Stone Mattress (32 page)

Shoshanna, the occupational therapist, does the rounds at dinnertime, pestering the clientele about everyone’s need to express themselves through Art. When urged to participate in
the finger-painting or pasta-necklace-making or whatever other bright idea Shoshanna has cooked up to give them all a reason for staying on the planet for another sunrise, Wilma pleads her limited sight. Shoshanna once upped the ante with some yarn about blind potters, several of whom had achieved international recognition for their beautiful hand-thrown ceramics, and wouldn’t Wilma like to expand her horizons by giving it a try? But Wilma froze her out. “Old dog.” She smiled with her hard, false teeth. “No new tricks.”

As for the Internet porn, some of the crafty lechers have cellphones and treat themselves to the full freakshow that way. This is according to Tobias, who gossips with anyone in sight when he isn’t gossiping with Wilma. He claims he himself doesn’t bother with the tawdry and inelegant cellphone porn, because the women on view are too tiny. There’s a limit, he says, as to how much you can shrink the female body without turning it into an ant with mammary glands. Wilma doesn’t entirely believe this tale of abstinence, though maybe he’s not lying: he just might find his own invented sagas more erotic than anything a mere phone can come up with, and they have the added virtue of starring him.

“What else did you learn?” Wilma asks. All around them is the clanking of spoons on china, the murmur of thinning voices, an insect vibration.

“They say it’s their turn,” says Tobias. “That’s why they put
Our Turn
on the signs.”

“Oh,” says Wilma. Light dawns:
Artern. Our Turn
. She’d misheard. “Their turn at what?”

“At life, they say. I heard one of them on the television news; naturally they’re being interviewed all over the place. They say we’ve had our turn, those our age; they say we messed it up. Killing the planet with our own greed and so forth.”

“They have a point there,” says Wilma. “We did mess it up. Not on purpose, though.”

“They’re only socialists,” says Tobias. He has a dim opinion of socialists; everyone he doesn’t like is a socialist in some disguise or other. “Just lazy socialists, always trying to grab what others worked for.”

Wilma has never been sure how Tobias made his money, enough money to be able to afford not only all the ex-wives, but his quite large suite in Ambrosia Manor. She suspects he was involved in some dubious business deals in countries in which all business deals are dubious, but he’s cagey about his earlier financial life. All he’ll say is that he owned several companies in international trade and made sound investments, though he doesn’t call himself rich. But then rich people never call themselves rich: they call themselves comfortable.

Wilma herself was comfortable, back when her husband was alive. She’s probably still comfortable. She no longer pays much attention to her savings: a private management company takes care of that. Alyson keeps an eye on them, as much as she can from the West Coast. Ambrosia Manor hasn’t kicked Wilma out onto the street, so the bills must be getting paid.

“What do they want from us?” she asks, trying not to sound peevish. “Those people with the signs. For heaven’s sakes. It’s not as if we can
do
anything.”

“They say they want us to make room. They want us to move over. Some of the signs say that:
Move Over
.”

“That means
die
, I suppose,” says Wilma. “Are there any rolls today?” Sometimes there are the most delicious Parker House rolls, fresh from the oven. As a way of helping their clients feel at home, the Ambrosia Manor dieticians make a conscious effort to re-create what they imagine were the menus of seventy or eighty years ago. Macaroni and cheese, soufflés, custards, rice pudding,
Jell-O dolloped with whipped cream. These menus have the added virtue of being soft, and thus no threat to wobbly teeth.

“No,” says Tobias. “No rolls. Now they are bringing the chicken pot pies.”

“Do you think they’re dangerous?” says Wilma.

“Not here,” says Tobias. “But in other countries they are burning things down. This group. They say they are international. They say millions are rising up.”

“Oh, they’re always burning things down in other countries,” Wilma says lightly.
If I live that long
, she hears herself saying to her former dentist. It’s the same throwaway tone:
None of this can possibly ever happen to me
.

Idiot, she tells herself. Wishful thinking. But she simply can’t bring herself to feel threatened, or not by the foolishness outside the gates.

In the afternoon Tobias invites himself for tea. His own room is on the other side of the building. It has a view out over the back grounds with their gravelled walks, their frequent park benches for the easily winded, their tasteful gazebos for shelter from the sun, and their croquet lawn for leisurely games. Tobias can see all of this, which he has described to Wilma in gloating detail, but he can’t see the front gate. Also he has no binoculars. He’s here in her apartment for the vista.

“There are more of them now,” he says. “Maybe a hundred. Some are wearing masks.”

“Masks?” Wilma asks, intrigued. “You mean, like Halloween?” She pictures goblins and Draculas, fairy princesses, witches and Elvis Presleys. “I thought masks are illegal. At public gatherings.”

“Not quite like Halloween,” says Tobias. “Masks of babies.”

“Are they pink?” says Wilma. She feels a slight tremor of fear. Baby masks on a mob: it’s disconcerting. A horde of life-sized, potentially violent babies. Out of control.

There are twenty or thirty small people holding hands, circling what is most likely the sugar bowl: Tobias likes sugar in his tea. The women are wearing skirts that appear to be made out of overlapping rose petals, the men shimmer in iridescent peacock-feather blue. How exquisite they are, how embroidered! It’s hard to believe they aren’t real; they’re so physical, so finely detailed.

“Some of them,” says Tobias. “Some are yellow. Some brown.”

“They must be trying for an inter-racial theme,” says Wilma. Stealthily she inches her hand across the table towards the dancers: if only she could catch one, hold it between thumb and forefinger like a beetle. Maybe then they’d acknowledge her, if only by kicking and biting. “Do they have baby outfits on, as well?” Diapers maybe, or onesies with slogans on them, or bibs with incongruously vicious images such as pirates and zombies. Those had been all the rage, once.

“No, just the faces,” says Tobias. The tiny dancers won’t give Wilma the satisfaction of allowing her fingers to pass through them, thus demonstrating their non-reality once and for all. Instead they curve their dance line to evade her, so perhaps they’re aware of her after all. Perhaps they’re teasing, the little rascals.

Don’t be silly, she tells herself. It’s a syndrome. Charles Bonnard. It’s well documented, other people have it. No, Bonnet: Bonnard was a painter, she’s almost sure of that. Or is it Bonnivert?

“Now they’re blocking another van,” says Tobias. “The chicken delivery.” The chickens come from a local organic and free-range farm, as do the eggs. Barney and Dave’s Lucky
Cluckies. They always come on Thursdays. No chickens and no eggs: that might get serious in the long run, thinks Wilma. There will be querulousness inside the walls. Voices will be raised.
This is not what I paid for
.

“Are there any cops?” she says.

“I don’t see any,” says Tobias.

“We need to ask at the front desk,” says Wilma. “We need to complain! They ought to be cleared away, or something – those people.”

“I already asked,” says Tobias. “They don’t know any more about it than we do.”

The evening’s dinner is more vivacious than usual: more chattering, more clattering, more sudden bursts of reedy laughter. The dining room appears to be short-staffed, which on a normal evening might result in increased peevishness, but as things are there’s an atmosphere of subdued carnival. A tray is dropped, a glass shatters, a cheer goes up. The clients are warned to be aware of the spilled ice cubes, which are barely visible and slippery. We wouldn’t want any broken hips, now, would we? says the voice of Shoshanna, who is wielding the microphone.

Tobias orders a bottle of wine for the table. “Let’s live it up,” he says. “Here’s looking at you!” Glasses clink. He and Wilma are not a twosome tonight, they’re at a table for four. Tobias proposed it, and Wilma surprised herself by agreeing: if there’s no safety in numbers, at least there’s the illusion of safety. If they stick together they can keep the unknown at bay.

The other two at the table are Jo-Anne and Noreen. Too bad there can’t be another man, thinks Wilma, but in this age group the women outnumber the men four to one. According to Tobias, women hang around longer because they’re less capable
of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integrity would put up with it? Sometimes, when the bland food gets too much for him or when his arthritis is acting up, he threatens to blow his head off, if he could only lay his hands on the necessary weapon, or slit his wrists in the bath with a razor blade, like an honourable Roman. When Wilma protests, he calms her: that’s just the morbid Hungarian in him, all Hungarian men talk like that. If you’re a Hungarian man you can’t let a day pass without a suicide threat, though – he’ll joke – not nearly enough of them follow through.

Why not the Hungarian women? Wilma has asked him several times. Why is that they too are not razoring their wrists in the tub? She enjoys re-asking questions because the answers are sometimes the same, sometimes not. Tobias has had at least three birthplaces and has attended four universities, all at once. His passports are numerous.

“The Hungarian women aren’t up to it,” he said once. “They never know when it’s game over, in love, life, or death. They flirt with the undertaker, they flirt with the guy shovelling the dirt onto their coffin. They never give up.”

Neither Jo-Anne nor Noreen is Hungarian, but they too are displaying impressive flirting skills. If they had feather fans they’d be hitting Tobias with them, if bouquets they’d be tossing him a rosebud, if they had ankles they’d be flashing them. As it is they’re simpering. Wilma longs to tell them to act their age, but what would it be like if they did?

She knows Jo-Anne from the swimming pool. She tries to do a few laps twice a week, manageable as long as someone helps her in and out and guides her to the change room. And she must have met Noreen before at some group function like a concert: she recognizes that pigeon-shaped laugh, a tremulous coo. She has no
idea what either of them looks like, though she notes via her side vision that they’re both wearing magenta.

Tobias is far from unhappy to have a whole new female audience. Already he’s told Noreen that she’s radiant tonight, and has hinted to Jo-Anne that she wouldn’t be safe in the dark with him if he were still the man he once was. “If youth only knew, if age only could,” he says. Is that the sound of hand-kissing? Gigglings come from the two of them, or what would formerly have been gigglings. Closer to squawkings, or cluckings, or wheezings: sudden gusts of air through autumn leaves. The vocal cords shorten, Wilma thinks sadly. The lungs shrink. Everything gets drier.

How does she feel about the flirtation that’s going on over the clam chowder? Is she jealous, does she want Tobias all to herself? Not all of him, no; she wouldn’t go so far. She has no desire to roll around in the metaphorical hay with him, because she has no desire. Or not much. But she does want his attention. Or rather she wants him to want her attention, though he seems to be doing well enough with the two inferior substitutes on hand. The three of them are bantering away like something in a Regency Romance, and she has to listen because there’s nothing to distract her: the little people haven’t shown up.

She tries to summon them.
Come out
, she commands silently, fixing what would once have been her gaze in the direction of the artificial flower arrangement in the centre of the table – top quality, says Tobias, you can hardly tell the difference. It’s yellow, which is about all she can say for it.

Nothing happens. No manikins appear. She can control neither their appearances nor their disappearances; which seems unfair, since they’re products of nobody’s brain but hers.

The clam chowder is succeeded by a ground beef casserole with mushrooms, followed in turn by rice pudding with raisins. Wilma concentrates on eating: she must locate the plate out of the corners of her eyes, she must direct the fork as if it’s a steam shovel: she must approach, swivel, acquire payload, lift. This takes effort. At long last the cookie plate descends, shortbread and bars as usual. There’s a brief glimpse of seven or eight ladies in off-white frilly petticoats, a can-can flash of their silk-stockinged legs, but they morph back into shortbread cookies almost immediately.

“What’s happening outside?” she says into a gap left in the web of compliments that’s been spinning itself among the others. “At the main gate?”