Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(72)
Perhaps in response to her frustration, a phalanx of little men forms up on the windowsill. No women this time, it’s more like a march-past. The society of the tiny folk is socially conservative: they don’t let women into their marches. Their clothing is still green, but a darker green, not so festive. Those in the front rows have practical metal helmets. In the ranks behind them the costumes are more ceremonial, with gold-hemmed capes and green fur hats. Will there be miniature horses later on in the parade? It’s been known to happen.
Tobias doesn’t answer at once. Then he says, “Not an ambulance. Some sort of picketing. It looks organized.”
“Maybe there’s a strike,” says Wilma. But who among the workers at Ambrosia Manor would be striking? The cleaners would have the most reason, they’re underpaid; but they’re also the least likely, being illegal at worst, and at best in strong need of the money.
“No,” says Tobias slowly. “I don’t think it’s a strike. Three of our security are talking with them. There’s a cop, as well. Two cops.”
It startles Wilma whenever Tobias uses slang words like cop. They don’t go with his standard verbal ensemble, which is much more pressed and deliberate. But he might permit himself to say “cop” because it’s archaic. He once said, “Okey-dokey” and at another time, “Scram.” Maybe he gets these words out of books: dusty second-hand murder mysteries and the like. Though who is Wilma to make fun of him? Now that she can no longer fool around on the Internet, Wilma has lost track of how people talk. Real people, younger people. Not that she’d fooled around on the Internet very much. She was never interactive, she was just a lurker, and she was only beginning to get the hang of it before her eyes started to go.
She’d once said to her husband – when he was still alive, not during that year-long dream-nightmare period of mourning when she’d continued to talk to him after his death – that she’d have lurker written on her tombstone. Because hadn’t she spent most of her life just watching? It feels like that now, though it didn’t at the time, because she’d been so busy with this and that. Her degree had been in History – a safe-enough thing to study while waiting to get married – but a fat lot of good all that History is doing her at the moment, because she can’t remember much of it. Three political leaders who died having sex, that’s about it. Genghis Khan, Clemenceau, and what’s-his-name. It will come to her later.
“What are they doing?” she asks. The marchers on the windowsill have been heading to the right, but suddenly they wheel around and quickstep left. They’ve added lances with glittering points, and some of them have drums. She tries not to be too distracted by them, though it’s such a pleasure to be able to see anything in such intricate and concrete detail. But Tobias doesn’t like it if he senses that her attention is not fully focused on him. She wrenches herself back to the solid, invisible present. “Are they coming in here?”
“They’re standing around,” says Tobias. “Loitering,” he adds disapprovingly. “Young people.” He’s of the opinion that all young people are lazy freeloaders and should get jobs. The fact that there are few jobs available for them doesn’t register with him. If there are no jobs, he says, they should create some.
“How many are there?” asks Wilma. If only a dozen or so it’s nothing serious.
“I’d say about fifty,” says Tobias. “They’ve got signs. Not the cops, the other ones. Now they’re trying to block the Linens for Life van. Look, they’re standing in front of it.”
He’s forgotten she can’t look. “What’s on the signs?” she asks. Blocking the Linens for Life van is not compassionate: today is the day the beds are changed, for those who don’t need extra linen services and a rubber sheet. The Advanced Life wing is on a more frequent schedule; twice a day, she’s heard. Ambrosia Manor isn’t cheap, and the relatives would not take kindly to ulcerating rashes on their loved ones. They want their money’s worth, or so they’ll claim. What they most likely want in truth is a rapid and blame-free finish for the old fossils. Then they can tidy up and collect the remnants of the net worth – the legacy, the leftovers, the remains – and tell themselves they deserve it.
“Some of the signs have pictures of babies,” says Tobias. “Chubby, smiling babies. Some say Time to Go.”
“Time to go?” says Wilma. “Babies? What does that mean? This isn’t a maternity hospital.” About the opposite, she thinks caustically: it’s an exit from life, not an entrance. But Tobias doesn’t answer.
“The cops are letting the van through,” he says.
Good, thinks Wilma. Change of sheets for all. We won’t get so smelly.
Tobias leaves for his morning nap – he’ll come by again at noon to lead her to the dining room for lunch – and, after a few false starts and a cheeseboard knocked to the floor, Wilma locates the radio she keeps on her kitchenette counter and switches it on. It’s specially made for those of diminished vision – the on-off and the tuning dial are the only buttons, and the whole radio is sheathed in grip-friendly, waterproof lime-green plastic. Another gift from Alyson on the West Coast, who worries that she’s not doing enough for Wilma. She would surely visit more frequently if it weren’t for the teenaged twins with unspecified issues and the demands of her own career in a large international accounting firm. Wilma must call her later today to assure her that she herself is still alive, at which time the twins will be forced to say hello to her. How tedious they must find these calls, and why not? She finds them tedious herself.