WAS (30 page)

Brought to you by Procter and Gamble.

They scowled slightly, not sure they had the thing figured out. A kind of radio with pictures. They were only mildly bemused. The whole world had passed them by so long ago that nothing made sense. But they liked the sound of families, and breakfasts, and husbands being kissed goodbye, and the softened voices of women dealing with secret shame.

At night, it was taken away.

The next day, they clustered around it, a new hunger in their eyes. Inside that little box, children bounced in and out of living rooms or wept in their mothers' arms. Grand and powerful women schemed: husbands faced bankruptcy; toothpaste was sold. Gradually the nothingness sucked in the Angels.

Old Dynamite stood with her back to it, looking out of the window. Or she sat, staring somewhere else, her mouth creased around with smiles as if her face were a pond into which someone had thrown a stone. Sometimes her eyes blazed. Sometimes she sang softly. Bill found himself growing disturbed by her.

"Listen, Bill," said Tom Heritage, "the only way you can stick this job is to put it all to the back of your mind. You start taking it to heart, you could end up like them. Once I get my license back, I'm getting out of here, drive a taxi, anything. You should do the same, boy, I can tell you."

Forty years, fifty years, in this place, thought Bill. What a waste of a life.

In November, there was going to be a movie on TV. Networks did not usually show movies, so it was a special thing, a lot of publicity. It was a kids' movie, but a lot of the staff wanted to see it. A kids' movie would not have anything in it to rile the Angels.

So it was decided to wheel out the television from nine to eleven at night. The Angels, like children all over the country, were going to be allowed to stay up late to watch it. Bill, the gentle master of the TV, took the night shift for the first time.

The staff crowded in, the caterers especially, all the employees who were still too poor to own a television. They returned to the Home in their cloth coats. Some of them brought their kids. The children looked fat and sleepy and grumpy. A few of the Angels showed up too, drawn by the excitement and by the sound and sight of children.

The old people in their slippers shuffled up to the children, cooing, confused, wanting to warm their hands around young life, such as they had never had a chance to nurture. The children hated it.

Old Dynamite came lumbering forward too, like some stick insect on long prairie pins, in her Home pj's, smelling slightly of sweat and dry-cleaned sheets. She staggered smiling toward one of the children.

"Hello, hello," she said in a breathless but supple voice. "Hello children. Hello my little ones."

"Mo-mmmie!" wailed one of the children in fear, and turned her face toward her mother.

"I told you, Hattie," said the mother. "I said you was to be nice to the old people."

"Now aren't you the prettiest little thing!" said Dotty, with longing and bad breath. The child covered her mouth, shrank back into her mother's arms.

"Sunflowers," said Dotty. "You like sunflowers, honey?"

The child stared at her with sullen dislike.

"Well," whispered the old woman. "Their real name is moonflowers."

Bill smiled at the mother to let her know that nothing was wrong. "Come along, Dotty, it's just about to start," he said, across the room.

"Do you like Indians? I'll tell you a secret, honey. The Indians won. They're everywhere, but they're just invisible."

Bill walked among the old people, gently guiding them away from the children, into chairs. They should have realized the effect that seeing children would have. None of them had seen children in so long.

"And taffy apples," Old Dynamite was saying. "Oh, I used to like those. They pull out my teeth now."

Bill was next to her, lulled by the normality of her voice. Bill still thought normality was hardly to be breached. He touched Old Dynamite's arm, to lead her away.

The insanity came leaping out of her. Her face twisted up, and she hissed at him like a snake and threw off his hand with clumsy, sweeping strength. She staggered backward and nearly fell over. Bill felt something in him leap back with fear. Her back stiff with pride, Dynamite began to walk by herself toward an empty wheelchair.

The child's mother shifted her body and the subject, looking away from the old insane woman. "I don't know why they have to put on a kids' movie this time of night," she said to her buddy from the kitchens. She had been hoping all the Angels would be asleep, so her little Hattie need not be frightened. She was bitter about being poor and what it cost her little girl.

That'll teach me, thought Bill. Looks sweet, but she's in here for a reason. I reckon Old Dynamite could still be quite an ornery handful. Some rough old pioneer lady who went mad.

They had their first bad reaction to the TV that night. Wasn't more than five minutes into the movie when Old Dotty stood up and shouted. "Who put this on?" she demanded.

Bill moved quickly. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Just sit still, Dotty," said Bill, trying to soothe her.

"How'd it get there?" she shouted, loud. "That's me. How did I get there?"

"It's just a movie, Dotty."

"Who said they could put me on that thing? They got it wrong! Wasn't like that. Only one room we had and couldn't afford no hired hands, I can tell you."

The woman from the kitchen made clicking sounds of disapproval. Did everything have to be ruined for her little girl?

"It's just a movie, Dotty," said Bill.

"What is that thing?" She pointed at the television.

"It's a TV. It's like a radio with pictures. You can show old movies on it. That's what that is, an old movie."

For some reason, that seemed to mollify Dotty. She dropped back down onto her chair, sulking, arms folded. "I ain't never seen a movie," she said, as though that might explain how she came to be in one. She sat looking merely disgruntled for a few minutes more.

Then the cyclone came. When the wind began to moan, Old Dotty began to shake her head from side to side, no, no, no. She looked confused; her hair was wild but her eyes looked frightened and lost. When she finally saw it was a cyclone, she shouted, once, very loudly, and covered her mouth. And when Judy Garland stepped out of Kansas into Oz, Old Dotty covered her face and wept. She pulled in breath with great heaving sobs. The little girl began to cry too.

"I want to go home!" said the little girl.

The mother began to gather up her coat in a rage. "Just for once," she muttered in bitterness.

"I want to go home," echoed Dotty, so softly that only Bill could hear.

"Come on, Dotty," he murmured. Experimentally he wheeled the chair around. Dotty did not fight. She had gone still and staring, her head hanging slightly. Bill wheeled her down the corridor to where the Angels slept.

"Here we are," said Bill. "Back home."

Old Dynamite didn't fight as he helped her up onto the bed and lifted her feet around, pulled up the bars of the cot. She turned her old seeping head with staring, watery eyes onto the pillow as he tucked her under the quilt. She's peaceful now, Bill thought. Getting her to go to the John will only rile her up. I'll clean her in the morning, before anyone sees.

"You just sleep now, Dotty," he whispered. He patted her arm, helpless to offer anything. He began to walk back quietly toward the lighted window in the door.

"Take me to the ocean," said Dotty.

Bill stopped and turned. Did she want to say anything else? He waited. There was a silence for a while. He was about to go again when she said, "I ain't never seen the sea."

"We're a long way from the sea, Dotty," he whispered back to her.

"I'd like to see the ocean," she said. "And then I'd like to die."

What could he tell her? That he'd take her there in the morning? That things were going to get better? That anything good was ever likely to happen to her now?

"They show the ocean on TV, sometimes," he said.

"I ain't no use to anybody. You oughta take me to the sea and drown me."

"I don't think that would be a very good idea."

Two beds down, old Gertie began to moan.

"If we keep talking, we'll wake everybody up. I'll come visit tomorrow," he said.

"It was about me," she whispered. "I really am Dorothy. Dorothy Gael, from Kansas."

The skin at the back of Bill's neck prickled. My, but that's spooky. That's what the character just said in the film.

Better say nothing, he thought. He walked out of the room backward. Better let her sleep.

He shuddered, involuntarily, and tried to calm himself. Whew. Must have been strange for her. Never seen a movie. Been in here since before movies. So she didn't know what they're like. So she sees an old movie that starts in Kansas about a little girl on a farm, must be like her own life coming back. He listened to his own footfalls, soft-shoed, on the corridor.

He went back to the TV, dreading that maybe someone had knocked it over and got hurt. Everything was fine. Bill leaned over to Jackson, the black janitor. He'd been working in the Home for an age.

"Jack," he said, "what's Old Dotty's real name?"

"Don't know," said Jackson. "Don't know their names, mostly. They got files on them all, though."

Wouldn't it be strange, though, if the names really were the same?

Bill drove the car home, and it all seemed to get stranger and stranger, the more he thought about it. Say she was about eighty. She could have been sent here when she was thirty and that would be about 1900. She could have been in here all that time. A whole world could have gone by. The Wright brothers, movies. And both world wars. It's like when they had Veterans Day parades, when he was a kid, and some old guys would come tottering along with their decorations, and they'd be decorations from the Spanish-American War. You had to pinch yourself to realize that there were people who could remember the Spanish-American War.

He needed to talk to Carol. He drove to her house, breathing the smell of the car heater. He parked and ran through the cold to the front door. Lights were still on downstairs. He rang the bell and waited, stomping his feet, waving his hands.

"Is Carol up, Mrs. Gilbert?"

"Why yes, come in, Bill. Anything wrong?" The door was speedily closed behind him.

"No, I'd just like to talk to her."

"Sure," smiled Mrs. Gilbert. It was hard for the young people when they were almost married to have to go bouncing back and forth between houses. "Carol?" she called upstairs. "Bill's here."

Carol Gilbert knew herself to be lucky. She had the boy she wanted. Everything about it was just perfect. Everybody thought so, even her parents. Even her mother, who left the two of them alone with a cup of coffee each in the living room.

He looked up at her and Carol reminded herself how good-looking he was, how reliable, how nice. He needed to talk, so Carol listened, like you were supposed to do. He talked to Carol about some old lady in the Home.

"You can't let it get to you like this, Billy," said Carol, stroking the hair at the back of his neck.

"It's just she's been in there so long. Can you imagine how strange that must feel?"

"You can't imagine how she feels and neither can I. It's sad, Billy, but she went mad and had to be put away."

"She asked me to drown her." Bill looked down at his big hands that could so easily kill.

He was so nice. Big and handsome and sweet. Carol took the back of his neck in both of her hands and pulled him to her and kissed him. She thought of the life they were going to have together. May not be rich, but we'll be happy. Why couldn't he just fix his mind on that?

"Anyway," said Carol, "tomorrow's Sunday. We can go looking for the house again."

"Oh!" said Bill, but it was a groan. "I promised I'd go talk to her tomorrow."

"Well," sighed Carol. "You got a choice. Me or an old mad lady."

He tried to smile and gave her a quick and slightly dismissive little kiss.

"How long you got before the Army?" she asked. She would hate being alone.

"Just a couple of months, I guess. Still haven't had my notice."

"Well," said Carol firmly. "We have got plenty to do before then." The wedding was going to be before then, and that too would be just perfect.

On Monday morning, Bill ran up the steps of the Home. He'd had an idea.

First he went to see Dotty. She sat in a wheelchair with her beautiful smile focused far away.

"Good morning, Dotty," he said. "This is Bill."

She didn't respond.

"Remember me? After the TV show?"

She began to hum nervously, in a high, frail, barely audible voice, shutting him out. That old song again.

Bill knelt by her chair and hung his head. A fine help you've been, Bill Davison. Between you and that television that got brought in here because of you, this old lady is worse than ever.

"I'm sorry, Dotty," he told her, whispering. He didn't want anyone else on the staff to hear. People had been fired for caring too much.

Then he went to see Gwen Anderson, in Admin.

Gwenny was one of his mother's many friends, a funny little widowed lady whose conversation Bill permitted himself to find tedious. It ran in a tight repetitive circle of cooking and homemaking. He had not visited Gwen since coming to work at the Home, and he felt bad about that. He felt worse now. He was going to ask a favor of her.

It was a bit better when he saw her. She let him off easy.

"Bill!" she exclaimed. "Hiya, honey. You haven't been to see me. I was just telling your mother."

"Oh. You know how it is. There's so much stuff to be done before the wedding and all."

Bill felt guilty again. He talked to her about the church's Christmas plans, and about the seat covers his mother was making for her, and how delicious her lemon sponge was. He also talked about the wedding, though he was surprised at how little he had to say about it. So was Gwenny. There was just a little lurch in her face as he ran out of things to tell her.

"Well, a February wedding will be such a treat," she said. "It'll come just when it seems that winter will never end. You must be real happy."