Mrs. Marlowe went down the hall, jerkingly with her walker. Her cold bones ached, her head felt light and dizzy, though her mind was as acutely aware as ever of the dismal place she had to call home. She heard Miss Martha behind her, the soft footsteps of her nurses’ shoes, her raspy breathing, and felt inescapably watched. Privacy did not exist in the convalescence home; Mrs. Marlowe’s home until the day she died. Miss Martha went around and opened the door to the recreation room for her. In a vague gesture of defiance she pushed her slow walker past the door.
“I think you’d better come in here and have some rest.” She pushed stubbornly on. The nurse spoke louder for her failing ears. “Come on inside the rec room!” Miss Martha latched on to her bony arm and gently turned her around, Mrs. Marlowe docilely obeyed.
When she entered the room, no one looked up. The Elderly sat in chairs or in wheelchairs, watching Maury or staring off into the past. Their minds were mostly faded; those still bright were resigned to their own mental disintegration to come. The place and the smell and the false halogen lights-- all slowly smothered Mrs. Mennen.
When she first arrived a few weeks ago, she talked to nurses and residents as if they were normal intelligent beings. She soon found they were dulled by their time here. The nurses acted as if she herself was already senile. They condescended and insulted her questions, though most never completed a college education. Her ache for communication only grew worse with the memory of long conversations she had with the late Mr. Mennen. Their talks would go past the edge of consciousness, and they could talk for hours about anything. After so many beautiful years together they were like two versions of the same soul.
It was so bitterly ironic that Mr. Marlowe had died first, he who had been so robust and full of life, even in his golden years. Even as her body failed, he took care of her, always lovingly, never complaining.
He was working in his garden on that gray morning, beautiful ominous morning, but he did every day; that day he didn’t come in for lunch. She waited for him until lunch became quite cold. Outside, beside his beloved apple trees, his heart beat its last. His soul went happily to heaven, though his other half remained on Earth. His body was quite cold to the touch when Mrs. Mennen’s finger caressed his face last. She didn’t cry out or show outwardly her sorrow, but a single tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek and landed like a salty raindrop on the dirt. Everything was like a fuzzy nightmare as the paramedics arrived, then pronounced him dead. Shortly after they called her children, she sounded confused on the phone; her children decided it was finally time for her to go to a home. Though it broke her heart, her beautiful house was put up for sale, the place where she had raised her children, lived, and loved. Within a week it was sold. The children assured her they loved her, but they really couldn’t be there to take care of her. Though regrettably, it was their only option.
So she sat and watched Maury, but bright eyes saw into the past, past the T.V. and through the beige walls. Into a sunlit garden filled with laughter and love. One of the halogens burnt itself out, finally, and brought her back. He died of a heart attack, but she would die of a broken heart.
The Tapioca was ice-cold and tasted old. She stirred it a few times with her spoon, breaking the congealed top layer, and then folded her cold hands. Outside the window past the bare trees, her eyes feasted on delicious meals she shared with her husband.
“Mrs. Marlowe,” Miss Martha interrupted her reverie, she was incessantly doing that, “Mrs. Marlowe, you have a visitor.”
With his eyes full of pity and guilt, Mrs. Marlowe’s son walked into the stuffy room. “Hi mom.” he began softly.
She smiled and he was forgiven, after all she was his mother, and her love remained unconditional. “How’ve you been?”
“Pretty good” he filled her in with the petty details of his life currently, as old faces looked on, some wistfully, some bitterly, their progeny never visited anymore.
The conversation was awkward at best. At worst it was a lie, and a heart breaking betrayal.
She smiled back at him a sad wrinkled smile.
“I have an appointment I’ve got to get to, but if you need anything, don’t be afraid to call me.
Mrs. Marlowe’s daughter was a hairdresser, shy as a girl, as an adult she delighted in hearing the small pointless details of her client’s lives. At Quick Cuts she fluffed a blond woman’s bangs, and then teased them into a finished cloud of the 90’s, a cloud that hung constantly on her mind like her own enormous bangs. She wasn’t blessed with her parents’ intelligence, or if she was, it had dissipated, due to drugs and alcohol in her younger years. As last client left, the hairdresser thought about visiting her mom, but she wouldn’t know what to say; they never got along that well. Her mother was a Harvard graduate, while she barely graduated high school, eventually going to cosmetology school. Still, the expectations and disappointments that constituted their fights in her adolescence always hung between them. She went anyway; it was her duty. The smell of Old entered her lungs as she stepped through the doorway. She greeted her mother with a gentle hug; her mother’s body felt so small and fragile in the hairdresser’s thick arms.
“I’m so happy you came to visit me.” She looked at the floor, “it gets so lonely here.”
“Oh mom, you have these other people to talk to.” she waved her arm around in an all inclusive gesture.
Mrs. Marlowe stared piercingly with her light blue eyes at her daughter and asked, “Will you give me a haircut? My hair’s getting so long.” She desperately wanted her daughter to know she accepted her occupation and everything else about her. The old fights just didn’t matter much anymore. But she couldn’t find the words.
“Well, not today, I have to take Conner to soccer. Maybe you could… take the bus to the bus stop. And I’ll pick you up on my lunch break. Do you think you’re feeling well enough to take the bus?”
“Of course I am!” she said indignantly “I can do more than you think.”
“Okay. Meet me on the corner of Daisy at 12:30 on Friday.”
“Don’t Forget me.” Mrs. Marlowe got a mental picture of standing there, stranded in the cold. Her daughter was prone to forgetfulness.
“I won’t forget. Bye Mom.” She awkwardly tried to leave.
“I love you” said Mrs. Marlowe, she was at the age when death is inevitable and all she wanted was to be at peace with the world.
But her daughter was at the age when peacemaking is still awkward. “Okay I love you too. See you on Friday. Bye.”
She left and her mother stared on after her. “I feel so old and useless. They would be relieved if I died, quietly in my sleep. God wherever you are, I am willing to accept my old age, and my death. But please! Spare me from senility and loneliness.” She uttered a silent prayer to god.
The monotone days sped by. She felt herself becoming more and more despondent; grieving for her husband coupled with being away from her home was almost too much for her old heart to bear.
Clinging to the hope that one day her children would take her in, she thought, “I miss seeing my grandkids. How can I convince my children I wouldn’t be a burden, but a grandma?
Then she looked into the flickering light above her silver head. “I’m such an old woman now, and my children have abandoned me. I have no one. God, why have you done this to me?” Night came early, and coldly, those winter afternoons.
Mrs. Marlowe could not sleep for hours in her cold bed. Every bone creaked and complained like an old house. The snoring of tired men who might stop breathing at any moment scratched away at her dreams, pulling her in and out of waking consciousness. Her own feeble breaths tasted the sickness in the building, the sickness that eventually everyone caught.
But morning finally came, cold and gray, and she had lived to another day. It was Friday; she looked forward to her haircut like she never had before in the entirety of her life. When noon arrived at last, Mrs. Marlowe’s nurse led her to the bus stop and even waited for her, asking, “Are you sure you can do this all by yourself?”
“Quite Sure.”
The bus arrived in a cloud of pollution and squeaking brakes. She climbed up the enormous steps with the help of her nurse. Her bony knuckles were white on the handrail.
Fear tickled her as she began her journey, taking a seat.
The bus drove through the city she had known as hers, and every shop and fruit stand she visited once was a happy recollection. The further she traveled from the convalescence home the more she relished this new flavor, independence.
The bus rumbled to a stop and let out a sigh of exhaust at the corner of Daisy Way. Mrs. Marlowe picked herself up and walked nervously into the street. Her daughter was not there on the corner, but then it was only 12:20, her daughter would probably not arrive until after 12:30, she was always late. She waited there at the corner, 12:30 arrived and it began to drizzle, her daughter never appeared. The cold pierced through her sweater and the mist hung on her white curls like dewdrops on spider webs.
Shivering, she began to formulate excuses for her daughter, hoping she hadn’t forgotten. Mrs. Marlowe sat down on the wet bus stop because the arthritis in her knees complained and her weak hips ached in the cold. 12:45 and still she sat shivering.
“Where is she?”
Finally she had to decide what to do, it was apparent her daughter forgot. After some thought, she asked herself, “should I try to take the bus back? Or try and call her? I don’t have her number.” she looked around; there was only a liquor store and a dilapidated old Denny’s. “I know she works about two blocks from here, but where was it? It’s too cold to be lost today.” She got up and tried to read the bus schedule, but her glasses were foggy and wet. The rain came down harder it was now no longer a drizzle.
Uncaring people hurried by, not even glancing down at her.
She rallied her bones and complaining muscles to walk, down the block to where she could almost see a payphone, shining like a beacon through her fogging glasses. Her feet were painfully numb and the walker felt as if it might slip away at any moment. The little wheels rolled precariously on the edge of the sidewalk. Mrs. Marlowe stepped off into the street and made her way to the phone. The plastic phone to her ear, she said her name, Meredith Marlowe, to the collect call recording and waited for her daughter’s voice.
“Hello? Mom! I can’t believe I forgot. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
She made her way back to the wet bench, soaked to her bones. Each breath of cold air hurt her shocked lungs. She felt cold little pieces of rain on her cheeks and brushed them away, little pieces of ice. For five horrible minutes she sat there on the bench, seeing her daughter’s car pass by every time, not stopping. A white Nissan finally pulled up next to the curb. Her daughter’s contrite face peered through the window. She helped her mother into the passenger’s side. Staring out the window into the rain, she avoided her daughter’s eyes, shivering even with the heater going full blast. The car felt as if there was not enough air inside, suffocating heat and silence enveloped them.
“I’m so sorry Mom, You’re still cold? I see you shivering.”
“I’ll be okay.” She said.
“Do you still want a haircut today? I can still take you to the salon and give you a haircut.” The hairdresser asked tentatively.
“No, I think we should wait for a nicer day”, Mrs. Marlowe replied resignedly. The rest of the drive was silent except for the heater, the windshield wipers, and the occasional wheezing of Mrs. Marlowe. When she tried to fall asleep in her cold bed that night she thought of how she woke up; that morning had seemed so hopeful, but it ended so horribly. She felt ashamed too, that she couldn’t be independent. The one experiment had failed.
The night stretched on forever, her head felt hot and feverish, and her feet had yet to thaw out from the day.
She fell into some strange and frightening dreams and strange fatalistic thoughts came to her. “What if I die now? I am dying. I feel so sick.” The idea haunted her that her life would be unremembered and her children alone. “Would they even miss me really though? They are just waiting for me to die, it will be a great relief for them, and they won’t have to visit me, pay for me to live here, or even think of me. I will be utterly gone from the world. And what have I ever given this world?” She thought back to her years as a journalist, writing the home and garden section. “No one ever read it. It really was such a waste, but I did enjoy it.” She thought back even farther to her tortured years as a young woman. “I was always so horribly pessimistic toward life in general. I wrote poems and such, usually with some angsty tone, and somehow I always expected to be a tragic poet, but it was much harder than I thought, and besides that I fell in love.” She smiled in the darkness. “Frank Marlowe was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She thought of how cliché that sounded, it did no justice to their unified soul. “He brought me out of a introspective depression. What would I have been without him?” the more she thought on it, the inconvenient truth dawned. “He tamed me, pacified me from becoming a writer to becoming a nowhere newspaper journalist. I was just housewife, and not even a good mother. And what am I now? A drain on society and my children?” She felt like she was sinking into an abyss, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the fever or if she was falling asleep, or even, if she was dieing. She faded in and out of consciousness, poignantly aware of her life. It seemed like maybe just a short dream. On some level she was aware that she had a fever, and that it was becoming increasingly hard to breathe. Each small breath rattled in her watery lungs. And it was so cold, but her head was burning. Her eyes stared out into the darkness, the lids heavier, and she was so tired—more tired than she had ever been, it was as if the tiredness of an entire lifetime was finally catching up to her. And so she passed away. Her soul faded out of her body—and away.
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