This Old Man

by Lois Ruby

  “Do you have to go back to the hospital for a checkup or anything?” I asked. This was crazy. Why was I doing this? If she thought I was so smart, this was only proving how dumb I truly was.

  “What if I did?” she hedged.

  “Would you do me a little favor?” I asked. I was trying so hard to sound humble, while my ego soared.

  “I already did you a big one, remember?”

  “I know, and I’m grateful, really I am. But if you go back to Chinese Hospital, would you stop in and visit that man next door to you, Mr. Kwang? Just tell him the Girl of the Lu Yun Poem says hello.”

  “I’m not going to do that!”

  “Please. It means a lot to me.”

  Ms. Ching sighed deeply. “If I’m in the neighborhood. Only if.”

  “I think you’d better hurry, because he’s going home in a few days. You’d better go up there today or tomorrow.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to worry about any guy like Hackey Barnes. You’re a conniver, like me, Gertie.”

  I smiled, but said nothing.

  “Listen, don’t call me again, okay? Never.”

  “Aye-aye,” I said, like a private accepting an order. I filed her number away in the back of my mind for rapid recall, if I should ever need it.

  23

  Why is it that when you’re really on top of things and you’re finally getting the world by the tail, something happens? Carmella was due back the day after Pammy signed the final papers on Baby Boy Wilkins. He then officially became Derek William Stemmons, son of Mr. and Mrs. William Stemmons, and brother of Randall Stemmons, who was his father.

  Jo, Pammy, Sylvia, and I all went to Alcatraz to mark the double-whammy occasion. This time we were prepared, wearing ski parkas and gloves. We stood in the cell that had housed Al “Scarface” Capone. Now the chartreuse paint was peeling away, and the grimy toilet and wash basin were corroded by time and salty air.

  We sat on the bunk Machine Gun Kelly once slept on. We stepped into the Hole and took turns closing the door on one another, to feel the utter terror of being alone in stony, damp darkness. A few seconds was all any of us could tolerate. I wondered how those men felt alone in there, if they found enough inside themselves to keep them going through the long hours between the bread-and-water rations. I kept thinking of Old Man, wondering if he felt utterly alone, like these men, between Wing’s visits. I knew I would crack under such unrelieved loneliness.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Sylvia shuddered. “There’s got to be someplace more cheerful on this rock.”

  There was. We walked down the aisle across the west-end cell house. The prisoners had named it Times Square. Another walkway between two cell-blocks was called Broadway. The western block of cells they called Sunset Boulevard. And out of respect for Al Capone’s Chicago roots, his cellblock was nicknamed Michigan Avenue.

  It lifted my spirits a little to know that these men without hope still had a biting sense of humor.

  “I wouldn’t call it a sense of humor,” Jo observed. “I’d say they were just trying to humanize an inhuman situation.” She’d been to visit her mother in Vacaville for the first time. I wondered if she spoke from experience now.

  We caught the ferry back to Fisherman’s Wharf. We were all feeling gloomy and unwilling to cast our gloom to the wind just yet. Finally Pammy said, “You know, the last time I was on this boat, not counting an hour ago, but the real last time, I was afraid the baby would come while we were out on the water, remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Jo, “I remember you were fretting your fool head off about what country the kid would be a citizen of, as if we were in international terrorist waters out here.”

  “Oh, well, I was pretty young then,” Pammy said.

  What were we talking about, two months ago?

  “A lot’s happened,” Sylvia agreed, with a sigh. “The baby, my Bradley, I went down almost two sizes, Darlene’s gone, Jo’s looking for an apartment.”

  We all received the catalogue of events silently, distilling our own memories from it. Then Sylvia said, “I guess we’ve all changed but you, Greta.”

  My head snapped up. For a minute I thought it was a joke. But I saw that she was gazing off into the bay and thought so little of the remark that it had already slipped from her mind.

  How little she knew me! How little any of them knew me. Paula Ching, who didn’t know me at all, knew me better than these girls I’d lived with for four months. I wasn’t the same Greta Janssen who’d checked into Anza House with cinammon buns for hair and baggy overalls for clothes, to keep me from looking too dangerously feminine. I wasn’t the same Greta Janssen who said she didn’t need anyone or anything. And I wasn’t the same Greta Janssen, the fugitive. It was more than two weeks since I’d had a nightmare or even a threatening daydream about Hackey.

  I had confronted him, that day at the hospital, and nothing had happened. I had slipped away from him, and nothing had happened. He could find me easily, I finally admitted, but hadn’t bothered.

  I was free of Hackey Barnes. That was the biggest change, but of course the girls wouldn’t know anything about this. Each person is alone in the Hole, I reasoned, and when she comes out, she doesn’t reach for just anybody, only for a special one or two people.

  A small voice echoed off the wind and back to me. It was Pammy. “You’re wrong, Sylvia. I think Greta’s changed,” she said. The other girls were too wrapped up in the waves and wake and didn’t really hear her. I listened closely. “In the beginning I didn’t think Greta was for real, like you never knew how she felt about things. Now I think she’s the best friend I ever had.”

  My tears dried in the wind, like drops of water on a radiator.

  “Greta, did I ever thank you for calling the ambulance?”

  “No,” I said, with my voice shaking.

  “That day? Well, you really showed me what kind of a friend you were, because you knew better than I did what would be the best thing for me to do.”

  “I called the ambulance because I was scared, Pammy.”

  “Me, too.” We listened to the roar of the ferryboat motor, then Pammy asked, “Do you think Randy and me will ever get married?”

  I shook my head, with an apologetic look in my eyes.

  “Me neither.”

  “You want to play good news–bad news?” I asked Mr. Saxe. He had had a new, small couch installed in his office, which barely left enough room for both of us to stand up at once. Now I sat with my legs under me in the corner of the couch and he rolled his chair out from behind his desk to face me. There was a square of gauze taped to his neck; he’d had the mole removed.

  “Sure, I’m game.”

  “The bad news is Carmella’s coming back. Who knows how that’ll work out.”

  “And the good news?”

  “The good news is, I think I’m maybe free of Hackey.”

  “Wonderful! What will you do if he comes around?” Mr. Saxe asked.

  “I’ll just look him in the eye and say, ‘Leave me alone!’”

  “He’s not as tough as you imagined him to be?”

  I shook my head, remembering how I used to live in mortal fear of him. “I know he’s not going to drag me off anymore, or make me do anything I can’t. Strange as it sounds, I think he’s sort of fond of me. Also, I don’t think he wants the responsibility of a kid, you know? It was different when he found my mother. He was young then. But now I think he’s going to stay out of my life, and if he does come around, I can say no to him whenever I want to.” The thought was still new to me and very comforting, like a campfire on the beach.

  “You’ve got back-up, too. The school and Elizabeth and I are behind you all the way.”

  “Um-hmm.” The fire warmed my fingertips and toes.

  “What changed your perception of Hackey?”

  I thought a while. “Oh, a few things that woman from the hospital said. Also, I finally noticed that Hackey’s just a man, not a giant or a monster, just a pret
ty short, paunchy man whose hair is thinning fast. On top of that, I made the incredible discovery that Hackey and my mother actually love each other.”

  Mr. Saxe seemed surprised. An eyebrow rose, like Mr. Spock’s.

  “I guess it’s not like you and your wife—and incidentally, you still haven’t told me anything about her, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” he chuckled. “Why start now?”

  I curled my lip at the corner, to register my dismay. “Anyway, it’s not like you and the mysterious Mrs. Saxe all cozy in your home with that sweet kid who answers the phone. With Hackey and Marla, it’s different. It’s like they’re connected by a string, loosely, but when either one pulls on the string, the other feels it.”

  “That’s one good definition of love,” Mr. Saxe said.

  I moaned. “It’s sure not the happily-ever-after kind.”

  “Would you say it’s a love-hate relationship?”

  Was he teasing, bringing up that other great revelation we’d had in this office? One glance at his sincere face, with the eyes wide open and unblinking, waiting for my reply, convinced me that he was serious. “I suppose it is.”

  “That’s the most complicated kind,” he said gently. “Oh, Greta, how far you’ve come in such a short time. I’m so proud of you.”

  I studied my hands and the gaudy plaid of his couch. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I hope things work out for you at Candlestick Park.”

  “I’m going to hate working there, you know. I don’t know a thing about baseball. I don’t even like peanuts, unless they have M & M’s wrapped around them.”

  “Oh, sure, you’ll hate going out there for every game and carrying that heavy box around and hawking peanuts and Cokes. Maybe you’ll learn to love it, too.”

  That time I knew he was teasing.

  We had strawberry sundaes to celebrate Carmella’s homecoming. No fan, this time.

  “It’s lovely to have you back.” Elizabeth practically crooned.

  “Yeah, well,” said Carmella.

  “Isn’t it nice to have Carmella back, girls?”

  I looked to Jo, our spokeswoman, who was just about choking to death on her spoon to keep from laughing. Pammy’s eyes were riveted to her placemat. They didn’t expect me to say anything, did they?

  “Look, ladies, what’s done is done. Tonight we’re starting over,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just sorry Sylvia’s not here, but it’s good that she’s going home more these days.”

  Carmella kept sliding her spoon into her mouth, then pulling it out with the same mound of ice cream on it. I was sick just watching her. Pammy stirred her ice cream into a mud puddle. She could have drunk it with a straw. Jo gobbled hers and scraped the bowl until nothing was left but strings of strawberry sauce.

  “You want a spatula?” Elizabeth teased.

  “Nah, I’m doing fine without it.”

  I had never thought about different ice cream styles before. Elizabeth’s technique was to take a delicate spoonful of vanilla and dip it in her strawberry sauce. Each spoonful looked exactly like the one before. Me, I just plodded along randomly through my bowl till it was empty. Why all this fascination with ice cream behavior? Well, it kept me from thinking about how Carmella was going to turn everything upside down.

  I glanced over at her, slouched in her chair, leaning on her elbow, one hand supporting her sulky face. Under the table she had her knees spread like a sailor. It wasn’t going to be easy. And if Elizabeth forced us too hard into being One Big Happy Family, it would all fall apart for sure.

  I wasn’t giving Elizabeth enough credit, because when we were done with our sundaes, and Carmella was still sucking on the same spoonful of ice cream, Elizabeth said, “Well, we all have things to do, right?” We cleared our bowls and stacked them in the dishwasher and scattered to the far corners of the house, while Carmella still sat at the dining-room table. Eventually she’d get the message: if she wanted to be part of our house, she’d have to make the first move.

  Old Man was checking out. A large carton stood in the corner, full of his things. I looked around the room for the last time. The tapestry drapes were actually thin; golden polyester draw drapes; there was no man in the distance walking through a meadow, but that was all right, It didn’t change my memory.

  Old Man sat in a high-backed wheelchair, with a tray across his lap. He folded his arms serenely on the tray, but I could see that they weakly supported him in this unaccustomed upright position. Wing’s father had gone to borrow a car from a friend, and Wing was checking Old Man out at the Admissions Office. There I was, alone with him for the last time. I smiled at him. He lifted his eyes shyly and smiled back. I think he was embarrassed to be alone with me, now that he was on the brink of his freedom from the hospital.

  He said something to me. I didn’t understand a word, but I nodded and smiled and pressed my hands together like a teacher who’s delighted with her class pet. It was the right response, because it untied a whole parcel of words. Some sort of a story was breathlessly tumbling from him. I listened to every word, imagining that he was telling me about that night in Sunkiang when the missionary spoke of the Country of the Starry Flag before he smuggled Old Man’s passport through the gate.

  Now he was dressing for the first time in the stiff Western clothes. Now the black hat slid down the back of his head, where once the queue might have braced it. The scratchy wool coat was pulled over his shoulders by a servant boy. Now he was on the train to Shanghai, now on the boat bound for San Francisco.

  He could have been telling me what he had for lunch. It didn’t matter. This was the story I heard.

  The breathless words stopped as Wing came back into the room. He placed the carton carefully into my arms, as though it contained great treasures. He arranged Old Man in the wheelchair, propped a pillow behind him and to his side, and the three of us left the cottage that had become Old Man’s universe.

  In the bright light of the hall, Old Man’s eyes shyly rose toward me again, as though he knew that I had understood his whole story.

  About the Author

  Lois Ruby is the author of eighteen books for middle graders and teens, including Steal Away Home, Miriam’s Well, The Secret of Laurel Oaks, Rebel Spirits, Skin Deep, and The Doll Graveyard. Her fiction runs the gamut from contemporary to historical and from realistic to paranormal.

  An ex-librarian, Ruby now writes full time amid speaking to bookish groups, presenting at writing workshops, and touting literacy and the joys of nourishing, thought-provoking reading in schools around the country.

  No one would love to have a spirit encounter more than Ruby, so she explores lots of haunted places—Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, Theorosa’s Bridge in Kansas, dozens of ghostly locations in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and even a few spooky spots in Australia, Morocco, and Thailand. No spirits have tapped her on the shoulder yet, but it could still happen; she hasn’t given up hope.

  Ruby and her husband live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the foothills of the awesome Sandia Mountains.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author is grateful for permission to quote the poem “The Valley Wind,” by Lu Yun, from Translations from the Chinese, translated by Arthur Waley. Copyright 1919 and renewed 1947 by Arthur Waley. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  Copyright © 1984 by Lois Ruby

  Cover design by Julianna Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1364-2

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Med
ia, Inc.

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