by Tracy Kidder
“Recession,” Joe said. “Ten-dollar bills.”
“Are we still picking them up?” Carol asked.
“Just on the right side,” Lou said. “I can’t reach all the way with the left. Somebody’s gotta bring in a tape measure, see if my right arm’s longer than the left.”
“Maybe your hips aren’t straight,” Carol said.
“Well,” said Lou, stretching left. “Years ago I used to carry a toolbox on my right shoulder.”
“Verrrrry good, everybody,” Carol said. “Everybody still breathing?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes!” Joe said.
“I just say that so you’ll have something to say.”
“Oxygen in, whatever coming out,” Lou said.
“If we didn’t breathe we’d turn purple!” Joe said.
“But some people hold their breath,” Carol said.
“Yes, I agree with you,” Joe said.
When they started to work on their feet and legs, Carol switched to a Scott Joplin piano rags tape, and they went walking in place, did a piece of the Charleston with their feet, made cancan kicks if they could, all without ever leaving their seats. In a while Lou took a break. Soon Joe did, too.
“Anybody worn out?” Carol asked.
“We’re all worn out,” Lou said.
“Or we wouldn’t be here,” Joe said.
They concluded with more slow, gentle stretching, and everyone thanked Carol, who said, with evident feeling, “It’s a privilege for me. How’s that? I’ll see you all on Monday, God willing.”
At the doorway Lou and Joe split up. Lou would go back to their room. Ruth would be here any minute for her daily visit. Joe said he was going to ride the exercise bike. Lou said, “Don’t push it, Joe. Don’t try and go all the way to Chicago. Maybe just Cleveland.”
Joe limped down the central corridor toward the occupational therapy room. “I glide across the floor,” Joe said as he hobbled along. “God almighty.” He looked forward to the bike. Riding felt like progress, carrying him back.
The OT room was small and sunny, full of exercise equipment, the most hopeful-looking room at Linda Manor, promising rejuvenation. Carol arrived to supervise. “Don’t get too fancy,” she said. Joe grunted as he began pumping the pedals.
After he got up some momentum, he’d talk. He spoke of his wife. “She wore herself out. Soaking my foot twice a day, helping me in the shower. Good God.”
“Basically, you do what you can,” Carol said.
“That’s right.” Joe’s voice sounded testy for a moment. “Adjust. Adjust,” he said, as if quoting from a despised text.
“How’s your knee?”
“It’s, uh, fine.”
“You lie,” Carol said.
Joe said, “Uh, Lou. He asks you how far? Don’t tell him.”
“Keep it fuzzy when he asks?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, because he does worry,” Carol said.
Joe pedaled on. He said he wanted her to increase the resistance in the machine. Since the blister, Carol had kept it at the lowest level. She said, “No, no.”
“I know,” Joe said, “but Jesus Christ.”
“Because all tension does, Joe, is build up the muscle.”
“I don’t want that.”
“No, you want endurance.”
“No,” he said. “All I’m doing it for is get my belly flat.”
Joe pumped and pumped. The muscles in his jaw flexed, he breathed heavily, sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Going back to Pittsfield,” Carol sang.
10
Earl came out into the hall for his morning walk. He pushed his wheelchair down the corridor toward the nurses’ station, a portable oxygen canister hanging from the handlebars, the blue tube still looped around his head. Every time he’d felt that he was making progress with his physical therapy, he’d had another setback and been obliged to stay in bed. Earl wasn’t feeling very well today, just better than he had. His doctor had visited again, and had told Earl that he wasn’t ready to go home. He needed to get some exercise, the doctor said. Earl understood this to mean that exercise might get him out of here. So Earl resolved to take these walks, two walks per day, no matter how he felt.
Earl walked out of Sunrise, passing the lineup with averted eyes. Walking slowly down the central corridor, he glanced in the tall narrow windows of the physical therapy room. M&M’s was over. The room was empty now. He planned to go to M&M’s himself soon. Earl walked down to the administrative corridor, turned around, and walked back to his room. Then he lay down to rest, awaiting lunch.
Everything he ate here had a funny taste to it now, except for the cans of liquid dietary supplement, a product called Ensure. Earl sat on the edge of his bed, his tray on the table before him. He smacked his lips over the Ensure. He picked at the solid food on his plate. He got a little down. Then he rested again, and at around one o’clock he saddled up for his second walk.
Earl hitched up his trousers to a spot not far below the sternum. His belt wasn’t tight enough anymore to hold up his trousers securely, even though he had it cinched to its last hole. Earl attached his nose catheter to his portable oxygen canister, fumbling a little, breathing rapidly and noisily. He set the oxygen on 2, and he was ready. He’d go a little farther than this morning. He’d walk behind the wheelchair all the way out to the lobby, around the piano, and back.
A friend of Earl’s had called the other night and offered to talk to Jean about taking Earl home. Earl had demurred. He’d work it out with her himself. “It’ll be a chore for Jean,” he said, walking on. “But I won’t go upstairs to bed. I’ll get a bed downstairs, and a toilet. But Jean’s afraid I’ll fall sometime and she won’t be able to pick me up. I know it’s going to be a chore for Jean, because even though we can afford help, she likes to be independent, and I will be a chore at certain times. Jean’s trying to be nice to me. At the same time, she’s a little afraid of having strangers in the house.” He made it to the piano, which he circled. On the way back, Earl began running short of breath. By the time he turned down the Sunrise hallway, he looked as though he’d run five miles. He climbed right back on his bed and lay there, concentrating on his breathing, wearing the night watchman’s look. He had asked one of the maintenance men to poke a new hole in his belt so he could cinch it tight, but the man hadn’t come to do it yet. A simple thing like that. A lot of things around here took longer than they should.
11
Outside Linda Manor’s windows, some snow appeared. It soon melted. For many days there were views of flapping flags and cold gray skies, and then bright sunshine lit the grass. The days warmed up a little. The temperature inside didn’t vary much. It was always warm. Many residents wore sweaters and shivered at the slightest drafts. From outside, in the afternoons, bedroom windows stood out dark against the sunlight. Now and then a resident’s face swam into view behind the glass and lingered, looking out. Weather was observed but not experienced. Art sat in his favorite armchair in the lobby, beyond the full reach of the jets of fresh air that visitors brought in.
“It’s a beautiful day,” said a visitor, stopping in front of Art’s chair and unbuttoning her coat.
“Yes,” Art said. “That’s what the people tell us.”
The visitor passed inward, and Art went back to his own thoughts, gazing at the windows.
Joe stood at the window in the room upstairs for a moment. “It’s a nice day, Lou.” Then Joe lay down. Today being a shower day, Lou lay on his bed, too. Showers wore him out. He wished he knew exactly why. In the room the lights were off. The view of woods and brown meadow out their window was brightly lit. It was as if their room were a dark museum and their window a backlit diorama in which a bear or a red fox might appear. Joe began watching a movie. His son still brought him videotapes regularly, and Lou still shook his head and said, “I don’t understand why Joe wants to listen to some of those tapes.” Joe’s movies remained Lou’s trusty soporific, though. Lou was dozing now. W
hen he awakened he’d say to Joe, “I slept two hours between car smashups.”
Soon Joe, too, dozed off. The TV played on unwatched, the afternoon light slowly fading in their window, the sound of gunfire emanating faintly through their door into the corridors of Forest View. Throughout Linda Manor, from closed and half-opened doors, came voices broadcasting news of the bombings in Kuwait and Iraq, mingled with the sounds of soap operas and game shows. Now and then the elevator bells rang—Boing, boing, as in a department store. A monotony of sound is a kind of silence. The lengthening afternoons were full of silences.
***
Jean peeked in the door to Earl’s room. He was napping. She withdrew to the corridor and looked out the windows at the sunny, spring-portending February afternoon. “He’s a good scout,” she thought. “He’s puzzled by these things that are happening to him.” She thought Earl had finally resigned himself to staying on at Linda Manor. At least yesterday he said that he realized what a trial it would have been for both of them if he’d lived at home these past few weeks. But he kept saying to her, “This isn’t me.” He was still having a very hard time believing that he wouldn’t get over this sickness one day. Optimism, Jean thought, had tenacious roots in Earl. He believed in the lessons of the Frank Merriwell books that he read in his youth: work hard and think good thoughts and help other people. But he found it difficult to say what his motto should be now. And Jean was having some of the same difficulty. Now and then she had thoughts like this: “At least when Adam and Eve left the Garden, they went out together.”
Where did people get joy and energy? From their families, and especially their children, she thought. But where could she get those things, returning every night to an empty house? What would it be like to work here? She hoped the people who worked here had home lives that restored them. Maybe the fact that they were helping other people was enough. Everything seemed to revolve around that, she thought. To have a vital connection. She felt disconnected. Her own health wasn’t sound enough for her to work at a real job. She still had some responsibilities away from here, but she wasn’t having much fun at anything, because she was doing almost everything alone.
Jean wished that she could garden, but gardening was still two months away. Driving over this afternoon, she found herself thinking about the difference between looking and seeing. At a museum, she thought, most people just glance and move on. But every so often a person stops and really sees a painting. That was the way she wanted to live, she thought driving over. “I want to experience things,” she thought. “I don’t like just to pass by them. That’s the part I miss. I like to live connected.”
Linda Manor was a good place, Jean believed. But there was too much sadness here. The other day she sat out in the lobby with Earl and the one friend of Earl’s from Holyoke who regularly visited, and a woman in a wheelchair across the lobby began weeping, waving at her departing husband’s car. Jean wanted to do something, but could think of nothing to do. She wished she saw more residents like that fellow who sat like a guard at the front door. She liked his songs of hello, which she overheard in the hallways. This place needed more of that, a little energy. She smiled, thinking of Bob. He reminded her of Art Carney in The Honeymooners.
Jean hadn’t taken off her coat yet. “We say, ‘March forward. Don’t look back.’ But most of the stuff is back!” she exclaimed toward the windows. Then she turned away and tiptoed into Earl’s room. She sat in a chair beside his bed until he woke up from his nap.
***
Earl had constipation problems once again. They lingered for a few days. Finally, after several younger nurses tried without success, one of the veterans managed to give him a full-fledged enema. “I finally had an enema today,” he crowed. “I yelled and screamed, but I feel much better.” Earl lay on his bed. There was some color in his face. His thoughts were rambling, though, this morning while he waited for Jean to arrive. He spoke even more rapidly than usual.
“I still want to go home. But I couldn’t go with all the stuff that’s going on. I could, but Jean doesn’t want to go through that. She’s such a fastidious woman. Everything has to be spick-and-span. I’m careful, too. I don’t smoke. But I notice she’s always cleaning up things that don’t need cleaning up. I know she’d love to have me home. But—this is a terrible thing to say—she doesn’t want me to disrupt her household.”
Earl wet his lips and readjusted his nose catheter. He thought of the many hours Jean had spent in here at his bedside, never missing a day, often bringing in picnic lunches and dinners in the hope of arousing some appetite in him. Her own health was far from perfect, too. “She’s been very faithful,” Earl said. He wouldn’t talk to her again about going home. It would upset her. But when he felt as well as this, he couldn’t help but think of going home. And if he kept on feeling this way, he wouldn’t be a chore.
***
Earl took his two walks Saturday. On Sunday morning his two young grandsons visited and played Monopoly with him. Earl intended to lose, but he’d forgotten the game and old banking instincts asserted themselves. He managed to lose the rematch.
“When I get company it helps me immensely,” he said afterward, when everyone was gone. “Even if I just know someone’s coming.” Now he faced another week in here.
Earl still took the sleeping pill Halcion every night. He’d felt afraid to try to sleep without it ever since his doctor told him he probably had a week to six months left. About a month had passed since then. Some days lately Earl believed he might have more than five months left. But last night, just when his bowel problems had cleared up, a tooth fell out, a front tooth. He’d awakened mourning it. “Everything’s happening,” he said. “Now I look worse than ever, dammit.”
The gap did add a few years overnight to Earl’s visual age. He had to get his mind off it. Today he’d shaved and dressed without assistance, which was good for him, he felt, though he figured help should have been offered. By ten o’clock he’d made four phone calls, to various friends. Then he made some more notes on his family’s history. “You know, keeping your mind active is so important.”
On his bedside table lay a calculator, a spiral notebook with his notes on family history, and a fat neat bundle of checkbooks and bills, bound together with a rubber band. Jean’s bookkeeping skills were another project. She had some distance yet to go, Earl felt, but then again Earl had exacting standards. It wasn’t just a question of paying the monthly bills, he liked to say, but also of knowing when to pay them. Pay a few days late and you risked a penalty; pay a few days early and you lost interest on your money. Anyway, he had to get Jean self-sufficient on the bills, in case the doctor’s prediction was correct.
Jean arrived smiling, carrying the morning paper. She always wore a cheerful look when she arrived, even if she had to compose it at the door. Earl was very businesslike today. “Here’s that check for St. John’s,” he said, undoing his financial bundle and handing that item to her.
She tucked it in her pocketbook. “What are you trying to do, look like one of those rockers?” she said, leaning over and buttoning up his shirt, which had been partway open on his thin chest. She moved some mail to one side of his bedside table, his desk. Earl moved it back, saying, “Be careful now.”
She smoothed out his half-elevated collar and sat down.
In his notes, Earl had gotten to the story of a brother’s untimely death, in the railroad yards of Holyoke. He retold it now. “John was hopping onto railroad cars. He had to go through the railroad yard to deliver lunch to our father. He was hopping onto the ladder of a moving train and he slipped and was mangled. He was only six years old.”
“Probably someone dared him,” Jean said softly.
“Two or three years ago I went to the Holyoke Public Library and found the story of his accident,” Earl said. “I was only a couple of months old when it happened. At the cemetery there’s a tiny headstone. Forestdale Cemetery. I was president for fourteen years.”
“Three
or four lots belong to our different families. And you and I don’t know where we’re going,” Jean said. She had a soothing way of confronting sorrow. Sometimes consciously, and sometimes without forethought, she was trying to help Earl find a way of confronting death. He wasn’t built in such a way as to make that easy. He was the doer in their family. Jean said to him now, “We were brought up, we were taught that taking care of gravesites was one of your familial duties. Almost like the Japanese. My grandmother took me there as a little girl, and I was afraid of dying a lot when I was six years old. She made a lovely outing of it. She cut down some lilacs. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘To take some nice flowers to all our lovely relatives in the cemetery,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this a pretty day? We’ll put some flowers here, these here.’ We came back and sat on the porch and drank lemonade. I wasn’t quite as anxious about it after that.”
Earl sat upright against his pillows. “Probably helped you a lot.”
“I think what happened was my grandfather had died,” Jean said. “And I’d prayed every day and I was resentful about that. What’s the good of prayers if this is what happens? I thought I had a direct line to God.”
“What a jolt in life you have,” Earl said.
“Well, you know,” Jean said, “you don’t see the big picture when you’re young. I wasn’t as secure about heaven as I was about earth.”
Earl did not comment. Jean was going out to lunch soon. He turned to business. She was to pay for lunch. First, she should go to the nurses’ station and get his portable oxygen bottle refilled.
“And try to get a little exercise,” said Jean, rising. She nodded toward Earl’s midsection. “But be sure to zip up. Don’t let the horse out of the barn.”
Earl had missed another item when dressing himself this morning. He looked down, then zipped up his fly, murmuring, with a little smile on his face, “Horse out of the barn, I love that.”
As Jean went off for the oxygen, Earl picked up his phone and dialed. “Can I talk to someone in the kitchen? This is Mr. Duncan in one thirty-one. Oh, Dave. Fine. How are you? What’s the alternate on today’s meal? Pot roast with gravy. What else have you got in lieu of that? Baked chicken. Let me have that. Everything’s working out fine on breakfast now. Two eggs. Now supper. What else besides macaroni and cheese?”
