By way of preparation I’d filled a large thermos full of freshly ground Viennese cinnamon from the coffee place on the corner and cleaned up a travel mug for Jackie, which she accepted gracefully. She had her rebellious hair throttled into a ponytail and wore a spiffy light oxford-cloth shirt and khaki shorts outfit that made her look like a recent graduate of an exclusive women’s boarding school. Or a recently expelled undergraduate lobbying for readmission, a far more likely scenario.
She’d done the best she could with her eye patch and contusions. For her, the trip would end with me dropping her off at NYU Medical Center where they were supposed to put her face all the way back to the one she had before joining me for lunch on the Windsong deck. I coaxed her into letting me drive her in by describing some stops we could make along the way, and promising not to give her a pep talk or act in any way that could be construed as sensitive or nurturing.
“Stick to your strengths,” she’d said to me. “Make the coffee, drive your lunatic car, offend people we meet along the way.”
Inspired by her wardrobe, I picked out a pair of khakis and a blue shirt of my own.
“Team uniforms.”
It was early in the morning. The sky was overcast, but bright enough to drench the scrub oak and maple of North Sea in rich shadowless light. We drove south out to Montauk Highway where it turned into Route 27, the four-lane highway that formed a bridge to the west over which City people and tradesmen crossed the pine barrens. But only stayed there long enough to pick up Route 24 north to Riverhead, where I thought I could easily find the Sisters of Mercy home where my mother had lived out the last few years of her life, and where Gabe Szwit and Appolonia had told me Mrs. Eldridge was living out hers.
Jackie and I had debated the wisdom of getting Butch’s or even Gabe’s okay to see her, then decided it would be easier to explain later than get permission. Jackie gamely asserted some legal theory on why we didn’t need to ask, which was good enough for me. I was more preoccupied anyway with the prospect of revisiting a place I thought I’d never have to see again. Voluntarily.
It wasn’t the Sisters’ fault. They ran as good a home as you could. It was the sight and sound of all that human wreckage, sick and exhausted souls waiting it out, or simply bewildered to find themselves wherever they thought they were. My mother never knew, or if she did, she was determined not to share that knowledge with me.
By the time we hit the incongruous four-lane road that passed the crotch of the Great Peconic Bay, the sun had burned off the morning haze and was now busy burning up the grasslands and vineyards of the North Fork. We followed it up to Sound Avenue, then went west until we came to a complex of three-story brick buildings with white trim, and discreet notices of the home’s ecclesiastical affiliations.
I crossed myself and found a place to park.
The reception desk sat in the middle of a small foyer. An overweight white guy in a white shirt and tie with a photo ID badge clipped to his breast pocket was on duty. On the desk were a large sign-in book, a phone, a walkie- talkie and a paper plate littered with the consequences of a partially eaten corn muffin.
Jackie had done most of the prep work, so I let her take the lead.
“Hi. We’re here to see Aunt Lillian,” she told the guard, her face filled with an ingratiating smile. “Lillian Eldridge. I called ahead, they said this was a good time.”
The guard nodded.
“Oh, yeah, they’re all done with the morning routine by now. Folks’re either in their rooms or out on the patio or in the open areas with the TVs. Eldridge, is it?”
“I’m her niece Lillian. They named me after her. This is my husband, Dashiell.”
I smiled, too, and tried to look like the victim of a winter-summer romance. The guard called somebody on his walkie-talkie to check out our story, ignoring the phone on his desk. I would, too, I guess. More fun to say things like, “copy that.”
He signed off and said, “Okay I just need some identification.”
Jackie looked at me.
“You probably left your wallet in the car again, but here’s mine,” she said to the guard, dropping an official- looking photo ID in front of him. He squinted to read the fine print.
“Institute of Blepharoplasty? You got your driver’s license?”
She looked embarrassed.
“Sorry It’s all I brought. Dash likes to do all the driving,” she said, mooning at me and slipping her arm through mine to demonstrate how safe she felt with me behind the wheel.
“I always tell you to bring your purse,” I grumbled. “But what do I know.”
“At this point, not a heck of a lot,” she said, sprightly.
“That’s okay,” said the guard, seeing a way to take the side of a pretty young wife against her grouchy old husband. “This is okay. What’s blepharoplasty?”
“Eyelid surgery,” she said, signing the book. “I’ve been practicing on myself all week.”
The guard gave us each passes to clip to our shirts and a map of the facilities with Lillian’s room x-ed in. We walked the distance without challenge, passing rooms with open doors with white-haired wraiths in and out of the beds, and common rooms, the TVs blasting out advice from talk show hosts, the volume set to the viewers’ average hearing capacity.
“Wasn’t that some kind of felony you just committed back there?” I asked her.
“I don’t think you can be charged with pretending to be a member of a society that doesn’t actually exist. Or giving a false ID to a private security guard. I looked it up last night, sort of.”
“Whatever you say, Lil.”
The guard’s map brought us to a nurses’ station behind a high counter that protruded into the corridor. Two women were sitting in swivel desk chairs and deep in conversation. We waited for an opening.
“We’re here to see Lillian Eldridge,” said Jackie, waving her visitors tag.
“Isn’t that nice,” said the bigger of the two as she stood up. Bigger by a hundred pounds, carried unsteadily on legs shaped like inverted cones. Her face was round as a full moon and slick, with a yellowy, almost jaundiced tint, though warmed considerably by her happy smile. She established her balance with some effort, then offered her hand.
“What a nice surprise,” she said. “She’ll be thrilled.”
“She will?” I asked, surprised myself.
“Well, it’s been like forever. Nobody from the family ever seems to come, I’m sorry. And you’re her niece?” she asked Jackie.
“We’re from California. First chance we’ve had,” said Jackie, looking a little guilty on behalf of her impersonation.
“So you haven’t seen Butch or Jonathan?” I asked.
She thought about it.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t recall the names.”
“So how is she?” asked Jackie.
“Remarkably well, if you ask me,” she said, forthrightly “Very stable. Been that way for quite some time.”
“So how would you describe her mental state,” said Jackie. “I just want to know what to expect.”
The nurse, Maryanne by her name tag, pondered the question.
“Well, she’s not agitated, if that’s what you mean. Might seem to you perfectly normal. Medication is a miracle, especially for people as profoundly dissociative as Lillian,” she said.
“Dissociative? I’m so sorry, I don’t know what that means,” said Jackie.
“Too much time in California,” I said. “Dissociation central.”
“Doesn’t know if she’s here or not,” said Maryanne. “Can’t quite seem to get herself fixed in the world. We all drift off a little. Lillian is never able to get all the way back.”
Jackie and her assumed identity thought about that.
“Will she know who I am?” she asked Maryanne. “It’s been a few years. Will she remember?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. She has a difficult time remembering who she is herself, so it’s doubly hard to remember anyone else.”
Jackie jerked her thumb at me. “By the way, she never met Dash,” she said, and then, as if to celebrate
