She lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. “There shouldn’t be anything wrong. I don’t know why I’m acting like this. You get to be my age, you learn to live with things that bug the shit out of you; you learn not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Did you just skip to the end of this conversation or did I miss something?”
“Huh?” She looked at me, blinked, and shook a small but at least genuine smile onto her face. “I, uh… I’m sorry. I guess I drifted off for a minute.”
“What gift horse? What’re you talking about?”
She pulled in another drag, let the smoke curl in front of her face for a moment, then exhaled. “It’s been so great since they took over, it really has. We’ve got new uniforms, extra help, better food, the working atmosphere has never been so good, and the money… Lord, I’m making almost twice what I was making this time last year, and that’s on top of the great bonus we got for-” Her eyes flashed a quick oh-shit and she left the sentence unfinished.
“The bonus you got for…?” I prompted, then it came to me: “The confidentiality agreement. Is that it?”
“I really can’t. I just”-She reached over and took my hand-“really can’t talk about it. The way I figure it, I’m just about a year away from having everything paid off and being able to afford a house-not just rent a nicer one, but buy one. Do you know I’ve never owned a home? Isn’t that a pisser? It would be nice to spend the third act of my life in my own home. And if I don’t screw up, if I do what I agreed to and keep this job, then I can have all that. Is that so bad? Does that make me callous? Is it such a terrible thing to want an actual home and peace of mind? Christ, I’ve spent so much of my life worrying over one thing or another that by the time I took a real breath it was halfway over.”
“No one’s saying you haven’t worked hard for everything, it’s just-”
“-and I’m not going to find anyone, you know.” This followed by a phlegm-filled, bitter, ugly little laugh. “Sure, if I lived in San Francisco or Los Angeles or someplace like that, someplace where they don’t look down on you because you’re gay, I might stand a chance. But look at me-I’m an old gal. Whatever chance I had for a great romance in my life has long past, so if I’m going to be the lovable old-maid aunt, why can’t I at least be comfortable and content? Dammit, I’ve helped people, you know? I’ve cared for them when no one else wanted to-and not just because it was my job, understand. I did it because I wanted what was best for them. All of them. This is no different, really. Is it?”
Look up “bemused” in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of my face at that moment. “What the hell is wrong, Mabel? Why are you talking like this?”
She squeezed my hand and opened the car door. “I have no idea. They say the mind is the first thing to go.”
I held on to her; I wasn’t going to let this drop. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“What I’m not supposed to. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it someday, but not now. I don’t know. I keep my word. I’ve always kept my word, that’s important. For right now will you just answer a question?”
“Sure thing.”
“Am I a bad person?”
“God, no! You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met. Why would you even ask-”
She pulled away from me and closed the door. “I’ve got a ride for later. I’m going straight to the dealership when I get off. Come by later this week and see the new car. I’ll drive us to Beth’s opening night.”
I watched her go inside, then started the car and drove away. I was almost home when I jerked the wheel around, made an illegal U-turn, and went back. Maybe Whitey would still be up and could tell me something. Even if he wasn’t up, I’d shake his ass awake. I figured I was owed one genuinely rude interruption.
I parked in my usual spot and started to go through the back entrance.
It was locked. Not only that, but it now required a card-key to open. Something made a whirring mechanical noise over my head and I looked up in time to see a security camera pirouette on its wall-mount and point at me.
I did what we’ve all done at one time or another-made a goofy face and waved. A few moments later one of the regular shift nurses-Arlene-appeared at the door and used her card-key to open it. “Let me guess-Mabel forgot something?”
“Maybe I just wanted to flirt with you.” Arlene was sixty if she was a day.
“Maybe if I was twenty years younger I’d drag you into the linen closet and make you do more than flirt.” She opened the door wider and let me in. “But my husband wouldn’t like it.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said, moving past her.
“Mabel’s in the break room having coffee. Come get me when you need to leave and I’ll let you out.”
I pointed at the new lock. “Has there been much of this? I mean the new security?”
“They’re turning this place into something out of that 2001 movie, I swear. You need card-keys to move between units now, and every hall has its own camera and a microphone so we can hear if anyone calls out for help. You’d think we were guarding the gold at Fort Knox. There’re even three more full-time security guards, two inside and one covering the grounds for each shift. We’re getting to be quite the place, we are.”
“I don’t have to worry about being stopped or something, do I?”
“No,” she said, reaching into her pocket and removing a plastic credit-card-looking thing at the end of a dark ribbon. “Just make sure you wear this where it can be seen.” She draped the visitor’s pass over my neck. “You have to wear one of these at night-even a fixture like you.”
“‘Fixture.’ Oooh. I love it when you talk like an interior decorator. Tell me about accouterments next. Whisper about them slowly.”
“You are the most evil boy, aren’t you?”
“I get a lot of complaints about that, yes.”
“Who said I was complaining?” And with that Arlene led me to the unit and left me to my own devices. The break room was in the hall opposite the one leading to Whitey’s room, so it didn’t exactly take a lot of sneaking and skulking to get to his room-though I was anxiously aware that I was on camera now.
I passed the room which had been the former home of the Captain Spalding Brothers and slowed. The new occupant-who for the moment had the room to herself-was sitting in her wheelchair, asleep in front of a color television displaying a muted re-run of The Waltons. There was a vibrantly green potted plant on the windowsill, several books stuffed between a set of hand-carved cherry-wood bookends, themselves shaped like books; an antique Tiffany lamp whose stained-glass shade glowed softly from the 40-watt bulb underneath, diffuse sunlight warming church windows. A patchwork quilt lay neatly folded at the foot of her bed, while the head was covered in an assortment of small, colorful pillows. There were framed photographs hanging on the wall next to her bed; a black and white wedding picture, so faded around the edges it looked like something glimpsed through a fog; several color photographs of the same cat and dog taken years apart, the cat going from a bright-eyed gray-furred kitten to something that looked like an overused feather duster with a rheumy gaze, the dog journeying from its days as a square-bodied bundle of muscles and legs to an arthritic bundle atop an old throw rug that, like the animal lying on it, had seen better days. I wondered if the animals were still alive, and then why there were no pictures of children and grandchildren anywhere to be seen. Everything about the room and the woman sleeping in the chair whispered of weariness, of too much quiet, not enough voices and visitors. A lamp, a quilt, some books, a television, and frozen moments from memory framed on the walls; this is what her life had come down to. I wondered if any of those books were poetry collections, if perhaps it contained any Browning, if she had certain well-thumbed pages marked for easy finding or knew them by heart; did she ever fall asleep repeating snippets of sonnets in her mind as she looked at the frozen moments from her life?
My heart is very tired, my strength is low, My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within them till myself shall die .
I knew Whitey would kick my ass up between my shoulders if he knew I was thinking these things. (“Know what your name would have been if you’d’ve been born an Indian? ‘Dark Cloud.’ Trust me on this. They wouldn’t have had to worry about having their land stolen by the White Man and then being systematically slaughtered, no. You would’ve depressed them to death!”)
I smiled at the thought, wished this sleeping woman pleasant dreams and a happy day to come (I also couldn’t help but smile at the bumper sticker someone had pasted to the back of her wheelchair: I ACCELERATE FOR FUZZY BUNNIES), then headed on down to Whitey’s room.
His door was closed.
