Ann Beattie - Another You

She turned into the parking lot outside the nursing home. Three places were reserved for doctors, six for staff, two for the handicapped. There were five cars in staff parking. The rest of the places were empty, though a motorcycle was parked horizontally at the back of one of the doctor’s spots. A red pickup was parked in visitor parking and a blue Chevrolet with Florida plates. She pulled her white Toyota in between the truck and the Chevy, thinking: how patriotic.

At the station inside the entrance she was greeted by a pudgy woman sausage-stuffed into a pastel-green uniform, who immediately announced it was her first week on the job, so she didn’t recognize anybody. The woman entered Evie’s name on the computer and, reading the screen, told Sonja everything was much the same; Evie was continuing to progress in physical therapy, her conjunctivitis was cured, and she had resumed sleeping normally. The woman spoke brightly, as if anything merely normal could be viewed as amazing progress. Evie had been such an active person all her life, and now she was only a person about whom things were said: she did this; she did that; this is cured; another day passed uneventfully. How slowly they must pass , Sonja thought. How very slowly they must pass. As Sonja sniffed a gardenia in a vase on the counter, the woman complimented Sonja’s blue earmuffs, which hung around her neck like Walkman headphones. In such settings, there were always so many things left unsaid, Sonja thought: the tacit understanding that we’re-okay-they’re-screwed was like an eyewink that didn’t have to transpire.

Evie and the other residents were at Time with Tots, a weekly visit from a neighboring preschool. Getting off the elevator, Sonja could hear the squeals. First the hospital staff had tried bringing pets in to cheer the nursing home patients, but that resulted in petty jealousies and despondency when the pets were trotted off; then they decided on children, which, surprisingly, the patients seemed not to project onto so much and from whom they did not expect so many things.

Sonja stood in the doorway of the large sunny room at the end of the hallway, the place where patients snacked or talked between scheduled activities, watching the thin-as-a-rail nurse flicking her fingers on a tambourine. Other tambourines had been passed out to the patients. As children tumbled through cartwheels or various contortions on a big rubber mat, under the direction of their preschool teacher, tambourines jingled out of sync, shaken by a woman in a wheelchair and a tall man who sat on a sofa, methodically patting another man’s hand, his free hand madly jingling the tambourine, his knee jumping nervously. Evie sat in a small chair — small Evie in her small chair — and Sonja was happy to see that today Evie had sufficient strength to sit there without being tied in. There were about twelve patients in the room, half seeming to enjoy the children’s tumbling, the other half sleeping or staring somewhere else. Evie was one of the patients staring somewhere else. For a few seconds, before she took a deep breath and walked into the room, Sonja reflected that Evie’s look of hazy concentration had been constant throughout her life: the slight frown, the stigmatic gaze, her mouth the only sure giveaway as to whether she was happy or sad. Today Evie was sad. Droop-lipped, she looked at the action, frowned, and looked away — though who wouldn’t intensify her wince in the cacophony of the tambourines? Sonja made her way carefully around the room’s perimeter, smiling in response to the thin nurse’s half smile, stopping to shake the hand of a man in a wheelchair who extended a bony hand in greeting. “I’m not senile,” the man said, as they shook hands. Loud jingling drowned out her response of “I’m sure you’re not.” “It’s music and tumbling,” he said.

Evie saw her coming, and her mouth eased into a surprised smile. Her speech had been thick since the last stroke, so Sonja’s name sounded like “Toada.” Sonja smiled at the idea of herself as a toad-woman, some absurd creature in a sci-fi movie — Toada, with supernatural abilities to … what? Swim through air, webbed feet kicking behind her, swimming for the distance. No amount of kicking would change this fact: after half an hour Sonja would leave and Evie wouldn’t; it was Evie who should have the supernatural powers, Evie who needed empowerment to escape. After she asked how Sonja was, the second question would inevitably be about Marshall. She had stopped asking about Gordon, but she always inquired about Marshall. Why did he call but not visit? Was he still so dissatisfied with academic life? Was he taking care of himself?

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.’ ”