The Last Waltz

Ignoring my sense of foreboding, I concentrated on Charlie, my husband of less than a year as he emptied his apple picking bag into a basket. "With all this help, your mother's orchard will be picked clean in no time."

I brushed back that stubborn lock of hair that always fell across his forehead. His skin was warm against my finger tips. “Do you remember what you did this time last year?"

"Of course. I got my heart's desire when you said yes."

"And you gave me mine."

He frowned. “We still haven’t been able to take a wedding trip.“

“It doesn’t matter.” I wanted nothing more than to be with him. To feel him beside me each night in bed. To wake to his kiss. To share our hopes and dreams while we built our future.  

 "Shall we dance?" He took my hand.

I closed my eyes. He whistled the familiar strains of a waltz. His callused palm cupped my fingers. His warmth enveloped me as he held me close. I heard bees buzzing.

No, something is wrong. We shouldn’t be able to hear bees at this time of year. I try to hold Charlie closer but I can’t feel his hand against mine anymore. His warmth fades. The buzzing refuses to be ignored. I open my eyes.

I’m back in purgatory. My roommate’s alarm hisses.  

“Who the hell needs an alarm clock in a nursing home?” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and wait for the dizziness to pass. Above me are ceiling tiles stained shit brown. On the floor, linoleum so yellowed it seems like I’m stepping into a puddle of piss. I shuffle to the bathroom. I’d never admit it out loud, but this morning I’m grateful for the grab bar beside the toilet. 

"Lillian! What are you doing in here by yourself? You know you're supposed to wait until someone helps you." An aide barges into the room, the rubber soles of her shoes making noise like she’s walking on a wet floor.

“I can wipe my own ass.” I’ll be damned if I’ll let this woman touch me. It’s bad enough I’m stuck in a cheap ass facility where I have to share a room. I’ve been here months now and realize that I’m fooling myself if I think this hell is temporary. 

While the aide is distracted with manhandling my roommate, I rest against the closet door frame and pick out clothes for the day. Something bright to lift my spirits. A pair of burgundy double knit pants, for comfort, and a polyester blouse with oversized yellow and orange flowers, for shock value. The pants are baggy and loose at the waist. The blouse hangs on me. I’ve lost weight in this hell hole.

The aide bounces beside me. "It's Wednesday. Your daughter will be here for lunch. Are you sure this is what you want to wear? What about this?"

"No." I reject the matching pants and top she offers. 

"You sure, hon? You want to look nice for your daughter don't you? You're lucky you have family close enough to visit so often."

"I'll take comfort over style." My daughter will hate the color combination and the bagginess. I’m feeling petty and want to poke at her. She’s a big part of why I’m here. If I hadn’t given in to her, I’d be in a nice facility back home with my friends and my memories. She played on my not wanting to be a burden and talked me into moving two-hundred miles to be closer to her. That way it’d be more convenient. For her. 

After the aide scurries away, a nurse comes in to slap little paper cups on our nightstands. “Meds, ladies.”

She scurries away, too.       

“Those nurses never wait like they’re supposed to,” my roommate complains.

I don’t care. I dump the pills in my hand and try to remember what each one is supposed to do. At every visit, the doctor says the meds are the main thing keeping me alive. He talks to my daughter as though I’m not in the room. At first that really pissed me off, but now I don’t care. His indifference gave me an idea for an escape plan.

“I need some water.” I perform the next step in my morning ritual. When I’m safely in the bathroom, I turn on the faucet and drop the pills one by one down the sink drain. I keep the water running until I’m sure they’ve disappeared. 

After breakfast, I sit in my favorite spot in the sun room. There’s one of those wicker chairs with the big fan back that’s camouflaged by some fake ferns and a fake ficus. My solitude is momentarily interrupted when the aides wheel in the insensate residents strapped into their chairs.

One of them looks like my sister. I sure the hell hope that woman is oblivious. Being aware of your deterioration is hellish enough when you can still move around on your own. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to be trapped in your body.

Being in the same room with these zombies is too much. I want to leave but my path to the door is blocked. I can’t get past without being seen. As an ambulatory inmate, I’ll be shepherded into the activities room to play bingo or make something out of popsicle sticks.

I close my eyes and let the sun warm my face. Children are playing in the park across the street. Their shouts and laughter drift through the open windows.

I’m a child again on a hot August afternoon. We kids had run to the livestock tank as soon as our folks pulled out of the yard. We’d have plenty of time for a swim and chores before they got home. Bragging about who’s the best swimmer, we stripped to our underwear throwing our clothes over bushes well away from the danger of getting wet.

“Manny, you take first watch.” Reinhold, the oldest of us still at home ordered. “Climb up there and make sure you holler the minute you see anything moving. And mind the wind. You’ll have to move fast if those blades swing ‘round.”

The rest of us clambered in the tank, shouting at how cold the water was. There wasn’t much room to actually swim but that didn’t matter because none of us knew how. We had contests to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest and who could avoid being dunked.

When Manny got tired of missing out, John, the baby of the bunch hoisted himself up the ladder. I climbed up after him until Reinhold tried to pull me down. “No, girls can’t climb that high.” 

“Just you watch me.” I splashed water in his face until he turned me loose. Perched up on the platform beside John, the prairie stretched forever under a sky so blue it made me wish I could fly. To the east was a smudge on the horizon. That’s Sutton where my folks went. To the west was the spire of the school house rising from a grove of trees.

John decided he was missing too much fun so Reinhold took his place. "I guess girls can climb this high. I should know better than to tell you that girls can't do something."

"You're forgiven." No matter how much he teased me or got in my way, I could never stay mad at him or any of them. We younger ones were thick as thieves.

Up here the wind hummed through the wheel and jiggled the tail. Reinhold pointed to the north. “See that where all those trees are? That’s the Blue River. And that clump of trees just over there, that’s Uncle Jakob’s place.”

"And there’s Grandpa's barn. You don't think he can see us do you? I bet we stick out like anything up here in our drawers."

Reinhold laughed "Nah. He's too busy to be staring over here."

"Oh, look over there. I bet it's Pa and Mama." A plume of dust moved along the road.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” Reinhold hollered. We scrambled to pull our clothes over wet undergarments. I was helping my little sister Leah tie her shoes when a branch reached out of the bush. It grabbed my arm and started shaking me.

I open my eyes and see my daughter, Lucy. She’s shaking my arm. “Mom? What are you doing?”

“Just resting my eyes.” The emptiness of the room slaps me. Everyone is gone. “I’m the only one left.”

I'm here." Lucy looks around. “They’re serving lunch. Are you hungry?”

She’s impatient at my slowness so she grabs my arm and steers me to the dining room. It’s meatloaf. Gray and greasy. Everything on the plate is gray. I’m careful to lift the fork to my mouth when Lucy is looking. We talk about the food, the weather, and her busy schedule. Our usual topics of conversation exhausted, Lucy lays her cutlery on the table and starts rearranging the condiments. It’s not a good sign.

"The girls are coming next weekend."

"They were just here last weekend."

"Well, yes but they're coming again."

"Why? What are you up to?"

Lucy sighs. "Mom, please. Don't make this more difficult than it already is."

"Make what more difficult?"

"Tom and I have been talking. We have to take your things out of storage." She vomits the words onto the table.

Here it is. The next blow. The next decision my children are making for me, about me, without me. 

 "Tom isn't willing to pay for it any longer and I just don't have the money. There just isn't any other way. "

"What are you going to do with my things?" 

"That's why the girls are coming, Mom. Look at this as an opportunity to make sure we do what you want with your stuff. Not everybody gets that chance, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"We want you to make a list of what things you want to go to whom. I can take your furniture, mine’s falling apart. And grandma’s china and the sterling silver flatware Dad gave you.”

“Of course, you will.” I’m surrounded by vultures. My bones picked clean and left to bleach in the hot sun.

“If there are things you want to hang onto we'll send it home with the girls and they'll store them in their basements. Is that okay?"

“It’s not like I can do anything about it so it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

That’s become my mantra since Charlie died. He’d come home from work one day with a fever. The next day he was worse. I called the doctor and we rushed him to the hospital. By nightfall he was dead. One of the neighbors told Lucy when she got home from school. She was only sixteen.

Tom was in the army stationed in Germany. The Red Cross offered to bring him home. He refused. He turned the argument he’d had with Charlie two years before into a weapon against Lucy and me. It was a double loss for both of us. She blamed me. After that, I’d been so numb that nothing mattered. That familiar numbness penetrates my body, every organ, all my bones.   

“Even so, Mom, it matters." Lucy stops rearranging the salt and pepper shakers long enough to pat my hand. "I know you'd rather be living in your own place but it's just not possible. You’ve heard what the doctors say. That's the reality, Mom, and we just have to face it. Things will look better after you have some time to get used to the idea."

We go to the day room where I welcome the opportunity to sit down again. A game show blares from the television in the corner with a handful of residents circled around guessing at the answers They cackle in delight when one of them guesses correctly as if they were the ones winning the prizes.

I settle into a straight-backed side chair I know I’ll be able to get out of unassisted. A nurse hustles in with a cart and stops in front of me. “Here you go, hon, your noon meds.”

I take the small paper cup with the pills, pop them under my tongue, and then make a show of drinking the water the nurse hands me. I wait until she walks away then dig a tissue from my pocket, fake sneeze, and discretely spit the pills into the wadded tissue before I slip it into my pocket.  ”I dreamt about your father last night.”

Lucy picks at a worn spot on her oversized arm chair. "You did?"

"We waltzed in the orchard."

"Um-hm."

"You know he proposed to me under an apple tree."

"I know." 

"Knelt right there in the dirt and told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me."

"That's one of my favorite stories about you and Dad."

"I guess he did,” I whisper.

"Did what?"

"Spent the rest of his life with me."

Lucy sighs. "Oh, Mom. Why do you torture yourself with these memories? It's been over forty years."

"Don't you miss him?"

"Of course I do, Mom. Do you want to come with us when we go to the storage unit?"

"No."

"Okay. Why don't we make a list then?" Lucy digs in her purse and retrieves a pad of paper and a pen.

"You came prepared." 

She folds her hands in her lap. "Mom, I know you resent that you can't live on your own. But, honestly, being snippy with me doesn't change anything. Besides, you've had lots of good things happen your life, haven't you? And there's lots of good things ahead."

“Lots of good things.” I snort. “Twenty years of happiness with Charlie followed by forty-five years of heartache and loneliness. A son that only speaks to me when his wife makes him. A daughter who uses me as a piggy bank.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair?” Is it fair that I bailed my daughter and her shiftless husband out of one financial disaster after another? Is it fair that over the years I spent almost every penny I had making sure my grandkids weren’t homeless or hungry? Is it fair that I have nothing now yet they’re circling like vultures? 

Lucy sighs. ”Whatever, Mom. I'm not going argue with you. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I’m stating the facts.”

“Maybe the girls could take you out to eat after we're done next weekend. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"No. They should be saving their money. Besides, I'm too tired to go gallivanting around."

"It's not gallivanting, Mom. Just an hour at a restaurant. The change of scenery might do you good."

"I'll be too tired to go out. Besides, I might be dead by then."

"Mom, don't talk like that. You've got lots of good years left in you."

"I'm tired. I need to go lay down for a while."

I concentrate on keeping my balance as I walk. We part ways by the elevator where the wheelchair people are lined up in front of the reception desk. On impulse, I kiss my daughter's cheek and hug her. "I do love you, Lucy."

"I love you too, Mom. Get some rest, okay? I'll call you later about going to dinner next weekend."

I rest a hand on the nurses' station for balance until the elevator doors close behind her. One of the more coherent wheelchair residents has their feet on the floor, inching along the hall.

I grab the chair's handles. "Here let me help you. You want to go this way, right?"

I use the chair for support as we shuffle down the hall. When we get to the doorway of my room, I apologize with a twinge of guilt to the woman I hijacked. Despite my exhaustion, I feel exhilarated, the kind of satisfied tiredness that comes after a hard day’s work.

I stretch out on my bed, close my eyes, and wait for Charlie to come for me.

BIO:

Lea Pounds holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha. She loves to explore those brief interactions that tell a deeper story. Lea is published in Sand Hills, The Novice Writer, After Dinner Conversation, and The Good Life Review. Lea can be found online at leapounds.com