The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

by Kit Reed

  The aide is Barbie perfect, buff and agile; the rich lady who owns the Shih Tzu is old. Unlike Gram and the others, who have fallen away, the rich lady has hung on to both her money and her flesh—did money make the difference? Pink, powdered and sweetly rounded, she stays in bed because her knees can’t support her weight. Even though she’s rosy and better dressed than the others, she is just as frail. With her firm butt bouncing, the aide walks into her employer’s room. Doesn’t she notice the disparity? The diamond rings embedded in the fat fingers and her fleshy, entitled smile say no. Roiling shadows collect on her ceiling just the way they do on Gram’s, but the rich old lady doesn’t see; she never looks up.

  Nobody here can afford to look up. For all they know, the place is lovely and everything’s fine.

  At the nurses’ station a covey of early risers leans on walkers, waiting for the balloon lady to come. In the breakfast room five women warble, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” while the recreation director beats time. Four old ladies with Magic Marker red mouths sit around a card table, waiting for the attendant to deal. Cheerful enough, Jane supposes, considering they’re all going to die soon, but she can’t afford to dwell.

  Instead she hurries because she can’t shake the idea that something new has entered the place. Jane is aware of some new element, a difference in the air. She’s almost used to the shadows but today, there’s something more—an extra density that makes her eyes snap wide. She imagines it taking shape.

  Has death come to visit? If only. But no, she thinks. Just, no. It isn’t the cumulative pressure of old age that makes her twitch and it isn’t the sound that time makes when God pulls the plug. There is a difference in the shadows that drift in the sunlit building and come rushing in her wake.

  She passes the old lady whose vocabulary got away, all but one word. “Good morning,” Jane says to her even though it won’t make any difference.

  When she turns at the sound the old lady’s eyes are leached of light. “Dwelling, dwelling, dwelling, dwelling,” she says in conversational tones, inching toward the dayroom in her flowered muumuu with the pastel webbed belt. Her leash is attached to the rail the management put in so old people who tip over won’t fall far.

  She used to be somebody, Jane thinks. They all did. It makes her move a little faster because Gram’s failing. Every time she comes into the room at Palmshine Villa she comes wondering how much of her grandmother is still left.

  In the room across the hall from Gram the old soldier shouts. He’s been shouting for years. Harmless, the nurses said when Mom begged them to move Gram to another room so she wouldn’t have to hear. They looked condescendingly at Gram. Remember, he doesn’t have a nice family like Mrs. Trefethen here. Do they, Gram? Gram smiled, happy as a dog at the pound, eating its last meal. Mom protested. “But he scares her.” Gram wasn’t scared, Mom was. Paraplegic, they said, even if he wanted to he couldn’t hurt a flea. “He’s making threats.” No he isn’t, he’s fighting Nazis. The war, they said. They said, So sad. Nobody comes even at Christmas, nobody phones and they never come. “That’s not my problem,” Mom said, “it’s his problem.” They said, If your mother isn’t happy here you can always … Jane’s heart leaped up but Mom recovered in a flash. “Oh no,” she said in that tired, tired voice, “This is perfect. Everything’s just fine.” He only shouts when he hears you coming, they said. When you’re not here he’s quiet as a clam.

  Even though Jane tiptoes he knows. The dry voice cracks the air above her head like a whip. “I know you’re out there. Come here!”

  This is what she hates most about these Sundays. “Oh, please. Not today.”

  God damn you God look what you’ve done to me, me in the bed and Vic dead and I can’t get out until I find out who. Vic is dead God damn you. Dead and nobody will help.

  It is in the building now. You

  “Who killed Vic?”

  “Oh, please.” Jane looked in once and saw a sheaf of white hair, a profile like the face on a medal. He heard her breathing and turned, a blur of red rage—a glaring mouth with that savage flash of teeth but his expression was both so blind and so angry that she fled before she could find out whether he saw her and if he did, whether he knew who she was. That day she closed Gram’s door as nearly as she could and leaned against the inside, terrified that he’d lurch into the wooden panels in his rage and send her and the door crashing into the room. Today his dry, hard voice knifes into her. “Who killed Vic?” This is how it always begins. Once he gets started the shouter will rant for hours. “Come on, you bastard bastards, who did it?”

  Half of Jane wants to confront the old wreck and shut him up, but she’s afraid to go in. “Shut up.”

  “It had to be one of you.” His shout cuts through everything. It’s like being within range of a heat-seeking missile. It doesn’t matter who you are today. It wants to find you and destroy. As she dives into Gram’s doorway the accusations follow. “Now, God damn you. Who?”

  “Beats me,” she says and dodges into the room.

  Odd. Behind her, something in the shadows stirs.

  The room is nicely kept and so is Gram, but she’s always anxious, going in. What does she expect to find in the sweet little room with its ruffled bed, a lipsticked skeleton? Gram gone, with the bed stripped and her belongings rolled on top like the bedding of an army moving out? Or is she afraid of Gram rising out of her velour recliner to scold her for being late, the way she did when Jane was young.

  The old man isn’t done. “God damn your shit,” he cries. “Tell the truth or I’ll eat your face and spit out the teeth.”

  “Gram, it’s me.”

  Never mind, Gram is glad to see her. Gram is always glad to see her, it’s a given that when Jane walks in the old lady’s smile lights up the room. She knows her granddaughter, too, it’s not like she forgets. “Jane,” Gram says with that smile that the complications of old age can’t turn off and not even pain can dim.

  She flinches. Is Gram in pain? Gram won’t tell her or she can’t tell her, so Jane has never known. She still has words, but a lot of important ones have gone away.

  “Smear your shit in your eyes,” he howls. “Now, tell.”

  “Hello,” she says, bending to kiss that transparent cheek. “Hello, Gram.”

  She looks so sweet sitting there in the recliner where the aides put her after they sponged the oatmeal off her mouth and dressed her for the day; Jane thinks Gram is in fact sweeter than she ever was in real life. Something in the water, she wonders? Something they give her at night? Or is it just that Gram has finally let herself lay back and let go? After a lifetime of keeping a perfect house, washing and ironing for a family that she controlled and fed for years, along with the multitudes, after all that taking care, she’s on vacation from her life.

  “I brought blueberry muffins, Gram.”

  “Of course you did.” That smile!

  “And the shit in your eyes.” So loud, so ugly.

  Jane gestures in the direction of the shout. “Oh Gram, I’m so sorry about that.”

  Gram smiles and blinks politely the way she always does when she doesn’t understand, which is most of the time lately. Age has left her with a few macros—boilerplate speeches that kick in whenever Jane says anything but she knows who Jane is, she does! “You were lovely to come.”

  Does it hurt, Gram? How much does it hurt? She wants to ask but Gram looks so happy that she’s afraid to bring it up. She responds by rote, “Lovely to see you, Gram.”

  The television is going—it always is—Sally Jessy, Oprah, Rosie, Ricki, makes no difference, the daylight voices are interchangeable. The psychic Muzak and emotional screensaver supply everything Gram needs now that she’s lost everything else. Jane is grateful that the old lady’s lost it, so she doesn’t know how awful this is. She may not know she’s in this pale blue room in this pretty place in her oversized aqua recliner because this is the bottom line. Gram isn’t getting well. She’s here for good; except for her birth
day and Christmas, when an ambulance brings her to her daughter’s house for dinner and takes her away before the pie, she is going to be in this chair in this room in Palmshine Villa for whatever’s left of her life. It’s good Gram likes TV so much. Good thing poor Gram’s protective mechanism kicked in when her hard disk overloaded and crashed.

  Gram looks nice in aqua: aqua muumuu, fluffy aqua robe. It complements the chair.

  Gram looks nice and the room is nice but the words barreling in from across the hall are ugly and sharp. “And sleep in your shit because you won’t tell me who killed him.”

  Oh stop.

  “Oh, look,” Gram says. “Doesn’t Rosie have on a pretty red shirt today.”

  But she can’t drown out the old soldier. “Who killed Vic? Was it you?”

  “And doesn’t she dress the child nice,” Gram says because he can’t drown out her sweet voice.

  This is her life now, these daily TV people are closer to Gram than her family, Jane realizes. She’s a little hurt and at the same time happy for Gram, who looks frail but clean and pretty and well taken care of, with her white hair nicely waved and a bobby pin with a blue butterfly clinging to the spot where the pink scalp shows through. “Nice, Gram. It’s a nice color. Would you like me to get you one like that?”

  He is still shouting. “Was it me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Gram says, beaming. “Just get me the box tops. I can always send away.”

  “Help me,” he screams. “I have to find out.”

  I don’t know who did it but I may, he is lying dead somewhere but if I can get back the memory I may find out. Solomons I was fighting on, or was I at Tobruk? Was that Vic running along beside me, did I push him ahead and did he take the bullet that was meant for me, is it my fault he was killed in the first wave? Is that what happened to you, old shitface, is it my fault you got blasted out of your life?

  Something is shimmering out there. I am coming for you.

  “Who killed Vic?”

  Jane murmurs, “I wish he’d stop.”

  Rosie’s theme music makes a cheerful sound in the room. The ambiance is cheerful, and so is Gram. Although massed shadows roll down the halls like thunderclouds before a terrible storm, the room is bright. There are stuffed animals the great-grandchildren gave, marine blue curtains to match the nice comforter and ruffled bolster that Mom bought when they moved Gram out of the house she couldn’t keep. Her hospital bed has a dust ruffle just like a little girl’s. Books she can’t read any more line the little bookshelf like the ghosts of old friends. Family photos stand on the top in Plexiglas frames. Gram with Mom and Jane and the others in Gram’s better days. She looks so pretty! Like somebody else. You wouldn’t know her if it wasn’t for the smile that travels from one snapshot into the next into the studio portrait made on her 80th birthday, into this room and onto the face of the wraith in the recliner chair. There isn’t much left but the smile.

  It’s enough, or it would be except for the scary business in the halls. What is it, exactly, that makes Jane anxious today, and fearful for Gram?

  It could be nothing, she thinks, as across the hall the old man accuses the world at large: “You know who killed Vic. Who was it? Was it you?”

  “Who’s Vic?” she says to Gram.

  The old lady turns sweet, empty eyes on her. “Who?”

  “The old man across the hall says somebody got murdered.” She shouldn’t be talking about this but it’s better than what she really wants to say: Don’t you ever want to get out of here, Grammy? Are you happy or sometimes do you think you want to die? Disturbed, she finishes, “This guy Vic.”

  “Oh,” Gram says, blinking the way she does when she doesn’t have the foggiest, which is all the time now. “Vic,” she says with that midrange pleasant smile that means nothing. It is nothing like the welcoming blaze when Jane enters the room but it’s the best she can do. Lips like a shriveled rosebud, with that genteel, vacant tone. “Of course,” Gram says without knowing what she’s saying. “Vic.”

  “Who was he, Gram? Was Vic his son and did you meet him, do you know?” What did the nurses say? He has a family. They used to come. Now nobody comes and the checks come straight from the bank.

  “Who?”

  “Vic!” She doesn’t want to scare her grandmother but she does want an answer.

  Bemused, the old lady murmurs because it’s expected, “Poor Vic. Oh look, Janie, look what Rosie’s doing now.”

  It’s useless to ask her but Gram’s the only person she can ask. “What happened to him, Gram?”

  What happened to me? Wife I had before I went away, two boys I had, Timmy and little, did we name one of them Vic My friend Angus had little girls, he was the first over the top and I promised to follow but his belly blew up in a fountain of fire and blood Pull me back he was begging would he not have died? I couldn’t, not with that hole in the belly, guts blooming, twitching wet parts of him slithering into my arms it’s not my fault he went first dead like my point man and when I try to sleep they blossom all over again they found his penis in the dirt next to my face keep your head down men …

  In the building now, and coming down the hall. It’s nothing you did in the war.

  “Somebody killed Vic and you know it …”

  “Oh God.” Jane groans. “What if this is the wrong place?”

  “It’s so sweet,” Gram says, “Rosie bringing up her own baby all by herself.”

  “You have to move out of this place,” Jane says wildly. Is she trying to get the old lady out of this room for the afternoon or for good? She doesn’t know. The old soldier’s voice rises and she shouts to cover the sound, “It’s not out of the question.”

  “Rosie’s just a wonderful mother, just like Oprah and those wonderful people in The Partridge Family … “

  She grabs Gram’s shoulders. “What if something happened to you?”

  “And that nice girl who took care of the Trapp children, they are an inspiration for us all.” This is a lot for Gram to say at one time but she is all worked up now. Her lips are trembling and her eyes glisten with approval. “It’s fine mothers like them and that lovely Ma Walton who make America great.”

  Jane tries, she tries! “I don’t think Oprah has any children, Gram.”

  At least Gram has a nice family, unlike that poor bastard across the hall. Who will not stop shouting, “No. He didn’t kill Vic. You know he didn’t and you know who did.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Gram gasps.

  “No no, Gram. Not you!”

  “And I know it too.” Querulous. “Did you kill Vic?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody, Janie, I didn’t.” Gram’s face shrinks like crepe paper; she’s about to cry.

  “Shh. Shh, Gram. Don’t worry about him, really.”

  “Who?”

  “You know. You do! He’s just a crazy old man.”

  But Gram’s face is working. She’s caught on an old memory that won’t surface. She can’t tell Jane what it is but Jane can see from her face that it hurts. There is something buried back there unless something is happening to her in the room right now. Whatever it is, it hurts. Gram’s lap robe falls away and she sees her grandmother’s feet are cased in plastic lined with sheepskin. Why? Oh, Gram.

  Meanwhile the old man rails, “Did you kill him?”

  If he would only stop shouting.

  “Did you?”

  Jane rises to close the door.

  “Why, no.” Gram is terribly upset. “Of course not. No.”

  But the doors in this place are jiggered so they won’t really close. Regulations, Jane thinks. Health care centers have to come up to code. She soothes her grandmother with bits of blueberry muffin. The old lady chews and chews but when she spreads her mouth in a new smile, the bits of blueberry muffin are still there.

  Suddenly the old man’s tone changes. “Why, you didn’t kill Vic, you tried to save him.”

  Uneasy, Jane glances at her grandmother, but Gram is fixed o
n the television now. She smiles on as though she doesn’t hear.

  “But he died anyway!”

  “Oh, look, Gram.” Jane warbles. Her voice is shaking. It sounds sweet and false. “Look at Rosie.”

  “Do you want to know who killed Vic? Do you?”

  “Isn’t that a pretty red shirt?”

  Anguished, the old man finishes. “I killed Vic.”

  “My God.” Jane shoots a look at her grandmother. Did she hear? Is she afraid?

  I didn’t kill Angus and I didn’t kill my point man, I got a citation for what I did, the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star but it was shit because I couldn’t get an erection and I couldn’t get a job. I was shit and my life was shit and I hated them, because before the war ever happened it already was. Alana left me for that Hunky refugee and took the kids but I showed her, I did, I showed them all.

  All except me.

  “I know who killed Vic,” the old man cries.

  “Pretty red shirt. Your mother ought to wear red,” Gram says. “It would take people’s minds off the wrinkles and the fat.”

  “Gram!”

  Gram goes on in the unruffled tone she uses when Mom cracks during one of these lectures and starts to yell. Just when you love her best she gets a little mean and you remember she always was. “If only she’d get herself up nice, like my girls Rosie and Oprah do.”

  From across the hall, the news comes in on a sob. “I killed Vic.”

  “They’re just television, Gram.” What if the old man really is a murderer?

  “Lose her looks and she’ll lose her handsome man and then what will she do?”

  “Mom looks fine.” What if he kills Gram?

  “Aaaaaahhh.” His throat opens in grief. “Aaaaaah.”

  “Shh,” Jane murmurs, “please don’t.”

  And with that brilliant smile that lights up Palmshine, Gram burbles, “Poor Vic.”

  “Shh, don’t worry. It’s just crazy talk, Gram.”