The Leisure Seeker: A Novel (25 page)

My dream is of the last time we visited Jim. It was always torture for John to see his friend that way, but this day it was worse than it had ever been. Jim couldn’t even talk by this time, couldn’t even call for Dawn. He sat there in his chair, drooling, chin resting on his chest. Every now and then, his lips moved as if he were speaking some silent language that only he could understand. When we tried to talk to him, he just looked up at us, reacting to the sound of our voices with an endless, unseeing stare.

After we left, John turned to me in the car and said what he always said to me after we visited Jim. “I will shoot myself before I end up like that.” But this last time, he said something
else as well. He took my hand and said, “Ella, promise me,
promise
me that you will never put me in a place like that.”

I looked at my husband and promised him that one thing.

I open my eyes a little after six, finally giving up on sleep. This crushingly bright California morning, I am feeling so weak I can barely hold my head up.

John is snoring. During the night, he pulled an afghan over him and it almost covers his entire head. I check to see that he hasn’t wet himself. He hasn’t, but he’s getting ripe again.

I try to pull myself up from bed and don’t quite make it. I consider rolling out, but fear that I will roll right onto the floor. I remember that I’ve left one of my little blue pills in my sweatshirt pocket. So I plunge my hand into the folds of my clothes, sift through the balled-up Kleenexes, finally locating the pill at the bottom. After I gather as much saliva as I can in my mouth, which isn’t much, I swallow it. This will either put me back to sleep or allow me to actually get out of bed, one or the other.

When I wake up at 8:30, the discomfort has mellowed. John is lying next to me with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the van. I can’t tell if he’s lucid.

“John? You awake?”

He doesn’t say anything at first and I think for a horrible moment that he is dead and I’m alone.

“John?”

He turns and looks at me, matter-of-factly. “What?”

“I was just wondering if you were awake.”

“I’m awake.”

“Good. I don’t want to be alone.”

He puts his hand on the back of my head and strokes my head and neck. His hand feels wonderful, the way it used to feel, but different. I think it’s because my hair is thin now. He used to do this all the time when we were younger, then I started wearing the wigs and he mostly stopped, except when we were home and by ourselves.

“You’re not alone, sweetheart,” he says.

“I don’t want us to be apart, John.”

“We won’t be.”

He looks around at the inside of the van. I think maybe he’s going to ask if we’re home, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “This is a good old camper.”

“Yes, it is,” I say. There is a long time where we don’t say anything, but John looks at me so tenderly that it helps me to forget all the bad things. It’s a look that makes me feel that everything that’s going to happen will be just fine.

I smile at him. “Your hair is sticking out like Bozo.”

He smiles back at me, but I can see his eyes start to mist over, dissolving back into the gray. I start to talk faster, more than I can get out at once.

“Are you ready for Disneyland?” I say, more loudly than I mean to. “Remember, we’re going today. It’s going to be really fun, John.”

I scare him a little, but I’m trying to pull him back to me. I don’t want him to go away yet. I want him to understand.

“We are?” he says.

“
Yes,
John. This is the last leg of our vacation. It’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He just nods along, caught up in something he doesn’t really comprehend.

“It’s been real good,” he says.

I place my hands on John’s face, my fingers over his lips. His cheeks are coarse with hair, but I don’t care. I move my thumb over a bump on his lower lip.

“It’s all been real good,” I say.

“I’m glad we’re going away,” he says.

He’s confused. I think he thinks we’re heading out on vacation right now. I could correct him, but don’t.

“Me, too” is what I say to him. “Me, too.”

“Are you sure you’re up to visiting the park today, ma’am?” says the young man driving our shuttle van.

I want to say,
No, goddamn it, I’m not at all up to it today, but I’m going anyway
. But what I say is, “Oh, I’m sure we’ll manage.”

“They have motorized wheelchairs you can drive around in, might make things easier.”

“Really?” I say, curtly. “Well, I don’t like wheelchairs. I don’t think we’ll need that.”

He looks in the rearview mirror at me and my You-Go and doesn’t say a thing.

Soon as we drive up to the place I see that he’s right. Everything looks so much more spread out than twenty years ago. You know how when you visit a place from your childhood as an adult, everything looks so much smaller? Well, revisiting a place as an old person is the opposite. It all looks goddamned enormous.

Still, I am determined to do this. We have to take a tram just to get from the parking lot to the ticket office. I have a hell of a time just getting on the thing until some considerate young man gives us both a hand.

By the time we get to the ticket line, I’m already exhausted. We get the “One Day–One Park” tickets and they cost a fortune. I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point. I put it on the charge card along with everything else.

“Do you have any of those motorized wheelchairs?” I ask, now realizing that there’s no way either of us will be able to get around this place, especially as weak as I’m feeling today.

“They might be all rented by now,” says the unrelentingly cheery young woman at the ticket booth. “You’ll need to talk to the cast member there. The wheelchair rentals are on the right, past the turnstiles.”

“Rentals? I was told they were free.”

“It’s thirty dollars for the electric ones. With a twenty-dollar deposit.”

“Je-
sus Christ
.” I look at John and he just shrugs. I don’t remember Disneyland being such a gyp joint.

As I stop to catch my breath, I glance upward to watch the monorail glide above us.

“Get a load of that! Gee whiz!” says John, pointing in the air, thrilled at the sight of the sleek orange-striped airtrain. The transformation is complete. He is a child again.

I watch the tail slither into the distance. It still feels to me like a vision of the future. Except now, it’s a future that I’m too tired to imagine.

When we pass the turnstiles, I head on over to the rental stand with John in tow. He’s already looking disoriented from all the activity.

“Are you here for an ECV?” the tidy young man says to me. I’m not so used to a southern accent coming from someone who looks Chinese.

“A what?” I say.

“An electronic convenience vehicle. An ECV. That’s what we call these.” He points to the two remaining scooters.

“I guess we are.” I get out my charge card.

He gives me the fifth “Aren’t you a cute decrepit old lady?” grin I’ve gotten since we arrived at Disneyland. They like to smile at you here while they stick their hand in your wallet.

“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re gonna drive around this joint.”

John brightens at the word
drive.
“Can we get the van in here?”

“No, we’re going to drive one of those.” I point to the little blue scooters.

The young man explains the controls on the chairs. I am leery at first, but after a quick supervised spin around the room, I’m pretty sure I can handle it. John, as usual, warms right up to anything he can drive. In no time, he’s scooting around like crazy.

“I don’t want you to go far away from me, John,” I say, stowing my purse in the front basket. “You hear me?”

No, he can’t hear me because he’s already taken off.

HERE YOU LEAVE TODAY
AND ENTER THE WORLD
OF YESTERDAY, TOMORROW
AND FANTASY

That’s what the sign says as we pass beneath a bridge into the park. It’s dim and crowded as we walk through, and it makes me glad we’re on the scooters. We are stable on these buggies and can’t get pushed over, a good feeling for a change. As we emerge on the other side, I am amazed to see that Disneyland hasn’t changed much, although it’s certainly more crowded than I remember, especially for 11:45 in the morning. I hate to think what this place is going to be like in four or five hours. We’ll be long gone by then.

There are families everywhere, flocks of strollers, two and three abreast. I see a herd of what must be three hundred kids all wearing the same navy blue T-shirts. There are children running around, screaming bloody murder. As we tool down
Main Street U.S.A., I’m a little overwhelmed. An old horse-drawn streetcar passes by; behind it a flivver honks at us, a rude
ow-ooh-ga
. Behind me, I hear the clang of a steam locomotive, a brass band playing a Sousa march. People are yelling to the left of me. A group of seven or eight young kids come up quickly on my right side, laughing and screeching. I make sure my purse is secure in the basket. Suddenly, John has disappeared again. I look to my left, to my right, but I can’t see him anywhere. I start to get a little frantic.

I don’t know exactly what happens then, but when I finally look straight ahead, I see that I’m about to run right into a giant Winnie-the-Pooh, who has appeared out of nowhere. I panic and forget what to do to stop this thing.

“Watch out!” I yell at his furry orange back. At the very last second, he turns. I look into Winnie’s mouth and see a flash of panic in the eyes of the person in the costume. I hear him say “Oh!” just before he jumps out of the way.

I finally release my death grip on the accelerator and the scooter stops on the spot. All I had to do was let go. I yell my apology to Winnie-the-Pooh. He waves, but inside that costume, he’s probably giving me the finger.

John scoots up next to me, laughing. “You almost ran over that bear,” he manages to croak out between guffaws.

“Just about gave me a heart attack,” I say, starting to chuckle myself. I’m sure it was quite the sight.

Main Street U.S.A. is like an old town square. We scoot around for a while, looking at city hall, the movie theater, the penny arcade. We roll past a little café, half indoor and half out,
where a man is playing old ragtime piano. We zip in and sit awhile. When a waitress approaches we tell her that we just want to sit a little and listen to the music. She says we have to order something, so we both get Cokes. The man at the piano plays “I Don’t Know Why” and “California, Here I Come.” It makes me wish we could have brought the kids and all the grandkids here, but considering nobody even wanted
us
to go on this vacation, I guess that probably wouldn’t have happened.

We are outside “The Enchanted Tiki Room” when it happens. One minute I was in line, listening to the birds sing “In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room,” the next minute, I’m on the ground flanked by Disneyland paramedics and surrounded by onlookers. I have no idea what happened.

“Who are you?” I say to one of the young men, who’s just put an awful-smelling inhalant under my nose.

“How do you feel?” he says to me.

“I feel a little woozy, that’s all.” I don’t mention the screaming discomfort in my side where I must have fallen, or the fact that my entire body feels like a sack of potatoes that’s fallen off the truck and rolled seven blocks.

“We’re taking you to the hospital, ma’am,” he says to me, all muscles and confidence and conked blond hair. He must be a weight lifter. His head is connected directly to his shoulders. I look for his neck, but it’s nowhere to be found in his paramedic jumpsuit. He reminds me of Jack LaLanne, only bigger and stupider.

I have a gander at the other guy, an older black fellow on the heavy side. He says nothing. I turn back to Jack LaLanne.

“You’re not taking me to the fucking hospital,” I yell.

I hear a collective gasp around me. All these fine Disney citizens, indulging their morbid curiosity by rudely standing around watching the old cow passed out on her keister, are simply appalled by my language. I look up to see a gigantic Mickey Mouse. He ratchets his head around at the kids present, then holds his hands up over his giant mouse ears.

“We have to, ma’am. It’s Disneyland protocol.”

I pull my arm away from him. I try to sit up, but he holds me down. I don’t put up much of a fight because everything discomforts so bad.

“I don’t care what it is, I’m not going,” I say. “I’m fine. I just got a little dizzy. I’m not used to these contraptions of yours.” I don’t see John anywhere. “Where’s my husband?”

Jack LaLanne looks at me like,
she’s going to be trouble
. And he’s right. I’m not going to any hospital. I am done with hospitals.

“He’s over by our ambulance,” he finally says. “He seems disoriented. Does he have Alzheimer’s, ma’am?”

“He has a little dementia,” I say, one of my biggest fibs yet this trip. Saying John has a little dementia is like saying I have a little cancer.

I’m getting mad now, and I get even madder when I see someone come up with a stretcher. “I’m not getting on that goddamn thing!” I yell, not even knowing where I get the
strength to scream like that. All the people around us look alarmed, but not as much as Jack and his pal.

I know once they have me on that, all is lost. They will take me to the hospital, and this trip will not have its proper close. I don’t know where I pull it out from, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that they are ones I can hold on to.

“If you put me on that, I will sue Disneyland for a million dollars.”

There’s nothing like a look of fear on the face of a heavily muscled man.

“I will do it, so help me God, you put me on that thing.” I cross my arms and try to keep from wincing. I narrow my eyes at him. “And it will be
your fault
.”

Jack waves off the stretcher for the moment. “Ma’am, there’s something wrong with you,” he says, voice straining. “We need to find out what it is.” I can see a hint of true concern reveal itself across his lantern jaw, but I don’t care. I will play this hand to the end.