Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

It was overcast…

Driving up PCH to see Reina.

All her work with Ginevra had led to this.

Leggy’s miscarriage had led to this—

Maybe there was still a chance to be more than a woman.

But was the idea of finally becoming a warrior— of showing up on her mother’s set —just another fantasy of a bravura role? It hardly mattered. The motivation behind entering combat, however chimerical or self-glorifying, would be quickly expunged by the act of warfare itself.

All would be bloodily forgotten, especially in victory.

—

The “memory care” home, formerly a private residence, lay at the end of a cul-de-sac on a high Santa Barbaran bluff. Straining, one heard the low, querulous static of the ocean.

She never called beforehand to announce her visits, few as they were.

Ninety-year-old twin sisters nodded on a couch while a man in formalwear tinkled a saucy, castrated version of a Nirvana song on the lobby’s baby grand. As the staff caught sight of her, tiny seismic shocks of surprise jostled them one by one. Like a royal incognito , Dusty kept her head down but managed to dispense a few fleeting, undercover smiles as she floated toward her destination.

She stood at the door, looking in.

Asleep in her chair, Reina wore the robe Dusty brought a few years ago from Beijing. Deep blue, with an embroidered astonishment of yellow-gold swallows. The braided bun atop her head was a work of art; a hairdresser came each week and did the ladies for a small fortune. She instantly thought of retreating. Why not just have a cup of tea and catch up with the R.N.s? Then Reina’s eyes opened and seemed to look at her — into her. Devil . So Dusty entered, dutiful and dignified, like a eulogizer taking the stage.

“Hi, Reina.” That’s what she called her, for years. “How ya doin’?”

“Well, I’m doin ’,” said Reina. “I am definitely doin’ .”

A not-too-far-off neighbor’s voice cried, “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!”—battle cry of dementia and defeat.

Dusty kept the ball in the air for the usual amiable volley of nonsense: how long Reina had been sitting versus lying down, how beautiful her hair was, the beautiful weather, had she been to the beautiful beach, did the piano man play her favorite Bacharachs. A nurse brought Dusty’s special tea (kept on reserve) then two more appeared and they all had a jovial visit in the queen’s wing of the broken-memory palace.

When they left, Dusty sunnily asked, “Do you know who I am?” Reina looked askance, brow knit in disgust. “Tell me my name.”

“Why should I?”

“Oh come on, Mom.” The Mom just came out — she’d process that later, with Ginevra. Interesting. “What’s my name? You can tell me.”

“I’m supposed to do everything you say?”

“You’ve never done anything I’ve asked you to!” She had to laugh. “I’m Dusty , your daughter .”

“Want to give me your autograph? Asshole?”

Scalded, she backed off and took a few yoga breaths before starting over.

“How are you, Reina?”

“Oh, just fine,” said her mother, with blank kindliness. She was somewhere else now but Dusty wondered how much of it was an act. “I do a lot of dancing.”

“Really?” she asked, humoring. “When? When do you dance? When do they have dances?”

“Every night, Josephine!”

“Wow. Really. Okay.”

“ You know that,” said Reina, scowling.

“Cha-cha? Fox-trot? Do you fox-trot?”

“Well, I don’t trot . I’m not a horse. Last time I looked.”

The old woman smiled, bits of green food in her teeth. Dusty wanted to shove stalks of frozen broccoli down her throat until she choked — to flood her lungs with saltwater and organic juices till they ruptured.

“What about tango? Do you tango? Do you samba?”

“They don’t allow that.”

“Illegal, huh.”

She was running out of things to say. She had come with a mission but everything was getting sweaty and fuzzy now.

“Have you eaten yet? Did you have lunch?”

“They don’t serve lunch till six-thirty.”

“They don’t serve lunch till dinnertime?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m not sure if that’s the case, but okay. Maybe they do it differently here.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

They sat in silence. Her mother said, “So how’s Big Movie Star?”

“Big Movie Star’s great!” said Dusty, with bullshit bravado. “Makin’ shitloads of money.” Announcing her worth was her most toxic venom.

“And how’s the little tramp?”

She didn’t see that coming and contorted under the knife.

“She’s not a little tramp and her name is Allegra. She’s my wife and she’s effin’ fantastic.”

“She’s stealing from you.”

“I don’t think so, Reina.”

“Why else would she be with you?”

“Good question!”

“She wants your money .”

“She can have it, she can have all of it! In fact, I’ve already given her millions !”

For all her bluster, she may as well have been a crippled woman being chased down a dark field by a rapist with superpowers. Reina guffawed and wet-farted. “She’s cheating and stealing from you because you’re old, old, old . Look at your skin . The young do not love the old!”

Dusty walked from the room and out of the building. She moved listlessly toward the car and stopped. No: she would go back in — had to. She’d do what she promised herself then never return.

The twins on the couch were gone and so was the pianist.

An orderly in a hairnet had just brought a lunch tray and Reina was snarling that she wasn’t hungry. Dusty was surprised when her mother asked her for help. A happy-faced R.N. came in and Dusty told her that Mom would eat later, they were going to visit awhile longer, it was all good. The nurse said of course , then, with comic flourish, reassured that “Your mother eats… whenever she wants to!”

“I’m sure she does,” said Dusty.

The nurse said, “No one’s on a timetable here.”

Everyone left.

Dusty steeled herself.

“Mother,” she said studiously. “I wanted to ask about Aurora.”

There it was: the euphemism shot by a fainthearted cannoneer. Ginevra told her to expect nothing, which was understood. Therapist and client agreed to call it an exercise —just asking the question was an important step in healing . Dusty had even psyched herself up the night before by performing a visual meditation, linking this final errand to the closing of the lid of Reina’s coffin.

“Can you tell me what happened to her? Years ago you told me she was adopted by a ‘nice family’—Daddy told me that too. But you never… we never really talked about it. Ever! Why? Why didn’t we?” The old woman remained quiet and expressionless. “But we can now . Can you tell me anything? About the details? Mother, is there anything you can remember?”

The trickster genius of wet brain lay in its oracular unpredictability; Dusty’s arrows might elicit cyclopean rage, the flinch of nonresponse, or essential truths. Hope rose hard, like a hundred shuttlecocks in her chest.

“I’d like to know if you ever met them, that’s all. The people who adopted Aurora.”

“Oh, just forget it.”

Reina put on her warty Brueghel peasant face — not a harbinger of good things.

“Forget it? I basically had to! I basically had to arrange my entire life around forgetting it — so don’t tell me to forget it!”