Far-Flung Read online

  When the senior citizens had successfully toasted the New Year, Mrs. Carlson closed the shades and dimmed the lights. She clapped her hands for silence and, being the type of woman she was, got it. “Happy New Year!” she shouted, and raised both her arms above her head as if she were a successful political candidate. “Well, we have a special New Year’s treat for you. Something nice and romantic and beautiful to watch. I’m happy to introduce Dillon and Deanne, from the Tuxedo Dance Academy, who are going to entertain us with some ballroom dancing.”

  Dillon and Deanne squeezed through the jungle of tables and wheelchairs and stood in a clearing in the middle of the cafeteria, They smiled and waved to the senior citizens. “Music, maestro,” Dillon said, none too enthusiastically.

  Mrs. Carlson lowered the needle to a record on the phonograph, which began playing at the wrong speed. Dillon and Deanne laughed and boogied frenetically for a moment, and then began to waltz as the speed was adjusted and the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” became recognizable.

  Miss Alice Paul returned from the bathroom to find the cafeteria dark and rearranged. She couldn’t find her seat so she stood against the wall. It was snowing out. Two people were dancing in the middle of the room. Miss Alice Paul recognized the woman from the bathroom. She had come in and changed—from a nylon snow suit into a ball gown. She had asked Miss Alice Paul to zip her up. Miss Alice Paul thought she had seen a tattoo on her back, but she could have been mistaken.

  They finished dancing; some people applauded. Several in the group had fallen asleep. People always fell asleep when they turned the lights out. That was why they didn’t show movies anymore.

  “Well,” Mrs. Carlson announced, breathlessly, as if she had been dancing herself, “wasn’t that beautiful? Poetry in motion, is what I call it! Guess what? Dillon and Deanne have offered to dance with some of us! Let’s show them how agile we are. Who’d like to dance?”

  Miss Alice Paul was looking out at the snow falling in the parking lot. A bus drew up to the curb and collected a line of people. She was wondering where the bus was going when Dillon appeared at her side and asked her to dance. For a moment she was confused—the snow had been falling with a disorienting richness, like fabric disintegrating in the sky—but then the lights dimmed again and Dillon led her through the tables, and she thought, Do I remember how to dance? She found she did: The motions were all still there somewhere, and she moved closer to Dillon and closed her eyes, which helped. She heard Dillon say “You’re good,” and she felt herself squeezing his arm, a strange, involuntary gesture, and her hand felt the shape of his biceps beneath his coat and held it and Dillon said “Let’s try something,” and he began to dance more intricately and Miss Alice Paul followed him, her feet articulating a language she thought she had forgotten, and for the first time in ages, she realized she knew what she was doing and she couldn’t help laughing a little and Dillon said “Let’s dip,” and they did; they dipped, and when Miss Alice Paul opened her eyes she found that she and Dillon were the only ones dancing and that everyone was watching them.

  No one realized Miss Alice Paul had bolted till Knight called on New Year’s Eve, saying she had been picked up at the Bloomington bus station for loitering. Apparently she had gotten on a bus after the nutrition lunch and took it all the way to Bloomington, but once she got there she didn’t know what to do. The police found her crying in the station.

  No one ever did figure out what exactly had happened, because Miss Alice Paul stopped talking. She also kept her eyes closed most of the time after she came back to Norwell, squeezed tight, as if every moment were a scary scene in a movie.

  At first everyone thought she was just mad at them and not talking out of spite, but after a few weeks, when she still hadn’t said anything, Topsy called Carleen Dempster, the therapist at the Norwell Mental Health Center. Carleen told Topsy to bring Miss Alice Paul in for a visit, but Miss Alice Paul wouldn’t go. She just shook her head when Topsy suggested they go see a friend.

  So Carleen made a house call, one night after dinner. While Dominick loaded the dishwasher, Topsy filled her in.

  “Now, is she a relation of yours?” Carleen asked. She took out a little spiral notebook and wrote “Miss Alice Paul” on the top of a page.

  “No,” said Topsy. “She was a friend of my mother’s.” “And now she’s living with you?”

  “Well, when my mother died, there was no place else for her to go. They lived together for about thirty years.”

  “Doesn’t she have family?”

  “No.”

  “Well, now, does she pay rent?”

  “No,” said Topsy. “She doesn’t have any money.”

  “She has no income? What about Social Security?”

  “She doesn’t get any.”

  “What about welfare?”

  “No,” said Topsy. “She’s just an old gentlewoman. She never worked. She was a pink lady for a while, I think, but that’s volunteer.”

  “And she didn’t pay rent when she lived with your mother?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “She just helped out,” said Topsy.

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. With the cooking and cleaning, I suppose.”

  “And she wasn’t paid?”

  “She wasn’t an employee. She was a friend.”

  “And what about your mother’s estate?”

  “What about it?”

  “Was this Miss Paul recognized by the estate?”

  “No, this Miss Paul wasn’t.”

  “So now she’s just living off the goodness of your heart?”

  “Yes, although she doesn’t quite see it that way. She wanted to stay down in Bloomington, in my mother’s house. Actually, it belongs to me. I was renting it to my mother.”

  “And you couldn’t rent it to Miss Paul?”

  “Like I said, she hasn’t got any money.”

  “Well, who buys her clothes and all?”

  “I don’t know. She has things. They’re all about a hundred years old. I bought her a new winter coat, but she doesn’t wear it.”

  “Well, this sounds real complicated. She should have been on welfare all along. She must have some money coming to her.”

  “Well, I told you, she stopped talking. Ever since she came back from Bloomington.”

  “When did she go to Bloomington?”

  “Over New Year’s.”

  “And she hasn’t talked since then?”

  “No. At least not to me.”

  “She talked to me,” said Dominick. He closed the dishwasher.

  “Did she?” asked Topsy. “When?”

  “The other night.”

  “What’d she say?” asked Carleen.

  “Well, it was … I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “’Course you should,” said Topsy. “Why not?”

  “She’s real sad,” said Dominick. “She said she wanted to die. She asked me to run her over with the car.”

  “Oh, she asked me that, too,” said Topsy. “I think that’s just a ploy for sympathy.”

  “Well, you can’t be too sure,” said Carleen. “How old is she?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. My mother was eighty-three, and Miss Alice Paul was about the same age. About that, I’d say.”

  “And do you want her to continue living here?”

  “What do you mean? What can we do?”

  “Well, maybe she should be at Heritage Hills.”

  “I don’t think she’d like that,” Topsy said.

  “Well, let’s ask her,” said Carleen. “Where is she?”

  “She’s upstairs. She goes right up after dinner, sits in the dark. It’s like she doesn’t want to be here at all. Like she just wants to ignore everything.”

  “Dear oh dear,” said Carleen. She followed Topsy up the back stairs. The door to Miss Alice Paul’s room was closed. Topsy knocked.

  “She won’t say ‘Come
in,’ or anything,” Topsy said. She opened the door.

  Miss Alice Paul was sitting on the bed, one hand braced on either side of her. The room was dark except for some stripes from the porch light. Topsy turned on the overhead light.

  “Miss Alice Paul, this is the woman I was telling you about who wants to help you,” Topsy said. “Her name is Mrs. Dempster.”

  Miss Alice Paul sat perfectly still, her eyes closed. Carleen walked over and put one of her hands on top of one of Miss Alice Paul’s. Miss Alice Paul drew hers away.

  “Hi, Miss Paul,” Carleen said. “I’m real glad to meet you.”

  “Maybe I’ll just leave you two alone,” Topsy said.

  “That’d be just great,” said Carleen. “I’ll be down in a while.”

  When Topsy had retreated Carleen turned the light off. “We’ll just sit here in the dark,” she said. “We don’t need that old light, do we? I always did like to sit in the dark. It’s real comforting.” She sat down on the bed next to Miss Alice Paul and for a while she didn’t say anything.

  “What a real nice quilt this is,” she finally said. “Did you make it?”

  Miss Alice Paul didn’t respond.

  “I took a quilting class at Adult School a couple years ago, but all we ever made were pillows. Mine came out all lumpy. You need such patience to be a good quilter. It’s a dying art, you know. It is for sure. ’Cause you see, it was women who did it, and now they’re just all doing something else.” She paused. “I mean, they all have jobs or something. I like my job, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have the time to do more things with my hands, things like quilting. Or just plain sewing.”

  Miss Alice Paul seemed to have relaxed a little. It was hard to tell.

  “Miss Paul, I don’t want to tell you what to do. I mean, I respect you, and if you don’t want to talk to me, well, I think that’s fine. I mean that. It’s fine. But I think you should. I think you should talk to me because I can help you. And things aren’t going to get better unless someone helps you. They’re going to get worse.”

  She paused and put her hand back on top of Miss Alice Paul’s. Miss Paul folded her hands in her lap. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said.

  “What?” said Carleen. “Excuse me?”

  Miss Alice Paul cleared her throat. “I was married once,” she said. “And I’m not a widow and I’m not a wife and I’m not a divorcee.”

  Carleen thought it Would be impolite to ask what indeed she was, even though Miss Alice Paul seemed to be waiting for that exact question.

  “My marriage was annulled,” Miss Alice Paul said. “It was annulled by the court and the Church after twenty-eight days.

  “Well, huh,” said Carleen, with great interest. And then, when Miss Alice Paul failed to continue she asked, “Why was it annulled?”

  “I got married to Thomas Oliver Lippincott, which was not, of course, his real name. He had another wife. She was in a sanatorium up in Saranac, New York. He thought she was going to die of tuberculosis, but she did not die of tuberculosis.”

  “She got better?” Carleen asked.

  Miss Alice Paul nodded her head, once, with vehemence.

  “Miss Paul?” Carleen asked.

  Miss Alice Paul stood and walked over to her dresser. She took a pin from her pin cushion, which was shaped like a gigantic mutant strawberry. She held it out in the dark, something shiny in her palm, for Carleen to see. “Sara Teasdale gave me this pin,” she said. “Do you know of Sara Teasdale?”

  “I don’t think I do,” said Carleen.

  “Sara Teasdale was a poet. I met her in New York City, and I admired her brooch, and she gave it to me. She took it off her coat and gave it to me. It’s made of agate and amber. She took it off her coat and said, “If you like it, please do have it.”

  “Wow,” said Carleen. “How interesting.”

  “Do you like it?” Miss Alice Paul asked. She walked back over to the bed, her arm outstretched, and stopped when her hand was in a patch of stray porchlight. A fat bumblebee rested in her palm.

  “It’s very pretty,” said Carleen. “But I don’t really wear—”

  “Here,” said Miss Alice Paul. “If you like it, please do have it.”

  The girl didn’t take the pin. She left it on Miss Alice Paul’s dresser. It looked as if it had been flying around the room and landed there. For a moment Miss Alice Paul tried to believe it was a real bee, that she was afraid of it. Then she picked it up and clutched it in her palm. The metal wings bit into her skin, but it wasn’t like holding an object. It was like holding a feeling. This is pain, Miss Alice Paul thought. The harder she clutched it, the better it felt.

  After a minute she opened her hand to see if her palm was bleeding, but it wasn’t. There were just lines, red and calligraphic, like a Chinese character.

  “There’s a magician in the solarium,” the girl said. “How does that sound?”

  “What?” asked Miss Alice Paul.

  “This afternoon’s event is MAGIC. Do you want to go down to the solarium for a magic show?”

  “I don’t believe in magic,” said Miss Alice Paul. “It’s all just tricks.”

  “But they’re fun to watch,” the girl said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Why don’t you go,” suggested Miss Alice Paul, “and tell me all about it?”

  “I think you’re supposed to go,” said the girl. “Your chart says you can go to all events.”

  “Does it say I must go? Is this Russia?”

  “I guess you don’t have to. I’ll put down you were asleep.”

  “Don’t lie on my account,” said Miss Alice Paul. “I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  “Why don’t you just come down for a little while? If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you back up. I promise.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Miss Alice Paul.

  “Jane,” said the girl.

  “All right, Jane,” said Miss Alice Paul. “I surrender.”

  “Good. I should think you’d like to get out of this room.”

  Miss Alice Paul looked around her hospital room. Since she had broken her ankle, she had been moved, from The Lodge, the nicest building in Heritage Hills, into the intermediate care pavilion. She should never have tried to escape out the window at night. Not that she believed her ankle was really broken—she had walked to have it x-rayed. She was sure they had put a cast on her leg and her in a wheelchair and moved her to intermediate care only to keep her immobilized.

  The solarium was not accurately named. It was illuminated not by the sun but by long tubes of fluorescent lights. The couches and chairs had, like their inhabitants, found their way to the solarium after what appeared to be long and taxing lives.

  The magician, a lady in a green velvet tuxedo, was pouring water into a handkerchief folded to resemble a vase. When the pitcher was empty, she snapped the handkerchief open, revealing nothing but air. She paused for applause, but received none.

  Her next trick required a volunteer, and she was vainly seeking one when Jane appeared beside Miss Alice Paul’s wheelchair. “You’ve got a visitor,” she said.

  “A visitor?” asked Miss Alice Paul. “Who?”

  “A friend,” said Jane. “A boy. He’s waiting in your room. I’ll bring you up.”

  It was a boy: the boy. He was standing by the window, looking out, when Miss Alice Paul was wheeled in.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Jane said. “Have a nice visit.”

  “Hi, Miss Alice Paul,” the boy said. “Remember me?”

  “Of course,” she said. But she couldn’t think of his name. He was just the boy. There had been the boy, and the girl, and the two ladies. The crazy one and the mean one. She had always liked the boy the best.

  “I’m Dominick,” he said, as if he knew she didn’t know his name.

  “Of course, Dominick,” Miss Alice Paul said. “It’s nice of you to come. Sit down.”

  He went to sit on her bed but then he not
iced the bars were up, so he sat on the windowsill. He nodded out the window. “I was outside cutting the grass and I thought I’d come in and see you. See how you are. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “No,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “What happened to your foot?”

  “They tell me it’s broken.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “An accident,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “I don’t feel it,” said Miss Alice Paul. She looked at her foot, which was extended straight out in front of her, like a sword. She had forgotten about her feet. They were so far away from the rest of her. She had lost interest in them. Every other Thursday, she was lined up with the other residents, barefoot, in the corridor, and a podiatrist, who sat on a little rolling platform, scooted down the row, his head bowed over their gnarled, naked feet, trimming their toenails. Like Jesus washing the apostles’ feet.

  “It took me a while to find you,” Dominick said. “This is a big place.”

  “Well, I used to be over there.” Miss Alice Paul started to wave toward The Lodge, but then she realized she had no idea where it was. “But they moved me because of my foot. It was nicer over there.”

  “Maybe you’ll get moved back,” Dominick said.

  “Maybe,” said Miss Alice Paul. “I doubt it.”

  “Oh,” said Dominick. He sounded disappointed.

  “How are you?” asked Miss Alice Paul. “You said you were cutting grass?”

  “Yes,” said Dominick. “I have a job cutting grass. All over the county.”

  “That sounds … interesting,” Miss Alice Paul said.

  “Not really,” said Dominick. “But it’s nice to be outdoors.”

  “How’s school?” asked Miss Alice Paul.

  “It’s over. I graduated. I start college in the fall.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Indiana University. Bloomington.”

  “I used to live in Bloomington,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “I know,” said Dominick. “With Aunt Gran.”