by Tracy Kidder
The Silver Whistle first appeared on Broadway in 1948. It was a hit, and soon forgotten. A tramp searching for some free room and board comes to the rest home posing as an indigent seventy-seven-year-old, though he is only middle-aged. He ascribes his youthfulness to a potion, a harmless concoction that in due course he administers to the residents. Naturally, once they’ve sipped, they rediscover the boldness and romance that have lain dormant within them.
The play ends with the tramp’s departure. “God bless you,” he said to the residents of the old age home. “God bless you, too,” replied one of the resident actors.
The audience applauded loudly, and then Sue, becoming once again the activities director of this nursing home, said goodbye to Eleanor. Sue deposited a huge bouquet in Eleanor’s arms. “We will miss her dearly,” Sue said to the audience.
Eleanor remained seated. She received the audience’s applause with a sedate smile, her chin lifted, and when the applause, her applause, died down, she said simply, in her strong, always slightly hoarse voice, “Well, I thank you all very much.”
The audience was shuffling and chattering. Several of the able-bodied had stood when from the stage, the pretend stage, a high voice called, “I have a message here from our drama group. Can I keep you here for a moment to read this message?” It was Winifred. Lapsing for a moment into her bibulous stage character, she said, “And then I’ll give you all a drink.”
Winifred, in her wheelchair in the activity room doorway, peered through her magnifying glass and declaimed the message she had inscribed on one of her recycled cards. It went on for a few minutes and concluded with Winifred reading loudly, “It was riotous fun, even though we were all convinced of our doom, to live out our days here at the home till our demise in death and rotting. Let us here apply the stage rule: the show must go on, but not on and on and on. Let us finally say a hearty, sincere, and loving thank you, Eleanor. From the Linda Manor troupers. P.S. May we all apply these words of wisdom. It’s better to wear out than to rust out.”
***
When she’d moved into Linda Manor, Eleanor had thought she was making the last move of her lifetime. On a summer morning, four days after the play, Eleanor made her last move again. At the Forest View nurses’ station the pre-breakfast procession to the elevators, what Art called the cattle drive, had begun. But this morning Eleanor did not join the throng. She sat near the nurses’ station in her wheelchair, dressed in a short-sleeved sweater, purple slacks, and white sneakers. She wore a gold necklace and two wristwatches. An aide stopped to say goodbye. Eleanor looked up and smiled. “I hate goodbyes. I said so many yesterday.”
Eleanor’s late-night companion came by on her walker, the woman with whom she had shared many 2 A.M. snacks. “Bye again, honey. And good luck.”
Eleanor smiled and waved, then said, “I’ve gotta say goodbye to Phil.”
“He’s already gone down,” said one of the staff.
“Oh, well.”
Art had already gone downstairs, too, without saying goodbye, but Eleanor didn’t mention Art.
Eleanor struck up a conversation with the nurse, who was still dispensing pills. “I’m going to work with the speech pathologist on stroke cases,” Eleanor was telling her, when Joe’s loud voice interrupted.
“I gotta say goodbye to Ellen-er.”
Lou and Joe came toward her, side by side on their canes. Joe offered his left hand, which Eleanor took with her left. “Goodbye and good luck,” Joe said.
“Where’s the traveler?” Joe stepped back and Lou bent down and kissed Eleanor on the forehead. “Bless you,” Lou said.
Lou and Joe trooped slowly away toward the elevators. Watching them go, Eleanor said, “I’ve gotta get out of here quick. I hate these goodbyes.” But she made no move to retreat.
There were still some stragglers, residents who chose not to go down early to breakfast. Clara, the pleasantly confused woman who used to tie Bob’s shoes in the morning, came up from behind, lugging her huge pocketbook as always, and gave Eleanor a kiss. “You just remember to change your clothes,” Eleanor told Clara. “And clean out your pocketbook.”
“We’ll miss you terrible,” said Clara.
“I should get back to my room,” Eleanor said. “I’m tired of saying goodbye.” But she only wheeled herself to the water fountain, from where she had a view that commanded all of Forest View’s corridors. She said goodbye to yet another resident who was passing in a wheelchair, then turned her head toward the sound of a high, cheery voice. Elgie was approaching. Eleanor glanced at her, then turned her eyes away, lifting her chin. Elgie passed by. Elgie’s new roommate, deeply demented and very timid, was following Elgie at a little distance, walking on tiptoes. Eleanor said goodbye to her. “Say hello to Ken for me.”
“Who?” asked Elgie’s roommate.
“Your son,” Eleanor said.
“Oh.”
“Oh, I’ll be glad when all of this is over.” Eleanor sighed. “But, I was happy with the play.”
An aide gave Eleanor a hug. “Don’t tell the pilot how to fly.”
A nursing supervisor came by. “Well, may God go with you. It’s nice that you’ve been able to be part of our lives.” From the living room came the cry of the demented woman whom Eleanor had nicknamed the Banshee. And then at last Eleanor’s family emerged from the elevator, her son and a grandson who lived nearby and her granddaughter from Wisconsin, big with child, who collected a large plastic bag full of Eleanor’s pills and also the sheaf of paperwork. An aide passing by patted Eleanor’s head.
Eleanor reached up and touched her hairdo lightly with both hands. “If you muss this…”
Eleanor’s granddaughter laughed and said to the aide, “She’s hoping to marry a rich man so she can stay in a private room.”
The charge nurse gave Eleanor a hug. “You send us a postcard.”
“Thank you for everything.”
Most of the residents were gone to breakfast now, either downstairs or into the living room. Rosa was kicking up a fuss near the nurses’ station. “I have to get my medication or something and she hasn’t done it. Doggone it!” Rosa waddled off, muttering angrily. Eleanor didn’t call goodbye to her. She liked to describe Rosa as “a perfect Shakespearean clown,” but hadn’t managed to find a part for her in a play. It was too late for that now.
Eleanor looked around. Zita was pacing west, down the longer corridor. “Hey, Zeet. Come here.” It seemed for a moment that Zita would simply pass by. But Eleanor reached out and caught her hand, pulling her closer. Then, clearly, Zita saw her. She bent over Eleanor. Eleanor kissed Zita’s cheek. “Goodbye,” she said. “I’ll see you.”
“When’s that?” Zita said.
At this moment, as she looked down at Eleanor, Zita’s senses seemed restored. Her eyes glistened. A tear rolled out of one. Abruptly, she turned, bent down, and plucked at a flower in the weave of the carpet.
“You can pick me a flower,” said Eleanor, watching from her wheelchair.
Then, suddenly, the mask descended. Zita stood upright and paced off. She headed down the corridor toward the west windows. An aide intercepted her and led her into the living room for breakfast.
Eleanor watched. “I hope someone will keep me informed about Zita,” Eleanor called to the aide. “She’s the only one I will miss.”
Then Eleanor turned to her retinue, the three family members who stood in a circle around her, and Eleanor said, “All light. Who’s pushing?”
Eleanor passed, as if in state, through the downstairs corridors, extending her hand to a couple of front office people, and then out the lobby into the hot morning air. At the car door, she rose from the wheelchair and climbed, slowly and carefully and yet rather nimbly, inside.
3
Lou remembered a fellow resident who always wore a hat indoors and liked to travel backwards in his wheelchair. (Lou once told him, “You’d make a good quarterback.”) About a year ago the man slipped into a coma and was sent to the hospit
al. There, Lou heard, he was kept alive with a respirator. “It didn’t make any sense. He was going anyway,” Lou said to Joe.
Lou said he wouldn’t want his family to see him dying that way, turned into a living-machine. Both Lou and Joe had DNRs, “Do Not Resuscitate” orders, on file. Like many other residents, each had a little red dot affixed to his name tag outside their door. The dot warned the staff against performing on them not only CPR but also the procedures known as intubation, ventilation, and defibrillation. Some months ago, Lou and Joe had heard about a new Health Proxy law, which allowed a person to name a “health agent” who would make medical decisions for the person if the person couldn’t make them for himself. Sitting by the window, Lou told Joe that his granddaughter, herself a nursing home administrator, had the forms. “I’m gonna ask for a copy.”
“Ask her to bring two,” Joe said.
“We could ask downstairs in the office.”
“Okay, I’ll ask in the office.”
“I think I’m gonna go out there right now,” Lou said.
Lou ordered the forms from the front office and headed back upstairs. “Well,” he said, “that takes care of one thing.”
***
The room became again a corner of Fenway Park. Joe watched. Lou listened. Ever since his retirement Joe had looked forward to the eternal return of the grand old game. Back home in his den, Joe had discovered that the Red Sox won more often than not if he wore his Red Sox cap. In the room at Linda Manor, Joe’s Red Sox pennant hung from the mirror on the wall behind his TV set. Joe put on his Red Sox T-shirt and cap for Opening Day. The Sox won, and he put his magic cap away for Opening Day next year, or, if this should be the year of the miracle at last, for rooting them to victory in this coming fall’s World Series. The Sox last won the Series the year Joe was born. Perhaps, he said, they’d win the year he died. If so, he figured, he’d have to live to a ripe old age indeed.
But he was just being cautious. He had high hopes again this year, but didn’t want to dash them by uttering them aloud and giving the Sox the evil eye. The team had played unevenly so far, slumping early, then reviving. Now they were playing mostly night games, and once again on many nights Lou went to sleep not to the sounds of action-adventure movies but to the drone of the Sox announcers’ voices and the thumps from the bed beside him. Joe drew the curtain between their beds for night games as he did for movies, so as not to disturb Lou. With the curtain drawn, the room became two rooms in cross section, like two rooms in a dollhouse. On one side of the curtain lay Joe, his face deeply flushed, his lips fastened tightly to stifle shouts, but pounding the mattress, sometimes in glee, more often in fury. Lou lay on the other side with his covers pulled up to his chin, shaking with silent laughter.
Mornings after games, stronger oaths than usual often rattled around their room. One morning Lou told Joe again that he really ought to break the swearing habit. If he didn’t, Lou said once again, Joe might start cussing during one of his granddaughter’s visits. Joe said all right, Lou should correct him every time he swore. Sometimes Joe would catch himself. “Jesus Currr—” he’d say, and he’d bite off the curse. But then the Red Sox hit another losing streak. On a morning after another loss, Joe lay on his bed and said toward the ceiling, “I don’t care to hear about it. I don’t care to hear about it. I don’t care to hear about it.” Then he muttered, “Jesus Christ!”
“Joe,” said Lou, “you promised me you wouldn’t say that.”
“No,” said Joe. “I’m praying.”
Lou had turned ninety-two in May. He received at least a dozen cards, including one from Winifred, an old condolence card on which she’d written birthday greetings. Joe and Bob chipped in and bought Lou a new bottle of cheap brandy, the only kind he liked. Ruth catered a special birthday lunch complete with chickpea salad, one of Lou’s favorites, the Nudniks all seated at a table of their own in the activity room, Lou in a cap that read “#1 Grandpa” and Joe in his Red Sox cap. The place set for Art was empty. Art had to go to the hospital that day for a bone scan. “You stay around here long enough, and boom, boom, boom,” said Joe, looking at Art’s empty place.
***
In late June, the state surveyors arrived to give Linda Manor its yearly inspection. The surveyors held a confidential meeting with residents, in order to root out complaints. Winifred raised several, but other residents contradicted her. Joe limped into the meeting. It was the first Linda Manor meeting he’d ever attended. He got up and told the inspectors, “Nurses, aides, and kitchen workers are wonderful. And I’m not going to speak about the cooking.”
Then he limped out, and Lou raised his hand. “What I have to say may hurt you,” Lou said to the surveyors. “But if the state and federal governments gave less paperwork and a lot more money for nursing homes, everyone here would be happier.”
The crowd of residents clapped with unusual vigor. The memory of that applause lingered for Lou. Coming from people whose faces he couldn’t see, it warmed him.
The surveyors held what the manuals call an exit meeting, in the activity room. The surveyors had asked the administrator to invite all of her managers and also some residents. She invited Lou and several others.
They sat in a wide circle, as if in a session of group therapy, the chief surveyor presiding, the various Linda Manor managers and several nurses sitting solemnly and quietly. The chief surveyor was smiling. She said she’d learned a lot. She mentioned the deficiencies found in the kitchen—just a few picayune items.
“I regrettably wouldn’t know about that,” Lou piped up. He was the first member of the audience, including staff, bold enough to speak.
“No,” said the surveyor. “And that’s one of the reasons we need people to come in and look at that.” She went on, “Based upon an acceptable solution to that, recertification is recommended.”
There could not have been much question, but several of the managers let out long breaths and smiled at one another.
“We’ve discussed everything. Probably more than you wanted,” said the chief surveyor. She laughed. The managers laughed, too. Lou pursed his lips.
The surveyor didn’t ask any of the residents if they had something to say, not at this meeting. Maybe residents were invited merely to fulfill a paper requirement. But Lou clearly took this meeting seriously. He looked stern and attentive, his face turned toward the surveyor’s voice. She went on, listing a couple of small items for correction: the ID and summary sheets weren’t up to the standard of federal regulation F. 514; the receiver of the pay phone in the central corridor should be amplified; Forest View should have its own pay phone. Lou sat almost motionless, his striped cane between his legs. But Lou’s fingers tapped impatiently on the handle.
Finally, the surveyor recommended that the color-coded dots outside residents’ doors be removed. She’d noticed those dots right away, and she thought it an invasion of residents’ privacy to have dots outside their doors announcing that the inhabitants were prone to falling and wandering, or, most important, had Do Not Resuscitate orders on file. That was deeply private information, the surveyor said.
“It’s been a pleasure being here,” she said after explaining her objection to the dots—she’d left no doubt that she expected those dots to be removed. “I’ve enjoyed it. Any questions?”
No one spoke, neither residents nor staff, until Lou raised a finger off his cane. “I question this thing about the color code. We don’t always have the same nurses on the floor, and if something happens, they need to know what to do.”
“I agree,” said the surveyor, leaning toward Lou.
“Well,” Lou said, “what’s the answer to that?”
“In-service. So per diem staff are aware of residents’ needs. People shouldn’t be relegated to colors on doors.”
“I have no objection myself,” Lou said.
“There’s a difference between having no objection and something you want. If you want dots outside your door, you can have them,” the survey
or replied.
Sue spoke up, supporting Lou. She said she’d brought up the issue of the dots at Resident Council and no one had said they minded them. In fact, most residents hadn’t known what the dots signified.
Another staff member suggested a meeting of residents to vote on the issue.
“To me, it seems incongruous,” said the surveyor. She sat with her skirt smoothed over her crossed legs. “In a facility that doesn’t use a paging system and goes out of its way to respect residents’ rights, to have everyone know that someone doesn’t want to be resuscitated.”
The surveyor looked around the circle and said, “It’s important to get resident input, but I don’t think everything should be put up for a democratic vote. There shouldn’t be a power struggle. Residents shouldn’t be in the middle, where they feel they have to support the facility. It shouldn’t be an adversary relationship.”
“Mr. Freed,” said one of the nursing supervisors, turning to Lou, “that information is readily available to the nurses.”
“I have no objection either way,” said Lou, both hands on the handle of his cane. He turned his head toward the surveyor again. His voice was steady and clear. “But coming back to what you just said. You have a per diem nurse come in and she doesn’t know your needs. I filled out one of those forms, and I don’t care who knows that I don’t want to be resuscitated.”
