Old Friends

by Tracy Kidder

  Lou was on a roll now, once again. “In Philadelphia, shortly after I was married, my brother had a Ford. There was no regular shift in those days.”

  “Well, they hadda crank it up first,” Joe said.

  “That’s not the main part of the story.”

  Joe, looking at the ceiling, made an exaggerated closure of his lips.

  Lou went on: “And they didn’t have signals at the crossings. The cops stood in intersections with signs. Philadelphia from Broad and Fairmount, going west on Fairmount was a real wide street.” Lou drew a map with his hands. “And at Twenty-second and Fairmount there was a big prison. Eastern Penitentiary. Just before you come to Twenty-second there’s a big steel gate.” Lou shifted in his chair. “Anyhow, this Sunday morning my brother called me up. He said, ‘There isn’t much traffic, I’ll take you out and teach you how to drive.’ Out on Broad and Fairmount, he puts me in the driver’s side. I couldn’t see any traffic. I was tense as hell. We were riding along pretty good.”

  Joe chuckled at what was coming.

  “Anyhow,” Lou said, “we got out to Twenty-second. I don’t know what happened. I drive up on the pavement, and where do we do that but right beside that prison gate. Fortunately we didn’t hit it, and my brother says, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here before someone sees us.’ And that’s how I didn’t learn to drive. That’s my one and only time behind the wheel of a car.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joe said. “You had another thing happen to you once. You drove a thing through a plate glass window.”

  “Out in California,” Lou said. “A big department store. They had small hand trucks and…”

  Lou went on for a while. Then he returned to the present. “Hey, Joe, incidentally, what’s the definition of ‘hospice’?”

  Joe shook his head. Lou was amazing. Sometimes Lou would get to thinking about his wife and say, “I think I’ve seen about everything God meant me to see.” And then, often moments later, he’d raise his index finger and say, “Incidentally, Joe…” He’d want to know if Joe knew what this term they kept using on the radio, “Dolby sound,” meant. If humanity continued to extract such vast amounts of minerals, oil, and water from the earth, would the globe collapse? Did chickens raised in incubators lose their nesting instinct? Could hail be used as ice cubes if it was tainted with acid rain? Could you eat salmon after they’d spawned? If vultures ate tainted meat, why didn’t they get sick? “Sitting here, I think of some of the damnedest things,” Lou said once. He didn’t have to tell Joe that. Lou would sit in his chair, his brow knitted, his lips pursed, like a student at an arithmetic problem, and Joe would know that pretty soon a question would be asked. What was chicory? Someone had said a wild duck had been seen on the grounds outside. What did a wild duck look like? What was the origin of the expression “freeze the balls off a brass monkey”? Did anyone ever try filling a football with helium? If someone down on the first floor and someone up on Forest View each simultaneously pushed the button to summon the same elevator, what would happen? Where did the expression “sow your wild oats” come from? What kind of wood were George Washington’s teeth made from? They’d been discussing that one for three months.

  When Joe didn’t know the answer, which was often, Lou would hold the question until Ruth came in. The other day Lou asked Ruth, “I wonder what lesbians actually do?” Then, with sudden force, Lou said to his sixty-five-year-old daughter, “But don’t you tell me.”

  Ruth told Joe that it had gotten to the point where her friend the reference librarian wouldn’t even say hello to her. The librarian would see Ruth coming and say, “All right, what does your father want to know now?” The man was almost ninety-two years old and he asked more questions than any child Joe had known. Joe used to think seventy-two was old. Well, it still was, as far as Joe was concerned. Life was mysterious. Maybe ninety-one was, in its way, younger.

  What was the definition of “hospice”? Lou had asked a moment ago.

  Joe looked thoughtful. “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  Then, suddenly, Joe sat up. “Here. I’ll go get the, uh, medical thing. They got a, a… Oh, what the hell.”

  Joe’s steel brace clattered on the floor. He was putting on his orthopedic shoes.

  “Where ya goin’?” Lou asked.

  “Well, I’m gonna find out what ‘hospice’ means. They got a, uh, medical dictionary.”

  Lou rolled his shoulders and settled back in his chair, his eyes shut, like an old cat in the sun.

  Joe headed out toward the nurses’ station. He limped along on his cane down the carpeted hallway, then stopped for a moment to rest and catch his breath. “Lou’s always thinking of these things. It’s good. It keeps him active.”

  Joe started on again, limping toward the nurses’ station and the medical dictionary. “Keeps me active.”

  13

  Earl was growing a mustache. “I wanted to for a long time, but I was too chicken,” he said. “If I’d known I’d be tied up this long, I’d have started it sooner.” He had taken off his oxygen catheter. “All in all I’m a lot better. I shave myself. I dress myself. I’m walking a little better.”

  He’d gotten part of his family history onto the tape recorder, with some help from that aide who was so adept with the device. Sitting on the edge of his bed, in street clothes and slippers, he’d turned the table into his desk again and done some work on his income tax. From the other side of the room came sounds of explosions and goofy voices. His roommate was watching cartoons. Earl was making a list for Jean of the bills she’d have to pay in the months to come, in case he wasn’t around. His lawyer had visited him the other day, and he’d asked the lawyer to go see Jean. Earl wasn’t going to leave her untutored in these matters, as her first husband had—though through no fault of his own, poor fellow. “There are a couple of things she can’t find,” Earl said of Jean. He chuckled. “I kidded her last night. I said, ‘Look in all your pocketbooks, dear.’ Because if I give her something, she folds it up and puts it in her pocketbook.” He’d also written himself a couple of memos about matters to discuss with a fellow Red Cross volunteer, his most faithful friend from Holyoke, who was coming to visit. And Earl still had some mail from various companies to review. “These are things Jean doesn’t know about that you’ve got to study. AT&T’s coming up with a new plan, and I’ve got to study it.”

  Earl glanced at his roommate, who sat in a wheelchair in front of the TV, his stroke-disabled arm in a sling. A lot of the time Earl still changed the channels for him. “You want that on?” Earl asked him. “Or do you want channel forty?”

  “Is forty,” his roommate murmured without looking away from his TV.

  Earl had too many of the wrong thoughts hovering at the doorway to his mind. If he didn’t keep busy, they’d enter in a crowd. He was still thinking about getting out. Sometimes it seemed like the most important goal of all. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t a great deal less afraid of dying than of dying here. “If I don’t make myself do things, I’ll go bananas. I’m always worried about not having visitors. But I think it’s awful to be here and not have anyone to talk to. My goal—I don’t know if Jean’ll go along with it—my goal is to get out of here next Monday. I don’t think I can do any more here. The food here is like all institutions’. I look at it and that does it for me. I’m not perfect, but last night when the nurse was here, she walked out and the bed wasn’t made at all. This morning the nurse said, ‘You don’t need a brief anymore,’ which was nice to hear. But this atmosphere here is very depressing.” He wet his lips, drawing quick breaths. “Very depressing. I think getting home, even though it would be hard for Jean, would improve my morale and I’d eat better. She may fall over. I got here January eighth and Medicare paid till the twenty-fifth, and I’ve had to pay from then on in. It costs a pile of money. I really think I could go home. I’m not perfect. I’d get better food, and we could have a VNA girl come in and test me.”

  ***

  A few m
ornings later, Earl awoke and found his oxygen catheter lying beside him. It must have fallen off in the night, and yet he had slept soundly. There was excitement in his voice when Jean arrived and he told her, “Last night my oxygen thing fell off and it didn’t bother me at all. I woke up and felt like a million dollars.” He added, “I’m always going to be short of breath.”

  “I think that’s true,” Jean said.

  He walked with her behind his wheelchair to the lobby, to meet his friend from the Red Cross. He got a little winded, but he recovered. Back in his room, they settled down to talk awhile.

  “You’re very flexible,” Jean told him. “I’m pretty flexible.”

  “You’re coming,” Earl said.

  “You’ve been good for me, pal.” She patted his knee.

  “So have you.”

  Earl gave no hint of the subject uppermost in his mind, but as they talked he must have been waiting for an opening, which did not materialize. Finally, just before she left for lunch—as he often urged her to do—Earl said to her, “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “About what?” Jean asked, standing by his bed, buttoning her coat.

  Earl looked up at her. “I want to go home.”

  ***

  Jean walked out through the lobby. The sun had some real springtime warmth in it. The only snow lay in small piles, more sand than snow, at the corners of the visitors’ parking lot. Her mind was full and troubled. She’d thought he had resigned himself to staying on. Now he was getting restless once again. He wanted out of here. She didn’t blame him. She wouldn’t mind having him come home for a few days. But not for the duration. The other evening Earl called her up from his room, and in the midst of the conversation he abruptly said he couldn’t talk anymore because he was out of breath. She felt that sudden fright, and the wave of weakness that follows, of a driver who has nearly had an accident. She was all worn out with worry. More than ever she needed those times when she could feel that others did the worrying, so that she could prepare herself for being on her own in the world again.

  Jean always looked composed. The illusion came from her neatly done hair, her tweed skirt, her tasteful silver earrings. But now, as she stood at her car door, there was strain in her face and in her voice as, looking back at the façade of Linda Manor, she said aloud, “I don’t want you to die.” She didn’t want to watch him gasping for breath. She didn’t want to lose her strength with him at home, and aid in his demise. The white balconies and balustrades and windows glistened in the sunlight. Earl lay back inside. Knowing that he couldn’t hear, she spoke aloud to him the words that filled her mind, as if they might cross the morning air, turn the corner, and enter softened through his window. “I have to fight back sometimes. I understand what you’re saying, but I also have to think of myself.”

  ***

  Jean didn’t come in that afternoon. She called him instead. She said over the phone that she couldn’t take him home for good. “There’s nobody here to take care of you,” she said.

  Earl called her back right away. He promised he wouldn’t discuss going home again. And the quarrel was patched up. But a door had been closed as well. He could no longer dream of going home.

  His roommate had left for supper now. The window across the room was darkening. “I’m thinking too much. I just made out a check for forty-five hundred dollars to this place. The services get less and less. Last night my bed wasn’t made. And, of course, the food is… unbelievable. Push a bell and no one gets here for twenty minutes. You go down to the front there and you see people it’s awful to look at. I thought I was only going to be here nine days, and now it’s been a year and a half. A month and a half. I’ve got to get this depression out of my mind. But I don’t know.”

  He glanced at the snapshot of himself on the bulletin board. “I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Our children and grandchildren are all healthy. I’ve got Jean. I was such an active guy. I wish I’d had a little heart attack. But anyway, I’m here. I’ve gotta live with it, I guess.”

  Earl stared at his plate of shepherd’s pie. “I’ve lost my appetite. Just looking at it. Jean loves the same TV programs. That’s one thing. So we’re watching the same programs. If I wasn’t such an active guy, I could maybe take this better. I’d just as soon kick the bucket. It’s my future. At the moment I can’t see what’s in store. I have to stop and think about things to be thankful for.”

  Earl went on staring at his plate.

  “I just feel caged in here.” He looked again at the photo of himself on the bulletin board. “That’s how I looked till last July. Robust and everything. Most of my friends are so far away, they don’t often come here. People don’t like to come to a place like this. There’s a friend I played golf with all the time, and he’s never been here. Of course, this is depressing right here, this news about the war. Well, I guess I better get going while it’s still warm.”

  He took a little bite.

  “That’s about as tasteless as can be. Boy. No taste. Not to me, anyway. I thought Jean would be here by now. I think she’s afraid of coming, except I told her I wouldn’t discuss it. Thank God there are TV programs like Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. That gives me a lift. Simple a thing as that.”

  ***

  The next morning Earl got out of bed and didn’t return to it. He sat down in an armchair and worked on the family history. “I’m feeling great.” He lifted his thin right hand and crossed two fingers.

  He had called up Jean right after shaving. “I told her I was sorry about the way I talked yesterday. I upset her terribly. So I made up my mind I’m going to try to keep my morale up. I asked her to bring up a folder I kept on Florida. The way I feel now I could almost make it. I want to go in March. But it’s a tough time to get in.” He had canceled their reservations. He’d call today and ask to be put on a waiting list.

  “I didn’t use oxygen at all last night, and I slept like a, oh, beautiful. Of course, I had a pill. I can walk a little bit now. I’ll pay another bill for this place today. I hope it’s deductible. My former wife was told she had six months. She lived seven years. She had a lot of guts.”

  ***

  Jean felt somewhat restored. They’d had their argument, out in the open at last. She told Earl to go ahead and try to make reservations for Florida. Why not? she thought. She recalled that conversation back before Earl’s heart attack when they agreed they’d like to die together, on the way back from a splendid trip. So why not try to go to Florida? What if Earl died on the way? He could live to be a hundred and have nothing but bad days, she thought. Would that be preferable?

  ***

  Earl awoke and looked at his roommate’s clock on the wall above his TV. It read 8:30. Earl could not remember the last time he slept so soundly and so long. “I slept till eight-thirty! Without oxygen!” he told the nurse. He’d see if he could go without oxygen for the entire day.

  He made it until afternoon, but then, while merely lying on his bed, he started panting. His fingers fumbled with the oxygen catheter as he looped it around his neck. He set his jaw. “I want to get the doctor over. So I can find out something about myself. I’d like to go to Florida. I’d need a wheelchair to the plane. I might have to bring a urinal along. That’s embarrassing. Something could happen. But I’ll take that chance. I don’t want to get depressed.”

  14

  Behind Winifred, in her window, out by the drive, stood an old dead maple tree. Crows often gathered in it. Winifred liked to study them, especially on Sundays when she would watch The Chalice of Salvation on television and the crows—it seemed to her—would hold their own church service in the tree. The maple’s limbs were empty now. The crows must have taken shelter from the latest cold snap.

  The Hoyer Lift had come and gone and left Winifred in her recliner. She’d had her cry. Now, her native sanguinity restored, she was making use of time. She sat surrounded by her cordless phone and many wicker baskets and plastic bags stuffed full of correspondence, magazines, a
nd projects. Winifred paged through back issues of Ideals magazine for an inspirational poem to read at next month’s Resident Council meeting. She wrote a little poetry of her own. She spent some time separating raffle tickets. Then with scissors and paste she resumed the endless task of turning old greeting cards into new cards and also into bookmarks. She had prepared an advertisement for her bookmarks, which read:

  A bookmark is a simple thing

  But oh what helpful joy it brings.

  In her earlier life, Winifred kept a house and raised a child. For many years, she worked as a governess at other people’s homes. Retired and widowed, the elderly but mobile Winifred, out in the wider world, cut a notable figure on the streets of Amherst. Bound for committee meetings, get-togethers, and banquets, she limped along behind her wheelchair, which was her mobile office, the seat stacked high with papers and refreshments for her various affairs. She helped to organize the local chapter of the Gray Panthers. She also served in eight other organizations. She said she was president of seven, including the tenants’ association in the subsidized apartment building where she last lived, mainly among other elderly, widowed women.

  “And I used to be the Band-Aid for everybody, and the mouthpiece, and their hearing aid. And, oh, how they miss me. Because I love people and my old cliché is, Life is people helping people.” So saying, Winifred was apt to break into poetry. “Life itself won’t give you joy unless you really will it. What life does give is time and space. It’s up to you to fill it.” She carried on for twelve years in that life, right up until the stroke that landed her in here, at the age of eighty-four.

  She was born for raising funds, she often said. Confinement in a nursing home had not stopped her. Last summer she raised $200 to send her favorite aide’s son to camp. But she was only warming up with that. Her plan to buy a chairlift van for the nursing home’s own use was what raised her spirits these days. She contemplated with relish the freedom of a wheelchair van at her disposal—and at the disposal of other residents, of course. She figured she’d have to find at least $15,000 to buy a good used van and at least $35,000 to buy a new one, and never mind the costs of a driver and insurance. She had organized and named the Linda Manor Chairlift Van Fundraising Committee. She had taken the position of co-chairperson. Dan from Forest View had agreed to serve as her co-chair. So far he and Winifred were the committee’s only members. That did not faze Winifred, however.