The Black House
Lois and Herbert drove to the Hilltop Home just before seven that evening. They were received by a young nurse in blue and white uniform, who sat with them in a waiting room for a few minutes and told them that the ambulant guests were having their dinner in the refectory, and that she had spoken to three or four couples about the McIntyres’ offer, and two of the couples had been interested, and two hadn’t.
“These senior citizens don’t always know what’s good for them,” the nurse said, smiling. “How long did you and your husband plan on, Mrs. McIntyre?”
“Well—doesn’t it depend on whether they’re happy?” Lois asked.
The nurse pondered with a slight frown, and Lois felt that she wasn’t thinking about her question, but was turning over a formularized response. “I asked because we usually consider these arrangements permanent, unless of course the single guest or the couple wishes to return to the Hilltop.”
Lois felt a cold shock, and supposed that Herbert did too, and she did not look at him. “Has that happened? They want to come back?”
“Not often!” The nurse’s laugh sounded merry and practiced.
They were introduced to Boris and Edith Basinsky by the nurse in blue and white. This was in the “TV room,” which was a big long room with two television sets offering different programs. Boris Basinsky had Parkinson’s disease, the nurse volunteered within Mr. Basinsky’s hearing. His face was rather gray, but he smiled, and extended a shaking hand to Herbert, who shook it firmly. His wife, Edith, appeared older than he and rather thin, though her blue eyes looked at the McIntyres brightly. The TV noise conflicted with the words the McIntyres were trying to exchange with the Basinskys, such as, “We live nearby . . . we’re thinking . . .” and the Basinskys’ “Yes, Nurse Phyllis told us about you today. . . .”
Then the Forsters, Mamie and Albert. Mamie had broken her hip a year ago, but could walk now with a cane. Her husband was a tall and lanky type, rather deaf and wearing a hearing aid whose cord disappeared down the open collar of his shirt. His health was quite good, said Nurse Phyllis, except for a recent stroke which made it difficult for him to walk, but he did walk, with a cane also.
“The Forsters have one son, but he lives in California and—isn’t in a good position to take them on. Same with the two or three grandchildren,” said Nurse Phyllis. “Mamie loves to knit. And you know a lot about gardening, don’t you, Mamie?”
Mamie’s eyes drank in the McIntyres as she nodded.
Lois felt suddenly overwhelmed, somehow drowned by gray heads all around her, wrinkled faces tipped back in laughter at the events on the TV screen. She clutched Herbert’s tweed jacket sleeve.
That night around midnight, they decided on the Forsters. Later, they were to ask themselves, had they decided on the Forsters because their name sounded more ordinary, more “Anglo-Saxon”? Mightn’t the Basinskys have been an easier pair, even if the man had Parkinson’s, which required the occasional enema, Nurse Phyllis had warned?
A few days later, on a Sunday, Mamie and Albert Forster were installed in the McIntyre house. In the preceding week, a middle-aged woman from the Hilltop Home had come to inspect the house and the room the Forsters would have, and seemed genuinely pleased with the standard of comfort the McIntyres could offer. The Forsters took the room the McIntyres called their guest room, the prettier of the two extra rooms upstairs, with its two windows giving on the front lawn. It had a double bed, which the McIntyres thought the Forsters wouldn’t object to, though they didn’t consult the Forsters about it. Lois had cleared the guest room closet completely, and also the chest of drawers. She had brought an armchair from the other twin-bed spare room, which meant two comfortable armchairs for the Forsters. The bathroom was just across the hall, the main bathroom with a tub in it, though downstairs there was also a shower with basin and toilet. This move took place around 5 P.M. Lois’s and Herbert’s neighbors the Mitchells, who lived about a mile away, had asked them for drinks, which usually meant dinner, but Herbert had declined on Saturday on the telephone, and had explained why. Then Pete Mitchell had said, “I understand—but how about our dropping in on you tomorrow around seven? For half an hour?”
“Sure.” Herbert had smiled, realizing that the Mitchells were simply curious about the elderly pair. Pete Mitchell was a history professor at a local college. The Mitchells and the McIntyres often got together to compare notes for their work.
And here they were, Pete and Ruth Mitchell, Pete standing in the living room with his scotch on the rocks, and Ruth with a Dubonnet and soda in an armchair, both smiling.
“Seriously,” Pete said, “how long is this going to last? Did you have to sign anything?” Pete spoke softly, as if the Forsters, way upstairs and in a remote corner, might hear them.
“Well—paper of agreement—responsibility, yes. I read it over, no mention of—time limit for either of us, perpetuity or anything like that.”
Ruth Mitchell laughed. “Perpetuity!”
“Where’s Lois?” Pete asked.
“Oh, she’s—” At that moment, Herbert saw her entering the living room, brushing her hair to one side with a hand, and it struck him that she looked tired. “Everything okay, darling?”
“Hel-lo, Ruth and Pete!” Lois said. “Yes, everything’s all right. I was just helping them unpack, hanging things and putting stuff in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I’d forgotten to clear a shelf there.”
“Lots of pills, I suppose,” said Pete, his eyes still bright with curiosity. “But you said they were both ambulant at least.”
“Oh sure,” said Lois. “In fact I asked them to come down and join us. They might like—Oh, there’s some white wine in the fridge, isn’t there, Herb? Tonic too.”
“Can they get down the stairs all right?” asked Herbert, suddenly recalling their rather slow progress up the stairs. Herbert went off toward the stairway.
Lois followed him.
At that moment, Mamie Forster was descending the stairs one at a time, with a hand touching the wall, and her husband, also with his cane, was just behind her. As Herbert dashed up to lend an arm to Mamie, Albert caught his heel, lurched forward and bumped his wife who went tumbling toward Herbert. Albert regained his balance with his cane, Herbert seized Mamie’s right arm, but this did not prevent her from swinging forward and striking Lois who had started up the stairs at a fast pace. It was Lois who fell backward, landing on the floor and bumping her head against the wall. Mamie cried out with pain.
“My arm!” she said.
But Herbert had her, she hadn’t fallen, and he released her arm and looked to his wife. Lois was getting to her feet, rubbing her head, putting on a smile.
“I’m quite okay, Herb. Don’t worry.”
“Good idea—” Albert Forster was saying as he shuffled toward the living room.
“What?” Herbert hovered near Mamie, who was walking all right, but rubbing her arm.
“Good idea to put a handrail on those stairs!” Albert had a habit of shouting, perhaps because he did not move his lips much when he spoke, and therefore what he said was not clear.
Lois introduced Mamie and Albert Forster to Pete and Ruth, who got up from her armchair to offer it to one or the other of them. There were pleasant murmurs from the Mitchells, who hoped the Forsters would enjoy their new surroundings. The Mitchells’ eyes surveyed both the Forsters, Mamie’s round gray head with its quite thin hair all fluffed up and curled evidently by a professional hairdresser to make it seem more abundant, the pale pink apron that she wore over her cotton dress, her tan house slippers with limp red pompoms. Albert wore plaid house slippers, creaseless brown corduroy trousers, an old coat sweater over a flannel shirt. His expression was slightly frowning and aggressively inquisitive, as if consciously or unconsciously he had decided to hang on to an attitude of a more vigorous prime.
They wanted the
television on. There was a program at 7:30 that they always watched at the Hilltop.
“You don’t like television?” asked Mamie of Lois, who had just turned the set on. Mamie was seated now, still rubbing her right elbow.
“Oh, of course!” said Lois. “Why not?” she added gaily.
“We were—we were just wondering—since it’s there, why isn’t it on?” said Albert out of his slightly parted but hardly moving lips. If he had chewed tobacco, one would have thought that he was trying to hold some juice inside his lower lip.
As Lois thought this, Albert drooled a little saliva and caught it on the back of his hand. His pale blue eyes, now wide, had fixed on the television screen. Herbert came in with a tray that held a glass of white wine for Albert, tomato juice for Mamie, and a bowl of cashew nuts.
“Could you turn up the sound, Mis’r McIntyre?” asked Albert.
“This all right?” asked Herbert, having turned it up.
Albert first laughed at something on the screen—it was a sitcom and someone had slipped and fallen on a kitchen floor—and glanced at his wife to see if she was also amused. Smiling emptily, rubbing her elbow as if she had forgotten to stop, eyes on the screen, Mamie did not look at Albert. “More—louder, please, if y’don’t mind,” said Albert.
With a quick smile at Pete Mitchell, who was also smiling, Herbert put it up even louder, which precluded conversation. Herbert caught his wife’s eye and jerked his head toward the sunroom. The four adjourned, bringing their drinks, grinning.
“Whew!” said Ruth.
Pete laughed loudly, as Herbert closed the door to the living room. “Another TV set next, Herb. For them up in their room.”
Lois knew Pete was right. The Forsters could take the living room set, Lois was thinking. Herbert had a TV set here in his workroom. She was about to say something to this effect, when she heard, barely, a call from Mamie. The TV drama was over and its theme music boomed. Through the glass door, she saw Mamie looking at her, calling again. When Lois went into the living room, Mamie said:
“We’re used to eating at seven. Even earlier. What time do you people eat supper?”
Lois nodded—it was a bore to try to shout over the blaring TV—raised a forefinger to indicate that she would be right on the job, and went off to the kitchen. She was going to broil lamb chops for dinner, but the Forsters were in too much of a hurry for that.
After a few minutes, Herbert went looking for Lois, and found her spooning scrambled eggs onto warmed plates on the stove. She had made toast, and there were also slices of cold boiled ham on a separate plate. This was to go on trays of the kind that stood up on the floor.
“Help me with one of these?” Lois asked.
“The Mitchells think we’re nuts. They say it’s going to get worse—a lot worse. And then what do we do?”
“Maybe it won’t get worse,” Lois said.
Herbert wanted to pause a moment before taking the tray in. “You think after we tuck them in bed we could go over to the Mitchells’? They’ve asked us for dinner. You think it’s safe—to leave them?”
Lois hesitated, knowing Herbert knew it wasn’t safe. “No.”
THE LIVING ROOM television set was brought up to the Forsters’ room. TV was the Forsters’ main diversion or occupation, even their only one, from what Lois could see. It was on from morning till night, and Lois sometimes sneaked into their bedroom at eleven o’clock or later to switch it off, partly to save electricity, but mainly because the noise of it was maddening, and her and Herbert’s bedroom was adjacent on the same side of the hall. Lois took a small flashlight into their bedroom to do this. The Forsters’ teeth stood in two glasses on their night table, usually, though once Lois had seen a pair in a glass on the shelf in the bathroom, out of which she and Herbert had moved their toothbrushes, shampoos and shaving articles to the smaller bathroom downstairs. The teeth gave Lois an unpleasant shock, and so they did when she switched off the loud TV every night, even though she did not shine the light on them: she simply knew they were there, one pair, anyway, and maybe the second pair was in the big bathroom. She marveled that anyone could fall asleep with the TV’s bursts of canned laughter, marveled also that the sudden silence never woke the Forsters up. Mamie and Albert had said they would be more comfortable in separate beds, so Lois and Herbert had made the exchange between the two upstairs rooms, and the Forsters now had the twin beds.
A handrail had been installed on the stairway, a slender black iron rail, rather pretty and Spanish-looking. But now the Forsters seldom came downstairs, and Lois served their meals to them on trays. They loved the TV, they said, because it was in color, and those at the Hilltop hadn’t been. Lois took on the tray-carrying, thinking it was what was called women’s work, though Herbert fetched and carried some of the time too.
“Certainly a bore,” Herbert said, scowling one morning in his pajamas and dressing gown, about to take up the heavy tray of boiled eggs and teapot and toast. “But it’s better than having them fall down the stairs and break a leg, isn’t it?”
“Frankly, what’s the difference if one of them did have a leg broken now?” Lois replied, and giggled nervously.
Lois’s work suffered. She had to slow up on a long article she was writing for an historical quarterly, and the deadline made her anxious. She worked downstairs in a small study off the living room and on the other side of the living room from Herbert’s workroom. Three or four times a day she was summoned by a shout from Mamie or Albert—they wanted more hot water for their tea (four o’clock ritual), because it was too strong, or Albert had mislaid his glasses, and could Lois find them, because Mamie couldn’t. Sometimes Lois and Herbert had to be out of the house at the same time, Lois at the local library and Herbert at Bayswater. Lois had not the same joy as in former days on returning to her home: it wasn’t a haven any longer that belonged to her and Herbert, because the Forsters were upstairs and might at any moment yell for something. Albert smoked an occasional cigar, not a big fat one, but a brand that smelled bitter and nasty to Lois, and she could smell it even downstairs when he lit up. He had burnt two holes in the brown and yellow cover on his bed, much to Lois’s annoyance, as it was a handwoven blanket from Santa Fe. Lois had warned him and Mamie that letting ash drop could be dangerous. She hadn’t been able to tell, from Albert’s excuses, whether he had been asleep or merely careless.
Once, on returning from the library with some borrowed books and a folder of notes, Lois had been called upstairs by Mamie. Mamie was dressed, but lying on her bed, propped against pillows. The TV was not as loud as usual, and Albert appeared to be dozing on the other twin bed.
“Can’t find my teet!” Mamie said petulantly, tears started to her eyes, and Lois saw from her downturned mouth, her little clamped jaw, that she was indeed toothless just now.
“Well—that should be easy.” Lois went into the bathroom, but a glance revealed that no teeth or toothglass stood on the shelf above the basin. She even looked on the floor, then returned to the Forsters’ bedroom and looked around. “Did you have them out—in bed?”
Mamie hadn’t, and it was her lowers, not her uppers, and she was tired of looking. Lois looked under the bed, around the TV, the tops of the bookcases, the seats of the armchairs. Mamie assured Lois they were not in the pockets of her apron, but Lois felt the pockets anyway. Was old Albert playing a silly trick, playing at being asleep now? Lois realized that she didn’t really know these old people.
“You didn’t flush them down the toilet by accident?”
“No! And I’m tired of looking,” said Mamie. “I’m tired!”
“Were you downstairs?”
“No!”
Lois sighed, and went downstairs. She needed a cup of strong coffee. While she was making this, she noticed that the lid was off the cake tin, that a good bit of the pound cake was gone. Lois didn’t care about
the cake, but it was a clue: the teeth might be downstairs. Lois knew that Mamie—maybe both of them—came downstairs sometimes when she and Herbert were out. The big square ashtray on the coffee table would be turned a little so that it looked like a diamond shape, which Lois detested, or Herbert’s leather chair would be pulled out from his desk, instead of shoved close as he always left it, as if Mamie or Albert had tried the chair. Why couldn’t the Forsters be equally mobile for their meals? Now with her coffee mug in hand, Lois looked over her kitchen—for teeth. She looked in her own study, where nothing seemed out of place, then went through the living room, then into Herbert’s workroom. His chair was as he would have left it, but still she looked. They’ll turn up, she thought, if they weren’t somehow down the toilet. Finally, Lois sat down on the sofa with the rest of her coffee, and leaned back, trying to relax.
“My God!” she said, sitting up, setting the mug down on the coffee table. She had nearly spilled what was in the mug.
There were the teeth—lowers, Lois assumed—on the edge of the shelf of the coffee table that was otherwise filled with magazines. The denture looked shockingly narrow, like the lower jaw of a little rabbit. Lois took a breath. She would have to handle them. She went to the kitchen for a paper towel.
HERBERT LAUGHED LIKE A FOOL at the teeth story. They told it to their friends. They still had their friends, no change there. After two months, the McIntyres had had two or three rather noisy and late dinner parties at their house. With their TV going, the Forsters presumably heard nothing; at any rate, they didn’t complain or make a remark, and the McIntyres’ friends seemed to be able to forget there was an elderly pair upstairs, though everyone knew it. Lois did notice that she and Herbert couldn’t or didn’t invite their New York friends for the weekend any longer, realizing that their friends wouldn’t want to share the upstairs bathroom or the Forsters’ TV racket. Christopher Forster, the son in California, had written the McIntyres a letter in longhand. The letter read as if it had been prompted by the Hilltop Home: it was courteous, expressed gratitude, and he hoped that Mom and Dad were pleased with their new home.