Five Tuesdays in Winter(40)

I unchained and unbolted the door and left. The corridor was silent. The elevator ascended, opened, accepted my weight with only a slight sag. It dropped with a swift, gentle sigh to the lobby.

In a red leather chair by the revolving door, Steve was sleeping. I nudged his knee with my knee and his eyes opened and I watched them find the whole story in my face. He was older than me and wise as God. He walked beside me, very slowly, as slowly as you can imagine walking, out onto the street, over to Pike, and all the way back home.





WAITING FOR CHARLIE





Everyone had told him to speak to her like normal. But how could he, when her shaved head slumped toward the window away from him, when the hospital smock had loosened, revealing a chest freckled and flat as a washboard with her large breasts fallen to the sides, when she lay propped up beneath a sign that read: PT DOES NOT HAVE BONE ON RIGHT SIDE OF SKULL.

They had removed it because of inflammation after the accident. Otherwise, she would have died. Now, weeks later, the swelling was down and the side without the bone had caved in like a rotten melon. He’d grown used to his own deteriorations: his hip, his lungs, his skin that tore like wet tissue. He had to sleep with oxygen. He bled for no good reason through his clothes. But looking at this child, not even twenty-five, so badly damaged she had not yet surfaced to consciousness, was not something he was ever going to get used to. He would never come back here again. Never.

Like normal.

“Hello, Charlotte.” He waited for her to turn and greet him. Of course he knew the circumstances, but when, in the past ninety-one years, had he spoken to someone in a quiet room and not had them respond?

He spoke louder. “I said, ‘Hello, Charlotte.’ ” He was certain that within the hour he was allotted he would snap her out of it. He had accomplished far greater things than that in this lifetime.

He knew his grandchildren were scared of him. Or had been. He’d been big and loud. He hadn’t liked their gum chewing or their back talk. He felt sorry now for all the times he’d told this one her hair was too short, that it was bad enough she called herself Charlie. But sometimes direction was what children needed.

There was a chair by the window. He pulled it closer and sat.

“This is your grandfather, Charlotte. I’ve come down by myself to see you. I want you to wake up now. You’ve gotten everybody too worried about you.” He remembered his wife telling him not to say anything negative and added: “You’re a very good actress but come on now.”

There was a loud cracking noise, like something hard and brittle splitting in two. He saw the wide mouth of a tube resting on her collarbone. He recognized the contraption from his last operation. It pumped into the air fifteen percent more oxygen, and it had made him feel safe. It didn’t seem to be rubbing against anything but the washcloth underneath. Her jaw shifted and there was another crack. It came from inside her mouth.

“Hey, don’t do that.” He put his hands on her cheeks. Her skin was slick with sweat. Beneath his fingers, her chin swayed once more from one side to the other, releasing the terrible sound. He was frightened he’d find every tooth in pieces, but when he pried open her mouth, they were all fine. They were even familiar. She’d spent a whole summer with him, the summer her older sisters went to camp and her parents divorced. She was eight and all her teeth seemed to be falling out or growing in. Nearly every night, she showed him the latest developments. She’d been a nervous child, but she’d grown into a bold, confident young woman. Overconfident, perhaps. All his grandchildren were overconfident. When he complained of this, of their aggression and recklessness, he was laughed at. The pot calling the kettle, they said.

He’d seen a picture of the trail she’d fallen on. “I wouldn’t have gone down that slope. It was too steep and too icy and you could see the rocks were bare. It was a foolish thing.” He didn’t care. She needed scolding. She was probably sick of people coming in cooing and mooning and pitying her. She needed a firm hand. “A very foolish, stupid thing.”

On a whiteboard facing her bed, facing the sign about her skull, her sisters had written in Magic Marker: “Good Morning, Charlie! It’s Saturday Feb. 15. You’ve had a skiing accident. We’re all at Dad’s and will be back soon. Can’t wait to see you!” All over that wall were photographs, posters, drawings, poems, and letters. There were red roses and a slew of valentines on the radiator.

In a basket on the windowsill beside him were several glass bottles. One was full of little red beads. He turned it around and the label said WHOLE RED PEPPERS. The others were liquid: SEAWATER, GRENADINE, VINEGAR.

“How are you all doing?”

A nurse was in the doorway. He tried to think if there was anything he needed, then remembered he wasn’t the patient.

She glanced down at the basket in his lap. “Were you thinking of giving her a little aromatherapy?”

“No.”

“Well,” she said in the way nurses did, thoroughly inured to resistance. “Her therapist doesn’t come on Sundays so it might be a good idea. All you do is remove the cap and let her take in a few whiffs. Smells are amazing. They trigger memory quicker and deeper than any other kind of stimulant to the senses.”

He chose a bottle whose label had been peeled off. He unscrewed the cap and the smell of lemons flooded the room. He breathed it in eagerly. It was a beautiful smell. He thought of his three granddaughters in the summer, placing rusty lawn chairs in the yard and squeezing lemons into their brown hair. After the divorce, they often slept over, though his son’s apartment was only a few blocks away. They said the beds were more comfy. He put the bottle beneath her nose. There was no reaction.