by May Sarton
Today I shall ask whether I can go and sit outside. There are chairs out by the barn, fresh air, and the idiotic geese to watch dawdling about, and the leaves turning. Yesterday I was allowed to get up. I even had a cup of coffee in the kitchen. So maybe … if I am meek and cheerful about it. No tears, Caro, no abject pleas.
I did get out and it was wonderful. Just being outside this house was a breath of something like freedom. The sun was warm, so warm I took my sweater off. I took note paper with me and the daily paper and pretended I was an ordinary person on a vacation. I saw a cedar waxwing, several robins, and heard a song sparrow. My hearing appears to be intact and my eyes (as long as I have on my glasses) do pretty well still. It was all such a change that I didn’t read or write after all. I became entranced by the slight motion in the maple leaves as a light breeze touched them alive. I understood why Hopkins spent hours making drawings of small waterfalls and eddies in a brook. It is the same pleasure, the changes within a pattern as it is affected by a current or by motion in the air. Then when I looked down, the geese made me laugh with their ridiculous antics, their towering necks and hisses when a car drove up, their absurd waddly walk, so full of dignity. The jar leads them and his three wives follow with a young goose bringing up the rear.
“Do the geese have names?” I asked Harriet when I went back in at lunchtime.
“Only a goose would name a goose,” she answered in her flat way.
“Well, someone named me!” It was an attempt at humor, but one might as well tell a joke to a pig.
She is tired and cross these days. There are rumors that she and the lover will go away for a month to Florida. The telephone is in the hall outside my room and I have heard her trying to get someone to take her place, not easy.
Will it be better or worse if they do go? Of course it depends on the substitute. Certainly it is a gamble as it is possible that we could do worse. On the other hand we might get a retired RN and then Standish would have the care he needs so badly. He has bed sores, I hear. He groans and curses a great deal now and sometimes does not appear to know who I am. He peers at me with a troubled look, trying to remember. I hold his hand, often ice cold, but he does not squeeze it hard as he did when I came out from the dark. He is past feeling that much any more. How long will he hold out? Will no one ever come to see him? I try not to think about him and that is cowardly.
How angry I was years ago when people refused to admit that the concentration camps existed! Then, when the evidence was there—those frightful photographs of piles of emaciated corpses, and the survivors nothing but bones and eyes—people said to me, “Why dwell on it?” I felt that if we turned away by an inch from experiencing the truth as far as it could be imagined, all these despairing people would have died for nothing, their agony itself denied them. The only thing we could do was to know. And after the first shock, and the horror that human beings had done this to other human beings, we had to face that, in some depth beyond the rational, we each have a murderer and a torturer in us, that we are members of each other. All my scientific ideas about progress went down the drain. It was a crisis of faith in man for any thinking person and, for some, a crisis of faith in God.
But almost all of us shut ourselves away from what is painful. Only our own pain brings us back into compassion. My father, a generous-hearted but rather limited man, imaginatively speaking, touched me when he had his first operation at over sixty. One day when I went in to see him, he was, much to my dismay, crying. I had never seen him weep. “What is it, father?” I asked, and could not have been more surprised by his answer. “The concentration camps,” he said. “I have been lying here thinking about those wretched prisoners.” Of course he was sublimating his own misery.
There is a connection between any place where human beings are helpless, through illness or old age, and a prison. It is not only the heroic helplessness of the inmates, but also what complete control does to the nurses, guards, or whatever. I wish I could have seen Harriet and Rose as they were before they opened this ash heap for the moribund. It may well be that they began not only with the idea that a nursing home is a sure-fire investment but with the thought that they would enjoy taking care of the old whom families abandon for one reason or another. Rose, so buried in her flesh, sometimes looks out with an innocent and childlike air, asks something like a human question. The other day she picked up my lapis lazuli pin (Alex found it for me at Cameo Corner in Bloomsbury) and turned it over in her hands with real appreciation of its beauty. (That intense blue, who has ever seen its like?). She said, “Someone who loved you must have given you this.”
I was quite taken aback. “Yes—someone who loved me,” I answered. Idiotic to have started to weep.
“But Miss Spencer,” she said gently, “that is not something to cry about. Let me fix your pillows and straighten things out here a little. The Reverend Thornhill is coming to pay us a visit.”
A visitor? I felt wildly excited at the prospect but I was not about to play into their hands about this, so I pretended not to care one way or the other.
“And who is this gentleman?”
“Oh, he’s the minister at the Methodist Church.”
“No doubt it will be edifying.”
(Oh dear, that was a mistake. The irony in my tone, unmistakable, and the use of a word beyond Rose’s vocabulary, insulting to her. The moment of something like communication was shattered and she went about her business, banging the broom on the bureau, her heavy hands battering everything about.)
The news of an imminent visitor has thrown me off—I have lost the thread of what I meant to consider this morning. Oh yes, about what happens to people who have complete power over others. This would be a far kinder and better place altogether if anyone concerned with us took the trouble to look around, to sense things, to observe, and to keep an outsider’s eye on our keepers. But initiative of this sort does not appear to exist—there is a fundamental shyness about interfering. After all, the daughters and sons of the poor old men here may think, it is none of our business, and Dad is losing his mind, so how can we believe what he says? They are told, no doubt, by social workers and perhaps even by doctors, scarce as they seem to be around here, that old people become “mental,” a word that has always amused me, as it seems to suggest the opposite of what it means. They are told, I suppose, that old people are naturally depressed and that their depression is “built in,” and that the way to handle it is with drugs, not with imagination or with kindness. And most of them are simple people, terrified of the very atmosphere of a hospital or a “home,” ill at ease, not able to be themselves. Harriet’s manner with them is conspiratorial. They talk in whispers to each other and in falsely jovial tones to the patients, and the son or daughter leaves feeling that he has done all he can by paying a visit. The rest is up to the “institution.” They are not people who have ever had the courage to put up a fight. The police, their bosses if they are factory workers, the “company,” the “government” are all terrifying powers they cannot control or even understand.
Harriet and Rose are really kind to only one person here, the feeble-minded Jack. He gets little treats. They make an effort to understand what he says and what he wants. More than once he has called them to help one of the old men. He is the pet, an easily distractable but sweet nature. Possibly it is his total helplessness that has endeared him, and the fact that he can do no harm, can never talk “against” them. He is visited by his very old father every week. (I presume he was brought here when his mother died.) They sit beside each other, almost silent after the father has said the same thing several times: “Well, my boy, you seem to be in good spirits.” The father brings him hard candies to suck. The father is the only visitor I see who does not seem anxious to get away, who seems actually to enjoy seeing his boy. And he always thanks Harriet for taking such good care of “my boy,” gives the rocker where Jack is permanently tied in a gentle rock or two, and tiptoes out to the taxi waiting for him in the yard.
I wonder whether homes like this are ever inspected? The deterioration in cleanliness is marked these days—I suffer from the smell of urine. Bedpans are not properly cleaned and are often left around not emptied for hours. Surely there are laws about homes like this? Is it so remote that the powers that be have never got around to inspecting? Or does Harriet (who worked in the State Hospital) have pull that makes her feel safe? Perhaps I can ask a question like this of Rev. what’s-his-name if and when he comes—but I must be terribly careful. Impossible to have any privacy. All the doors are open, and Harriet and Rose lurk and make sudden appearances if they sense that any criticism is in the air. They will be particularly on the alert where I am concerned because I am articulate and still able to express my feelings. Now, Caro, you’ve got to think this out. Maybe the wisest thing would be to try to impress this Rev. first as a human being, still compos mentis, only that. And then, when he comes back—but how long does that mean? In two months or more? He has never paid a call before. What I am afraid of, if he is at all sympathetic, is a torrential overflow of talk. I feel like a person on a desert island who sees a fellow human being swimming toward him out of the blue. Try not to hope, Caro. You know it is the most dangerous emotion now.
Well, Reverend Thornhill came. I had expected a sententious man in his sixties, I don’t really know why—I suppose because the Methodist minister at home was like that! How wrong we are to permit ourselves any stereotype where human beings are concerned! Richard Thornhill turned out to be a youngish man, a little over forty maybe. I heard his voice in the next room, a nice warm voice, “Well, how are you people today? We’re in the great October weather—at least that is a tonic. The drive up the hill was so splendid!” I heard Harriet making the introductions and the quiet way he addressed each of the old men, some of whom mumbled and then were silent, lapsing into indifference almost at once. I had been so afraid he would insist on a hymn or at least read the hundred and first psalm, but he didn’t. He was extremely polite to Harriet and Rose. “It must be very hard,” I heard him say, “but you are doing something greatly needed.” They were quick to explain that it was hard indeed, impossible to get help, but they did their best out of true Christian concern, etc. Standish, in one of his now rare rowdy moods (no doubt he was stirred up at the idea of a visitor from outside) suddenly shouted “Shit!”
There was a murmur—I couldn’t catch the words. Rose ran in to tell Standish to be quiet and not to insult the minister. And Richard Thornhill, bless him, strode right past her and introduced himself.
“Mr. Flint, I’m glad to meet you. May I sit down for a moment?”
“Don’t see why not. It’s a free country, ain’t it?”
“More than he deserves after that dirty word,” Harriet sniffed, standing ostentatiously in the doorway. I could see her shadow on the wall, that mountain of flesh.
“Perhaps I could have a little talk with Mr. Flint,” Richard Thornhill said gently but firmly.
“Of course. He’s been poorly lately, has a lot of pain. And throws his medicine away. What can we do?” She shrugged and went away.
There was a silence. I could imagine that Standish was taking Thornhill’s measure, could imagine very well the keen look he gave him. “Are you going to fool me? Are you honest? Who are you?” Then Mr. Thornhill murmured something, but of course Standish didn’t get it.
“I’m deaf, God damn it! You’ll have to talk louder. Can’t hear a word!”
“I would like to help you if I can,” poor Richard shouted.
“Help?” The answer shot back. “People in Hell get no help. They just get more Hell.” Standish gave one of his bitter guffaws, a kind of curse on the universe. “Yes,” he said, “try it, you’ll like it.” (It was a commercial we had often heard on the TV and it always made Standish laugh. I would hear him saying sardonically to Rose when she brought his supper, “Try it, you’ll like it.”)
“I know it’s not easy, Mr. Flint. It’s hard going for you.”
“Hard going all my life. That’s no news. But just the same. I didn’t think it would end like this.” Again there was silence. I felt for Richard Thornhill and I admired him for being silent. Sometimes silence is the greatest sign of understanding and of respect. It is far more consoling than words of false comfort.
“Do you have no family?” he asked then, speaking loudly.
“Yes … no … what does it matter? You talk to Miss Spencer next door, the only person with her wits about her within a radius of ten miles, I guess. She has her hearing. You talk to her,” Standish said, bearing down hard. “She’ll tell you—”
“I will. God bless you.”
But this, of course, was a red rag to a bull. “God bless me? You’re joking! God doesn’t have the address. God never got further than the general store in the village. God?” Suddenly he was in one of his rages. “Christ!” he shouted. “I’m an old man. I had a wife, I had children. My wife is dying miles away from me. I’m dying miles away from her. My children?” I could hear the sob wrenched out of him, then: “Talk to Miss Spencer, for Christ’s sake.”
So that was the introduction. I was lying on my bed in my pink blouse and blue tweed skirt. I had on my best shoes. Richard Thornhill sat down in the armchair beside me and murmured, “I upset him. I didn’t mean to.”
Harriet, of course, was there in the doorway. But while she said her piece I looked hard at this young man.
“Miss Spencer is our special, Mr. Thornhill. She is sometimes violent, but now she has learned her lesson, we think she is doing rather well. She’s such a lady.” (So I get back my ironies at their expense.)
I didn’t care what Harriet said. I had heard it all a thousand times before. I cared about this young man. I liked his face, a little unformed around the mouth, good clear blue eyes, good forehead. He was no fool, and so far he had made no boners. His copybook, as far as I was concerned, was surprisingly clean for a man of the cloth (if that is the locution). In fact, he appeared to be a fairly intact human being and I hadn’t seen one for months.
“Yes … of course … I would like to have a little talk with Miss Spencer.” The formula was repeated and forced a retreat, no doubt only a very short distance.
“Perhaps you would have the authority to close the door. As a usual thing it is not permitted.” That was my first test of Thornhill and he responded at once by closing the door.
He himself appeared to be relieved no longer to have to try to straddle two opposed worlds. I saw he was troubled and decided to help him out.
“It must be very hard for you to come into a place like this, a place of despair. It is good of you to make the effort.”
“Well, Miss Spencer,” he said with a smile, “it’s part of my job. I care about human beings or I wouldn’t be a minister.”
“The problem is that with the old, the senile, there is so very little to be done. I can see that the time you will have spent coming up here to this remote place might well, in your own mind, have been better spent helping some young boy on drugs or some desperate young mother who wants a divorce.”
He gave me a rather piercing look.
“I have the care of souls,” he said. “I don’t believe the soul has an age in human terms.”
“Really? That’s very interesting. Very few people in this place have any soul. Or it’s buried so deep that even you would have difficulty in making contact with it.”
“Mr. Flint does,” he said firmly. “What can be done for him?”
“Mr. Flint is committing suicide. That means refusing his medicine or managing to get rid of it (I sometimes help by throwing it down the john) and by starving himself. Would you deny him the privilege of dying as fast as he can?”
“You are asking me questions I cannot answer.” I saw his face go pale. Poor dear, what has he known of despair?
“I’ll try to ask one that can be answered. Has this place been inspected and if not, why not?”
“It’s that bad.” He was instantly
alert. I have observed before that when moral dilemmas are involved, there is nothing more efficacious than something perfectly down to earth and practical. A bowl of soup or a letter to a representative in Congress can work wonders to relieve the conscience.
“I have no point of comparison,” I answered. “Perhaps this is better than it seems.”
“You are not like the others here. What is your story?” he asked. I felt his strain, his fear of entering a private reserve. And I liked him for daring to ask the question.
“Nothing special.” (Be careful, Caro.) “My brother, my only family, is eighty and remarried to a much younger woman. I had a heart attack six months ago—some time ago, my memory fails about such things. I had to give up living alone, and needed care. John tried to make a go of having me live with them. But his wife, Ginny, and I have nothing in common—it couldn’t work. We were all three being torn to pieces. And this place was recommended by the hospital. So I am here.”
I could sense that he was looking for a formula. What had I been “before”? “You were a professional woman, I presume?”
“A high-school teacher in our home town, a hundred miles from here or more. I taught math. That’s all gone now, but I am sustained by poetry and the music I hear in my head.”
“You compose?”
“No, but I remember Bach fugues (close to mathematical formulas) and can, so to speak, hear them in my head. Bach and Mozart.”
“You have no record player here?”
“No. It is quite expensive—even a place like this is expensive. I can ask for nothing like that.”
“No wonder you are sometimes violent!”
“Oh, not about that. I became violent because they wouldn’t get a doctor for Standish when he was in great pain. But then I was put in a room without windows for an indefinite time—days anyway. Little by little, Mr. Thornhill, the spirit gets broken here. Maybe it has to get broken. There is no hope and the spirit lives on hope. I am now learning the ways of despair.”