Long Term Care

          Nana wakes in bed. Its an island floating in a sea of darkness. The black ocean swallows reference, drowning time and date in its obfuscating depths. She can almost hear its soft waves lapping at the shore of her bed. They seem to invite her in.

          Just a dip, she thinks, maybe just her toes. She stretches her legs out slowly under the covers, pointing her feet and tapping the top sheet with her big toes… but a bottle tinkles from the kitchen and Uncle Jack swears the way he used to back in Chikasha. She smiles. Oceanic thoughts scatter and dissipate. She hasn’t seen Jack since her brother’s wedding. What a beautiful wedding that had been; her little brother had finally beaten up the courage to ask that Miller-girl’s father for his blessing (far too late in her opinion) and two days later the whole town was in her backyard to watch them wed. That was how things were done, you see? Before robots could fly groceries to your doorstep, people had to work together. When your fence needed mending, when you ran out of varnish before the cupboard was finished, when your crops sat dusty and dry in the field, you called upon your neighbors for help. From the kitchen she hears a cork being pulled from a glass bottle and the splash of liquid pouring into an empty cup.

          Creaking and snapping, she emerges from bed to stand stiffly in her white nightgown, clutching one of the four posters for support. It’s cold, but she moves through this new temperature curiously, like a baby in a pool, her fingers searching through the negative space for anchorage. The curtains are pulled tight, and she judges by the cold that the fire must be out too, so no light intrudes upon her perception. She drags her left hand along the baseboard and shuffles slowly toward the door. She shouldn’t be up this late! She thinks, giggling softly. What would Auntie Helen say if she discovered her sneaking around! Caution is for the elderly, she reminds herself, and whispers a prayer before letting go. Unmoored, she drifts toward the unlit lantern that always stood upon her chest of drawers.

          Each step is an age, each moment a memory. She sees Uncle Jack’s craggy face smiling in the dark air; he’d just spent fifty dollars on a piano for her birthday. She’d wanted a piano since she was six years old, but they could never afford one. It all started that morning when she’d rode to the university with Uncle Jack. As she was waiting for him to finish his business with the head cook, she’d happened to stand just outside the Catlett Music Hall as someone very foolish was leaving it. Music was allowed to escape between its heavy metal doors. She heard a man playing piano so beautifully, so selflessly, so unlike the organist at church that she disobeyed her Uncle’s instructions and sneaked in before those doors could shut her out. Oh, how that music changed her, made her feel things she’d only guessed before and think things she wouldn’t dare entertain. Afraid to enter lest she upset the performance, she sat in the lobby with her head pressed against the back wall, closing her eyes to feel the reverberations of what turned out to be Brahms’ piano concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major. She waited for the concert to end, for the audience to stream past her into the street, and for gas-light to replace the sun’s, making the world seem smaller and more fragile. Somewhat dazed, she picked across the tile floor and peaked in at the stage. There, a brown Baldwin Grand gleamed in a blazing spotlight. Its lid was propped open, lending it a sense of vulnerability, and a rifled composition languished like a Greek goddess over the desk stand. It loomed in her mind and became symbolic. It seemed to tug at her clothes and draw her along the sloping center aisle toward it. But before she reached the shining object, a foreign-looking woman wrapped in a shawl the exact color of the piano paced into the spotlight and began shuffling the music into order. Nana hadn’t been spotted yet, and if she’d stayed perfectly still, she might have gone unnoticed. But she couldn’t help herself, so she stepped forward and asked the foreign woman for the man’s name, the man who’d played so beautifully that day. Showing no surprise, the foreign woman studied her from the stage, peering so deeply into her eyes that Nana cowered. The room suddenly felt so cold and the light so harsh. Without a word, the foreign woman broke eye contact and strode behind the curtains, her boots clacking upon the polished wood. Nana still hears those steps sometimes when she dreams, and they sound like inevitability and indifference. She heard a back door swing open (the foreign woman must have been still, for the clacking had ceased, mercifully) and a clear, deep voice resounded around the theater: “My name is Elena,” said the foreign woman, and she locked the door. That night, Nana received a wicked punishment from Auntie Hellen for disobeying her Uncle, but her enthusiasm for piano prevailed through both pain and poverty. So when, for her sixteenth birthday, Uncle Jack came home with a beat-up old upright in his brake, she abandoned all sense of propriety and wrapped him in her arms, kissing his rough unshaven cheek. “And now he’s here!” Nana thought, “Uncle Jack’s in the kitchen,” and she’d made it halfway toward the chest of drawers.

          The darkness in front of Nana is all-consuming, but her memory gives it an outline, a directionality. She can’t see where she’s going, but she feels comfortable where she is now, and takes another step forward toward the chest of drawers where the lantern will be. Todd used to sit by that lantern all night and write. Even once she’d wired the house with electricity he preferred the lantern’s motion and smell. He said it made him more creative. She’d loved Todd in a way, with his hangdog devotion, but she could never marry him, never give him what he wanted. She’d been married twice before she met Todd (she was a widow and a divorcee) and was unwilling to give up the strength she felt for having raised her children alone. Todd wanted her, but she felt protective of herself (she had worked, after all, for years to become who she is) and saw no reason why Todd should get to have her. It is because of Todd that she distrusts words that begin with the letter, “P.” Todd was a poet, you see? Which is always less attractive than it sounds, and she associated him with words like, “pining,” “pathetic,” and “paranoid,” which, as traits go, are downright unattractive. But he was also passionate and parental, so while she never wanted him back, she did sometimes want him around. She can almost hear the familiar scratch his fountain pen made on rough paper, the way his rambunctious left foot tapped incessantly as he sat bent over his “work.” When she moved away from Oklahoma, he wanted to come with her, but she wouldn’t allow it. She wanted her life to be hers alone. She knew she’d made the right decision when she received his letter. In typical Todd form, the letter was a poem. She can still remember what it said:

“When I think about it,

I hardly believe it’s real.

I don’t sleep, and I can’t eat,

I’ve hardly touched a meal,

Since you’ve gone away and left me here,

Alone with what I feel.

Missing you and missing you,

Is a wound that will not heal.

I just want you one more time,

Over and over again.

I just want to look in your eyes,

And see myself in them.

I just want you to come for me and,

Let me choose to let you in.

I just want to talk with you,

So you can tell me who I am.

Because it’s been five years, and I’m a different man,

Who’s still in love with you.

Because it’s been five years and your replacements,

Can never replace you.

Because it’s been five years and the lies I’ve told,

Will never become true.

It’s been five years and although I’ve tried,

I’ll never forget you.”

          She still has it around here somewhere, and although she’d never replied, she sometimes thinks of Todd on nights like this one. When the darkness in front of her makes her flee back to a time in which everything made sense, and one thing happened after another, sequentially. These days, she admits, it’s become harder and harder to tell why things happen.

          Completely without reference, the feeling of the oriental carpet brushing against her feet offering the only evidence of terrestriality, Nana takes another step. She stares ahead of her into the formless dark. Formless, yet full. Outlines flash in front of her like watermarks, and a reality emerges from her memory. Although she cannot not see, she knows the layout of the room. Behind her stands her twin bed, and behind that, her bookcase; four feet in front of her and at seventy degrees is her armoire; five feet to her right resides the door; and two steps from her outstretched fingers is the chest of drawers. Yes, the chest of drawers, and the lantern, are right in front of her.

          Just one more step and she’ll feel the lantern with her fingertips.

          She steps forward trustingly, thrusting her hands out before her like a hieroglyph. She feels for the lantern, remembering how its iron wire extended parabolically over its scorched glass. She stretches her fingers wide and curls them around the air, grasping. Where is it? Panic vibrates painfully through her chest and her breath comes more quickly. Moving is suddenly more of an effort and her joints feel stiffer, more painful. The dimensions she was so sure of only moments ago seem to fall away, and she’s lost, floating in space away from everything she’s ever known. She sees the faces of her loved ones flitting in front of her and she can no longer distinguish her brothers from her sons, her grandchildren from her parents, her husbands from her friends. The cold bites her exposed arms and she hears Elena’s awful clacking, but this time it’s coming towards her. She sits down, it’s all too much to comprehend. The clacking gets louder, and she feels it inside of her, as if it was the sound of her own heart beating against her chest. She lays down completely, tears welling in her eyes, and wails as a door opens behind her, spilling light around a room she’s never seen before.

          “Mrs. Bertolini?” asks a voice from behind her. “Oh Mrs. Bertolini, what happened? What are you doing out of bed?”

          A pleasant looking foreign woman appears above her. The foreign woman looks familiar but Nana’s sure she’s never seen her before. “Let’s get you back into bed, huh? You’ve got a big day tomorrow, remember? Your son is coming to visit and he’s bringing your grandchildren. Nana’s gonna need some energy to keep up with Prince Leo and Krissy-Bug.” The foreign woman reaches down and grasps Nana’s arms, pulling her upright and leading back toward the gurney.

            Nana crumples like a baby animal to the high metal bed with her quilt on it. Even through tears she can see that this stranger’s room is adorned with her possessions. Atop a pragmatic white storage unit she can see her ornate wooden jewelry box, laden with gifts from her former lovers (none from Todd, incidentally) and on the sheer, support-barred windowsill to her left are pictures of her family; in the furthest one she says Uncle Jack’s face smiling at her in black and white. Nana turns to the foreign woman, who’s pushing clear liquid into the port on her arm, and mumbles something about Uncle Jack being in the kitchen.

            “Shhhh…” says the foreign woman, and Nana’s eyes feel like stage curtains falling over a performance. “Sleep now, for Elena,” she coo’s. Nana closes her eyes compliantly and hears someone’s feet clacking as they stride away from her. Each successive clack, although quieter than the last, seems to shake the room with increasing force, before suddenly ceasing. She hears a door open. Lively music fills the room for a moment, and then the door closes.