. Her daughter would hate her, but Rose was sure she did already.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cheryl stared out the kitchen window at the rain. If it had not been for Richard’s fragile lungs, she could have taken some satisfaction in the damp spring weather. She hoped Rose and Al were having a rotten time in upstate New York—all chilled and huddled together. Then it occurred to her that other people had sex lives and were less inconvenienced by inclement weather. I will not cry, she told herself, as she paced back and forth on her tiny kitchen floor, staring at the checkered linoleum. I won’t cry. I won’t cry. The Home Health Agency was sending a supervisory nurse, and after she got here everything would be all right.

  There was so much information she needed to give the nurse—like how Richard was not eating. Unless there was some change this morning. She padded into the living room in her gown and terrycloth scuffs to check his tray. The circle of brown sugar on top of his Cream of Wheat was unbroken, which me
ant he had not even tried it. Nor had he eaten any of the applesauce. She lifted the tray and asked, “Could I bring you something else?”

  He shook his head no.

  Cheryl carried the tray back to the kitchen. For the last two weeks most of her energy had gone into cooking soft foods. All of which he had rejected. She felt more like an unwanted waitress than a wife.

  She dumped the applesauce down the drain, then stared longingly at the Cream of Wheat. It was cool, but the brown sugar smelled nice. How many calories in Cream of Wheat? Lots, probably. She quickly spooned the cereal down the drain, ran cold water, and flipped on the disposal switch. Black coffee was calorieless. She poured herself half a cup and, feeling slightly virtuous, ran upstairs with it.

  A shower would feel good, but there was no time. The nurse might be here at any moment. Cheryl put on jeans and a turtleneck shirt and exchanged her worn scuffs for new elasticized slippers. Then she went back downstairs and returned to staring out the window.

  The garbageman came. He pulled his green truck into the empty spaces beside her Vega and, with much grinding of gears, backed over to the Dempster Dumpster. The curly-haired driver had to emerge from the truck to pick up some papers and boxes lying outside the trash container. He hurled them inside with angry, jabbing motions as if their presence were a personal affront. When he hopped back into the cab, a shrill, grating noise started. Then two long metal prongs slid under the dumpster and lifted it high in the air. A day’s worth of Constitution Square’s garbage cascaded into the back of the truck.

  The whole process reminded her of that Hoyer lift the nurse’s aides used on Richard. First they slid under him a parachutelike nylon sling, which was fastened by chain links to the hanger of a tall metal contraption on wheels. Richard was then pumped into a sitting position, causing him to resemble an enormous baby in the clutches of a mechanical stork. But no baby ever cursed like he did. And no aide ever came back a second time. Maybe this new agency had more stouthearted employees.

  She peeked into the living room. Richard’s breathing sounded bubbly and raspy, like her mother’s old glass coffee percolator. Fluid was collecting in his lungs, and he needed to be sitting up. The nurse had better get here soon. She stared at the beige wall phone. She ate half a banana as she watched a puddle collect in the parking lot. At eleven o’clock she called the agency. The dispatcher told her Mrs. Elter had six new cases to evaluate and would arrive sometime between nine and three.

  “I thought they told me morning,” Cheryl said apologetically, knowing full well they had told her morning but not wanting to antagonize anyone. This was the only home care agency left in Fairfield County.

  How could her mother and Al have left right now? How?

  To banish her tears she again checked on Richard. “Can I do anything?” He looked stiff, starved, uncomfortable, but he shook his head no. She emptied his plastic urinal, which he had set as far away from him as possible—right by that useless red phone her mother had sent. Who did she think he was going to call? Dumb, dumb, dumb, she thought, as she swished Lysol in the urinal, then replaced it by the phone. She switched on the TV for him. It was the best she could do.

  At 12:30 she fixed him tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. At one o’clock she dumped the cold soup and ate the rejected sandwich herself. She gulped it down guiltily while standing by the stove. She didn’t want the nurse to catch her stuffing herself. In fact, she had never much liked anyone watching her eat. During her early teens she had breakfasted daintily, eating only the egg white and half a piece of toast. Then she would take the Entenmann’s coffee cake up to her bedroom and eat the entire thing, sliding the incriminating container under her bed.

  Finally armies of ants converged on her bedroom and her mother attacked with a spray can of Raid. Cheryl had waited to be slapped, scolded, punished. But Rose remained calm. “Amazing,” she had said, “the way these little creatures got all the way upstairs.” For Rose to display anger, Cheryl supposed, would have betrayed too close a connection to that fat, hopeless child. You had to love someone to yell at her.

  An elderly shriveled man carrying an oversize black umbrella walked by the window. She watched him go as far as the brick gate, where he stopped to wait for the bus. Cheryl wanted to offer him her car keys but doubted that he drove. Since she could not help, she felt obligated to continue leaning against the cold aluminum sink watching until the city bus stopped for him.

  Shortly after that the nurse parked her compact car in the spot where the garbage truck had been. Mrs. Elter wore a blue raincoat, had limp gray hair, and looked, Cheryl thought with relief, motherly. She also appeared to be familiar with the layout of Constitution Square condominiums, for she proceeded directly to the kitchen and set a worn leather satchel on the table. Cheryl took her damp coat, then gestured to the living room. “Richard is in there.”

  Mrs. Elter pulled a yellow file folder from her satchel and sat down at the table. “I’d like to ask you a few questions first, Mrs. Olsen,” she said kindly. “If you don’t mind. And then I’ll speak to Mr. Olsen.”

  Cheryl nodded. “Oh, sure.” It was such a relief to have somebody capable tell her what to do. But the kitchen furniture had been rearranged to accommodate Richard’s wheelchair and now the other chair was at the far end of the table. Cheryl tried to move it, but succeeded only in knocking over a return-for-deposit Coke bottle that was by the wastebasket. She blushed and sat down. “I’ve gotten a little behind in my housework.”

  Mrs. Elter smiled sympathetically. “That’s perfectly understandable.” The yellow file folder had inside pockets. Just like a kangaroo, Cheryl thought, choking down a giggle. She did not want Mrs. Elter to think she was hysterical. The nurse pulled a mimeographed sheet from a pocket and smoothed it out. “How old is your husband, Mrs. Olsen?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  The woman made a clucking sound. “And how long ago did the aneurysm occur?”

  “Sixteen months ago. Richard could tell you better about all that. We weren’t married then.”

  Mrs. Elter ceased writing. “How long have you been married?”

  “Eleven days.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  The woman did not see at all. She developed a guarded look as if she suddenly realized she was dealing with an obvious oddball. Her sympathy was replaced by a distant professionalism. “Well, everything seems to be in order. I need to take Mr. Olsen’s temperature and blood pressure. When was his last BM?”

  Cheryl gulped. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s not something we’ve discussed.” She gestured into the living room. “Richard would know better. My stepfather enlarged the door on the downstairs bathroom so Richard’s wheelchair could fit in. But he’s away.”

  Mrs. Elter stood. “Let me examine Mr. Olsen.”

  Baffled, Cheryl remained at the kitchen table. Richard was depressed. He refused to talk or eat. So did it really matter when he last had a bowel movement? Apparently it did, for Mrs. Elter was back within minutes to announce: “I’m going to have to administer an enema. I could use some plastic sheets. A dry cleaner’s bag would do.”

  “Does that need to be done first? He hasn’t eaten anything. And he hasn’t had a bath or sat up.”

  “The aides feed and bathe him. They can’t do this, though, and it was ordered by his doctor at the Home.”

  “Oh, I see.” With fleeting self-pity Cheryl decided that a college dropout like herself had no right to question a professional. After ripping two plastic bags off never-worn spring suits, she went upstairs into her bedroom and closed the door. Too agitated to read, she sat in the wicker chair and stared at the paperback romance on her dresser.

  “Cheryl. Cheryl.” Even through the closed door, she could hear Richard’s importunate cries. It was the first time in several days he had wanted her, and she could not go to him. If only her husband had continued to need her and love her, they might have made a go of it. Instead he had retreated into his own private world, and this marriag
e, just like her first, was slipping through her fingers.

  She got up, turned on the radio, and flipped from station to station, but that did not prevent her from hearing Richard’s anguished scream. “No. No. No! Go away. For God’s sake, go away!”

  Cheryl hoisted herself out of the chair and started running downstairs. Her perspiring feet stuck to the foam soles of her slippers. She had not worn shoes in four days and felt dirty, unkempt, lifeless. The lethargy left her when she got to the base of the stairs and saw Mrs. Elter shaking her husband’s arm.

  “Calm yourself,” the nurse ordered Richard.

  Cheryl clenched her fists and straightened. “Please leave, Mrs. Elter.”

  The woman’s face and neck turned splotchy red. “I thought you wanted help.”

  “We do want help. My husband wants to be made more comfortable. I don’t see you doing that.” Though Cheryl had never dismissed anyone before, her voice remained calm and firm. To this nurse Richard was not a man, just a collection of ailments, and Cheryl wanted her out of their home as quickly as possible. She was relieved when the woman began stuffing her medical paraphernalia back into her nurse’s bag.

  “I need you to initial my visit sheet, Mrs. Olsen.”

  Cheryl used the magnetized pen that clung to the refrigerator to scribble her initials, then she went immediately to Richard. Generally she was embarrassed to display concern and affection for her husband in front of these medical people, but today she took Richard’s hand and held it tenderly.

  She heard Mrs. Elter mutter “I’m way behind in my schedule” as she banged out the front door.

  When Cheryl went back to the kitchen and peered out the window, she noticed there was a green puddle where Mrs. Elter’s car had been. Her car is leaking antifreeze, Cheryl noted cheerfully. She then stared at the linen calendar that next year could be used as a dish towel. Now that the weekday and weekend routine never varied, she paid little attention to dates. But tomorrow something was happening. Heinz! Jetlag Johnson was putting him on a plane bound from Florida into LaGuardia. Someone had to stay with Richard while she drove to the airport. But who? Mrs. Elter’s agency certainly wouldn’t send an aide for tomorrow.