A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

“What the fuck is going on around here? That’s all I want to know. What the fuck? Who is that man in my office? Did you fuckin’ replace me behind my back? I’m the goddamned boss around here, or at least that’s what I thought. We’ll see what you’re thinking when Friday comes, see if I’m signing your check. Who the hell are you?” he asks, looking at me.

“Silver,” I say.

“Good job,” he says. “Keep up the good work.”

“Now, where the fuck is my secretary? She said she was going to lunch, and I swear that was ten years ago. …” The man wanders off.

“Like I said, it’s been good for most people, and it’s nice to see him up and around,” the woman says.

“What are they giving him?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the patients — in fact, perhaps I’ve said too much already. It’s a little of this, a little of that — there are advances being made every day. It’s a lot about movement — getting them up and out. Short of true paralysis, there’s no reason a person should be in bed or sitting down all day … and for those who are too weak, we start them off just hanging up.” She leads me down the hall to a room and opens the door. Dozens of long springs hang from the ceiling, and each pair of springs is attached to a modified straitjacket/ canvas lace-up vest, and laced into the vests are old people. They hang like limp puppets, half standing, half bouncing, half dancing to music, as physical therapists make their way from person to person. “They seem to like it,” the woman says. “We invented the units here — weighted standing-assist devices. It cuts down on the respiratory illnesses — better lung function.”

“They seem pleased,” I say, unable to get over the sight of a roomful of “suspended” elderly.

“Enough show-and-tell for one day,” the woman says, closing the door. “Are you going to go down to the YMCA and look for your mother? They just left, so you should be able to catch them.”

I have to pay fifteen dollars and fill out a liability waiver before I can enter the pool area of the YMCA, and the fact that I am not going swimming seems irrelevant to the person at the desk.

I enter through the men’s locker room, an unappealing old green tile space dotted with male flesh and the smell of sneakers.

As soon as I enter the pool area, I am sent back — told that I must take off my shoes and socks and wash my feet in the shower before entering.

“Hi, Mom,” I call out when I get into the pool area, my voice echoing off the tile walls and then absorbed into the chloramide fumes rising off the pool’s surface. “Hi, Mom,” I repeat.

The entire class turns to face me. “Hi,” all the ladies in the pool answer.

My mother is wearing a latex cap, the same kind she used to wear thirty years ago — white with large rubbery flowers in full bloom bursting off the top. Could it be the same bathing cap she’s had all along? She swims towards me and, considering that not so long ago she was bedridden, it’s disorienting to watch her kicking, swinging her arms through the water’s surface. She breaststrokes to the edge of the pool, where I find myself staring down into an oddly open face — framed by the latex flowers — and a deep, wrinkled cleavage.

“You look great,” I say. “How are you?”

“Fantastic,” she says.

A barrel-chested man swims to her side.

“Hello, son,” he says.

“Hello,” I say.

“Good to see you,” he says.

“You too,” I say, going along with it.

“How’s your sister?” he asks.

“Good,” I say, even though I have no sister.

“I’m very worried about your mother,” he says. “I can’t find her anywhere.” He speaks in a booming voice, like a former radio announcer.

“You can’t find her because she’s gone,” my mother reminds him. “But you’ve got me now.”

“You have each other?” I ask.

“Yes,” they say.

“And what about Dad?” I am confused, suddenly a child again.

“Your father’s been dead for years — I’m entitled to have a life,” my mother says.

“Would you two like to come back to class?” the instructor asks, and they turn around and swim back to class, their diapers poking out from under their suits.

On the way home, I stop at the A& P. It’s not my regular store, I just happened to go there. A woman seems to be following me through the store, everywhere I go.

“Are you following me?”

“Am I?”

“Are you?”

“Hard to know,” she says. “Most people go up and down the aisles,” she says, “they go row by row; unless you have a system of your own, you’re bound to see the same people twice.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Have we met before?”

She shrugs, as though it’s irrelevant. “What kind of cake do you like?” she asks. We’re in the frozen-foods section, stopped by the desserts. “Plain pound cake, or something with frosting?”

“I’ve never bought cake,” I say, and it’s true. “If I wanted cake, I think I’d go to a bakery, but I’m not really a cake person.”

“I think young people like frosting, old people like plain,” she says, putting a plain Sara Lee pound cake into her cart.

“You don’t look old,” I say.

“I am, inside,” she says.

“So how old are you?” I notice that her body is thin, sinewy, more like that of a child than a grown woman. Her hair is long, thin, almost stringy — dirty blond.

“Guess,” she says.

“Twenty-seven,” I say.

“I’m thirty-one,” she says. “You have a lousy sense of what’s what.”

I push my cart onward — perhaps I should be grateful for her attention, but at the moment I’m not, I’m distracted — dog biscuits, cat litter …

She intercepts me again: “You’re an animal lover?”

“The cat had kittens,” I say.

“I always wanted pets,” she says, “but my parents hated the idea: ‘They track in dirt,’ my father would say. ‘It’s all I can do to manage you and your sister,’ my mother would say.”

“Well, you’re thirty-one now,” I say, “so I guess it’s up to you.”

“I recently had a cat,” she says. And then pauses. “Can I meet your kittens? Can I? How about I come to your place for hors d’oeuvres?” She throws some frozen cheese puffs into her cart.

I don’t really know what to say — or, more precisely, I don’t know how to say no.

And so, when I pull out of the A& P parking lot, she is behind me, following me — almost bumper to bumper. Her car is as nondescript as her person — a white compact of indeterminate age — one of a million. As I’m driving, I’m realizing that I didn’t pick her up, she picked me up, and it makes me nervous. Why is she following me? There’s a reason people used to be “introduced,” a reason why polite society is called polite and why it evolved the way it did — with great castle balls and formal letters of introduction.

She parks behind me in the driveway and comes in carrying a bag of her frozen things, asking if she can put it in the freezer for the moment, and suddenly it’s entirely awkward. It’s not like she’s stopping by to borrow a roasting pan, or so I can show her how to make tarte tatin.

Tessie barks.

“Who is this big bad doggy?” she asks, in a babyish voice.

“It’s okay, Tessie, it’s a woman from the produce section who wanted to come home with me,” I say.

“You invited me over,” she says, still bent and talking to Tessie. “He said, ‘Do you want to come to my house and play with the pussy cats?’”

“I don’t think so.”

“Um-hummm,” she says to the dog, who wags her tail, grateful for attention.

I put away my groceries and ask if she’d like some coffee or tea.