David Wallace - Broom of the System

Mindy turned way around, so that her sleeve was all of a sudden out of Candy’s reach. Candy’s hand hit the counter. Mindy looked into the orange and black.

“Mr. Vigorous?”

/a/

10 September “You hurt me, Andy,” says Lenore. “You hurt me inside. ”“Well sugar that’s love,” says W.D.L.

So look, very closely. If one looks, very closely, into the bowl of the toilet, one sees the water inside is in fact not still, but pulses in its thick porcelain cup; rises and falls, ever so slightly, influenced by the ponderous suck and slap of subterranean tides unimagined by any but the devoutest morning pilgrim.

/b/

“ ‘Down the Laughing Brook came Billy Mink. He was feeling very good that morning, was Billy Mink, pleased with the world in general and with himself in particular.’ ”

“Roughage,” said Concamadine Beadsman.

“ ‘When he reached the Smiling Pool he swam out to the Big Rock. Little Joe Otter was already there, and not far away, lazily floating, with his head and back out of the water, was Jerry Muskrat.

“ ‘ ”Hello, Billy Mink!“ cried Little Joe Otter.

“ ‘ ”Hello yourself,“ replied Billy Mink with a grin.’ ”

“And this one is called what again?” asked Mr. Bloemker from across Concamadine’s bed, doing something to his eye with a finger under his glasses.

“It’s called ‘Billy Mink Goes Dinnerless,’ ” Lenore said without looking up from the book. “Can we please just do it, here? I sense Concamadine really liking this one.”

“By all means.”

“Roughage.”

“ ‘ ”Where are you going?“ asked Little Joe Otter.

“ ‘ ”Nowhere in particular,“ replied Billy Mink.

“ ‘ ”Let’s go fishing down to the Big River,“ said Little Joe Otter.

“ ‘ ”Let’s!“ cried Billy Mink, diving from the highest point on the Big Rock.‘ ”

“Her face is healing well in the moisture, don’t you think?” said Mr. Bloemker.

Concamadine actually didn’t look all that good. There were sores, and there were bandages. A translucent white bandage stretched tight from just above Concamadine’s left eye up into her forehead; one of her tiny pale eyebrows was lost in the bandage that seemed to be growing into the skin.

“I think it was a splendid idea, having the humidifier brought in,” Mr. Bloemker said, looking at his thumb. “We’re just beginning to lose the heat and moisture that was in such generous attendance all season, as I’m sure you’re aware. Concamadine had such trouble last year, and if I recall correctly it was at just this time. As do so many of the J-ward residents. In any event, a splendid idea, Ms. Beadsman.”

“Roughage.”

“ ‘So off they started across the Green Meadows towards the Big River. Halfway there, they met Reddy Fox.’ ”

The red sores looked soft and bright in the light of the morning that spilled into Concarnadine’s wall of windows from the central courtyard full of colored water. They looked wet. No running, though. The bandage that Lenore particularly objected to covered a whole big patch like that, right above Concamadine’s eyebrow. Lenore thought of the adhesive sticking to the soft of a sore. She thought of the bandage getting taken off.

“How often do you guys change that bandage?” she said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, precisely. I would imagine daily.”

“There’s no way you guys—”

“Roughage. ”

“—rip the thing off, right? You always wet it and peel it off carefully?”

“Of that I’m sure. We do not rip here.”

Lenore looked into Concamadine’s eyes. Concamadine smiled.

“ ‘ ”Hello Reddy! Come on with us to the Big River, fishing,“ called Billy Mink.

“ ‘Now Reddy Fox is no fisherman, though he likes fish to eat well enough. He remembered the last time he went fishing and how Billy Mink had laughed at him when he fell into the Smiling Pool. He was just about to say ”No“ when he changed his mind.

“ ‘ ”All right, I’ll go,“ said Reddy Fox.

“ ‘Now Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter are famous fishermen and can swim even faster than the fish themselves. But Reddy Fox is a poor swimmer and must depend upon his wits. When they reached the bank of the Big River they very carefully crawled down to a sandy beach. There, just a little way out from shore, a school of little striped perch were at play. Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter prepared to dive in and each grab a fish, but Reddy Fox knew that he could not swim well enough for that.’ ”

“Roughage roughage roughage roughage.”

Lenore remembered how last fall Mr. Bloemker had shown her a lot of other people in the Home with Concamadine’s particular condition. Mr. Bloemker had called the condition geriatric acne. He had had a theory. He said that both kinds of acne had to do with the skin not doing what it was supposed to do. He had said, “Someone disposed to see it this way might say that the skin is designed to keep what is properly inside the body inside the body and what is outside the body from getting in,” and then that, “whereas in the case of young people we might say that they are so full of interior life and energy and whatnot that said life and bits of its interior may actually protrude from the envelope of the skin, forced outward, in the case of the residents here we might say that the assault here works in the reverse direction, that the residents’ energies and attentions have collapsed on their still centers to such an extent that there is no longer sufficient interior life and energy to keep what is outside from puncturing the envelope and impinging on the steadily receding interior,” and so on. “Not infection rising from within, but injury punched into the tired envelope from without,” “the skin no longer a viable boundary,” and so on. He had not said membrane, to Lenore’s knowledge.

“Except it only happens in the fall, when it gets drier,” Lenore had said. “Next fall we’ll get Concarnadine a humidifier.”

“ ‘But Billy Mink jeered at Reddy Fox.

“ ‘ ”Pooh! You’re no fisherman, Reddy Fox! If I couldn’t catch fish when they are chased right into my hands I’d never go fishing.“

“ ‘Reddy Fox pretended to be indignant.

“ ‘ ”I tell you what, Billy Mink,“ said he, ”if I don’t catch more fish than you do to-day I’ll bring you the plumpest chicken in Farmer Brown’s dooryard, but if I do catch more fish than you do you will give me the biggest one you catch. Do you agree?“

“ ‘Now Billy Mink is very fond of plump chicken—’ ”

“Roughage.”

“ ‘—and here was a chance to get one without danger of meeting Bowser the Hound, who guards Farmer Brown’s chickens. So Billy Mink agreed to give Reddy Fox the biggest fish he caught that day if Reddy could show more fish than he could at the end of the day. All the time he chuckled to himself, for you know Billy Mink is a famous fisherman—’ ”

“Roughage.”

“ ‘—and he knows that Reddy Fox is a poor swimmer and does not like the water.’ ”

Concarnadine Beadsman, Mrs. Stonecipher Beadsman, Jr., had been in residence at the Shaker Heights Nursing Home even before the Home had been bought by Stonecipheco Baby Food Products. Concamadine Beadsman had unfortunately gone senile while still in her fifties. She had giggled in the rain at the funeral of her husband, after the accident involving the Jell-O alternative. She had moaned in the car on the way to the main Beadsman home in Shaker Heights, to which she was moved from her own home in Chagrin Falls after the death of her husband. Then, for a few years in Shaker Heights, her days had been filled with trips to the mailbox: two hours’ walk to the box at the end of the block; the meat of the day spent peering into the black mouth of the box as the slot was held open first with one hand and then the other, the day punctuated neatly by the mailman coming at four and unlocking the bottom of the box and mail heaving out all over — an end-of the-day release with which Concamadine often unfortunately found herself in involuntary empathy — followed by a thirty-second drive back to the house with a family-member who drove low in the seat and wore sunglasses…. Then just rest, relaxation, unlimited Lawrence Welk, a plethora of mail-watching options, function-labels for things. As far as Lenore could tell — and she did try — Concamadine was really happy.