Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

The receptionist, a phone wedged to one ear and a tooth-marked pencil behind the other, motioned her to wait. Anna used the time to sign the register. She was surprised to notice that Adele had another visitor: Elizabeth Glinka, who had been the Gödels’ live-in registered nurse. Anna nibbled on the stub of a fingernail. Might she impose, or should she make herself scarce, as a courtesy? She’d have liked to meet this woman who had witnessed the Gödels’ last years together.

“I’m sorry, Miss Roth. No one is allowed to visit Mrs. Gödel today.”

“But I see that she has a visitor.”

“That person is waiting in the lobby.”

“Did something happen to Adele?”

The receptionist righted her coffee cup, which was tilting dangerously, and answered with a prim expression, “I’m afraid the information can only be given to a family member.”

“Mrs. Gödel has no family.”

The woman frowned. Her fingers, deprived of nicotine, worried at the already mauled pencil.

“She had a bad night. The doctor on duty didn’t like her chances this morning.”

Anna’s heart started racing. “Is she conscious?”

“She’s very weak. The best thing for her is to avoid any excitement.”

“I’m going to leave you my telephone number. Would you call me if there are any developments?”

“I’ll put the word out. Everybody likes you here. It’s so unusual for a young person to spend any time with our residents.”

Anna walked away in a daze. She’d known that Adele was in poor health, but the older woman had always seemed to have inexhaustible vitality. She couldn’t die like this. They had parted with bitter words. Anna had been short with her and felt responsible for the elderly woman’s sudden decline.

Too tired to retrace her steps immediately, she dropped into a Naugahyde chair. Nearby a woman in her sixties was knitting. Her hair haphazardly blow-dried, the visitor gave Anna a big smile. She had a hard face, but her brown, heavy-lidded eyes radiated an unmistakable kindness. Anna couldn’t tell whether the glow was meant for her specifically or for the world in general.

The woman stopped her rhythmic clicking and stowed her knitting away in a patchwork bag before coming to sit next to Anna. She held out a firm hand. “Elizabeth Glinka.”

“Anna Roth. I’m delighted to meet you. Although the circumstances …”

“Don’t worry. Mrs. Gödel has been through worse.”

She tilted her head, examining Anna with frank curiosity. The young woman sat straighter.

“Can I call you Anna? Adele has often spoken about you. She’s right. You’re pretty and you don’t know it.”

“That’s just the kind of compliment Adele would give.”

Elizabeth placed her calloused hand on hers. “It’s a good thing, what you’re doing for her.”

Anna felt a twinge of guilt. Their relationship was still ambiguous. She hadn’t made clear to herself where her interest ended and her affection began. Mrs. Gödel might have complained to her old nurse about their last discussion.

“Originally, I came to her with a specific goal in mind.”

“But you came back.”

“Have they told you anything?”

“She suffered a small stroke last night. It wasn’t the first. She’s let herself go into decline since her husband’s death. It’s over, she no longer wants to live.”

“Have you known the Gödels a long time?”

“I became their nurse full-time in 1973. Their gardener was a friend of mine, and one thing led to another …”

Reality flooded in through Anna’s locked doors. Tears welled up and her vision blurred. It was easier for her to cry over an unknown old lady than to summon the courage to say her final goodbyes to her grandmother.

Elizabeth pulled a clean handkerchief from her bag and handed it to her. “Adele hates crying. Just think what she’d say if she saw you.”

The young woman blew her nose and tried to smile.

“The end is not far off, but it won’t be today,” said Elizabeth.

From her bluntness, Anna guessed she was telling the truth. It would be too cruel for the Gödels’ nurse to lie to her just to make her feel better.

“I have a lot of affection for Adele,” said Elizabeth. “I hope she’ll slip away quietly, in her sleep. Without suffering. She’s earned that much. Even if she wasn’t always so easy to deal with! She had her moments. You must have noticed?”

Anna shuddered at the nurse’s use of the past tense, but she couldn’t keep from nudging the conversation toward the object of her quest. She berated herself for her lack of compassion.

“Did you talk with Mr. Gödel?”

“He didn’t exactly talk much! A nice man, though. Except when he wandered off the deep end …”

Mrs. Glinka examined her out of the corner of her eye. Her scruples were a matter of principle, but she, too, needed to confide.

“It wasn’t exactly a state secret that Mr. Gödel was a special case. Adele had to watch him day and night. When I was hired to help out, she seemed at the end of her rope. She had put on a lot of weight. She was struggling with the aftereffects of her first stroke. She had serious problems with high blood pressure and arthritis. Her joints were swollen from bursitis, and she was a wreck. She couldn’t cook or garden. It depressed her to be so useless. She was stuck in a wheelchair, and he couldn’t look after her. He couldn’t even look after himself! She worried so much about him that she neglected her own treatment. But what can you do? As far as she was concerned, he took precedence over everything, including her own health.”

“Didn’t he die while his wife was in the hospital?”

“Just after she got out. The poor woman had no choice, we made her go in. Her life was in danger but she refused to leave him. He would stop eating when she wasn’t there! I shuttled back and forth between them, knowing all along that it was too late. He wasn’t answering the door anymore, even for me. I would leave his food on the stoop. Most of the time he wouldn’t touch it.”

“With her gone, he let himself die?”

“He would have died long before if she hadn’t taken such good care of him. She carried him for years.”

Anna folded the handkerchief. “I’ll give this back to you another time.”

She hoped that that other time wouldn’t also be the last, at Adele’s funeral.

“In spite of all he put her through, I’ve never seen a closer couple. I’m surprised she’s outlived him as long as she has. I gave her a couple of months, if that. With nobody to look after, she had no reason to go on. She was lost. In fact, she’d forgotten how to fill out a check!”

“I thought she took care of everything.”

“Mr. Gödel sometimes had crazy ideas. Toward the end, he was convinced that she was spending money wildly behind his back. As if Adele could have done anything like that when she was tending him night and day! As if he had any money to waste! What a tragedy! Thirty years of living in that house, more than forty years of living with her man, and then one day, poof … She’s alone and headed for the hospital.”

“Did you help her pack up Linden Lane?”

“It took us five days to sort through the basement. Piles and piles of paper! She was always stopping and looking at photographs or reading old notes. Just scribbled bits, for the most part. We put everything in boxes except for a few letters.”

Anna refrained from asking, “Where are the goddamn archives?” Elizabeth knew well enough that she was interested in the documents.

“She cried, poor woman. She muttered in German, and I didn’t understand much. She tore her hair out. I thought she was going to have a fit.”