‘Just that I failed to get some advertising in Flemington today which would’ve been useful for the Bugle.’ That was true. Edith had spent more than three hours driving, waiting, then talking to the manager of a department store, but the store preferred to stick with the local paper plus their throw-away system.
‘George okay?’ Cliffie asked with a nervous glance at his mother. They were then having dinner.
‘He’s all right. Why not?’
Cliffie took a forkful of baked beans. ‘When is he going into this nursing home?’
‘What nursing home?’ Edith waited.
‘I thought you were talking about it – you and Aunt Melanie.’
Edith said calmly, ‘I don’t think George has said anything about it.’ She suddenly had a recollection of the beige, two-story building on a hill about twelve miles from Brunswick Corner – resident apartments or some such euphemistic appellation it had, plus a real name like Sunset Lodge. Old people had apartments of their own, even with kitchens, and nurses were on hand. Gert had pointed it out to Edith years ago, when they had been driving past. Edith wondered if she should sound it out.
Cliffie soon drifted to the living room for television, Edith did the dishes, and when she was finished, Cliffie had left the house. Cliffie couldn’t be upstairs with George, could he? She went into the hall to hear, if she could, any murmur of voices. Sometimes Cliffie went up to see George, or to look at him, because George was so often asleep. But Edith sensed that Cliffie was not in the house. She was quite good at sensing that (had never been wrong that she could recall), so she decided to do some Bugle work, type a couple of reminder letters about subscriptions, then go to bed with a book.
The next morning shortly after 8, the telephone rang, and it was Melanie herself.
‘I’m phoning from the hospital, but I’m going home in two days. Isn’t that nice?’ Melanie said.
Edith had been awaiting a word from her mother, had been afraid to ring the hospital. She felt she had received a charge of energy herself. ‘I can’t believe it! I’m so glad, Aunt Mel’nie! I was worried!’
Melanie chuckled. ‘I think I was too! Can’t talk long, m’dear, doctor’s orders.’
When they hung up, Edith was smiling a broad smile, for the first time in days, she realized. Good old Melanie! How nice to have a great-aunt you could say to ‘I was worried!’ as if she were a contemporary and a pal!
Edith rang up Gert to tell her the good news, because only yesterday Edith had told Gert that she was quite braced for her great-aunt’s demise. Edith breezed through her chores that morning, changed her bed and Cliffie’s, and took the sheets to the launderette to be collected in the afternoon, then stopped at Stan’s for cough syrup for George, because his bottle had run out. She thought of changing George’s bed, but she deliberately changed his bed, usually, on a different day so she wouldn’t have so many beds to do the same day. She’d best stick to that. Since she was feeling strong and optimistic, however, she thought she might approach George on the subject of rest homes.
It was around 11:30 when she went up to George’s room, and she thought of telling him the good news about Melanie, then realized that George did not know Melanie had been ill. She knocked on the partly open door, and called, ‘George?’
Thank goodness, he wasn’t sound asleep, and he moved his head on the pillow, looking toward the door. ‘Edith.’
‘George, I —’ Edith pulled a straight chair nearer his bed and sat down. She made sure he was reasonably alert before she went on. ‘George, I’m wondering if you wouldn’t be more comfortable in a place near here that has residential apartments. You’d have your own things around you, a nurse day and night when you push a button. Just twelve miles from here!’
George was watching her with a pink, fearful expression. Edith wished she had visited the place before talking with him.
‘To go off somewhere?’ George asked. ‘Who?’
‘I was talking about residents’ apartments,’ Edith began again somewhat louder. She was glad Cliffie had gone out. ‘There’s a place near here. Where you’d be more comfortable than here! Better service. Other people to talk to!’
George shook his head. ‘Don’t need other people!’ He panted slightly. ‘Me?’
Edith had taken a breath, but she released the breath, wordless. She tried again. ‘But I do!’ Now it was like a battle. And was she going to yield? ‘I’m busy enough, George. If you wouldn’t mind – If you could think about it —’
The front door slammed shut. Cliffie had returned. Edith got up and closed George’s door, and returned to the chair.
‘If you wouldn’t mind too much, George – just for a couple of months – try it. Then you could come back here if you didn’t like it.’ Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
‘Don’t want to go anywhere.’
‘I’m tired!’ Tired of the goddam trays, library books, bedpans, which she’d had to bring to him several times in the last weeks when he’d shouted for her. ‘A vacation from each other for a while —’ She’d go to the residential apartments place and get some information, a brochure to show him. Edith stood up, frustrated, aching, miserable.
George’s brown, shiny, pink-rimmed eyes gazed at her with sadness and mistrust.
‘I’ll be going, George!’ she shouted. ‘Do you need anything now? – Lunch coming soon.’ Edith went out.
Cliffie was standing in the hall, leaning against the balustrade. ‘What was all that?’ he asked with interest.
Edith was sure he knew what it was.
Cliffie was smiling.
Edith continued down the stairs, suddenly exhausted. She’d go to the damned home after lunch, she vowed to herself.
‘Is he leaving?’ Cliffie asked, following her.
‘Not sure. Maybe,’ Edith replied as matter of factly as she could. ‘Are you in for lunch, by the way?’
‘Oh – I dunno. It’s not even twelve yet.’
Edith detested his vagueness.
‘Be great if he’d leave. It’d give you an extra room.’
‘I thought you wanted that room.’ Edith spoke just to be saying something, but it was true.
‘I don’t want it! After he’s been there so long? – Oh, well, if we got new furniture, changed it around, maybe painted the room —’
Edith would have liked a scotch before lunch, but didn’t take one, because Cliffie certainly would have joined her or made a remark, because Edith almost never drank anything at noon. She decided to have a sandwich and a glass of milk and start out right away for the Sunset Lodge or whatever it was.
Cliffie hung about the kitchen, sipping from a can of beer. ‘Do you think he’ll leave?’
‘Cliffie, I don’t know. It’s for him to decide.’
‘Ha! What can that old vegetable decide?’
Edith managed to ignore it.
Just after 1 (Cliffie had gone off earlier without lunch), Edith drove to the residential apartments, which she couldn’t find and had to inquire for at a gas station. She had overshot. It was called Sunset Pines, she was told. It was low and beige as she remembered it, nestled behind a green hill. Edith drove slowly toward it, alert for anything that looked like an entrance. She found it.
The hall floor was of black linoleum with a few oriental rugs here and there. There was a smell of carrots or carrot soup (nicer than medicine anyway), potted plants, a switchboard at which sat a nurse in blue and white. Edith said she wanted to inquire about accommodation for a male resident. The nurse summoned a younger nurse who was able to show Edith a typical room, the nurse told her, this one with bath, though not all the rooms had private baths. In the hall, some old people walked about, others propelled themselves in wheelchairs. The room was square, quite adequate and cheerful, Edith thought. The Sunset Pines was U-shaped. A ramp led down to a sunparlor at one end of the U, with a television set that several guests were watching. The other end of the U was a dining hall. ‘For our guests who are ambulant,’ said
the nurse. ‘Of course we serve trays, if people can’t get up.’ The price was two hundred dollars a week for a room with bath and full meals and monthly check-up, but did not include medicines and drugs, and a room without bath was a hundred and eighty per week. ‘Of course the pension for Senior Citizens and Medicare take care of much of the expenses.’
Edith was a little stunned by the price, but after all George had it, and as Brett had said a few times, he couldn’t take it with him. Edith thanked the nurse, said she would be in touch, and departed with a handful of brochures and a couple of postcards with color photographs of exterior and interior views of Sunset Pines, which looked quite attractive, though devoid of guests, even of nurses.
Since it was nearly 4 when she got home, Edith made tea for herself and George, and took the brochures up with the tray. George was asleep, and she had first to put the tray on a chair and remove from the bed his lunch tray, which she set on the hall floor. George had to creep to the bathroom as soon as he awakened. He used his cane. Tap-tap. When he came back and had settled himself in bed, Edith poured his tea.
‘I went to the apartment place today,’ Edith shouted freely, because Cliffie was still out. ‘Brought you some pictures of it.’ She showed him the postcards first, then the brochure which was printed on pale green paper.
‘Where is this?’ George asked, drooling a bit.
‘Oh, not far! Just twelve miles away.’
Propped on one elbow, George looked through it all. ‘Don’t like places like this,’ he remarked. ‘Like hospitals!’
Edith glanced at his worn slippers, flattened at the heels because he never put them quite on, and at a crumpled handkerchief on the floor which contained God knew what but was her job to pick up.
‘Expensive too,’ George added.
You must be a Christian, Edith told herself, but since this didn’t always work and wasn’t even always to be advised, she thought with equal swiftness that she’d better hang onto the initiative she had, so she plunged ahead and said, ‘Well, George, as I told you today, I have enough to do running this house – without Brett, you know – and I’m going to take a part-time job! I thought I could make it without but —’ Another deep breath and she went on, regardless of how much George could hear. ‘There’s a shop willing to take me on afternoons now, which is something, considering the summer’s the most profitable for the shops here, and summer’s over. The point is, George, you’ve got the money to take care of yourself!’ After this, Edith felt exhausted.
George let his elbow collapse, and fell back upon his pillow with his aristocratic nose pointed toward the ceiling.
God damn it, Edith said to herself, she’d call up Brett tonight. She stood up. ‘Will you consider it, George?’
‘Don’t want to go anywhere. No, I don’t.’
Edith, feeling she had the patience of Job, gathered what she could of the clutter of dirty glasses and cups and teaspoons, a handkerchief, a napkin, and descended with the tray. Thank God, he hadn’t wet the bed; one had to be thankful for small things. She thought a letter to Brett might be more forceful than a phone call.
When she had brought down the second tray and washed up she went to her workroom and began the letter. She told Brett about visiting Sunset Pines and her failure to interest George in going there.
Maybe you would have more influence if you wrote or spoke to him? I haven’t mentioned it before but now and then he needs a bedpan. Or did I mention it before? Both Melanie and I think it your responsibility as well as mine…
Edith felt a small admiration for her understatement. That day was Wednesday. The letter would go off tomorrow and Brett would have it by Friday.
15
Brett responded with a telephone call Friday evening. Frances Quickman happened to be with Edith, as Frances was returning a dozen or so glasses she had borrowed for a church bazaar.
‘Suppose I catch that ten-thirty bus out tomorrow morning?’ Brett said. ‘I can see it’s time I had a talk with the old boy.’
Edith agreed. She felt relieved. She was going to start work Monday at the Thatchery, a shop on Main Street. Six afternoons a week from 2 until 7 p.m. Edith was glad she would have something definite to tell Brett about a job.
Frances, then having a gin and tonic, looked at Edith as if she might have heard Brett’s name, so Edith said:
‘Brett. He’s coming tomorrow morning. Going to have a word with old George. We’re thinking he ought to go into a nursing home. Something nice, like Sunset Pines.’
Frances wasn’t nearly so intimate a friend as Gert, but Edith didn’t mind at all, just now, coming out with the truth to Frances about Brett and George. What was there to be ashamed of?
Frances said she had once visited someone at Sunset Pines, and thought it a pleasant and well-run place. ‘George must be quite a strain on you – sometimes.’
‘He’s Brett’s uncle after all,’ Edith said with a smile.
‘And how is Brett doing?’
Edith knew she really meant how were Brett and Carol doing. ‘I think very well – likes his job,’ Edith replied. ‘And I think he wants to marry the girl.’ Edith laughed a little. Best to come out with it. Via Gert, Edith supposed, everyone would sooner or later know that Brett and she were divorced, that it wasn’t a temporary separation.
‘You’re taking it awfully well,’ Frances said with fervor. ‘I’m not sure I could do the same. And your house and yard still looks so nice – And Cliffie?’
‘Oh, he’s —’ Edith had been about to say he was doing splendidly. But at what? Hydraulic engineering? Edith smiled at herself this time. ‘Cliffie’s just the same,’ Edith said with equal frankness. ‘Works sometimes at the Chop House as you may —’
‘We’ve seen him there, yes! He waited on our table one night. Did quite well!’ Frances laughed merrily.
‘Your table?’ Edith was startled. ‘He told me he was behind the bar. Well, he’d tell me a different story just to amuse himself. Then he works sometimes at the Stud Box – God, these names!’
‘Oh, sure! The nice gay boys’ place. Well, I must say I’ve bought Ben some awfully good things there, sweaters and sports jackets. Good quality. And they don’t mind taking things back if they don’t fit. But I never saw Cliffie there.’
‘I never know when he’s there,’ Edith said gaily. ‘He’s anything but regular – about anything.’ She realized she was happy, because she was going to see Brett tomorrow.
‘Tell Brett to come over and have a drink with us. Both of you, a pre-lunch drink. Think you can manage? I’ll be finished shopping by noon at least, so just walk in the door. Love to see Brett again.’
Edith said they probably would.
Brett came the next morning just after 12. Edith had not gone to the bus stop to meet him, because the walk to the house was short, and she had thought meeting him might look more anxious than friendly. She had done the shopping and intended to make steak au poivre that evening, hoping Brett could stay. Brett wore his old plaid woolen jacket that he called his hunting jacket, in which he had never gone hunting however.
‘So – how are you?’ Brett asked.
‘All right, I suppose. The Quickmans want us to come for a pre-lunch drink. But maybe you want to see George first.’
‘I do – frankly.’ Brett’s brows drew together. Edith thought there was more gray in his hair.
‘Why don’t you go up alone – surprise him? Well, it won’t surprise him, because I told him you were coming today. Meanwhile I’ll fix his lunch tray.’
‘I will. Where’s Cliffie?’
‘Out somewhere. I think he’ll be in for lunch because I asked him to be. Told him you’d be here.’
Brett started up the stairs. ‘Nelson! Hey, you’ve grown some more! Big boy! Don’t be afraid!’
Edith heard Brett’s laugh. Then she went into the kitchen to make an egg salad sandwich on toast for George, with a glass of milk. She put the finishing touches to their lunch table, wine glasses, on
e small red rose which was almost the last of summer, then she carried George’s tray up. To her surprise, Brett was just crossing the hall to come downstairs. He had a pained expression and he shook his head at Edith. Edith went on into George’s room with the tray.
George was lying back on his pillows, eyes shut, and one bony hand, a flat, rail-like wrist above it, exposed by the pushed back pajama sleeve, lay along the edge of the bed. He had covered his eyes with the back of his left hand, a frequent attitude.
‘Lunch, George! How’re you feeling?’ Edith didn’t care about George’s answer, if any, set the tray as firmly as possible over his thighs just above his knees, so he could raise up and eat, then went out to speak with Brett.