Гарри Тертлдав: The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging

A sunbeam slipped between the slats of the venetian blinds. Anne Berkowitz opened one eye. The clock on the nightstand by the bed had digits big and bright enough to let her read them without her glasses—6:47. She muttered and rolled away from the sneaky sunbeam. She didn’t want to get up so early.

But she was awake. And she was having trouble breathing—not bad trouble, but the kind she had almost every morning after she’d stayed too flat for too long. She reached for the nasal cannula and put it in place. Clear plastic tubing connected it to the green-painted oxygen tank that sat on a wheeled cart by the other side of the bed.

Wrinkled skin hung loose on her arm as she reached out to turn the valve at the top of the tank. She’d never been fat, not once in her eighty-four years. She’d hardly ever been as skinny as she was now, though. If she kept going this way, pretty soon there’d be nothing left of her.

She nodded to herself as oxygen softly hissed through the tubing. Pretty soon there would be nothing left of her. The doctors said she had maybe a year left, maybe two, three at the outside. She worried about it less than she would have dreamt possible even ten years before. As long as it didn’t hurt too much, she was about ready to die.

The oxygen made her feel stronger. The trouble wasn’t her lungs. It was the narrowing of the big artery that came out of her heart. Aortic stenosis, the docs called it, which was the same thing in Greek. An operation—a graft—could fix it, but they said she had not a chance in a thousand of waking up again after they put her under. So here she was, watching her clock wind down.

After a couple of minutes, she reached out and turned the valve on the tank the other way. The oxygen shut off. Anne sat up. Once she got vertical, she was okay, or as okay as she could be these days.

She put on her glasses. The room came into sharper focus. The room… Her mouth twisted. The Hebrew Home for the Aging insisted it was an apartment. They could call it whatever they pleased. It still looked like a room to her.

A TV on a stand. A computer on a stand. A bookcase. Novels. History. Poetry. Genealogy. A black-and-white photo of her husband, looking handsome and Mad Men -y in a suit with narrow lapels and a skinny tie. Sheldon had been gone for almost twenty years now, and not a day went by when she didn’t miss him.

Color photos of her son the CPA and of her son the ophthalmologist. Color photos of her grandsons and granddaughters, and a new one of her baby great-granddaughter. Not least among her reasons for keeping the computer was that so many other photos of Elizabeth were on Facebook.

The room—the apartment, if you insisted—also boasted a minifridge and a hot plate. Anne could cook there, after a fashion. She could, but she seldom did. Meals were social times at the Home for the Aging.

She walked into the little bathroom. The tub had a gap in the side so unsteady seniors wouldn’t have to step over it—and so the water couldn’t get more than two inches deep. She’d heard there were some bathrooms with real tubs, but she’d never seen one.

Morning meds first, though. Anne’s mouth quirked. When you got to her age and state of decrepitude, you were what you took. She opened the medicine cabinet. Brown and green plastic pill bottles crowded the shelves, swamping things like toothbrush and deodorant. She took a blood-pressure pill, a stomach-acid suppressor, a vasodilator, a pill to steady her heartbeat, one to hold osteoporosis at bay, and a couple of old-fashioned aspirins for her arthritis, which wasn’t too bad. They all sat on her tongue while she filled a glass with water. Even if it wasn’t long and sticky, it could hold more at once than a chameleon’s.

She brushed her teeth. They were in better shape than the rest of her—most of them were implants. Then she closed the cabinet. As she always did, she marveled at the little old lady who peered back at her from the mirror. How did that happen? How did time get to be so cruel?

Her eyes. She still knew her eyes. Even behind the lenses of her glasses, they were dark and bright and knowing. And her narrow chin hadn’t changed so much, even if she had a turkey wattle under it now. The rest? Wrinkles gullied cheeks and forehead. Her nose was a thrusting beak. Ears as big as Golda Meir’s. Thin, baby-fine hair, white, white, white.

Nothing she could do about any of it, either. Oh, she could dye her hair. She had for a while, when Sheldon was still alive. But she’d been younger then herself. It hadn’t looked so phony as it would now.

After a shower, she started to put on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of heather-gray sweatpants. They were easy, they were comfortable, and what else mattered?

Most of the time, nothing. This morning, Anne caught herself. The kids would be coming today. She’d almost forgotten. She didn’t care about looking nice for anybody here, but for them she did. The T-shirt and sweats went back on the shelf in the closet.

She chose a silk blouse with a floral print and dark blue polyester pants instead. She’d still look like a little old lady, but so what? She was a little old lady. These were the kind of clothes the kids’ grannies put on when they came over to visit.

Her Nikes had Velcro fastenings, not laces. Tying shoelaces wasn’t easy any more. She opened the door, closed it behind her, and walked down the hall to the stairway.

A young Filipino aide smiled at her. “Good morning, Mrs. Berkowitz!” the woman said in accented English.

“Hello, Maria.” Anne’s voice held a vanishing trace of accent, too. If you listened, you could hear it in the vowels and in the slight guttural flavor she gave the r .

She walked down a flight of stairs, holding on to the banister and feeling brave. Going up, she’d take the elevator—that was hard work. But down was okay, as long as you watched where you put your feet.

A garden stretched between her residence block and the dining hall. The same warm, bright, San Fernando Valley sunshine that had woken her poured down on it. A scrub jay in a pale-leaved olive tree screeched at her: “Jeep! Jeep! Jeep!” Anne smiled. The bird figured the garden belonged to it.

She ambled along the smooth concrete path. A hummingbird flashed past her on its mad dash from one flower to the next. Its whole head glowed magenta. Anne admired hummingbirds for their beauty and for their take-no-prisoners attitude. She’d never seen one till she came to America.

Another Filipino attendant wheeled an old man up the path toward her. The man in the wheelchair stared at the orange and yellow flowers as if they were new to him. For all practical purposes, they were. Far gone in Alzheimer’s, he had no idea he’d been here last week, and the week before that, and…

“Morning, Ninoy,” Anne said to the attendant as she walked by.

“Morning, ma’am,” he answered. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

“It is, yes.” But Anne frowned once her back was to him and he couldn’t see her do it. The Hebrew Home for the Aging’s Alzheimer’s wing was in a severely modern three-story building near the dining hall. She thanked heaven she’d be dead before she had to go in there. Forgetting whom you’d loved, forgetting who you were, forgetting even how to use the toilet… She frowned again, and shook her head. Yes, truly ending was better than a living death like that.

She had oatmeal for breakfast, and canned fruit, and a cup of real coffee, not the decaf she usually drank. Her doctor would cluck when she told him she’d done it. But he was only in his forties, younger than her boys. What did he know? It wasn’t good for her? Nu? So what? She was dying by inches anyhow.