She went on talking about family and holidays and traditions, and all he could think of was Holly. Christmas with Holly. His first Christmas with Holly—the first of many. He wanted it to be special, one they’d never forget.
“Elizabeth, I have to go,” he said, breaking in on the importance of celebrating with loved ones and the uncertainty of life and whether or not certain older relatives would be alive for the next holiday. “Invite whoever you like, and I’ll try to come. And set an extra place, because I might bring a guest.”
“But what about Barbara?”
“She can bring her own guest.”
What a day. What a day. Oliver was well pleased with himself by the time he pulled into the parking lot at St. Augustine’s. He’d been a very busy boy and had still managed to arrive in time to pick Holly up. He told himself it was to save her a bus ride, but in truth, the sooner to see her, the better. It was his new motto.
He hadn’t been in many convalescent centers... well, never had been, actually, but St. Augustine’s didn’t look much different from a hospital. The smell was certainly the same, and the long halls with doors and the infirmary-green paint and the eerie silence that covered distant, unfamiliar noises and the overwhelming aura of pain and disease.
Hospitals were hospitals, in his book, and St. Augustine’s was sure as hell a hospital, he decided, feeling immediately uncomfortable.
“May I help you?” asked a young woman in a medical uniform of white pants and a blue-and-white-striped top. She zoomed past him in the lobby, through a doorway, and out again. “Not that I can help you much,” she went on as if she’d been standing still. “I’m still in orientation and I can’t even find the bathrooms in this place, much less anyone to help me change the sheets in two-thirteen, but... I’ll try. I hope you’re not selling anything.”
“No, I’m looking for someone,” he said, smiling at the frazzled woman.
“Thank heavens. I’m pretty good at finding the patients.” She pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket and opened it. “Who is it?”
“Ms. Loftin?”
“Loftin. Loftin.” She ran a finger down the list. “Room 307. Take that elevator up two floors and then you’re on your own. Sorry. It’s not always like this, and I hope I’m not always like this, but we’re short-staffed today and I’m watching the desk and the phones and helping with the residents and... well, as soon as flu season is over...” She bustled away muttering. “Flu season, my butt. I bet it’s always like this around here. They’re just afraid to tell me, afraid I’ll quit, and I should...”
Frowning and uneasy, he walked to the elevator. There were long corridors on either side where there seemed to be more activity and a little less confusion than in the lobby. Light streamed in from huge windows on both ends, dispelling some of the gloominess. There were Christmas decorations everywhere—some looked to be older than the building. An elderly man in a wheelchair waved to him and, feeling foolish, he sent a small wave back.
There was a nurses’ station directly in front of the elevators on the third floor, but it was as empty as the reception desk in the lobby.
However, he was far from alone. People with walkers, wheelchairs, and canes where shuffling and limping in the halls. Some were tied into wheelchairs with harnesses and appeared to be parked in the hallway.
“Are you the magician?” He spun on his heel to see another blue-clad attendant. “You don’t look like a magician.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh. Well then, what can we do for you?”
“I’m looking for room 307.”
“It’s right down the hall here, I’ll show you.” She turned to a man with a walker and said, “Mr. Pope? The dayroom is that way, remember? Why don’t you follow this man and Mr. Stevens and me? I swear I can’t tell one end of this place from the other myself today. Say, would you mind helping Mrs. Quinn there?” she asked, directing Oliver’s attention to a smiling old woman in the tinsel-trimmed wheelchair beside him.
“Alls I need is a little push to get me started, dear,” she said, pointing down the hall. “That way. That way. That’s it. Now just give me a good shove.”
Oliver looked to the attendant for help, and she grinned at him, nodding. “She likes to feel the wind in her hair.”
When in the Twilight Zone, do as the Zonies do, he thought, grimacing as he gave the wheelchair a little push. It was an incredible relief to see that he could have shot the old lady from a catapult and her wheelchair wouldn’t have gone any faster than if he’d been pushing it slowly.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist that,” the grinning aide said, motioning to the left with her head. “Three-oh-seven.”
“Is it always like this around here?” he couldn’t help asking.
“No,” she said, maneuvering them around a man sitting trancelike in the middle of the floor. “But with the magician coming and Christmas and the carolers from the elementary school tonight, we’re all a little excited.”
“I see,” he said, looking back at the man.
“You know, you look familiar. Have we met?”
She didn’t look familiar, but... “We could have. I was at your fund-raising party last week.”
“That’s right. The serial killer. Are you looking for Holly?”
“Yes. I thought I’d give her a lift home.”
“I’ll tell her you’re here, then.”
“Thanks,” he said, stepping out of the parade to the dayroom. “I’ll wait here for her.”
“Sure you don’t want to come see the magician with us?”
He was positive. “Maybe next time.”
Oliver was stunned. How could Holly live like this? he wondered, turning back to room 307. She worked in poverty and spent her days off in bedlam.
The woman he’d declared to be pregnant at the party passed by with another group of fun seekers. He smiled at her and received a stiff, polite nod in return. Her followers were somewhat younger than the first bunch, but all appeared to be equally infirm or impaired. Farther down the hall were some still younger.
He was out of his depth. The handwritten label on 307 said Loftin, so he stepped inside and closed his eyes.
Was it the reminder of his own frailties that was turning his stomach? Or was it worse? Was his sense of human perfection insulted by the sight of physical disease and weakness? He was trembling inwardly and castigating himself for his own weaknesses, those of his mind and his heart. It was one thing to believe in the dignity of the human soul, and quite another to act on those beliefs. It would be bigotry of the first order if he couldn’t find some way to connect the belief with his actions.
It grew quiet in the hallway. He sighed and slowly opened his eyes. He felt sick at the pit of his stomach. Every resident he’d seen was a supreme being, compared to the low he was feeling. And Holly... What would she think of him? Lord, how he wished he was more like her: so open, her love all-encompassing and so easily given.
He looked about the room then, confused. Not an office. Not a storeroom of hair supplies. A dim light glowed across the room; the overhead was off but a fan rotated slowly from above. A bed with a brightly colored patchwork quilt. An old wooden chest of drawers. A small artificial Christmas tree. An easy chair and another lamp. He stepped to the center of the room.
There in the shadows sat a woman... or a man with long hair, dark but mostly gray. No, a woman. She was looking straight at him.
“Excuse me,” he said, mortified. Had she been watching him all along? Why was she so quiet and still? Was she afraid of him? “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I have the wrong room.”
He shifted into reverse and was making a hasty retreat when his eye caught the marker above the bed. Loftin, Carolann. Carolann Loftin? Loftin wasn’t all that uncommon a name, but it wasn’t that common either. The years he spent worshipping his Uncle Max weren’t a complete waste, he knew, as he calculated the odds of a particular hospital accommodating two women by the name of Loftin,
one a patient, one a volunteer. He stepped closer.
“Are you... You aren’t by any chance related to Holly, are you?” he asked.
She remained silent and motionless.
“Holly Loftin? She works here? Does hair? She’s a volunteer?”
She remained silent and motionless.
He moved closer, bent at the waist to get a better look. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe she was asleep. No. She was staring at him—straight through him, as a matter of fact. He inched forward.
She sat in the wheelchair with her hands settled one atop the other in her lap. She wore a canvas vest over shocking red pajamas, tied to the back of the wheelchair to keep her upright.
She remained silent and motionless.
“My name’s Oliver Carey,” he said, not sure why, coming to a crouch position beside the wheelchair. He searched her stonelike features for similarities, and even taking into consideration the ravages of time, pain, and disease, he found none. The woman had never been a beauty, but then Holly wasn’t what some people would categorize as a classic knockout. Holly had a good face, a nice face, an animated face, but her beauty came from within. Her beauty was in her...
He reached out and slowly turned the lamplight to the woman. Her eyes were golden brown, a rich umber, an earthy color. Watery, they shimmered like tarnished gold dust. They were Holly’s eyes, but without the warmth and the wisdom.
He pivoted toward the sound of movement at the door.
“I see you’ve met my mother,” Holly said.
Eight
“SO WHAT DO YOU think, Carolann?” she asked, crossing the room. “Didn’t I tell you he was handsome?”
Oliver stood as she approached them, watching her, baffled. As if she’d done it a thousand times under the same conditions, she stretched up to kiss his numb lips.
“Hi,” she said, smiling her pleasure at seeing him.
“Hi.” His voice squeaked.
“He’s tall too,” she said, back to addressing Carolann as if it were a three-way conversation. “I like my men tall, don’t you? Comes in handy when you have a lot of stuff on the top shelf, doesn’t it?” She smoothed her hand over the coarse hair she’d brushed and secured at the neck with a pretty new clip first thing that morning, and smiled at Oliver. “What have you two been talking about?”
“I just got here,” he said, dumbfounded. He had a hundred questions to ask, but by the way she was acting, it didn’t feel like the right time or place.
“Have you been properly introduced?”
“Yes. I told her who I was.” He felt like an overachiever taking full honors for a simple task poorly done.
“Good. She keeps to herself mostly, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t listening. Right, Carolann?” She bent to be at eye level. “I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back tomorrow. It’ll be Christmas Eve. I’ll sing to you. We’ll open our presents on Christmas morning again this year, if that’s okay with you?” Holly kissed her mother’s limp cheek, hugged her, and patted her shoulder. “Bye. Sleep well tonight,” she whispered.
She stood and chuckled at Oliver’s expression. “Say good-bye, Oliver,” she reminded him.
“Good-bye Oliver” was on his tongue and halfway out his mouth before he could stop it. Everything felt so unreal. It was either make jokes or scream hysterically.
“Good-bye. It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Loftin.”
Holly laughed. “Ms. Loftin, if you please. Carolann never married.”
He was getting curiouser and curiouser. He could barely contain himself while Holly gathered up her coat and the bag she always carried, said good-bye once more, and moved out of Carolann’s room.
“Oh, where to start,” she said, flinging her arms through the muddle of new things to talk about before he had a chance to say a word.
“Try the beginning,” he said, not at all surprised that she was ready for his questions. If she’d been in his head again recently, she wouldn’t have seen anything but a huge question mark.
“Hmmm...” She was thinking. “I guess it started when the Spoletos tried to adopt me. I was nine. I was in school and I wanted to receive my First Holy Communion. I went to Catholic schools, did I tell you that?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. But I started late. I didn’t know anything about the religion, so I was nine before I could get baptized and receive Communion the way Mama and the boys had. I wanted to be like everyone else I knew. I always felt so left out of everything. But there are rules against indoctrinating foster children into a religion without the court’s or the natural parents’ permission.
“Mama knew how important it was for me to fit in and feel normal. She didn’t like making waves with the Child Welfare people because she was always afraid they’d take me away if she did, but she thought it might be worth it this time. She thought God was something I’d be able to take with me wherever I went. But the judge turned her down flat. So then she decided she’d try to adopt me. I’d already been with them a year and a half, maybe two, and there hadn’t been any parental contact, so she tried.
“Good night, Linda. Good night, Rosa. I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said, as they passed two attendants in the hall. “Then have a nice holiday. I’ll see you Monday.
“Where was I?” she asked, her fingers finding his hand and slipping in comfortably.
“The Spoletos were trying to adopt you.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, after talking to me and the people from social services, and with Mama’s other adoptees, the judge thought that might be okay, but there was still one hitch. My birth mother was alive and she hadn’t relinquished custody.” She paused briefly, glancing down at the floor. “This was news to me. Hurtful news. I’d always thought she was dead. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anything but foster homes.”
“Holly, I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me any of this.”
“Yes I do,” she said, stepping into the elevator. “You need to know. You need to make a decision as to whether or not you can live with who I am.”
“It doesn’t matter, Holly.” He could see the hope in her eyes, and that she wasn’t quite ready to believe him on this point. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to do something, anything, to convince her that nothing in her past mattered to him—maybe it was one of those things that only time could prove, he thought. “All right. Go on.”
They left the elevator, crossed the now-posted lobby, calling farewell to a nurse as they went. They stepped out into the cool, fresh evening air. Oliver couldn’t remember smelling anything better—except maybe Holly, warm and musky with passion.
“Well, she wasn’t dead and she didn’t want me, but she wouldn’t give up custody either. So, there I was. And when all my friends were going up to receive Communion, I was sitting in the pews. And when they all marched up to get confirmed, I was sitting in the pews. Mama did her best. She’d tell me it wasn’t as important to receive the sacraments as it was to be prepared, in my heart and in my soul, to receive them. It wasn’t much of a consolation. And every time I’d be left sitting in the pews, I’d think about her, my real mother, the one I’d thought was dead.”
He helped her into his car, and she waited for him to slide in beside her.
“It didn’t end there though. Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved with a foster child? Every time something happens? Getting a driver’s license and applying for state loans for college were like getting an amendment added to the Constitution. Mama and I would sit there and roll our eyes and fill out papers till our fingers went numb.” She laughed, looking out the front window at nothing in particular. “Carolann Loftin gave me life, but Marie Spoleto made it worth living. She’s a tough old cookie. Nothing was too big for us to handle together.”
“So, how did you find Carolann?” he asked, after a short silence.
“Why. I should tell you why I found her first. And I’ll tell you I was angry,” she said, the emotion clear in her voice. “I hated her. I hated her with all
my heart. I hated her for every time someone laughed at me or called me a name or called me Spoleto and made me explain. I hated her for giving me away, and I hated her for not giving me to Mama. I hated her every time the social worker came to our house, and Mama would worry that the house wasn’t clean enough, or that I was too thin and would they take me away from her. I hated her for making me different. I hated her when I was afraid and lonely. I hated Carolann every time I looked in the mirror.” She went silent.
Oliver was glad. He didn’t want to hear any more. He was curious, but it wasn’t worth listening to Holly relive it in her mind.
When she spoke again, it was on a lighter level.
“So when I graduated from college—now, you have to remember that I studied psychology and sociology and I was young and innocent and a terribly deep thinker at the time... So I had decided that in order for me to purge myself of all my unhealthy and pent-up anger, I would need to confront my birth mother and tell her exactly what I thought of her,” she said, like a college professor.
“And you put her in a coma?”
He was as shocked by his words as she was. They looked at each other across the car. Then suddenly burst out laughing.
“Oh, Oliver. That’s awful.”
“It’s sick. I can’t believe I said it. I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head, his gaze darting back to the road.
“Don’t be,” she said, still chuckling. “It’s better to laugh sometimes.”
He was hesitant to hear more, leery of his own responses, afraid he might add to her pain. But she was right. He needed to know—he wanted to know all there was to know about her. Not to pass judgment, but simply to know.
“What did happen? How did you find her?”
“I was twenty-two by then, so I petitioned for full disclosure of my files. I got her name and her last known address from there.” She paused. “Chinatown. San Francisco.”
“Chinatown?”
“That was her last known address. There were about twenty more after that. It took me almost eighteen months to find her,” she said, getting out of the car at the curb in front of her apartment.
Wait for Me Page 11
