anything for me except make love. A lot of the women I’ve known since Rosa’s death have been just the opposite.
Rosewood Convalescent Center is like other nursing homes I’ve visited-a prison disguised as a rest home for the elderly and infirm. While they think they are being watched, the employees, who are in mufti, wear cheery expressions, at least until they find out who I am. Still, there is no hiding the guard post-the nurse’s station that sits strategically at the midway point of the entrance to the building. Two wings form forty-five-degree angles from this central point, and I would bet the lunch Clan graciously paid for that it takes a key to get out the back door.
After being required to show my Blackwell County Bar Association card to the assistant administrator, an anxious young woman who seems to regard my card as a confession that I am a convicted rapist (“This man claims to be her attorney”), and to the administrator, a man, whom I mentally dub Smiling Jack because of the frozen sneer he wears during our conversation, I am silently led by an aide to Room 142, which we reach after a series of turns that leave me completely lost. It must be nap time or perhaps time for their favorite soap, because we come upon only one resident, a trembling old man in bathrobe and slippers pushing a walker who seems as much at sea about where he is going as I am.
The aide, who appears to be a high school kid, knocks as she opens the door, and if my client is again having sex, we will be sure to catch her at it. Instead, we come upon two people, one woman curled up in a fetal position in the far bed nearer the window, and another woman sitting at a desk next to a dresser. It will be just my luck if Mrs. Gentry is the old lady who looks as if she is in a coma, but the aide points out my client in the metal folding chair as if she is identifying her in a police lineup.
“That’s her.”
The aide leaves, and I awkwardly introduce myself. Mrs.
Gentry turns in her chair, and I am pleasantly surprised by her healthy appearance. Though her skin is somewhat discolored by liver spots, she has a strong, masculine face that reminds me of an aunt who is now dead. Her hair, more gray than white, is thinning, but it is combed and pulled neatly into a bun at the back of her head. She is wearing turquoise trousers and a beige smock that covers a heavy but not obese body. Holding a pen in her left hand, she waits patiently until I am finished with my lie that Clan has to be out of town, and then asks if her hearing has been canceled for Tuesday. Her voice, I note, has an old woman’s cracked quality, but is strong. I tell her that so far as I know it is still set, and that I need to talk to her in private.
With a right hand almost as big as my own, Mrs. Gentry gestures dismissively toward her roommate, and says dryly, “We can’t get much more private than this. Eloise can’t hear.”
I glance at Eloise, who doesn’t even appear to be breathing and then back at Mrs. Gentry and smile. Though I get into trouble occasionally, I tend to make snap judgments about my clients, and I decide I like this old, mannish-looking woman. I may not be able to help her, but I’ve got a little time to give it a shot. I need to stop obsessing about Andy’s case for a while and get some perspective. After all, it is still more than a month off.
“The judge will want to know why you want out,” I say, as I drag over the other chair in the room.
“What will you tell him?”
Mrs. Gentry stares at me as if she hasn’t made up her mind whether I have any sense or not. I begin to be aware that she hums constantly under her breath when she is not speaking. Finally, she begins, sending forth her words in a torrent.
“I never wanted to be in here in the first place. For six months, I was horribly sick and almost died. Gall- bladder problem they probably didn’t diagnose right at first and lots of infection.
They had to take it out, and most of my pancreas, too.
I’m on oral insulin, but that’s all except vitamins. I’m still a little weak but I don’t need to be in here. My son got tired of waiting for me to die, and by now he’s probably wasted half of my money. Tbmmy thinks he’s a businessman-wants to sell Arkansas rice to the Japanese. Who doesn’t? Now I can’t even get a drink of water without having to ask six people if it’s okay. Would you want to live like this?” she asks and immediately begins to hum again.
“No, ma’am,” I say, and scan the room. The walls are a dull mustard color, and there is a smell of urine and disinfectant coming from her roommate’s bed. What in the world could be more depressing?
“Can you take care of yourself?”
She folds her arms across her chest and clears her throat.
“I don’t want to take care of myself. I was in one of those retirement places-decent food, alcohol, somebody to play bridge with, my own apartment, even some privacy, dam it.” Suddenly, tears come to her eyes.
“Obviously, I’m not going to live forever, but I don’t want to die in here if I can help it. Would you?”
I decide not to ask her about the sex-in-a-box business right now. It is irrelevant and of only prurient interest.
Though Clan will be disappointed if I don’t come back with details, surely he can survive without knowing the sex life of an eighty-four-year-old woman who looks a bit like the pictures I’ve seen of Gertrude Stein. I get her to sign a couple of releases so I can look at her records and talk to her doctor.
Since she has no control over her money and can’t hire her own doctor to examine her, we are at the mercy of the nursing-home physician, who, if he knows anything, surely is aware which side his bread is buttered on, but it can’t hurt to talk to him. I visit with her for another thirty minutes, and as I am picking up my briefcase to leave she clears her throat and says, dropping her voice, “There’s something else you ought to know.”
As I cram my notes into my briefcase, she begins to hum.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Mrs. Gentry looks over at her comatose roommate and says, with great dignity, “I’m still sexually active.”
I nod, unable to bring myself to tell her that I am aware of this remarkable fact.
She says,”
“They discourage that sort of thing here. In fact, they treat you like a child and make you feel dirty. You have to sneak around.” Her voice has become a whisper.
“I have a friend here whom I’ve known ever since my son admitted me. He and I were caught in kind of a compromising position a couple of weeks ago in the food pantry. I would die if that comes out in court.”
Mrs. Gentry’s spotted, wrinkled face has turned a bright red.
“I think it’s totally irrelevant,” I assure her, “and I’ll object if your son’s attorney tries to bring it up.”
Mrs. Gentry sighs, apparently relieved, but it occurs to me that the incident would be wonderful evidence that she shouldn’t be here. As I try to suggest this, however, the humming grows louder until it seems to fill the room. It sounds like “Sentimental Journey,” but I couldn’t swear to it.
Hell, I don’t blame her. A person ought to be able to screw in peace. Still, it would be nice. As I finally leave, telling her that I will see her again before the hearing, she looks at me as if she has known all along that lawyers are perverts.
Rainey scrapes the bottom of her empty yogurt cup like a chicken scratching for food. A kiddie-size cup hardly seems worth the trouble, but Rainey, as I have learned to my regret, has the self-discipline of an old- fashioned nun.
“I have some information for you,” she says and then licks the white plastic spoon.
“It’s all gossip, but since it’s about sex, you’ll pay attention.”
This reference is prompted by my disclosure that I have a date with Kim Keogh tomorrow night. We could never work out lunch, so I swallowed hard and asked her out to dinner.
Rainey and I have gotten to the point where we tell each other about our love life, or at least parts of it. It seemed strange at first, but since we have become such good friends it was probably inevitable.
“She’s probably home looking at herself in the mirror,” I say gloomily. Now that I’ve asked Kim out, I’ve started to worry that we don’t have anything in common. I scoop out an M amp;M from my cup and pop it onto my chocolate-and-vanilla-flavored tongue. God, if chocolate tasted any better, it’d have to be outlawed.
“What’s the deal?” I ask, remembering that I have asked her to find out what she could about Yettie Lindsey.
As if she has forgotten, Rainey stares for a moment at the traffic whizzing through the intersection of Davis and Edgemont and then back at me. She is wearing pink twill jeans and a soft, clingy aqua top. She brushes a strand of her frizzy red hair back from her temple in the humid, oppressive night air, raising her left breast in the
