We Are Not Ourselves(174)

“Hello, Calypso,” Eileen said, with forced brightness.

“Calypsa. With an a. Say hello, Calypsa.” The woman’s name tag read Kacey, but she hadn’t introduced herself, even though she was the social director. The bird just sat on her wrist, giving Eileen an eerie stare.

“I’m Eileen.”

“She’ll go up your arm if you hold it there for a minute.” Eileen could think of nothing else to reduce the awkwardness of the moment, so she stuck her hand out reluctantly. “Straight,” the woman said sharply. “Put your arm out straight. She’ll walk right up.”

Eileen straightened her arm. After a few moments the bird hopped decisively onto her wrist. Eileen had to restrain herself from crying out as the bird made its way to the soft skin inside her elbow, where it stopped and dug its claws in.

“It pinches a bit,” the woman said.

“It certainly does.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I suppose so,” Eileen said tersely.

“I take her around to the patients. She loves to crawl on them.”

Eileen was incredulous. “Crawl on them?”

“All over.”

It was hard to see how this was going to be something Ed would enjoy. The bird was making its way up her arm to the shoulder, where it settled in with a certain finality, as though it had planted a flag. Eileen was able to relax slightly, though it was kneading her shoulder through the fabric.

“It—she—doesn’t hurt them?”

“She wouldn’t hurt anyone,” the woman said with a hint of indignation. “They can scream at her and flail around and she just acts like a lady.” The bird pecked at Eileen’s collar and seemed about to engage her ear when the woman whisked her away, clucking, ostensibly at the bird, but Eileen felt it directed at herself.

Ed wasn’t in the dense crowd in the television room.

“Where is my husband?” she asked the attending nurse at the main desk.

“Who are we talking about, ma’am?”

“Edmund Leary,” she said. “He was admitted yesterday.”

“He could be sleeping. He had an eventful day.” The girl raised her brows.

“What happened?”

“Sometimes there’s an adjustment period.”

“What happened?”

“He had to be restrained. He didn’t want to be changed. He’s a little younger than our average patient. He’s got more pop in him.”

She felt a twinge of pride beneath her concern. She ached to see him. She walked down the hall and found him staring at the ceiling, the radio at his bedside playing at a low murmur. After a couple of seconds she realized it was tuned to a rap station. She shut it off angrily and headed back to the desk.

“There was a rap station playing on my husband’s radio.”

The girl gave her a blank look. Her straightened hair—whether it was her own or not—was piled on her head in a colorful tower that looked like a piece of glazed ceramic. She should have known better than to think this girl would understand.

“There should never be a rap station on his radio.”

“I’m sorry about that, Mrs. . . .”

“Leary. Eileen Leary. My husband is Ed Leary, and I will be here every day. And I do not want rap music on his radio.”

“I’m sorry—”

“I’m a nurse. I understand they may put the radio on when they’re changing the sheets, doing up the room. Under no circumstances should the radio in his room be set to a rap station.” She could feel herself sweating. “I’m trying to make myself perfectly clear.”

“Would you like to speak to my supervisor?”

“I will call tomorrow,” Eileen said. “Thank you.”

“This won’t be a problem,” the girl said, “I assure you.”

“I know it won’t,” Eileen said, and she went back to Ed. She could hear in her head all the things that nurse was thinking about her. She’d heard this narrative in her head for as long as she had been supervising nurses, and she was fine with it.

Somewhere deep down, she knew that if Ed were his former self enough to take in the rap music with all his faculties, he might very well be curious enough to give it an honest listen. There had been times when she had suffered Ed’s open-mindedness like a thousand little cuts, but it was tolerable because he gave in to moments of tribal loyalty himself sometimes, and even displayed occasional ill-temper about the things that got her blood going—like that night she’d never forget, when a couple of Hispanic kids, who had been leaning against the streetlamp in front of the house for an hour, cursing up a storm, drew Ed out to the stoop. He dressed them down and told them to take that kind of low-class language elsewhere, because this wasn’t that kind of house, and she stood in the vestibule and watched over his shoulder as they skulked away. Now, though, that he could hardly discern the differences between things, there was no appeal she could make to a reasonable, mutual, even generational abstention from the noise around them. The silent radio reproached her. She put on a Nat King Cole CD for him.

At the end of her visit, she had a hard time navigating her way out through the identical hallways that seemed to loop back on each other. She asked for the “front entrance” because that was what she’d heard it called, even though it was at the back of the building, and even though facing the street was an entrance she imagined should have been called the “front entrance.” That entrance was the “back entrance,” and if she went out that door, she would have had to walk all the way around the facility to the “front entrance” to get to her car.