Another You (8 page)

From the pocket of her housedress, Evie brought out a card. It was from a childhood friend, who now lived in California—a card meant to be humorous that depicted two old crones with fur coats over their pajamas and Barbarella hair, each drinking champagne, the message easily paraphrasable as “You’re only as old as you feel.” “Hairy,” Evie said. She meant “very,” but at first Sonja thought Evie was wryly commenting on the hairdos. Sonja left Evie to get a wheelchair so they could talk privately in Evie’s room. The wheelchairs were lined up just outside the door: new wheelchairs with red leather seats, all marked on the back
FLOOR
2, quite a few with bumper stickers on the back:
I
’
D RATHER BE WRITING MY NOVEL; I SKIED POTRERO HILL
.

As they left the room, the children were holding hands and circling, beginning to sing. Their shrill voices, reciting a poem they’d memorized, seemed grating—and what did the poem, about the coming of spring, have to do with going in a circle? The nurse and the teacher recited the poem: something about crocus popping up with pink heads.… Sonja was glad she and Evie could escape the room. As she wheeled her down the hallway, Evie inspected the contents of her gift bag, took out the cookies, planning a hiding place for the cookies once they got to the room. Underpants and cookies always disappeared. Maybe it was the Tooth Fairy gone mad, become the Underpants and Cookies Fairy, a malevolent goblin who stole instead of giving. Sonja discussed the possibility with Evie; Evie told her she wouldn’t joke if she had to spend as much time as she did listening to senile imaginings. They settled themselves in the room, which had a hospital bed, but which was furnished with Evie’s own furniture. Though it wasn’t a depressing room, Sonja was depressed to think that, for Evie, it had come to this—a little room down a little corridor, where she would swallow little pills from little cups that would be of little help.

“I thought about our talk last time,” Evie said. “Thought” came out “taught.”

“About Tony? Whether I should tell Marshall?” Sonja said.

“I still think what I thought last time. I don’t think you can gain anything by telling him. He wouldn’t show his emotions, and that would be hard to accept.”

“Maybe he’d go crazy. First he’d slug me, then he’d buy me candy and flowers.”

“He’d miss when he took a swing at you, and he’d buy the flowers but leave them somewhere. That’s what he’d do. He’d come home with his books.”

This was the way Evie usually talked about Marshall when he was absent. When he was there, though, she doted on him. Sonja took her hand, nodding in silent agreement, and changed the subject. She told Evie what she hoped were amusing stories about how neurotic some people had been recently as she’d shown them houses. “You know what the kids say now? ‘Get a life.’ They say it if somebody’s fixated on something stupid. ‘Get a life.’ I was getting gas a few days ago, during the storm, and a guy who was paying for his gas was insisting on telling a joke to the attendant. Cars everywhere, wind blowing, snow coming down, and this jerk was trying to buttonhole the attendant to tell him a joke about the Pope and Frank Perdue, and finally the attendant just walked away, saying, ‘Get a life.’ ”

“Everybody’s so rude,” Evie said. “It would be funny if everybody wasn’t already so rude.”

“Nobody’s rude to you here, are they, Evie?”

“Marshall,” Evie said. “He could visit more often.” She bit into a cookie. “I wonder what it was about the Pope and Frank Perdue,” she said. “Remember that joke the nurse told me? ‘He doesn’t write, he doesn’t call.’ ”

Sonja did remember the joke—it involved a woman raped by a gorilla, bemoaning the fact that afterward, “He never writes, he never calls”—but she wasn’t much in the mood for jokes. She had talked to Tony just before she left the house that morning, about a house sale that was slipping away, and interspersed with that morning’s sexual fantasies, he had communicated his own anxiety about relaying bad news by telling one inappropriate joke after another. And Evie—what must the world seem like to Evie, now that nothing was taboo and there were so many jokes, told by everyone from the nurses to the cleaning crew? She felt stuffy—stuffier than Evie, by far. She was also sorry that Marshall did not pay more attention to his stepmother,
though if anyone could understand his habitual preoccupation, it would be Evie. The week before, when Sonja visited, Evie had quizzed her about Marshall. Did he help her with housework? She had taught him how to make a bed, how to iron, how to bake. Did he do any of those things to help out? “You know Marshall,” Sonja had said. “He’s very distractible.” “Well, are the beds even half-made, then?” Evie had wanted to know. Some part of Sonja took secret delight in Evie’s high estimation of her. If she had answered honestly, she would have said she’d stopped making the bed herself. Not only that, but she’d been cavorting in beds in motel rooms with Tony. On the last visit, she had given Evie the impression that the affair was winding down, though that was untrue. She had misled her, hedging her bets: she’d confessed in order to be forgiven, though in case Evie didn’t seem inclined that way, she’d tried to deemphasize the importance of the affair, hoping that would also result in her feeling less pain if Evie did censure her.

“It was quiet here last night,” Evie said. She spoke suddenly, as if she had just realized something. “No one was complaining, and I didn’t hear one dinner plate dropped on the floor, and the television was broken, which almost gave Mr. Goldman Saint Vitus’ dance, so they played music for us. One of the aides went out to her car and brought in Frank Sinatra music. There’s a record—a tape, I guess I should say—of him singing duets with new singers” (it came out “pinging duets with new pingers”), “and you know, it was still nice to listen to him, but of course he’d lost that beautiful voice. The way he once sang ‘This Love of Mine.’ ” She smiled apologetically at Sonja. “I never had a crush on him the way most people did. I was just thinking that when he was young, he could sing and seem to make the world go quiet. I think people in the nightclubs did settle down. They paid attention even when he was singing an up-tempo song. They couldn’t help but listen, the way you can’t think of anything else if there’s a bee behind your head.” “Bee” came out “tree,” and it was only when Evie made a spiralling motion with her finger that Sonja understood what she was pantomiming. “And if I was like some of the others here, I’d take the occasion to talk about the beautiful gardens I used to have, and to tell you about all the bees that would come for the purple flowers on the oregano plants, but that drives me crazy: they say one word, like ‘bee,’ and they’re off and running about every time they ever saw a bee and how funny and
meaningful and important it was, like you’d never seen one yourself. I could get bothered by it, but I don’t.” She shrugged. “I am bothered by it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you about every other time in my life when I was bothered.” Evie fidgeted with the ring on her finger. “And another thing they do is make complete non sequiturs,” she said, “so maybe I’ll take a hint from them there. I wanted to ask you to unwrap some more of that Yardley soap you brought last time. At my age, I’m not going to wash with little shards of soap anymore. It’s not like we’re still back in the days when all of America was told to ‘Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.’ Of course, they tell you whatever they want to tell you. Look at the so-called gas crisis, not so many years back.”

Sonja could not be in Evie’s room long without feeling trapped, and Evie knew it, so she asked her to do things for her: straighten the clothes on the hangers; unwrap new soap. When Sonja finished, it was always her cue to leave—Evie expected it and acted as grateful as if she’d served her all morning.

Downstairs, though she had forgotten to sign in, Sonja signed out. Meal trays were being wheeled onto the elevators for the patients who ate in their rooms instead of going to the common room. The sausage woman was standing by the elevators, joking with one of the men pushing the carts. She waved to Sonja to acknowledge her leaving, but did not return to the desk. Her task was left unfinished at the computer; fish swam across the screen as the machine awaited her return. The smell of gardenia was strong in the air, an oppressive smell of near-cloying sweetness that stuck in her nose as she stood in front of the automatic door and emerged into the suddenly much colder day, the sun having disappeared behind clouds, the snow as discolored as candle wax rubbed between dirty fingers.

As she started the car and backed out, she had a sudden memory of the children circling. She heard again the chanted poem and wondered whether it would have amused or dismayed Marshall—Marshall with his love of Yeats and Pound and Shakespeare’s sonnets. Though she did not always know his thoughts, she usually knew which issues he was thinking about, and, after so many years, she could formulate arguments for or against, which—to tell the truth—she often invoked not as a matter of principle but to get a discussion going. As winter wore on, Marshall went into his own form of hibernation. He could become as silent as drifted snow.

Martine, dear:

A quick note to ask that you do me a couple of favors. I enclose E. Bedell’s business card and wish you would call and say it would be better for him to visit in late June, when some fellow is coming from Yale to fund-raise, so by joining our forces we might escape paying through the nose. He will already know what this is all about. I believe he will be in Stonington, but someone should answer at any of the numbers
.

Also, the owner of Heatherfields has told me there is a slight possibility of getting some trees planted before the summer is over—you would think they’d try harder to please in this bad economy, but they’re as vague as ever. The other favor is that Alice has taken quite a dislike to Mr. Perry’s painting in our bedroom, and though it hurts me to part with it, I think if it could be taken down for the present and put in another room, that would make her happier. I try to walk the line about what is an indulgence of Alice and what is simply common courtesy. I suspect I am overreacting to her overreaction, but if you would put it in my study—just lean it against the wall, I mean—I’d appreciate that
.

Alice firmly refuses to phone Dr. St. Vance, whom she formerly thought quite brilliant and helpful, and I am wondering if I would be asking too much to put you up to calling his office and letting him know she will soon be returning to Maine. He is so tactful, he may wish to phone to welcome her, or something like that, and I feel sure that when she hears his voice her resolve will change. If this is an imposition, do nothing and I will try to handle it when I arrive. I suppose this is going behind Alice’s back, but she still seems very sad to me, quite irrespective of circumstance, and I know that previously you shared my belief that … oh, I am lecturing you, and twisting your arm besides. Do what you think best
.

Until we meet, Fondly
,
M
.

5

IN A DISTURBING DREAM
, the beagle that had run into the road when Cheryl Lanier had been in his car took flight just as he was about to hit it, his attempts to brake in time futile, the car like a heat-seeking missile targeting its object. Marshall was asleep and aware that he was dreaming, but someone or some situation had forced him to be asleep, so it was with the mixed emotions of a person unwittingly drugged, or perhaps hypnotized, somehow kept in a dreamlike state against his will—well: he couldn’t articulate it, but if he’d been forced to describe the way he felt, he could have said only that he felt slightly anesthetized and that while he knew the out-of-control car might cause serious harm, there was a simultaneous awareness that he could relax, because he was only a dreamer in a dream. Then his perspective shifted, and what he saw was a car in the snow, a car that might drive forever, a snowstorm that would continually fall, and beside him in the car was Cheryl. He had thought, within the dream:
I’m dreaming
, but then he had felt her hand in his and been sure that he was in real time, that whatever was happening was real. Somehow he and Cheryl had gotten out of the car, and they stood on an embankment, ankle-deep in snow, looking down on a miniature car running on its own, as if they were watching a slotcar someone else held the switch for. He felt momentarily pleased, in the dream, like a child taken to look inside a department store window at Christmas, seeing a train whizzing around a track, mounds of cotton sprinkled with glitter approximating fallen snow, small lights warming the interiors of each small cottage. Everyone
was old-fashioned: the women in their wide-brimmed hats and floating scarves, hands plunged into furry muffs; the men in fedoras, holding aloft tiny children who were replicas of themselves. Everyone was waiting—as those at the store window waited—for Santa’s sleigh. He was clasping Cheryl’s hand in childish excitement as the teetering sleigh on its nearly invisible wires began its transit across the night sky, the sound of bells heralding its passage, Santa’s face seen in profile, until the sleigh with its shaky runners disappeared in a denouement of tinkling bells, while down below the automated figures, whose movements had not been well synchronized to correspond to the arrival of Santa’s sleigh, looked up just after he disappeared, their hats falling backward, the children held aloft to gaze upward at absolutely nothing.