Grandma’s bed, as if he’s been looking underneath. He quickly stands.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Vince,” I say.
“Why’s that, Mr. Idle?”
“Cleaning under the bed of individual residents seems somewhat beneath your pay grade.”
“All hands are on deck plugging in space heaters in the first-floor rooms,” he responds. “Winter cometh, and our central heating is acting up.”
I examine Vince, whom I’ve privately nicknamed the Human Asparagus. He has a ’70s hairstyle, puffy and curly on top tapering into his neck, and a thin torso that widens out slightly through his hips. When he walks, he looks like a single shuffling stalk. His skin has a dark hue that suggests a lineage that is one-quarter Asian or southern European. He’s got a perpetual light cough that provides me mildly entertaining internal debate. I vacillate between thinking the cough stems from any number of disorders — from hay fever and postnasal drip to reactive airway disease — to instead thinking it’s kind of somatization: in other words, a deep-seated psychological tool used to communicate his sense of being put-upon and always under duress.
“I’m kidding,” I say.
“About what?”
“About your dedication to cleaning under beds.”
“Meaning what?”
“It looks to me like you’re snooping around Lane’s room.”
He turns his head, and I follow his gaze toward the edge of the bed, where he’d been kneeling. Nestled between the bed and the nightstand is a white space heater.
“You need to cool down, Mr. Idle.”
“You need to stop treating me like I’m something you found in a bedpan.”
“No wonder Lane is agitated,” he says, then adds after a pause, “given the attitude of her visitor.”
I let go of Grandma, and I step toward Vince.
“Please go,” I say.
He pulls his lips into a tight smile, then looks at Grandma.
“Are you okay, Lane Idle?” he asks. It sounds genuine and tender.
“Not too bad, Mr. Van Gogh.” She’s long since nicknamed him after the painter.
Vince looks at me like he wants to say something. But he shakes his head and leaves.
“That one would never cut off an ear,” Grandma says. “He likes to hear himself talk too much.”
It’s a rare moment of lucidity. Maybe I’ll be able to get Grandma to tell me about the man in blue or about someone named Adrianna.
I guide her to the bed, where she sits, mute, hands folded in her lap. I look around the antiseptic room. It’s tiny enough to make me wonder if society, through our boxy retirement rooms, is preparing our elderly for the comfort of a coffin.
On the wall across from Grandma’s bed is a framed poster of a train from the 1950s winding through snow- capped German Alps. Grandma loved trains. She said that train travel made it feel like the world was standing still so that you could, for a few moments, catch up with it.
On her dresser sit three small silver picture frames. One image shows me and my brother in matching overalls, taken when he was four and I was two. A second shows Grandma in her mid-fifties, wearing her karate
A third photo shows Grandma Lane and Grandpa Irving on the deck of a cruise ship they’d taken in the early 1970s to Alaska. Grandpa wears his prototypical near-smile, a look that says: “I like this place well enough.” His hair is short, face round but lean and closely shaved. He looks like he could’ve been the extra in a movie about a gang of likeable toughs, but not the lead. I imagine that anti-war protestors at the time would’ve mistaken him for a Nixon man, when he was a left-leaning guy unperturbed by dissonance or different tastes but didn’t like to stand out himself.
I look under her bed where Vince had been kneeling. I see nothing but floor and space heater, as advertised.
On the nightstand is Grandma’s long-kept unabridged dictionary and a copy of
“Nathaniel,” Grandma says.
“Yes.”
“You know the difference between ‘lay’ and ‘lie’?”
She’s a big fan of grammar niceties, and likes to test me.
“I won’t lie, I still have no idea. Or should I say: I won’t lay?”
She seems to take a moment to digest my response, then smiles. I suspect it is a rote reaction, an if-then program triggered by my jocular tone she’s come to recognize.
“Are you trying to distract me?” I ask.
“I don’t understand.”
I hold up the piece of lined notebook paper. “Would you mind if I look at this?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ll just glance and if it seems too personal I’ll put it away.”
On the paper, in Grandma’s jagged scrawl, she’s written: “I have three children.” But she’s crossed out “Three” and written “Two” next to it. Below that, she’s written: “We came from Eastern Europe? Western Europe?” She’s also penned: “Irving drove a blue Chevrolet.”
My heart drops. The notes must be part of Grandma’s desperate attempt to hang on to her memories, to clarify her life.
“You raised two great sons, Grandma. My dad and Uncle Stevie,” I say.
“I know that.”
“It’s no fun to get old. We all forget things. Anytime you have any questions about the old days, you should ask me. I’m right here.”
I fold the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. “Grandma, can I ask you something?”
No response.
“Favorite grandmother, I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“Is something making you afraid?”
“David hated to talk about his feelings. He hated to talk about anything, like Irving.” David is my father.
I take her hand.
“You mentioned a man in blue. Would you tell me about him?”
“You are much more like me, and David is much more like Irving. Isn’t that strange?”
I take a deep breath. How can I get her to remember? Grandma Lane has become by far my toughest interview.
“Yesterday, in the park, you referred to a man you’d seen earlier. Am I making sense?”
She doesn’t answer.
These are complicated questions, even for someone who has fully functional gray matter.
“Grandma, yesterday you joined me at an office for a meeting. We went to your dentist. Did you see a strange man there?”
“This isn’t fun.”
“Do you have a friend named Adrianna?”
Grandma looks down.
“Who is Adrianna?” I ask, pointedly.
Her head jerks up and looks at me wide-eyed. She lets out a terrible wail.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here,” I lean in close. “It’s okay.”
She is quiet again, and breathes deeply.
