The Year of Pleasures (24 page)

She stared at me, saying nothing. She was lying in bed in a flannel nightgown, under several blankets. The television was turned on but with no sound—some soap opera, it appeared, an overly made-up woman speaking earnestly to an overly made-up man. Lydia looked paler than when I’d last seen her, and though it was hard to assign a word like
fragile
to one so fiery, her voice was softer, her posture less erect. But her eyes were as brightly focused as before, peremptorily accusatory, and there was about her, even in repose, an air of hectic energy.

“Are you here to fix the television?” she asked. “About time!”

“No.” I told her my name again. “I’m the one who bought your house.”

She drew back into her pillows. “Oh, no you don’t. I have nothing to do with that house anymore. Any problems, you just take to somebody else. Now get out or I’ll call the nurse.”

I moved toward her. “I’m not having any problems. I just found something I thought you might want.” I pulled the radio from the box.

She reached out eagerly to grab it and inspected it thoroughly—sides, top, bottom. Her hands trembled and I saw that her nails needed care—they were overly long, and something was caked beneath them. “I
told
that Delores I’d left it behind, but she said, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ I knew it was there! Plug it in, will you?”

I put the box of letters down on the bedside chair and did as she asked. She immediately tuned in a talk station to a low volume and then hid the radio under the covers. “We can’t have these here. Some idiot rule so people don’t sue for electrocuting themselves. Don’t you tell a soul; they’ll take it from me. What else have you got there?” She was almost smiling.

I regretted not bringing her something else: a little bouquet, instant cocoa, some nice soap. “Well, that’s letters, Lydia, addressed to you. They were up in the attic.”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Then she sat up straighter and pointed her finger at me. “You read them, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t! Well, to be honest, I started to read one, but I stopped. Anyway, here they are. I thought you would probably like to have them.”

I put the box in her lap, and she stuck her hand in and pulled out a pile of letters. She stared at them, unmoving, then laid them on the bed beside her. Then, abruptly, she put them back in the box. “Take them away. I don’t want them.”

I hesitated, then took the box from her and put it back on the chair. I moved in closer, grabbed hold of the bed rail. I spoke quietly. “I’m sorry for invading your privacy, Lydia, but I must tell you that what I read was very beautiful, and I just thought—”

“He died a long time ago and I died with him. Yes, I did. That same day. My major regret is that I didn’t take my own life on the day I heard he lost his. Didn’t have the courage then and don’t now, either, I’m sorry to say.” She gestured outward, toward the hall. “This place is a hellhole, don’t you doubt it. A bunch of slobbering, crazy people, tied into their chairs. Visitors looking for money to inherit. That’s what’s here. Pig slop at every meal, and they wonder why you don’t eat. And a staff that can’t speak the English language and thinks nothing of leaving a thermometer in your mouth for half an hour
every
single morning!”

I did know about that. I remembered when John was in the hospital and a nurse would run around checking everyone’s vital signs and be gone from the bedside for far too long. “You might take it out,” I suggested. “You can just take it out after a couple of minutes. If you don’t shake it down, it will still register.”

“Helpful hints from the ignorant,” Lydia said. “You know what they do if you take it out of your mouth? They put it in the other place! And if you take it out of there, they tie your hands!” Her voice had grown loud now.

“Okay,” I said, picking up my purse. “Well, I—”

“I don’t know what possessed you to bring me those letters. What did you think? That I would be happy to be reminded of him?”

“I did think that.”

“Why in the world would that make me happy? To be reminded of all I missed!”

“I’ll just take them,” I said. “I’ll leave my phone number at the desk. If you ever change your mind and want them, call me and I’ll bring them over.”

“Throw them away!”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I will.”

I walked out of her room and down the hall. Lydia was right: There were people in the home who were tied into wheelchairs, staring vacantly ahead, lost to themselves and to others. But only some of the people were like that.

There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, “Two wolves live inside me. One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret. The other is the good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love for the world. All the time, these wolves are fighting inside me.” “But grandfather,” the boy said. “Which wolf will win?” The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.”

John used to talk about finding the soft spot in people, how that was step one. Then came the next step, the harder one, getting them to trust that you would not violate that place. He said patients would often become the most furious just before they were ready to make themselves vulnerable, that you had to withstand the fire in order to earn the cease-fire, and that it was always worth it to do so. He said that inside everyone there was a place that shone. But John’s compassion was legendary and his patience far greater than my own. I wouldn’t come here again.

Still, I stopped at the desk on the way out and left my number with the indifferent nurse’s aide there. She watched with crossed arms and raised brows as I wrote it out. She didn’t believe any more than I did that Lydia Samuels would call me to come and see her again, and I doubted she would take much care in putting the information somewhere safe. When I put my hands in my pocket for my gloves, I felt the newspaper picture I’d brought along. I started to take it out to throw it in the trash but changed my mind.

When I got home, I saw Benny standing on my porch. “My mom needs an egg,” he said. “Can we borrow one?”

“Of course. Come on in.” He followed me in, and I took off my coat and lay it across a kitchen chair, then went to the refrigerator. “Is just one enough?” I asked.

“That’s all she said to get, is one.” Benny bent down and picked up something from the floor, the newspaper picture. “This fell out of your coat.” He looked at the picture. “What is it?”

“Just a picture I liked,” I said. “I’m going to put it in my story journal. What
is
the story there, Benny?”

He smoothed the picture out on the table and studied it. “Well, today is her birthday and he gave her a surprise party. And her name is Edna and his is Samuel. No. His name is Garcia.”

“Wonderful!” I said. “And how old is Edna today?”

He looked carefully, thought for a moment, then said, “Fifty.”

On Saturday morning when Matthew came over to paint the bedroom, he brought along Jovani. “Do you mind if Jovani helps?” he asked when I answered the door. “My other friend couldn’t come.”

“Of course not.” I pulled the door open wider.

Jovani stared triumphantly at Matthew. “I telled you,” he said. “Is it not?” He came through the door and then stopped to look around the living room. “Niiiicce!” he said, and I said, “Thank you.”

“Niiiiicce!” he said again, and again I said thank you.

He turned to face me. “This is very nice house.”

“Jovani,” Matthew said. “Jesus.”

I led them upstairs and helped them set up, laying out newspapers and covering my furniture with sheets, then went out shopping to look for a new outfit while they began stripping off the wallpaper. I’d agreed to have dinner with Tom Bartlett, who’d apparently decided to overlook my behavior at the end of our last time together. And I was glad; I thought we could at least be friends who might enjoy going places together. Tonight, though, he had invited me to his place—he was going to cook dinner. At first I’d hesitated, thinking that
his place
suggested something I wasn’t ready for. But then he’d said, “Just
dinner,
Betta,” and I’d laughed and agreed.

By the time I got back, a new blouse and sweater in hand, the boys had begun applying long strokes of blue to the walls. I liked the room much better already, and I told them so.

“I am wonder,” Jovani said. “If you don’t mind, can I ask something?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay. Why is a woman alone buy a house so big?”

“I just liked it,” I said. “It has things I always wanted in a house and never had.”

“But . . . so many rooms to be in one person?”

“I doubt I could have found a smaller house that had what this one does. And it was . . . well, it was kind of an impulse buy. You know what that is, right?”

“Of course. But it’s too big, the house, not good for you. Your bedroom is far from the door. Someone come in, and you don’t know, you can’t hear.”

“Jovani!” Matthew said.

“I’m sorry for scare you. But sometimes the truth is want out on you.”

The doorbell rang, sparing me from coming up with a response. It was Benny, staring off to the side, deep in thought. When I opened the door, he asked quickly, “Can I come in?”

I opened the door wider, and he stepped into the hall, removed his boots, then headed for “his” chair at the kitchen table, the place he’d begun doing his homework every Wednesday after school before we had dinner. I sat opposite him.

“I’ve got girl trouble,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Two of them like me.”

“That doesn’t sound like too terrible a problem.”

“Actually, it is.”

I envisioned two girls vying for his attention, then remembered the strong longings I’d felt when I was Benny’s age, sitting lovestruck in Mrs. Menafee’s fifth-grade classroom. I remembered watching Billy Harris do a math problem at the chalkboard, with his plaid shirt and narrow brown belt and corduroy pants, the comb lines in his hair courtesy of Brylcreem. I’d felt dizzy with a free-floating form of desire, and I wrote
Mrs. Billy Harris
in tiny print on my notebook paper, then quickly erased it. One day, he’d walked me home after school, and afterward I’d lain on my bed with my eyes closed, embracing my teddy bear, trying to think of something to clinch the deal, to win him for my own forever. But the very next day Tish McCollum took him away from me, and that was that. “I’ll never love anyone again!” I wailed to my father. “Oh, I think you might,” he said.

“So what’s happening?” I asked Benny.

“For one thing, they both want to come over. And last time Heather came over, she kissed me. And she’s in sixth grade, so. . . .”

“Well!”

“Yeah. My mom doesn’t know, because it was in my bedroom.”

“
Really!
You brought her to your bedroom?”

“She made me. She said she wanted to see my room, but she only wanted to kiss me.”

“Hmmm. Did you like it?”

He grinned. “
I
don’t know. But now they both want to come over on Monday after school.”

I heard Jovani and Matthew coming downstairs, and Benny quickly looked over at me. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“I don’t think they heard anything. That’s just my friends Matthew and Jovani. They’re doing some painting for me.”

They walked into the kitchen, and I made introductions. “Benny just stopped by,” I said. “For . . . cookies.”

“You make yourself?” Jovani asked. “From nothing?” I nodded. He sat down. “Then I rest here for a while.”

“I was just saying I’m having girl trouble,” Benny said, and I had to work hard to conceal my delight at his openness.

Jovani leaned in close to him. “You tell me your problem and I tell you
exactly
how do you do.”

Benny said nothing.

“For sure,” Jovani told him. “If you listen for me your problems women, you become right away happy man.”

I threw the butter into the mixing bowl and turned the mixer on.

“Where are you
from
?” Benny asked loudly, speaking above the whirring sounds.

Jovani spoke confidentially. “From the country of love, where the people they know how to enjoy more their lives. You take your girlfriends there. Brazil. You don’t have one inch sorry.”

I looked at my watch. Two more hours before the first date I’d had in over thirty years.