Exit Lines Page 4

  “And you know,” Emily added, “you shouldn’t go on living alone. It’s not safe. It’s a worry.” Greta saw she meant it was a worry for them, which is an unfair burden for a mother to put on her children. Also, it would be unfair to suggest moving to live with one of them, when they have their own complicated responsibilities, their own households. And so they pay for her to be here. They are generous girls.

  They have come to town as they could to help choose what she could keep, what they wanted to keep, what must be thrown out, sold, given to charity: memory after memory assessed, packed or discarded. She has kept, besides necessary clothing and furniture, her small collection of jewellery, those gifts from a reckless time, and some photos: decades-old, yellowy, curled ones of the faded faces of the family left behind; snapshots of Dolph in his youth; and representative pictures of the girls through the years, and of their children too, now themselves all grown up.

  Yesterday they chose a photograph of her and the three of them, from when she was in her prime and they were still young, for the display case outside her door—“just so everybody knows you’ve got an army backing you up,” Patricia said, laughing but serious too. Other photographs, propped on wide window ledge, TV cabinet, the new space-saving wooden shelves the girls have installed on her walls, form a haphazard kaleidoscope of a great many years. Greta more resembles her father, but last night, spirits at last free to fall, she was swamped for the first time in years by an unexpected longing, like a child’s, for refuge in the arms of her mother. Her mother is a plump middle-aged woman staring formally and uncomfortably out of the small portrait Greta brought with her to this country; a woman who has been dead now for two decades; whom Greta has not seen in the flesh for much longer than that, not since she and Dolph waved their frantically hopeful goodbyes to their lined-up families on the left-behind train platform; but who last night poked her way into Greta’s newest new world to say, although in her own language, Do you see again how brave a mother must be?

  A simple tearless wave, such as Greta’s yesterday, takes such courage.

  She remembers well George’s devotion to his daughter. Now Colette is whatever she is—at the moment, a woman in yellow pushing her father around a retirement home in his wheelchair. While Greta’s Sally is a librarian at a university, her Emily markets things like laundry soap for a large corporation and her Patricia is a pharmacist. All of them far away, here and there. Busy, yes.

  Of course Greta expected to encounter familiar faces at the Idyll Inn, but oh, her heart.

  A young foreigner does what she can with whatever she has. Short of the largest sins, she does what she must.

  A good mother hoards her affections, and for the most part invests them in her children, where they belong.

  A young, widowed, foreign good mother of three must be brave as stone. But she is not stone.

  It is all life, all experience. She should be glad, is glad, to be breathing; has come close enough to never breathing again under the assault of heart attack. She was able to call her own ambulance, but what, as the girls pointed out, if she had not been? At the Idyll Inn, by pressing the button that hangs at her throat, the least pretty and most unjewelled of necklaces, she will swiftly have help. Otherwise—as did not need explaining, although the heart doctor explained anyway—she risked dying alone, going undiscovered until one of the girls grew alarmed by an unanswered phone, or a neighbour noticed mail piling up. The word deliquesce comes to mind from her days of learning the language. It sounds close to delicious, in a sliding, slippery way, but it is instead a terrible damp, rotting word.

  There was once a time when living under the same roof as George could have thrilled. It is not very funny when desires come true too late to be any longer desired.

  She will return to her room before he wheels past again, and telephone her daughters, as she has promised. That obligation, to care for children even when they are no longer children—that is not love like in a foolish movie or romantic book. It is what remains.

  Sally and Emily have similar questions: “Are you sure you like the place?” and “Do you need anything we didn’t think of?” and “What have you been doing?” and “What are the meals like?” and “Do the staff seem all right?” and “Have you run into any interesting people yet, anybody you know?” Yes, no, getting used to everything new, better than she expected, as far as she knows to this point, and yes, she has nearly run into someone interesting she knows. “You sound great, Mother,” says Emily; and “I’m so pleased this is working out for you,” says Sally. Patricia’s phone rings until her voicemail picks up. Greta worries about her, the risk of robberies and violence seeming quite high at a pharmacy in a large city where addicts and other desperate people are likely to gather, but “Don’t fuss, Mum,” Patricia always says, “I don’t work alone, and my foot’s never far from the panic button, and even if I wanted to be a hero, which I don’t, we’re never supposed to resist, just hand over whatever. Anyway, it’s never happened, at least not to me, so don’t worry.” In Greta’s view, the fact that something has not happened only increases the chances it will. “That makes no sense, Mum. Statistically, it’s not how things work.”

  Maybe not. But in life? Maybe so.

  Unlike her sisters, Patricia lives in a high-rise, a condominium where, Greta imagines, mysteriously glamorous events can occur in the life of a woman who, also unlike her sisters, is not married and does not have children. “I am just calling to let you know all is fine,” she tells the voicemail. “I am very pleased and grateful to be here, thank you. I am leaving my room now, so there is no need to call back. There is always something to do here, you know.”

  There are more people than George moving in, with much bustling and clatter, and calm voices, and shouting or patient ones, beyond Greta’s door. This is frightening, so many strangers among whom she will not belong. This fear is not unfamiliar. Like other fears, it must be faced promptly because it will not go away by avoiding it. “It’ll be an adventure, Mum,” Sally said yesterday as they were leaving, which is a good, but impossible, way to think. They mean well, her girls.

  Greta does not have an understanding yet of the staff, but the administrator, named Annabel, like a cow, was in Emily’s high school class, which led to some friendly conversation as Greta moved in, and may or may not create special benevolences. Like a good clerk, which she was, Greta intends to be patient even with the clumsy or careless. Like a good customer, she will be judicious in her demands and generous with her gratitude. That is what people respond kindly to, as she learned in her jobs and raising her girls. She must begin in this fancy place as she means to go on: with the courage to be not a foreigner, to be no longer a clerk; to move as if she belongs, head high and stride sure—she can do this, she will, but oh, it is a hard, hard thing to do.

  6

  THE BABY OF THE PLACE…

  BUT HERE IS SOMETHING ELSE TO GET USED TO: rounding the corner too swiftly in her anxiety—what if others are already gathered at tables, with no space for her and no interest either, and she finds no one else ever to talk to or be with and must retreat to her room and be lonely and alone here for the rest of her life, what if all that?—Greta nearly runs down, almost trips over a little woman walking with the aid of one of those contraptions with wheels. “Pardon me, I am so sorry.” She knows this small person, although vaguely and in more upright posture, but without at the moment a name—a customer of shampoos and lipsticks when Greta worked as a clerk at Alf Stryker’s drugstore? “I am going too fast on my way to the coffee, would you join me? I am by the way Greta Bauer.”

  Here in this small rush of words is her newest brave start.

  The woman is very small, with skin of tissuey softness, and pale brown eyes—faded eyes? Her hair waves in white-sugary fashion, and would once have been brown, like her eyes. Even so, Greta can see that when they were small, her girls might have called an old person of such stooped appearance a witch, although Greta would correct that sort of m
eanness. “Witches can be good, do not believe all you read,” she might say. Or “Appearance means nothing,” which of course is untrue.

  Freeing a hand for Greta to shake, very gently because how fragile these bones feel, this witch, good or bad, says, “How do you do. I’m Ruth Friedman, and I’d be delighted to join you. I’ve been in my room long enough. I’m in 3, close to the dining room. It takes me so long to get where I’m going these days, I need the head start.”

  See how easy?

  “You look familiar,” this Ruth Friedman says. “Have we met?”

  “I worked for many years at the Stryker drugstore. I think I served you then?”

  “Oh, of course. We kept our agency’s pharmacy account at Stryker’s, so I shopped there for myself too.” It speaks well of Greta as a mother that they never encountered each other the other way around, in the course of Ruth’s duties. “I don’t know if you remember, I was with Children’s Aid.”

  That would be interesting, and no doubt sad also, but what should a good mother and store clerk, concerned mainly, like most people, with keeping her own family’s head above water, know about the dark, hidden places of this pleasant, treed, rivered, hilled city? Greta knows some things, but not those particular ones. “If you would like to sit, I can get what we want. Would you prefer coffee or tea, and shall I get us cookies also?”

  Neither coffee nor tea is recommended for osteo, or for people who’ve had heart attacks, but this is a matter of first impressions and getting acquainted, and anyway, how much harm can they do? “Coffee, please, with plenty of milk and no sugar. Cookies would be lovely as well.” It’s slightly alarming to Ruth that in the process of helping her get seated, Greta pulls the walker just out of reach. Ruth can get by without it, but it’s a comfort and convenience. Also, she is vulnerable to minor panics if she starts feeling trapped; like in the old days, finding herself in a small, one-exit apartment, for unhappy reasons, with a large, angry man, some unstrung father. This has happened. Still, Greta does not strike her right off the bat as a person inclined to do harm.

  First, do no harm, is the pledge doctors make, but that is a much harder, more ambiguous goal for anyone, not only for doctors, than people might think; even quite unrealistically ambitious.

  Ruth assumes that this week, with all the commotion and racket of people moving in, will not be typical. At the moment, the lounge is an oasis, and it’s thoughtful of Greta Bauer to bring coffee and cookies right to Ruth’s side—in these very practical and fundamental ways, the place is not terrible.

  As for the rest, well, that will be up to her.

  Her reason for moving here must be different from other people’s. Otherwise (and how can she not smile at this, so that the nice Greta person across the room at the coffee machine thinks she’s smiling at her, and smiles back)—otherwise, such mass catastrophe would lie ahead for the poor Idyll Inn staff! She is proposing a far greater tumble and vault than her lithe former body could have imagined, decades ago, when she was a gymnast performing high, airy leaps.

  Here, she already feels almost light again. In the absence of Bernard, the weight and burden of history has been haunting their little white-vinyl-clad home, no escape. Even for only one person—especially for only one—that house is too small to contain so much time, but here, in this newest, most cheerfully inoffensive place there is no history at all, good or bad, hers or anyone else’s, steeped yet into the walls. Here too, staff, although no match for Bernard’s tender fingers, are efficient and useful, in her experience to this early point. “And so,” she asks, as Greta settles into the chair opposite, “do you like the place so far?”

  “Yes, it is very fine. My generous daughters help me to pay, or I could never afford it.”

  Ruth has noted the tinge of accent, the slight labouring over words. There are certain old drumbeats that can cause small hairs to rise on the back of her neck, even though they have nothing directly to do with her or, most likely, with this woman sitting opposite, dipping a chocolate chip cookie into her coffee. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that some history is not yet ancient; that the afterlife of war and holocaust is long and may manifest itself unexpectedly. Like now. “That’s wonderful. You must be proud.”

  “I am, yes.” Greta beams. Most mothers do. “And you worked with children in trouble?”

  “Whole families in trouble, one way and another. Honestly, the people who should not have children but do, without even thinking about whether they have any talent at all for the job—it’s shocking sometimes.”

  Like many parents Ruth has encountered, Greta looks puzzled by notions of talent or job. “I confess, I gave it no thought myself. But I am fortunate, I know, with my girls.”

  “Obviously they’ve been fortunate as well.”

  Greta nods. Obviously she agrees. “You have children?”

  “No. It was more than enough to worry about other people’s.” No need to mention that, fierce as she may be on the subject of children’s general well-being and safety, Ruth isn’t all that individually fond of them; whereas in her experience people are normally vastly sentimental about their own children, but have no broader affections when it comes to weighing personal comforts against keeping the offspring of strangers here or anywhere else in the world fed, safe or even alive. But a familiar, infuriating pity has flickered across Greta’s face—no children, too bad, what a shame! “I saw far too many examples of ghastly families,” Ruth adds. “That alone was far from encouraging.”

  Again Greta nods. What a large head she has, made larger by a mass of thick silvery hair, and blunt features, blue eyes—a striking woman, Ruth expects, in her youth, back in a time, unlike now, when voluptuousness could be much the same thing as beauty. “That is so, families can be terrible, I know. In the apartment downstairs from mine lived for a while people who shouted and struck each other. I would go to their door to say I would call your very agency, or the police, and they would be quiet then for a time. They moved away finally. You would see much worse than that?”

  “Yes. Although you never know. It seems to be hard to decide when to call in the authorities.” Ruth hopes she hasn’t implied that Greta’s downstairs neighbours moved away and kept right on yelling and landing blows on each other when they might have been stopped by a phone call. They would not have been stopped. Only crises and catastrophes ever were. Sometimes.

  Ruth is exhausted by tales and images that take up space she needs now for quite other purposes.

  So many people these days seem too young for their duties—firefighters, police officers, lawyers, they all look like apple-cheeked innocents. Bernard’s oncologist, too: Dr. Lucy Holmes, a mere infant, arriving in town to take up her practice just in time to stick Ruth’s husband into a long, claustrophobic scanning machine, and later to lean forward and take his and Ruth’s hands in her own and say, “I’m sorry. It isn’t good news.”

  Indeed it was not. What Ruth and Bernard had taken to be swellings and tweaks of pain associated with aging were instead cancers busily consuming, one by one, his most necessary organs. “I see,” Ruth and Bernard said, “I see,” but of course they did not, right away.

  Whoever does?

  “We can try treating aggressively,” Lucy said. “There’s always a chance.” But her tone suggested otherwise. “And you know, there are wonderfully effective pain control methods these days, as well as all sorts of other resources. Survivor groups, counsellors, therapists.”

  “Thank you.” But Bernard’s life was not a democracy. Ruth, even Lucy, could offer opinions, but only Bernard and the cancer had votes.

  Ruth has heard both lovemaking and sleep referred to as the little death. They are delicious in their quite different ways, but what is either compared with the real one? Back home, she and Bernard wept and shouted and cried out, “Why me, why you?” and held tight to each other.

  And then they got on with things. “I’m a widow,” she tells Greta. “My husband died just over a year ago. You
too?”

  “A widow, yes. Not so recent, however.”

  “I expect most of us here are.”

  “Yes.”

  Ruth told Annabel Walker that, living alone, she was finding the osteo made it too difficult to properly look after herself, as well as occasionally dangerous. Helping Ruth choose a suite, Annabel took care to point out that the Idyll Inn was not a place for the seriously medically needy, but for people able to cope, with some help. “Well,” Ruth told her, “I may be slow, but I get there. There’s no question about coping.” In its way this is true enough. Reminders of purpose do sizzle-bubble, though, causing her to close her eyes briefly in anticipation and alarm when they erupt, which reasonably enough is fairly often, including right now.

  The nice Greta person is asking, “Will you know many people who live here?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. There could be an exceptionally successful child from the past who’s managed to get a job in the kitchen, or as one of the aides.” This is possible, but the odds were always against those castaways and brutalized youth, that infant debris, growing into thriving adulthood, even minimum-wage adulthood. “Or an old board member taking up residence. A different category, that would be. I mean, different from both the children and me.”

  “As I will see customers, but not other clerks?”

  “Exactly.” A matter of class; a bond of sorts even though, strictly speaking, Ruth herself was once among Greta’s customers. “The way it’s maybe not as easy for us to afford the place. I only have my little pensions and the money from selling our house. My house.” That’s been one of the problems, hasn’t it, that so much has refused to become singular after devoted decades of plural?