Part 16 (1/2)
”No, really, I don't think-”
”Whad'ya know, here's Reverend Rick no ya doin', Reverend? Why don'ya come on in for a minute or two Cheer up our patient here, who's all down in the du up to a little chat, Mrs Flett?”
”Well, I-”
”I could always come back tomorrow”
”Well-”
”I'll just stay a minute Sure wouldn't want to tire you out”
”Oh, no”
”Pardon? What's that you say, Mrs Flett?”
”Please sit down Make yourself-”
”Afraid I didn't quite hear-”
”Make yourself, make yourself”-here Grande of her lower teeth, panics briefly, and then, thank goodness, finds the right word-”comfortable”
”I'll just pull up a chair, Mrs Flett, if that's okay with you”
”So good of you to come”
God, the Son and the Holy Ghost; suddenly they're here in Grand the wall, a trio of paintings on velvet, dark, gilt-edged, their tenderlove Not a sparrow shall fall but they-what is it they do, these three? What do they actually do? I used to know, but now at the age of eighty I've forgotten It seems too late, so Reverend Rick will put forth an explanation The cleansing of sins, rede way back, the blood of a la barbarous A wooded hillside Spoiled
”Afraid I didn't quite catch what you said, Mrs Flett”
”I said, it's so good of you to co?
No, it only see
Froh of sheets From her pain and bewilderhty-year-old throat The drugs The dreanored, and doomed The pastel scenery outside her expensive , the car doors sla lot, Jesus and God and the Holy Ghost peering down on her in their clubby,one way or the other, when you coht down to it, about the hurts and alarms of her body-at this tio away
”It's so good of you to come”
Did you hear that, the exquisite manners this elderly person possesses? You don't encounter that kind of old-fashi+oned courtesy often these days And when you think it's only teeks since her bypass, six days since a kidney was seized fro, considering all this, that she can re, the persevering strictures of social discourse
Never h theMrs Flett
Grandirl-it seems her name is Jubilee- disbelief, pretending horror-”Not anoth-ah bouquet! I swear, Mrs Flett! Now, you tell me, how'm I supposed to find rooot?”
Mrs Flett's son, Warren, and his neife, Peggy, have sent an inflatable giraffe, five feet tall, with curling vinyl eyelashes and a mouthful of soft teeth-it stands by the , and wobbles slightly whenever a breeze passes through A conversation piece, Mrs Flett thinks, a little puzzled, wondering if giraffes hold special significance for the elderly, the infirotten fahters-Rain, Beth, Lissa, and Jilly-have pooled their babysitting aenerosity, their sacrifice, brings tears into her throat, though, in fact, she never once takes the y to read the tightly printed directions
And at five o'clock every afternoon Grandhter, Alice, in Haland (ten pm, Greenwich time) Alice used to joke that her aily on her way out, rather like Queen Elizabeth in a , to life-this mystery, this little enterprise But now she understands her picture will have to be reordered Heron the transatlantic line, adopts a clear, quiet, unrushed voice, as though she were phoning froh she were someone in a television drama
”I've spoken to the doctor, Mother He says you're doing wonderfully well He says you have the th, and if you only had, you know, just a little o ho such wonderful care and attention, and luckily Blue Cross covers al”
Alice also phones her sister Joan in Portland, Oregon, and says, plunging right in: ”She can't possibly go hoe? She's helpless”
To her brother Warren in New York she says, the telephone wires taut: ”I've talked to the orthopedic surgeon and he says she'll never be able to walk again, not without a walker, and maybe not even that Iof the end”
All three of Mrs Flett's children feel guilty that they are not at theirto fly over at the end of her teaching teriven birth to a Down's syndrohtly, that he can't possibly abandon his family at a time like this, not even for a few days Joan has actually o, Tahters to look after and a husband who is prone to extra-marital involvements Mrs Flett's niece, Victoria, writes a witty little note every second day, but for the moment her professional responsibilities, as well as her husband, Lewis, and the twins, keep her in Toronto When Grandrandchildren, her grandniece, she is unable to fores in her irl, Jubilee, is more real to her now And Dr Aaronfeld and Dr Scott on their daily rounds, their jokes, their loud, hearty, hospital laughter And, in his way, Reverend Rick And faithful Marian McHenry who has not 's visit, never mind that all she can talk about are her relations back in Cleveland And the Flowers! Where would she be without the Flowers, who come by cab every two or three days, and what a time they all have then!
Even when Mrs Flett still had the drainage tube in her nose, when she could scarcely lift her head froe by her bedside Just a couple of hands that first day, then gradually increasing You'd hardly think it possible that Grandma Flett could concentrate on hearts and spades, points and tricks, trumps and cross-trumps at a time like this, but she can, she does; they all do Lily, Myrtle, and Glad are their names; Glad, of course, is really Gladys, not Gladiola, but she considers herself a full-fledged Flower nevertheless The four of them live on various floors of Bayside Towers, where Mrs Flett has had her condo all these years, and it was here, in the baseether (This would be in the late seventies, after Mrs Flett lost her two dearest friends, Beans dying so suddenly, Fraidy Hoyt going senile; a terrible tibusters Other people at the Bayside envy their relaxed good nature, their shrugging conviviality, and each of the Flowers is acutely aware of this envy, and, in their old age, surprised and gratified by it At last: a kind of schoolgirl popularity Unearned, but then, isn't that the ith popularity? The four Flowers are fortunate in their nize their luck Lily's fro Myrtle froht say, and yet their lives chime a similar tune Just look at them: four old white women Like Mrs Daisy Flett, they are s; they are, all of them, comfortably well off; they have aspired to no profession other than h; there is soreed and droll about the way they're always on the cusp of laughter On Sundays they go to church services at First Presbyterian and, from there, to an all-you-can-eat brunch at The Shellseekers (a sign over the cash register says ”Help Stole afternoon, Monday to Saturday between the hours of two and four-thirty, they play bridge in the card roo the round corner table which is positioned well away from the noisy blast and chill of the air conditioner This is the Flowers' table and no one else's ”How're the Flowers blooreetings
”My husband used to say that girls with flower names fade fast”
It was Myrtle who said this one day, out of the blue, and for sohter Nohen asked how the Flowers are bloo, one of the fast,” and one of the others will add, with a calypso bounce, ”but holding firm” It's part of their ritual, one of an Glad's been knitting for the last ten years And another joke about Mr Jellicoe on the sixth floor who cradles his crotch when he thinks no one's looking And about Mrs Bolt who looks after the library corner and hoards the new large-print books for herself
And Marian McHenry and her everlasting nieces and nephews up in Cleveland And about the inevitability and sinfulness of the pecan pie at The Shellseekers They celebrate each other's birthdays-with a bakery cake and a glass of California wine-and on these occasions one or other of the Floill be sure to say: ”Well, here's to another year and let's hope it's above ground”
This, to tell the truth, is the joke they relish above all others, a joke that shocks their visiting fa freshness, with a fine trill of ht down to it, about their own deaths
Their laughter at these moments wizens into a cackle It's already been decided that when one of theoes over the wall” or ”trades in her ashes” or ”hops the twig” or ”joins the choir invisible”-that then, given a decent week or two forthree will invite the unspeakable Iris Jack) to fill in at the round table, even though Iris has the worst case of BO in captivity and is so durand sla neatly at her wrist bone where the light strikes the white plastic of the hospital bracelet, which reads: Daisy Goodwill
That's all-just Daisy Goodwill So off the Flett and leaving the old na in space, naked as a tulip
Fortunately this error does not appear on her hospital chart and has so far gone undiscovered by the staff and by Mrs Flett's many visitors A secret known only to her
She cherishes it More and n of her soul
Not that she's ever paidlife she's been far too preoccupied for s a woman has to do-and shyly e to look hi she would be powerless to draw hi how in twopoverty of her mind Mrs Flett, who attended Sunday School as a child and later church, has never been able to shake the notion that these activities are a kind of children's slide shoholesoh you did have to put on a hat and fix your face in a serious gaze for the required hour or so as you drifted off into little reveries about whether or not you had enough leftover roast beef to make a nice hash for supper, which you could serve with that chili sauce you'd made last fall, there were still two or three jars left on the pantry shelf, at least there were last tis and baptisms, yes, yes, but never for Mrs Flett the queasy hills and valleys of guilt and salvation The literal-ht deeply about such matters, and why should she? The Czechoslovakian creche she sets up at Christmas does not for her represent the Holy Faures, nicely carved in a stiff folkloric way and brightly painted, though the baby in theJesu, Joy of Man's Desiring It was all rather baffling, but not in the least troubling
Do people speak of such things? She isn't sure
But then Reverend Rick coan to , the existence of her soul, the state of her soul, the radiance of her soul, et cetera, et cetera, and now, in her eighty-first year, the rebirth of her soul through the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior Needless to say, Mrs Flett doesn't mention to Reverend Rick the fact that her soul's compacted essence is embraced by those tords on her hospital bracelet: Daisy Goodwill
And behind that na na whose form she sees only when she turns her head quickly to the side or perceives in the rhythli her by surprise She has alotten the small primal piece of herself that caht, on whose surface, in fact, no thought had ever shone Nevertheless (it can't be helped) whatever comes later, even the richest of our experiences, we put before the judginalelse Soreat forehead
”I' herself to consciousness in the lonely, air-conditioned, rubber-s discomfort of the hospital, ”still here”
”She's a real honey,” Jubilee says to anyone who happens to be around ”Not like sohter,” Mrs Dorre, the head nurse says ”A fighter, but not a complainer, thank God”
”A sweetheart, a pet,” says Dr Scott